1. My Friend, the Moon

When Tom was younger, he went to buy fresh bread every evening with his mother, Alice. They always walked and the bakery was far from home, so it was not uncommon for the Moon to come out along the way. "Hello, Mister Moon! Do you wanna come with us?", he liked to say. When they arrived at the bakery, he looked to his mother, excited, and said "Look ma! The Moon came with us!", and did the same when they got home.

2. Fiction

"Did you know that The Hulk was a detective once?", says Alice. Tom is 4. He puts his hand in the forehead in a gesture of superb irritation. "No, mom, this is make-believe!".

3. Cookie Conundrum

According to Tom, a mysterious group of sinister chipmunks was eating the cookies in the jar. When Alice asked for proof, Tom replied that a secret group of chipmunks got rid of all the evidence.

4. Ice Cream Dilemma

"So, mom, you have two options" — said Tom, seriously. "There are only two ice-cream flavors: chocolate and vanilla. Any choice is fine by me".

5. Tom and the Rats

Tom's house used to be infested with large disgusting rats. One day, he shouted: "Rats are the worse! No wonder we call them rats!

6. Dream Logic

Tom dreamed that his forehead could fly without him, leaving a hole in his head. When he woke up in the morning, there was a deer on the porch eating a hot-dog.

This may seem like I'm rambling but, please bare with me, I think I have some point(s) to make.

• I've been trying to locate a common ancestor image to the album cover of Gnarls Barkley's single Crazy and the banner of an interesting talk titled Imagination and it's resistance to chance. I think the resemblance is sufficient to suggest one an ancestor exists and it's not just a crazy coincidence. Can anyone help identify it?

• The same academic conference linked above hosts a fascinating introduction to Intensionality, Invariance, and Univalence. It captures some of the most exciting mathematics going on at the moment. Presumably I should be posting this in ~science tagged as mathematics. Is there some limit at which particular tags become popular enough to warrant their own subtilde? Are there queries users can run to determine tag counts? These questions were prompted by the slight irritating thought of classifying mathematics under science.

• People could respond to many different parts of this thread since I've written so much. However, the points are slightly related, at least in how I present them. If I were to split them up into separate posts, not only would it add to the noise, each point would lose whatever relation they had. So, I wonder if, much like r/IAMA, could there be a better format for conversations where many users are speaking to a particular individual? An expert or celebrity perhaps. Trying to track all the replies of the main user was always a hassle in those IAMA threads.

If there's interest in such an extension to tildes, I'd like to offer my help in implementing it. That's my main point really and why I posted here.

Update 12/03/2020: this is not a telemetry, but a kill switch from Colombian carrier - confirmed by HMD. Kill switch will be removed from most devices soon. I updated an article and posted it here.

Original article below:

I have recently purchased Nokia 6.2 and wanted to check if it sends any data somewhere, considering what happened with previous models

First, I noticed approx. daily connection to dapi.hmdglobal.net
This is a Google Cloud that could belong to a company behind Nokia - HMD Global.
But the Privacy policy in my phone only speaks of "activation" process, not of daily diagnostics data.
So I used developer tools to remove the following packages (warning: this may break your device, I am not responsible for any consequences)

    com.hmdglobal.enterprise.api
    com.qualcomm.qti.qms.service.telemetry
    com.qualcomm.qti.qmmi
    com.qualcomm.qti.qdma

Before removing them, I used APK Extractor to save APK files just in case it breaks my phone and I may be able to attempt reinstall. This part comes into play later.
The first was my blind guess about what exactly connects to dapi.hmdglobal.net
The next 3 I found mentioned in various forums for other devices as "safe to remove", however, I have not seen any telemetry sent to Qualcomm or anywhere else, except what I mention next.

After removing these packages, I noticed that there are some remaining unknown connections my device attempts several times per day.
They are all done in same order, one right after the other:

    www.pppefa.com
    www.ppmxfa.com
    www.forcis.claro.com.co

After some investigation, I found that the first two domains point to some Microsoft Cloud servers rented in US.
The last one most probably belongs to Colombian telecom company, and this is where it becomes interesting.
After many hours of fruitless removing of different apps in my attempt so stop it, I suddenly remembered something.
When I used APK Extractor previously, there was an empty first line with some generic icon where an app icon should have been.
I went there again and indeed, this is a hidden system app, that you can not see in the list of all apps in Settings, normally. But it turns out, you can see it in Data usage (after it successfully sends some data using your mobile connection).
The name of the app is deliberately left empty to hide it, but if you click it in Data usage, you can see that this app is co.sitic.pp , which can receive SMS, can make calls, and has access to internet.
As with all Android apps, you can reverse read the name to guess what it is.
Turns out, http://sitic.com.co is a Colombian company, who "are leaders in innovation and create mobile and WEB applications for new products and services." (credit goes to Google Translate)

screenshot of the app with permissions

In other words, this app is a 3rd party telemetry, hidden from user, not mentioned in the Privacy policy, that has access to SMS.
This looks very bad and I really hope this is a malware injected by factory and not something knowingly distributed by Nokia, HMD Global, the EU company.

After removing the co.sitic.pp app, requests to Microsoft Cloud and Columbia stopped.
I was later pointed to a German forum, where (I believe) it was first found in a Nokia 7.2 device.
So, we have it confirmed in 2 devices in 2 different countries.

On German forum they contacted Nokia (I assume support) but got tired exchanging emails for weeks without any result.
On 02/03/2020 I have requested an official reply from Nokia and HMD Global via press.services@nokia.com and press@hmdglobal.com and waiting for reply.
Since I am not a journalist, I may never get one.

TLDR: 3rd party telemetry is found in Nokia 6.2 and 7.2 devices, is hidden from user, has access to SMS, and sends data to Microsoft Cloud in US and a server in Columbia.
It is probably supplied by SITIC S.A.S., a Colombian company, and looks more like a malware than a telemetry.

I'll start with @TheFanficGuy's reply to a comment of mine where he said you can bring down an authoritarian regime without a coup'd etat/successful civil war, although I admittedly can't really imagine any dictator just giving up power like that unless it hurts their economic allies. (And the Arab spring shows this above all else.)

I also wouldn't be surprised if many of these regimes only make a minimal amount of effort to keep their population shut.

Do we have any mathematicians in the house? I've been wondering for a while why math is usually focused around real numbers instead of computable numbers - that is the set of numbers that you can actually be computed to arbitrary, finite precision in finite time. Note that they necessarily include pi, e, sqrt(2) and every number you could ever compute. If you've seen it, it's computable.

What do we lose, beyond cantor's argument, by restricting math to computable numbers? By corollary of binary files and therefore algorithms being countable, the computable numbers are countable too, different from reals.

Bonus points if you can name a real, non-computable number. (My partner replied with "a number gained by randomly sampling decimal places ad infinitum" - a reply as cheeky as the question.) Also bonus points for naming further niceness properties we would get by restricting to computables.

I've read the wikipedia article on computable numbers and a bit beyond.

So I don't know about all of you, but I'm pretty sick of terrible healthcare in the USA.

So I'm starting this thread for all of us to rant about our personal issues with healthcare. I'll be writing my rant into it's own reply later (it's a bit of a long one), but I wanted to start the thread now to give others a chance to start venting.

Rules of Rant Thread:

1. Don't argue a rant
2. Thread is likely going to be incredibly USA-centric. USA healthcare is assumed unless stated otherwise.
3. Rants should involve people no more than 2 degrees of separation from yourself. This thread is to vent about your personal experiences, not hearsay from total strangers.

In order to foster further discussion, and include those without a rant: Here are some things I personally would appreciate and expect for replies, but others might not.

• Explanation of how things would work out for you if you were in a similar situation
• Advice for dealing with any ongoing or future problems

Special thanks to Max Woolf and Project Gutenburg for resources, and the Brothers Grimm for such inspiring material.

The Fae in a Bottle

By Reverend William Howland

"Dear brother, thou seest the water
crystallizing, go and show it to the merchant. I will make him a
little bottle of water of the same kind; put it in a corner, and
not open it too quickly, until the reflection shall let him see it."

The merchant, who was standing behind the glass, said, "If that is
the case, I do not see why the name of the fountain should be
changed." "Why not?" asked the merchant. "Because my name is
Dummling." "Dummling, what is that?" "Is a rare and wonderful
name; I do not know how it is to have it." "If you do not see why
the name of the fountain should be changed," said the merchant, "I
will pay you three thalers." "There! now I see what is in my head;
I will pay you thaler, but you must wait until I come back."

Then he disappeared behind the glass. The poor man was forced to go back
on his begging; he had no more money but the three thalers which the
merchant had given him. He had long ago left the village, and wandered far
off, and when he came back, his brother had forgotten him, and thought,
"Why should I travel farther? I have not seen my brother." Then he came to
the town where his brother was again living. "Dear brother," said the
brother, "how are you? How are you getting on?" "Oh," said the brother,
"not well."

"Then just come and eat thy bread."

"That would be very good," said the brother, and went away.

He walked a long time, and came to a great forest. Then he said to his brother,
"Go and bring me with you to-morrow morning." "Nay," said the brother, "I
can't go. I have heard so many lies and stolen things from my brother,
and they have not served me very well, I see very well that they will
do me no harm." Then he went to the gallows, and told them that there
was a poor shivering, peering there from the window. "If you let me in,"
said the brother, "I will do you a favour. In grey hairs you can see
a piece of a horse's heart." So he went into the forest, and saw there
how a greyhound which was his neighbour, was dead. Then he was sad,
and made himself known to the brother. "Dear brother," said he,
"how are you getting on? What hast thou been saying there about
a piece of horse's heart?" "Ah," said the brother, "how can I say that
on the gallows, when I have not a drop of blood on me!" Then he gave him
the greyhound's heart, and had it put in his own. The brother felt for a
while in his pocket, and then he said, "I have a small bottle of wine,
and if thou art inclined to drink, thou shalt find the courage
to hold thy tongue." "To what use is the bottle put," said the
brother, "but to some end I should like to have a sip?" "To win the
Rosen Cup," said the brother with great joy. "To me that is enough,"
said the hare. "To thee alone, it is the most valuable thing that
the world possesses," said the brother. "To me, it is my most valuable
thing." "To me, it is my most valuable possession," said the hare. Then
he turned himself around and went to the gallows. "To-day it was
announced that the very gallows were to be, and to-morrow they were
to be," said the brother. "I do not know to which I should place myself,"
he replied, "but, to-morrow it will be to-morrow, and to-morrow
I will go." Then he was led to the gallows, and was once more there
in the place where he had formerly been. He again said to the greyhound,
"I wish you were still standing there." "To-day it was announced that the
very gallows were to be, and to-morrow they were to be." "I do not know to which I
should place myself," said the hare. "To-morrow it will be to-morrow, and
to-morrow I will go." Then he turned himself round and went to the gallows,
and was once more there in the place where he had formerly been.

"To-day it was announced that the very gall

(E/N: The story stops here abruptly, as the author ran out available memory. I wouldn't like to enforce my interpretation of the story upon it, so I'm leaving it as written.)

One thing we take for granted in social media is that any comment may receive a reply from anyone. Maybe we should rethink that? What would happen if it were optional?
For example, for someone posting in "What's a widely criticized thing that you feel is worth defending?" topic, I am not sure that everyone posting there really wanted to start a discussion.
Having replies shut off might be frustrating sometimes as a reader, particularly when something you disagree with gets a lot of upvotes. But it would make the author's intent clearer. If you're inviting further conversation, leave replies on. If you're not, turn it off.
Everyone has the right to walk away from conversation. This would make it explicit. Maybe it would make heated threads less likely, since they'd stop sooner? It seems like it's more difficult to walk away when you're also letting the other side get the last word?

Per @mrbig:

What is a logline?: a brief summary (25 to 40 words) of a story for film, television or book that states the central conflict and an emotional "hook", with the purpose of stimulating interest (Wikipedia).

A logline is evaluated not exactly for what a story is (since it does not contain a complete story), but for what it can be. Suggestions usually seek to maximize the dramatic potential of the idea.

Create a Logline, and you can chose to reply to others with your interpretation of how their stories would go.

Hello everyone, it's 00:16 my time and I'm finally fucking done making all the data pretty for you after about 4 hours of coding to parse all those juicy CSV files cause guess what, the excel files that JotForms gave me WHERE FUCKING GḀ͒ͬ̓ͦͅRͤ͊̔́B̴̼̫̟͍̅̆A̩̽ͮ̂̏͡G̸̭̜̑͑̃Ȇ͈͙͈̠̖̋́̌ͭ͂ͧ^{help me}

Anyway :) Let's give y'all a brief rundown of the current Tilde demographics, and some highlights, CAUSE NOW I HAVE ALL YOUR DATA AND THUS INFINITE POWER TO MAKE JOKES^{did I mention I've been doing for half the day and I'm really hungry? AND TIRED?} Honestly you owe me this moment of insanity considering I'M RUNNING ON GREEN LEAF JUICE AND HOW MUCH DATA I WADED THROUGH AHHHH-.

Also, most of these will be pictures because honestly I can't be asked to not pretty paste these figures into markdown tables or I'll legitimate go insane. Anyway, this post has plenty of sass, don't take this shit too seriously please, gracias.

The 2019 Census

Anyway.

This year we got 249 responses in total, which really annoys me cause 250 is way prettier to look at at. However, one was completely empty and the other two are... Fishy. More on that later.

Personal details

Age

When it comes to age, Tildes is heavily skewed towards people in their 20s to 30s, 45% of the responses came from people between 20 and 30. Overall, late 20s to and early 30s dominate the demographics. (before anyone screams at me about the proper use of graphs, don't worry I also took Statistics at uni, but the histogram in Excel refused to work and honestly go make your own census) There is also some statistical noise, which I'm not sure how it happened. Most likely someone typed too quickly.

Our youngest user is 11! And either very intelligent, cause they also speak 9 languages, or a fraud. If you're not a fraud, I apologize and wish you luck on your future path in life, which will surely be extremely successful, if you really speak that many languages at such an age.^{Hint, this was one of the fishy responses}

Our oldest user is 70! I really don't know what to say, cause that's a pretty high number for an internet user. How was uhh... The cold war?^{Holy fuck I should stop I need to eat}

Geographical... Stuff

Overall, the Tildes demographic hasn't changed much. US and Canada still lead by quite a lot, but we have acquired quite the little diverse userbase.

All I can do is salute my fellow other Austrian user. Can you say Oachkatzalschwoaf though? THAT'S THE SIGN OF A REAL AUSTRIAN.^{NONE OF THIS STARTING WORLD WARS SHIT}

Language

Predictably, a large number of people does not speak a second language besides English, however, due to geographical diversity, a large number of languages is represented, most of them from Europe, which is Tildes' second largest userbase.

Gender & Sexuality

Tildes is heavily male-dominated, probably due to its IT-focused population and the fact that most of us came from Reddit.

Of the 248 responses, 17 people hit marked that they were trans, pretty much all of them MTF (which is apparently the majority of trans people, Wikipedia tells me.) 3 preferred not to say and everyone else is cis.

Now, let's get to the sexy stuff. And by that I mean the point where the numbers rub together in fantastic ways.

The majority of Tildes is really fucking straight, though we have some fun sexualities represented, my personal favourite Still figuring that out. You do you mate, you'll get there eventually. Also, whoever wrote down O-Sexual also wrote X-Treme Wiccan as their religion, and at this point in I'm too afraid to google what any of that is. Clearly, we need more straight people, after all, we're in the 20s.^{Before anyone yells at me, THIS WAS A FUCKING JOKE} For now I've defined that person as Fish numero dos.

Religion

So, here's a doozy. To that one person (probably part of the 9% of <20 year olds), WHO DECIDED TO WRITE THE WONDERFUL ANSWER atheism and angosticism are not religions, can you PLEASE read the question properly next time. FUCK.^{Honestly that is such a 14 y/o thing to write, by the Ǵ͙͔͔̻͖̜́ͅO̶̱̘͡D͓̞͉̲͓̥S̢̲͙̙̟̯̙͓̱͟}

Anyway, religion is probably the thing with the most diverse answers, honestly. There are words in there I have never read in my life before. Like what is Apatheist.1? Is there some sort of ranking? Does it work with natural numbers only? Is there a Apatheist.3,51? It can't be a typo, people take religions way too seriously for that.

Politics

I averaged out the scores of everyone who answered the political questions and got the following answers (remember, these are based on the 8values quiz):

Economy - 7,02
Diplomacy - 6,9
State - 3,8
Society - 7,48

Only economy is really surprising here, though I'd also have expected diplomacy to be a little lower as well. Maybe the leftist skew ia bit of an illusion?

Work, education and really everything else these sections were a terrible idea

When it comes to education, Tildes is pretty university focused. Almost half people replying have a bachelor's, a good bunch are working or have aquired their master's. Also one (maybe soon-to-be) MD and a few PhDs. The Craftsmen and tradeship people barely balance us out, we need some more COMMON FOLK IN HERE.

IT people, rejoice! WE STILL REIGN SUPREME^{Everyone else will remember that} All jokes aside, shoutout to the stay-at-home dad, proud of ya'. And to the disabled person, I hope life goes as well as it can for you. That goes for the longterm-unemployed person as well. Someday, you'll manage mate, someday.

And to the person who said their job is a waste of time in exchange of money... Mate, you need someone to talk? I'm here. We're all here.

Surprise section about technical shit and Tildes

OS usage is as expected, due to Tildes' heavy skew into IT and the fact that Apple doesn't nearly dominate as much in other countries as in the US, it's to be expected.

Due to said IT dominance Linux has almost caught up with the leader, Windows. Though my personal favourite is Anything cool that comes into existence, like can we make a Linux fork that is called literally that? You'd be the perfect match.

When it comes to Tildes specifically, y'all need to chill out. Most people who answered the census visit Tildes multiple times a day, like the content here doesn't even move that quickly? WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING? IS THERE SOME SECRET CULT I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?_{If it's a LSD cult I'm totes in lads.}

As expected, most people who answered the survey have an account, and most likely due to the heavy IT skew most people are visiting from their PC. But I have also seen some people requesting a mobile app in the free form questions, so maybe that would go up if a native app were to be created.

The freeform questions

Well, in all honesty, not much has changed. Most people like the dedicated community, site design, in-depth discussions (though that was sometimes a point on both sides), etc. and dislike the heavy domination of IT topics and US/Europe news & politics. Also, multiple people simply said @Deimos when asked what they like most about Tildes. Get a room, y'all. Though it's well deserved, I think we can all agree on that.

Complete list of positive feedback: https://pastebin.com/KYCYLWP1

Complete list of negative feedback: https://pastebin.com/Eng6jjay

Complete list of ideas for change: https://pastebin.com/eery3mCt

Why am I posting these? Cause in all honesty, freeform feedback like this is hard to analyze and summarize, so I'd rather just post it all so everyone can form their opinion. Also, I'm tired.

Special mentions

Someone was nice enough to add the mention in parantheses that I should add them to the bisexual list instead if no one else marked pansexual. Well lucky you, exactly one other person marked it! You two can go find yourselves a room with lots of sexy pans in it now and have some fun.^{This is how it works, right?} Or just, slide into each other's DMs or something and talk about your love for pans. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I also appreciate the one person who entered their religion in the languages section on accident. That's fact now, you speak Raised Catholic, now spiritual/atheist now, no shh, no talking back, that's your language now.

To that one person that said that Tildes is too serious, this one's for you.

And cheers to Deimos, without whom I couldn't be so silly on this overly serious but fantastic platform.

Anyway, Grzmot out, I need sleep. I'll come back in 8 hours or so to regret the shit I just wrote down at 2 AM. Please don't ban me.

Hello everyone, it's me again, that guy who can't create online forms reliably.

As some people might've noticed, the last attempt backfired on me in two ways:

1. The form itself was... Lacking, as numerous comments told me
2. The wonderful, privacy conscious form creating site I used physically broke after about 70 responses, meaning I lost the entirety of the data collected thus far and any future response. As I couldn't view the responses individually either, this means that the previous attempt was a complete failure.^{Please hurl your insults at me in the PMs to not clutter these comments.}

This has lead me to create a new form on a new site: JotForms. As this is commercial site, it shouldn't break after a handful of replies and also is still privacy conscious. They do not save any data as the recipient of the data (me) is declared as the controller. Be assured that I will use all collected data solely for the census (i.e creating fancy graphs and analysing it).

The only positive aspect here is that at least I got to address valuable feedback you guys gave me. I've updated the political section and expanded the work and education section. I'm sure it can still be improved though.

The currently only problem I have is that on the free tier of JotForms, you're limited to 100 submissions, which we'll surely exceed based on the numbers of the last census. Buying the premium for one month (actually subscribing and then cancelling it) would cost me USD 19. That's not the world to me, but would you guys be fine with me appending a paypal link to send some voluntary donations my way if you think I'm doing a good job? I don't want to make a profit, I'd just like to recoup the cost.

Currently, the form is still in editing, you can view a picture of it's current form here. Nothing is set in stone, and I'm open to all suggestions.

Part 1: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/llhd33/152-the-real-enemy-part-1

Part 2: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/94hwe43/153-the-real-enemy-part-2

Part 3: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl3vj/154-the-real-enemy-part-3

Not-So-Secret Santa Is Live!

Sign-ups for the group itself will NOT close and will continue to be available on an invite-only basis.

IMPORTANT EDIT: It is more than okay to join the group even if you do NOT intend to gift games to others! Please join if you want to receive games. Gifters love to have an eager audience to gift to!

For certain events (such as Not-So-Secret Santa) gifting is necessary for those choosing to participate, but these are always optional. Membership in the group and accepting freely given gifts requires no burden of gifting on your behalf.

ALSO IMPORTANT EDIT: Not-So-Secret Santa has a buy-in of under $5 USD. Though gifters can certainly choose to gift a more expensive game if they prefer, each participant is including at least one game on their wishlist that is less than $5 USD in order to minimize the people who are priced out of participating.

With @Deimos's permission, I have started the Tildes' Steam Game Gifting Group and am beginning its first event: Not-So-Secret Santa!

In proper Tildes' fashion the group is invite-only at the moment, so if you would like to join, please reply here or PM me with a link to your Steam profile or your Steam username. I'll have to friend you to send you the invite, but you don't need to keep me on your friends' list after you've accepted it if you don't want to (I promise I won't mind!).

I envision the group being used for specific events (like Not-So-Secret Santa), random giveaways, and group-limited lotteries (using the platform Steamgifts).

Some people only include footnotes on their text after they finish it, or realize that their interpretation of something might not be the same as others interpretation (like what is social media) or source their claims, or detail it after finishing the main body. Admittedly we might want to let the user choose whether their edit is worth notifying to all who replied for the sake of stuff like typos though.

BTW this has been posted before but it was a year and a half ago sometime around when tildes itself became a thing so a new post is definitely due.

My favorite genres are hip-hop and electronic but lofi and synthwave songs like resonance and HOME are just as good.

Edit: Seems most people here (at least most who replied) like a variety of metal and rock genres. Pretty interesting.

Discuss: namespace clashes expose and ensure instabilities in user-side solutions to interface problems.

Case in point -- the RemindMeBot, which will send a timed reminder message to anyone who calls it in a reddit comment with the phrase "RemindMe!", has been cloned and iterated upon by another bot, Kzreminderbot, which responds to the exact same trigger phrase. Both bots reply to the comment threads where they are summoned. Kzreminderbot has slightly more diverse features, including email/text notification, but the interesting thing here (I think) is the impotence of the response from the creator of RemindMeBot, who has added a link in their comment replies to send annoyed feedback to the second bot.

We talk occasionally about the scramble for usernames on new services, but this is an slightly novel example of the cascading hierarchies of website design. A feature which reddit lacked is added by a bot, but that bot is too provisional to cover the hole which it was meant to fill.

I had a problem uploading a profile photo to Meetup today and so contacted support:

I can't upload a profile photo so am unable to join a number of groups. The photo just fails to upload and have tried a number of different sizes (from 400x400 to over 2000 x 1000) and formats - jpg and png. Something seems to be failing!

I got a fairly quick reply:

What problem do you see when you try to upload a photo? Are you seeing any error messages?

The first thing to check when uploading a photo is the size and format of the image.

Images should be .jpg, .gif, or .png format.
The file size limit is 10MB. (If your file size is already below 10MB, try reducing the size further.)

If your image meets these specifications, send the photo to me as an attachment and I'll take a look. I'll also need the link to the page where you're having trouble uploading the photo.

So I sent the image I was trying to photograph (a photo of me with a camera wearing my Refused tshirt) and received this reply:

Profile photos can't have text in them at all (even words written on clothing). It's one of the most common reasons you might have trouble uploading a profile photo. If your photo has any text or lettering, try uploading a different photo.

If that still doesn't work, the next things to check when uploading a photo are the size and format of the image.

Images should be .jpg, .gif, or .png format.

The file size limit is 10MB. (If your file size is already below 10MB, try reducing the size further.)

If your image meets those technical specifications and is free of text, send the photo to me as an attachment and I'll take a look. It's also helpful if you can send the link to the page where you're having trouble uploading the photo.

What? "Profile photos can't have text in them at all (even words written on clothing)"

I pixelated the word "Refused" from the photo and sure enough after uploading the edited photo, it uploaded.

Confused, I sent a reply:

I've pixelated out the text on my tshirt and that seemed to resolve it. It seems to be strange policy? Any reason for this?

And got this bizarre explanation:

To keep our design consistent across all devices, rich text formatting, embedded images, and embedded videos are not supported.

I've replied back to see if the support person can explain what they mean.

If a top-level comment is collapsed by default (presumably due to "noise" tags), replies to that comment will still trigger the "1 new" text on the topic, but won't be visible when you visit the thread - and there's not even any indication that you should expand the noise-tagged comment to see a reply.

Would it be possible(/desirable) to show the red indicator next to collapsed comments if there's a new comment underneath them?

This was posted on Twitter by Alec's sister. She's protected her account now (probably because of how disgusting the replies to it were), but I've re-typed the statement here:

Alec Holowka, my brother and best friend, passed away this morning.

Those who know me will know that I believe survivors and I have always done everything I can to support survivors, those suffering from mental illnesses, and those with chronic illnesses. Alec was a victim of abuse and he also spent a lifetime battling mood and personality disorders. I will not pretend that he was not also responsible for causing harm, but deep down he was a person who wanted only to offer people care and kindness. It took him a while to figure out how.

Over the last few years, with therapy and medication, Alec became a new person—the same person he'd always been but without any of the darkness. He was calm and happy, positive and loving. Obviously, change is a slow process and it wasn't perfect, but he was working towards rehabilitation and a better life.

In the last few days, he was supported by many Manitoba crisis services, and I want to thank everyone there for their support. I want to thank Adam Saltsman for staying up late talking with us and reminding Alec that there was a future.

My family has and always will be the most important thing to me. Please give us time to heal. We tried our best to support Alec, but in the end he felt he had lost too much.

I currently do not see a place for myself in games or on Twitter. I will not be looking at the responses to this post. I appreciate everyone who has reached out to me over the last few days. For anyone who is in a time of darkness, I encourage you to reach out for support. There are always people who will be there for you.

As backstory, he was accused of abuse (and sexual abuse) last week by Zoe Quinn with several others corroborating past abusive behavior (a bit more detail in this article). As a result, the other Night in the Woods creators cut ties with him. I'm going to re-post their statements below inside a collapsed block since they're fairly long, but you can expand it if you want to read them:

(Edit: since Zoe Quinn has deleted her Twitter account now, I'm going to re-type her statement as well)

IMO one of the major issues with online debates, arguments and heated discussions is that they often tend to escalate rather steadily over time, and as each side gets more frustrated with the other they also tend to slowly get more personal as well. I am admittedly guilty of falling into this trap occasionally myself too, which has got me thinking about ways that Tildes (the site and the users here) can potentially help deescalate unproductive arguments and allow people to disengage more effectively from them. To this end I thought it might be a good idea to have a brainstorming session regarding that.

To start things off, here are most of the ideas I could find related to this issue that have previously been proposed and are already on Tildes Gitlab (click ▶ to read the full details):

Feel free to voice your support or criticism regarding the above suggestions, offer up ideas to potentially improve them, or even propose your own brand new ideas related to this issue in the comments here as well.

p.s. Once again, the point here is to open up the conversation and get ideas flowing freely, so let's please try to keep things positive, and keep any criticism purely constructive and friendly so as not to discourage people from participating.

Previous Unofficial Weekly Discussions:

Week #1, #2

Other relevant links:
Donate to Tildes - Tildes Gitlab : Issues Board - Tildes Official Docs

This thought was brought to you/sponsored by my perception that there's an increasing number of comments on Tildes that attempt to "answer" questions posed in the titles of posts, but don't necessarily demonstrate that the user has read the article before commenting. I won't link specific comments, but I've noticed a fair bit of it as of late. I get that those titles bait people into voicing their opinion, but often it's at the detriment of overall discussion. Should a prerequisite of clicking the actual link in question be a requirement before the user is allowed to post a top level comment? Or perhaps a cooldown period of entering a thread versus commenting may help?

The goal here would be to disincentivise the posting of "driveby" or similarly reductive comments that often don't demonstrate nuance or knowledge that is conveyed in the associated article. Sure, we can't ever know if the user has actually read the article, but it's not designed to be a foolproof strategy, just a discouraging one.

There's a few ways this could be implemented, probably via the utilization of a small bit of javascript that toggle's a user's reading state for a particular post. Thoughts?

Just to clarify since I've edited this post: I mean top-level comments only. Replies are more likely to be in response to the parent comment, rather than the title and wouldn't be affected by this proposal.

I'm sharing in case some of you are having a similar issue at work or at home, and to hear your opinion and/or similar stories!

I've been using Ubiquiti access points in my home for a few years now, and overall, they've worked very well. 3 APs giving near perfect 5GHz VHT80 coverage on DFS channels. LAN transfers are about 600-650mbit on laptops, which has proven to be plenty for wireless clients in my home. Keep in mind that this is a pretty basic setup... besides the APs, there's just the ISP provided GPON ONT which is also a typical all-in-one ISP solution (router, switch, AP, firewall, DHCP server...) with it's Wi-Fi turned off.

As I said, I was pretty happy with the results, however there was one feature that I could never get to work just right; roaming. You could be walking around the house watching a live stream and the stream would pause for 5-8 seconds until the roaming transition was over. Strangely, with VoIP calls, roaming would be about 3-5 seconds. Even enabling fast roaming features (which I believe is simply 802.11r) on the AP's controller would not give the results I was looking for. After days of tweaking TX power settings, channel selection and trying to implement Minimum RSSI (which I ended up not using), I finally gave up and resigned myself to the 4-6 seconds (oh, the humanity) of roaming time.

Fast forward to about two months ago and I added a new router to the setup (UBNT ER-4) and a switch (UBNT USW-24). Setup went smooth, already had some cat.6 cabling around the house, now it was time to actually use it. Had some fun setting up a guest Wi-Fi network on it's own VLAN, which was always a concern of mine; having "untrusted" devices connect to my network. The access points do client isolation on guest networks by default, but in my mind it wasn't enough as I have some file servers and time machines on the network.

Anyways, a few days after doing the setup I'm walking around the house with a livestream on my mobile and suddenly realize that it's not losing the connection. I try with a VoIP call and it worked flawlessly. I start walking around faster and still, the phone is roaming without an issue. I was very excited!

I'm thinking it must be the router that somehow solved the roaming issue. My first theory was that the DHCP server on the ER-4 was doing it's thing much faster than the ISP's device, allowing the wireless clients to actually roam faster. So I do a web search and I find some very relevant info. It was a thread on a forum and reddit thread with a sysadmin that was about to give up on the APs because of roaming issues. In both threads, there were replies about what switch were they using.

Apparently, some switches (Cisco and HP were mentioned), have a "MAC aging" interval setting which is way too high by default, or they simply have bugged firmware that doesn't allow the switch to "re-learn" the MAC address of a device on a different switch port. I assume that ISP provided "el-cheapo" gear has similar issues.

So, if you're having roaming issues with your wireless clients, check your switches!!!

Anyways, just wanted to share this story. Thank you for reading. :-)

~supplementary condorcet voting poll, if you'd like to answer in more nuance and provide some data to compare against when i ask this question later on down the road.~ poll has been closed as the week i said it'd be open has elapsed. thanks folks, and of course feel free to continue replying to this thread,

(foreigners are also welcome to chime in on who they'd vote for if they were eligible)

it's still 200 days to the iowa caucuses, but since this election cycle began literally six months ago already and we already have one debate under the belt, we're probably far enough along in the primary at this point that at least some of the billion candidates trying to run for the coveted position of democratic nominee for president in 2020 are making an impact on you, and nobody has actually asked this on here recently, weirdly enough.

i'll probably ask this question again in... i dunno, three months (so mid-october)? and see what changes between threads (if anything does).

I bet this is already taken care of, but if I type @Silbern or /u/Silbern , will I get a notification I wonder?

Edit: Nope, but someone else replied to a comment right before I hit refresh, so for a brief moment, thought I did. Thought I was quite clever for a moment, but alas.

Update! After a few hours of struggling I managed to set up Read the docs for Tildee, it should help using the library significantly.

After getting some inspiration from TAPS I thought that maybe I try to work on something vaguely similar on my own. And after… some? hours of coding today I came up with this: tildee.py (source)
It's a wrapper for the Tildes Public/Web API that is already used by the site internally to make it work. The obvious problem with that is that it will at one point break when this unstable API is changed. It can do basically all things a normal user can do with the notable exception of applying comment labels (because I haven't gotten around to that yet).

Example of usage for a DM reply bot (result):

import sys
from tildee import TildesClient
import time

# Initialize client and log in, 2FA isn't supported yet and will probably break in horrible ways
t = TildesClient("username", "password", base_url="https://localhost:4443", verify_ssl=False)

while True:
    # Retrieve the "unread messages" page and get a list of the conversations there
    unread_message_ids = t.fetch_unread_message_ids()
    for mid in unread_message_ids:
        # Access the conversation history page; this also clears the "unread" flag 
        conversation = t.fetch_conversation(mid)
        # Get the text of the last message
        text = conversation.entries[-1].content_html
        # Abort if it's from the current user (I don't think this could actually happen)
        if conversation.entries[-1].author == t.username:
            break
        print(f"Found a message by {conversation.entries[-1].author}")
        # If the message contains a reference, reply in kind
        if "hello there" in text.lower():
            print("Replying…")
            t.create_message(mid, f"General {conversation.entries[-1].author}! You are a bold one.")
        # Delay before processing next unread message
        time.sleep(3)
    # Delay before next unread check
    time.sleep(60)

This has a lot of potential. Haven't yet figured out potential for what, but I'll take what I can get.
I'd be really grateful if someone with a little more experience than me (that's not exactly a high bar :P) could give me some pointers on the project's structure and the "API design", hence the ask tag. Other creative ideas for what to use this for are appreciated, too.

welcome to debate #1, night 2. the first thread on this turned out to be about twice as active as i was expecting (i estimated at most 50 or so replies), and that was for the "undercard" so unless something changes with this night, i think we'll be doing these in pairs from here on out--at least until either the DNC pushes out enough candidates for one debate, or activity drops significantly in these threads. previous night's thread can be found here if you'd like to continue the discussions of last night's candidates. anyways here are all the details you'd ever need, and probably then some:

first off, i recommend you sort by newest first instead of the default since this thread will likely be semi-active and covering a live event.

How to Watch:

The debate is being broadcast by NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo, and will air live across all three networks starting at 9 p.m. ET.
Telemundo will broadcast the debate in Spanish.
The debate will stream online free on NBC News' digital platforms, including NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, the NBC News Mobile App and OTT apps on Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV, in addition to Telemundo's digital platforms.

livestreams will also be available on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube because the DNC mandated that of its partners for the debates.

The Candidates:

Democratic Presidential Debate: See The 20 Candidates Who Will Be Onstage

• Michael Bennet (Senator from Colorado)

Bennet is running on fixing a broken political system, the blame for which he puts at the feet of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. Bennet says spending from wars and tax cuts was essentially the U.S. lighting “money on fire.”

• Joe Biden (Former vice president)

Biden’s top concern is less about reshaping America and more about returning America to “normalcy.” He argues that if President Trump gets another four years, the DNA of the country will be fundamentally altered.

• Pete Buttigieg (Mayor of South Bend, Ind.)

The 37-year-old is making a generational-change argument. He argues for progressive processes — like fixing redistricting and voting rights — in addition to policies — like being more cautious on war and more progressive on climate change and health care.

• Kirsten Gillibrand (Senator from New York)

She’s focused on women’s rights, especially when it comes to health care. She boasts that a Fox host called her “not very polite” for speaking out about the “nationwide assault on women’s reproductive freedoms” and “fundamental human rights for women.”

• Kamala Harris (Senator from California)

Harris’ slogan is “for the people,” and she’s making the case that President Trump is a “fraud.” The former prosecutor says Trump is fighting for the wrong people — the powerful and wealthy — while she wants to “advocate for the voiceless and vulnerable.”

• John Hickenlooper (Former governor of Colorado)

The centrist has a pragmatic message. He says pragmatists aren’t against big things; they know how to get them done. He has also spoken out against Democrats’ lurch toward socialism, warning that moving in that direction would reelect President Trump.

• Bernie Sanders (Senator from Vermont)

Sanders wants to beat President Trump, but he believes the way to do it is not with “middle-ground” approaches, but with promising wholesale progressive change. He’s the only candidate willing to wear the (democratic) socialist label.

• Eric Swalwell (Representative from California’s 15th District)

He has focused his campaign on ending gun violence in the country, targeting semiautomatic assault weapons in particular by calling for a mandatory national ban and buyback.

• Marianne Williamson (Spiritual guru, entrepreneur)

The New Age author is campaigning with a philosophy of “Think. Love. Participate.” As an outsider to politics, she believes change needs to come from the outside and that “half-truth tellers” can’t beat President Trump.

• Andrew Yang (Founder of Venture for America)

The startup investor is running on a data-first approach to the presidency. His big idea is to address the threat of automation with a Universal Basic Income, in which every adult would get $1,000 a month.

The Rules:

Candidates will have 60 seconds to answer questions and 30 seconds to respond to follow-ups. No opening statements, though candidates will have a chance to deliver closing remarks.
Five segments each night separated by four commercial breaks.

The Analysis:

NPR has 7 questions of their 8 for the debates which apply to today's debate:

Will Biden stand up to the scrutiny?
Is the debate an opportunity or danger zone for Bernie Sanders?
Can Harris and Buttigieg stand out?
Do the pragmatists or progressives win out?
How much of a focus is Trump?
How will foreign policy factor in?
Who will stick in voters' minds?

other pre-debate analysis pieces that may be pertinent to you:

• NBC News: On Night Two, all eyes — and jabs — will be on Biden
• Vox: What to expect at the first Democratic presidential debate
• the Guardian: Democrats prepare for first showdown as 2020 debates loom
• from POLITICO: Inside the top matchups in the 2020 Democratic debates

I am working on an app called Percent Done that is a combination of goal setting, time tracking and habit tracking.

I like setting time-based goals for myself every day, such as “write for an hour” or “work on Percent Done for four hours.”

I also like Seinfeld’s “don’t break the chain” method. For example, Apple Watch shows you how many days you have completed your exercise circle and tells you that you have been keeping at it for x days.

Percent Done is a marriage of these two concepts. It allows you to set goals and track the time you spend on them, as well as how many days in a row you have consistently completed them. For example, you can add a goal that says “write for an hour every day,” and Percent Done will notify you every day to write for an hour. You will be able to tap on this goal and Percent Done will start counting back from one hour. You will also be able to see how many days in a row you have written for an hour.

Here is a demo GIF.

You can also add one-time goals to Percent Done with or without time tracking, so it is a task management tool as well.

You can play with the design prototype here: Percent Done design prototype

I would really love to get your feedback on this. If you are interested in being a beta tester, feel free to reply to this topic or e-mail me at "hi at evrim dot io."

By the way, this is almost completely a self-promotion post. If it is against the rules, I'd be happy to remove this.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is out on Netflix. I'm thinking to use this topic as the megathread to discuss the (re-)watch, to avoid flooding the Tildes Activity feed with one topic per episode.

To borrow a past Tildo's approach, I ask that any top-level comments contain ONLY the episode number, such as "Episode 13" and no other text.

Press the Collapse replies button, find the top-level comment for the episode you care about, and reply under that top-level comment. If there's not yet a top-level comment with that episode number, create it.

I thought it might be fun to make a little game out of asking Fermi problems and trying to work out solutions to others'.

What is a Fermi problem?

A Fermi problem is (to quote wikipedia ):

an estimation problem designed to teach dimensional analysis or approximation, and such a problem is usually a back-of-the-envelope calculation. The estimation technique is named after physicist Enrico Fermi as he was known for his ability to make good approximate calculations with little or no actual data. Fermi problems typically involve making justified guesses about quantities and their variance or lower and upper bounds.

Basically, these are questions that would be very difficult to calculate exactly without looking up the answer. The goal is to arrive at a good estimate by making justified assumptions. As such, looking up facts and statistics should be minimized or outright avoided (e.g., if the question is "What is the mass of the water in Lake Michigan?", you shouldn't look up Lake Michigan's volume to aid your answer. This should be estimated from things you know off the top of your head).

The way this thread works

1. If you have a Fermi problem, post it as a top level comment.
2. If you have a solution to an already posted Fermi problem, post it as a reply to that comment. Be sure to post your reasoning and thought process.

Fermi problems can be fun to come up with, and fun to answer. Examples of Fermi problems might include:

• How many piano tuners are there in Chicago? (this one is apparently one that Fermi came up with himself)

• How many keystrokes occur worldwide, daily?

• What is the mass of the water in Lake Michigan?

• How many cars are there in New York City on a given day?

• How many blades of grass are there on the National Mall?

• How many eggs are consumed in the US each day?

Since many of these have no definitive answer, it is not always possible to score the 'correctness' of an answer. Nonetheless, others can judge when an answer makes reasonable assumptions, so feel free reply to answers with suggestions of which assumptions can be refined or further justified.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of song you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

Replies can then recommend songs to that individual.

Hint: Use the "collapse replies" button to view only top-level posts.

See previous posts of this type: books, games

This post went well in ~books, so I figured we could give it a go here.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of game you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

Replies can then recommend games to that individual.

Hint: Use the "collapse replies" button to view only top-level posts.

EDIT: This is an old thread that's fallen off many people's feeds. See a current version here.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of book you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

Replies can then recommend books to that individual.

Examples of what I'm thinking for top level posts, in case my description was unclear:

• Recommend me a book that will make me cry.
• Recommend me a book with a great twist.
• Recommend me a book that deals with loss.
• Recommend me a book about the fall of the Roman Empire.
• Recommend me a book with a main character in her 80s.
• Recommend me a book to help me learn PHP.

It is Wednesday, my dudes! So why not have some good old foreign-language practice? As an
experiment, let's try just that. Start a thread in a language you would like to practice or teach,
or reply to an existing one. E.g.

## German / Deutsch

Hier sprechen wir Deutsch! Wie geht es Ihnen?

If you want to fix someone's grammar and also reply to them in the same message, I would recommend
using a horizontal ruler with “* * *”. E.g.:

I think “sich” should be “ihm”.

* * *

Es tut mir Leid, dass es ihm so schlecht geht.

For those of you not following the NBA too closely you might not be aware but tonight the Magic play the Heat. For about the past month or so the two teams have been battling out for the final seed in the Eastern Conference Playoffs. I'll re-cap why this is so important for the Magic since they're the team I support and maybe some Heat fans can hit back with a reply for why it's so important to them.

1. In the 2011-2012 season the Magic entered a dark period called the "Dwightmare" where their best player who had led them to an NBA final Dwight Howard began stirring up drama within the organisation. Dwight was traded in the offseason to the Lakers giving serious deja vu of Shaq's time in Orlando. Since 2012 the Magic have consistently been cursed to mediocrity and missing the playoffs.

2. Magic star Nikola Vucevic (a player acquired from the Dwight trade) has been constantly underrated and disrespected by people around the NBA. After 7 seasons Vuc has finally made the All Star team and has led this team to exceed the expectations set at the beginning of the season. It is also important to note that Vuc has not made the playoffs either since 2012 when he was playing with the 76ers.

3. The Magic are 0.5 games behind the Heat, whoever wins this match will take the 8th seed from the other and likely bring a lot of motivation and momentum into their next games therefore being more likely to make the playoffs.

There's many more storylines to this match than I've put in here but I feel that this gets the main gist of why it's so important to fans of the Magic.

Suppose you want to participate in an old post with hundreds of comments. You made your fresh new comment, injecting your thoughts and effort into it and hit the post button with hopes and dreams.

The post is bumped to the top under Activity. Other tilders saw the old post on the top, they are intrigued, perhaps as much as you are and wonder what you can add to the discussion, but they couldn't find your comment.

Why is that?

You replied to a thread with a very old top-level comment.

As Tildes is still relatively new, this isn't much of a issue now, but one that I feel needed to be addressed eventually as the site grows. It is certainly a low priority issue for the time being.

Sort by new only sorts comments by the time when top-level comment is posted, which is an inherent characteristic of comment threads. If my last years of memeing on redditting has taught me anything, it is that a new post gathers the most views in the first few minutes when it was posted (This might be a few days on Tildes).

Bumping helps extend the longevity of a given post if the thread gathers enough attention and discussion value to warrant a comment, but that alone would not alleviate the fact that new comments is seen by less and less people as the post gets older (as indicated by votes). If we want to make high-quality comments seen by more people, we need to make comment age a less limiting factor.

Tildes needs to help its users to discover new comments.

A few solutions come to my mind.

1. By presenting comments in a linear fashion like the good old bulletin board does without any hierarchy such that sort by new would truly be sort by new.

2. By highlighting ( or whichever other means ) comments that meet certain criteria (Comments that are among the latest 10 or comments that were posted within the last hour, this can vary depending on the activities of the comments)

3. I would like to propose a novel solution to this problem by compacting the comment threads to a forest of trees with navigable nodes. This sounds totally outlandish, it might very well be, but its an idea that I think worth sharing.

The editing is rudimentary but I hope the idea is communicated well.

Cheers!