(Hot take alert)

I personally think mass protests should be brought back. Many governments around the world are rejecting democracy and so can really only be held accountable with drastic measures. I'd even argue people should be armed and follow domething like in the Charlottesville gun rallies or the 1968 DNC riots as a model for protesting particularly egregious stuff like Trump's impeachment trial. A few hundred thousand armed people pointing at the US Senate saying 'A trial without witnesses is unconstitutional, the president is not above the law' would definitely send a message to the Republicans there and watching in FOX.

Grandma is understimulated in assisted living, and while Mom is looking into ways to either bunk with her, or drag her back to our place, I'm exploring other options. Her apartment does have wireless internet, so we could set up some sort of telepresence or video calling device, but even something as simple as a Relay or a KC2 isn't great, because it loses power, and needs to be explained to her.

I'm thinking that we might have better luck with a Tablet or a PC solution, and I do have a Kindle Fire (5th Gen?) and an off brand Windows 10 tablet around, and I am open to a Pi Project or speciality devices, but it has to be simple enough to plug and play, and the dream would be if it could start a video chat without the receiver having to pick up, or at least as simple as a nurse being able to come in and start a call. Any suggestions?

Recently, I've been posting here about all sorts of theatre that's available for streaming during the pandemic lockdown. Sounds like fun! But when I actually try to watch some of it... I'm having technical problems.

My Lenovo Yoga tablet won't cast from Chrome. At all. The option just doesn't exist in the Chrome browser on the tablet. The only way to cast anything is to open an app - but the videos I want to watch are on a webpage. In Chrome. Which doesn't have a casting option. Not helpful!

So I go to my desktop computer. It can cast from Chrome to Chromecast. But the result is video only, because "casting tab audio is not supported on this device." I tried Googling that error message, but I ended up getting flummoxed. The Google Help pages don't even mention this error, and other tech blogs are too complex for me to understand.

The Chromecast works fine. It accepts input (with sound) from other sources. It's just webpages (like YouTube.com and Vimeo.com) I'm having trouble with. I managed to watch one video last week, but I had to resort to installing the YouTube app to make it work. But not all the videos are on YouTube.

Any ideas?

I've been using Textra for years, but there's some new protocol whose name I don't remember that Textra isn't compatible with. This results in some messages (primarily from other LG phones to my LG phone) going only to the LG Messaging app and not Textra, which is annoying. Any recommendations?

Frustratingly (and in keeping with how confusing the messaging has been from the Australian government on all aspects of this pandemic), there is no single easy source that lists these new restrictions in a nice simple format.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-29/public-gatherings-limited-to-two-people-coronavirus-covid-19/12101162

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-29/scott-morrison-coronavirus-covid19-two-person-rule-explained/12101212

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/elderly-australians-told-to-self-isolate-at-home-outdoor-gatherings-restricted-to-two-people-20200329-p54f1g.html

• All gatherings, whether indoors or outdoors, are limited to 2 people. Exceptions apply for people you're living with (you're already sharing germs with them). However, previous limits of 5 people for weddings and 10 people for funerals still apply.

• People should only leave the house for necessary activities, such as: shopping for supplies, exercising, medical care, work, school.

• Elderly people should stay home and self-isolate. This applies to: healthy people over 70; unhealthy people over 60; indigenous people over 50. (And if we ever needed evidence that indigenous people have worse health than everyone else, this announcement proves it.)

• Public playgrounds, outside gyms, and skate parks will close.

These rules are all advisory, rather than legal. However, individual states can choose to enforce them legally.

Solved!

Thanks to @pseudolobster's post here, I was able to resolve the issue by creating a new user account on the computer. I'm leaving the post up for posterity, in case anyone else is ever searching up this same issue in the future.

My husband is starting to transition to work from home. He is using his personal computer and just yesterday set up a VPN, Microsoft Teams, and Windows' built-in remote desktop so that he can access his work computer. Everything worked smoothly and he was able to finish out his workday from home just fine.

Primary Issue

This morning, upon booting his computer, he cannot access his Start Menu. It is on screen, and it appears clickable, but nothing comes up. Likewise, the search bar in his task bar is present on boot, but upon clicking the start menu for the first time it disappears and does not return. Other basic Windows functionality seems to be broken. Alt-tabbing does not work to switch between windows. System tray icons are present, but right clicking them and selecting an option does nothing. We cannot open taskbar settings or network settings this way, for example.

This might be indicative of a larger breakdown. Even by command line, I can't get to the Windows 10 settings or Windows Update. It seems like all of the "new Windows"-style interfaces won't start (though the old ones, like the Control Panel, do).

We can still open up apps by clicking on the links in his taskbar, and those seem to work fine. I can also get to the run command with Win+R.

He is running Windows 10, and as far as I know, it's fully up-to-date (I can't open Windows Update to check).

Additional Information

In attempting to diagnose this issue, I've come across several others that are potentially related. I don't know if these are relevant and they're not a primary concern at the moment, but I'm including them here in case they help contextualize what's going on.

There seems to be a runaway process that slowly eats up more and more memory over time, as well as a chunk of CPU. Sometimes it's called "Service Host: Windows Push Notifications User Service_#####" and sometimes it's called "Service Host: WpnUserService_#####" with the numbers changing each boot.

Also, in attempting to restart the computer, it sometimes (but not always) pauses with a notification about programs still running, with one of them being "Task Host Window" with the message Task Host is stopping background tasks. (\Microsoft\Windows\Plug and Play\Device Install Reboot Required) Finally, immediately before restarting, it shows an error message from "svchost.exe" which reads The system detected an overrun of a stack-based buffer in this application. This overrun could potentially allow a malicious user to gain control of this application.

Is this potentially a malware/intrusion issue?

Attempted Solutions

I have tried, to no success:

• Rebooting the computer, both via a restart in Windows as well as by holding down the power button
• Signing out and back in to his user account on the computer
• Running sfc /scannow
• Running DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth

Request for Help

I know we have a lot of techy people here, but I also know you are all probably busy with everything that's going on. Nevertheless, if anyone has any guidance or help they could give on this issue, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Also, it's been a while since I've used Windows, but IIRC there's a way of just resetting the whole thing and starting fresh? That's not ideal, but if that's the course of action I need to take, just let me know. Ultimately I just want this to work, by whatever method, so that my husband can be at home and reduce his exposure.

From the NY times

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont was reassessing the future of his presidential bid on Wednesday after a crushing round of primary losses left him with no realistic path to the Democratic nomination and the 2020 race itself looked increasingly dormant because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Mr. Sanders’s campaign has stopped actively advertising on Facebook and its campaign manager sent an email to supporters without asking for donations — the kind of steps that other candidates have taken before ending their campaigns. Mr. Sanders’s aides said he is not suspending his campaign at this point, even as some Democrats have become increasingly vocal that he should consider leaving the race.

Even among Democrats who view Mr. Biden’s eventual triumph as inevitable, there is a belief that contested primaries are good for the party, making some of them reluctant to call for Mr. Sanders to withdraw. In Wisconsin, Democratic officials worry that if Mr. Sanders drops out before the state’s planned April 7 primary, it could dampen his supporters’ enthusiasm, depress turnout and hurt progressive candidates for state and local offices.

Mr. Sanders also views the coronavirus crisis as a moment when the progressive agenda he has championed for years is especially vital, and he is eager to leverage his influence for good at a time when issues like health care and economic inequity are so resonant, some allies say.

And top advisers see potential for him to continue to shape the narrative around how the country should be responding to the crisis and are holding out hope that they can harness existing virtual infrastructure to allow him to get his message out and keep his supporters engaged — a tacit admission that the campaign is no longer trying to win.

The above paragraphs show that yes, Sanders knows his electoral situation is done for, despite never clearly indicating if he is dropping out.

Some suggested Mr. Sanders should declare a moral victory — Democrats have moved broadly toward his progressive policy platform since he began his first presidential campaign — and throw his support to Mr. Biden.

“It’s time to throw in the towel knowing that he has won the battle of issues,” said Wilbur Colom, a D.N.C. member from Mississippi. “The Democratic Party has moved within inches of his revolution on all major issues. We all are feeling the Bern.”

From the Star

Charles Chamberlain, chairman of the progressive group Democracy for America, said Sanders can play a potentially “critical” role in unifying the party by continuing his campaign.

“Bernie has already made it clear that he will 100% support the Democratic nominee and that he’s going to campaign for Joe Biden if that’s who it is,” Chamberlain said. “The reality is, that’s not 100% true for all Bernie Sanders supporters. So there is a real value to Bernie staying in the race as long as possible to bring those people into the party deeper.“

That underscores the sensitivity of how Sanders proceeds. Justin Bamberg, a South Carolina state representative and Sanders supporter, said it’s wrong to assume that, if the senator quickly drops out, his backers would unite behind Biden.

“It’s a mistake for the party, regardless of whether the nominee is Biden or Bernie, to think that beating Donald Trump in and of itself will be enough motivation for the average person living their day-to-day life to come out and be excited about voting in November,” Bamberg said.

I agree. Biden needs to emphasize that he can be trusted to keep his promises of endorsing and then carrying out Warren's plan despite their controversies and that the bernie or bust folks won't gain nothing from a Biden presidency.

I skim-read multiple news aggregators daily, and for weeks now, every single day, 75% or more of the news is specifically about Covid-19.

By comparison, it is worth reminding younger readers that we didn't even know about the Spanish Flu until ~30 years ago. During WWI, we (humans) suffered the deadliest pandemic of the modern era, and it took 60-70 years before anyone even noticed.

If you didn't grow up before the Spanish Flu became common knowledge, that may be a hard thing to grasp ... but during the late-80s and into the '90s, there was this slow, years-long trickle of news from medical researchers, historians and (FFS) archeologists (?!!?) about how there might actually have been a massive global pandemic during WWI that no one knew about.

Today in Wikipedia, there is just one little tidbit about how various things like (intentional) under-reporting and co-mingling of flu deaths with war casualties, led to it being nicknamed "the forgotten pandemic" ... which doesn't really capture that sense of "Holy Fuck"-ness when you discover that up to 100 million people died of the flu one year, and no one even noticed.

Okay ... at any rate .... you get my point. In 1919, the news intentionally under-reported it worldwide (except in Spain ... hence the name), in part to help prevent panic.

Today, the news media coverage is just incredible. Nothing on Earth happens any more, except Covid-19. A few thousand people die (I'm sorry, but yeah, more people die in car accidents), and the Media loses its mind.

OTOH, honestly, it's mostly been pretty good, accurate, up-to-the-second coverage (as best I can tell), really driving home the message of "we know it sounds lame, but wash your hands, dammit ... a lot", and etc.

So ... thoughts? This constant in-your-face media coverage ... good or bad? How much is media causing the panic vs just reporting on it?

I'm trying to clean up my internet presence and move away from at least Facebook and Google. I've come a long way with deleting my Facebook and it's now basically an empty shell for messaging. I've installed Signal and will start the grooming process with my friends and family now. If you have some solid arguments for the change regular ol' folks can understand please share them with me because as we all know "privacy" just isn't enough.

Next phase is the big one...Google or basically G-mail.

1. Is there any way to get an complete overview of where you've used your e-mail for a service online?

2. What e-mail would you recommend?
2a. I'm OK with paying a bit for overall quality, security and equally important UX!
2b. I don't use any other relevant Google products like Drive etc. It's just regular e-mail and sign in credentials for other services I basically need

3. I use a Mac, iPhone and iCloud. Is iCloud a problem? IF this needs to change it HAS to be an "easy" switch and not like setting up a server for myself. Because it won't happen and I'm not skilled enough.

I would very much appreciate your input :)

EDIT: Thank you all for your thorough comments!

Gaming Blind Dates Event

For Valentine's Day, the Tildes Game Gifting Group is offering up a number of "blind dates" for any gamer who is interested in trying out something new. Each gift is a game, but you won't know the game's name -- only the top 4 tags describing the game. Select the tags which most interest you, then find out the exactly who the game is once it's given to you! Hopefully it's a keeper!

How can I participate?

You may choose to:

• gift a game/games as a blind date for others,
• go on a gaming blind date (i.e. receive a game gift),
• or both!

Steps to enroll:

1. Comment either in this thread here on Tildes, or in the thread on the Steam group (if you are already a member).

2. In your comment, identify whether you would like to gift a game, go on a gaming blind date, or both!

3. If you are not already a member of the Tildes' Game Gifting Group on Steam, PM me with a link to your Steam profile so that I can friend and add you (the group is invite-only).

4. If you are gifting a game, PM me or message me on Steam with the name of the game, how you will gift it (e.g. store purchase, key, etc.), and the platform it's on (if not Steam).

Timeline

You may enroll up through Thursday, February 13. Once all the participants have enrolled, the blind dates will be set up and will begin on Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14.

Additional Info

To ensure that giftees will have a good chance of liking their gifted game, we are requiring that gifted games have a combined user review score of at least 80%. You don't need to worry about getting a bad or junk game!

Games are given freely by their generous donors, and there are no strings attached or hidden catches. You ARE allowed to receive a game even if you don't gift one!

For other questions/specifics, full details are available in the event thread in the Steam group.

Note: If you do not wish to see this thread in your Tildes feed, please use the ignore function to hide it!

Scott Morrison stands by Liberal ad promoting government's bushfire response

Here's the advertisement itself: https://twitter.com/ScottMorrisonMP/status/1213330419044638722

For the non-Aussies, and for the Aussies who aren't political tragics like me... the reason everyone's up in arms is that this video has been released by the Liberal Party, not by the Australian government. We can tell by the "Authorised by" statement in the final frame. Government information comes with the Commonwealth coat of arms and says "Authorised by the Australian Government, Canberra". Party political advertisements have to be "authorised by" someone within the political party. In other words, this is a political ad, not a government press release. The Liberal Party (not the government!) is promoting itself on the basis of what the government is doing for the bushfires.

Scott Morrison has already been an utter failure during this crisis. He went on holiday after the fires started. He's done as little as possible since he returned. And people have noticed. People have abused him when he turned up to visit their town. People have literally refused to shake his hand (but he grabs their hands and shakes them anyway!).

But, despite all this wrong-footedness, this new advertisement is the most tone-deaf thing he's done (so far!). It reflects his background in marketing. Everything's a message for him. Unfortunately for him, the message here is "I'm using your suffering to promote myself".

Scott Morrison has fucked up yet again.

I'm looking to get a couple of remote controlled dimmer sockets for a quite specific use case (heat lamps in a tortoise enclosure), and I'd like to control them directly from a Raspberry Pi. I've found a couple of decent looking fairly generic options - examples from Trust and TKB - and there seem to be several appropriate radio modules, either USB or GPIO.

Detecting and pairing with devices seems (hopefully) straightforward. My sticking point is trying to figure out how standardised the actual messaging is; there seem to be several brands of hub and device that can be used interchangeably, but a few that can't. In my case, of course, the RasPi will be taking the position of the hub and speaking to the devices directly.

I'm having trouble finding reliable info on whether a command like "dim to 70%", or "read output power" will be the same across all devices, whether it will follow some kind of standard but it may be one of several competing formats, or whether it's completely proprietary.

Any insight on how easy it is to programatically talk to these things would be very much appreciated!

So today I decided to ditch instant messaging / texting / whatever in favor of longform emails, phone calls (which I'm terrible at), and proper physical letters.

I want to focus on the physical letters part because that's a skill I'd like to train, but I only have a couple people who it looks like will go through with that. Most will either let me float away (understandably!) or will contact me in the more convenient ways I'm allowing myself to engage in. So after playing Kind Words, I'm thinking that writing to strangers could be a fun exercise! This could be a couple people meeting here and writing letters, or it could be a whole thing, depending on interest. Casual letters are beautiful things, let's try to make some :)

If you want to participate, please post at least the following:

Age group:
Topics of interest:
Country / Region (please don't post your address, that can be done through PMs):

Original page is unencrypted so I'm posting the article here.

This is something I wrote a couple of weeks ago--not part of Timasomo, but something I'd like to share with folks here. It's becoming more important to me given events in real life and also as I explore yoga more deeply as part of my teacher training program. There's clear inspiration from Whitman's O Me! O Life!, but the message is very modern.

That the powerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse
Why not let the verse be love?
It used to be so easy, so easy, just a simple choice
Choose love
All the conflicts of today and every other time
Not enough love
For one another
For ourselves
Not enough love
All the religions and faiths of the world
All our enlightened leaders
All taught love
The play used to be about love
So many acts ago
Only a few moments ago
Seems like forever
Seems we’ve forgotten the lines
But no one to remind us what they are
And we don’t get a rehearsal
We get one grand opening day
One somber closing night
No matinee
No encore
Why choose any other verse but love?
Love makes everything else possible
Makes everything else worthwhile
Everything else builds on love
That the powerful play goes on and you may choose a verse
Choose love.

note: Posted this with the wrong title first, so deleted and reposted.

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.

Developing topic, don't see any news sources on it yet. Lots of pro-CCP troll issues being opened, as well as people starting to open issues going against the original trolls. (e.g. pro-HK protester messages)

Hacker News discussion

Notepad++ v7.8.1 : Free Uyghur announcement

Notepad++ GitHub issues page

Sample issues

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.

I have lots of thoughts about Tildes that I end up forgetting. This post is my attempt to put them to good use. Some of those were already stated elsewhere.

Introduction

Just to make it very clear: I am extremely happy with the way things are going on Tildes. If that was not the case, instead of drawing criticism I would simply not be here. So, please, let's be civil and avoid taking things personally ;)

I'm also a regular user, so please be gentle with my ignorance regarding the technical reasons why some things are either impossible or unpractical.

1. An Answer To A Common Objection

Some of these suggestions may encounter the following answer: "this should be an extension, not a core feature". To which I might respond:

1. Extensions impact performance and it's good practice to keep them at a minimum
2. Not everyone uses the same browser.
3. Features implemented by the actual developers will probably be of a better quality

2. Golden Rule

Unless explicit or clearly unpractical, all suggestions should be interpreted as to be as optional (and preferably opt-in) as possible for the user. I'll also make frequent use of the imperative mood: please understand that those are still suggestions. The imperative mood is just more practical. Also, notice that this is not my first language.

3. Suggestions

3.1 Keyboard Shortcuts

The majority of Tildes users would probably welcome a good set of keyboard shortcuts. I apologize if such keyboard shortcuts already exist: if they do, there should be a page listing them all.

3.1.1 Vim-like and Emacs-like keybindings

There should be Vim-like and Emacs-like (you could choose which one!) keys all around. Even with things like Vimium, not everyone uses them, and a well-thought-out set of keybindings would be extremely beneficial.

This also applies to text fields.

4. Open Calls For Moderators

Right now, I'm not sure what criteria are being used to give someone moderator powers. I think being a developer or contributor is the main criterion, which makes a lot of sense. But other participants might be up to the task, and giving them a chance could be beneficial.

5. Moderation Action Should Always Present Reason

This may seem obvious and even unfair, but I think when a moderator is in no condition to dedicate the time to justify their moderation action (such as locking threads, removing contents or banning users), then the moderator should wait until this condition is met in order to take action.

6. Heated Discussions Should Be Allowed in More Circumstances

I understand Tildes is, and should always be, a place for politeness, even affectionate discussion, but sometimes heated language, including irony and sarcasm, are necessary to stress a point and take the discussion forward. I understand that's a fine line, and that is usually better err on the side of caution, but I also feel the need to caution my fellow Tilders and Tildes administration against excessive moderation, which could stifle the discussion of sensitive subjects

7. There Should Be a Page Explaining How to Collaborate

This page should be short and to the point, with lots of links. I, for instance, wanna collaborate in the documentation, but the information telling how to do so was in a comment I cannot find anymore.

8. Table of Contents

Tildes markdown should support the automated creation of a simple table of contents, which would be very useful for longer posts. Preferably, there should be a limited set of options, such as:

• title of the table of contents ("TOC", "Table of Contents", "Contents" etc)
• numbered vs unnumbered
• depth of the numbering

9. Search own content

I find very hard to search my own content. Sometimes I must reference something I said earlier, or adapt a previous response to a question I already answered. On these occasions, I have to manually Ctrl+f page after page of my user page, which is tedious and inefficient.

10. Sort my own content

I wish I could sort my own content in the same manner I can with other pages. This would help with item 9, and also help answer faster to comments that were recently made.

11. Notifications

I wish it was possible to op-in desktop notifications for Tildes to show me whenever I get an answer to a thread, a comment or a private message.

Correction: I'm not referring to Email notifications, but desktop notifications. The ones that appear occasionally on your browser or screen.

12. There Should Be Space for Comedy

I'm not saying Tildes should become a place for lazy memes and endless puns, but comedy is valuable content and I don't like the idea of Tildes being a more conversational version of Stack Overflow. I fully agree with @deimos vision for a website for meaningful interactions with a focus on privacy. I just don't think comedy is necessarily a menace to this and all the other Tildes' stated goals. Right now, we're a very serious bunch of folks. There should be a place for humor in Tildes. How would that work? IDK. I leave this open for discussion.

13. Link to Excerpt

It would be awesome being able to link not just to a particular comment, but to a selection of that particular comment. After linking to the excerpt, I would go to the full comment, but the excerpt would be highlighted.

Conclusion

This is more of a collection of thoughts than an article, therefore I cannot offer a proper conclusion. But I'd like to kindly ask my fellow Tilders to give some considerations to my ideas. And please understand that they are not complaints. It's just may to contribute to this great community.

Cheers ;)

Time for a story.

Some of you might remember that I was planning on going abroad. I intended to visit New York City with one of my best friends, setting foot in the United States for the first time in my life. I have had reservations about the actions and the state of politics of the US for a while, but I'm by no means an activist; I largely settle for small discussions regarding this topic, online or among friends. This means that I had not considered the current administration as a deterrent to my week-long trip.

For the sake of what I'm about to talk in the rest of this post, some additional personal details are needed for context. I am a EU citizen and a second-generation immigrant, child of a parent born in North Africa. I was fortunate enough not to have to go through having to acquire a "real" visa as my country is part of the ESTA program. This program is a fast track of sorts that allows a non-citizen to get clearance to get into the US by providing information through an online form. As I went through that automated process, I arrived at one step that worried me: they asked about being a citizen of another country. Now, I have both an EU ID and passport but I have double-nationality from my parent and so I also have ID and (an expired) passport from that country.

That country is not unstable or known to host terrorists or extremist organizations but I was wondering if I would be lumped in with immigrants from more troubled countries and so I hesitated to put that information at all. But then I figured that it would be a bad idea to lie and then have to explain why I lied if they figured out. And I didn't visit that country for a decade. So in the end I did input that info. This decision stayed with me and caused me anxiety until the end of the 72 hour waiting period. I thought about being denied while having already spent roughly a thousand bucks on the airplane ticket and the hotel. Fortunately in the end everything went through. That put my fears at ease.

Let us fast forward to the day of the trip. My friend and I had the good idea to stay up really late the night before even though our flight was outrageously early. I think I slept for 3 hours if that. And during the 8 hour flight I absolutely could not sleep despite my best efforts. This is just me setting the stage for some heavy sleep deprivation.

Arriving at JFK, we eventually stumble upon the horribly long queue for customs. When we got to an officer, my friend went first, giving his passport and scanning his fingerprints. I went just after him, doing the same. However, the officer seems to have an issue. They close their booth and ask me to follow them. My friend's watching and is like "wtf is going on", the only thing I manage to say is "welp later I guess", maybe not realizing what is going on.

My passport withheld, I'm led to a waiting room... and told to wait there, no reason given. The officer tells me that "it" should be quick. As I scan the room, I mostly see Arab or Asian people with an additional one or two white-passing people. I sit and get my phone out to message my friend where I am and what I was told, when an agent immediately tells me that no phone is allowed. I can only imagine how panicked my friend was getting at that point.

An hour passes.

With still no reason given for what I'm going to call an arrest, I then had had time enough time to see people go through, leave and for others to take their place all the while I listened to the officers talk to each other and interact with the visitors.

The ratio of people stayed mostly the same, meaning the majority was comprised of Arab and Asian people, roughly half didn't speak English at all. There were two types of processing. The first one was people waiting 20 minutes and getting called to a counter in the same room, getting their passport back and being allowed to leave. The second one was people waiting at least half an hour and getting summoned to go with an officer to an ominous corridor, staying at least half an hour and then being allowed to leave.

The officers at the counter chatted within themselves in a friendly manner, typing on their computer at the same time, a nice front immediately shattered by how they talked down to everyone. One elderly person went to get something in their luggage placed at the opposite end of the room when two officers yell at them to sit back down. An asian person was using their phone unaware of the restriction when an officer warns them: "Don't use your phone. Don't use your phone! Hey! Don't use your phone! Oh for the love of- DON'T. USE. YOUR. PHOOONE." Apparently talking slowly to a visitor in a foreign language means they can obviously understand what the office is saying and that they're just acting like they don't understand. And more variations of cliché American cop tropes.

A half hour passes - still no reason given.

My friend tries to approach the room to get information and I hear an officer asking firmly for him to go away. (Un)fortunately an officer finally summons me. They lead me into a room and I'm invited to sit down. The officer apologizes for the wait, and then begins an hour long interview. They are very friendly and ask what places I intend to visit, they ask me about my childhood, my parents, my relation to my other country, my education, my hobbies, my jobs. Then I'm asked to unlock my phone. They go through every app and ask me to explain what they all do. They capture my Facebook name, contact names, what is open in my browser, and more stuff that I can't see.

I cannot describe how distressing it is to see an officer of the law go through your phone. I could not predict if they would stumble problematic material or if they would interpret things the wrong way. This is why I hate people that say "oh I don't care about privacy, I've got nothing to hide". You think I have anything at all to hide?! I am a law-abiding citizen of my country, I have never harbored any intention of committing a crime in my entire life, I can't harm a fly for heaven's sake!

And finally after all of this I am allowed to go. I get to my friend and hug them and try to get out of this place as fast as possible.

Maybe you're wondering if I tried to oppose any of this? Hell no. Not using my phone, waiting without reason, giving an ungodly amount of personal information and give access to my phone to a stranger, I did not fight through any of this. Why? I was afraid. I was an alien going through customs in the Patriot Act era. It was very clear to me that if I tried to block any of this process I would not go out of that airport to the US. I have my principles in privacy, but I did not want to waste a literal thousand bucks and more of my time.

So I went along.

For those that aren't familiar with it, Kind Words is a recently released "game" where players can write a message about a difficulty they're facing or something that's troubling them. Other real people in the game can then respond, letting that person know that they're not alone. Players can also write un-addressed messages of positivity in the game, which are spread to other users via paper airplanes.

I figured we could have a thread on Tildes with our own version of the game via comments.

Here's how I figure it will work. We'll have three post types:

Request: share your situation in order to get kind words in response
Response: offer kind words to other people who have posted here
Airplane: write general thoughts of goodwill for all the readers of the thread

Please begin your post by naming its type in bold font. For those posing Requests, please let people know if you would rather receive public responses or PMs.

Example post:

Request: Sometimes I find myself wondering if there's any point to anything. It feels like I'm working so hard at meaningless stuff, just to get by. Anyone else feel this way?

That isn't my request, just an example of what someone might type.

Remember that the point of the thread is to let people know that they are heard and that they are not alone!

Let's all be kind!

I recently happened to mention edbrowse in a throwaway comment, and @ainar-g expressed some interest in it. I took my sweet time, but I finally managed to assemble a short(ish) write-up on it, and my sleep-addled mind is thinking that this topic - niche, weird tools - could just become recurrent.

Terminal brosers, such as lynx, w3m and elinks, while still used and under more-or-less active development, are very niche tools. edbrowse fills a niche within that niche, as it's meant for use by non-sighted people, and thus provides an interface even more bare-bones and arcane than the usual TUI/curses apps that share its space.

As per the name, edbrowse's interface is heavily inspired by ed's, the standard text editor: edbrowse, in fact, is not just a web browser, but it combines together a browser, a text editor, a mail client, and - for some reason - a database client. All of these functions are mostly controlled via one-letter commands and, as is tradition, only displaying a single ? on error^*.

edbrowse is also unique amongst the terminal browsers because of its support for JavaScript and the DOM. The text it spits out is meant for Braille displays and screen readers, so it lacks niceties like color or aligned tables, but if you were to browse to reddit.com with it, you would see a perhaps ASCII-art Snoo fill the screen^†.

"Browsing reddit? How‽," you might ask. "How am I supposed to get this thing to stop questioning me? All those ? are filling me with existential dread, I have no idea what to do!"

While it's all there in the manual (but not in the manpages, for some reason), reading through 30k words of text can be a bit of a slog. They do provide a cheatsheet, though, even if it's a bit messy.

So, how do you use edbrowse? If you already know how ed works, most commands (especially "movement", search and listing commands) will work as expected - it is also an editor, after all - but edbrowse adds another handful of them.

The most important of them is, perhaps, browse. It will make edbrowse put in an HTTP request, grab the response (if any), and then render it. It will print out the length, in bytes, of the response and of the rendered text, and stop there.

$ edbrowse
edbrowse ready
b https://tildes.net
119201
20083

To actually peruse the page you can use any of the ed listing commands (print, list, and number), or the z command. z works much like p, but it prints a number of lines (normally 24) while "remembering" your position within the page.

0z10
{Tildes}
{Log in}
<>Sidebar

* {Activity}
* {Votes}
* {Comments}
* {New}
* {All activity}

Links are indicated by curly brackets, while form elements (both input elements and buttons) are wrapped in angle brackets. You can follow a link by jumping to the line containing it and issuing a go command (using g2 to follow the second link on that line, g3 for the third, g$ for the last), but, in normal use, you should probably just search for the link text.

/{Log in}/g
5886
923
0z10
{Tildes}
<>Sidebar

Log in

Username <>
Password <>
<-> Keep me logged in
<Go>Log in

The same thing goes for form elements, but the command to use, here, is i (for interact). i has actually four different subcommands: i[N]=, to set the value of a text field, ipass[N] to prompt for the value of a password field, i[N]* to press a button^‡, and i[N]? to ask edbrowse what that damned element is supposed to be.

/Username/ i=mftrhu
/Password/ ipass
hunter12
/<Go>/i*
submitting form
124579
20049

You can jump back to the previous page with ^, and refresh the current page with rf.

Of course, edbrowse can do much more - can be configured to do much more, via .ebrc, as it possessed (very) rudimentary programming facilities. It can edit its own configuration file, and reload it with config, so - rejoice. You won't ever need to leave it.

And, after seeing just how aesthetically pleasing its configuration language can be, I'm confident that you won't ever want to leave it.

# Switch to a new editing session
e2
no file
e ~/.ebrc
# Show the last lines of the configuration file
$100,113n
100 function+google {
101 b http://www.google.com
102 /<>/ i=~0
103 /</ i1*
104 /^About/+2
105 }
106 function+ddg {
107 b https://duckduckgo.com
108 /<>/ i=~0
109 i2*
110 /<Go secure>/+1
111 /<Go secure>/+2
112 z24
113 }

As I said earlier, while edbrowse does possess some programming facilities, they are very rudimentary. Functions are nothing more than sequences of edbrowse commands with some flow control constructs: they can do everything an user could do, which means that they are often convoluted and overly terse.

The ddg function, for example (which is invoked via <ddg [PARAMS]), first browses to duckduckgo.com. The DuckDuckGo home page, as rendered by edbrowse, only contains a link followed by the search form:

{About DuckDuckGo Duck it!}

<> <S secure> <X>

So the function looks for the (first) empty text field (/<>/), fills it in with the parameters passed to it (i~=0), activates the second form element on that line (i2*) and, once the results page has loaded, skips the initial boilerplate (/<Go secure>/+1,+2) and prints the first 24 lines of results (z24).

Sure. It could be replaced by a single line, replacing all the form interaction with a simple b https://duckduckgo.com/?q=~0, but where would be the !!FUN!! in that?

* This is not completely true, as edbrowse will show more long-form error messages, but it's pretty inconsistent with them.
† Iff you have JS enabled in your current session. It can be toggled on and off with the js command.
‡ I had no luck with the Tildes buttons (e.g., sidebar toggle, upvote button), though, at least not with the version of edbrowse that Debian bundles up.

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)