Hi,

I'm not being false-modest. I'm actually dumb.

I can tell by the initial interactions I have with people. Within 10 minutes of meeting someone, they'll point out how something dumb manifested... and I'm usually in the room when they say it and I'm usually the one who did the dumb thing and it somehow comes out that I did dumb thing... awkward silence... fumbling words/take backs to try and "save" it.

I wish people wouldn't try to take it back. It's like I should be ashamed I'm dumb. I don't think I'm dumb, I just think that I think differently (and I also don't know a lot of things).

I have my own narration. Instead of trying to "save" the situation, I wish people would ask me my narrative/thought process. If I bring it up without being asked, it sounds like I'm trying to make excuses for myself, or I dig a bigger hole because I expose how even more dumb I am?

It's weird. I know I'm dumb, I just don't know when I'm doing something dumb.

Do you know how hard it is going through life not really knowing why you're dumb or when you'll be doing something dumb?

Anyway. What's a dumb thing you've done?

Three weeks ago I decided I should stop developing on my own and open my side project to get feedback. So here we are now.

Midnight pub is a writing platform that aims to be the virtual equivalent of a pub: you go there to talk about your day, interact with a person or two while you unwind, and leave whenever you feel like. It's centered around the idea of entries & references (backlinks) to connect entries together.

It's a small community of people at the moment. Anyone is welcome to drop by and say hi!

https://midnight.pub/

• Read more about the concept: https://midnight.pub/e/268288534443459079
• See a video demonstration: https://share.getcloudapp.com/8Lu7JkNO

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-04/coronavirus-numbers-victoria-rise-again-lockdown-suburbs/12422456

Victoria recorded its second-highest ever daily increase in coronavirus cases, with 108 people diagnosed with the virus overnight.

Residents of nine public housing estates in inner Melbourne will be required to stay in their homes due to an outbreak of coronavirus cases.

23 cases had been identified in more than 12 households in the Flemington and North Melbourne public housing estates

the nine towers included 1,345 units of housing and were home to about 3,000 residents.

"No-one will be allowed out of those public housing towers," Mr Andrews said.

I just watched the press conference. This article misses some details.

The residents of these public housing towers will not be allowed to leave their flats/apartments at all, for any reason. They can't even step outside their front doors into the common corridors. The common areas are potential transmission vectors, so these people have to stay inside their flats and not come out at all. And the lockdown starts immediately. Anyone currently inside can't come out. Anyone who comes home can't come back out. (I except some people will decide not to go home).

This is an extreme lockdown, beyond anything done in Australia so far.

Over the next few days, all residents in the towers will be tested for coronavirus. The lockdown is expected to last for at least 5 days, which is how long it's expected to take to test everyone and get the results.

I'm so excited. I'm getting measured very soon for custom-fit Harlick figure skating boots.

Takes 8-10 weeks for them to be ready, so I'll have them before my local rink reopens! I've been going to an ice rink much further so I don't get rusty in the mean time… it's fun, but exhausting (and expensive) to travel an hour and back every time for just 3.5hrs of training.

Booking for measurements wasn't exactly simple either. I have to travel to France, take two trains and three taxis to get to some city I've never even heard of. And that's the closest shop to me.

Seriously I'm hyped. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas day right now, and this week I'm traveling to give my wishlist to Santa in person.

Article: 'See it as your civic duty': Testing blitz to target hotspots as Victoria records 33 new cases

I found this part especially interesting:

Health workers going door-to-door to test residents in these hotspots will be using a new type of saliva test developed by the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity that is less invasive, and painful, than nose and throat swabs.

There's a new form of coronavirus testing in Australia.

I'm a female working in the construction field and was wondering how to dispose of my feminine products discreetly and hygienically in a portable potty with a crew full of males where male toxicity exists... 'twas weird.

I've been meaning to make the jump to the menstrual cup (due to my sustainability inclinations), but due to laziness/squeamish reasons, I didn't make the jump until I realized how practical it was with my profession!

I'm able to keep it in for a half day before emptying, so it's awesome for the jobsite! I can urinate with it too! which is also awesome... and! NO SMELL! I feel so much cleaner now. and the internal pressure kinda releases some cramps... not all the cramps, but some! And it's totally comfortable to work out in (for reference: I do outdoor running). Not to mention, there's way less waste and cost! (And for those who find bodily fluids cool, the thick, deep, dark red that you see when you empty makes me feel powerful, like you can conquer anything... in reality, I just sit with my Chimmy plush and wait for my significant other to plop chocolate goodies in my lap.)

The only downside I could find is that it took some time to get used to (about 1 cycle) and I can't hold my pee (I know I'm not suppose to anyway, but it's a nice privilege... these pipes had some major damage).

Anyway, any cycle stories/tips/tricks? embarrassing moments? origin story?
I'll go first, my mom was in a ferocious fight with my older sister for spending the night with some guy or whatever. As my mom was ripping my sister's clothes/throwing her out the house, I got my first period. I had to interrupt the fight to ask what I should do... middle child problems! I guess I found a good way to break up a fight...

Everyone always refers to the coming of Eurogames a long time back, but I'm wondering about modern games. Where have they come? Where will they go? I'd say the art has gotten better, more eye-catching, but I'm more ambivalent about very recent (last five years) game mechanics.

This is something weird to me. I think skin color is pretty diverse no matter where you go, or at least, I don't know enough to say otherwise. But take hair color. Europe has more diversity in hair color than almost anywhere else. Same with eye color. Why is this? Is it just because I interact with more people of European heritage on day to day business, or has Europe actually had more mutations which affect hair color, eye color, etc? Or is it that Europe, being a crossroads has had more people immigrate through it.

If this is racist, it's unintentional, this is just an observation, which I've been unable to find an answer to.

If you have an answer, a link to a paper would be great.

Edit: A point against what I just wrote that I thought of: Asia has both mono and double eyelids, which is something Europe doesn't have. Native americans don't count either for or against, since they immigrated fairly late in a small group, which also explains why almost all native americans are type O

Here is the admin post in r/ethereum announcing the contest and below is the text of that post.

Previous Tildes and r/TheoryOfReddit discussions on this:

• Tildes: Reddit is moving forward with their Community Points ("donuts" in /r/ethtrader) experiment, including moving them onto the Ethereum blockchain

• r/ToR: Reddit is moving forward with a monetizing of karma experiment

• r/ToR: Reddit is rolling out "community points" (cosmetically monetized karma) in /r/FortNiteBR and /r/Cryptocurrency

• r/ToR: The admins roll out a new system of "Community Points for Subreddit Governace" on r/libertarian - thought?

tl;dr: Do you believe your Ethereum scaling technology can handle Reddit's scale? It's time to let the Ethereum community hear about it. Send your demo in the comments by July 31, 2020.

This is your chance to earn some fame but, to be clear, there is no prize if your solution is chosen or modified to meet Reddit’s needs. Our lawyer made us write this.

https://preview.redd.it/q7hhi6lzlp551.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=cdb26cbbe59e26f4fc73da5740da1308e2a87579

The Goal

In conjunction with the Ethereum Foundation, Reddit is inviting Ethereum scaling projects to show the community how your scaling solution can be used to bring Community Points to mainnet. Our goal is to find a solution that will support hundreds of thousands of Community Points users on mainnet today, and can eventually scale to all of Reddit (430 million monthly users).

We’ve evaluated some of the most promising scaling solutions, and have learned a few things:

1. There are plenty of awesome projects that we don't know about yet. We seem to learn about a promising new scaling solution every day.
2. Most existing scaling solutions focus on the exchange use case, which favors optimizing for transfers. Many of these designs don't take into consideration the costs of obtaining tokens or entering the scaling system, which can be significant. Community Points distributions have cost an order of magnitude more gas than all other operations combined, primarily due to on-chain storage costs associated with onboarding new users.
3. It's unclear how to determine the best solution. There is a lot of code, a lot of documentation, and a lot of hype out there. But there are very few objective real-world reviews or comparisons of various products/implementations.
4. We need the Ethereum community's help to figure this out.

Do you have a scaling project that meets the criteria below? If so, share your demo in the comments of this post by July 31, 2020. Please note that all demos need to simulate Community Points usage for 100,000 users.

We also invite all scaling experts in the Ethereum community to comment on any demos submitted to enable a better understanding of the trade-offs and compromises between different solutions.

We will review the demos and plan to share any updates by September. While we don’t expect any novel scaling projects, we hope that you, the Ethereum scaling expert, can show us how to scale Community Points.

Demos should include:

1. A live proof of concept showing hundreds of thousands of transactions
2. Source code (for on & off-chain components as well tooling used for the PoC). The source code does not have to be shared publicly, but if Reddit decides to use a particular solution it will need to be shared with Reddit at some point
3. Documentation
   1. How it works & scales
   2. Cost estimates (on-chain and off-chain)
   3. How to run it
   4. Architecture
   5. APIs (on chain & off)
   6. Known issues or tradeoffs
4. Summary of cost & resource information for both on-chain & off-chain components used in the PoC, as well as cost & resource estimates for further scaling. If your PoC is not on mainnet, make note of any mainnet caveats (such as congestion issues).

Requirements

Scaling. This PoC should scale to the numbers below with minimal costs (both on & off-chain). There should also be a clear path to supporting hundreds of millions of users.

• Over a 5 day period, your scaling PoC should be able to handle:
  • 100,000 point claims (minting & distributing points)
  • 25,000 subscriptions
  • 75,000 one-off points burning
  • 100,000 transfers

Decentralization. Solutions should not depend on any single third-party provider.

• We prefer solutions that do not depend on specific entities such as Reddit or another provider, and solutions with no single point of control or failure in off-chain components, but recognize there are numerous trade-offs to consider

Usability. Scaling solutions should have a simple end user experience.

• Users shouldn't have to maintain any extra state/proofs, regularly monitor activity, keep track of extra keys, or sign anything other than their normal transactions
• Transactions complete in a reasonable amount of time (seconds or minutes, not hours or days)
• Free to use for end users (no gas fees, or fixed/minimal fees that Reddit can pay on their behalf)
• Bonus points:
  • Users should be able to view their balances & transactions via a blockchain explorer-style interface
  • Exiting is fast & simple

Interoperability. Compatibility with third party apps (wallets/contracts/etc) is necessary.

• Scaling solutions should be extensible and allow third parties to build on top of it
• APIs should be well documented and stable
• Documentation should be clear and complete
• Third-party permissionless integrations should be possible & straightforward
• Simple is better. Learning an uncommon or proprietary language should not be necessary. Advanced knowledge of mathematics, cryptography, or L2 scaling should not be required. Compatibility with common utilities & toolchains is expected.
• Bonus Points: Show us how it works. Do you have an idea for a cool new use case for Community Points? Build it!

Security. Users have full ownership & control of their points.

• Balances and transactions cannot be forged, manipulated, or blocked by Reddit or anyone else
• Users should own their points and be able to get on-chain ERC20 tokens without permission from anyone else
• Points should be recoverable to on-chain ERC20 tokens even if all third-parties involved go offline
• A public, third-party review attesting to the soundness of the design should be available
• Bonus points:
  • Public, third-party implementation review available or in progress
  • Compatibility with HSMs & hardware wallets

Other Considerations

• Minting/distributing tokens is not performed by Reddit directly [1]
• One off point burning, as well as recurring, non-interactive point burning (for subreddit memberships [2]) should be possible and scalable
• Fully open-source solutions are strongly preferred

[1] In the current implementation, Reddit provides signed data for claims, but does not submit the actual claim transaction for the user (the user does that themselves). Note that smart contracts are considered independent of Reddit provided there is a path to decentralizing control over them.

[2] Subreddit memberships are currently implemented as a contract acting as an ERC777-style operator that can burn points on a monthly basis, but we are open to changing that implementation.

Community Points Overview

To help you get started, this is an overview of how Community Points work today and some stats on how it's used. We are open to changing most implementation details, provided the basic requirements (above) are met.

Usage stats over the past month

Number of Community Points holders: ~17,500

Number of transfers: ~20,000

(reference: reddit.dappradar.com)

Number of subreddit memberships: ~800

Contracts

Community Points is built around 3 contracts:

1. SubredditPoints: the ERC20 token
2. Distributions: manages token supply & token claims
3. Subscriptions: enables membership subscriptions in the form of recurring token burn

Deployed Contracts & Source Code

r/FortniteBR

SubredditPoints: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0xe0d8d7b8273de14e628d2f2a4a10f719f898450a

Subscriptions: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0x396b89db5e9317ff25360c86bd4e2aae3bbc62ea

Distributions: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0xc0c08af3f2a3f8d6730118e0d2de4367053ebddf

r/CryptoCurrency

SubredditPoints: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0xdf82c9014f127243ce1305dfe54151647d74b27a

Subscriptions: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0x77cb2dbeadb7313242d7f3070ce8fc98e96080e4

Distributions: https://rinkeby.etherscan.io/address/0x1c5122bfeba106eea33cf5bdf2004ab22213ca20

Points Distribution & Claims

Token supply is controlled by distribution rounds managed in the Distributions contract and triggered by Reddit. For each round (occurring ~monthly), Reddit submits a proposal for points distribution to a subreddit for approval. Once approved, Reddit issues signed claims for individual users according to the agreed upon points distribution. These claims can be redeemed on-chain. Claims are obtained from Reddit, and submitted to the Distributions contract, which validates the claim and calls the Subreddit Points contract to mint points.

https://preview.redd.it/lunpaj18mp551.png?width=1120&format=png&auto=webp&s=da31db1db07cfe4f327692a7398772019b8eb7bd

Memberships

Subreddit memberships are obtained by burning points via the Subscriptions contract. Redditors can optionally configure their membership to be renewable on a monthly basis without additional interaction. The Subscriptions contract is granted permission to burn points by being configured as an ERC777-style default operator in the Subreddit Points contract.

https://preview.redd.it/bqnvt50amp551.png?width=1120&format=png&auto=webp&s=812f46a0308aea370908eb73ca93abac810e58ba

***

We'll be watching this thread and answering questions. Looking forward to what comes out of this!

Hello hello, sorry for being a bit late recently with these, been real tired hahah. Alas, I am still keeping the tradition and making these once a week, every Friday ! It's my little escape time, anyways :P Since I missed the writeup for last week, I'll be putting both on the same post for extra goodies for the fellow readers of this !

June 5th:

this week for my curry dish I have prepared a green indian curry ! Which, frankly, I didn't know existed in this form before.... If you know me, you know there are two foods that I really hate the most when raw, those being cilantro and yoghurt. So, when my dad sent me a green curry based on cilantro and yoghurt, I was a bit skeptical at first. I mean, surely combining both of my least hated ingredients together would make for a sensory disaster ! But, to my surprise, eating this was not as much of a pain as I thought it was going to be. No no, instead of being an awful pile of green mush, it ended up being quite nice chicken with a rich and tasty green sauce on top. Honestly, one of the most confusing and fun times of my life ! Cooking it was a bit of a hassle tho, since it did smell awful for me. But it was well worth it ! :P

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/LNV3nAl
Recipe: https://www.scrambledchefs.com/classic-indian-green-curry/

June 12th:

Hello hello, sorry for being a bit late recently with these, been real tired hahah. Alas, I am still keeping the tradition and making these once a week, every Friday ! It's my little escape time, anyways :P

This week, I have prepared a dish I found on the channel Get Curried: Chicken Handi! It's a dish traditionally made in a special pan called a Handi, which I do not own! So I just used my trusty dutch oven pot. The recipe was a pretty simple curry, consisting of a mostly cream/yoghurt based sauce with a little tomato, varied spices, onion, and of course, chicken ! I think by it's own it was a pretty good recipe, but for me, what made it stand out was the fact that I used ghee for the first time in one of these. Took me 6 months to finally do it, but I bought a tub of ghee for this just to try it out. And...
Oh My God.

Ghee was an absolute game changer !!! The nutty, creamy flavour really propelled this dish into fantastic territories I didn't even know were possible ! I haven't been this ecstatic for a single ingredient in a while, but god damn. I truly believe ghee to be irreplaceable after this experience, I'll have to see if it impacts other dishes I've made a lot or not. But safe to say, this was such a great addition to my cooking ingredients. Will have to use again.

On another note, here's a little anecdote about the whole cooking process from that day. Dad and I went to buy some yoghurt to make naan (which turned out quite amazing in the end), and he saw a tub of yoghurt that was on sale. Quite cheap, too. So without hesitation, he bought it. Once we got back home, he realized it was skim yoghurt, which wouldn't make for the best naan, but it's alright anyways. Once he started kneading the dough, he soon quickly realized that he had gotten... Vanilla yoghurt. So now, we had a whole batch of sugary naan dough which would definitely not work well with our curry and no yoghurt left for anything. In retrospect that was quite funny, lol.
He did end up going for some yoghurt, though. We ended up making some pretty great naan, as I said before :P

Anyhoo, great recipe that I'd REALLY recommend doing, especially if you're using ghee! But maybe don't use too much, we made the mistake of adding a bit much, which made a really big grease pool on top, which could be unappetising. But hey, you ain't hearing me complain about it :P

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/uEi00Q9
Recipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO0issT0Rmc
Question of the day: what foods have had a "click" in your lifetime? Perhaps something you have once hated, but then suddenly just finally understood. It's happened to me a few times, curious to see if anyone else has gotten that feeling hahahah.

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~

I'm an undoubted pleb when it comes to just about everything artistic (with the exception of music, in which I have impeccable taste). A while back, I suggested I'd be interested in seeing some critique or general discussion of already-known or published poetry, if only so I could get others' opinions on things that usually go over my head. This is an effort to get the ball rolling, with a poem that is one of my favorites.

Also, I'm not sure if this belongs here or in ~arts, please classify as appropriate.

Morning - Frank O'Hara

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

If you are tracking your time, how many hours of focused work are you doing per day on average?

What I mean with focused work is only the time that you are working. Not counting the time you take a break, not counting the time you go to the bathroom, not counting the time you get up to drink water, etc. If you don't stop your time-tracker during non-work activities, please mention it.

Short of drugs, I find music to be one of the most effective ways of inducing an emotional state on demand. If you want to hype yourself up, get that adrenaline flowing, what's your go-to song?

For me, it's definitely DJ Mehdi - Signatune (Thomas Bangalter edit). Hard-hitting French House. It's repetitive and brutal, and not at all what I would choose for a cozy, relaxed listening experience. But god damn if it doesn't get the adrenaline flowing.

What's yours?

I thought this might be an interesting subject for conversation, inspired by the rationalist emphasis on the importance of noticing your confusion for figuring out important warning signs that could easily be overlooked.

I think it's best to try to answer the question as genuinely as possible. Sometimes, saying you're confused is implied criticism of others' behavior, but I think it's more important to notice those moments when things about the world genuinely don't add up.

As a simple example, I'm somewhat confused that the stock market has been going up. It's not all that confusing because bear market rallies are a thing, and many others are puzzled by this as well. But still, I must admit that I don't understand the mechanism behind it.

The main advantage of this is that updates can be organized and followed daily like on the COVID threads (which is especially useful if you don't live in the US and can't keep track of what's going on) and the main disadvantage is that unlike COVID, we have no idea if this will go on long enough or be dynamic enough to truly merit that. (Although in @dubteedub's COVID post he doesn't discount doing updates every 3 days, which we could do although that conflicts with 7-day weeks)

There's a lot of unrest in the US lately, with protests going on in several cities.

How do you feel about the state of things in the US, regarding racism, police brutality, etc...? What's your viewpoint on the protests? How do you see the situation evolving? Some fear deadly confrontation between military police and civilians.

Have you had the misfortune of having a negative encounter with police officers? Care to tell your story? Have you participated yourself in one of these protests? What was your experience like? If you haven't, do you keep yourself informed? Where do you primarily find news? What's the general mood in your neighborhood, in your community, in your city?

We've seen protests pop up a lot more in recent years in various parts of the world - eg. Hong Kong, Lebanon, France, etc... Do you feel that this is symptomatic of a larger, global unease? Or can the US protests be considered wholly specific?

I can think of several good reasons why protesting is a really bad idea right now:

• The virus doesn't care if your cause is just.
• If you end up going to jail, that's another hotspot.
• It provides cover for violence.
• The courts are going to do whatever they do at their own pace anyway.
• The long-term work of police reform isn't even going to begin until the crisis is over.

And yet, despite all these good reasons, I don't see leaders, black or otherwise, clearly saying that people should stay home. For example, Obama's statement is carefully neutral on this. It seems to be taboo?

But I'm out of touch. What am I missing?

How I narrate my life has a lot to do with how I feel in the present. Bad things happened to me and I have done bad things. But there has been good people and good things also, and by forgetting them and only remembering the pain, I do a disservice not only to them, but to myself and my own wellbeing. I have been changing my story, not because the old narration is not true, but because it omits. It was not intentional omission, I just couldn’t remember. So

I want to tell the story about a boyfriend I once had named Jack. Jack was a huffer, he huffed paint, and you could always tell what color spray paint was on sale, by the color of the ring around his lips. I believe Jack loved me. He was older than me by about a decade, and I was young, but emotionally I think we were the same age. At the time of my relationship with Jack, I was a ward of the state and moved in and out of foster homes, behavioral modification centers, juvenile hall, and state mental hospitals.

I want to tell this story about Jack not only because he is most certainly dead, and tenderness and epic feats should be remembered, but also because there is never a place for me to speak about Jack.

So Jack loved me. When I was struggling with my sexuality and claimed that I only had sex with him and with men because they were easy, he stopped touching me, and allowed me to use his place to explore girls I liked. He would make them feel at home, make food, and leave to do something else elsewhere. He would never participate in a threesome when girlfriends and I were tripping our asses off, or drunk or high on something else, instead he’d go to a corner and huff paint and leave the world for a bit. When a john beat the crap out of me, and I wouldn’t go to the hospital because I was afraid of being arrested, he stitched me and set bone, all while cheerfully talking about how we would murder the bastard. In recovery we made elaborate plans for execution and giggled, and snuggled, and listened to music and had gentle sex, because I like girls, but I am not really gay.

Jack was also a planner. And not only could he make a conversation about plans to murder some deserving asshole, he could also devise and follow through on plans on how to bust me out of my various incarcerations. Most of them failed, and one cost him his own incarceration, but he had some successes. When I would be incarcerated, Jack would go to libraries and planning offices and find architectural and electrical plans for the buildings I resided in. We had this coded language we used in our letter writing where I could let him know where exactly I was located inside the building and he could let me know how far into a plan he was without a censor being able to casually figure out what was going on.

And Jack succeeded. Power went out, and I crept down stairs without alarm, and we met in bushes, and we moved through yards, and made our way to bus stops and subways until we were safe, and far, and naked, to talk and laugh, to tell the story, and have or not have sex. And then he would go to the corner and huff and fall away from the world. And I would go out into the night to make a buck.

Jack made it his mission to keep me from being locked up. He would pretend to be the brother or uncle to gain entry, to find weaknesses and to exploit, constantly on the lookout to find ways to extract my freedom, almost like he understood that I was locked up not because there was something inherently wrong with me, but that there was something wrong with the system that could not be bothered to parent the child who they had authority over. Me drugged on Thorazine, Jack carrying me down an elevator through a front door towards freedom, a quick puff at the parking lot, a friend waiting in a car around the corner, laying zoned out together, looking at Jack with his mouth stained blue. Grateful.

He had a horror story of his own that he never foisted on anyone. He also had once been a child of the state. And paint and other inhalants completely annihilated his pain. But he loved me, and paused his own decline to show me acceptance and love and tenderness. I could rest.

Jack’s name is not Jack. His name was Bill Pfeiffer. And it has been easy in my life to tell my story that no one loved me, that no one believed in me, that no one ever let me breathe. But Bill Pfeiffer did. And as the narration of my life changes, and I focus more on what I have had instead of what I did not have, Bill once again comes to free me.

I'm an amateur musician and amateur audio editor and creator. (I noticed the ~creative category isn't that active, and) I was wondering if there were any Tilders who make music with Linux. Activities such as:

• recording instruments or vocals
• producing music digitally
• composing and using score writing software
• editing and mixing audio

I'm interested to learn more and improve my craft(s), so perhaps people could share their go-to apps or hardware, and tips for beginners, like how best to configure Linux for audio work (minimize latency, etc.). I'd be interested in any finished (or unfinished!) works produced with Linux that anyone would want to share.

I mainly use ardour for audio production, including MIDI. I use Musescore for making scores / sheet music. I occasionally use command line tools like exiftool and ffmpeg. I've dabbled with LMMS, and have outgrown Audacity.

Decided I'd post a text post and provide links to all the content, since there's so much and it's all quite diverse. I'll update this post throughout the day with more content:

• NASA Press Release: NASA Astronauts Launch from America in Historic Test Flight of SpaceX Crew Dragon
• Live stream & launch video, courtesy SpaceX & NASA. This is going to be live all the way through to docking with the ISS.
• NASA Spaceflight (Good resource, quite in-depth): SpaceX Dragon’s historic launch dodges weather to launch and end the gap
• SpaceNews: Crew Dragon in orbit after historic launch, by Jeff Foust
• The Verge: A cute stuffed dinosaur hitched a ride on SpaceX’s historic launch
• The Verge: Watch NASA astronauts fly SpaceX’s Crew Dragon using touchscreens

I recently switched operating systems on my phone and lost some of the automated workflows I had during the transition. While I've rebuilt some of it, but it sometimes feels like I'm missing something or that I could do more, I just don't know what exactly. I'd like to hear from others here and see if they can inspire me to implement what works for them. I'm using an android phone with automate and here's the workflows that I got:

• When plugging in the phone, set it to do not disturb and enable Bluetooth. This is for when I go to sleep so that I don't get woken up by notifications and I can listen to podcasts on my headband.
• If at work (Based on cell towers, not GPS) set phone to vibrate, when leaving it set it to ring. I actually lost this one but haven't rebuilt it since I've not been to the office in a while.
• Learn location. For a set time, grabs the cell towers around and stores them in a JSON file.

What kind of automation have you implemented on your phone?

Input wanted for an article.

Let's say that your company is considering the purchase of an expensive new application to help in the company's software development. The demo looks great, and the feature list makes it sound perfect for your needs. So your Management arranges for a proof of concept license to find out if the software is worth the hefty investment. The boss comes to you to ask you to be in charge of the PoC project.

I'm aiming to write an article to help developers, devops, and testers determine if a given vendor's application meets the company's needs. The only assumption I'm making is that the software is expensive; if it's cheap, the easy answer is, "Buy a copy for a small team and see what they think." And I'm thinking in terms of development software rather than enterprise tools (e.g. cloud-based backup) though I suspect many of the practices are similar.

Aside: Note that this project is beyond "Decide if we need such a thing." In this scenario, everyone agrees that purchasing a tool is a good idea, and they agree on the baseline requirements. The issue is whether this is the right software for the job.

So, how do you go about it? I'm sure that it's more than "Get a copy and poke at it randomly." How did (or would) you go about designing a PoC project? If you've been involved in such a project in the past (particularly if the purchase wasn't ideal), what advice could someone have given you to help you make a better choice? I want to create a useful guide that applies to any "enterprise-class" purchase.

For example: Do you recommend that the PoC period be based on time (N months) or workload (N transactions)? How do you decide who should be on the PoC team? What's involved in putting together a comprehensive list of requirements (e.g. integrates with OurFavoredDatabase, meets performance goals of X), creating a test suite that exercises what the software dev product does, and evaluating the results? ...and what am I not thinking of, that I should?

My Anniversary is coming up and I'd like to do a movie night for my wife. She likes romantic films but I don't so we don't often watch them together.

I'd like to come up with 3 or 4 of the best romantic movies ever to watch together as a gift to her. Since I don't ever watch these kinds of movies I don't know what's objectively good.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who responded! There are so many great options that I'm going to make a list of all of them to draw from on other special occasions too!

TL;DR: How long should a graphics card last? What can I do to make them last longer?

This is perhaps an odd question to ask, but I've been a console gamer for most of my life and have only been all-in on PC gaming for maybe 1-2 years and I think I may be missing something.

So there has been about three times when I have spent money on a half-decent graphics card, and each time they have failed me. The first one was a genuine hardware failure, probably a memory failure judging from the artifacting. The second one failed for reasons I have been unable to figure out. It didn't appear to be overheating, but I was getting driver errors that suggested it were; reinstalling from scratch did nothing to fix it.

The last, most current one is the one that bugs me the most. I'm getting the same problems; driver crashes just like overheating, except this one has better temperature monitoring and I can see that isn't happening.

I previously thought that the reason why my graphics cards would always crap out on me was because those were cheaper cards from less reputable manufacturers, but this last one is really bugging me because it's relatively high end and from a reputable manufacturer - it's a Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700, complete with the giant AMD reference cooler. I'm getting it RMAed, but since I didn't keep the receipt I am still going to have to pay to fix it even though it should theoretically be under warranty.

I've done a ton of searching to find out how I can possibly solve this myself, but I am frankly astounded by how little information the drivers give out on Windows. I'm seeing that the device is being reported as unavailable but nothing whatsoever as to why.

To make matters worse, it seems like this isn't actually common for other people. Most people seem to be replacing their graphics card because they are obsolete, not because they physically fail.

So basically what I am asking is, how long is a graphics card actually supposed to last for? Do I just have astonishingly bad luck?

I wasn't sure if this should go in ~tech or ~tv. Feel free to move if it's more appropriate over there.

I am planning to cut the cord soon and get rid of cable TV. I have an older TiVo Premiere that's rarely over 5% full. I'd like to get an indoor HDTV antenna to connect it to for those rare occasions when we want to watch something live, or record something off broadcast TV. I know next to nothing about HDTV antennas, though. I see that BestBuy carries them for prices from ~$20 to ~$120. I'd like one that works well and can be kept out of sight. (I've read some can even be painted over!) Does anyone have any recommendations or any things I should be aware of in getting one?

Hello hello people ! Hope you are all doing well today :) This week, I have prepared possibly the most complex dish I have in this whole curry thing I started at the beginning of the year ! (side note, it really has been 5 months I've been making a curry dish every friday huh? that's insane hahahah) A Katsu Curry completely by scratch ! The process started on Wednesday, where I had to make a broth with a few spices, beef stock and mushrooms ! It took me a while to find some shiitake mushrooms... they always come in huuuge portions and I only needed a little bit lol. Now I have a bunch of shiitake mushrooms lyin around and I dunno what to do with them ! I guess I'll see :P After making the broth I chilled it for 2 days until friday where I started the curry prep. Curry was quite a simple dish to make, but the fun part was making katsu to go with it. Definitely a combination of flavours that go real well together ! As for the curry, it's a weird tasting thing. It definitely tastes like curry, but almost tastes like it in a branded way, you know? It's like the taste of a generic "Curry" dish. From my understanding that was kind of the point, but still, find it rather odd.. not that it's any bad though ! You can't really go wrong with curry powder :P I found that curry with calrose rice is actually quite phenomenal... calrose has such a distinct texture that it's barely even replaceable with any type of rice. Delish ! Overall, I think everything melded in together quite well and made for a real good sensory experience. I do think I could've salted the curry a little more, but my parents said it was fine so I left it as is hahahah. Definitely recommend this one if you have the patience to make a broth a few days early !

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/EwrKmqR
Recipe: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/katsu-curry
Question of the day: What do you think is the best accompanying dish (i.e. crunchy bread, naan, rice...) ever? What do you usually have alongside your dishes?

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~

Hi!

My wife and I met through our mutual love of horror films, and really love watching movies together in general-- good or bad. For the past three years we'd go to the local horror film festival around her birthday which, sadly, is not happening this year, so I thought I'd wrangle up some horror films available online for us to watch instead.

Do you have any favorites?

Here's some of mine!:

• Transmission 1 (warning: starts loud): This was a webisode released to help promote the 2007 horror film The Signal in which a sound emitting from electronics affects how people behave.
• Spider: A prankster doesn't know when to stop. (trigger warning & mild spoiler: some eye stuff)
• Lights Out: Something seems off more than the lights (all of this guy's stuff is pretty decent as far as short horrors go).

I know those are higher production value than most of the stuff you'd see at a festival, so don't worry about that. We really enjoyed one last year called Finley that was just a complete delight.

In case anyone is interested, tomorrow 24 May 2020 is the anniversary of the launch of this indie mmo. Regnum is one of the largest indie mmos in the latin speaking world. The game is f2p and is quite simple -- 3 realms warring for fun over forts and invasions. it's very casual, so you can join in the war, or just hang around and chat, laugh at the fortunes of war, or go grind a bit etc. https://www.championsofregnum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=112175
If you guys have questions, I can try to answer.
It runs on really low spec pcs too (and runs on Maxc and Linus very well).

(if you are totally new to the game, the anniversary event is usually hugely packed out, so you may find lag during these few days in the war itself)

My brother and I have been going at it on if a YouTube channel puts out a video, based around a conversation with either a static image or a simple eye catch behind it, can it be considered a podcast? I'm of the opinion that a podcast is a podcast because it's an audio file, in an aggregator, that can be downloaded to a portable device with minimal fuss. He's of the opinion that the content makes a podcast, and if all podcast aggregators suddenly go under, any audio files with album art uploaded to YouTube would be considered indistinguishable from podcasts, so podcasts can live exclusively in the YouTube space and still be considered a podcast.

Does anyone else have a take on this? Can I use Tildes to definitively prove my brother wrong?

Disclaimer I was going to post this on ~tildes but thought we could have a more casual conversation about it here.

So how can tildes stop corruption from happening on its platform, it’s no secret that other similar websites have become corrupted the best example of this is Reddit they do what advertisers want them to do or who ever is giving them money, only a couple of days ago I saw this video about a guy who was running a cult on there recruiting vulnerable people and they did nothing because he was buying thousands of awards a day.

Tildes doesn’t have advertising and is a non profit with no investors so those are 2 big places it can’t get corrupted from. One place I could see problems is donations I would be interested in if all donations are Anonymous I should probably have looked into them before writing this but maybe someone else knows the answer, if they aren’t what is stopping big donators getting special treatment?

My main reason for this topic is the video mentioned above but I also thought it would make an interesting discussion on here.

Latest update here. Thanks to everyone who helped me out!

I have an Nvidia Shield hooked up to my TV, and it's great for Android games and emulation. I'm looking for similar hardware that will allow me to play my Steam library on the TV.¹ It doesn't have to be as small as the Shield TV, but I'm not interested in having a giant tower hooked up in my living room. Basically, I want what those old Steam Machines promised before fizzling out.

What I'm looking for:

• Pre-configured
• Able to support wireless controllers through Bluetooth
• Able to play smaller, less demanding games flawlessly
• Would be nice if it could play more demanding titles, but this is not a must
• Has decent cooling (I'm worried that boxes not designed for gaming will get way too hot)
• Price point: undetermined so far -- I'm willing to pay what I need to, but I want to see what's out there before committing to anything
• Would like to be able to set it up to basically be a seamless "console" if possible, where I can boot right into Steam (or easily get there with a controller) and not have to use a keyboard and mouse (I do have a Steam controller but I would rather use an 8BitDo SN30 Pro+ as my primary input method)

Searching around, here's what I've found so far:

• The System 76 Meerkat is a mini PC that looks great (and I'm partial to the company), but I don't know how it would perform with gaming. Also, I haven't decided if I want the (small) amounts of friction that come with gaming on Linux on my TV or not.

• Intel NUCs seems to be popular, and they have some gaming-focused models at higher price points.

• The MSI Trident 3 is explicitly gaming-focused and has a dedicated cooling system. Might be overkill for what I need though?

Here are my main questions:

1. What other hardware options are out there that I don't know about?
2. What hardware profile and price point should I be targeting for my needs? How little is too little, and how much is too much?
3. Are there any pitfalls to this kind of setup that I'm not aware of?

I'm open to any and all suggestions, as this kind of stuff is all a bit over my head so it's hard for me to even know what I'm looking for. I haven't even decided that this is definitely something I'm going to do yet, since there's such a wide range in price and performance. Instead what I'm trying to do is figure out what my needs are and then which models (if any) would fit them best.

1: I do have a Steam Link and have tried the app, but the quality for me has been spotty enough that I would rather have native hardware playing them than trying to stream it from my laptop.

This is a scenario question similar to the "You are stranded on a deserted island, what do you bring?" question. The following guidelines I offer stem from my planning and experiences, I begin my 4 months shortly.

• There is no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no cell phone service nor internet service.
• US Postal Service is available.
• It is about 45 minutes away from the nearest town and is located on United States Forest Service owned land.
• You will be sharing the cabin with several other like-minded people that you've never met before in a roommate dynamic.
• The accommodations are free through the program.
• This program runs a 9 days on, 5 days off work schedule. For the 9 days on, you will be camping along trails you are maintaining and not be at the cabin.
• Basic food storage (coolers), a solar shower, washboards and tables will be provided.

What do you bring? For functionality? To maintain comfort and/or sanity? Entertainment purposes? Keep in mind the point of this experience is to remove yourself from the grid, expose yourself to the rawness of nature and the elements. While it's tempting to say you'd bring a $10k solar/battery array, download all the things, and just host 5 day binge watching sessions with the bears, that's not the purpose. ;)

The cheap bluetooth sleep-mask with built-in headphones I ordered off Amazon stopped working (big surprise) and I'm in the market for something similar but of good quality. Requirements:

• Wireless
• Comfortable to wear while I'm lying on my side

It doesn't have to be part of a sleep mask, and it doesn't even need to have great audio quality. I use it more for audiobooks and white noise than music. I just want something that's going to work with no issues and last for a while.