Intro

A while ago, we held a LGBT Q&A panel that allowed people to ask questions to LGBT people that they might have been afraid to ask otherwise. I think this was incredibly valuable, and I would like to try a slightly less structured and topical version of the thread.

This thread is for questions about any topic that you're worried might come across as insensitive or invasive or uncomfortable or whatever -- questions that might get responded to negatively if you were to ask them elsewhere. Ask a question that you tend to keep to yourself, for whatever reason.

My hope is that people can ask some questions in good faith and get answers in good faith. In order to do that though, I do think it's important that we have some norms in place:

Ground Rules

Anyone can ask questions or provide answers or both. This topic is not a panel but a Tildes-wide discussion.

Askers

Ask a genuine question that you want a genuine answer to. Feel free to ask informational questions, experiential questions, and opinion questions. They will be afforded the principle of charity, but also understand that this is not a thread for hot takes or passive aggressive shots or anything like that.

Follow-up questions are allowed and encouraged.

To keep threads organized, post a new top-level comment for each separate question, unless your questions are all related to the same topic and work better as one comment.

Answerers

Give genuine answers to the questions given. The goal of the thread is education and understanding. Even (and especially) if a question is difficult, frustrating, or off-putting, I think one of the best things you can articulate is why it is that way for you as a way of helping others understand your experience and perspective.

All

Please abide by this principle: if your words have the potential to cut, then please have the courtesy of using some anaesthetic. If you know you're entering into potentially inflammatory territory, please go out of your way to soften sharpness and defang your words. The last thing I want this thread to be is a set of escalations or inflection points.

If you're worried your question might look provocative, openly state your intention and give some background for why you want to ask, to show that you're acting in good faith and willing to listen to answers. If you're worried your answer might slam on someone, openly state your intention and give some background for why this is a topic that elicits such strong feelings from you.

If a question or answer does cross lines or occurs in bad faith, please label it as malice.

If you do not want to see this topic in your thread for any reason, please use the ignore post feature.

I am hoping that we can have some very thoughtful, compelling, and insightful conversation here, and, based on what I know of the Tildes community and our last attempt at a thread like this, I have full faith that we can achieve that.

Long time lurker, first time poster. I have a 7 year old lenovo y-40 running Ubuntu which has served me well, but I am starting to get concerned that it may be time to put it out to pasture. Nothing has broken, but I know it's getting a little old.

The way I see it, my options are to stick with this computer and upgrade the ram (currently 8gb, space for up to 16) and perhaps replace the hard drive (although replacing things makes me a little nervous, I have only replaced the battery thus far), or buy a new computer.

I kinda hate buying things but will throw down for a decent piece of gear if I need it. I have a budget of ~1000 (but if it can be cheaper that's better), want to run linux and use my computer mostly for programming and internet-stuff. I am also unsure if I need to stick with a laptop-I almost never take my computer anywhere and have it hooked up to a monitor anyway. I mostly have been looking at getting a T14 or something from System76 but they all seem a little pricey. Thoughts?

General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

Here is my schema:

```sql
CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
  article_id   INTEGER
, warehouse_id INTEGER
)
;
```

How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Where to post this feels tricky. The terms in my post title -- "Product Backlog" and "Sprint" are very IT-specific terms from a popular business management philosophy (Agile) and methodology (Scrum) for creating software.

However, I am intentionally trying to adopt and adapt these concepts to my own life goals, personal improvement efforts and general day-to-day "get shit done" task lists.

Has anyone else done this? It only just now occurred to me to search the 'Net to see how unusual this idea is, and of course, I'm seeing plenty of evidence that I'm not the first person to think of it.

For the non-IT folk, here's the nutshell version. Large, long-term software development projects get broken down into bite-sized tasks, those pieces get prioritized and best-guesstimated as to each one's difficulty, and then short-term "Sprints" (each generally 1 week to 1 month long) are devoted to completing a selected subset of those tasks.

As an on-going process, the overall project goals and tasklist (the "Product Backlog") get reviewed, re-evaluated and re-prioritized, and past efforts are regularly evaluated for effectiveness, and the lessons learned get incorporated into future planning.

Probably the most significant piece of the Agile philosophy is the iterative process. Never lose sight of the overarching goal, but focus -- hard -- on those bite-sized pieces, always review your own efforts and learn how to improve your process of getting things done, and always be ready to modify all mid-term and long-term goals as the journey unfolds, as new information comes to light.

... And I realize I'm meandering, perhaps, a bit too much into the philosophy of software development ... but I hope it's clear how well this could translate over to personal development, life goals, self-help, stuff like that.

At any rate, that's what I'm doing over the next two weeks ... I'm running my own personal "Life Goals" Sprint, adopting the various tools and terms and ideas built into Agile -- and specifically, the Scrum-style implementation of Agile (which is more philosophy than process). Depending on how it goes, I may well be doing this for a long time to come.

Would love to discuss the idea, get feedback, pros and cons, yada ...

docs don't have preview for these:

I think this starts at ~~9 PM~~ <ins>10 PM</ins>
I think this starts at 9 PM 10 PM
E = mc<sup>2</sup>
E = mc²

also,

markdown inside expandable text:

(it was already opened because <details open>)

I've never been one to follow much social media - certainly not the kind that is just a (almost certainly fake) presentation of a perfect life. Someone's highlight reel. But I did catch myself on the other side of this. I spent hours on some days baking or cooking specifically to flex on people with well-crafted photos of the finished food. I still enjoyed it, but once I realized what I was doing I started cooking much more reasonably difficult dishes - so I'm sure it was motivated by a wish to instill envy in others.

So I think I understand that side of the equation. But I had a more or less captive audience (a Slack #food channel). Can anyone speak from the side of the willing consumer? The avid subscriber?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!

I recently went into my attic and pulled out my old 1990s 4-track Fostex X-26 tape recorder. I was hoping to transfer some of my old band tapes to the computer. Alas, it is dead. While it turns on, the motor appears frozen, and the device hums. (I don't mean there's line noise when you plug a speaker into it, I mean the device itself audibly hums, even when not using the tape controls.)

I have seen online that some people repair theirs. It's probably beyond my skill level to do so, though. (And I don't really want to do it myself.) I have contacted a few shops near me (Los Angeles), but have gotten no replies, unfortunately. I was wondering if anyone here knows of a good shop that would repair an older device like this.

I have also contacted some places that claim to do cassette to digital transfers, but none have replied to my questions about whether they can deal with a 4-track recording. Also, just looking at their prices, it seems like it would cost significantly more to have them convert my tapes than to get the recorder repaired. (And I'm not sure what's on all of the tapes, so I don't really want to hand over some embarrassing practice tape or tape containing some out-of-context banter between takes on it.)

I've looked online for a used one, but all the listings I've found have been "for parts only", which is what mine would be if I were to sell it. And knowing how these things go, they probably all have the same broken part. So any recommendations are appreciated!