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    1. What have you been listening to this week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

      Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

      4 votes
    2. What did you do this week?

      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 week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do...

      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 week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

      6 votes
    3. Megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - March 18-20

      This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate...

      This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

      18 votes
    4. What creative projects have you been working on?

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on. Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just...

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

      Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

      If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

      4 votes
    5. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started...

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

      7 votes
    6. Do data storage providers 'share' identical data among clients?

      What I mean is, if two clients of a provider upload the same data, do the hosts identify the match and create only references to the identical data for the multiple clients, or do they simply have...

      What I mean is, if two clients of a provider upload the same data, do the hosts identify the match and create only references to the identical data for the multiple clients, or do they simply have two copies of the same data on their server?

      Caveat: I am merely geeky.

      What prompted the thought was an article maybe on /. that Russia might run out of data storage, and this would impact entertainment providers. Seems a good way to save space if that's an issue.

      I would guess not, as storage is pretty cheap these days (or was at least in the before times), and it would raise privacy and possibly copyright issues. But a semi-scrupulous and miserly provider might consider it I suppose. Anyone here have any insights or knowledges?

      9 votes
    7. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was...

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

      If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

      3 votes
    8. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      6 votes
    9. Megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - March 16-17

      This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate...

      This thread is posted Monday/Wednesday/Friday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

      21 votes
    10. How many of this year's Oscar nominees have you seen?

      Hey everyone. I know there's a few people here interested in film, but the majority aren't really. With the Oscars right around the corner, I was curious as to how many of this years nominees you...

      Hey everyone. I know there's a few people here interested in film, but the majority aren't really. With the Oscars right around the corner, I was curious as to how many of this years nominees you have seen. Here's the Wikipedia page to see the nominees.

      I've seen all the Best Picture nominees and most of the acting contenders. Notably I haven't seen Spencer, Parallel Mothers, and The Worst Person in the World which I will try to watch by the time of the ceremony. This year I have seen 4 of the Best Picture nominees in theaters (Belfast, Licorice Pizza, West Side Story and Dune). This is in comparison to last years 0 (obviously) and the year before's 5 (1917, Little Women, Parasite, Joker, and Once Upon A Time Hollywood). The rest I saw through streaming.

      If I had to rank this year's Best Picture nominees, this would be the order:

      1. West Side Story
      2. Licorice Pizza
      3. Don't Look Up
      4. Belfast
      5. Nightmare Alley
      6. King Richard
      7. Drive My Car
      8. The Power of the Dog
      9. CODA
      10. Dune

      What about you guys?

      6 votes
    11. What examples of Goodhart's law have you encountered in your own life?

      Goodhart's law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. For example: my parents' health insurance company incentivized physical activity1 by giving rebates to people that...

      Goodhart's law:

      When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

      For example: my parents' health insurance company incentivized physical activity1 by giving rebates to people that got a certain number of steps daily, as measured by Fitbits. While my parents genuinely did make an effort to walk more, there were also days where they attached their Fitbits to the dog, gave them to someone else who was going for a walk, or even aggressively tapped their feet with the device on their knees while sitting in order to meet the measurement. Thus, their step counts ceased being an actual measure of physical activity.

      How does this play out in your life, job, industry, field of study, etc.? What measures have been made targets? How has that changed the reliability or validity of the measures themselves?

      Also, have you experienced any counterexamples? Are there measures in your domains that haven't succumbed to Goodhart's law? Why do you think that is?


      1. This was the face value reason given. I'm more cynical and feel it probably wasn't about physical activity but instead about data gathering.

      19 votes
    12. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      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...

      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?
      
      2 votes
    13. High-Quality "independent" product reviews

      This question was brought on by one of danluu's posts, which linked to another post going into why benchmarking matters. In that post, I discovered a bunch of different places/people running...

      This question was brought on by one of danluu's posts, which linked to another post going into why benchmarking matters. In that post, I discovered a bunch of different places/people running benchmarks to determine the highest performing "thing". Over my years on the internet, I've come across other places and people doing this for other categories of things, and think it would be beneficial to get a large list down of all the high quality testers and reviewers in one place. So I'll start off with a comment below with a list of all the high quality reviewers that I've come across for anything and I would love it if you all could do the same!

      Caveats:

      • I'd like to try and avoid communities centered around a single niche object. First example that comes to mind for this is the mechanical keyboards subreddit. While there's some good information there, I feel that it's highly diluted from everyone else in the community "following what's popular". If there's a specific user that consistently posts high quality information from there though, I'd say that's fair game.
      • If I (or someone else) posts a resource that you don't think is a high quality resource, or is untrustworthy, put a comment down explaining why! It's hard to be on guard all the time, so I'm sure I've fallen for marketing (word of mouth or otherwise) plots without realizing it.

      I'll include a disclaimer for reviewers or categories that have an innate subjective aspect to them. (Audio & Video would be good examples I think)

      10 votes
    14. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      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...

      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.

      5 votes