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!

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?

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.

Have you ever received notice that you might be eligible for something from a class-action settlement? Ever notice that the effort required to recover is significant, and the recovery perhaps insultingly miniscule?

I don't know of any data, but I suspect that's true of nearly every class action lawsuit, even those that win in court battles. Maybe the original plaintiffs get a decent recovery, sometimes there's injunctive relief (which means the court forces the defendant to do or not do something). Every once in a while, individual members of the class get a meaningful outcome (vw's dieselgate comes to mind).

The public interest justification for the outcomes where the recover for class members is really small, if one is even ever really offered, is that the cost of the action to the defendant serves as an inducement to all defendants to keep their act together. But see, Tyler Durden's explanation of the actuarial function from Fight Club.

My thought is that instead of any recovery for the individual class members ("fuck 'em, right?"), their portion of the money should go to a public interest fund dedicated to consumer protection. My reason for this is that these small recoveries don't make any useful change for the individual class member consumers. But collectively, might add up to enough to make a meaningful difference to the future activities of producers.

Of course, all the usual caveats about corruption and accountability come into play. But there's a few reasons it might help, if those can be overcome. First, it might prompt faster, lest costly settlements. The payouts would be lower, and also the transaction costs. This shifts the litigation process from focussing on big recoveries to high volume of suits, bringing in more defendants. It would also enable smaller firms to bring suit, the hope being that smaller firms would take on more marginal cases and get more action.

Second, it might actually create a feedback loop. If the fund gets large enough, it could lobby and investigate, providing more information more new suits, and identifying the worst actors, and encouraging useful regulation. Imagine if Consumers Union could return to its glory of the 80's and have a big lobbying fund?

Or, we could just have decent government level consumer protections (hahhahahahahahahah!)

I'm primarily a freelance backend dev and for the first time venturing on full-stack development of a non-trivial web app on my own, hence I needed some guidance.

I've got all the backend stuff in php/mysql covered, I just want to know what's the best way to create a dashboard (with left sidebar) considering various aspects like long-term code maintenance and support, robustness, etc. Looks don't matter that much as it's a CRUD app but obviously, better is more appreciated.

Based on my research until now, AdminLTE seems to be the most popular way of doing it among most devs although a few others like material and coreui also seem to have some street cred.

But another approach I'm considering apart from AdminLTE is to just use pure bootstrap and fiddle up my own sidebar using something like this. That way, I won't be tied to just one Bootstrap version which is used by AdminLTE (v4.6) and troubleshooting will be much easier through google search and StackOverflow. What do you guys think is the right approach?

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.

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’ve always enjoyed rally games but only recently decided to buy a wheel (just a used Logitech G29) and also decided to give F1 22 a shot. I feel like I’m okay-ish at DiRT Rally 2.0 and WRC 10 but atrocious at F1 22. How do I actually learn to be better instead of constantly making mistakes?

Question is for anyone who's ever gone through a breakup -- no matter how big or small. Also it goes for whether it was mutual, you were the one broken up with, or you had to be the one to break the news.

What did you learn from your breakup?
How did it change you?

Okay, I promise this is the last time I’ll make one of these posts for the rest of the year.

The major fall festivals (TIFF, Telluride, and Venice) happened. So many movies got mediocre reception at these festivals (namely Alejandro Gonzalez Inaritu’s Bardo, Florian Zeller’s The Son, and Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light).

So the race has taken a more serious shape. Here are the old predictions.

Here are the renewed predictions:

Picture:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Babylon
3. Avatar: The Way of Water
4. Everything Everywhere All At Once
5. The Banshees of Inisherin
6. Women Talking
7. Elvis
8. TAR
9. The Whale
10. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Alt: Top Gun: Maverick

Director:

1. Steven Spielberg - The Fabelmans
2. Damien Chazelle - Babylon
3. James Cameron - Avatar: The Way of Water
4. Daniels - Everything Everywhere All At Once
5. Todd Field - TAR

DGA Snub: Martin McDonagh - The Banshees of Inisherin

Lead Actor:

1. Brendan Fraser - The Whale
2. Austin Butler - Elvis
3. Colin Farrell - The Banshees of Inisherin
4. Bill Nighy - Living
5. Hugh Jackman - The Son

Alt: Diego Calva - Babylon

Lead Actress:

1. Margot Robbie - Babylon
2. Naomi Ackie - I Wanna Dance With Somebody
3. Michelle Yeoh - Everything Everywhere All At Once
4. Cate Blanchett - TAR
5. Olivia Colman - Empire of Light

Alt: Jennifer Lawrence - Causeway

Supporting Actor:

1. Ke Huy Quan - Everything Everywhere All At Once
2. Brendan Gleeson - The Banshees of Inisherin
3. Paul Dano - The Fabelmans
4. Brad Pitt - Babylon
5. Ben Wishaw - Women Talking

Alt: Barry Keoghan - The Banshees of Inisherin

Supporting Actress:

1. Michelle Williams - The Fabelmans
2. Claire Foy - Women Talking
3. Sadie Sink - The Whale
4. Kerry Condon - The Banshees of Inisherin
5. Janelle Monae - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Alt: Nina Hoss - TAR

Original Screenplay:

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once
2. The Banshees of Inisherin
3. Babylon
4. The Fabelmans
5. TAR

Adapted Screenplay:

1. Women Talking
2. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
3. The Whale
4. Living
5. Bones & All

Cinematography:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Babylon
3. The Fabelmans
4. Empire of Light
5. The Batman

Production Design:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Babylon
3. The Fablemans
4. Elvis
5. Amsterdam

Costume Design

1. Babylon
2. The Fabelmans
3. Elvis
4. Amsterdam
5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Hair and Make-up

1. The Whale
2. Elvis
3. The Batman
4. Babylon
5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Original Score:

1. The Fabelmans
2. Babylon
3. Avatar: The Way of Water
4. Women Talking
5. Empire of Light

Sound:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Top Gun: Maverick
3. Babylon
4. Elvis
5. The Fabelmans

Film Editing:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Babylon
3. The Fabelmans
4. Everything Everywhere All At Once
5. Elvis

VFX:

1. Avatar: The Way of Water
2. Top Gun: Maverick
3. Everything Everywhere All At Once
4. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
5. The Batman