I have an oral surgery coming up that's going to require me to be on a liquid diet for around two weeks (possibly more). Early on it'll have to be pretty strict -- nothing with even small bits of food or anything "gritty" like a smoothie. Later on I'll have a bit more leeway, but I will still have to keep to stuff that doesn't really require chewing until everything's fully healed.

I'm mostly looking for opinions on stuff like meal replacement shakes -- ideally ones that are tasty, satisfying, and without a lot of sugar (if anything like that even exists?).

I'm also interested in any tips/tricks people have if they've been through something similar. I'm hoping to make the best of the (hopefully no more than) two weeks that I can.

Any big Comic fans here? anyone see GOTG3 yet? I'm going on the 13th, didn't have time to get to it till then.

No Spoilers, please just curious what everyone thinks.

Was wondering were you would rank it in the MCU.

My top three for Solo Films
Captain America Winter Solider
Captain America Civil War
Thor Ragnarök

Top Avengers
Infinity War and Endgame

Does GOTG3 beat Civil War or Winter Solider ? I hear its better than two but I don't think that's hard to do. GOTG 2 is the weakest of the first two for sure.

So instead of just posting a link to the opening weekend of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 (which is looking to open in the low 110s) I thought I'd just make a post talking about the recent box office of super-hero movies and the fatigue going on with general audiences.

Let's rewind to the far distant past of December 2021. Spider-Man: No Way Home just opened to over 200 million dollars. It re-invigorates movie going among the general public. Grosses at the box office afterwards are vastly higher. Spider-Man makes nearly two billion dollars at the box office. The next super-hero movie to come out is Batman, which does pretty well considering it's the first entry in a rebooted series.

Then, the summer movie season kicks off with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Seemingly, the movie is heading towards a 200+ opening weekend (much like Spider-Man). The film was sold as a follow-up to No Way Home, but in reality it had little to nothing to do with that movie. General audiences caught on, and were overall mixed on the film, so the opening weekend landed under 200 million. The film ultimately went on to gross over 900 million at the box office, but with terrible legs.

The next film after that was Thor: Love and Thunder. Again, the film garners a mixed reception with both critics and audiences. It ultimately grosses less than it's predecessor Thor: Ragnarok (although L&T did not open in China or Russia). It did okay all things considered, but it was another poorly received entry in the franchise.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever comes out in November with much better reception. Although it still ended up dropping 500 million worldwide from it's predecessor (300 domestic). Again, considering this was dealing with the loss of it's star, it did okay all things considered. Still, it was a disappointment compared to what it was expected to make and the critical reception was weaker than anticipated.

Then the big dumpster fire happens. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is released. It gets the MCU's second rotten score on RT, and gets the worst audience reception of the series since Eternals. The film manages to get the highest opening of the Ant-Man franchise, but with terrible reception it also gets the worst legs of the MCU. It ends up with the lowest gross of the Ant-Man movies despite opening higher than both of them.

The GA got burned from a constant flood of mediocre product (and we're not even talking about all the TV shows).

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, despite much better reception than most recent MCU films, is ending up with a lower opening than it's predecessor, and will most likely end up with a lower gross than the first film. This is referred to as "paying for the sins of the father."

This will be the lowest May opener since The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opened in 2014 (not counting 2020 or 2021).

Super-hero movies will still be around, and some of them might make a lot of money, but it's clear the utter dominance it had at the box office for the past 10 years is over. Which is kind of insane to think about how quickly this all came crumbling down (only 1.5 years!). But it goes to show there's a limit to how many mediocre/bad movies the GA can handle in a franchise.

And this isn't even counting how poorly both Shazam and Black Adam did for DC.

It seems like Quantumania might have been the "Heaven's Gate" for the MCU, it was the straw that broke the camels back.

So what will happen with super-hero movies? Probably a return to the pre-Avengers normal. Mainline superheroes (like Batman and Spider-Man) will remain lucrative. But lesser known superheroes are now riskier bets, and if those lesser known heroes are in a bad movie, there's no saving it. Logically, budgets for these movies should get lower to accommodate the lower grosses bound to happen from now on. And there needs to be actual effort put into the film in order to make it a good film first and foremost.

Unfortunately for the MCU, many of the movies slated for 2024 were greenlit before they could change direction (like Captain America: New World Order which went into production a few months ago). The budgets for these films are probably going to be really high like they've all been (200M+) and the grosses will get even lower as these movies were not given proper re-writes to right the ship.

As for DC, it puts a lot of pressure on Gunn to make Superman a good movie. And not just a good super-hero movie, but a good movie. Like how Batman Begins was just a good movie.

Hollywood is now looking towards video game movies as the next big thing, thanks to the massive success of Mario, so these movies are going to have to build themselves back up.

I nearly made this post a hot few hours ago, but it turned into me gushing about Worlds Without Number for an inexplicably long time. I realized that of all the things that matter, going into the minutiae does the least.

So yeah, I'm just curious what kind of not-D&D RPGs people are into and why exactly they're interested in it. Obviously there's the whole 'Wizards of the Coast is a shithole company' aspect, but I'm speaking more from a broad design standpoint than a moral one.

Hi Tildes, as the title says I am in the market to purchase my first car (of my own) and am finding myself pretty ignorant about the types of considerations I should be making. I really do not know that much about cars, so I am finding it a bit difficult to compare different options as I don't really understand what is important in a car. I was hoping to ask for some advice here and recommendations of guides or other resources to help with my decision. Here is some information:

• I am looking to buy new, not used.
• I am interested in an SUV or station wagon as opposed to a sedan — I like driving them more, and would very much like the extra space for moving things.
• I am in a situation where I intend to pay in cash, with a budget of roughly $30k. I know that paying in cash is sometimes not actually beneficial, but due to my specific circumstances this is the route I am going.

I have started to look at some options but am finding myself unable to compare things like different engines, transmission, and other performance and reliability metrics. What features should I actually be focusing on, i.e. what is actually important? Are there any primers out there that people can recommend?

To give a sense of what I am considering, some of my current contenders are: 2023 Subaru Forester, Mazda CX-30, Toyota RAV4, and similar cars.

In honor of Tildes' 5th birthday, presenting a preview of this app I've been working on, called:

Three Cheers for Tildes

It's not ready for an alpha release yet, but have some proof it's not vaporware:

Pre-alpha app preview: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dZ5cDZFrpUw

Q: What devices will be supported?

Android 6.0 and newer. iOS 12.4 and newer (includes iPhone 5s and iPad Air).

Q: Who is this app for?

Mainly for people who are a great fit for Tildes culture, but have found it hard to keep up, without an app.

Maybe they visited once or twice, liked what they saw, but quickly bounced off because they're more accustomed to apps than websites. They could simply have forgotten about Tildes, without that dedicated icon on their homescreen.

Maybe the lack of an app signaled to some that the site was not worth taking seriously yet.

Or maybe they had been active for a while, and over the years gradually got tired of waiting 5-10 seconds to cold-start a web browser on their phone.

I know Tildes regulars don't particularly need an app. Those who've stuck around have clearly been perfectly fine using the website for the past 5 years, after all. Tildes does have an excellent mobile site already! That said, I'd be thrilled if the regulars tried and ended up enjoying the app, but at the same time, I'm not planning to put in massive effort to change minds and habits that don't need to be changed.

Q: I'm new to Tildes. Is Tildes the Next Big Thing? Is it going to replace <mainstream social network>?

Almost certainly not, and that's more than okay! It was never designed or intended to compete head-to-head with any major social networks. Tildes is its own community with its own way of doing things. We could use some new users in 2023 to keep things fresh, in my opinion. But the goal has never been growth at the expense of quality. I believe most of us want to keep the cozy, and manageable, community feel.

Please read the Tildes Docs if you're interested in the philosophy and policies of the site.

Q: What does the app do differently than the mobile site?

Currently: It follows native UI design patterns. It comes with a homescreen icon. It loads faster than a full web browser engine.

Planned: Easier to submit stories by hitting Share from other apps. Notifications. Content and user filtering features.

Q: Will your app have ads?

No. As long as Tildes itself is ad-free, Three Cheers will remain ad-free.

Q: Will you monetize the app some other way?

I might ask for donations, with options to send money to myself or Tildes or both.

I didn't build this app as a moneymaker per se. It's been a fantastic way for me to brush up on new (to me) technologies, and I wanted to support the Tildes community at the same time. Also to be really honest, my competitive side was fired up being the first person to release a native mobile app for Tildes.

Q: Why is the app closed source?

I don't want to open this can of tildo-shaped worms, but know I have to; <details>-ed for length:

On the other hand, if anybody is inspired to prove me wrong and build an open-source app, by all means, go for it! It would be exciting to see an ecosystem of apps maintained by different developers.

Q: Will you release an open-source SDK at least?

Maybe. I'd be up for collaborating on this. It would largely depend on whether the site admin is confident enough to tackle the increased spam and abuse that may result following a public SDK release.

Thanks for reading! I'll post another topic in ~tildes when an alpha version is ready.

Official Announcement

NYTimes Article

Apollo Apollo (well known iOS client) developer talking about the specifics. Sounds like the API will now be paid based on usage.

It's a bit easier to have an opinion after the Apollo developer revealed the specifics Reddit gave him. Other than the NSFW part, which seems odd considering the API will be one of the revenue streams that isn't advertiser supported, it seems reasonable, of course waiting on the final price per usage.

It was never going to be sustainable for Reddit's API to be fully free. It was just silly - you could use the whole site, which certainly costs money in both AWS fees and developers doing KTLO, and not see any advertisements via the API.

App developers will pass the costs along to the user, many will likely fold because it won't be commercially viable with the additional cost, but, well, that's the way of things.

I've been a reddit user for a long time, it scares me how big the number is (death is marching my way quickly).

Before reddit I was on digg, and before that, usenet (before google ruined it). God I miss usenet. I know it technically still exists, but it seems to be mostly binaries and spam.

But the new interface really stinks, and since they've killed .compact, I decided it was time to go. (There were dozens of us using i.reddit.com! Dozens!)

And like the title says, it's a lot like kicking smokes. I was pretty jonesd the first couple days, and the experience comes like an impulse (Brain: "I'm bored! Check Reddit!"), followed by my conscious, no thank you, followed by, "What? No! We have to check reddit! Have to! We must do it now! Now! NOW!" followed by a gradual diminution in intensity of that same message, then a period of life, then repeat. The repeats slowly diminish in frequency, duration, and degree, so that now, only once or twice to I want to hit it.

A couple exceptions: I still check my relevant geographic reddits once in a while, and if relevant, I'll add "reddit" to my google results. I also use stackexchange and wikipedia more for some of those informational reasons, but those two, due to their labyrinthine and fiefish rules constrain content. Another discussion. There are also certain, ah, visual distractions for which reddit is still a good source (and for that I use teddit.net, thanks friendly tilderino!).

To ease withdrawals, I've been clicking tildes a lot more, also slashdot, and fark, and also ibooks. I'm proud of myself, and happy I've done it.

A moment of reflection-why do I like these sites so much? And why not facebook, twitter, etc.? I do like to argue, occasionally even as a third grader, but facebook and twitter have plenty of opporunity for that sort of thing. No, the difference is that reddit (and tildes, and usenet) are structured around ideas, whereas facebook etc. are structured around personalities. I'm an introvert, smarter than most people I encounter (at least along certain axes, many of which may be of dubious merit), curious and interested. Interested in ideas. Which is not to say I do not find people interesting, or do not value close, intimate, personal relationships. But I like to talk about ideas, and most people do not, except on places like reddit and here.

Perhaps I will start my own substack now.

Over the past 2 weeks I watched Arcane, mainly because a friend of mine insisted it was a masterpiece when it first came out and has been waiting to hear my opinion since. While I think it's very good from a technical standpoint, I found it very tropey and ultimately I was underwhelmed. Part of that was the expectation going in that it was supposedly perfection, but part of that was simply my own lack of investment throughout. I realized I wouldn't bother to watch season 2 whenever it's released, because I simply don't care enough about the story or characters to keep going.

However, my friend thinks it's the best Western animated show since Batman: The Animated Series, and I've been trying to think if there's any other legit contenders. Any suggestions? My taste favors stuff like Robot Chicken and Archer, but I think comedies are kinda at a disadvantage in serious comparisons.

As an old, I prefer the old reddit. Which, lets be honest, has been going away for a while.

But so long as I could browse on my phone via i.reddit.com, I was happily entertained by time there.

No longer. And I'm saddened by it. It was an imperfect community, but its good parts are replicated nowhere else as far as I can tell, Tildes notwithstanding. Although, if Tildes were maybe 2-3x as busy and had more para-reality* fans, it'd be really darn close. I am still sad, and sad that we can't keep awesome things that generate a lot of community benefit but low income (see also, usenet). Probably, it's a good dead cow.**

*As a true believer (tm), I hesitate to use the word conspiracy, because it has gained so many negative associations with far right absurdity and violence. Among the more serious members of the community, we have yet to come up with an easy to use term. Another thing in the world I am sad about. For the record, I don't believe the election was stolen, but I also don't believe Kennedy was assassinated by Oswald, or at least not him alone.

**if anyone is interested, I relay the story of the Wise Man, the Poor Family, and Their Cow.

I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess (yes I'm using the walking mode). It feels bad, unreliable, and I'm lost all the time. Yesterday I ended up 2 hours away from my destination and had to call an Uber (big humiliation!). Walking is my preferable way of urban exploration and I hate talking to strangers.

What I want is a simple compass that tells me "go to that general direction and you'll get there". No map, no street names. Just an arrow and a linear distance (like, in a straight line). Like a videogame. Without foreknowledge, street names are just confusing and unnecessary. I can handle the route myself.

Does such an app exists?

Lately I've been thinking about withdrawing most if not all my money off the bank and investing in a safe box, but I'm not sure how wise of a decision that is. How does everyone here go about that? Do you keep your money in the bank? Do you have a safe box at home? Why one over the other? Do you invest some of it, say in things like cryptocurrencies/stocks? What would you recommend or advice someone to do in regards to this if you could?

I have a reputation for being an atrocious cook. No one wants me to cook for them (I've had outright refusals), and my 'meals' have been the butt of jokes. Having had so many kitchen disasters I fear trying anything new or complicated. I try my best to follow a recipe, but things often start to derail and I don't know what I've done wrong. I have zero intuition then I can get into a spiral where things turn from bad to inedible.

Much I can attribute to how I grew up around food. The parent with the cooking duties didn't like to cook and didn't get to grips with it, but I didn't know any better. For most of my life, the dinner meal fit the same template: over-cooked (but not charred or burnt) plain meat, a carbohydrate (usually a root vegetable plain or mashed, but without any other ingredients), and over-boiled vegetables (soggy and tasteless). Table salt, pepper, and commercial tomato sauce were available for seasoning on plate - nothing was ever seasoned prior to being plated. We had no gravy, mayo/aoli, marinades, chutneys, dressings or the like, except for the Christmas day meal. Fresh herbs and whole spices did not exist in this reality, but some packet ground herbs and spices were kept and only to be used for the Christmas Day meal.

Needless to say, leaving home has been a bit of a revelation for me. I love flavorful food, and eating herbs and spices every day, but I struggle with cooking and don't have much confidence. I would like to learn how to cook, with an emphasis on health and nutrition. I know plenty about those topics, the problem is with the execution! I need to go back to the basics - learn techniques, experiment and fail, but still somehow improve over time. My primary motivation is to do this for myself, but it would be nice to one day be able to offer to cook for someone! I'm not very ambitious, I'd be happy with just doing a few things very competently and am patient and ready to work on this for the next few years.

I've hunted around on this site and found a discussion about the 'Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat' book/series, which I'm currently reading/watching and have learned a lot so far. I also found an old thread about culinary theory, but I think that's a bit over my head! (https://tild.es/6pc).

So, Tildes, has anyone taught themselves successfully as an adult? Any advice on how to start or any resources you can point me in the direction of? Ideally, I'd like to learn about the 'why' as well as the 'how', because I am just so clueless! Also, are there any food channels/blogs etc. that you follow that have an emphasis on healthy and fresh food? Very open to all cuisines. Thanks all!

Last weekend, my girlfriend and I drove down to attend the Monte Vista Sandhill Crane Festival. It's a roughly 4 hour/200 mile drive from Denver down to Monte Vista, with lots of variation in elevation. I got a Tesla Model Y last June, and since then haven't really had the chance to go out into the remote mountains of Colorado with it.

This weekend would be my first such excursion. Getting down to Monte Vista is absolutely no problem. At about the halfway point in the trip, there's a Tesla Supercharger. That, combined with the range of the car meant that conserving battery was no problem at all.

I was worried, however, about how the car would fare down in Monte Vista for the three days we would be there for the festival. There are no charging stations of any kind in downtown Monte Vista itself (though there are a couple of slow chargers on the outskirts of town, slow chargers with nothing around them are kind of useless). However, there were fast chargers in the towns nearby! One in Del Norte, and another couple in Alamosa, both a 20 minute drive out of Monte Vista. My plan was to charge up at those every evening while we were down there.

On the trip there, we left Denver at 100% SoC, and the battery and cabin preheated for 30 minutes beforehand. We arrived at the Poncha Springs supercharger with about 17% SoC, plugged in and charged to 90%, which took about 40 minutes. The reason for charging this high was because I wasn't sure what state the non-Tesla fast chargers would be at when we got down to our destination area. My plan was to head from Poncha Springs toward the Del Norte fast charger; arrive at 60% and charge back up to 90% before driving around to look for the cranes.

We arrived in Del Norte at 60% SoC as expected, but we found the one fast charger already occupied when we got there. Thankfully, we waited less than 5 minutes for the owners to get back finish charging, after which I was able to plug in and start charging.

This charger was advertised as a 62 kW charger, but for the hour we spent charging there, the charge rate never went above 30. I'm sure part of this was that I was charging from 60-90%, and part of it was that it was cold out, and the Tesla lacks the ability to precondition the battery en route to non-Tesla fast chargers. We ended up charging there for about an hour to get the same charge that the supercharger gave us in 15-ish minutes.

Luckily, there was a brewery/pizzeria and a neat antique shop just a block away.

At some point in the trip, I became aware through Plugshare that the fast chargers down in Alamosa were being taken down that weekend for upgrades. They were installing more stalls, and I guess that necessitated taking the existing ones offline. Now instead of 3-4 fast charging options in this area, I was down to just one. I was certain that because those chargers were down in Alamosa, many more people would come up to use the single charger in Del Norte. Further, I knew that lots of people came down for the crane festival, and so I was worried that there would be an increase in the number of EVs competing for this one charger.

When we got to our hotel in Monte Vista, I noticed there were outlets near the parking lot. I asked the front desk for permission to charge my car in the lot overnight, but was denied because "it would cost them too much money". I thought about offering to pay for the privilege, but the person at the desk didn't really seem interested in pursuing that line of conversation further.

Overnight, the battery stayed charged at pretty much the same level, only losing 1% indicated charge. We got up at 5 AM in order to see the cranes take off from their roosting location in the wetlands, and go out into the fields to loaf (this is the technical term :D). We spent the rest of the day driving around the back roads and farm roads, watching the cranes in the fields.

The whole day I was checking the charge point app to see if the one fast charger available to us was in use, in order to judge how busy it was, and to plan when we might go charge there. Surprisingly, not once did I see it in use!

Since we had had a great day watching cranes, we decided to leave a day early. We had enough charge to get to the Poncha Springs supercharger, and from there back home with no issues.

I thought I would conclude with a few bullet point takeaways from this trip:

• Range anxiety is real. I spent a lot more time thinking about where to charge and if I could charge enough on this trip
• Being away from the Tesla Supercharger network sucks. A whole set of fast chargers I was relying on was taken down exactly when I needed them. They're slower, you have to worry about them not functioning much more.
• Tesla is opening a supercharger site in Alamosa! They filed for the permit just this week. This will basically erase the anxiety I had last weekend on future trips
• Total energy costs for this 500 mile trip were about $35. That feels pretty cheap to me!

Pop-Up Event: Demo Disc Days

Today we are going to take a trip back to the 90s, when the best way to try out new games was to use a now-antiquated piece of magical circular plastic that you might have gotten along with your subscription to something like PC Gamer, PlayStation Underground, or the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine.

The demo disc offered gamers a small taste of a variety of different games, letting you try out the beginning levels of lots of different titles in hopes that you'd find ones you like and buy the full games.

One of the most iconic demo discs actually came with the PlayStation console itself, and featured its games laid out in a grid. This is the format we'll be exploring in this pop-up: it's our taste of the 90s, but with the games of today ^{or yesterday or ten years ago.}

Community Task: Together, we will create our own modern demo disc by filling in cells in the grid below. To fill in a cell, you must "demo" a game, which consists of:

• playing the beginning of a game,
• that you have never played before,
• for at least 30 minutes.

Choose an unfilled category below, find a game to demo that fits it, and report back here with your thoughts once you've done so! Once you successfully demo a game, it gets put into that slot.

At the end of the pop-up, we will have what may very well be the first demo disc of the 2020s featuring a spread of 42 games across multiple styles and genres!

Additional Info: The styles and genres have been taken from among the list of Steam's most popular tags (with a slight preference for things that give a more 90s feel). You can use Steam's search tool or Steam's library filtering to find games that fit two tags simultaneously.

If you don't use Steam, that's fine too! A game doesn't have to be "officially" tagged to fit its category. If you feel the game fits, then go for it -- no matter what platform you're playing it on. PC games are fine; console games are fine; emulated games are fine; web games are fine; phone games are fine. Any and all games are welcome on our demo disc!

Also, the game does not have to be a modern game -- just new to you. If the game is playable today and can be demoed, then it works for our demo disc!

Finally, it is fine to demo more than one game for the event. In fact, please do! We’ve got a lot of slots to fill!

Playing World of Warcraft Classic WOLTK, I realize that dungeon instances are the best part of the game for me. I love the holy trinity, and how everyone has a specific role to play and contribute to the group. But the thing is, WoW is just not that hard. As a level 30 healer, I'm going through the motions and being complimented on my heals, but I could do it with very-low effort and only partially awake. And according to other players, that won't change until I get to raiding, and maybe not even then. PvP is a possibility, but I'd like to explore games that focus on the matches without all else that comes with an MMO.

The problem is, when I think of the kind of equivalent outside the MMORPG sphere, MOBAs are what first come to mind. But LoL, Dota, etc, are not easy games for an older gentleman to pick up. I don't wanna play anything that relies on quick reflexes because I simply have none. And a game like Starcraft, on the competitive level, also relies on high APM as far as I know.

So maybe this game doesn't exist, but I'd love to play something that allows me to be in a group with a defined role that requires some degree of coordination (and a social aspect) but is neither an FPS nor a stressful high-octane game for people in their 20s with a lot of brain energy to burn.

Hello Folks,

I haven't posted on Tildes for a while and today I have a very strong feeling to post something.

But what exactly should I post about? In some sense, a writer's block is the exact anti-thesis of a child. Coming up with some creative content is sometimes painfully difficult for a functioning adult like me, while my 10 year old nephew can blabber hundreds of different things in a five minute span!

Now obviously, I can also come up with hundreds of different things but we all know it's not so easy to put down those things on the keyboard. I'm not an expert in writing craft but I have a strong feeling that most of us just hold ourselves back out of fear of what the world says. And honestly, the so called "world" here is acting very toxic and isn't helping by discouraging content creators who aren't always top notch. And sometimes, the content itself can be good or bad just as beauty is defined by the eye of the beholder. What is cringe for you may be good content or even humor for someone else. If only most of us start focusing on the "full half" of the cup instead of the "empty half", think just how beautiful this world will be!

Years of facing such toxic behavior on platforms like reddit and twitter has caused me to over-analyze and over-scrutinize everything before saying it. Any idea or concept has to pass through a lot of "mind filters" in order for them to get the "clean chit" for "yeah, this can be published". Perhaps, this particular post I'm writing is an exception or anomaly in that sense!

As a programmer, freelancer, writer, someone interested in things like humanities and social sciences, and an ordinary Indian dude, you guys tell me what kind of content should I write so that the writer in me thrives and also the content is at least bearable by the audience?

The problem I'm trying to solve here is difficult but I may not be the only one going through this phase. Is there a solution to this? Any proven and practical solution which you've had success with yourself?

A part of me thinks that I should try podcasting or youtubing first, and then I'll gain the confidence necessary to actually write mind-blowing content. But I have a problem with impromptu speaking and talking, is that a very common problem? Is there an easy fix available for that? I intuitively know from what I've observed in this world that most people have enough confidence to say or speak a lot of things (even the harshest of things!) right in front of others' face but when it comes to writing, they can't write so much. I'm a kind of antithesis of that, isn't it?

How exactly does one build confidence with public speaking? They say keep practicing and you'll get there. Here is a feeble attempt, not exactly a podcast but something near enough - a presentation for an app idea I've got. I want to create more of these but again, what content? I've got no ideas, especially interesting or appealing ones. And judging by the number of likes that youtube video got, I already have half a mind of just giving up on this!

If you've reached until this point, thank you for sticking with me till the end. And apologies if I picked up on your brain beyond its limits!

I’m going to be in Washington, D.C. for the next week (give or take a day). I’ll be staying in Arlington, VA and plan on utilizing public transportation while I’m there.

Any unconventional recommendations or things I should know?

Partly posting this because I love those little nuggets of local lore, and partly so I can share this local fact that I just discovered.

My city's cathedral has this amazing double-bowl copper font (different angle here) which I had assumed was ancient - the cathedral is almost 1000 years old - but it turns out that until 1994 these bowls were being used at a local chocolate factory to make caramel to go inside Rolos and was gifted to the church when the factory closed.

Oh no! My friend thinks she shouldn't use her nice ornamental coffee pot, because it is made of aluminum! Nevermind that there might be science developing somewhere that this substance may be some kind of innocuous which is not total. It's just horrible that that is how people make decisions
sometimes!

I got really defensive when I started hearing that people would avoid plastic bottles. Seemed like the kind of discernment that could only put me out of touch with things which are available. Go get your coffee pot! I doubt that you'll ever be able to tell if it ever impacted your health. Another friend of mine has a whole crop of prohibitions. He liked some of my clothes and talked about borrowing them until he found out they included polyesters, at which point he completely dropped interest and then I just felt put down for going on with something he had rejected. I thought, why did he speculate to me at all, knowing he had that sort of judgment still pending? Disgust should be unspeakable! but people bring it out with such righteousness, like "wouldn't you like to be healthier, away from all these awful things"? I also feel this way about smells. I hate how people respond to perceptible odors. Everyone is so sure of their opinions. Someone please come out with me for this. Unless you're struggling to breathe I really do not want to hear what you think about a smell. You're just going to interpret the world as being a worse place to be and that habit is what disgusts me!

Welcome to Tildes first Turing Test.

Rules:

1. Anyone can ask a question in a top level thread if you want to see if you can tell man vs machine. I'll just start with @NaraVara, but feel free to post up.
2. Anyone can answer the question in 1.
   a. Respond with two responses. One human. One AI. Add [A] in front of the first response and [B] in front of the second response. Randomly assign which one is the human. Remember your choice and keep it secret.
   b. Your AI should try to pretend it is human. You can decline to respond to any question that exploits GPTs well published weaknesses, or exploits the fact that this is a small community. I suggest you pick a character from https://beta.character.ai/ that is similar to you, or get really good at Jailbreaking ChatGPT so that it will pretend to be a human with a personality similar to yours. Any response where the machine mentions ChatGPT or OpenAI disqualifies that thread, as Turing's machine should be specifically designed to pretend to be a human.
   c. Your human response should be a genuine response. Answer the question without tipping the scales either way. Don't say something impossible for the GPT model to say. Don't mimic ChatGPT. You can always decline to answer any question, just decline for ChatGPT as well.
3. The original person who asked the question in 1 can now reply with a follow up question based on the responses in 2.
4. Now the original person who provided the answers in 2, can now answer the new questions in 3.
5. And so on. After 700 words of questions and answers, the person asking the questions in 1 and 3 must guess which is human and which is AI. 700 words is approximately 5 minutes of Q&A.
6. If you are asking questions, no peaking if there is activity in another thread. I suggest we use expandable sections with the details tag to hide responses.

@NaraVara, if this is clear, do you want to give this a go?

Edit: minor formatting

Pretty much what the title says - I’ve been looking for something small and not too expensive to run a few VMs on recently, and I’m just genuinely amazed at where the tiny SBC space is at right now.

The Celeron N5105 seems to be the go to choice at the moment. You can get an entire machine running that CPU that’s slightly smaller than an old double CD jewel case, for $150. Less than $200 if you want 16GB RAM and a fast NVMe SSD in there too. Four decent quality 2.5GbE NICs thrown in as a bonus. And it’s not that much slower than my expensive full size desktop from late 2020.

Part of me thinks I’m just getting old - phones have been plenty of people’s primary computer for years now, after all - but there’s something about having a real standalone x86 PC that size for literally 1/5th the price of a flagship phone that just blows my mind.

EDIT: See final update here

...and I'm a little worried the dealership might try to screw me over.

Some backstory:

In 2021, Chevrolet announced the Bolt EUV -- a slightly larger version of their Bolt EV.

Right after it got introduced, all Bolt EVs and EUVs underwent a battery recall. Dealers were unable to sell these until their batteries were replaced, despite the high demand for the vehicle.

In June 2022, Chevrolet announced a $6,300 price drop for the EV/EUV.

My current car was due for replacement (it's a 2003, lol); I wanted my next car to be an EV; the price drop made this something I could really afford; and it turns out that the EUV is literally the only electric vehicle at that price point that I can actually fit in (my head hits the ceiling in a Kona, for example).

In June 2022, I attempted to buy an EUV, only to find out that there were waitlists everywhere because the price drop increased demand, while the recall decreased supply. As such, I put in an order for a 2023 EUV with a deposit.

2023s went into production in July, but it turns out they're not made in order (which makes sense: the factory makes batches of similar types) and it also turns out that different dealerships have different "allocations" which means that they only get so many of a certain type of car -- even if it's been directly ordered by a customer.

I didn't know this at the time of ordering, but, the dealership I went with had a very low allocation for EUVs.

I have waited this entire time (which is not uncommon), and my car has finally arrived at the dealership. I'm slated to pick it up tomorrow and finish the purchase.

My concerns:

The dealership knows right now that they have me over a barrel. I've waited eight months for this thing. There is no other available inventory anywhere, as the EUVs sell immediately or, in most cases, are already spoken for before they arrive due to waitlists. People trying to get them complain about huge markups because of this.

I have a "motor vehicle purchase agreement" from the dealership from when I ordered the vehicle and made my initial deposit. That paper shows that I'll be paying MSRP for the vehicle, which I'm happy to do.

My question is: is the dealership going to try and make me pay something different, knowing that I'm not going to walk away from this? I feel somewhat comfortable that I have an agreement for the MSRP in black and white, but is that enough?

My other question is: is there some other way they're going to try to get one over on me? Something more subtle or that I don't expect? The last time I bought a car was ~15 years ago, and I pretty much stood there while my dad did the talking (also the car was used and super cheap).

I will be financing a loan through the dealership to pay for the car.

Basically, what can I do to make sure tomorrow goes as smoothly as possible? I'm hoping that it's easy, cut and dry, and there's no funny business, but I've also heard some horror stories -- especially from people trying to buy the particular car I'm getting.

Yesterday, Adsense support sent an email to their users regarding their upcoming policy changes. This primarily affects how subdomains are monetized. Going forward, your subdomains inside the primary domains in the "Sites" section (www, etc.) won't be allowed, any existing ones will be removed and their rules will be merged with the primary domain (such as example.com).

Furthermore, what constitutes a "Site" will also change henceforth. You can only add a primary domain (such as example.com) and the subdomains which are listed on the public suffix list (such as github.io, blogspot.com, etc.). Thus, your own subdomains (such as xyz.example.com or www.example.com) won't be allowed in Adsense.

I don't know what they will achieve by doing this considering they already vet and audit each site before approving them for adsense? In any case, other alternatives to Adsense exist such as Propeller Ads, CJ Affiliate, etc. for those affected by this move but I don't know their efficacy.

Yes, I’m totally serious.

If you find a recipe online that includes beans in the ingredients list, chances are that it calls for canned beans. And I honestly don’t know why. Canned beans are terrible.

To be specific I am not talking about flavored beans. Beans in tomato sauce or a sugary sauce for baked or barbecue beans tend to be OK. It’s the unflavored ones that bother me.

I could only wish that a lack of flavor was the only problem with canned beans, but in addition to that they also tend to have a sharp metallic taste. I don’t even know how that can happen. Canned tomatoes don’t taste that bad. Are they just not cleaning the cans before they put the beans in them?

We are living in an age where it’s surprisingly common for people to have access to pressure cookers which can cook dry beans en masse within an hour’s time. And the result will be properly nutty, buttery, and creamy like they are supposed to taste.

I get that canned beans are always going to be more convenient, but they taste so much worse that I honestly don’t think the resulting dish should be called the same thing.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Pop-Up Event: Twenty-Twenty Vision

Community Task: Our goal is, as a community, to watch movies and fill in the following chart below that spans an entire century of film: from the 1920s to 2020s!

Choose an empty decade, watch a movie (any movie!) from it, and report back here when you're finished. Tell us why you chose that movie and what you thought about it.

I'll fill in the chart as we go, and once we have collectively watched at least one movie from each decade, we will have completed the Pop-Up and it will be closed!

Time Period: The Pop-Up remains open until the chart is filled!

I will shortly have need for a small, low power (power as in watts, not compute power) system for always-on Home Assistant use. However, Raspberry Pis are out of stock everywhere and while they can be had for extortionate prices on various auction/marketplace sites, I'm not sure I want to spend a load of money on something which might not even be what it claims to be.

Home Assistant suggest Odroid which I'd probably go for the C4 edition but it's relatively expensive (I need to add an MMC and a psu and various other things to the listed main board price)

Any suggestions? The Asus Tinkerboard looks overkill and is very expensive. It needs to be capable of running a standard Linux distro, ideally Home Assistant's own OS. Low power consumption is a definite, 2-3W at idle is probably the maximum I'd be happy with. Wifi is a bonus although not required right now - but the ability to add it if needed is essential. Some amount of expansion capability would be good if I want to add hardware sensors or bluetooth or a Zigbee transceiver or whatever. It needs some reasonably amount of compute grunt I assume but I don't think HA is all that hungry for number crunching power. The machine will more than likely be headless at first but a little bit of GPU and graphical IO would be handy if I want to stick a display on it in the future, which I might want to.

Any ideas? Oh, and also must be easily available in/to the UK.

tl;dr IDK what happened before, but r/antiwork is public now (again?).

I just stumbled across this tildes thread from 2 weeks ago [EDIT: crap ... 1 year and 2 weeks ago; mixed up my "current year" setting] ... which is right on the border between "keep posting in that thread" and "it's too old, start a new one" ... so here we are.

I'm familiar with the ideas, but never heard of that specific subreddit before. Looking through the Fox interview, I must be missing something, because I don't understand what all the fuss was about. What "mistake" did the mod make in the interview? Why did everyone suddenly hate her? etc. Seemed perfectly innocuous to me (apart from, why even bother with Fox).

But that aside, the previous thread indicates that r/antiwork was effectively bullied into going private. Looking at it this morning, it is not private. I am assuming that they just recently de-privatized it?

On a side-note, top comment on the thread is about not supporting r/cringetopia ... which ... that subreddit is private. Is that also new? It had me confused for quite awhile this morning, trying to figure out which subreddit was actually under controversy and forced to go private.

Most of the world seems to be settled around Chrome and Safari these days. I remember using Firefox a long time ago myself but then everyone started switching to Chrome and that also turned out to be a natural path of least resistance for web developers like me who had to test web apps in local environment.

This switch happened in circa 2015-16 if I recall correctly, many other browsers have evolved since then and people are looking at alternatives. The Android Kiwi browser, for example, is a great alternative for power users on mobile who need plugins but Chrome won't allow that. Other alternatives have evolved too like Brendan Eich's Brave browser which seems to be promising. Anyone here tried that yet?

I have half a mind to go back to Firefox but I recently learned about how Mozilla Corp is also funded by Google and that turned me off. Wouldn't you rather want to deal with the Devil directly instead of the Devil's assistant or sidekick!

And then there are also those who use Garibaldi, Midori, etc. but I can't go that purist way. I'm way too dependent on the digital way of life and sites like amazon and flipkart won't work in those browsers. What do you think should be the right path ahead from here?

For the past week, I have been researching headphones/earbuds, buying them, and then cancelling the order immediately because I realized I was making a compromise on what I am wanting. Not a crazy amount of cancelled purchases, just maybe...three.

Anyways, I am in the market for the holy grail of headphones or earbuds that fits my needs but I am thinking I might have to buy multiple for the different scenarios that I am looking for. Which are:

• Preferably earbuds so I can take one out if I need to have an ear free for something.
• Great mic quality - I want to be able to use these for work call and when I go outside to walk. Really need something that handles wind and background noise pretty well that doesn't leave the other person on the phone annoyed talking to me. I don't want to walk around with a boom mic in front of face though.
• No preference on wired or wireless. If wired, I would like direct USB-C so I don't have to think about dongles or anything. I also read that mic quality degrades with Bluetooth? Not sure how accurate that is but the consensus I have read was that wired earbuds have better mics than Bluetooth. Wireless would be amazing if I knew that everything else worked well. I would take a short battery life to have top notch everything else.
• Decent sound quality for music. I already have a pair of aftershokz that I use for working out so I'm not stranger to compromised sound quality. But when I go out on walks I want to listen to language podcasts so I can hear clearly.
• Active noise cancelling - longshot but this would just be nice to have since I have gotten a taste for these with my Sony headphones.

I would be interested to hear your product recommendations or solutions to my wants. I have a feeling that the perfect product doesn't exist but at the bare minimum I would take something that sounds decent and has a good mic that handles outdoor sounds well. ANC and wireless are optional but would be very amazing to have.

I would be using these with a Samsung S22.

Title says it all. Bootstrap+jquery has been my default route and path of least resistance when it comes to web development. Perhaps because I'm coding since a long time and belong to the old school when modern libraries like react weren't yet invented yet?

I had tried to meddle with Angular.js 1.0 back in those days but was soon disillusioned! It was cool and cutting edge but highly opinionated. It tried to do so many things under the hood that I soon quit the effort and the word "Angular" was stigmatized in my mind ever since! I don't know how different today's typescript based Angular is but that stigma or phobia prevents me from even looking at that direction!

React is another cool technology which everyone is talking about and I'm sure it has some merits. But I'm not sure exactly what React brings to my development workflow which jquery doesn't already do. Can you tell me some specific advantages or pros of react over jquery which can motivate me to learn the former and let go of the latter? What should I do?