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    1. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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 movies recently you want to discuss? Any films 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.

      7 votes
    2. Your favorite band that no one has heard of?

      I understand with the rise of music streaming people have been introduced to a wider variety of bands than ever before, but what's your favorite band that no one has heard of? I think everyone has...

      I understand with the rise of music streaming people have been introduced to a wider variety of bands than ever before, but what's your favorite band that no one has heard of? I think everyone has that one band that they love that no one in their friend group has ever heard of.

      I think I have a few, but I'll throw out Kadavar who have a Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath feel to them.

      45 votes
    3. How to reduce (non-spam) business calls to my personal cell phone?

      I have a business phone number that I use for work in addition to my personal cell phone number which I’ve had for 20+ years. I’ve always used my work number for anything job-related (colleague...

      I have a business phone number that I use for work in addition to my personal cell phone number which I’ve had for 20+ years. I’ve always used my work number for anything job-related (colleague contact, vendors, sales reps, networking, LinkedIn, etc) and only provide my personal for, well, personal contacts.

      But having had my personal number for as long as I have, it’s very easy to Google my name and find that number associated to me.

      My issue is that I’m constantly receiving phone calls and voicemails on my personal number from vendors, sales reps, etc that are either for services we use at my job or from vendors in relevant fields contacting me for various reasons. I realize some may lump this kind of outreach into “spam”, but I want to differentiate this kind of outreach from what I consider true spam (robocalls, phishing, non-work related sales calls like for home internet, etc) which just goes ignored and blocked.

      I don’t want to answer every call to correct someone to use my work contact info. I can continue ignoring but it does fill my voicemail and I’m hoping to reduce the number of calls I receive on my cell every day (even if it were to only cut it down by 5). Someone suggested changing my outgoing voicemail message to flag it’s my personal number and any work related messages would be ignored while providing my work number. I think this may be the best approach (though I’d skip providing my work number as I don’t need it to start receiving robocalls). I know I’m not the only one that deals with this (but maybe I’m in the minority rather than a majority) and am curious if y'all have this issue and if so, how you manage it?

      20 votes
    4. 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?
      
      7 votes
    5. Just subscribed to Crunchyroll. What should I watch?

      Hey guys, I am kind of out of touch with the Anime scene these days, and as the title says... What should I watch on Crunchyroll? All genres are a go, I will try anything, but I do tend to prefer...

      Hey guys,

      I am kind of out of touch with the Anime scene these days, and as the title says... What should I watch on Crunchyroll?

      All genres are a go, I will try anything, but I do tend to prefer your classic fantasy/sci-fi esque action types. I watched Claymore a few years ago and loved it, Hellsing, Tri-gun, Cowboy Bebop, etc.. So just drop some good recommendations if you don't mind.

      Edit: Thank you to everyone posting suggestions! It is appreciated.

      32 votes
    6. 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.

      17 votes
    7. What is your cloud backup service of choice?

      I have been going over services for which I pay monthly in my business. I have 17 clients where I do unattended cloud backups as well as doing a backup that I hold onto myself. Overall I backup...

      I have been going over services for which I pay monthly in my business. I have 17 clients where I do unattended cloud backups as well as doing a backup that I hold onto myself. Overall I backup around 4TB of data. I'm looking at possibly changing cloud services as the one I currently use has progressively increased their fees. I understand the need to pay for a good, reliable service as it reflects upon myself , my business and the service I provide but feel there are more competitive companies out there.

      None of this is for personal use and many cloud services are just that, personal use. These are all server (Windows and Linux) use cases.

      24 votes
    8. Where do I start if i want to draw these one day?

      Let's say I want to draw/paint things like this: 1 2 Think black/death metal album covers, medieval renaissance, dark/sci fi scenarios. I know this takes years of practice and I just want to do...

      Let's say I want to draw/paint things like this: 1 2

      Think black/death metal album covers, medieval renaissance, dark/sci fi scenarios.

      I know this takes years of practice and I just want to do these as a hobby.

      I am just lost to where I start. Just pen and paper and focus learn how to draw people first? Is there any online courses/resources?

      The second thing is I don't want to spend money so I won't learn to do these with oil or any real world material. If I do commit to the hobby with pen and paper, I will go to digital (drawing tablet + Linux/krita) and stay on that forever.

      It's the same with guitar. I play guitar for years and I'm settled for life with a nice guitar + mid priced digital pedalboard with nice effects/simulations (ampero II stomp) and a 1x12 flat speaker cabinet. No more purchases.

      29 votes
    9. Parents, how do you raise a well-behaved and well-adjusted child?

      Aiming this question at parents mostly. I'm about to be a dad in the next week or so and I obviously want to raise my son to be a good person. My father was/is an absent drug addict, so I have a...

      Aiming this question at parents mostly.

      I'm about to be a dad in the next week or so and I obviously want to raise my son to be a good person. My father was/is an absent drug addict, so I have a good roadmap of "don't." But I saw very little in the way of "do."

      Where is the line between being too authoritarian vs too permissive? What are your thoughts on gentle parenting? I don't want to trade "well-behaved" for "well-adjusted" or vice versa.

      I'm also open to newborn advice since that's what I'll primarily be dealing with for the next little while, obviously.

      55 votes
    10. Is this backup solution fine?

      I decided to set up automatic backup of my files from my phone and laptop to Backblaze B2. I didn't find a good solution to sync photos from my phone directly to Backblaze, so I decided to do the...

      I decided to set up automatic backup of my files from my phone and laptop to Backblaze B2. I didn't find a good solution to sync photos from my phone directly to Backblaze, so I decided to do the following:

      1. Sync photos from my phone to my laptop using Syncthing
      2. Back up those photos as well as other files from the laptop to Backblaze using Restic

      Is this backup solution fine, or are there any issues with it?

      Also, most of the stuff I need to back up, even on my laptop, are photos/videos. Is there a point in using Restic with it's deduplication and incremental backups for this use case, or should I just use Rclone directly? I'd assume deduplication won't save me much storage because photos generally don't have similar byte chunks, although I may be wrong.

      12 votes
    11. New vaccine technology could protect from future viruses and variants

      The vaccine antigen technology, developed by the University of Cambridge and spin-out DIOSynVax in early 2020, provided protection against all known variants of SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes...

      The vaccine antigen technology, developed by the University of Cambridge and spin-out DIOSynVax in early 2020, provided protection against all known variants of SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – as well as other major coronaviruses, including those that caused the first SARS epidemic in 2002.

      The studies in mice, rabbits and guinea pigs [...] found that the vaccine candidate provided a strong immune response against a range of coronaviruses by targeting the parts of the virus that are required for replication.

      Professor Jonathan Heeney from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, who led the research, [said] “We wanted to come up with a vaccine that wouldn’t only protect against SARS-CoV-2, but all its relatives.”

      https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1002345

      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-023-01094-2

      18 votes