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    1. 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.

      7 votes
    2. How to use the YouTube website?

      Youtube has become rather broken of late. The nagware popup complaining about my ad blocker can no longer be removed. I don't want ads and I certainly aren't going to pay. So far, I download the...

      Youtube has become rather broken of late. The nagware popup complaining about my ad blocker can no longer be removed. I don't want ads and I certainly aren't going to pay. So far, I download the videos via Jdownloader. Is there a less bothersome way? How do you go about it?

      25 votes
    3. How are your fantasy teams doing?

      Every other year besides this one I have suffered from several injuries on all of my teams, but this year I seem to have zero injuries on my two teams. I guess this is great considering I kept...

      Every other year besides this one I have suffered from several injuries on all of my teams, but this year I seem to have zero injuries on my two teams. I guess this is great considering I kept Michael Thomas on my team a year or two ago when he was out for nearly the entire season, hoping he would come back and save my team (that didn't happen).

      Anyways, just wanted to see if anyone else was doing as well as me, think I have a shot of winning this year which I've never done before.

      6 votes
    4. The Escapist magazine's entire video team has either been fired or resigned

      This is breaking news and I'm no journalist, so bear with me here. It looks like a bunch of people at The Escapist were fired earlier today (one, two, possibly more). In response, the entire rest...

      This is breaking news and I'm no journalist, so bear with me here.

      It looks like a bunch of people at The Escapist were fired earlier today (one, two, possibly more). In response, the entire rest of the video team has quit (including Yahtzee, plus all the rest)

      The video team has plans to go independent. From their new Discord, they made this statement (from Nick Calandro):

      I was fired from The Escapist along with many others today, and in response the entire video team, including Yahtzee, has resigned from The Escapist.

      Our plan is to go independent, but we will share more plans on that later this week.

      79 votes
    5. Requesting info/experiences: software engineering and web documentation for the blind/low-vision

      I'm a technical writer. My company sells DevOps software mostly operated on the command line. I'm responsible for explaining this software via HTML5 documentation on our website. One of our...

      I'm a technical writer. My company sells DevOps software mostly operated on the command line. I'm responsible for explaining this software via HTML5 documentation on our website.

      One of our largest customers employs at least one software developer who is "totally blind" and requires a screen reader to work. I assume others exist, but they have not contacted us. Unfortunately, our website is not 100% ADA-compliant. It's far from the worst I've seen, but it could be a lot better.

      I'm familiar with high-level web accessibility paradigms and am currently doing an informal audit of our website to determine what we need to improve to make it fully ADA-compliant. I've prioritized discovery for accessibility concerns in our next sprint. Eventually, I'd like to look into hiring a consultant to do a more robust analysis, but only if necessary because I'd need to request funding. Unfortunately, I have limited control over the text that displays in our product, just the documentation. Long-term, I'd like to collaborate with the product team to ensure our CLI is fully ADA-compliant.

      I've begun reading web accessibility materials from the government. In the meantime, I wanted to ask: are any of you blind or low-vision, or have you used screen readers in the past? Or do you know any blind/low-vision devs? Either way, can you provide any personal insight into any of the things I can do as a technical writer to improve the usability of software documentation for the purpose of enabling you to do your job? My goal is to make the documentation experience great for screen reader users, not just OK.

      18 votes
    6. just testing

      "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

      1 vote
    7. Presenting a new (old) way to solve the "album problem" when streaming music

      The "album problem" is, of course, the fact that our music listening habits have changed over the past decade and the value of a well-thought-out album is not nearly what it once was. This is in...

      The "album problem" is, of course, the fact that our music listening habits have changed over the past decade and the value of a well-thought-out album is not nearly what it once was. This is in large part due to the fact that it's easy for people to create playlists with a billion different songs to choose from, recommendation algorithms, "Discovery Weekly" playlists, and whatever else the streaming services can throw at us.

      I may not speak for all of us, but I've personally not been able to fully consume a new album for quite a while now, finding that I gravitate toward a few songs/singles that get dumped into a separate playlist. I don't like this and I miss the days that I would discover deep cuts in the back of an album that I listened to ad nauseum.

      I present to you the "Six Disc Changer" playlist. The rules are simple:

      1. Create a new playlist in Spotify, Tidal, or your chosen platform. Call it "Six Disc Changer"
      2. Add six FULL albums to the playlist
      3. Force yourself to listen to the playlist -- maybe not exclusively -- but a fair amount. Imagine you're driving around in your 2002 Honda Civic and the only music available to you is what you've got in your CD changer.
      4. Any time you want to add a new album, you must remove an old album. You should only have six CDs loaded up at any time.

      If you want to take the concept a few steps further...

      1. Any time you remove a CD, add it to a separate playlist called "CD Catalogue".
      2. Any time you want to add a new CD to the catalogue, you must "purchase" it with an "allowance" of your choosing. I'm going with 1 new album per week. You can swap out albums from your Catalogue playlist freely, but new albums must be "purchased." This will simulate scarcity, which was a large part of what drove us to listen to albums over and over again.

      But... why?

      My goal is to get back to listening to full albums and truly taking them in. The best way I can think of to do that is to simulate the way things used to be. By using a streaming service instead of, say, just going back to CDs or records, you get the benefits of convenience, Last.fm, easy Bluetooth, etc.

      As for what's in my CD changer right now, I've got:

      1. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin
      2. The Antlers - Need Nothing
      3. Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues
      4. Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come
      5. George Harrison - Living in the Material World
      6. Bob Moses - Battle Lines

      Is it dumb? Probably. It's been fun so far and my music listening experience has been much more focused.

      25 votes
    8. Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of November 6

      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...

      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.

      14 votes
    9. Movie of the Week #2 - Drive My Car (2021)

      This is the second movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. It also won for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. IMDb...

      This is the second movie we discuss of Academy Award Winners. It also won for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.

      IMDb
      Letterboxd
      Wikipedia

      Feel free to add any thoughts, opinions, reflections, analysis or whatever comments related to this film.

      The rest of the schedule is:

      • 13th of November: L.A. Confidential
      • 20th of November: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
      • 27th of November: West Side Story
      8 votes
    10. Album of the Week #8: Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

      This is Album of the Week #8 ~ This week's album is Tame Impala - The Slow Rush Year of Release: 2020 Genre(s): Psychedelic Pop Country: United States Length: 57 minutes Listen! (Album.Link)...

      This is Album of the Week #8 ~ This week's album is Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

      Year of Release: 2020
      Genre(s): Psychedelic Pop
      Country: United States
      Length: 57 minutes
      Listen! (Album.Link)

      Excerpt from NPR:

      As a producer, Parker has more moving parts to balance this time, but he arrives at a deft auteur-pop synergy in which every last decision, down to the assorted cathedral-like reverb effects that lend his voice an otherworldly aura, become as intrinsic to the music as the melodies or the words. Though there's a lot going on in the latticework of the music — springy analog synthesizer arpeggios, guitars doing unguitarlike things, layers upon layers of pastel lushness — the post-psychedelic swirl of The Slow Rush registers as an organic blend, with the songs never feeling cluttered or too tightly scripted.

      Discussion points:
      Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
      Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
      Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
      What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
      Was there a standout track for you?
      How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

      --

      Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.
      Missed last week? It can be found here.
      Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~
      9 votes