Hi all,
Been looking for a new mobile lately to replace my V20 (still havent found one but my criteria has changed). Looking for (im trying to avoid buying an mp player - not as if there are many options left)

3.5mm headphone jack
good/great audio (has good internal dac -- not looking for great speaker output)
good battery life
5G
dual sim
has to be something that lasts (had V20 for 7 years)
Not going to be used for gaming. Mainly scrolling, forums etc
Any suggestions ?
Or am i stuck with something in Sony range (i know bit overpriced but oh well..)
or getting an older V60 (not keen as the battery life wont be good now imho).
thanks
N

As my school project this year, I'm making a metasearch engine for courses (any type, online/offline, free/paid). I could just add the websites I know myself but school requires us to provide a detailed explanation of how we did "market research", so I'm asking here.

What websites do you usually go to first to when you want to learn something? It should preferably be something which is not exclusive to IT, but those websites are fine as well if they're really good.

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.

I didn't have as much time for reading this year. My daughters kept me quite busy (and happy). However, I managed to squeeze in one or the other title. I don't want to discuss all of the forty-something books I read, but here's an incomplete list of what I can recommend (and what not).

I really enjoyed the following books:

• number9dream by David Mitchell
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
• Red Rising (all six books) by Pierce Brown
• The Cold War by John Lewis Gaddis
• Dark Rome by Michael Sommer
• A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman
• The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
• At Night all Blood is Black by David Diop
• The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World by Tim Marshall
• First Person Singular by by Haruki Murakami
• Guitar Zero by Gary Marcus
• This is your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin
• The History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill

I think my favorites were Black Swan Green and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. Both are very powerful stories with complex protagonists.

I didn't really enjoy these books:

• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (seriously, I like Murakami, but I hated this book – the plot was annoying, stylistic choices were questionable and the protagonist bland)
• The Vegetarian by Han Kang (the book was interesting, but also a bit "too much" for me)

I think those books taught me something, although they weren't necessarily fun to read:

• Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
• The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• The Great Mental Models Volume 3: Systems and Mathematics

Especially Chris Voss and James Clear can't stop boasting and/or advertising. I learned something from their books, but I found them annoying to read. The mental models book and the Phoenix project were fun, though.

I'm a software developer and read quite some books about this topic this year. I can recommend the following of them:

• Efficient Linux at the Command Line
• 100 Go Mistakes
• The Staff Engineer's Path
• TypeScript Cookbook
• Principles of Package Design

But I didn't really like those (although they're good from a technical perspective):

• Cloud Native Go
• Security and Microservice Architecture on AWS

So, what did you guys read? What can you recommend? Which books disappointed you?

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.

We end the month of 1990s movies with a Christmas classic. Home Alone from 1990.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

Is this a stable Christmas movie in your household or is it perhaps the first time you see it?

Next months schedule for January is:

• 1st: Four Rooms
• 8th: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
• 15th: City Lights
• 22nd: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On
• 29th: The Iron Giant

The Holidays by the end of the year are a time for meeting a lot of family members that we may not have seen for a long time. For a lot of people, this a joyful moment of relaxation where they can enjoy the company of those they love. For others, this can also be a stressful period, when tensions, trauma, and insecurities related to family relationships emerge, often in unexpected ways. Different people experience those events in vastly different ways.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?

What does Christmas (as well as other events with a component of "forced" social gathering) mean to you?

How did you manage it this year?

Is this usually a happy time for you? Why?

I miss the magic of Christmas. Today and tonight feels ordinary to me, and I miss that sense of wonder.

I miss the trips my family would take to visit our relatives. I miss the get-togethers, and the feasting, and playing games with my cousins and the family friends.

Even though I'm an atheist now, I miss having to go to midnight mass. I miss the excitement of being able to open one present before going to bed.

Unless some tragedy befalls me, I'm sure I can recapture that magic in my future. I'm not depressed about it. But that's a hope for later. For now, this is it.

For everybody else out there who's having a so-so Christmas... wishing you all the best, and hope you can still find a moment to appreciate the holiday.

Normally in the evenings I have to myself, I keep busy and find satisfaction in coding, or writing, or gaming. Tonight, those things don't feel meaningful.

I just wish I had somebody special to share Christmas Eve with, like in all those cozy Christmas songs. Instead, I'm just tired and want to sleep... But I can't go to bed until me and my mom can get my dad changed, so he's not wet with urine the whole night. Just like last night, and the night before that, and the night before that.

I wish I could have gotten to know my dad as well as I've gotten to know my mom, as an adult instead of as a child. But I also would have never spent this much time with my mom if my dad didn't end up with PCA, so wishing for that is wishing for an impossibility.

Why are people setting off fireworks in my area, starting at midnight? It's already 2:00 AM. It's Christmas Eve, not New Years. Aren't kids supposed to be asleep for Santa Claus to drop off presents? Do kids still believe in Santa Claus, or do they just stay up late playing video games on Christmas Eve now?

Maybe they aren't fireworks, maybe they're shooting at Santa.

I've been hearing some ambulance sirens. My dog is upset. It's hard to feel sorry for myself when there are some people having a much worse Christmas than me. If you're having a true disaster of a Christmas, I am truly sorry and I hope you pull through.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/25

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

I just got into felting, and I have already made 3 siamese cat ball.. ornament... things. I plan to sell these on Etsy for some side income.

Does anyone have any good sources for wool, with a good selection of colors (preferably earth tones)?

What about tips in felting strategies for things like keeping lines neat, or blending colors together, fading them, general design layout planning, etc?

Pics of my first felt cat, the seal point: https://imgur.com/a/u6hJOgy

In one of my secret santas this year I have bought a digital copy of a solo RPG to give, however as it's only a PDF I'm not really sure what the best way to go about presenting this on the day of the exchange would be. I want there to be something for her to open, I know that much. In an ideal world whatever she opens will link to a download of the PDF or something, so maybe a QR code situation of some sort?

Yes, yes, I know, the classic blunder 😅

I just have to say though, the difference is insane, I mean what the actual fuaæosiuhrfjk!?

I have been on 60 hz screens my entire life, only upgrading to 1080p in 2015 or so, and I bought my current screen from a friend a year or two ago -- I guess that's why I never realized it was 144 hz, not 60 hz!? But playing WoW with another friend yesterday, we started talking about specs and refresh rates came up, so she even offered that I could borrow her second screen because she felt so sorry about my only having 60 hz. So for fun and just to be sure, I went to check my settings and yup, it said 144 hz in there! "Surely not", I thought... so I clicked it and absolutely surely fucking yes, it instantly looked a million times better??? I laughed so hard because it is both amazing and I am an idiot because I have seen this exact meme dozens of times and I cannot believe that I am a victim too 😂

The colors are so much richer, the movement of everything was so much smoother. I mean seriously, my mind is still completely blown now a day later. This is a great christmas present for myself, and it was free!

I don't think any other computer upgrade has ever had this big an impact. Blew my mind!

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/24

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Apple recently released a journal app in their latest iOS update. I used to journal when I was younger and thought it would be a good opportunity to get back into it. I usually use it as a reflection of my day, but some days nothing happens and I feel like there's probably a plethora of things I could be writing about.

So for those of you who journal what do you like to write in it?

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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