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I'm doing a bit of Typescript programming and started using zod for input validation. It has a fair number of convenience methods, one of which is brand(). This creates a unique type, much like the newtype operator in some languages. This is despite TypeScript not having unique types by default; TypeScript implements structural typing.

The technique used to implement unique types has been known for a long time, but it's new to me. You can declare a type with an extra field that doesn't really exist.

There seem to be several variations on how to do this. They seem to be mostly equivalent, but the ergonomics might differ. (Some might have better compiler errors that others?) The basic requirement is that the imaginary field doesn't get in the way in normal use, but it's incompatible with other types, causing a compiler error if they're mixed.

One way goes like this:

declare const brand: unique symbol;

type Brand<T, TBrand extends string> = T & {
  [brand]: TBrand;
}

It can be used to declare branded types like this:

type TopicId = Brand<bigint, "TopicId">;

const myTopicId = 123n as TopicId;

This trick relies on the fact that TypeScript's type checking is unsound. We can lie to the type checker. Intersecting T (in this case, bigint) creates a subtype of bigint with an imaginary field. The field's type is declared so the field requires a specific string, so it's going to be incompatible with just about any other type, unless you use Brand to give it the same name on purpose. (The field doesn't actually exist and no string is actually stored there.)

To create a TopicId value, you use "as" to explicitly downcast bigints to TopicId's. Then you can use them just like a bigint, except that there will be compile errors if you use them wrong.

A less strict approach is to make the imaginary field optional, described here as "flavoring" but I don't think that's in common use? Then you could assign bignums without doing a cast, but the type is still incompatible with other branded type. This reminds me of how types work in Go.

I got my friend a midi beatpad a while ago and he's about to start using it to experiment with music. Does anyone have any tips I can pass on? Any help with software/equipment would be greatly appreciated.

I'll be visiting Taipei for a little over a week in mid-January. I'm going to attend a conference, but have most evenings free and will be staying a few days after it ends too. Looking for good recommendations on activities in the city (museums, sights, etc.). I've heard Taipei has a very good nightlife, but unfortunately I don't know if I'll be able to experience much of that due to with whom I'm traveling.

Voiceover: In space, there is SPACE WAR. Once there was a king or something, but he died. Honestly, it doesn't really matter. The Space War continues.

[We open to shots of bucolic farmland -- in SPACE.]

Village Chief: Everyone! We have to make love so the harvest gods make our crops grow! (This is a real line from the film.)

Village Chief: I am going to talk for a bit about religion. It will never come up again in any way for the rest of the movie, and our folksy ways will seem a lot weirder when the main characters walk to a spaceport that's, like, 20 miles away. But that doesn't happen for like another 30 minutes of screentime, so I'm going to go for it.

[Suddenly - Nazis in SPACE. They were presumably mentioned in the opening narration.]

Admiral Noble: Everything about me screams evil. Give me your grain.

Village Chief: Oh, uh, we don't have any.

Gunnar: Even though it's been shown that the whole village loves and trusts the village chief, and he explicitly told me not to do this, I will publicly contradict him in front of Admiral Noble and suggest that we sell the Nazis some of our massive amounts of grain.

[Admiral Noble kills the village chief. He demands all of the grain!!! He leaves some Space Nazis behind for the purposes of terrorizing the village and then leaves while they.. grow the grain? I guess?]

Gunnar: Noooo the consequences of my actions!

[The Space Nazis are evil to the villagers and also each other. They have a robot. He is conflicted about things.]

Robot: Have you heard about the king?

Village Girl: No.

Robot: There was a king. All we combat robots had a prophecy about how he would have a daughter. Then he did. Then they both died. We decided to stop fighting because all the light had gone out of the world.

Village Girl: Well I think you're carrying the light inside you, Nazi Robot That I Just Met.

Robot: That's kind of a weird thing to say, but thanks.

[The concept of combat robots who prophesy, worship a human god-king, and can choose not to fight - by far the most interesting idea in the movie - is never touched again. The Nazis try to rape the village girl, in case the audience needs a reminder that they are evil.]

Old Villager: Kora, when I found you on that crashed ship being all badass and stuff, I thought you were a badass. Please help us!

Kora: No, I don't feel like it. I'm going to leave. If the Space Nazis learn I'm here, they'll kill all of you. Wait, are those guys going to rape that village girl? Well, if I don't help, it'll introduce some moral ambiguity to my character, and we can't have that, so....

[Kora beats the shit out of the Space Nazis, mostly in slow motion. The robot helps, then runs away. He is never seen again, which is very confusing for the watchers since he has had a significant amount of the dialogue thus far.]

Kora: Well, shit.

Gunnar: We have to go find some more fighters to protect the village!

[Gunnar and Kora walk to the spaceport.]

Kora: The Space Nazi Emperor found me as a child and raised me as his daughter. I had to become an assassin or something. Now you know my darkest secret.

Gunnar: Honestly, I'm not surprised at all.

[They go to a bar. A weird alien disses Kora. She shoots him and a bunch of his friends in slow motion, but not before giving them lots of chances to surrender because she's a good guy.]

Kora: Anyway, now that those guys are all dead, we're looking for the super secret rebel leader. You know, the one whose very name means death to mention. Does anybody know how to find him?

[Kai stands up. Kai is sketchy and rougish.]

Kai: Yeah, I do. Plus I have a spaceship, which is convenient. We just need to run some errands first.

Kora and Gunnar: Tight.

[They visit a variety of locales. At each one they find a new member for their crew. Each new character gets a five-minute fight scene in slow motion. None of this is relevant to the plot. None of them get any more lines in the entire movie, because we have a lot of exposition to dump.]

Kora: At one point I was the bodyguard for the princess. She had space magic. It was wild. Anyway, just wanted you to know.

Gunnar: Wait, didn't that robot imply that the king and his family got killed, like, a hundred years ago?

Kora: Nah. Well, maybe. Don't worry about it.

[The crew finds the rebel leader.]

Rebel leader: Fuck off, we don't want to help you and your shitty village.

Gunnar: ...please?

Rebel leader: Good point. Okay, I am going to go help these guys. Team, this is exactly what we have been working towards. Who wants to come with me?

[Basically none of the rebels go with him.]

Rebel leader: Fair enough.

[They go to somewhere. Suddenly, Kai betrays the crew! And the Space Nazis are there!]

Gunnar: What the hell, man? You've acted sketchy this whole time, and now you're just going to go ahead and do an obvious betrayal?

Kai: The space nazis didn't just destroy my planet. They tortured every man, woman, and child living on it first. (This is an actual line from the film.)

Kora: Okay...? You'd think that would make you hate those guys instead of work for them, but whatever I guess.

Kai: Anyway, the whole point of all of this is that I want to collect the bounties on all of these rebel fighters I took you to visit, and I figured they'd come with you when you asked. Because I know your secret identity as the adopted daughter of the space emperor!

Kora: Wait, so you knew where they all were the whole time? And instead of just selling that information you cooked up this insane plan to bring me to them so that they'd join my crew? Why?

Kai: Don't think about it too hard.

[For inexplicable reasons, Kai and the Space Nazis force Gunnar to execute Kora instead of just doing it themselves. Or not doing it, since the whole point of the plan was to take her alive. But wait! Gunnar sets her free instead!]

Kai and Noble: Oh, bother.

[There is a fight. The good guys win - in slow motion. The rebel leader dies, but since he is one of a dozen minor characters, the audience doesn't really care.]

Djimon Hounsou: Guys, this is awesome. It could start a whole... rebellion! I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but actually it really IS. (This is an actual line from the movie.)

Djimon Hounsou: I am wasted in this film. Also, Snyder paid how much for me and gave me literally 35 words of dialogue?

[The Space Nazis get the body of Admiral Noble. They pump him full of juice and he has a vision of the Space Nazi Emperor. At one point the closed captions read "astral ice crepitates," which is just incredible.]

Space Nazi Emperor: I am going to briefly recap the backstories of all of the crew, since you probably forgot as they haven't spoken since they were introduced.

Space Nazi Emperor: Ok, now that that's over - find them!!!

[Admiral Noble comes back to life. The heroes ride horses through a sea of grain, despite this ostensibly being a movie about space. The last shot in the film is of a Nazi Robot in the grain holding a stick and wearing antlers on his head. It is unclear why.]

THE END

I've noticed this changing over the years from my options when interfacing with a website or app going from "yes" or "no", to "yes" or "maybe later". I've tipped over the point from being mildly annoyed by this trend to now being angry about it.

Navigate to my bank's web portal to pay bills, "did you want to try and qualify for this new Visa card?"

Launch and use an app, "leave a rating!"

It's even a part of Windows now. When running through update prompts, setting up a Microsoft account is "yes" or "remind me in 3 days". The answer is no thank you!

I want to be able say no! And don't ask me anymore, ever again! How often should a product be allowed to nag you into doing something you have absolutely no intention of doing? It feels like a situation where the dial on the nags could just keep getting turned up to try and force people into just submitting into whatever it is they're nagging us to do. They'll just keep prompting you over and over until you get fed up and just say yes.

Is this mindset actively being pushed by large companies to take away our ability to say no, and stop asking? Are there rules in place for this kind of thing?

Paradise is an exciting action sci fi with a really interesting premise. What if eternal youth, was available to anyone with money... yet it involved literally sucking the life force out of others less fortunate than yourself?



The movie focuses on Max, who after his wife is unexpectedly forced to give up 40 years of her life, he desperately searches for a way to get her youth back.

The movie is filled with the usual plot twists, cool sci fi graphics, true love and the like.



There are two truly interesting elements to this movie. The first is the cynical idea that if the rich could live forever, then they would be much more motivated to think about and solve for the long term health of the planet.

In this movie, only the rich can afford to extend their lives for as long as they choose, so we also see how that would severely impact wealth inequality. 



The second interesting element of this movie is a series of questions very similar to the trolley problem. If you could extend your life, at the cost of someone else's youth, would you, assuming they were somehow reimbursed financially?

What if your youth had been taken from you; or what if youth had been taken from someone you loved. Would you take it back? Would you take it back as ethically as possible, or ethics be damned?

Could you give up your youth to save a loved one from an extremely unkind yet uncertain end, or is it easier to risk your life to save theirs than it is to give up eternal youth once you have it?



At one point in the movie, we learn it is easier to take someones life passively through the forces of economics and medical science, than it is to actively kill someone with a gun to their head. Which is the essence of the trolley problem. But it is also the essence of wealth inequality.

We could easily flip the switch, to improve the quality of life and length of life for many people, at the cost of one rich persons riches, but those with power passively choose to not do so. The movie doesn't philosophize anywhere near as much as I am doing right now, instead focusing on fast action, true love and cool sci fi. But I think perhaps this movie is a very subtle warning to the rich. At a certain point of wealth inequality, some portion of the population will want their fair share of the wealth, ethics be damed.

https://www.netflix.com/title/81288179

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.

My whole life I have lived with the regret of not becoming proficient in a musical instrument. I grew up with a piano and acoustic guitar in my childhood home, and I actually took lessons for both but never committed to practicing or improving. As a result I grew up tinkering with both hit never learned how to read music or actually develop any fundamental techniques to play either.

I am an autodidact and have always felt that with the right resources, and a little discipline, I could at least learn enough to play a few songs on either instrument, and possibly with time become a sight reader.

To that end, I am curious, musicians of ~Tildes, what resources are the best to self-learn piano and guitar? Books, videos, apps, anything that you’ve used or know people have used and actually went from complete novice to reasonably proficient?

Thanks and happy new year!

This is a silly sounding topic, but I'm unfortunately in such a situation and want to be a step ahead in self defense. My ex wife and her new boyfriend have been overheard by my kids saying that they're going to "get me" or generally do something bad to me. They are not physically strong people so I'm not worried about a violent attack, but they are intelligent people and I'm worried about all the other options the internet leaves open to them. My ex obviously knows my social security number so I have already locked my credit with the three agencies (Experian, Transunion and Equifax). I have also changed every password I can think of and have security cameras around the entrances to my home. What else should I be doing? Are there legal consulting services or routes I should be looking into to prevent possible problems? I don't want to go overboard with this (and I promise I'm not a paranoid person) but I want to take any reasonable precautions I can to prevent bigger problems.

I'm starting the process of looking to buy a house. My partner uses a power wheelchair and anything we buy is going to need to be accessible or modifiable. So I know we're looking for a ranch, probably 3/2 at most is what will be affordable but I'm finalizing my pre-approval now.

That said... I'm almost 40 and I've never bought a house before. What are some things I need to know when looking at a house? I have a realtor and we're looking at our first place tomorrow. I'm bringing a measuring tape because the accessibility will matter.
But I don't even know where to start and what the normal questions are!

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 begin the new year with a movie that takes place on new year's eve with Four Rooms from 1995. Written and directed by four direcors - Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

How was the movie as a whole? Were there any of the four segments that you particularly liked - or hated?

Rest of schedule for January is:

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

I had a few questions about the game, because it's currently on sale for about half off (with the sale and the 33% coupon stacking) on PC. It was nominated for GOTY and won a lot of awards, and I hear a lot of praise for it, so as a Control (2019) fan I'm interested.

1. Do you need to play Alan Wake 1 to get the story? I heard someone say the second one summarizes Alan Wake 1 for you, but I wasn't sure if that's true.
2. Would someone who loved Control and RE4 Remake but hasn't tried Alan Wake 1 like this game? (spoiler-free answer if possible)
3. What did you think of the game? Was it any good? Was it worth the purchase?