What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Do you go by gut/heart feeling?

Do you analyze by head?

Do you write out long lists of pros and cons on paper?

Do you consult a lot of family and friends and then go by consensus majority?

Do you overanalyze and agonize and hit decision paralysis? If so, how do you get over that or push through it?

As the title indicates, I am curious how folks have “gone with their gut intuition”, especially in circumstances where they are faced with tough decisions or life-altering changes. Some thoughts/prompts for discussion:

• What does your “gut” feel like to you?
• How do you reconcile differences between your “gut feeling” and what your brain is thinking/telling you?
• How do you get to the point where you decide to “go with your gut”?
• Can you share examples of when you went against your brain, and followed your gut, and it turned out to totally be the right decision for you?
• Do you have any examples of when you followed your gut intuition, instead of what your brain/logical mind was telling you, and it came back to bite you?
• How have you learned to “trust your gut”?
• What tactics or steps have you learned to take when trying to parse between what your “gut” is telling you and what your “brain” is telling you?

Curious how other people listen to their gut and use that intuition to make decisions or choose which direction to go in (concerning life stuff, career stuff, relationship issues, etc.).

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.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

I aspire to better equip myself as a researcher and writer. As part of this, for me at least, I think that developing a note-taking (or marginalia) system would be useful. I read a ton of nonfiction and have especially been into history, economics, and geopolitics lately…but my “system” tends to just “highlight” insightful stuff in my Kindle and then…everything kinda falls off the map for me. I should probably start going back, reviewing the highlights, and making notes in a separate notebook/app/document for later research and writing purposes.

I thought it might be interesting to learn more about everyone’s reading/studying routine and specifically note-taking processes. I’m especially curious about those who blog/publish writings, and how they work to gather their thoughts and information as they are reading.

If you don’t mind sharing a bit about your note taking process or systems, here are some questions for discussion:

1. What is your process, generally? (Do you read print/digital/audio? Does your note taking change depending on different formats? Do you highlight with specific colors for certain reasons? What do you find yourself notating most frequently?)

2. Do you use pen/paper or is there a specific app you like to use for note-taking/research purposes?

3. If you use an app, what is your process for book notes? Do you take notes on paper and then transfer it to the digital app later when you’re reviewing? Do you take notes directly into the app?

4. Any other advice for someone looking to improve their learning/knowledge through more focused and intentional reading and note taking?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

If you're me, you would be someone who would be mildly interested in VR for almost 8 years but never actually managed fork over the money to get a headset. Maybe because you couldn't or because you were afraid to spend so much money on something you don't even know if it would give you motion sickness.

Last week, I decided that now is the time. I've looked over several devices, like Valve Index, Pico 4, Meta Quest 2 and 3. But my mind was kinda made up, I knew that I would either go for Valve Index or Meta Quest 3. I picked up MQ3.

The thing arrived on saturday morning. Time to play some games.

I boot up my desktop and install Steam VR, time to play Half Life Alyx... Cards on the table: I don't consider myself a Half Life fan. Not because I disliked the games, it's just I never played them when they came out. I can see why they are fan favorites and how impressive they were at the time, but I missed the chance to be wowed by them when I played them so many years later.

But HL Alyx is fixing that.

First, being "inside" the game was new. As someone who always played games on a 2D screen, I spent way more time than I care to admit looking at different objects, rotating them, interacting with them, etc. Once that novelty wore off, I proceeded with the game.

There's a scene where someone throws you a weapon. He tells you not worry, it's not loaded... Well, except it was, and when that thing dropped on the floor, it fired, I legit got jump scared. Later, when the crab thingies jump at you, I legit panicked and started shooting hoping that I would hit them. Dark sections? Legit horror.

I... Do not remember the last time I felt any of these things. If this was a conventional game, the gun falling would at best get a chuckle from me. Crab thingies? Meh, just aim and shoot them. Dark sections? Just another gaming section.

I think I get it now. I get why so many people like VR games. It's different. Because it's more immersive, you feel more involved with what's happening. Now that I'm writing this, yeah it sounds obvious, duh, but in a VR game it feels like it's you who is inside the game, in a 2D screen it feels like you, but at the same time you also understand that it's not you, it's your character who is inside the game.

I've been also trying Job Simulator.

As far as games go, this isn't really a "game". It feels more like a fun tech demo "hey, this is what you can do with a VR". An equivalent game with conventional 2D screen and controllers wouldn't get any attention from the public, and as for me, I would turn it off after 5 or 10 minutes.

But, it was legit fun. The Gordon Ramsay Robot yelling at me to cook food just made me grab everything and throw them at his face. In the office, I would throw things over to other cubicles like an annoying kid.

It's exhilarating to rediscover the joy and immersion that gaming can offer through the lens of VR. The sense of presence and tangibility breathes new life into familiar experiences, reigniting that childlike wonder I once felt.

Take-Two posted a legally-required notice that it is laying off 70 workers and closing a studio in Seattle. This is part of mass layoffs announced across Take-Two. This has also been mentioned by Games Industry.biz, although without much more details than what I have here (at time of writing).

The only Take-Two studio in Seattle is Intercept Games, who have been making Kerbal Space Program 2. We also know that Intercept had about 65-70 people working there (half of which were on KSP2, half of which were on an unannounced project).

Various KSP2 devs have also posted on social media that they have been impacted by layoffs (not sure about the rules re: linking social media profiles, so I'll hold off).

We may or may not have more news in the coming days. It's hard times in the industry right now, and my heart goes out for everyone affected.

EDIT: From Game Developer:

When approached for comment by Game Developer, Take-Two wouldn't confirm whether Intercept Games has been impacted by the cuts–despite multiple Kerbal Space Program developers indicating they recently left the studio, with one expressly stating they were "laid off." A company spokesperson did, however, explain that its Private Division publishing label will continue to support Kerbal Space Program 2.

...

When pushed again on the current status of Intercept Games, Take-Two told Game Developer it has "nothing further to note."

I have a guitar multi effects that has a headphone out with 47Ω

I want a budget somewhat neutral headphone to use with it and I am getting confused with the answers I found so far.

The AKG K240 mk2 (55Ω) seems to be a popular choice with people who own another multi effects (HX Stomp) with a different impedance (I think it's 12Ω).

This headphone is within my budget, but it seems too close to the 47 output of my multifx.

Will I have a problem with this?

I read somewhere that the headphone impedance should be much bigger than the output impedance, but another text I read somewhere explained that they should match closely.

I'm really confused about this.

I will soon have a home and figured now's the time to do a proper home server, especially since it's going to come with cat 6 run from the main panel to just about every room. I code for a living, but at the same time network is a massive gap in my knowledge, as are servers, and I was hoping to use this as a learning moment as well as just a way to optimize things. I've been doing research for a few weeks now on and off and feel like I've got more questions than I started with, so I'll just vomit them out and if anyone has some guidance I'd really appreciate it.

Some information:

1. I'm willing/able to spend to get quality/simplicity. Time is the much bigger crunch for me right now, and I'd much rather buy something that works even if it costs more than cobbling together some deals.

2. Related to 1, I'd like this to not become my fulltime second job/hobby. I will at some point try to expand to a full home lab, and do want to use this to learn about things I feel I should understand better for general knowledge and my career, but i'd love for core functionality to mostly "just work" after configuring so when I don't have time to do that I'm not stuck telling everyone "oh yeah it'll be broken until I find time to fix it".

Things I know I want-

1. Some sort of NAS. From my research Synology comes up a lot as the "it's expensive but it'll just work" option, and I probably want something like a 4 bay of NAS specific several TB HDD's in something like raid 5/6/10. Pricey as hell but I'm most willing to spend on this as the cost might very well be split by the family members who want me to guinea pig all this.

2. I will have a camera system and would prefer to not have it sending data outside my network. This is the area i've looked at the least, as it's a little farther down the road, but I know others who have things like Arlo and lets just say i'm not super impressed. Obviously this brings up question like remote access to said camera's and where I'm storing the data (nas? Somewhere else?)

3. I'd like to mess with a media server. Plex/Jellyfin constantly come up in my research, so I'll be looking into those, but I've also got a bunch of audiobooks that I'd love to be able to easily share, and I think there's software for that stuff as well.

4. Pihole strikes me as the other "well if you're going to do this, you might as well" option that i'm aware of. Realllly need to better understand networking in general, but I hear these days it can kinda be installed and quickly configured and then left to do its job.

5. Related to all of this, Casa OS keeps coming up as a very good tool for a beginner like me, since it streamlines the handling of docker containers and also file sharing. However it's not really an OS, since it must actually run on Debian (i think?) for now (zima OS still in testing?).

Stuff I'd like to mess with but doesn't have to happen right away.

1. Eventually the aforementioned NAS would be backed up offsite to another NAS at another family members house, once I know what the hell I'm doing.

2. Proxmox constantly comes up as THE tool to use, but it leaves a lot of questions for me. Obviously if I start trying to do lab environments and screw with VM's it's going to be great, but my understanding is that I probably don't, as a beginner, want to say load up a device with proxmox and then have it host debian which installs CasaOS as it'll get a little more tricky to have everything talk right? Unsure on this part.

3. Anything else I'm forgetting. One issue I keep having with this is a LOT of the information out there is either too complex for me to really grok or just says "well yeah you could do ANYTHING with this" and it just sorta assumes I know what the options are. If there's anything else worth checking out I'd love to know.

Hardware I've come across-

1. Synology - Already mentioned but seems like they're a common go to for a "more money than skill/time" situation like mine.

2. Zimaboard - My understanding is it's underpowered for its price, but the main draws are that it's VERY low power, small, and quiet. What it could actually do from my list above is where i'm unsure. I see people are supposedly using it for Plex servers and what not, and I'm pretty sure it's not going to make any kick ass lab environments, but being quiet, small, and maybe a bit closer to plug and play seems tempting (I know they make the blade and a few other products but it all seems greek to me).

3. Various mini computers - I've got a minisforum machine from several years ago that I currently use as a living room computer for light gaming and mostly playing movies and the like. Not sure if i could just wipe it and convert it to be the starting point (more on that later). I know used 1 liter mini pc's from companies like HP are also popular.

4. The MS-01 - Similar pile as the last one but my understanding is this is the kind of thing that's probably really cool if you actually know what the hell you're doing. I'm 99% positive it is vast overkill for my purposes, but I'd like to eventually get to the point where I could understand why I might want something like this. My understanding is if I knew what I was doing I could probably drop proxmox on this and do everything I could ever want and more, but I feel quite far from that.

Some general questions I have -

1. The thing that kicked this all off is my new place likely having fiber, and cat 6 drops throughout the building. Architecture is something I'm still a little shaky on. I assume i'm going to need my own modem/router (just because the cox routers are meh and not really configurable from last I checked), and then that routes to the server first???...or something(seems like a must if you want the pihole to do anything)? I've seen lots of niffty network diagrams at this point but they're all from people WAAAAAAAAY beyond my skill level doing much more ambitious stuff, so it gets hard to understand. If anyone has a simple home network diagram/guide to look at I'd really appreciate it.

2. I'm just in general going to need to learn more about networking, especially in a home environment. Should I eventually get those camera's set up, I want to understand how to let them talk to internal storage and what not ,but not get out to the web...or..something (again remote access seems nice, but also like a massive security concern). I know speed is also a big factor i'm going to need to better understand. Having a fiber connection in only to be bottle necked by a crappy router or a 1gigabit port is just a waste of money, so that's something else I'd like to better understand.

3. I'm a little unclear on how to deliver the media in a media server to the various screens throughout the building. I've got cat 6 to all of them, but I suspect i'm still going to need, at the very least, a cheap computer to hook up to it and then display the image to the monitor/TV? This is why I assume I can't just wipe my current mini PC and reuse it as a server, because I still need it to receive the data from the home server (or at least a web browser?). A part of me feels like if I got a powerful enough server it should be able to server the media direction to the screen, but then you'd need some sort of HDMI/DP drops as well from the server to all your screens?...or something?

Sorry for all the rambling but I've got an odd mix of knowledge and ignorance so it's been a little difficult to research when half the video is stuff I already get, and the other half blows past me or just assumes I know about the parts i'm trying desperately to learn about.

The blaze has officially ignited!

The May 2024 Backlog Burner is officially live. Use this topic to post about the games that you play.

Etiquette:

• It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.

• It is also fine to respond to your own posts.

• If you are playing Backlog Bingo, you can share your table either by markdown or through screenshots.

Gameplay guidelines:

• Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.

• You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.

Backlog Bingo: It's back and better than ever!

Backlog Bingo is a completely optional way of participating in the Backlog Burner. You can generate a random bingo card with different gaming categories such as Has a fishing minigame or Your friend loves it. You then play a game that meets a given category and fill in that square.

A conventional bingo win happens when you have filled in a full row, column, or diagonal. If you complete a full bingo with time to spare, you can go for another one on the same card. You can also choose to play with the "blackout" win condition if you're feeling extra adventurous, which means that you need to fill every square on the board to win.

In order to help out with this, our amazing @Wes has singlehandedly made an open-source Backlog Bingo web app from scratch! (and here's the GitHub repo, for those interested).

The site will:

• Generate a random bingo card for you
• Save your bingo card state as you enter games
• Export your bingo card to markdown for easy copy/pasting into the discussion thread

But wait, there's more!

• It has both Standard and Golf rulesets, as well as completely custom rules
• It allows for resizing the bingo card, so you can play a 3x3 or a 7x7 if you want
• You can choose which categories you want to allow on your card
• The categories now have groupings which limit similar ones from appearing on the same cards

Wes could have stopped there, but he didn't:

• The site is private by design; all user data is kept in local storage and does not touch the server
• The site can import custom JSON files so that people can make their own custom categories
• Because of this, people can use the tool for other events: a yearly reading challenge; an anime bingo month, etc.

What's that? You thought Wes was done? Nope. He kept going:

• It supports "dynamic" entries which allow for randomization within specific categories (e.g. "a game you've had for more than RANDOM[2,7] years")
• It has both light and dark modes
• It looks great in screenshots, so if you hate markdown tables you can post pictures of your card instead
• It has some other fun surprises as well

We've also updated the category list for this year to hopefully make it even better than the last. So, try it out! Generate a card and get gaming!

Let's burn through these backlogs!

Backlog Bingo FAQ

Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will irrecoverably delete your card.

Backlog Burner FAQ

Fair warning, I'm a dummy trying to talk about stuff I don't fully understand, but I wanted to see others' thoughts on this.

In the 1960s, America's GDP (per capita) was $3,000.
Also, in 1960, the federal poverty limit was $3,000 for a family of four.

In 2023, the GDP (per capita) was $82,034.
The federal poverty limit for a family of four in 2023 was $30,000.

This can't be good for the American people. Unless I'm drawing comparisons between two completely unrelated things?

People who are barely in poverty today would have to earn ~2.7x the amount they earn to stay consistent with those who were barely in poverty in the 1960s if GDP and FPL were still equal to each other. So what about the families caught in the middle? Too high earnings to get help and too low to thrive? They just suffer, I guess.

Out of curiosity, I calculated what the thresholds would be if the percentages of GDP to FPL were swapped between 2023 and 1960.

1960s numbers adjusted if FPL matched 2023's percentage:
GDP=$3,000
FPL=$1,111

1960s numbers adjusted if GDP matched the percentage comparison of 2023:
GDP=$8,100
FPL=$3,000

Please let me know if it actually matters that the GDP per capita is 2.7x the federal poverty limit for a family of four. Also, let me know your thoughts.