For me, its Arrested Development and South Park. I love AD for its meta-humour and inside jokes. However, I liked only the first three seasons. Here is a great video explaining what makes AD different. South Park for great satire and taking the humourous approach on complex topics. This video explains better than I could.

So, which are your favorite comedy tv shows and why do you recommend them?

I've been using Solus for years now as my main driver, but I think I may be switching to Arch soon. Or at least, start using Arch on my laptop, and keep Solus on my desktop. The main reason I wanna give Arch a try is because of how minimal it can be. I don't need a lot of applications, and I like to have the least amount of software installed on my machine as I can. Plus, distro-hopping is a disease, and it's time I try something new, haha.

So, I was just curious what DE people are using with Arch. Ideally I want something very minimal, but not too ugly. I liked using Budgie with Solus, so I may very well just use Budgie with my Arch install, but I thought I would see if anyone has any recommendations first! Thanks!

From speakers to earphones, how do y’all enjoy your music? I wanna find out what kind of sick rigs that we have on here but also wanna know how many of us aren’t into audio equipment but are super into music.

This occurred to me, for later when things are tagged by different people, will capitalisation matter? I'd suggest better it doesn't, makes it easier to see things that were intended to be tagged the same way.

You could even consider allowing spaces in tags but ignoring them when identifying which tags are equivalent.

So, i just rewatched the prequel trilogy and had soem thoughts, far removed from my first watching, and also after the new films, The Clone Wars, Rebels etc.

It comes down to this. If you don't buy the Anakin arc, it doesn't matter how good or bad the rest is, it all fails. And for many of us, we don't buy it, for several reasons.

• There is really NO foreshadowing in The Phantom Menace (TPM) that Anakin will turn bad. He's the blonde, ever helpful, committed to others all American good kid. Missing out on putting something in here was insane. Also, relying on the acting talents of a kid this young is rarely going to work out. I think the only thing they tried to do was show he had 'attachments' to peopel which was incompatible with Jedi-ism, but this wasn't greatly effective. It always seemed to clash with the emphasis on connections between peopel Obi-wan talks about in ANH.

• I don't find the relationship between Padme and Anakin believable. I mean, I don't think anyone does. Remember this is basically THE lever for his shift to the dark side. An awful script and terrible acting aside, I don't see how it was ever going to be believable. He had a boyish crush, she is interested in youngsters? There is no development fo their relationship to speak of, he's sold from minute 1 and she doesn't seem to have any journey to falling for him. Maybe he radiates a midichlorian pheromone? I don't see what we are supposed to think drove the relationship, even had the script, acting and direction been on point. And there were so many better ways to do it. Make them the same (ish) age when they met? Then you'd have a teenage crush as an ember they both carried that reignites later. There are many other ways, but it almost seems like they didn't try any of them.

• Anakin's dark side is tied to teenage against not to character traits. He's as emo as Kylo Ren would be later. The greatest danger to the galaxy is teenage hormones and the rage that comes from intractable acne. Again its exacerbated by the acting/dialogue/direction but still. His darkness is all driven by protecting people, but very selectively some people over others. And the other part is his entitlement, that he deserves more, which is really not compatible with the character in TPM. Also, he is selective what barriers he maintains. He never goes back for his mum but he is happy to get jiggy with Padme. If protection of those he loves is his main driver, why didn't this happen in any way between TPM and AotC.

• Anakin's seduction by Palpatine is silly. Its related to the point above. I guess if you don't buy the internal driver for his change, the external one makes little sense either. He preys on the weaknesses he exhibits, but the shift to him believing patent untruths is too abrupt. We aren't shown enough for it to be believable. Had we seen Palpatine messing with the minds fo others more directly, that might have helped, but we didn't get that. Again there were so many other ways to do this. If he'd fooled Anakin into inadvertently doing soemthign really bad, he coudl have then revealed himself and basically said that if Anakin fessed up then it would also hurt those he loved. But no its 'i have a vague idea of maybe stopping an unknown future threat to your weirdly inappropriate wife, pls go kill soem kids, m'kay?'. All we get is some iffy bad dreams, but again with no previous intriduction of Anakin as prophetic, thats not very convincing. Had that, say, been established earlier, it might have worked better. .

• Anakin's change to Darth Vader (suit and all) is too quick. I think they wanted to show the entombing of Anakin, and i get that, but they jumped right to the last stage. Had they shown essentially the v0.5 beta of the suit it might have been much better. Think the hilarious home made spiderman costume in the Toby Mcguire versions, ot the MNk1 iron man suit. It would have given us Vader but left for a sense of time between RotS and ANH.

• [ Added, forgot this before] - Anakin seems nothing like OT Darth Vader. The mannerisms, tone, style and feeling fo the two are hugely different. If you watch the end of RotS then the start of ANH, you get this right away. Again had you had the feeling the metamorphosis took longer it might have worked, but with the presto chango Vader makeover, its more jarring

So there are a gazillion other issues with the films. Some narrative, some continuity, many script, some racial, mostly all summed up as 'George Lucas made ANH accidentally, and peaked at that'. I will list a few in a comment below that occurred to me on this rewatch, but the core is this. The Original Trilogy is the Story of Luke. The prequels are the Story of Anakin. Had this worked better, i think we'd have been able to overlook the rest muuuuch more easily. There were missed opportunities all over the place. Maybe when they reboot the prequels :-D soem of this can be fixed up.

I think having the theme settings be universal as long as you are logged into your account would be nice. For example, if I log in on my browser I have Dark Theme set. However, if I log in on my phone it defaults to light theme.

I assume as more settings are added (e.g - turn off custom group stylesheets if those are added) it woud be nice to not have to go reconfigure settings on various devices.

I'm a serial car/bike addict, and have owned close to 50 cars and 10 or so bikes. Usually at least mildly modified for performance/handling/modcons, if not heavily modified. I'm not so much into visuals, as I am into improving cheaper cars so I can get more bang for my buck (I'm not well off).

I've owned everything from 1960s Mercs and Holdens to brand new Subarus and VWs. V-twin sport bikes to show-level streetfighters. I just like weird/unique vehicles, and tinkering with them.

Currently got a '97 Nissan Stagea RSFour imported from Japan. RB25DET with a few mods. FMIC, turbo back exhaust, intake, boost controller, turbo timer, TE37 reps, BC coilovers, and currently converting the centre console to a 7" RPi-driven touch screen with CONSULT integration to the ECU for sensor readouts, and setting it up for track days (half cage, etc). Pic.

Also about to take on a late 80s JDM Honda Goldwing which I want to fully restore to meticulous detail, for no other reason than I think they look retro-cool and are massively underrated for cruising. I plan on doing a small turbo conversion, and upgrading the brakes and suspension, but keeping it looking 100% stock and perfect down to every last bolt.

                                                              Book Plot: Spoilers

The book opens by introducing the gunslinger, Roland Deschain, who is on a journey to find the Man in Black. As he ventures across the desert with his mule, he meets a farmer who goes by the name of Brown with his crow, Zoltan. The gunslinger begins to tell of the time he spent in the town of Tull. When Roland first comes to Tull, he missed the Man in Black possibly by a week. It is later revealed to Roland by the barmaid, Alice, that during his stay the Man in Black brought a dead weed eater by the name of Nort back to life. Roland makes Sylvia reveal to him that she is pregnant with the Man in Black's child (more importantly the child of the Crimson King). Roland uses his gun and rips the unborn monstrosity out of Sylvia. Outraged, Sylvia convinces the entire town of Tull that Roland is the spawn of the devil. Roland guns down the entire town of Tull: men, women, children, and even his lover, Alice. The story refocuses on Roland at the dwelling of Brown. Roland goes to sleep and wakes up to Brown telling him that his mule died of heat exhaustion and wonders if he can eat it. Roland leaves on foot to continue his pursuit of the Man in Black.

As his journey continues, Roland happens upon a way station and sees someone there in the distance. Roland believes this to be the Man in Black, but finds out it is a young boy by the name of Jake Chambers. Roland is near death when he arrives at the way station and Jake brings him jerky and water from an atomic slug water pump. Jake tells Roland that the Man in Black passed by a few days before. The way Jake talks reveals that he is not from Roland's world. Roland asks Jake about where he came from, but Jake cannot remember anything. Roland proceeds to hypnotize Jake and learn about where he came from.

Jake reveals to Roland that he is from New York and was on his way to school when a man dressed like a priest snuck up on him and pushed him into the street. Roland believes this man to be the Man in Black. Jake is then hit by a car and dies, but not before the priest approaches him and blesses him.

As they prepare to leave, Roland goes down to the cellar and encounters a demon speaking to him from a hole in the wall. After their palaver, Roland reaches into the hole and pulls out a jawbone. They then depart from the way station, and eventually make their way out of the desert into somewhat more welcoming lands. Roland awakes in the middle of the night to find Jake gone. Roland tracks down Jake and finds him about to be taken by the Oracle of the mountains. Roland uses the jawbone to lure the Oracle away from Jake. He then gives Jake the jawbone to concentrate on while he is gone and couples with the oracle himself in order to learn of his fate and path to the Dark Tower. Once Roland returns, Jake discards the jawbone. Come morning, they continue their trek to the mountains.

Along the trek Roland tells Jake a bit about his past. He tells of Hax, the cook, who was hanged for being an aid to the enemy. Hax was to poison the town of Farson/Taunton. Roland and his friend Cuthbert overhear the plot and alert their fathers of the traitor. Hax is hanged and the boys are allowed to watch with permission from their fathers.

Roland also reveals how he became a gunslinger at the age of 14. As he is walking home, his father's advisor Marten Broadcloak calls Roland to see his mother, Gabrielle, in Marten's bed covering her shame. Angry, Roland charges off to challenge Cort so he may receive his guns. He defeats Cort with the use of his hawk, David.

Roland and Jake soon come to the mountains and enter a series of tunnels under the mountains riding on a mine cart. On their journey, they are attacked by a group of Slow Mutants. Roland battles the Slow Mutants and they move along without the mine cart. They eventually come upon the exit from the tunnels. Jake trips and is left dangling from the tracks. As Roland tries to help him, the Man in Black appears and tells Roland that if he saves the boy then he will never catch him. Roland decides to let Jake fall; Jake knows this and spouts, "Go then. There are other worlds than these." Jake then falls to his death as Roland goes to talk with the Man in Black.

They meet in a golgotha and palaver. The Man in Black reads Roland's fate from Tarot cards. Roland's fate includes The Sailor, The Prisoner, The Lady of Shadows, death, life (which the Man in Black burns), and the Tower at the center of everything. The Man in Black tells Roland he is only a pawn for Roland's true enemy who now controls the Tower itself. The Man in Black tries to convince Roland to give up on his quest by creating a representation of the universe and showing him how insignificant he is. Roland refuses and is forced into sleep. When he awakens, ten years have passed and there is a skeleton next to him, which he believes to be the Man in Black. Roland departs from the Golgotha and sits at the edge of the Western Sea contemplating the next step in his quest for the Dark Tower.

And holy crap this is well made. I hear it gets better in the later seasons, too! It makes me upset that we don't have more science fiction television of this quality, but also glad that I finally found this show. Hopefully I can get caught up quickly and join in with the rest of the world for the season finale. How do you all feel about The Expanse and other contemporary science fiction television?

Oddly all off a sudden, while I was watching a video, my phone started to play the same sound as my PC speakers. It was kinda of cool, like my phone was a second speaker. But it did it automatically. Anyone else see this? I have access to YouTube music now so maybe that's a new feature or something?

edit: My device is Windows 10 PC using regular Chrome and Google Pixel XL (Android P)

Openly published research makes science advance at a wonderful rate. In my experience scientists and researchers support open research in a nearly dogmatic fashion. Personally I am generally for it. However here is my concern.

I believe that humanity is in a terrible race. One of the competitors is the advancement of science, which of course can sometimes be used in a dangerous ways. The other competitor is our society moving towards murder and war becoming obsolete. The science is obvious and needs no examples. Societies move towards the sanctity of life is shown here.

"Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time", says Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."

Now to get to my point. In the past scientific advancement has created some really scary things. Atomic weapons, bio and chemical warefare, etc. However, those weapons took a lot of people and capital to produce, and had relatively un-scalable effects. Now with open research on advancements like CRISPR, we are nearing a time where in the near future a smart high school biology student with a few thousand dollars and an internet connection will be able to create self-replicating custom viruses that could kill millions. The asymmetric threat has never been greater.

Do you agree with my assessment and concerns?

If so, do you believe that there should be limits on publication of research in certain areas?

Edit: I should have said CRISPR and gene drives. Here is a TED talk on how gene drives can change and entire species, forever.

New devices, new apps, new websites, new tech, all these things get me irrationally excited. Almost like getting a package in the mail...

I’ve read it all my life. Learned to read on it actually and I’ve collected it too. Probably have one of the bigger collections for an average joe. Apparently it’s been rebooted or something. It’s pretty political, like it’s always been, but I hope it doesn’t go under.

So I tried to install sway on my desktop today. This required a lot of fiddling, as I had to pull in bleeding-edge dependencies for the Wayland libraries, and had to build the compositor framework wlroots. Finally however, I had everything compiled and ready to go and....

Proprietary Nvidia drivers are not supported. Use Nouveau.

I had completely forgotten that sway requires open-source Nvidia drivers. So - has anyone had experience using Nouveau? How usable is it from day-to-day? How noticeable is the performance hit when switching from proprietary drivers?

I personally have been getting really into anime the last two years and Akira is by far one of the greatest movies I've seen!
Edit: Thanks for sharing all these great films! I've got a lot of good movies I gotta look into now :)

I love the gameplay and overall feel of the game but the online lag is unbearable at times and the lack of local 2P play doesn't help in that regard.

Still, as long as the final game has more stages and some more characters (where is Luigi?) I'll probably buy it to play with the gf.

What did you think of the game?