We're excited to be closing on our first house in several week! It's a newer build but doesn't have ethernet run so in the nearish term future I'd like to run cat5 cat6 to some key locations:

• main level for TV and a mesh wifi node
• second floor offices (PCs) and entertainment area for consoles/second TV

Any really good guides that others have followed? So far the guides I've found focus on switches and crimping cables rather than how to get a cable from Point A to Point B effectively without knocking more hole that necessary in the wall.

Edit: meant cat6, thanks for the note.

I come in search for somebody who knows a thing or two about VLANs or, if possible, had set it up for themselves at home (or work).

I have Mikrotik router and Ubiquiti Unifi APs. My goal is to have three separate SSIDs on my APs to differentiate clients. One group would be closest family (group 1), another friends (2) and the last one would be QR-setup guest wifi (3).

The reason is security. I run 24/7 server at home with many services that I don't want other people than #1 to see. But I also run ie. DNS there that I would like all to see (all three groups; or make them use other DNS via DHCP-set-DNS, ie. 1.1.1.1).

So far I believe everything from that list is doable with the right knowledge (that I have yet to achieve). But I would also like some other things and that's part of why I'm asking here.

• Is it possible to initiate connection from #1 to device in #2? Ie. from server to Raspberry that serves as temperature sensor for Home Assistant? Is it some built-in functionality like "higher number VLAN can access all lower numbers" or do I have to setup some exception on my router for speciric IP and port? Or specific LAN port (I have 24 port router, yet not everything is connected via ethernet)
• Do I have to set it all up in specific order? I have read that I can cut myself off from accessing my router if I setup VLAN incorrectly and that's what I don't want to do :-)

If you know how to setup VLAN and could provide some points to kinda carve the path I could stick to, I would be really grateful! I do not want manual of step-by-step instructions, rather some points to follow so I don't fall for something important I missed.

I will of course read up on it myself and will experiment a bit (I have old RB133 or maybe even RB433 around that I can use for learning), but it would be great to have some pointers.

Thanks in advance for any advices or recommendations.

Hello fellow Tilderinos. My 9 year old will likely have to use crutches for a few weeks and I'm looking for some tips on how to make her life less miserable.

Unfortunately this happened not only right before we're set to fly on holiday this Friday (and we may have to cancel), but in early March she was meant to go on a week long school field trip where they were going to go horse riding and do circus classes. She's understandably upset she's going to miss out. Even if we're still able to fly on holiday next week, she won't be able to participate in the vast majority of activities she usually enjoys.

As a very physically active and social child, I know this is going to be really hard on her. I'd love some tips on how to keep her spirits up and make it possible for her to participate in fun activities (also possibly limit screen time as well). Would welcome any tips you may have to make it a less miserable time for her!

I joined MetaFilter in 2016, but I've only ever posted a handful of things there and I've browsed the site very little. I always thought it was a fantastic idea to charge $5 to join. It seems like a great way to counteract ban evasion and prevent people from trolling or behaving badly.

Does this idea that sounds great to me in theory work in practice? MetaFilter seems cool, but my experience with the site is shallow. So, I don't really know.

I'm also curious about people's thoughts and experiences with MetaFilter, perceived differences and similarities with Tildes, and theories about what makes social media and forums and online communities good or bad in general.

Also: wow, while I was writing this, I looked up how big MetaFilter is and it's tiny! This site compiles statistics. Note this important definition:

Active users means users who made at least one comment or post on the selected site in the given month.

There have only been around 2,800 to 2,900 monthly active users for the past year. It's been about 3,000 to 4,000 for the past 5 years. And the absolute peak was January 2011 with 8,100 active users.

The number of users who have ever posted anything to the site is a little less than 48,000.

A stats page from 2013 has more info:

• about 62,500 accounts existed at that time (this means at least 14,500 people have paid $5 for an account and have never posted anything)
• about 39,400 people visited the site while logged into their account that year
• there were 81.7 million unique visitors to the site that year
• the site got 231.4 million pageviews that year

That is wild. I had no idea the number of readers was so much astronomically larger than the number of writers. 39,400 writers (tops!) to 81.7 million readers is crazy.

I'm sad that MetaFilter is so small, has always been small, and seems to be dwindling over the last 12 years. I would have guessed that it had 100,000 monthly active users or 1 million, not 2,900.

It looks like we're getting some new sign-ups! Welcome to Tildes!

This thread is for you to ask any question you have about the site, from “what is the moderation philosophy?”to “what does that blue line next to some comments mean?” to “what is the general vibe like here?” Tildes has a lot of documentation, history, and embedded social norms that can be daunting or opaque at first glance, so here’s your opportunity to get help with anything you need.

Questions about anything and everything are fair game. Follow-up questions are encouraged! No question is too simple.

Also, a quick note: the only person who can speak in any official capacity on Tildes is our admin @Deimos. Everyone answering who is NOT him is just a helpful community member!

It is perfectly okay to ask any question — even if you think it’s been asked before, or even if you didn’t search for an answer beforehand. Just ask away, and someone will answer 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.

I'm using Bearblog right now and I love it but since I love tinkering a lot, I'm looking for a static site generator so that I can build mine by myself and take full control over my blog. Unfortunately my tech knowledge is not enough to build my own static site generator at the moment but I'm trying to get into that as well.

I know Hugo, Astro, 11ty etc. I'm looking for a much simpler tool.

I recently had an unpleasant experience. Something I wrote fully and without AI generation of any kind was perceived, and accused of, having been produced by AI. Because I wanted to get everything right, in that circumstance, I wrote in my "cold and precise" mode, which admittedly can sound robotic. However, my writing was pointed, perhaps even a little hostile, with a clear point of view. Not the kind of text AI generally produces. After the experience, I started to think of ways to write less like an AI -- which, paradoxically, means forcing my very organic self into adopting "human-like" language I don't necessarily care for. That made me think that AI is probably changing the way a lot of people write, perhaps in subtle ways. Have you noticed this happening with you or those around you?

This subject is a dead horse on most social media platforms (I'm sure there are dozens if not hundreds of similar threads on /r/askreddit alone, for one), but I didn't find a thread about it specifically on Tildes from a cursory search (though I did find more specific threads about some aspects of it like this one as well as the broader prescriptivism vs descriptivism subject here and even the mirror opposite of what this thread is about, that is deliberately using non-standard language in a constructive manner) and I think that it might spark worthwhile discussion.

By and large, I agree that language should be seen from a descriptive point of view, meaning a language's rules are defined by how people speak it, not the other way around. As the need to communicate evolves, so does any given living language and a rigidly enforced ruleset would get in the way of this process. By opposition, the prescriptive approach views a language's rules as defining a "correct" way (making any other way incorrect) of speaking the language to be enforced accordingly. Following either approach to its respective logical extreme would be a dead-end but I do think the most reasonably balanced way to approach this tends a lot more toward descriptivism than prescriptivism.

While agreed-upon rules are still definitely useful to establish a language's identity and defining a standard helps both with learning the language and structuring how the language should evolve (and when learning it's probably best to operate by the book at first, literally or otherwise, until you're familiar with the language enough to reliably tell when bending the rules is advantageous), getting yourself understood is much more important than strictly "following the rules", and that's before considering the cases where the rules themselves are ambiguous, or their validity is a matter of debate, which itself brings up the much more controversial issue of what constitutes an authoritative source for a language's grammar in the first place. In practice, even if there is a consensus on something being a grammar error, most are benign enough to not risk the meaning of the sentence being misinterpreted anyway. And of course, there's the issue of people ostensibly wanting to be helpful using "correcting someone's grammar" as an excuse for gatekeeping, toxic behavior or derailing conversations into a pointless grammar debate.

For example, while my latent pedantry constantly incites nitpicking on those smaller mistakes, it's obvious that someone using "Your welcome" instead of you're is acknowledging gratitude and no one would argue in good faith that this could be misinterpreted as referring to an abstract hospitality belonging to the person they're addressing. Similarly, using "irregardless" (which presumably arose as a contraction of irrespective and regardless) might be argued as meaning the opposite of "regardless" since ir- is a negation prefix, making using that word a mistake due to the ambiguity. In practice, interpreting it that way in any sentence where the word actually appears would be very unintuitive so the ambiguity doesn't actually manifest... Though the argument I see much more often against its use is that irregardless is "a made-up word" and therefore incorrect (as opposed to all the real words which are, what, woven into the very fabric of the universe?), which is silly. I personally don't use this word, but I wouldn't bat an eye if I saw it becoming normalized either.

That being said, I believe there is such a thing as incorrect use of language that actually hampers communication and therefore should be discouraged, some of which I'll give examples below. I... got wildly carried away while writing it so I made it an optional collapsible box.

Which turns of phrase would you consider to be categorically incorrect? Did I commit one in this very post? If you chose to read through the content of the collapsible box above, do you disagree with some of my examples (or the entire premise of the question in the first place)? While I'm assuming English as the default for my own answer, feel free to talk about any other language you might know (ideally with context for non-speakers of the language).

Also, since I mentioned it in the post, another optional subject: which mistakes that people seem to care a lot about (and sometimes not even mistakes, given that the same treatment is occasionally given to perfectly correct turns of phrase due to misconceptions about grammar rules) do you think aren't actually important at all?

I recently visited the fire department museum in Marietta, GA (outside ATL). There were very many interesting things to look at, but one of the things that caught my eye were the gauges on the 19th century fire engine. I experienced them on an emotional level as works of art. The faces and the hands were exquisite, and were no doubt created by hand, by someone dedicated to doing their very best job.

I couldn’t see it with old eyes, but I bet an optics assisted examination would reveal that a similar analogue gaguges on the 80’s style fire engines had a much higher degree of precision, smoother lines, more accuracy and consistency in measurement. But there was something ineffable about the dial, profound and unmistakable. The old timey dial adds to life, the mass produced dial, no matter how well produced, perform a function but otherwise just take up space.

One interesting thing about this quality, which I’ve called Wu after Dick’s book, is how immeasurable and subjective it is. Does that make it less real? I can’t even really define the quality, all I can do is acknowledge my experience of it. Another interesting quality is that it is only available to me in human creations. I don’t experience anywhere in nature, as much as I cherish wilderness.

Dick’s examination is often delivered in the context of distinguishing between original and counterfeit jewelry, which is apt. Another place I experience it is in audio equipment. Even modern ultra high fidelity equipment lacks wu for me, largely because so much of it is produced by machines. There’s a reason musicians who can afford any equipment often opt for old gear.

I wonder if a deliberate effort to restore wu, especially to everyday items, could benefit society at a fundamental level. Craft markets have hardly gone away, and we see a great many side hustle type products in sectors like soap and baby onesies and other home goods and fashion. But wouldn’t it be cool if your stove had wu? Your car? Your mobile?

No idea how we could decide to do that as a global population, let alone implement it. Perhaps it will be a side benefit of the apocalypse.