Alright, time to ask for help. I designed a website for my cousin using Wordpress, hosted via BlueHost. It's 99% done.

The problem: she'd originally registered her domain through wordpress.com. She also has an email through that, which she accesses via Google Workplace. We've transferred the domain, but the nameservers are still registered to wordpress.com. I've found the guides for transferring nameservers on BlueHost and wordpress.com, but this is a step above what I've dealt with in the past.

My main concern and frustration are the email. She's already using it for work, and I want to make sure there's no downtime, but I... honestly have no idea how it's even set up, right now. Or how this would work when transferring hosts entirely. Attempts to search it haven't been too helpful for me.

So my questions: How will changing nameservers impact the email? Would updating them potentially just... break her email entirely? Need her to set up the email separately? And if she does, can it be kept through Google Workplace/Gmail since that's what she's already using? Is it fine to leave it as-is? I assume not but her wordpress.com account shows that it expires in 2027, so...?

Just, please help.

So perhaps I should have done more research , should have known, etc. But their recent news post took me by surprise:

Your subscription money at work:

Image search enhanced with Yandex

They're just out there bragging about giving money to Yandex. This bothers me.

As I said above, I should perhaps done more to research this before subbing, but that news post.

Shame, as I quite liked the search, but it's back to DDG I guess.

Am I over reacting here? What do others think?

Every time I find myself in an ADHD related thread on the internets, I feel like I'm seeing my personal struggles being described by others (Anxiety, Depression, executive function issues... the list goes on).

My intermittent attempts to seek out a diagnosis (or rule it out) end quickly with all the utter shite noise in the search results (literally everyone is selling something).

I'm hoping some of you who've been down this road can shed some light. Should I just schedule and appointment with my GP and start a conversation or???

Thanks (hope I got this in the right sub-tilde)

UPDATE: Thank you all so much! I ended up setting an appointment with a nearby adhd clinic that does 2 brain scans, a bunch of bloodwork, several questionnaires, and a couple meetings with a psychiatrist/psychologist (can never remember which is which). 1st scan is on Monday morning, 1st meeting with psych* is in early December. Feeling optimistic.

Reading through all your comments, I feel connected and optimistic in a way I've never felt before when pondering what I can see to be atypical behavior/emotions/response to stimuli but felt powerless to address.

Thanks so much for helping a stranger on the internet, hoping to pay it forward someday.

hi tildes,

i’m an audio/video editor and want to work with youtubers (for free, probably). does anyone have any suggestions on where i can find people who either already have a channel and need help or folks who want to start a channel?

i found a subreddit for new youtubers (and their discord server) but it seems to be largely populated with folks who just want to do gaming-related things. to be clear, i’m not 100% against that or anything — i’ve watched some fun gaming stuff before — but i’m more interested in long-form content or even experimental/arthouse stuff.

one suggestion i’ve read was to search youtube itself for this but i struggled finding anything recent and in the realm of things i would be interested in doing.

has anyone noticed anywhere around the web people asking for editors/collaborators for non-gaming content? or does anyone here want help? i think i recall at least one tildes user posting one of their long-form history-related videos.

This will include a shameless plug as I need someone to help analyse what I can do to improve it, pretty please. I am out of ideas.

So, Https://thunderlizard.co.uk is my wife's website. It is a personalised clothing and gifts store based in the UK. It's hosted on 20i, and uses their CDN and caching, which isn't that great but it works okay.

It's Wordpress and Woocommerce and is store only, no blog at this time. Even with Rankmath installed, using SEO heavy product descriptions (and short descriptions), tags, categories, etc, and using both Index Now and Google Products plugin, it's not scoring well or showing up much in product or general searches.

I've read plenty of guides and put into practice as much as I can. The next thing to try is backlinks from quality sources, which Google are supposed to be phasing out. The issue is, what am I backlinking to if it's not simply the products? Can anyone advise me on what I can do to help?

A lot of her sales come via her Etsy store, but they absolutely destroy your profit margin with taxes and service costs. When she's making only a couple of quid here and there, profit margins matter. We're trying hard to push people towards the website, hence needing advice to allow people to find it. Is it simply that it's a hugely flooded market and it's like swimming in the Pacific and trying to stand out?

Rebuilt - please review - 2024/11/14

I watched the video "Dirt-Cheap Solar Generator Setup - What Can It Power?" by Alex Beale yesterday. In the video, the presenter purchases a cheap solar panel and power bank for a total of $250 and tests household devices to see what kind of wattage it can take.

Turns out the cheap device can power most household objects. I'm curious if it's possible to try a similar setup to meaningfully cover my electricity usage on a day-to-day basis. Unlike the creator of this video, I don't have a yard. I'm exploring whether a solar solution could work with my constraints.

I wanted to share this idea with Tildes and hear any ideas/feedback/experiences from people who have tried something similar.

My goal

• Investigate whether it's feasible to save money with this setup
• If so, find a setup that I can use to power some or all of my household devices off-grid
• Pay less in electricity costs
• Be able to rely on my power bank when the building's power goes out

My current situation

• I live in an apartment in an urban area in the US northeast (southeastern Pennsylvania).
• I do NOT have a balcony (sadly).
• I have two south-facing windows and four west-facing windows (two of which get a LOT of light, two of which get a decent amount but not as much). However, my south-facing windows don't get direct sunlight most of the day since there is a building in the way (just a bit in the late afternoon).
• The dimensions of the windowsills are about 16 inches in depth and about 55 inches in width. That's enough for a small or medium-sized solar panel, but not most panels designed for outdoor use.
• I can open the windows all the way and it would be physically possible, in theory, to hang something outside rather than keeping it on the windowsill (we'll get into this...)
• I pay for all my electricity. The heat/air is central and inaccessible, as are a couple of the overhead lights (there are only a couple), but everything else could theoretically be replaced with energy from a power bank, I think.
• I already have a power purchase agreement with a renewable energy supplier. All my energy is "green" in the sense that I'm making it slightly more economically feasible to produce green energy.
• In a less expensive month, the bill might come to around $75. In an expensive month, it might come to around $350. If I heated the unit as much as I would like, it would be higher.
  • I'm pretty sure most of my electricity use is the heat/AC.
  • I'm pretty sure most of the remainder is the washer and dryer dishwasher, followed by the washer and dryer.
  • I spend some amount heating my water otherwise (shower, sinks), but I can't address that with a solar panel.
  • I wouldn't mind saving money on the rest if that's all that's feasible.

My power needs (I think)

• I don't know much power my oven uses. It's electric, which the internet says averages around 2500 W.
• My dishwasher runs at 120 V and 18.7 A. That is... uh... 2244 W. Also a lot.
• My dryer says 120 V on the machine, and if I look up the model number, it seems to be at 15 amps. So that's 1800 watts.
• My washing machine, uses....... IDK how many watts. No information on this thing exists. But it uses a 120 V outlet. The internet says an average washing machine could use up to 1400 W (sounds high, but okay).
• My computer has a 520 W power supply, but I doubt it ever uses that much. It's old and mostly runs Solitaire. Maybe one day I will get a fancy new machine that does like 1000 W.
• My fridge uses 115 V at 4.5 A. Let's pretend that's 120 V and say 540 W.
• I can't tell how many watts my TV uses, but the internet says it could be up to 200 W.

I would want a bit of breathing room with the rated wattage so that the power bank doesn't explode.

No way I can run all these devices simultaneously off the power bank, but perhaps I could time them. Even partial coverage could be adequate if it makes financial sense.

Possible spatial configurations

I see a few possibilities here:

1. Stick a bunch of solar panels in the windowsills, propped up at a suitable angle.
2. Stick the panel directly in the window like an air conditioner. In this case I would want to use a two-sided panel, since there would be some ambient light coming from the inside. This would inevitably reduce my home's energy efficiency, which I would have to account for.
3. Weld some sort of counterweight to a mounting system that I can use outside the window to perch the panel at an ideal angle. This would also reduce my home's energy efficiency, but maybe by less since the gap could be minimized. It is also probably illegal. And dangerous.
4. Just fill my living room with solar panels. I will need to have a conversation about that. But it could be done.

I think #1 is the only one that is actually reasonable. #2 would cost me too much in heating bills to make any sense. I think #3 would get me evicted or sued by the city. And #4 is unreasonable considering that I like to use my house to live in.

My budget

I would maybe spend $500-1000 on this if the payback period was a few years. Not more than 5 because panels by then will be a lot more efficient.

I guess I could spend more than that if it makes sense. I have good credit and a high credit limit. I don't make that much money but I could save for a bit or carry a balance for a bit. I think I would draw a hard line around $3000.

The power doesn't go out here too often, so that isn't the main selling point, more of a nice-to-have.

My research

I'm just looking on Amazon. I know I could maybe get something a little cheaper elsewhere. I'm searching for "power bank with solar panel".

• 4000+ W range: OUPES Mega 5 for $3300+ with panels (I think?). That's a lot of money for something that might not even work. And I don't believe it would be $3300, most other models I'm seeing are closer to $5000.
• 2200 W range: Jackery Explorer 2000 for $2500 with the 2 panels. Maybe this could cover my energy-intensive appliances, one at a time. Still expensive. The solar panels will... maybe fit in the window with about 1/2 inch to spare? I could angle them slightly if needed?
• 1800 W range: (maybe) Anker SOLIX C1000 for $800 with 1 panel. It also says 2400 W so idk what it is really. Can't determine the width of the solar panel.
• 1000 W range: EF ECOFlow River 2 for $700 with 1 panel. I am also not sure how big the panel is.
• 600 W range: SinKeu Portable Power Station for $230 with 1 panel.
• 300 W range: Marbero Solar Generator for $230 with 1 panel.

I'm discovering that these companies never specify the dimensions of the solar panels because they assume no one would ever use them indoors. Probably for good reason. If they don't fit horizontally, I guess I could stand them up lengthwise.

I'm sure it would be possible to find a cheaper solar panel separate from the power bank. But as a ballpark, those are my initial numbers.

Math

Imagine I spend $2500 on the 2200 W Jackery model, with 2 panels. I could put them in the two bright west-facing windows. Let's just pretend they can get their maximum output and that charging time isn't an issue.

Let's say I use this every time I run my oven, dryer, washer, or dishwasher (not at the same time), and otherwise I connect it to my fridge and most other electronics. (I know I said my oven could be 2500 W, but I usually just use one burner, and I bet that's more like 1500 W.) Let's pretend the hassle of running all those cables has been solved somehow.

I really don't know exactly what my electricity breakdown is. If I have the heat/AC mostly off and am not in the unit a whole lot (e.g. traveling for some of the month), that's when I end up with a $75/mo bill. But if I'm out of the unit, that means I'm also not using my dryer/washer and other devices as much. I guess the fridge was still on. The $350 side of things is because it's hot and I'm running the AC more, and maybe slightly higher dryer usage for some laundry-related reason. So maybe I'll say the minimum I'm spending on non-heat/AC electricity per month is $50-100, and at most maybe something like $150.

So in this super optimistic scenario, the portion of my monthly electricity bill I suspect I'd be able to theoretically save would be $50-150. Let's just say $100. That means it would take 25 months to pay back if all goes well. Honestly that's not so bad.

If I instead bought the 1000 W ECOFlow setup for $700, I could cover all my non-intensive electrical uses. The main beneficiary would be the refrigerator, the computer, and maybe the television. I think the savings there would be like $25-50/mo at most, being pretty generous. If I say $35, that would be about a 20-month payoff. That's also pretty good, but if it'll take about the same amount of time to pay for itself, I'd rather get the higher-wattage one.

Numerous caveats:

• It's not always sunny in Philadelphia.
• The panels will not be at 100% efficiency because the window is cloaked in shadow half the day, and there is no way I get the angle perfect, and maybe the glass affects how much energy they can absorb or something (would it help? hurt?). This isn't inherently an issue, except...
• ...that the charging time for the power station might be long. Some of the reviews say 6 hours in maximum sunlight, so for my use-case there's no way it would be faster than 12 hours for a full charge, and probably more. I use my appliances kind of a lot. The fridge is always running, and either the washer, dryer, oven, or dishwasher are running a pretty good chunk of the time. I think that I could get by with this... but I probably wouldn't be able to use it as much as I'd like (there are often moments where more than one is running simultaneously), so...
• ...the payoff time wouldn't actually be 25 months. I suspect there are some factors I'm not thinking about that would reduce the realistic amount of energy I'd save here. Let's say it is half as effective in my setup as a normal person's, because the sun is half as visible or something, and the charging time is too slow to use often, or whatever. At a 50-month payoff (4 years), I would start to get skeptical. But not inherently opposed.
• I use my windowsill for other things that like sunlight, like plants. I would have to move the plants that really love the sun somewhere slightly dimmer. Is it worth it???????
• I also like to look out my window, and if I had a huge solar panel there (especially if I had to stand it up vertically for space reasons), that would be a bummer perhaps.
• Constantly charging and discharging this thing probably reduces its effective wattage output fast. I.D.K. by how much. But there might be a point where I can't use it for my high-wattage devices, which would largely defeat the purpose of buying an expensive model. Not clear to me what the timeline for that would be.
• I still can't figure out if the panels would actually fit in my windowsill.
• Since it wouldn't be able to run more than one energy-intensive device simultaneously, I'd have to be careful not to keep it plugged in to too much stuff at once. It would overall be a bit of a hassle to plug in the panels and the charger and everything. Maybe the panels could stay plugged in, but even so.
• Running extension cords all over the house and putting a giant solar panel in even just one or two of the windows would result in a catastrophic domestic state of affairs. I can just imagine the eye-popping that would happen if I set that up unilaterally.

Takeaway

There is almost definitely something I am not considering. My math is so napkin-based, so imaginary and so optimistic.

But even if the practical efficiency isn't great, I feel like this could maybe possibly actually work, and could save me a bit of money. I would just have to spend it all up front. I mean I don't have $2500 on hand. But I could scrounge up part of it and put the rest on credit. And it would make for living room conversation with guests?

Realistically this seems like an amusing but too-annoying to actually do sort of project. If you know anyone who's done something silly like this and had it work, let me know! I'd be curious what their experience was.

There are currently four computers in my household: a Windows 10 desktop, a Windows 11 laptop, and two additional Linux laptops (those are "mine"). One is a very weak but new machine, basically the cheapest laptop I could buy that was neither Android nor literally a toy. It is running Lubuntu 24.04, and is used largely for writing and light browsing. The other is an older machine running MX Linux. Right now it's single purpose is running my Plex server. Given that setup, transferring files between machines is often a necessity.

Both my desktop computer and my Plex server are connected via Ethernet directly to the router. The other two laptops are connected largely via WIFI, although I do connect my writing laptop via an USB/Ethernet adapter for updates/upgrades and larger downloads when necessary.

Among other things, I often download movies on my Windows 10 desktop computer and then manually transfer them in batches to my Plex external hard-drive, and then to my Plex laptop (when it has enough space, otherwise I just keep the movies on the hard-drive). That is because it is way more convenient for me to (re)search what I wish to wwatch, find and download it to my desktop than it would be the case for my Plex laptop. The laptop is not only in a position that makes it uncomfortable to use but is also very slow even for basic things such as firing up Firefox. I also prefer to do the scraping using MediaElch and while it is a fairly heavy (probably Electron) application, my desktop is powerful enought that it doesn't make any diference. I also use Subsync sometimes, which is, as far a I know, only available as a GUI application on Windows.

Most content I find online is very practical, teaching me how to follow concrete steps to make things work, but I haven't found much advice on which programs or tech "stack" would be adequate for a specific situation such as my own. I just want a robust way to seamlessly transfer file between all the machines on my home without having to plug and unplug hard-disks and flash drives.

Any suggestion? Thanks!

Solved

I was idiotically installing a legacy driver instead of the current driver. I installed the current one and it is now working.

Background on Tildes

For background I posted about distro recommendations a few weeks ago: https://tildes.net/~tech/1ji6/switching_to_linux_looking_for_distro_recommendations. I settled on Fedora KDE Plasma.

Steps taken before the problem

I installed Fedora onto an unallocated space on my SSD, alongside Windows 10. I have tested that Windows 10 is currently working, and that Fedora starts normally. I have also used the boot media to install onto my laptop with no issues. However, on my desktop before installing GPU drivers for my GTX 970, I found Fedora to be quite buggy. This would include the session freezing and needing to be restarted , or my screen would go black with text saying something along the lines "desktop session cannot be unlocked, press ctrl + alt + f3 and login and run a command (I cannot remember the command)" and then I could switch back to my previous session. Overall, it was a buggy mess. My thought process was that it may be a GPU driver issue, and so I started the process of installing RPM fusion and installing the driver from there. I have a GTX 970, so I followed the section titled "Legacy GeForce 8/9/200/300" on this page: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryHowto%5Cb%29. The commands I ran after installing RPM were: sudo dnf update -y and sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-340xx akmod-nvidia-340xx and followed all the prompts provided as necessary. I would then leave my computer for about 30min, before returning and restarting (thinking that a restart may be necessary to be fully using the drivers).

Current Situation

After going through the process listed above, I turned my computer on and booted into Fedora. My screen would hang on a black screen with a flashing white underscore at the top left corner. The computer would not get past this point, no matter how long it was left. Hitting "ctrl + alt + f2" would give me a working terminal that I could interact with, showing the basic CLI of Linux working. I did not play around much with the commands, but I do know the basic shutdown now command was working.

Troubleshooting Steps Tried

I was thinking that it may be due to the driver being X11 and I am running Wayland. I searched online and results seemed to indicate that this would not cause an issue
(I will add more steps here when people recommend them)

The other thread about potential spam on the site got me thinking, can/should Tildes hide itself from Google and other search engines (aside from just the main page) to avoid the tentacles of SEO from infiltrating the site? I'm not sure how feasible that is, but I know reddit has the option to prevent your profile from getting indexed by search engines so perhaps that could be applied to the site as a whole.

hello tildes,

i am searching for a bare-bones forum/message board. i'll describe what i need and perhaps someone can point me in the right direction:

must have the ability to

• create an account
• create topics with the ability to reply
• fully customizable front-end (html/css) so i can make it match my website
• either self-host or use a custom domain on ext hosting

unimportant but nice to have

• display images in posts via external urls
• different boards (categories?) to post into (would be nice but not vital)
• nested replies (or some visual way to see what you're replying to)

free would be ideal (dreams are nice) but probably wouldn't want to spend more than $5/month as this is a supplement to a website where i don't expect much traffic at all due to the nature of the project. no images/video/audio will be hosted ideally.

i'm ok with "hacker news" or "reddit-like" software but my backend knowledge if very limited. for instance, i looked into self-hosting lemmy but i don't understand how to setup docker. options like phpbb would be fine if i could strip away everything aside from the above-mentioned features.

i want it to be extremely simplistic in appearance and for the end-user (tildes is a great example of the simplistic end-user experience). tildes could be a cool option but i think getting it setup is a bit out of my skill-range.

can anyone offer any suggestions/guidence?

edited to emphasize important aspects and clarify things that are not vital but would be nice to have.

Solution

I added 20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com to my hosts file and everything is working fine now.
I also changed DNS servers away from my ISPs, thanks to all the recommendations in this thread.

cat /etc/resolve.conf
nameserver 1.1.1.1
nameserver 1.0.0.1

That seems to be working

> nslookup duckduckgo.com
Server:		1.1.1.1
Address:	1.1.1.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	duckduckgo.com
Address: 202.39.62.156
Name:	duckduckgo.com
Address: 2001:b000:1a0:3505:202:39:62:15d

except (note that non-autoratative IP address which belongs to my ISP) ...

> ping -4 duckduckgo.com 
PING duckduckgo.com (202.39.62.156) 56(84) bytes of data.

My ISPs address again. More...

traceroute to duckduckgo.com (202.39.62.156), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  * * *
 2  * * *
 3  * * *
...
30 * * * *

Why do ping and traceroute not use the new DNS server's I've configured (after re-booting too_)
The only thing to work is to add

20.43.161.105 duckduckgo.com

to my hosts file and now everything seems to be working as expected, though I have doubts now that changing the DNS configuration has done any good.

I know ISPs cache things like youtube to reduce costs so I'm wondering if 202.39.62.156 handled caching of duckduckgo, and they pointed their nameservers there and that box is broken.

Thanks for everyone's input and patience (lol are you still reading???)

Original Question

I've used Duck Duck Go as my main search engine for many, many years.
I have several search engines installed in Firefox including 2 for duck duck go. One for the /lite version and one for the full version.

[See update at bottom]

In recent days neither of these work. I would type my query into the search engine, press enter as I have done for years.

All I see is a blank page.

The latest development is that when I try and enter ANY search to either of those engines I get a GOOGLE 404 not found page.

    
    traceroute duckduckgo.com                                                                                                             ─╯
    traceroute to duckduckgo.com (216.239.38.120), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
     1  * * *
     2  * * *
     3  The usual internal routing of my ISP
     4  ""          ""            ""
     5  ""          ""            ""
     6  ""          ""            ""
     7  ""          ""            ""
     8  * * *
     9  any-in-2678.1e100.net (216.239.38.120)  4.089 ms  4.077 ms  4.181 ms
    
    ping duckduckgo.com                                                                                                                   ─╯
    PING duckduckgo.com (2001:4860:4802:32::78) 56 data bytes
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=1 ttl=117 time=10.1 ms
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=2 ttl=117 time=8.52 ms
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=3 ttl=117 time=6.87 ms
    64 bytes from any-in-2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net (2001:4860:4802:32::78): icmp_seq=4 ttl=117 time=8.83 ms
    
    --- duckduckgo.com ping statistics ---
    4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3005ms
    rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.873/8.584/10.118/1.155 ms

cat /etc/resolv.conf
> MY ISPs name servers
> MY ISPs name servers

Sure enough I cannot find any pages on the site 2001-4860-4802-32--78.1e100.net which is obviously belongs to google.

This is very very strange.

Could someone verify if they can use DDG or whether they see the same as me?
Does anyone have any idea what's happening?

UPDATE
I can connect to and use DuckDuckGo using a browser VPN. This appears to be a mess made by my ISP.
I'd still like suggestion to overcome the problem though.

My general question ... where do you folks go when searching for replacement parts for aging technology, particularly pertaining to game consoles? I've come across iFixit, and of course there's Amazon and eBay as well, but I've been having some difficulty finding a particular part.

My specific issue is, I have an old Dualshock 4 (model CUH-ZDT2U, with PCB/motherboard model JDM-055) that is on the outs. It started experiencing some stick drift, so I took it apart to clean the contacts in the joystick housing to the best of my ability. In doing so, one of my kids managed to get a hold of the controllers' guts and break off the vibration motor wires from the board.

So, after taking the board and chassis to a local Makerspace, I got the wires soldered back onto the board. So far so good! However, the stick drift is still an issue and the vibration connection isn't that great. So now, I'm hoping to find some replacement parts - namely, a replacement board with the chassis and motors included.

One of the main reasons why I'm trying to refit this old controller, rather than replace it outright ... is because my wife bought the controller (and the PS4 it came with) as an anniversary present years ago. I'm the sentimental type and I'm trying to keep as much of this old controller going as I can, Ship-of-Theseus style. In addition, these controllers don't come cheap - $70 seems to be the basement these days for a new, in-box controller.

I've taken a swing at purchasing replacement parts off eBay - however, while the controller models matched, the board models did not. iFixit has the exact parts I need, but they are out of stock and their stock is inconsistent. I found another site - Fasttech.ca - that purports to have the same parts, but looking around online I've found a fair bit of discussion surrounding this site and the fact that it may be less-than-reputable.

Any advice on where else I might be able to look for parts?

In search of an app where I can pay for pro features once and get a fully featured application. Is it even possible these days?

Ok, now begin rant.

I don't understand - these services are aggregators of other people's content and let's be honest, only have to build a competent media player one time.

Why the subscription? While I fully understand that Adobe kicked off this new evil timeline of permanent rentals, I don't fully understand how this applies for something as simple as a media player.

I love the labels feature of Tildes and use it fairly regularly where I feel appropriate. But recently I wanted to label a post (rather than a comment) and realized that there is no option for that.

Is this something that has been discussed before? I did a cursory search but was not able to find anything specific to labels on posts. I'm not even saying that I'd be 100% for the feature, just wondering if it's been discussed before. Questions like 'would it provide a benefit?' or 'if so, should those labels be the same as the ones for comments?' were along the lines of what I was thinking.

Might be a terrible idea, or difficult to implement for some reason or another, but sometimes I feel like a post could use a label (like 'exemplary' for a well-thought-out post, or 'malice' for one where the article posted feels deceptive and/or misleading) and right now there does not appear to be a way of doing that. Wondering what others think.

Yeah, I bought an ebike from Costco. It was a pretty good deal and it exceeded my expectation in just about every way, at least so far. The only thing that's bugging me right now is that the seat is supposedly super comfortable but my butt is sore after relatively short rides, but I've read that that will go away after a while.

I haven't owned a bike for decades and I was wondering if there was any less obvious things I should look out for. I already figured out that I put on the front wheel off-center because the disc was rubbing against the brake pad, but that was an easy fix. The manual for my bike is painfully lacking in details; half of covers how to use the controller, and the other half is assembly, and even that part wasn't terribly detailed. There were two parts that came in the box that it didn't even mention (a reflector for the handlebars and the derailleur protector - the latter of which I only figured out what it was after I did a reverse image search for it). It appears that it was written for people who already know a lot about bikes. The fork has shocks on it that appear to be adjustable but I don't know how or even why you would want to adjust them. Is there a website or a book that I can find with more detailed info on bikes generally?

Finally, accessories. I already bought two simple things just on impulse: a simple cheap cable lock and a bell (which seems like a strange omission for a bike, but what do I know?). I figure that I should have probably invested in a better lock, though, since it's a fairly expensive machine, so I thought I'd ask what people would recommend. Also are there any other accessories I might consider? I want to get a bottle holder, but I'm looking for a design to 3D print if anyone has any recommendations. It'd be nice to finally bust out my roll of ASA for it.

[Possibly solved, please look at comments]

Hey,

so recently a family member accidentally downloaded a shady browser extension called: "Easy Print" on Firefox. 30k downloads, no ratings, weird "offical" website and installed accidentally trying to buy tickets. I assume it showed something along the lines of: "Buy ticket now" and they just clicked on it (being overall inexperieced with security). Only extension installed was uBlock until then.

I won't post a link just in case, but you can easily find it by googling: "Easy Print Firefox" or "Easy Print App" for their website.

What makes this weirder is that they change the default search engine to Yahoo, which for me was always a red flag for a hijacked browser.

I uninstalled it, but am concerned that they installed something like a keylogger along with it.

Can anyone help me what this is and, especially, how I can properly teach them the basics of internet safety? Not the first time their PC/browser was filled with unwanted stuff...

Thank you and best regards!

I just chatted online with someone currently hiring for a mid-level software engineer who received more than 2,000 applications. That’s ridiculous.

So (inspired by actual events), I’m writing a freelanced article, "Upending the hiring process for technical talent.” Although the topic applies to any job search situation, the story is tuned to software developers and other tech fields, and I expect both remote work and AI to be primary factors.

Getting thousands of applications is nuts for both the company and the applicants. My question is, "What — if anything — can be done to make the process more sane for everybody?"

I would love input from the wise people on Tildes. (Formal attribution is not required, but context is helpful for verisimilitude: "...says one program lead from a midwest insurance firm.") I know you have opinions. However, the HIVE MIND responses I care about should come from people who have been affected by this change – primarily HR professionals and tech industry hiring managers. My short (?) list of questions:

• How many job applications do you typically get today for a technical position such as a software engineer? How has that number changed?
• Are there differences in the applications? I’m open to anything from “remote work expanded the number of people who want to work here” to “They are impersonal and seem AI-generated” to… well, what? Tell me.
• How do you triage the applications (no / maybe / worth talking to)? How long does it take? For HR, what percentage of the applications are provided to the hiring managers? For hiring managers, how does that percentage make you feel?
• How have you changed job listings? For instance, are you asking for more information in the application process or including more detail in the job req? Are you employing tools that claim to sort responses? Are you offering salary transparency so that nobody wastes time when the numbers don’t align?
• What changes have you implemented in the job process? (Turning more to recruiters, for instance? Relying more on employee referrals?)
• Is “return to office” an issue here? (I would imagine that “local candidates only” would reduce the number of applications, but I don’t want to assume too much about any HR connection.)
• Regardless of what your company IS doing to deal with the job application deluge, what — if anything — do you think COULD be done to make the process more sane for everybody? What would you do if you could wave a magic wand to address the problem?

I have an M1 MacBook Air. I use UTM to run a Debian 11 virtual machine.

After the initial setup, updating and upgrading, installing Firefox and a few small programs, (I almost called them apps, d'oh), the Debian.utm file size was about 6GB. Now, less than a month later, it's almost 9GB.

The VM size increases after each use. I haven't downloaded or installed anything close to 3GB worth. I have downloaded files, then put them into the trash and emptied the trash, could the trash not be emptying properly?

I have run ncdu, but nothing stands out. When I drill down into /usr and into each large folder, no sub folder is larger than a few 100MB. I can't see any big files lurking.

I've googled using many search terms, but I can't get past results that are about how to increase the size of a VM that is running out of room.

Thanks very much for reading this, any ideas?

Very similar to how the recipe book in the game "Potion Craft" is organized. I essentially want to be able to mark pages and assign an icon, letter, symbol, or whatever to the tab. Clicking the tab brings you to that page. I also want the freedom to arrange these tabs around the perimeter of the book.

I'm not even sure what search terms to use to find a software like this. I'm not looking for anything robust, just a simple reader app with minimal page marking with intuitive visual organization.

Does anything like this exist?

I've copied the full tweet below (it's from August, I missed this news somehow):

We've been evaluating a number of C++ successor languages for @ladybirdbrowser , and the one best suited to our needs appears to be @SwiftLang 🪶

Over the last few months, I've asked a bunch of folks to pick some little part of our project and try rewriting it in the different languages we were evaluating. The feedback was very clear: everyone preferred Swift!

Why do we like Swift?

First off, Swift has both memory & data race safety (as of v6). It's also a modern language with solid ergonomics.

Something that matters to us a lot is OO. Web specs & browser internals tend to be highly object-oriented, and life is easier when you can model specs closely in your code. Swift has first-class OO support, in many ways even nicer than C++.

The Swift team is also investing heavily in C++ interop, which means there's a real path to incremental adoption, not just gigantic rewrites.

Strong ties to Apple?

Swift has historically been strongly tied to Apple and their platforms, but in the last year, there's been a push for "swiftlang" to become more independent. (It's now in a separate GitHub org, no longer in "apple", for example).

Support for non-Apple platforms is also improving, as is the support for other, LSP-based development environments.

What happens next?

We aren't able to start using it just yet, as the current release of Swift ships with a version of Clang that's too old to grok our existing C++ codebase. But when Swift 6 comes out of beta this fall, we will begin using it!

No language is perfect, and there are a lot of things here that we don't know yet. I'm not aware of anyone doing browser engine stuff in Swift before, so we'll probably end up with feedback for the Swift team as well.

I'm super excited about this! We must steer Ladybird towards memory safety, and the first step is selecting a successor language that we can begin adopting very soon. 🤓🐞

Nitter link:

https://nitter.poast.org/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Original post:

https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1822236888188498031

Some of Kling's replies in that thread are also pretty interesting:

My general thoughts on Rust:
- Excellent for short-lived programs that transform input A to output B
- Clunky for long-lived programs that maintain large complex object graphs
- Really impressive ecosystem
- Toxic community

In the end it came down to Swift vs Rust, and Swift is strictly better in OO support and C++ interop.

The September monthly report for Ladybird released the day after I posted this. It provides basically the same information:

This Month in Ladybird September 2024

The section about Swift:

Successor language search progress

Over the past year, our core contributors have been exploring potential safe languages to complement or succeed C++. We evaluated several options, including Rust, Swift, Fil-C, and others. While some languages offered compelling features, many fell short in either C++ interoperability or providing the level of memory safety we needed.

After extensive testing and discussion, Swift emerged as the top choice among our core developers, thanks to the new Swift 6 interoperability features and its growing cross-platform support. As a result, we’ve decided to adopt Swift as our C++ successor language.

That said, this will be an incremental shift. The existing C++ codebase is deeply embedded in the project, and a complete rewrite would be impractical. Instead, we’ll be gradually introducing new components in Swift, carefully integrating them with our existing C++ code over time. Look forward to a dedicated blog post on the topic soon.

Hi Tildes, I am going to Vienna in November (and if anyone wants to meet up send me a message! but that's another topic), and this is only half vacation, half for a work-related conference, so I want to be able to easily spend a couple hours on work even during the vacation part. To make this easier, I want to buy a portable 2nd monitor that I can plug into my laptop.

I have ZERO experience using such an item, and wasn't even 100% sure they really exist until I searched just now, so I don't think I have any flat requirements. However, I would super like if it takes touch input and comes with a pen! (no i do not want a tablet, I want a 2nd screen for my laptop that I can drag windows & paste between etc). It also should either be super lightweight or be safe to put in my checked luggage (preferably the latter). Minimum 1080p resolution, I don't think the size matters THAT much but at least the size of a normal laptop screen (and not netbook) would be good.

(oops I thought I was pressing enter on a tag but it sent the whole post! edited a bit to finish writing it)

For those who don't know: Dark Tough sells high quality and really tough socks that take forever to wear out or develop holes. They're made in the USA and have a no-bullshit lifetime warranty. I bought my first pair over a year ago. It's actually kind of crazy that I put up with shittier, cheap socks for so long. I'm never going back.

And now, the ol' underwear are starting to get some holes in them. The kind of holes that let the breeze tickle your balls.

Unfortunately, while searching online for the Darn Tough equivalent of underwear, I found a lot of counter-recommendations. Someone would recommend a brand (like Duluth), but then someone else would provide a pretty detailed account of why and how that brand's underwear apparently sucks now, or they don't honor their warranty anymore, etc.

So, I thought I would ask for recommendations on Tildes, since I generally trust the judgement and reviews of you all more than other people on the internet.

This has been on my mind for a while, and I've voiced a similar concern 1.5 months ago in the recurring topic, but it went unnoticed.

Israel has been and still is actively committing genocide against people of Gaza. You can read a summary of the reasons it's being called a genocide in the Wikipedia entry (and its sources) . Wikipedia itself has recognized it as genocide, naming the entry Gaza Genocide, and it's a major feat considering the contentious nature of the topic and the heavy regulation and debates in Wikipedia culture. Even a UN human rights experts said in March that there are reasonable grounds to think a genocide is being committed, and UN is dominated by US influence, and is much slower to act and react, especially when western or US interests are concerned (which applies in this case, because Israel is an ally).

Israel's online propaganda machine has been hard at work about this issue, in order to control the narrative (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Israel also now ranks among the world’s leading jailers of journalists., another evidence of their commitment to suppress dissenting voices and control the narrative around this issue. It's also worth noting that western coverage of Israel's acts has been said to be legitimising Israel's behavior.

I think most things in the world are some shades of gray, and it's very understandable for people to have ambivalent attitudes about it, but I do not think this is one of those cases, for the following reasons.

• There is an active, ongoing genocide.
• The genocider nation-state has been spreading its propaganda to control the international narrative, especially in US (because US is its biggest ally and funder). It's doing this because it knows support from US and its allies is crucial to keep the genocide going. This involves manufacturing consent in the citizens of these nations.
• Tildes is heavily populated with citizens of US and other western nations.
• Not actively opposing this propaganda means one is helping -albeit indirectly but still significantly- the genocider nation.

I should clarify that, as of this moment, I'm not blaming the moderators, and I'm not saying they are doing this consciously and with full consideration. Instead, I'm trying to illustrate what is going on in the wider context, and what the actions in this mini-environment mean in the wider context. Simply put, genocidal propaganda is not an issue where you can follow the middle-ground, especially when you have power over a community.

For these reasons, I propose two changes in terms of moderation.

1. Both from now on and retroactively, change the names of the "Israel-Hamas war megathreads" to "Gaza Genocide megathreads".
2. Create and, both from now on and retroactively, use the tag "Gaza Genocide" when tagging.

The first point is self-explanatory. As for the second point, there comes up only 4 topics when I search for "Gaza Genocide" in the site, even though there have been numerous discussions about it. None of them have the mentioned tag, but they have the Gaza and Genocide tags separately. Furthermore, one of the topics is mine, and I had put the tag Gaza Genocide but it was later removed by moderation, and replaced with other tags mentioning this topic. Again, not throwing personal shade to anyone, but I think this is not a good way to go about this topic. A special tag would give it more visibility, which the victims of the genocide need.

These are my suggestions. If anyone can think of anything else, they are welcome to share as well.

I've been reconsidering things about honesty in the wider context of politics. I think honesty is at the heart of a good faith approach. You have to be both honest about the limitations of your own thoughts, you have to seriously consider the opinion of the person you're talking to, and you shouldn't attack their person in any way.

It's assumed in ethically liberal communities that honest and constructive conversations are the way to go to get political power, in the positive sense. "They go low, we go high." This is, of course, true in some contexts. An entirely bad faith approach to people would result in alienating potential allies. Having a good faith approaches also gives you some sort of moral argument, which you can leverage.

With this being said, this claim, that it is the only way, is extremely insufficient in several dimensions.

First of all, there are a lot of situations where bad faith approach, where you ridicule and attack your opponent, mock them, or even lie about them, etc. work. A recent example is the Couch Fucker bit about J.D. Vance. It's obviously not true, but it was a very useful piece of propaganda. It just caught on, because he really did seem like the kind of guy to do that. A similar example was misinterpreting a certain search, and saying he was searching dolphin porn. Again, he looks like the type to do that. A third example is the AI-generated images about the MAGA crowd bringing fake semen cups to support J.D. Vance. It's not real but it caught on, because the MAGA crowd contains a lot of people that seem that self-unaware and cultish.

Second, the "good faith first" approach ignores a key dimension of politics—the conflict. "Ideal citizens" in liberal democracies, or people looking up to liberal democracies and their ideals, like to imagine that a properly ethical, positive, constructive dialogue-based approach will triumph over bad actors. Gestures widely at the world This is simply not true. There are a lot of situations where such people fail.

The reason for this is that conflict is not "clean". It is conflict. It can be hard or soft in a wide spectrum, but one would have to ignore pretty much reality itself to claim there are only soft conflicts in the world. The good faith approach, which I outlined above, assumes that you can still overcome the hard conflicts with their "clean" approach (unless it's open war).

This is not true either. There are a lot of, and increasingly, bad faith actors in democracies or semi-democracies that are undermining them in every way they can. They want to take people's rights away, make them poorer, conserve or institute hiearchies, and a lot of them also want to kill you. A major chunk of the far right population would be delighted to genocide the people you love and yourself. And a bigger chunk of the right-wingers are sympathetic to them.

This is not a war in the conventional sense, but it's a serious hard conflict. So, the stakes are not just losing an election and then putting up with some leaders with "differences of opinion". Stakes are much higher. If or when they succeed, a lot of people will suffer at the hands of these weirdos. Some of them will even directly or indirectly get killed.

In light of this context, approaching bad faith actors in bad faith is within reasonable ethical limits, and it's the strategically sound option. This is, again, not a black-or-white thing. Not every situation requires the same strength or variety of bad faith response, neither ethically nor strategically. A context-sensitive approach is required.

This context-sensitivity, in other words flexibility of mind, is at the core of what I'm trying to illustrate here. Black-or-white thinking about having to choose between good faith and bad faith leads to ruin. It's a spectrum. A person ought to assess the situation at hand, and respond properly.

For example, on Tildes I try my best to approach topics from a place of good faith. I think this approach on Tildes mostly works, because a) people here in general try to operate on good faith b) people here seem to try to distance themselves from populist and rash arguments c) it's left-leaning to an extent, and definitely very anti-far right, so less insane opinions.

I neither would want to be bad faith here nor would see any point in it. However, on places like big social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, etc.) I don't really see the point. They are rife with fascists and fascist sympathizers. I saw plenty of naive people -I've been those people- try to explain things earnestly to them, assuming that their opinion is simply based on ignorance and misunderstanding, and not on active ill-will and a conscious choice to hurt people.

Before any objections, I will say that I am aware of the nuances. Not every right-winger is the same (and I have not made that claim), and even among far-right people there are ones who can be persuaded, because they simply are ignorant. But in vast majority of the time, these actors are operating on bad faith. They are not interested in constructive arguments, they are interested in spreading their filth in order to hurt people.

Keeping this in mind, it can be seen that a better counter to their claims is some variety of bad faith. In other words, more ostracization by labeling them things like weirdos and incels. More couch fucking, more dolpin porn, more cups of cum.

It seems like the input fields for comments are missing some required HTML meta parameters or something like that. When I'm typing in them, on mobile, I don't get any autocorrect or autosuggestions, I can't use swipe input, I can't move my cursor with the space bar, etc. This doesn't happen with any other text field on the site (search, post body, ...), so the problem must be in something like the type param of the input element. This is incredibly annoying and there have been multiple times where I didn't want to write a comment just to avoid dealing with this experience.

Edit: it also seems like it happens when editing a post, but it doesn't happen when making a new post

Edit 2: I just tried clicking around and for some reason it only happens when entering a text field for the first time, but not when clicking off and the back into the text field? Might be a GBoard bug then, weird that it doesn't happen on any other site though

Edit 3: the issue only happens that use markdown_textarea with auto_focus=True

Hi, there is a common trend among people in both physical and online circles: the idea that not reproducing means less reproductive success, so it means less "evolutionary success" for the individual. On an isolated level, the first part is true. However, a lot of people attach value-judgements to this, and wonder whether they are betraying the species by choosing not to reproduce. A lot of intellectual people even consider if they're "dumbing down" the species. And a lot of people think this must constitute some kind of paradox: more intelligence means less reproduction.

There's a lot to be said about this. First is the good ol' (and kind of boring) idea that evolution is not going toward "higher" beings, but simply a change in inherited traits in a population among generations. However, this is not my point in this post.

What I want people to consider is how much variety there is between individuals: only 0.1% of DNA differ between two individuals from the species Homo sapiens. This means the other 99.9% is the same. Despite however much media, intellectuals, and individuals might focus on differences between people, the genome is 99.9% the same.

But what if the 0.1% is so vital that it exerts an outsized influence on the rest of the genome? Well, first of all, at some level it doesn't matter. There is a reason the phrase "evolution by natural selection" is often used, instead of just using the term natural selection. It's because evolution and natural selection are not interchangeable. As stated before, evolution is a change in inherited traits in the population between generations. This includes four forces: selection, mutation, migration, and genetic drift.

Selection, as is known, tends to preserve traits that are more adapted to their environment. Mutation is the spontaneous origination of a new variation in the genome. Migration is individuals migrating to or out of a population. And genetic drift is random variation that happens between generations due to chance.

These mechanisms, taken together, determine the change of inherited traits between generations. However vital, natural selection is by far not the only means.

But-wait?! You were talking about populations, and not individuals. Why?

Well, it's because evolution makes the most sense at population level. You can't really examine the change of traits on an individual level. It's micro of the micro of the microevolution. Furthermore, at macro level (species to species evolution; speciation) it's populations that evolve, not individuals.

This is another key takeaway: in evolution, populations matter the most, not individuals.

Other than the 99.9% sameness in DNA, you can also see this in the genome structure. For the most part, we share the same number of chromosomes, structured in the same way, with genes interspersed at places that are mostly at the same part.

Supporting this, here are the current known numbers of genes in the genome, according to different sources. There is no evidence that the number of these genes differ significantly between individuals. Sure, the variations (alleles) of the exact content change very often. But not the existence of the genes themselves.

So, we not only share vast majority of the same DNA, but the way DNA and genes are structured is also almost exactly the same.

Let's summarize what I've said so far.

• Population level evolution matters the most in evolution.
• We share 99.9% of our DNA.
• We have almost the exact same genome structure.
• We have virtually the same genes (but not alleles).

Why have I said all this? Created this topic?

It's to counter the perspective that is so pervasive in culture, including intellectual spaces. The idea that not reproducing somehow makes you "unnatural", or "against laws of nature". There is, of course, already the ethical rebuttal against these claims: that natural doesn't mean good. However, what I've laid out here is also a different side of nature that is rarely talked about: in evolutionary terms, we are almost the same.

Following this logic, it can be seen that, even if you don't personally reproduce, contributing to the well-being of the population or the species means you are contributing to the inheritence of 99.9% of your DNA, its overall structure, and its gene structure. After all, your contributions make it so that other people can reproduce, and pass on these commonalities they share with you. You are not, in normative terms, "an evolutionary failure". It can even be argued that, at the current connected level of internationality where populations are quite dependent on each other, and exchange DNA with each other frequently, a global cooperative approach can even be considered the most succesful strategy.

As with most things in culture, when interpreting biology, the role of competition and dissimilarity is overemphasized, and the role of cooperation and similarity is overlooked, even when it runs counter to a lot of scientific findings. Funnily enough, Peter Kropotkin, who lived most of his life in the second part of the 19th century, realized this. Of course, he didn't have even remotely enough scientific evidence. But looking at nature, he had realized how much the role of cooperation was ignored, due to a fixation on competition. So, this is not a new problem, and my reasoning is not entirely new.

Further reading on this topic could be made by searching for "evolution cooperation" on the search engine of your choice, and on Google Scholar.

Edit to add: coop multiplayer is not available on the mobile version, which is the only realistic choice for our current life pattern / technology setup. I do agree it sounds interesting and fun!

My family has recently been on a big Stardew Valley kick. My spouse and I and our daughter are all first time players playing on android, which has no multiplayer mode.

From what I understand about multiplayer, I don't really think it would be good for us. We all play the game in very different ways. However, I think it would be amazing to be able to trade items. No one but me likes going into the mines/caves, and sometimes you just need one of something out of season.

My idea is that there would be a special chest I could put something into and it would be moved out of my game and into one of theirs or vice versa. Obviously, you could mod the game so you can just get any item, but this way somebody still has to get it, so it (hopefully) doesn't undermine the game economy.

I have been looking at the mod community, and it seems like the android version supports mods. I haven't found a mod that does as described. My general path forward is:

• set up a mod that implements the chest and talks to a server via API
• set up a server that can receive and hold incoming "put" and then send those items with the "get" from the client at the other end
• build the API so that it can represent important assets in the game
• come up with a lightweight way to secure the protocol to the intended users (this may depend on how identifiable individual clients are, but could be as simple as putting in a shared secret when creating the chest)

Obviously there are a lot of details to work out, but I wanted to get some wider feedback from people who had been playing the game longer.

• does this already exist and I'm just not aware? I did spend some time searching, but it seems like most mods are either cosmetic or change the in game mechanics in some way.
• would you be interested in something like this?
• what kind of mechanics would you want to see? Maybe a way to propose and accept specific trades rather than just sending items? Would you limit it to your circle of friends or be interested in a wider community?
• have you written or used Stardew Valley mods (especially on android), and if so, what was your experience?

Hello friends, and thank you in advance for any help on this topic.

I am looking for an android keyboard that does not have emoji, stickers or gifs, but also has long press options for special characters like dashes, slashes and colons etc.

Searching online for variants of "no emoji keyboard," only floods my results with the opposite and it's beyond frustrating!

I realize that the answer is likely right under my nose and I'm just missing it for whatever reason.

I would glady pay money for such an option if only I could find one.

I'm sorry if this question is silly or posted in the wrong thread, but I'm at my wits end.

Again, thank you for any help or redirection to my query!

Cheers!

I absolutely LOVE hearing other's stories from their games. Crazy things happen in game land, and these kinds of tales inspire others to play and experiment as well.

I recently had a hankering to return to one of my all-time favorite games: FUEL. I couldn't stop thinking: how cool would it be if I could revisit the game from the comfort of my Steam Deck?

That was my dream, but a few problems stood in the way:

1. FUEL was released in 2009 and was delisted from Steam in 2013. (Thankfully, I have a copy of it in my library, but we're talking about an installation build that is over a decade out-of-date at this point.)

2. FUEL still has Securom DRM.

3. FUEL still requires Games for Windows Live, which was also shut down in 2013.

4. FUEL is pretty mediocre unless you install the REFUELED mod.

So, I sat down with my Steam Deck and a hope and a prayer that maybe, somehow, I could get this game working?

Hurdle 1 wasn't even a hurdle. Proton is so damn good now. The game installed and ran flawlessly. I honestly never should have second-guessed it in the first place!

Hurdle 2 was also, surprisingly, a non-issue. Either the Securom servers are somehow still live and actually checked my CD key, or the dialog box lied to me as part of an offline fallback and told me I was cleared anyway (I'm thinking this is more likely?). Either way, I was happy.

Hurdle 3 was the first actual block. The game crashes when trying to pull up GFWL, which is pretty much what I expected -- the service has been down for over a decade now. Thankfully, there's an unexpectedly easy fix. Xliveless is a DLL that bypasses GFWL and lets the game boot (and save) without it.

Hurdle 4 isn't really a hurdle per se, but that's only because the Steam Deck lets you boot into Desktop Mode and get fully under the hood. I downloaded the mod, dumped the files in the installation folder, ran the mod manager through Protontricks, and then set up all of my mod choices. I then jumped back into game mode, and the game is flawlessly running -- mods and all.

I should also mention that I did all of this on-device. I didn't need to break out a mouse and a keyboard or transfer files from my desktop or anything. From the first install of the game to running it fully modded took me maybe ten minutes total? It was amazingly quick, and most of that time was me searching up information or waiting for the Deck to boot over and back between Desktop and Game Mode.

I realize that, in the grand scheme of game tinkering, this doesn't sound like a whole lot, but that's honestly the point. The fact that this comes across as sort of mundane and uneventful is, paradoxically, what makes it noteworthy. If we're keeping score here, I am:

• playing a 2009 Windows game,
• that was delisted in 2013,
• on a Linux handheld device in 2024.

I also:

• somehow passed the game's decade-old DRM check,
• bypassed the game's second DRM system that has been officially shut down for over a decade,
• modded the game in literal seconds,
• and did all that using only a controller -- while lying on my couch.

From a zoomed out perspective, I shouldn't be able to play this game. FUEL should be dead and buried -- nothing more than a fond memory for me. Even if I turn the dial a little more towards optimism, it really shouldn't be this easy to get up and running. I thought I was going to spend hours trying to get it going, with no guarantee that it ever would. Instead I was driving around its world in mere minutes.

I'm literally holding FUEL and its massive open-world in my hands, fifteen years after its release, on an operating system it's not supposed to run on, and on a device nobody could have even imagined was possible when the game released.

We really are living in the future. I remain in absolute awe of and incredibly grateful for all the work that people do to make stuff like this possible.