It doesn’t have to be something you 3D printed yourself. It can be practical or sentimental or aesthetic — whatever you like. What’s the best 3D-printed thing you have, and what makes it great?
I’ve bought enough digital comic bundles now that they’re starting to take up a decent chunk of storage space.
What I’d love to do, if possible, is losslessly compress them all down to their minimum sizes, in the same way that FLAC does with music. Is this a thing? And if so, what’s the best way to do it?
If lossless compression isn’t possible, is there a lossy compression that’s effectively lossless in that I won’t be able to tell the difference anyway? Lossless compression gives me good piece of mind, but the storage savings from an invisible lossy one are honestly quite appealing too.
No, unfortunately. The splits are locked down. They do give an option to add more to charity, but doing so increases your total rather than pulling it from the other categories.
I have some more information:
Firefox tries to pass this link back to Indie Pass:
indiepass-launcher://auth?code=[LOTS OF ALL CAPS LETTERS]&state=[mixed case letters and numbers]
I tried your .desktop file idea, Carrow, but unfortunately I couldn't get it going.
Then, having already dug up the path to the launcher executable out of the prefix, I tried to have Firefox open any indiepass-launcher links with Indie Pass.exe. This stops me from getting an error message, but the launcher is still stuck on the welcome screen, so it's not taking.
I also tried going into COSMIC settings to force the association, but unfortunately the default applications settings in the GUI are limited to only a few choices (see here). I'm sure there's a file I could edit to change ones that aren't available there, but I searched around for a bit and couldn't find out how to do it.
Is it potentially not working because Firefox is trying to pass the link to the executable directly instead of going through Proton?
I'm currently about halfway through the book.
I did order some pu'er tea to accompany the book and tried it out.
It's pretty good, but the Splenda I added might be doing a lot of the heavy lifting here (note: I find nearly all teas undrinkable without some added sweetness, so this is very much a personal preference).
The flavor itself was good, but there was a sour smelling note that put me off a bit. It had a bit of a mildewy/grassy scent. It wasn't super prominent, but it was enough that it gave me pause at the beginning. That scent didn't show up in the flavor for me though, and it also seemed to go away over time (maybe I just got used to it?).
Either way, I can see myself finishing the box, and, depending on how I feel after repeated cups, potentially even ordering more.
I tested out Linux compatibility.
The short version: I couldn't get it working.
The long version: it might be possible.
Attempt 1: Bottles flatpak (Soda runner)
I got the "installing program" box to pop up, and according to Bottles it installed correctly (as in, it gave me the option to manually run it after the install was done). Unfortunately, running it does nothing.
Attempt 2: Bottles flatpak (Proton-GE runner)
The installer didn't even run.
Attempt 3: Steam (system install), Proton Experimental runner
This worked... kind of. The program installed and ran and it got me to the welcome screen where it wants you to log in.
The login process doesn't happen in the Indie Pass app itself -- when you hit sign in, it opens your browser where you log in, give permissions to the app, and then it "hands those back" to the Indie Pass app. This is where I got an error message, popping up an "Open With" prompt that says there are no apps available.
I'm assuming this means that my computer doesn't know to pass whatever it is (a string, a token, a cookie?) back to Indie Pass to confirm the login. So, unfortunately, I can't test it further.
If anyone has any ideas for a workaround, let me know! I'd love to have this up and running on Linux if possible.
Note: all of this was done on a Pop!_OS 24.04 install with COSMIC as my DE which is still kind of buggy, so take everything with a grain of salt. Also, I'm not Linux savvy AT ALL, so take my own experiences with several additional grains. Someone more knowledgeable than me might have more luck.
Digiphile is a new bundle site created by former Humble Bundle employees, and this is their second comics bundle.
All the comics are DRM-free. I'm not sure about region availability, so if people want to chime in with whether or not the bundle is available from your country, please let us know. (Currently I can confirm that it's available in the US.)
Also, if you've read anything in here and can recommend (for or against) it, go for it. With so much on offer it's hard to know what's worth the time.
For anyone with concerns about Bauke’s trustworthiness:
Not only is he a really upstanding person and great Tildes citizen, but he is one of the official maintainers of the Tildes repo.
So, genuinely trustworthy.
Literally just finished playing with bubbles with my nephew. Tons of fun!
His dad got him like, a bubble gatling gun that creates a whole bunch of bubbles all at once, so he likes to take it and spray it at you, and he also loves it when we spray them above his head and they float down all around him.
I haven’t started yet, but it’s on my docket for next week (in addition to giving my entry for the CGA Friendship Book in hopes of fostering the platonic crushes I already have on everyone here 😂).
Oh, I see now. I thought you were focused on a procedural aspect.
I would hope that Tildes would approach those with the usual empathy and thoughtfulness that we see in most topics, but I can also see how people might approach it in a less positive or more distanced manner.
My thought was that the results would get posted and then people would talk about those responses in the topic, so there would still be good potential for discussions with the added benefit of anonymity for those that want it. Does that make sense?
Thank you for putting this together! The tech wizardry of people like you never ceases to amaze me.
An additional thought:
On one of my recent ask topics, someone mentioned how an anonymous posting mode would be good for it.
In lieu of an anonymous posting option built into the site (which is its own bag of worms), this could be a way for us to essentially achieve the same outcome. It would let us ask more sensitive or personal questions and get honest answers that people aren’t necessarily comfortable putting their usernames to.
I think this is an awesome idea. I’d love it in any format, but to me, the idea of an official, weekly one-off question feels right. Low barrier to participate; low barrier for data aggregation and reporting; focused discussion on that one area.
I think it would give us some nice insights into the community. Also, by doing it in small, frequent chunks, it not only makes it more manageable to run but also opens us up to doing some more fun or interesting questions, rather than just the usual demographic ones. For example: “Pick your Pokémon starter” or “Choose the color that most represents you”
Speaking of demographics, I also like the idea of having a set of recurring questions that run, say, once or twice a year every year. These could be standard demographic ones (age, gender, occupation, etc.) and then we’d build recurring data sets that could help us track trends over time.
Hell, maybe we make January and July our “demographics” months and ask the same set of questions for the weeks in those, leaving the other months open to whatever variety of question we have.
I’m just spitballing here, but I really do think this has a ton of potential and I will be happy with however it gets rolled out. Great idea, Bauke!
I love this! A survey to build surveys.
This is also a great way to head off that reflex we seem to have where someone releases a survey and then everyone talks about the way the survey questions should have been written.
Chiming in as someone who also likes men:
I like tall men.
I like short men.
I like medium men.
I just like men.
I’ve said before that I wish straight guys could climb inside my brain for a moment and see men the way that I see them, because I think it would open their eyes to the many wonderful ways that they themselves can be attractive and desirable.
Your AI point is a really good one.
I'm very much someone who tries to buy things rather than pirate them, as I figure somebody has to put money towards this stuff, and taking it for free always had a veneer of wrongness to it. It didn't necessarily stop me a lot, but it did add some guilt.
But watching AI just wholesale slurp up EVERYTHING and seeing the people doing it get massively rich and be seen as more valuable to society than all the people who created the "training data" that gives their programs their power in the first place really put things in perspective for me with regards to who was abusing whom.
If I download a book or a movie, I'm doing comparatively little harm versus a company that uses that same book or movie to train its AI. I'm also not profiting off of it.
It hasn't changed my personal calculus much (I still prefer to monetarily support what I can), but it has significantly reduced the "this is wrong" moral reflex I used to have about my own piracy habits (which are genuinely quite modest). I do hate looking at the world that way, but I can't deny that AI and some other large-scale issues have recently reframed a lot of my perception of the world and have pushed me in a direction of increasing pessimism and nihilism.
Have you made the move to COSMIC on your Pop!_OS installation? I'm curious as to what your thoughts are if you have.
I’ll have to try out the
%uchange and see if that works. Won’t have the opportunity to do it until probably Sunday though.I never actually did get the .desktop file to run on its own — it kept giving me an invalid desktop file notification when I tried to run it. I even opened some other files and copied their structure to see if that would work, but it didn’t.
Nevertheless, I appreciate the help! I’m absolutely the wrong person to be trying to get this going on account of my lack of Linux proficiency, but I also figured I could at least get the ball rolling. I’m still holding out hope that we can find a way, with the absolute holy grail being it running on the Steam Deck specifically.