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    1. Call for volunteers: Techies against COVID-19

      Hi tilders. I'll keep it brief: I'm looking for people of various technical skills (devs, sysadmins, etc) willing to volunteer their skills at labs, hospitals and other establishments in the fight...

      Hi tilders. I'll keep it brief: I'm looking for people of various technical skills (devs, sysadmins, etc) willing to volunteer their skills at labs, hospitals and other establishments in the fight against COVID-19.

      A lot of us are lucky to be some of the least-affected by the virus. Not only is the technical field generally young and low-risk, but it's one of the most compatible with work-from-home professions.

      So I'm trying to use some of the free time during this lockdown to set up a volunteer network, focused on tech.

      I'm looking for two types of people specifically:

      • Anyone with tech experience: programmers, web devs, devops/sysadmins, etc; who has time they want to spend on this.
      • Anyone who works in or adjacent-to the medical field, who can help with identifying high-priority and impactful needs (who needs help the most, and how to reach them most efficiently)

      Note: The immediate goal is to build up a network of potential volunteers. I've been doing this on my own for a bit and there's clearly lots of needs, but it's hard to convince labs and hospitals to onboard a single person, so I'm hoping to get more people on board before continuing the search.

      Stay safe.

      10 votes
    2. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

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

      8 votes
    3. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

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

      12 votes
    4. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

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

      10 votes
    5. Multi-format text editor with chain-of-command processing

      A while back I developed a desktop-based text editor (Scrivenvar) that uses the Chain-of-Responsibility design pattern to help me author fairly involved text documents. The editor's high-level...

      A while back I developed a desktop-based text editor (Scrivenvar) that uses the Chain-of-Responsibility design pattern to help me author fairly involved text documents. The editor's high-level architecture resembles the following diagram:

      https://i.imgur.com/8IMpAkN.png

      Am I reinventing the wheel here? Are there any modern, cross-platform, liberal open-source (LGPL, MIT, Apache 2), text editor frameworks (such as xi or Visual Studio Code), that would enable (re)development of such a tool?

      Scrivenvar is written in Java, but to my chagrin, Java 9+ no longer bundles JavaFX. The text editor was based on MarkdownWriterFX, itself based on JavaFX. This means there's no easy upgrade path, so I'm looking to rebuild the editor either as a cross-platform desktop application or as a web application.

      8 votes
    6. What tasks on your computer have you automated?

      After using Shreddit to delete my Reddit history periodically for some time now, I finally decided to make a cron job to automate it on a weekly basis. I use it to delete every post and comment...

      After using Shreddit to delete my Reddit history periodically for some time now, I finally decided to make a cron job to automate it on a weekly basis. I use it to delete every post and comment that isn't whitelisted, which right now is just a tiny subreddit for a musician I like that I solely moderate and a pinned post explaining why I have a bunch of karma but barely any posts.

      After setting this up, it got me curious as to what tasks other people automate in their lives in order to streamline their workflows and eliminate minor (or major) routine tasks.

      So, what do you automate, and how did you go about doing it?

      18 votes
    7. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      6 votes
    8. Do you run your own blog for personal use?

      I know this has been posted before, but I was going through old posts about blogging and at least half the blogs linked in the comments were offline now, so I thought I'd bring this topic back to...

      I know this has been posted before, but I was going through old posts about blogging and at least half the blogs linked in the comments were offline now, so I thought I'd bring this topic back to light.

      Do you run your own personal blog, and if so, could you share some details?

      • Is it self-hosted, or do you rent server space?

      • Do you use Wordpress or another blog platform like that, publish through other means like a flat-file CMS, or did you build it from scratch?

      • What topics do you write about?

      • How consistently do you post; or alternatively, why don't you post as often as you would like to?

      • Do you keep analytics, or do you write regardless of how many clicks you get?

      • Is your site monetized with ads or otherwise?

      • How popular is your blog on average?

      • How do you keep up with other writers' posts?

      I'm bringing this up because it seems like most places around the web centered on blogging are more in it for the money rather than for the content. Places like /r/blogging and the like are all talk about how to maximize views, earn revenue, and find your niche. I'd love to see some discussion more geared towards the content and construction of individual blogs, as opposed to people trying the next "get rich quick" scheme on their lists of passive income opportunities.

      Personally, I have multiple blogs for the sole purpose of giving me a platform to voice my opinions or share things that interest me without being constrained to a centralized platform like Twitter or Medium. I'd love to hear what you have all made and/or shared online, as well as the process behind making it happen.

      27 votes
    9. What arcade game would you like to see preserved at a source code level?

      Hi All, I have recently completed a software archaeology project, reverse engineering Space Invaders si78c, and would like to cast around for opinions as to which game(s) to do next. I am...

      Hi All,

      I have recently completed a software archaeology project, reverse engineering Space Invaders si78c, and would like to cast around for opinions as to which game(s) to do next.

      I am currently thinking of doing either Pacman, Donkey Kong or Galaga but am willing to entertain suggestions about other games of a similar vintage. Please go into detail as to why you think it's an important title.

      Eventually I would like to tackle bigger games from the home micro / console market, but they are most likely out of scope for now.

      Please note, this is very labour intensive work, taking several months / years at a time depending on title complexity, and I will most likely only do a handful of these (barring any great advances) in my lifetime.

      Cheers,
      Jason

      18 votes
    10. Linux is a subpar choice for professional video editing

      I don't wanna get into a heated discussion, so let me make something very clear: for a regular user, video editing on Linux is probably fine. That is just not my use case. I'm used to a degree of...

      I don't wanna get into a heated discussion, so let me make something very clear: for a regular user, video editing on Linux is probably fine.

      That is just not my use case.

      I'm used to a degree of freedom, choice, and stability that, right now, Linux does not provide in that area.

      I'm a film major who has worked as a professional video editor for many years and editing video on anything that is not nearly as good, reliable and precise as Adobe Premiere feels like torture.

      But even being very flexible regarding features and requirements, after trying all the regular suggestions, as professional tools, and with all the respect I can muster, they are just unusable for me.

      I need a reliable program in which I can throw any format without worrying about constant crashes, but Linux options are all either extremely limited, unstable or both! Before anyone asks: I tried multiple programs, in different versions and installation methods, on entirely different hardware and unaffiliated distributions.

      Kdenlive resembles professional-grade software but constantly crashes at the simplest operations. DaVinci Resolve seems like a good bet but is a nightmare just to install and equally crashy when/if I'm able to do so (last time I had to manually edit the install script following the instructions of some random forum post. This did not cause a good impression. And audio didn't work), and I'm not willing to use something so finicky if Linux doesn't get primary support.

      Besides, Blackmagic Design only provides a few pieces of the puzzle. Professional video editing requires a whole stack of integrated software. Both Windows and Mac OS have this, Linux has not.

      There's also the issue of GPU acceleration.

      I'm not saying FOSS developers owe me anything, nor that they have done a bad job with programs like OpenShot, Pitivi, Blender, whatever. I'm just saying that, regrettably, I'll probably have to install put Windows on dual-boot on my machine in the next few days.

      16 votes
    11. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

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

      8 votes
    12. Fortnightly Programming Q&A Thread

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads. Don't forget to format your code using the triple...

      General Programming Q&A thread! Ask any questions about programming, answer the questions of other users, or post suggestions for future threads.

      Don't forget to format your code using the triple backticks or tildes:

      Here is my schema:
      
      ```sql
      CREATE TABLE article_to_warehouse (
        article_id   INTEGER
      , warehouse_id INTEGER
      )
      ;
      ```
      
      How do I add a `UNIQUE` constraint?
      
      10 votes
    13. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

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

      10 votes