A few years ago when I was new to tildes a typed tildes.com directly in the URL bar. I realized I'd forgotten the correct domain extension and did a web search for "tildes community" or something similar.

One of the results was for tilde town . At the time I glanced over it and thought about joining but I never got around to it. Last July I somehow stumbled over it again and this time I applied to join.

It's a pretty cool place.

The idea is that it's a Linux server that each user gets an account on. You then ssh into it - and that's where the community lives!

They have a chat system, a forum system, microblogging that's private to that community, command line games (some of which are multi-player) and a bunch of other really neat features. Each user even gets a folder in their home directory that let's them serve up public web pages.

Technically they have about 2,000 registered users, but the number of actual active users seems to be similar to our community here.

The vibe reminds me a lot of what we have here except that tilde town is casual "slice of life" only and doesn't do news articals at all. Some of their forum posts are similar to our own, with posts for what people are reading and watching and what projects they are working on.

Ive enjoyed my time there so far and I'd encourage any one who's interested to check it out. My username over there is grendel84, stop by and say hi!

Asked in ~comp thread, figured it should be its own post.

Thinking about whether I want to do some upgrades to my 10 year old PC or buy new. I could bump RAM to 16 without breaking the bank since its DDR4, and maybe splurge on a new processor, but I'm not sure if I'd just want to go with a new machine at that point, thoughts?

AMD Ryzen 3 1300
8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR4
MSI B350M PRO-VD PLUS
4GB ATI Radeon RX 480

Edit: To follow up some questions about what I'm using this computer for, not a whole lot at the moment. I was thinking of making it into a media server or a Steam OS console now that it's available to download, but it's more of a whim and a project itch to keep my mind off of personal and global events.

Edit 2: I did pick up a AMD Ryzen 5 5500 for $75 and 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 from Corsair for $115 from Newegg. I'll roll the die and see if it works out. Thanks for the help!

I'm thinking of this in a "pitfalls of being self-taught" context, but I'm sure there's plenty of other places these moments happen. Feel free to also interpret the title as "How did I not know that?", "How did I miss that?", "Why did no one tell me that?" and the like!

The inspiration for this post is that I am over a year and a half into my Linux journey, which has involved a solid amount of tinkering and eagerly getting familiar with the command line, and I just now realized that you can do man <literally any command> to quickly get to the manual for it. And also that whatis exists. For the last 18+ months, I've been just doing <command> --help or <command> <subcommand> --help and searching the internet to supplement that. I knew that man pages exist, but I guess for some reason it didn't occur to me that there would be a way to access them that easily.

I love learning things on my own and building understanding by doing, just picking a direction and running with it, but... man. I often wonder how many little things that "everyone knows" I've missed through sheer random chance. And then there's things like my man pages revelation that I can't believe I didn't piece together on my own, considering all the other crazy stuff I've figured out. Oh well lol. I suppose it's good when the humbling reminders of my own capacity for ignorance arrive via something low-stakes like this than via something that could wreck my system!

Anyone else have similar stories to share?

I recently got promoted and my new position is about 70% travel.

Planes are loud.
Airports are loud.
Malls are loud.

I'm looking for really good noise cancelling, over ear headphones that have a hidden mic.

Ideally they would be good at playing audio on a plane and for taking zoom calls on my laptop. Bonus if switching between my android phone and MacBook is simple/without known issues.

Price is not a concern.

I'm asking "I" in the sense that I'd personally like an answer to this question, but really this is more about using VPNs in general.

Currently, I just use the server with the lowest latency because that gives me the least friction.

However, thinking about the GDPR in the EU, or California's data privacy protections: should I be strategically choosing a server based on those? Is there any benefit to having my traffic routed through a jurisdiction like that, or does that not really matter?

EDIT: To further clarify: will all the different websites out there log less data or treat my data differently if they believe my traffic is coming from the EU/California?

My phone is a Samsung A55. Fully updated.

I have ADHD and autism, which is to say that I have a very obsessive personality. I have used various blockers over the years to prevent me from wasting time on apps and websites.

Lock me Out has helped me for many years to curb my smartphone usage. Unfortunately, it stopped working, as it became easy to circumvent by either forcing the program to stop or uninstalling it. I have been in contact with the developer, but they weren't able to find a solution and eventually stopped responding to my emails.

So I need an app that prevents me from disabling blocks at all.

While I can pay for an app even if it is a little expensive, I cannot justify an expensive subscription priced in US dollars (although I might do so if there's no other alternative).

Any suggestions that could help me out? I'm using my phone 24/7, I can't stand it anymore. And I cannot simply turn it off because I have a toddler, and I must be accessible to my wife for emergencies when she leaves the home with him.

There are also many ways to use a smartphone that are actually useful, positive, and non-addictive. And I'd rather be able to access these functionalities.

Thanks!

I'm curious as I'd be possibly interested in a solution that works for me. I'd be looking at devices (mainly a robot vacuum cleaner) that are able to operate without a mandatory internet connection that send over data to a datacenter to collect your information without your explicit knowledge (nearly everyone just clicks 'accept' when reading the ToS after purchase).