Hey everyone,
I’ve been messing with complex nested if/then statements in Excel for many, many years, and recently dabbled in VBA. I’ve decided it’s time to learn Swift for Apple. Mainly for kicks, but also the fun of creating an app if I find a need.

For those of you that know these things, what’s your biggest suggestion for learning? Most useful tips? Things to watch out for? Etc.

Thanks!

Hey everyone,

It’s my first post here so my apologies if I mess something up.

Recently I’ve been refreshing my YouTube homepage constantly because I feel like it’s either:
A.) Suggesting me things I’ve already seen before
B.) Suggesting me things I have no interest in

So I’m going to go straight to the source and find some good YouTuber Channels I may have not heard of.

I primarily enjoy gaming critiques, history topics & natural disaster docs (kind of random I know), videos detailing scammers (SBF, Elizabeth Holmes, etc) but I don’t limit myself to these, I’m pretty much open to anything as long as it’s entertaining and/or informative… preferably both.

YouTubers I currently watch:

• NeverKnowsBest
• LiamTriforce
• Knowing Better
• Internet Historian
• Ordinary Things
• RennsReviews
• Scott The Woz
• SAWS
• ADoseOfBuckley
• DAngelo Wallace

Any recommendations are seriously appreciated. I don’t limit myself to a specific genre, but longer form content is definitely preferable.

Have you been visiting just too many different social media platforms lately, checking them out to see what the deal is? Well, same here. It feels like I've been a guest every night in different houses for the past month and I must say: I am exhausted.

But it's not over, far from it.

And I'm here to give you a heads up: we've witnessed platforms dying in the past, I'm guessing most of us have been a part of some sort of digital exodus before but I have a feeling that this one is going to be more painful.

Mainly because we've created so much data over the years and the majority of it got collected by centralised platforms. There are very few ways to take it with us and move elsewhere, it's all locked in.

Backing up your data now would also be a good idea, before some CEO comes with up the plan that it should be a paid feature.

I just want to say that this is all to be expected because the social web is in a transition period, and that golden bookmark doesn't exist yet. However, I think there are some contenders for it. What I want to ask is: where will you go next?

I've got some ideas, feel free to add your preference if I'm missing anything.

• Threads: Meta's Twitter clone that will be out some time this summer. It will be a federated (ActivityPub-enabled) platform.
• Bluesky: Jack Dorsey-backed Twitter clone. This one is also federated but it uses AT Protocol.
• Mastodon: The Twitter clone. It's got a fairly large userbase now, with lots of instances to choose from.
• Blog: Maybe it's not a bad idea to set up shop on a platform like Micro.blog (which is ActivityPub-enabled and has got community features built-in) and lead a quiet digital life.
• Threadiverse: Reddit-alikes.

I'm going to set up my first home server with an Intel NUC, but I can't decide what OS to use. Ubuntu seems popular but I like Pop!_OS and am not sure if that would be a good option. Then there's TrueNas and Unraid, but as a newbie, what's the best choice?

I'm also just curious what everyone else is using :)

Edit: Thank you for your great responses!

I've been a computer scientist in the field of AI for almost 15 years. Much of my time has been devoted to classical AI; things like planning, reasoning, clustering, induction, logic, etc. This has included (but had rarely been my focus) machine learning tasks (lots of Case-Based Reasoning). For whatever reason though, the deep learning trend never really interested me until recently. It really just felt like they were claiming huge AI advancements when all they really found was an impressive way to store learned data (I know this is an understatement).

Over time my opinion on that has changed slightly, and I have been blown away with the boom that is happening with transformers (GPTs specifically) and large language models. Open source projects are creating models comparable to OpenAIs behemoths with far less training and parameters which is making me take another look into GPTs.

What I find surprising though is that they seem to have only experimented with language. As far as I understand the inputs/outputs, the language is tokenized into bytes before prediction anyway. Why does it seem like (or rather the community act like) the technology can only be used for LLMs?

For example, what about a planning domain? You can specify actions in a domain in such a manner that tokenization would be trivial, and have far fewer tokens then raw text. Similarly you could generate a near infinite amount of training data if you wanted via other planning algorithms or simulations. Is there some obvious flaw I'm not seeing? Other examples might include behavior and/or state prediction.

I'm not saying that out of the box a standard GPT architecture is a guaranteed success for plan learning/planning... But it seems like it should be viable and no one is trying?

For the past week, I have been researching headphones/earbuds, buying them, and then cancelling the order immediately because I realized I was making a compromise on what I am wanting. Not a crazy amount of cancelled purchases, just maybe...three.

Anyways, I am in the market for the holy grail of headphones or earbuds that fits my needs but I am thinking I might have to buy multiple for the different scenarios that I am looking for. Which are:

• Preferably earbuds so I can take one out if I need to have an ear free for something.
• Great mic quality - I want to be able to use these for work call and when I go outside to walk. Really need something that handles wind and background noise pretty well that doesn't leave the other person on the phone annoyed talking to me. I don't want to walk around with a boom mic in front of face though.
• No preference on wired or wireless. If wired, I would like direct USB-C so I don't have to think about dongles or anything. I also read that mic quality degrades with Bluetooth? Not sure how accurate that is but the consensus I have read was that wired earbuds have better mics than Bluetooth. Wireless would be amazing if I knew that everything else worked well. I would take a short battery life to have top notch everything else.
• Decent sound quality for music. I already have a pair of aftershokz that I use for working out so I'm not stranger to compromised sound quality. But when I go out on walks I want to listen to language podcasts so I can hear clearly.
• Active noise cancelling - longshot but this would just be nice to have since I have gotten a taste for these with my Sony headphones.

I would be interested to hear your product recommendations or solutions to my wants. I have a feeling that the perfect product doesn't exist but at the bare minimum I would take something that sounds decent and has a good mic that handles outdoor sounds well. ANC and wireless are optional but would be very amazing to have.

I would be using these with a Samsung S22.

The vast majority of free and open source software available is well known for being clunky, having very unintuitive UI/UX and being very inaccessible to non-nerds.

We can see this in Linux distros, tools, programs and even fediverse sites.

I understand that a lot of it is because "it's free", but I also feel like a lot of people who make and use FOSS don't actually value user-friendliness at all. I feel like some of it is in order to gatekeep the less tech savvy out, and some of it is "it's good enough for me".

What are the best theories for why this is the case?

EDIT: A lot of replies I've been getting are focusing on the developers. I'm asking more why the users seem okay with it, rather than why the developers make it that way.

Hi,

I saw that Proton now has a Family Plan that includes all of their services including mail, calendar, drive, etc.

I've been looking to detach my and my family's life a bit from the big corps like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Proton sounds interesting.

At the same time I am wondering if they're really to be trusted any more than any other company. I found some critique of the E2E encryption being basically snake oil and not properly implemented etc. I am of course aware that there're always tradeoffs and while privacy is definitely nice, I don't need to go to an extreme degree of "no logs whatsoever, never even turning anything over to the police", I think I am just mostly looking to make me and my family less of a product of advertising, possibly AI/ML and so on, so some compromise is definitely possible.

I am curious, does anyone here have any experience with or opinions on the company and their products?

I am looking for a wi-fi tablet for singing from pdf sheet music on a shared Google Drive. The phone is too small of a screen.

In the past, tablets at this price are often junk, already end-of-life, and run so badly they are unusable (balky when simply scrolling). So, I am still using paper for now, afraid to buy yet another disappointing piece of junk despite not needing anything high end.

Any suggestions?

I, clearly along with many others, recently left Reddit and have personally decided not to return unless it sees drastic, lasting change. However, this has made it clear just how reliant I was on the site for multiple aspects of my life, ranging from local and world news, to hobby related announcements, to perspective, advice, and memes directly from marginalized communities. In Tildes I've already found some of what I've been missing, and I'm sure I'll find more as the community continues to grow, but Tildes doesn't have the same setup to allow for finding the same niche communities that I once had (nor should Tildes ever need to have that).

With all of that said, what gaps are you currently experiencing? Have you found any good sites or resources that have helped you or might help others in the thread?

I signed onto Reddit six years ago because that was where I could discuss stuff I liked intelligently. Due to social awkwardness and poor conversational skills, I feel like I contribute nothing to the conversation anywhere, on forums or IRL. I even signed up for Stack Exchange, Hacker News, and Ars Techinca for discussion, but they all look like you need a Ph.D. to contribute anything meaningful?

Am I alone on this? How can I be a productive part of the conversation?

What's it like over there right now? IIRC the blackout was supposed to finish today. I've decided to quit reddit unless something changes, so I want to do my best not to visit the site, but I am very curious about what the website and culture has been like for the past few days. And now that the initial blackout is 'over', how many subreddits have started to emerge again? Are people coming back now and acting like they've won? Has reddit responded to the blackout at all?

As the title says, could someone explain the Fediverse or this whole concept of federated instances?

I looked at Mastodon a few months back and recently at Lemmy and read a few articles and I still don't quite get it. I joined a Lemmy instance but didn't see any content from other instances. (God this makes me feel old)

To me, a non techie (who is reasonably computer literate), the problem with all these federation based platforms is that they don't seem immediately intuitive to laypeople.

It also seems to have the problem of individual instances being quite parochial in that there seem to be a lot of niche instances but few that are necessarily generic for an international audience, or conversely instances that are too vague ('this is an instance for humans') whereas with something like Reddit you just sign up and post in subs just like vbulletin based forums and subforums back in the day. Tildes is essentially similar in principle.

Please feel free to tell me, if I'm an old man yelling at the Cloud.

To be clear, Matrix as in the communication protocol. Curious if anyone has any recommendations for communities there. Personally I am mostly in the NixOS space, since that is the official chat for issues and questions.

I have never been a leader at a big company (or anywhere...), and honestly I am pretty ignorant when it comes to money and business, so maybe that's why I feel this way but... isn't this what for-profit companies ultimately are supposed to do? (make money?)

Reddit is blowing up today over his internal memo, and that's when I kind of started to feel bad for him. Wouldn't an internal memo be expected at a time right now? Wouldn't it say that kind of stuff? I'm just curious but for others, if you were in his position, what would you do right now? Is there a better move to be made? What should he have said in that memo? I kind of feel bad for him. At the end of the day he helped create reddit, and it must kind of suck to watch your own project devolve and people come to hate you.

The thing about this API decision that got to me is how abrupt it was - 30 days or thereabout. That doesn't seem like very long. But aren't these decisions usually made by multiple people? (not just a CEO?) I also think it sucks that reddit app hasn't been made accessible to vision impaired folks. So maybe he sucks as a leader, but is that a reason to hate him?

I'd love to better understand.

So, I’m moving to a new phone and revisiting a lot of accounts, apps, and settings.

When it comes to things like location history or ad personalization or whatever, is it even worthwhile to turn it off? Am I really supposed to believe that because I have some toggle off that Google suddenly doesn’t track where I drive on Maps? Like if they are going to be tracking me, which I assume they are, I might as well be able to see it to rather than have it exist in the aether somewhere where the info is attributed to me but not viewable in the UI.

Even with ads, I know shadow profiles are a thing, and that they definitely have data beyond what they show in the UI, so might as well opt in there too right? Plus, the non-targeted ads I get are basically porn-tier ads or stuff for gay men.

What should I do here? Move into the woods? Feels like I can’t win.

Hello there
(oh god, I am opening my first thread here - so exciting)

I'd love to ask the people here about local LLMs.
To be honest, I got interested in this topic, but am leaving reddit, where a sub r/locallama exists.
I don't want to interact with that site anymore, so I am taking this here.

My questions, to start us off:

• Models are available on huggingface (among other places), but where do I get the underlying software? I read "oogabooga" somewhere, but honestly, I am lost.
• If I only want to USE a local model, what are the requirements, and how do I judge if I can use something from the values of "4bit / 8 bit" and "30B, 7B"??
• If I get crazy and want to TRAIN a LorA ... what then?
• Good resources / wiki pages, tutorials, etc?

I immediately installed iPadOS 17 Beta 1. Apart from quirks with saving images from the browser, it's been about as solid as the latest 16.x.x.

Anyone running the other betas as your daily drivers?

I'm also eager to hear from Sonora users. Considering updating my i7 Mac Mini.

Here are my views on this:

• Windows: The Windows attitude towards privacy isn't good with their telemetry and other data collection increasing gradually from 8 to 10 to 11. In fact, most geeks across the support forums think that 7 is probably the safest and most privacy friendly Windows version but MS is doing everything it can to ensure that newer software doesn't support 7 and it just goes into obsolescence.

  The "default" state in which a W10/11 laptop comes today is so privacy unfriendly that it sends all kinds of data like contacts, location, etc. to Microsoft and their "trusted partners". You can't turn off this data unless you've visited power user forums and know exactly where to find those settings, and basic telemetry still won't be disabled of course.

  As ironic and unintuitive as it sounds, Microsoft Windows was probably much better in privacy department during the bad old days of Gates and Ballmer compared to the good "open source and geek friendly" days of Satya Nadella!

• Mac: Apple systems should ideally be privacy friendly considering the amount of premium they charge to their products and services. But how well does that work in practice? I've never used an Apple product but those who use them seem to have the impression that they're no good in this department compared to others.
  Logic tells me that a more capitalist devil should be no different than the less capitalist one, they're probably all the same when it comes to throwing user's privacy in the bin!

• Linux: Linux used to be the holy grail of users who cared about privacy many years ago but does that still hold good today? Ubuntu was also in some data collection controversy or other many times in past, but how are the state of things today? And what about the derivative distros, are they good too?

Let's share our favourite mono fonts and maybe we can find some new favourites. I used to use whatever was inbuilt with Visual Studio and JetBrains' IDEs, but since JetBrains released their JetBrains Mono, I've started using it everywhere. I override the monospace font on every website with it. Never was a huge fan of Fira Code, Consolas, or the other popular ones. Personal taste. But somethings about JB Mono just speaks to me!

Are you a ligatures person? Personally, I love them :)

It's pretty clear that those times are over, but I'm sure many of us remember the heydays of VC funded tech extravagance. These are the ones that come to my mind, hoping to hear others experience.

• At one point, uberpool was cheaper than the cost of public transport in the city.
• No sales tax on Amazon!
• So many promotions and code to get you to join in on their platform. This was also before they try to get you to subscribe to their monthly plans.

I recently decided to start using RSS to curate interesting news as I feel I am being overloaded with Clickbait from all directions when I am looking for the latest news or updates on Google. I'm looking for some good sources for Tech or Programming Articles or news that aren’t just clickbait and have good informative content.

I currently have BBC News, Krebs On Security and Ars Technica, does anyone have any other website suggestions which are worth subscribing to?

Ars Technica Information Technology - https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/technology-lab
Ars Technica - Gaming & Entertainment - https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/gaming
BBC Tech - http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/technology/rss.xml
Krebs On Security - https://krebsonsecurity.com/feed/

Hey everyone. I’m a Computer Science major who feels very behind. I don’t have any substantial projects to put on my resume. I look at basic open source stuff and can’t understand it.

I’m currently attending WGU online, but also work full time so I don’t have a ton of free time to learn or work on side projects.

Anyone have advice for a guy in my scenario? I ended up dropping out of college a couple times during COVID and now I’m just trying to get back on the right path.

The language I know best is Java, but I’ve been trying to learn C++ and web development as well. Applied for internships but no luck so far, I think I need to make some better projects.

I'm really excited for the release of the Apple Vision Pro since this seems like a major shift in how we might be interacting with computers in the future.

On the mundane things, I'd like to be able to browse the web and read articles and books while walking my dog, without craning my neck down or being oblivious to my surroundings.

However, I've had a couple ideas where the tech might go or unexpected use-cases.

1. HUD and computer interface while driving with an emphasis on voice control and navigation. This would be far superior to touchscreen center consoles. If apple ever launches a car, I would expect the Vision to be the primary interface.
2. Changing the "time of day" of the environment, like a sunrise alarm clock on steroids for helping those on night shift with nonstandard circadian rhythm.
3. Altering your appearance perceived by others. Could be as subtle as wardrobe changes, presenting as a different gender, or a persona that's not human (like a fursona).

What other cool use cases can you think of, in a world where you can seamlessly manipulate the visual and auditory world around you?

I recently discovered Paperless-ngx and have immediately fell in love. I must now decide whether to host it on my VPS (risky with personal documents), on a Pi at home or finally invest in a proper home server (something cheap but with a bit more power than a Pi4). It can totally be run a Pi, but performance may not be as good.

Does Tildes have a big self-hosted community? What are you self-hosting currently, and what do you enjoy about it?

Further questions:

• If you go by both, do you ever mix them or do you keep them totally separate?
• Do you let your real life friends, family and peers know about your online pseudonyms?
• For people building an online presence as a kind of brand, how does this impact your choice?

I figured it'll be easiest to consolidate discussion of all these in one place. As you find more good, thoughtful ones feel free to comment it and I'll edit them into this list.

Overall impressions seem very positive. LTT, in particular, tends to be pretty comfortable being critical of Apple and even he seems impressed (though I think his is the only review that doesn't have a hands-on component.

The Bloggers:

Daring Fireball: https://daringfireball.net/2023/06/first_impressions_of_vision_pro_and_visionos
Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/5/23750003/apple-vision-pro-hands-on-the-best-headset-demo-ever

The Vloggers:

iJustine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtCEGztr8cw
MKBHD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI&t=917s
Linus Tech Tips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqB0lUcqFbA
Snazzy Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUblFIaZKIk
Norman Chan (via Adam Savage Tested): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0HBzePUmZ0

I think most of us probably agree that browsing the net and taking part in online communities used to have more of an allure, and that in recent years the online experience has been really negatively affected by corporate and cultural trends. At the same time, I have a feeling that many of us probably disagree about when the "golden age" was, and probably disagree even more strongly on what made the golden age so great. So I am curious, what was the golden age of the internet to you? What time or era did you get the most enjoyment and fulfillment out of being online, and what about that era made it so?

I saw all the hype about Google's new passkey rollout on Hacker News and Ars Technica in the past month, and have even read an article stating that, paraphrased, "I should start using passkeys immediately, even if the tech is not all the way there yet."

Some questions:

• Are you using passkeys currently? Which provider?
• Is there a fear of vendor lock-in (looking at you, Apple) or ditching the product in the future (looking at you, Google)?
• Any other concerns I should be aware of, e.g. what happens if my phone gets run over by a bulldozer?

I'm running Windows 10 now, and I understand I can still use Emacs, but I'm seizing the opportunity to give it a shot to other tools. In part because I'm not sure how "native" my Emacs setup would feel on Windows, but also because I reached a point of "tinkering fatigue" and I want things that require less maintenance.

I used Org Mode a lot and was thinking if there is something with a similar feel that is more plug-and-play. Programs like Notion, Obsidian, and Roam Research are like that, I think.

These are some of my requisites:

• FOSS
• markdown or org markup
• I don't wanna pay for anything, ever
• plug and play
• text-based
• easy export and backup
• keyboard-centric or keyboard-friendly
• can be used offline
• local database can be synced using Dropbox
• Emacs-like and/or Vim-like keybindings

Now that ChatGPT's been around for long enough to become a quotidian fixture, I think most of us have realized that we're closer than expected to generalized artificial intelligence (or at least a reasonable facsimile of it), even when comparing to just a couple years ago.

OG AI doomers like Eliezer Yudkowsky seem a little less nutty nowadays. Even for those of us who still doubt the inevitably of the AI apocalypse, the idea has at least become conceivable.

In fact, the concept of an AI apocalypse has become mainstream enough to gain a cute moniker: p(doom), i.e. the (prior) probability that AI will inflict an existential crisis on humanity.

So for funsies, I ask my dear tilderinos: what is your p(doom)? How do you define an "existential crisis" (e.g., 90%+ population lost)? Why did you chose your prior? How would you change public policy to address your p(doom)?

Most of the world seems to be settled around Chrome and Safari these days. I remember using Firefox a long time ago myself but then everyone started switching to Chrome and that also turned out to be a natural path of least resistance for web developers like me who had to test web apps in local environment.

This switch happened in circa 2015-16 if I recall correctly, many other browsers have evolved since then and people are looking at alternatives. The Android Kiwi browser, for example, is a great alternative for power users on mobile who need plugins but Chrome won't allow that. Other alternatives have evolved too like Brendan Eich's Brave browser which seems to be promising. Anyone here tried that yet?

I have half a mind to go back to Firefox but I recently learned about how Mozilla Corp is also funded by Google and that turned me off. Wouldn't you rather want to deal with the Devil directly instead of the Devil's assistant or sidekick!

And then there are also those who use Garibaldi, Midori, etc. but I can't go that purist way. I'm way too dependent on the digital way of life and sites like amazon and flipkart won't work in those browsers. What do you think should be the right path ahead from here?

So, what's the hottest new thing in IT today, what's that coolest new tech which might prove to be a goldmine some years down the line? The way PCs, websites, databases, programming languages, etc. used to be in the 90s or mobile computing used to be in 00s? Early 00s gave us many a goodies in terms of open source innovations, be it Web Technologies, Linux advancement and propagation through the masses or FOSS software like Wordpress and Drupal, or even the general attitude and awareness about FOSS. Bitcoin also deserves a notable mention here, whether you love it or hate it.

But today, I think IT no longer has that spark it once had. People keep mulling around AI, ML and Data Science but these are still decades old concepts, and whatever number crunching or coding the engineers are doing somehow doesn't seem to reach the masses? People get so enthusiastic about ChatGPT, but at the end of the day it's just another software like a zillion others. I deem it at par with something like Wordpress, probably even lesser. I'm yet to see any major adoption or industry usage for it.

Is it the case that IT has reached some kind of saturation point? Everything that could have been innovated, at least the low hanging fruits, has already been innovated? What do you think about this?

I'm in the market for an external monitor for my Macbook M1 and wanted some advice on what I should get. I pretty much only code, read pdfs and webpages, and watch videos (not movies really) on my laptop, so these would be the use cases. I'm trying not to break the bank here so I was looking at some budget options. The Macbook has USB-C so I would be looking for a monitor with that, but my main question is regarding resolution. Do I really need a 4K monitor for my use cases? I'd be interested in hearing people's experiences with 4K versus without — I've never had one but I'm wondering if now is the time to splurge and get it? Will the difference be very noticeable if I'm primarily looking at text?

My first place option right now is this one from Asus, so I'm curious if the brand is reliable as well. I don't think I've ever had an Asus product. If I were to splurge and get a 4K monitor I would probably get this Dell, but at $400 its a bit more than I was hoping to spend. But I also don't want to get a monitor that I immediately want to upgrade. Curious what other people's thoughts and experiences have been.

EDIT: See my comment for some updates. I've backed away from the 1080p options!

I know very little about Linux but have a good overall level of technical aptitude.

I have a device called an eDrumin 10 which uses an app to change the internal settings. https://www.audiofront.net/downloads.php I would like to use the control app from a tablet, but would prefer not to buy a ipad if I don't need to. Would it be possible to run the Linux version from an Android tablet?

This could be for any number of reasons. The reason I was thinking of this, was realizing that there are certain topics that I could probably find the answers to online, but I happen to have a friend who is an expert in that field. So it's usually easier to ask them, and trust that their answer is either accurate or that they will tell me "I don't know".

The other aspect of it was, there are certain topics that are likely to be extremely "noisy" with disinformation (intentional or otherwise) or ads online, and so I'll avoid trying to research them and instead ask a friend.

So I've been watching a lot of Youtubers the past year or so, and I'm about to run out of content! So I'm curious what you all are enjoying? I'll start of course - some channels I really like:

Contrapoints - rarely uploads nowadays but makes great videos about social issues, especially trans and queer issues as she is herself lesbian and transgender.

Perun - weekly 1-hour videos consisting of analysis of military economics, primarily about the Ukraine conflict. He also branches out though, and has done great videos on China's military's modernisation, and the German military's procurement processes, to give some examples.

World War Two - you may remember him from The Great War, this is Indy Neidell and co. who goes through the Second World War in chronological order. It is very in depth as they do it week by week, so this is the most thorough documentary on the war available.

Skip Intro - analysis of TV shows, particularly his Copaganda series is very interesting, in which he goes on deep dives of different TV shows' portrayal of police and how, most of the time, this portrayal is very dishonest.

Climate Town - very informative and funny content about the climate crisis. Lots of things impacting the climate that you wouldn't have ever thought of before.

Jenny Nicholson - makes videos about her own interests, fandoms, nerd culture etc. Very funny but rarely uploads.

Edit: Thanks everyone for the recommendations and discussion! Lots of stuff to sift through now, thank you!

I'm spending time at a new city and Google Maps is shit for walking. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong with it, everything feels wrong. Car centric logic just doesn't work for walking I guess (yes I'm using the walking mode). It feels bad, unreliable, and I'm lost all the time. Yesterday I ended up 2 hours away from my destination and had to call an Uber (big humiliation!). Walking is my preferable way of urban exploration and I hate talking to strangers.

What I want is a simple compass that tells me "go to that general direction and you'll get there". No map, no street names. Just an arrow and a linear distance (like, in a straight line). Like a videogame. Without foreknowledge, street names are just confusing and unnecessary. I can handle the route myself.

Does such an app exists?

A student asked me this question today. They were looking into lithium batteries and e-waste and whatnot.

My initial response was something low, like maybe five or six, but the more I thought about it, the higher the number kept climbing — old phones, key fobs, wireless mice, flashlights, a food thermometer, etc.

I’m not sure I have an official count yet, but the number is WAY higher than my gut reaction. I also thought it was an interesting thought experiment, so I figured I’d ask here to prompt people to do their own inventory.

How many battery-operated devices do you have in your home? (They don’t have to specifically be lithium batteries, but if you want to limit it to just that, feel free).

I will shortly have need for a small, low power (power as in watts, not compute power) system for always-on Home Assistant use. However, Raspberry Pis are out of stock everywhere and while they can be had for extortionate prices on various auction/marketplace sites, I'm not sure I want to spend a load of money on something which might not even be what it claims to be.

Home Assistant suggest Odroid which I'd probably go for the C4 edition but it's relatively expensive (I need to add an MMC and a psu and various other things to the listed main board price)

Any suggestions? The Asus Tinkerboard looks overkill and is very expensive. It needs to be capable of running a standard Linux distro, ideally Home Assistant's own OS. Low power consumption is a definite, 2-3W at idle is probably the maximum I'd be happy with. Wifi is a bonus although not required right now - but the ability to add it if needed is essential. Some amount of expansion capability would be good if I want to add hardware sensors or bluetooth or a Zigbee transceiver or whatever. It needs some reasonably amount of compute grunt I assume but I don't think HA is all that hungry for number crunching power. The machine will more than likely be headless at first but a little bit of GPU and graphical IO would be handy if I want to stick a display on it in the future, which I might want to.

Any ideas? Oh, and also must be easily available in/to the UK.

Well, as the headline says my son wants to join Discord to talk to his friends while playing Roblox on the iPad. Up until now he's been using Teams to communicate while playing. Recently his friends have been switching to Discord so naturally he wants that too.

I only know Discord by name so I'm looking for insight into how it works and how safe it is for children and in general. I'm aware that the age limit is 13.

I know it's a technical question but I want to know specifically from freelancer perspective. A freelancer's decision making differs from that of regular corporate worker in this regard due to many reasons:

1. Freedom to choose: Unlike corporate, a freelancer isn't imposed any process or specific software guidelines to follow. They're free to use Linux and open source if they want to.
2. No team compatibility: A freelancer can work on specific project with a geographically distant team but they don't have to submit to any long-term compatibility constraints.
3. Budget constraints: A freelancer can't typically afford costly licenses. With corporate, they can scale well and bring down the licensing costs which isn't true for freelancers. Hence, open source software is typically more suited to their workflow (even when using a Windows OS).

Given all these factors, do you think a Windows or Linux laptop is more suited for a typical Freelancer? What do you happen to use?

This might be a weird framing but it's been bugging me for a few days. Many fields have a concept of classical training -- this is most common in music but applies in the humanities and many other areas. For example I do a lot of CAD work for my job, but I received what I would consider a "classical education" in design...I learned to draft by hand and physically model before I was ever allowed to work digitally. I got a lot of value out of this approach and it still informs the way I work today.

A lot of people view computers and technology as modern and almost anti-classical, but as the tech industry matures and the internet moves from something shiny and new to something foundational to our society, what will the new classicism look like?

Thanks for reading my question.