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    1. As of October 2021 what is in your opinion the best Reddit alternative and why? What are its best qualities?

      I obviously like Tildes, but i wonder if there are more interesting alternatives i don’t know about. I would interested in some objective analysis, I doesn’t have to be really popular , it can be...

      I obviously like Tildes, but i wonder if there are more interesting alternatives i don’t know about.

      I would interested in some objective analysis, I doesn’t have to be really popular , it can be just a place to post for some extra quality discussion.

      26 votes
    2. Looking for a GitHub cli tool

      And no, I'm not talking about git. I'm looking for a tool that I can use in scripts to automate non-git tasks on GitHub such as creating new repositories, drafting releases, uploading assets to a...

      And no, I'm not talking about git. I'm looking for a tool that I can use in scripts to automate non-git tasks on GitHub such as creating new repositories, drafting releases, uploading assets to a release, etc.

      I started dipping my toes into gh, GitHub's official cli tool, but when I created a repository it immediately cloned it, which is not what I want. I know I can just rm -rf the repo but ideally the tool I use would do only what I tell it and nothing more.

      Reading the docs for hub, it might do what I want, although I have some reservations about the project after reading this post written by the developer: https://mislav.net/2020/01/github-cli/

      I've also come across git-hub, which doesn't support creating repos AFAICT, and git-spindle, which doesn't support uploading assets.

      Are there any other command line GitHub clients I should consider?

      Which one do you use? What's your experience with it been like?

      5 votes
    3. Ask Tildes: What alternative apps/webapps do you use to browse Reddit?

      For all its flaws, Reddit is still a great news source, especially for niche areas. Unfortunately, more and more dark patterns are being added to Reddit's official site and apps. I'm reaching a...

      For all its flaws, Reddit is still a great news source, especially for niche areas. Unfortunately, more and more dark patterns are being added to Reddit's official site and apps. I'm reaching a saturation point and thinking I should probably switch to an alternative way of browsing it. I see a lot of apps aimed at browsing images/GIFs. I'd like something more similar to old/compact Reddit, optimized for text without distractions, but ideally less buggy. Any recommendations?

      Edit: thanks all for your answers!

      16 votes
    4. What's your smart home setup?

      Does anyone else here have a smart home setup? I've been building mine over the 7 or 8 years now in fits and starts. At first, it was smart lights in an apartment and then grew to include smart...

      Does anyone else here have a smart home setup?

      I've been building mine over the 7 or 8 years now in fits and starts. At first, it was smart lights in an apartment and then grew to include smart door locks. I bought a house and it now remotes, motion/door sensors, light switches, and more.

      After trying all of the platforms you can think of (Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Homekit, Homekit + Homebridge, Home Assistant, and more), I settled on Home Assistant earlier this year. As I've bought stuff over the years, I've tried to get things that support more than just one platform to avoid being too locked in to one ecosystem. Apple's Home platform is nice, but I can't use it if I want to switch to an Android phone.

      Like many of us, I've had some free time during the pandemic, so I put some work into getting Home Assistant up and running. It's definitely not for the average consumer. It requires quite a bit of manual editing of code to get it working perfectly but I've spent the past few months learning how to customize it and get things working just how I want them.

      I've also been working toward replacing the few components that rely on cloud services with equivalents that can work locally, so I'm not beholden to a cloud service that could disappear eventually.

      I also started automating more and more things:

      • I added a Zigbee controller and a bunch of motion sensors to automatically turn lights on and off as people enter/leave rooms.
      • Turn on the lights for my dogs if no one is home at dusk.
      • A very nice bedtime routine that turns off all the lights in the house, turns on the bedroom TV, arms the security system and then turns on the bedroom lights and slowly fades them out over the next half hour. That last one has been great for helping me get to sleep.
      • My favorite is an NFC tag hidden under the living room coffee table that I can scan. It turns on the TV and receiver, switches to the correct inputs and turns on the light strips I have around the living room. If my wife isn't home, it also turns off all the other lights in the house.

      I'd love to hear what other people have been doing.

      10 votes
    5. Is it me or are "news" articles on the web getting more and more irritating to read

      I've recently experienced something multiple times and wanted to see if others are seeing this. I'm seeing various news articles where the first few paragraphs basically say the exact some...

      I've recently experienced something multiple times and wanted to see if others are seeing this. I'm seeing various news articles where the first few paragraphs basically say the exact some information over and over again 3 or 4 times in slightly different ways. My most recent experience was this article about some hackers selling information on billions of Facebook users.

      The article starts off with the title "Personal Information of More Than 1.5 Billion Facebook Users Sold on Hacker Forum". Straightforward and to the point. Next we get this paragraph in bold:

      The private and personal information of over 1.5 billion Facebook users is being sold on a popular hacking-related forum, potentially enabling cybercriminals and unscrupulous advertisers to target Internet users globally.

      Next is a bullet list of the highlights of the incident:

      Highlights:

      • Data scrapers are selling sensitive personal data on 1.5 billion Facebook users.
      • Data contains users’: name, email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID.
      • Data appears to be authentic.
      • Personal data obtained through web scraping.
      • Data can be utilized for phishing and account takeover attacks.
      • Sold data claimed to be new from 2021.

      This rehashes the number (1.5 billion) and place (Facebook), but does contain new information like what was leaked, and some unsubstantiated claims about whether it's authentic and how it was obtained.

      The next paragraph repeats the 1.5 billion number a fourth time, and repeats that the data is available on a hacker forum. Two paragraphs later, we get another list of bullet points which are identical to the 2nd bullet point above; namely that the info contains:

      According to the forum poster, the data provided contains the following personal information of Facebook users:

      • Name
      • Email
      • Location
      • Gender
      • Phone number
      • User ID

      At this point I stop reading because I mistakenly think that I'm re-reading the same paragraph over and over again. It's an incredibly unpleasant experience.

      Is anyone else seeing this? I've been seeing this not just on smaller sites like the one linked here, but on major news sites like CNBC and CNN, too. I know that news sites are having their budgets slashed, etc., but I literally can't read articles like this. I mean my brain just won't let me complete them because it thinks it's caught in a loop or something. It's hard to describe.

      18 votes