Did you use a fire grate with a big space underneath and keep it swept clean? Or did you build up a big bed of ash under the grate? On the advice of a chimney sweep I put a perimeter of bricks under the grate to form walls and we're currently filling it with more and more ash (it really takes a while). It's starting to make a difference in how much heat comes back into the room. Without that void underneath, the fire doesn't burn so hot and cold air doesn't get pulled through so quickly.

(It feels like it's getting warmer - may all be wishful thinking though, I haven't taken any measurements!)

You... you must have been quite some 5 year old.

ELI5 has meant friendly simplified explanations (not responses aimed at literal five-year-olds) since forever, at least on the subreddit where the concept originated.

Now, perhaps referring to differentiability isn't layperson-accessible, but this is HN after all. I found it to be the perfect degree of simplification personally.

Some things would be literally impossible to properly explain to a 5 year old.

If one actually tried to explain to a five year old, they can use things like analogy, simile, metaphor, and other forms of rhetoric. This was just a straight-up technical explanation.

Lol. Def not for 5 year olds but it's about exactly what I needed

How about this:

Take a lot of pictures of a scene from different angles, do some crazy math, and then you can later pretend to zoom and pan the camera around however you want

The experience of driving in cities is inherently shittier as cities get larger.

I second the Yoto. My son and I have had much fun making our own cards and I got pretty good at extracting audiobooks from YouTube, processing them with audacity and making cards of book series that he was into. You can fit a staggering amount onto a single card (5hrs of audio if memory serves).

Honestly that was the biggest extra feature for us, we quickly exhausted all the Yoto store content that appealed, and weren't into any of the big franchise content (except a pleasantly surprising read of Pixar's "Cars") or joining the Yoto club.

Is the data stored on the card, or on the player? My guess is that each card just holds an id?

It's just an id. But the audio is stored on the yoto itself for offline play.

And second the blank/customizable cards, that's what 80% of our cards are and my daughter loves helping track down and extract content. Biggest hits for her have been Roald Dahl and random science stuff.

Roald Dahl has been great for the whole family, we do a lot of driving and listen to them in the car. We are very picky about the narrator's voice. Best so far have been The Witches (Miranda Richardson), Matilda (Kate Winslet) and the BFG (David Walliams - I don't like him personally but he is a great reader). Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a disappointment, the narrator garbles and throws away the lines.

Also David Tennant reading the How To Train Your Dragon series. He is a superb reader with an amazing range. Before he hit the big time with Dr Who he did a lot of radio.

We've also had family members record stories and I've put them onto cards. We gave my son a dictaphone to record his own stuff. He would do great long sagas of mayhem and battle, but he's lost interest in recent months.

There must be some pretty industrial strength compartmentalising going on.

Xfce has long been the only DE that gets out of my way enough for me to actually be productive instead of excited by the possibility of different configurations.

Have you tried a tiling window manager? All I want is an empty black screen and an app launcher.

I admit I'm intrigued by the idea. Do you have any recommendations?

The main tiling window manager using Wayland is Sway, although personally I like the simplicity of DWM. You can easily edit the configuration and compile it yourself.

One of the things I love about XFCE is its modularity. It's literally just a collection of programs that work independently, so while I use DWM, if I need a panel, I just type "panel" into dmenu, and XFCE panel runs right on top of it with no problems, aligning perfectly over the DWM top bar.

If you want to try a more complete DE, I'd recommend COSMIC. It's fresh and fast and very customizable.

Adobe programs were the worst offenders for this in my experience.

My dad told me of one Christmas he spent in Sheffield in the early 60s. He'd been ill or something and missed his train back home so he was moping about miserably. Then his Polish flatmate came home, took him to a park and taught him how to catch a duck (he mimed the actions used, with some string as a snare) which they roasted for Christmas dinner. There's something grim, damp, probably illegal, but also convivial and ingenious about the story that makes me think of Withnail and Marwood in Regent's Park.

I don't share your optimism but I'm glad of it!

It used to be one of my favourite sites for weird DIY stuff. At some point in the mid 2010s I guess ad revenue tanked and social media killed their business model, and it made sense to cash in on their underground zine-y brand to hawk affiliate links, sponsored content, e-courses and clickbait. Sad but understandable. Around the same time I found the same vibe in other disparate places: The Cracked podcast (I still enjoy Jason Pargin's stuff) listening to Mark Frauenfelder's Cool Tools podcast, which is now called Recommendo, which carries on the affiliate link stuff and scratches that gadget itch. And the DIY and tinkering vibe is a huge part of HN.