Hi, all.

I'd like to ask for a lazy recommendation. I last bought a KVM maybe 6-9 months ago and I returned it because of audio interference as well as low refresh rates on one operating system.

Ideally, I'd like the KVM to support:

• 1-2 4k monitors over either HDMI or USB-C at a minimum of 120Hz
• 1-2 USB-C peripheral ports
• 1-2 USB-A peripheral ports (presumably we're still at 3.1?)
• audio via 3.5mm
• RJ-45 @ 100 or 1000 Mbps
• a physical button to swap between inputs

For the most part we're talking about swapping between a MacBook Pro and a Windows Desktop. I would love if I could also include my Mac Studio in.the cycle of devices but I absolutely understand If I can only have two.

I hope you're all alright with me flippantly asking for a recommendation! I'm not a KVM expert. I spend my time elsewhere. I was really annoyed at the low performance of the previous KVM I bought. I hope there are folks on Tildes that can rave and rant about their KVM preferences. Thanks folks!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Last time I asked for local bookstore recs I had an AMAZING time visiting local bookstores in Minneapolis!! I'm going to St. Louis this weekend and I would love recs again!

Some extra info:

• Not shopping for any kids currently so children's sections don't matter to me and I would not go to an all-children's bookshop (though I deeply appreciate their existence)
• Primary interest is sci-fi & fantasy, so given the choice between a bookstore with a good overall selection, and a bookstore with a not-great overall selection but incredible spec fic section, I would go to the latter
• My free time will mostly be on Monday, so both store opening & Memorial Day traffic patterns are relevant to me. If the traffic is expected to be untenable I might stay in my hotel instead, but that's helpful to know too

But, all that said, I would love to hear about any bookstores at all in St. Louis that you enjoy going to!

I'm wondering if anyone has recommendations for daily sunscreens, specifically for my arms/legs. I have some Blue Lizard mineral sunscreen that I use but it's a little too greasy for me to really enjoy it for an every day sunscreen (apparently they've rebranded and have a new formula since the last time I bought it, so maybe it's better now? 🤷‍♂️).

I also have this NIVEA Super Water Gel that I absolutely love for my face/neck because it basically feels like lotion/isn't really greasy, but not sure I really want to spend as much to put that on my arms and legs every day.

Anyone have suggestions?

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

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I'm a fairly new detectorist, only been detecting for 25 months, I've only used five detectors Nokta Simplex Plus, Nokta Legend, Minelab Vanquish 540, XP Deus, XP Deus 2, so most of my knowledge of other machines comes from YouTube videos and forum posts, not first hand experience, this post will be all over the place as I didn't plan it out, sort of a stream of consciousness, all prices are in Canadian dollars, it should be cheaper in the USA but with new tarrifs who knows

I guess the biggest issue budget, machines are expensive, the cheapest machine I think worth getting is $275 and the most expensive general use ones break $2000, specialized machines can be $3000 to maybe $10,000 like pulse induction and imaging machines

Also, if you want to just hunt parks and such, you can get away only using single frequency machines, but if you want to hunt salt water beaches, or even freshwater beaches with lots of black sand, you are going to want a multifrequency machine that runs multiple frequencies at once

I am only going to mention on the main three manufacturers in the bulk of this post, Nokta, Minelab, And XP, but at the end I will briefly touch on Garret and Fisher and Bounty Hunter

I guess first I'll list the single and multifrequency machines, since it depends the environment you want to search

I don't know if I need to leave a space under each line like reddit, so I will

The single frequency detectors are;

Nokta Simplex lite

Nokta Simplex BT

Nokta Simplex Ultra

Nokta FindX

Nokta FindX PRO

Minelab Xterra Pro

XP Deus (1)

The multifrequency detectors also have single frequency capabilities unless otherwise mentioned, they are;

Nokta score

Nokta Double Score

Nokta Triple Score

Nokta Legend

Minelab Vanquish 340 (no single frequency)

Minelab vanquish 440 (no single frequency)

Minelab Vanquish 540 (no single frequency)

Minelab Equinox 600

Minelab Equinox 800

Minelab Equinox 700

Minelab Equinox 900

Minelab Xterra Elite

Minelab Manticore

XP Deus 2

Our of all those detectors, I don't recommend the vanquish series, even though they work great at the beach, the box is not water proof, a rouge wave could end it's whole career

I also don't recommend the equinox 600 or the equinox 800 as the suffered from leaking issues and broken coil ears, the 700 and 900 came out addressing those issues

So, if your budget is on the lower end, and you are never going to go to a salt water beach, or you don't want to fiddle with setting and just want a turn on and go machine, the Nokta FindX Pro is a good choice, it's $275, the cheapest machine released to compete with other cheap Chinese machines on Amazon, there's a YouTuber I know who does very well with it, it's definitely not a toy machine, like a couple I didn't mention, like the Xterra Voyager released for kids by Minelab, and a Nokta one I forget the name

If your budget is a little more and you will not hit a beach, the simplex machines or the Xterra pro come in next, they have some settings to tweak, and the Xterra pro has selectable frequencies up to 20khz

I guess this is a good time to put a little blurb about frequencies, lower frequencies like to hit higher conductors like copper or silver

Higher frequencies like to hit mid to low conductors like gold or iron

lower frequencies use more battery power and go deeper

higher frequencies use less battery power and don't go as deep

higher frequencies will also hit smaller targets than lower frequencies

On the market there's machines that will go from 4khz to 120khz as of today, a new high frequency coil was released for the XP deus 2, most machines where you can't select a frequency will use somewhere between 10 and 15khz which is a good medium frequency

And last for the single frequency machines is the XP deus 1, which is a very old machine now, I don't recommend getting it unlss you can get one super cheap second hand, it's still $1000 in stores and if you get the high frequency coil that's another $500, and as of today the deus 2 released it's high frequency coil, so it kinda makes the deus 1 deprecated imo, I can't think of a spot where I would use the deus 1 any more once I get the new coil for the deus 2

Now for multifrequency machines, like I said the vanquish is a good machine, but there's no single frequency option and it's not water proof, features all other multifrequency machines have

The score, double score and triple score are water proof, infact the triple score pro pack is the best bang for your buck you can get, it cost $670 and comes with the good elliptical coil, a big coil, a hand digger, a pouch, headphones, a hat, and a pinpointer, basically everything you need to get started, if I was getting my first detector I would strongly consider the triple score pro pack, the detector itself is almost as good as the top tier detectors when it comes to unmasking targets

The Minelab Xterra elite is a newish release, it's a nice multifrequency machine with a single frequency option and is water proof, it's released to compete with the triple score

The Nokta legend and Minelab Equinox (700 and 900) were the flagship models for a while for their respective companies, the legend has a few more settings than the triple score, and the equinox has more settings than the Xterra elite and the vanquish, both legend and equinox are water proof, have multifrequency and multiple single frequency options, the legend has single frequency options between 4 and 40khz, and I'm not sure about the equinox but it's probably similar

The top two machines on the market are the Minelab Manticore and the XP deus 2, both machines cost in the ballpark of $2000

I don't know much about the Manticore, but it gets high praise from people, the deus 2 has the best audio on the market, the deus 2 is my favourite machine I ever used

So in summery, I guess if you're on a budget and not hunting the beach, go for simplex, findX, Xterra pro

If you are on a budget and hunting the beach go for a score machine, the best one in your budget, or a vanquish but be anal about not getting it wet

If you are not on a budget but don't want to pay $2000 go for the legend, equinox triple score, or Xterra elite, these machines have room to grow into them

If you sure you will stick with detecting a long time, and you have lots of money, might as well go for a Manticore or deus 2, these machines will be relevant for a long time to come probably

And I said I'd touch on other brands, bounty hunter you could get if your just curious if you even like detecting, it's about $150 for the tracker iv, and it will find stuff, but it's a very basic machine, I rather use the findX pro

Garret machines STAY AWAY FROM THE VORTEX, It's been plauged with problems since release, their engineers should be ashamed of themselves, other Garret machines work okay, if you can get one cheap second hand, it could be a way to go, but if you pay full price for one you can get better working machines for the same price range

Fisher is older, and works okay, again if you can get one second hand for incredibly cheap maybe it would be okay, but they are really outdated, I do want to try the Fisher cz21 but it cost $2000 and i don't want to try it that bad

If I wasn't clear on something let me know and I'll try to clarify

The Great, The Lionheart, Our Lady of the Grackles, Olaf the Holy, Athena Glaukopis (grey-eyed), Emperor Youngzheng (meaning The Just/Justified), Amenhotep the Magnificent, Solomon the Wise, Much-Enduring Odysseus, The King of Pop, The Sultan of Swat, the Iron Lady, and perhaps for someone, Couch Potato are all epithets. For folks unfamiliar with the term, an epithet is a descriptive word or phrase that accompanies or replaces the name of a person. (Before surnames this was often used too just not passed down, with some of the occupational ones "the Smith" turning into surnames "Smith"

Sometimes it's used to distinguish Charles the Fat from Charles the Bald, or just to tell people you think they're Great (or Terrible), but it wouldn't be the same as just calling Charles bald today, it's how you actually refer to him. Homer used it a lot, and so did Shakespeare. And it has continued through the present with Oz the Great and Powerful, The Man of Steel, and King James.

So, my fellow Tildis, if you were to have one, what would be your epithet? Feel free to choose one that you want or share what you think others would call you. Or ask for others to give you an appellation directly if you so desire!

Was rifling through a drawer looking for a printer cord and came across my old school calculator. This Sharp Elsimate 201 was my pride and joy. I think I got it in junior high so about 1975. And for a 50 yr old calculator it still does exactly what it should.

Then I realized how much old tech I have that I have an emotional attachment to. I still have a Mac Plus and a Mac SE as well as an Imagewriter dot matrix printer and about a hundred 3.5" floppies sitting in a closet. I loved the first time I tried a Mac after the frustration of using DOS on a 286 PC. It just seemed like light years of improvement to actually use a mouse and playing with MacPaint was magical. I sometimes got chided for being a Mac evangelist at university and many people thought Apple would be crushed by Microsoft - looks like they're doing just fine.

My Marantz stereo is about the same vintage, mid 70s, and the Yamaha speakers still sound as good as the first day I fired them up. That stereo was built back when 22 watts per side was actual output and its loud enough to shake the walls. None of this "300 watts" fakery that came along when boom boxes became a thing. Plenty of distortion and zero fidelity is easy, quality sound takes quality engineering.

What have you got laying around that you just dont want to get rid of?

Week 4 has begun!

Post your current bingo cards.
Continue updating us on your games!

If you did not participate in Week 1 but want to start this week, that's fine!
Reminder: playing bingo is OPTIONAL.

Quick links:

• Backlog Bingo Site
• Week 1 Discussion and Event Guidelines
• Week 2 Discussion
• Week 3 Discussion

Week 3 Recap

10 Participants played 7 bingo cards and moved 38 games out of their backlogs!
There were 0 bingo wins.

Participants played as at least 7 animals:

• a dolphin
• a frog
• a martian
• a rat
• two cats
• a squirrel

At least 1 of those animals possessed a gun.

68% of the games played this week started with a letter in the first half of the alphabet.

Thus far, a total of 107 games have been played for the May 2025 Backlog Burner.

Game List:

• Amnesia: The Dark Descent
• Astral Ascent
• BEEP
• Blue Prince
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
• A Case of Distrust
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
• Celeste (randomizer)
• CrankVenture Capitalist
• DETOUR
• Doc Louis's Punch-Out!!
• Dordogne
• DREDGE
• Ecco the Dolphin
• Echo: The Oracle's Scroll
• Endless Alice
• Erenshor
• Fable Anniversary
• Frog Fractions: Game of the Decade Edition
• From Dust
• Griftlands
• I and Me
• Inscryption
• Legend of Mysteria
• Mars After Midnight
• MAZE
• Neverending Nightmares
• Nomad Survival
• Pool Panic
• Propeller Rat
• Sea of Stars
• Shadows of Doubt
• Squirrel With a Gun
• SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech
• Tales of the Neon Sea
• Tactical Breach Wizards
• Timelie
• Zero Zero: Perfect Stop

1. Announcement

The first Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions!

As previously announced, the first edition of the Tildes Short Story Exchange is now open to submissions!

Title: My Super Cool Story  
Genre(s): Science fiction, romance  
Expected feedback: In this story I need feedback on story, language, everything. You can be as ruthless as you want. I can take it!  
File: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/

Title: The Day My Dog Died  
Genre(s): Drama  
Expected feedback: I'm really insecure about the ending. This is a very personal story—be gentle with me!  
File: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/

2. Quick info

This is the beginning of a permanent short fiction workshop on Tildes! Anyone is welcome to post their short stories and get feedback on them. For more information, please click on the information box above or visit the introduction post.

The TSSE will feature one post on the 1st day of each month. Exceptionally, this first edition will be up from today (Monday, May 5th) until June 1st, when it will be replaced.

During that period, everyone will be free to post their short stories and their feedback at their own leisure.

3. How to submit your short story

You may use any website, blog, format, or platform to share your story!

If you are inclined to share a PDF, please also share your story in a format that is open, allowing it to be easily converted and better displayed on mobile devices such as phones, tablets, Kindles, etc. Some good formats for that are .docx, .rtf, .odt, .epub, .mobi, .txt, .md (markdown).

If you are sharing your story on something like Google Drive or Microsoft Office Online, make sure to set the appropriate permissions!

You may also use detail markdown blocks to paste your story on Tildes itself (see "Expandable sections" in the Tildes docs here).

4. Example submissions

All short story submissions should be top-level comments on the TSSE posts.

I drafted below an example submission that I encourage you to use. You are not forced to follow this model—feel free to add any information you want in your submission.

**Title**: My Super Cool Story  
**Word count**: 949
**Genre(s)**: Science fiction, romance  
**Expected feedback**: In this story I need feedback on story, language, everything. You can be as ruthless as you want. I can take it!  
**File or link**: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/

**Title**: The Day My Dog Died 
- **Word count**: 1500
**Genre(s)**: Drama  
**Expected feedback**: I'm really insecure about the ending. This is a very personal story—be gentle with me!  
**File or link**: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ffWEjR7qP3Gfn693cLvOaRujetl6b_5x/

5. How to provide feedback?

All feedback should be a direct response to short story submissions.

Feedback should always follow the guidelines put forth by the writer, but anything that is not explicitly prohibited can be understood to be allowed. There will be no strict rules on how feedback must be written, but I would suggest that everyone provide something potentially helpful to the improvement of the story. That is, of course, highly subjective.

This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

All previous Save Point topics

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Ever since I was a kid, I thought planetary rings were cool, and whenever I scribbled a non-specific alien planet I would give it rings. Lately I have been worldbuilding for a story, and naturally I gave the world rings. But since I made that decision, I've paid more attention to rings in other sci-fi I watch.

There's a lot of sci-fi planets out there with their own Saturn-esque rings. Very often it's just there for the vibes. In the opening to Rogue One, for instance, Galen Erso's farm is on a planet with rings, but this doesn't really come up or affect the plot in any way. I forgot this until I recently rewatched the movie. Similarly in the Foundation series on Apple TV+, even though the protagonist is from an ocean planet with rings (that are beautifully rendered), the rings never really come up. The endless ocean ends up driving both plot points in the show and the superstitious culture of the people who live there, but the ring does not. Maybe this is discussed more in the Foundation books but I'm not familiar with those.

Sometimes rings end up being plot relevant, like in Alien Romulus, where instead of being set dressing, the rings are an obstacle that can cause the space station to crash. Still, the rings don't directly impact the planet or the people who live there. The thing that more directly affects the colonists' lives is the atmosphere blocking the sunlight instead.

What really got me thinking was when I saw this Sci-Show video a few months ago about research that Earth possibly had rings about 450 million years ago. The rings lowered the overall global temperature and caused more extreme summers and winters due to light reflecting off of them. This made me realize rings can add quite a lot to the actual worldbuilding, since besides from the obvious cultural impact on any humanoid life, it can cause big environmental changes as well. This is pretty obvious when you consider how The Moon can do many things that affect life on Earth such as the tides.

Of course there's nothing wrong with stories hand waving away these types of questions, but it's interesting when stories like Three Body Problem take these tropes like living in a multi-star system and consider how that would mess with the people living there.

Astronomy nerds and sci-fi fans of Tildes, are there any other interesting ways rings would affect life on a planet?

+1 for slashdot, mainly because of intelligent topics and conversations about science, technology, scifi, games and all that fun stuff. Community participation and quality discourse made it interesting.

Everything on popular social media "out there" now is about click bait and sound bites, even comments and replies. Posts (and communities) are reduced to nothing more than grabbing a few seconds of attention.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?