Overall band score 8.

What's the next step? I am an Indian and wish to pursue a master's program in the US.

Should I prepare for the GRE and apply for spring semester? Total newbie about all of this university stuff.

Thanks in advance.

This post inspired by a story I read in another thread, where a guy gave support to a small-time musician who had actually quit for a while before it sounded like passion was reignited.

Actually, let me give some context for this thought: I have an old friend who does a variety of arts, including acting and playing in a band. I'm pretty sure they're both side-gigs for him, but the stuff he posts on social media is all about "Support the small-time artists!"

So between that and the post I read here... it got me thinking. There are some very nice things about going and seeing smaller artists in smaller venues- it may not be as crowded, and it will probably be cheaper than anything Ticketmaster has its greedy hands in. In addition, there might even be a chance to talk to the artist/musician at some point, and making those connections can lead to a variety of possibilities.

So supporting these small-time artists can lead to a lot of great benefits... then what's the problem with it?

As I thought about it, the first issue is: you have no idea what you're getting into. I'll be the first to admit it: I'm very, very picky with my music tastes. About a year or so ago, I was invited to see some friends of friends perform. Again, small-time artists. I went to support them... and ended up VERY disappointed. Mostly because, the style of music they played was not to my liking at all.

Another difficulty of going to see small-time artists? In my case, I've been lucky to have gone to a variety of concerts to see big-name bands (side note: my preferred style of music is rock and metal), and after being used to those... seeing a small-time artist just feels very, very lacking (for obvious reasons). Sure, it is possible for them to improve given time- my friend that i mentioned above has done exactly that over the years- but the first impressions are super-important, especially when it comes to deciding if you want to continue supporting them or not.

I enjoy music, and there are some cool things about supporting smaller artists... but at the same time, due to lack of advertising, you never know what you're going to get. It may be an awesome experience, or end up a complete flop. I want to know, for anyone who supports relatively unknown artists, what's your take on it?

I live in what is basically a studio apartment in someone's basement with a little cobbled-together kitchen in a small room attached to my bed/sitting area. My cooking is done in a largish Cosori convection toaster oven (mine) with a double-hob induction hotplate (kindly provided by landlord) sat on top. The hotplate is from Nutrisystem (not sure of model exactly) and it's definitely a step up from the electric one I brought from my old place (My kitchen was the laundry room there!), but over the last few years there's been a few things about it I don't like so I'm considering buying a new one.

The main problem I have with it is the lack of specificity in the temperature settings: it goes 140°, 210°, 260°, 300°, 350°, 400°, and above that I never really use, but I often have trouble with something cooking too fast at, say, 300° but too slow at 260°. I'd like a device that lets me make smaller, (like maybe 5-10 degree) adjustments at the very least. Also there is the issue that if you go above a certain temp on one hob, it will dial down the other automatically to keep from going over max watts, but it also means I can't boil water on one while searing a steak on the other. Not sure if there's a way around that what with the limitations of current portable cooktop technology and American house wiring codes. As you may have gathered from my living arrangements, I need to keep the cost down to a reasonable <$300, preferably <$200.

Because it needs to sit on top of my toaster oven, I need a side-by-side arrangement. I was gifted Amazon cards for Xmas so I'm hoping to find something on there to defray the cost, but if anyone can point me to the perfect solution somewhere else, I'm interested. Everything I've looked at there so far has preset temp settings and I can't tell if they are fine enough to be any improvement.

Bonus points if anyone knows of an induction-compatible stovetop griddle that heats evenly and isn't heavy-ass cast iron.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I had a few questions about the game, because it's currently on sale for about half off (with the sale and the 33% coupon stacking) on PC. It was nominated for GOTY and won a lot of awards, and I hear a lot of praise for it, so as a Control (2019) fan I'm interested.

1. Do you need to play Alan Wake 1 to get the story? I heard someone say the second one summarizes Alan Wake 1 for you, but I wasn't sure if that's true.
2. Would someone who loved Control and RE4 Remake but hasn't tried Alan Wake 1 like this game? (spoiler-free answer if possible)
3. What did you think of the game? Was it any good? Was it worth the purchase?

It's hard to find hopeful sci-fi these days. The zeitgeist is that things are bad and they will keep getting worse. That's a problem, because before you can build a better future, you must first imagine one. This is the first book I've found in a long time that does a credible job of that.

This post is about a pair of novels by Daniel Suarez. The first one is Delta-V, the physics term for a change in velocity; the second one is called Critical Mass. Together they're a heavily-researched look at asteroid mining, offworld economics, and space-based solar power.

The series takes place in the mid 2030s. By this point, the symptoms of climate change are becoming serious, creating what people call "the Long Emergency": famines, storms, and waves of climate refugees. There is real concern that the global economy will collapse under the strain. To avert financial apocalypse, an expedition is launched to mine the asteroid Ryugu; the first book covers the miners' training, their long journey through space, and the hazards of mining an asteroid in deep space. In the second book, they use those mined materials to build a space station in lunar orbit, to set up a railgun for launching materials from the moon's surface into its orbit, and to begin building the first space-based solar power satellites.

I was surprised to learn that space-based solar power is a real thing that the US, China, and several other countries and companies are actively pursuing. Basically, you have a bunch of solar panels in orbit, which beam power down to receiving antennas ("rectennas") on Earth. You lose a lot of efficiency converting the electricity to microwaves and back, but solar panels on orbit have access to ~7-10x more energy than those on the ground, since there's no atmosphere in the way and it's always solar noon. In exchange for a large initial investment, space-based solar power offers always-on, 100% renewable energy that can be switched from New York to California at a moment's notice.

That initial investment is a doozy, though. SpaceX is working on lowering launch costs, but launching material from Earth's surface into orbit is going to be very expensive for a very long time. So these books look at what might be possible if we could avoid those costs. What if we could create mining and manufacturing operations in space? What if we could use those to generate clean power in heretofore undreamt-of amounts?

I’m going to excerpt a conversation from the second book:

[At dinner,] chemist Sofia Boutros described the unfolding water crisis in the Nile watershed back on Earth—and the resulting regional conflict. This elicited from around the table a litany of other climate-change-related calamities back home, from wildfires, to floods, to famines, to extinctions.

The Russian observer, Colonel Voloshin, usually content to just listen, chimed in by saying, "Nations which have contributed least to carbon emissions suffering worst effects." He looked first to Lawler and then Colonel Fei. "Perhaps the biggest polluters should pay reparations."

Dr. Ohana looked down the table toward him. "It's my understanding that Russia has actually benefitted from warmer climate."

Yak replied instead. "Not overall. Soil in Siberia is poor. Wildfires and loss of permafrost also disruptive."

Lawler added. "You guys sell plenty of fossil fuels, too, Colonel."

The electrical engineer, Hoshiko Sato, said, "Complete decarbonization is the only way to solve climate change."

Most of the group groaned in response.

She looked around the table. "That might sound unrealistic, but there's no other choice if we want to save civilization."

Chindarkar said, "We've been saying the same thing for fifty years, Hoshiko. It's barely moved the needle."

"We’ve brought carbon emissions down considerably since 2020."

Boutros said, "You mean we slowed their growth."

Ohana said, "We should be planting more trees."

Monica Balter countered, "Trees require water and arable land. Climate change is causing deserts to spread, pitting food versus trees. Plus, whatever carbon a tree captures gets released when it dies—which could happen all at once in a wildfire."

Chindarkar looked down the table at her. "Nathan Joyce claimed we could use solar satellites to power direct carbon capture. Could that really be done at the scale necessary to reduce global CO2 levels?"

Colonel Voloshin let out a laugh. "That's not even in the realm of possibility. It wouldn't even make a dent."

Monica Balter said, "I respectfully disagree, Colonel." She looked to Boutros. "And Sofia, I understand we must do everything possible down on Earth to reduce carbon emissions: solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal—all of it. But that won't remove what's already in the atmosphere."

Voloshin shook his head. "We must adapt."

Lawler couldn't resist. "Easy for Russia to say."

Balter spoke to Voloshin. "Back in 1850, atmospheric carbon was at two hundred eighty parts per million. Now it's at four hundred fifty-seven parts per million. We put over a trillion tons of CO2 into Earth's atmosphere over that time. Humans caused the problem, and humans can solve it."

The colonel was unfazed. "Yes. All of humanity worked hard to cause this, and it still required almost two centuries to accomplish. It is naïve to think a few machines will correct it."

"Half of that excess carbon was emitted in the last forty years, and direct air carbon capture powered by solar satellites can actually work at a global scale. I can show you the numbers, if you like."

He scoffed. "Even billionaire Jack Macy says that solar power satellites are idiotic—that very little energy beamed from space reaches the terrestrial power grid due to transmission and conversion losses."

Balter nodded. "The number is 9 percent."

The crew around the table murmured.

He spread his hands. "I rest my case."

"But 9 percent of what? Jack Macy neglects to mention that a solar panel up in orbit is seven times more productive than one on the Earth's surface. The fact that he runs a rooftop solar company might have something to do with that.

Boutros asked, "A sevenfold difference just from being in space?"

Balter turned to her. "The best you can hope for on the Earth's equator at high noon is 1,000 watts of energy per square meter—and that's without factoring in nighttime, cloudy days, seasons, latitude. But a power sat in geosynchronous orbit would almost always be in 1,368 watts of sunlight per square meter. So you get a whole lot more energy from a solar panel in space even after transmission inefficiencies are factored in. Plus, a power sat won't be affected by unfolding chaos planetside."

Voloshin shrugged. "What if it is cloudy above your rectenna? You would not be able to beam down energy."

"Not true. We use microwaves in the 2.45-gigahertz range. The atmosphere is largely invisible at that frequency. We can beam the energy down regardless of weather—and directly to where it's needed. No need for long distance power lines."

"But to what purpose? It could not be done on a scale sufficient to impact Earth."

"Again, I could show you the numbers."

Chindarkar said, "I'd like to see them, Monica. Please."

Balter put down her fork and after searching through virtual UIs for a moment, put up a shared augmented-reality screen that appeared to float over the end of the table on the station's common layer. It displayed an array of numbers and labels. "Sorry for the spreadsheet."

Colonel Fei said, "We are quite interested in seeing it, Ms. Balter."

She looked to the faces around the table. "There are four reasons I got involved in space-based solar power... " She pealed them off on her fingers. "...electrification, desalination, food generation, and decarbonization. First: electricity. We all know the environmental, economic, and political havoc back on Earth from climate change. Blackouts make that chaos worse, but a 2-gigawatt solar power satellite in geosynchronous orbit could instantly transmit large amounts of energy anywhere it's needed in the hemisphere below it. Even several locations at once. All that's needed is a rectenna on the ground, and those are cheap and easy to construct."

Chindarkar nodded. "We saw one on Ascension Island."

Jin added, "J.T. and I are building sections of the lunar rectenna. It is fairly simple."

"Right. For example, space-based energy could be beamed to coastal desalination plants in regions suffering long-term drought-providing fresh water. It can also be used to remove CO2 directly from seawater, through what's known as single step carbon sequestration and storage, converting the CO2 into solid limestone and magnesite—essentially seashells. This would enable the oceans themselves to absorb more atmospheric CO2. Or we could power direct air capture plants that pull CO2 straight out of the atmosphere."

Voloshin interjected. "Again, a few satellites will not impact Earth's atmospheric concentrations, and where would you sequester all this CO2?"

"Just a few satellites wouldn't impact climate, no—but there's definitely a use for the CO2—in creating food. Droughts in equatorial zones are causing famine, but hydrogenotrophic bacteria can be used to make protein from electricity, hydrogen, and CO2. The hydrogen can be electrolyzed from seawater and CO2 from the air. All that's needed is clean energy." She glanced to Chindarkar. "NASA first experimented with this in the 1960s as a means for making food here in deep space."

"Really? Even back then."

"The bioreactor for it is like a small-batch brewery. You feed in what natural plants get from soil: phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, iron, potassium—all of which, incidentally, can be extracted from lunar regolith. But I digress..."

Colonel Fei's eyebrows raised. "That is indeed interesting."

"The bioreactor runs for a while, then the liquid is drained and the solids dried to a powder that contains 65 percent protein, 20 to 25 percent carbohydrates, and 5 percent fatty acids. This can be made into a natural food similar to soy or algae. So with energy, CO2, and seawater, we could provide life-saving nutrition just about anywhere on the planet via solar power satellites."

Voloshin was unimpressed. "Yet it would still not resolve climate change."

"At scale it could. Do the math ... " Balter brought up her spreadsheet. "We're emitting 40 billion tons of CO2 per year, 9 billion tons of which can't be sequestered by the natural carbon cycle and which results in an annual increase of roughly two parts per million atmospheric CO2—even after decades of conservation efforts."

She tapped a few screens and a virtual image of an industrial structure covered in fan housings appeared. "A direct air capture facility like this one could pull a million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere each year at a cost of one hundred dollars a ton. All of the components are off-the-shelf and have existed for decades. Nothing fancy. But it needs 1.5 megawatts of constant clean energy to power it—and that's where solar power satellites come in."

Voloshin said, "But who would pay? Governments? Do not count on this."

Chindarkar asked, "Monica, seriously: How many carbon capture plants would it take to make a difference in the atmosphere of the entire Earth?"

Jin added, "And how many solar power satellites to power them?"

Balter brought her spreadsheet back up. "Merely to cancel out Earth's excess annual emissions—9 billion tons of CO2—we'd need nine thousand 1-megaton DAC plants worldwide, each requiring 150 to 300 acres."

The group groaned.

Tighe said, "That's a lot of hardware and a lot of real estate, Monica."

"It doesn't have to be on land. Just 2.7 million acres total—smaller than Connecticut. And that would be spread across the entire globe. More importantly, doing that stops the advance of climate change. If we reduce emissions, then it would actually help reverse climate change."

Chindarkar studied the numbers. "Powered by how many solar satellites?"

Balter highlighted the number. "It would take 1.6 terawatts of electricity—or 818 2-gigawatt SPS-Alphas. Each about 7,400 tons. But again: that halts the advance of climate change."

The group groaned again.

"Eight hundred eighteen satellites?" Jin shook his head. "That would take decades to build."

"Not with automation and sufficient materials here on orbit. You've seen the SPS-Alpha I'm building—it's made of simple, modular components."

"Yours is one-fortieth the size of these 7,400-ton monsters."

"But it's the same design. We just need the resources up here in space, and we could scale it rapidly with automation."

Voloshin picked up his fork. "As I said: it is a technological fantasy."

Chindarkar ignored him. "Monica, what would it require to not just halt climate change—but reverse it?"

Balter clicked through to another screen. "To return Earth to a safe level—say, three hundred fifty parts per million CO2-you'd need to pull three-quarters of a trillion tons out of the atmosphere." She made a few changes to her model. "So with forty thousand DAC plants, powered by thirty-six hundred 2-gigawatt satellites in geosynchronous orbit, you could accomplish that in eighteen years."

Fei asked, "At what cost?"

"Roughly seventy-two trillion dollars."

Again groans and an impressed whistle.

Voloshin shook his head. "I told you."

Balter added, "That's four trillion a year, over eighteen years. Spread across the entire population of Earth."

This was met with a different reaction.

Jin said, "That is actually less than I thought."

"And bear in mind the fossil fuel industry has been supported by half a trillion dollars in direct government subsidies worldwide every year for ages. Whereas this four trillion is for just a limited time and would permanently solve climate change, and we'd see significant climate benefits within a decade as CO2 levels came down. And once it was accomplished, all that clean energy could be put toward other productive uses, either on Earth or in space."

She studied the faces around her. "But to accomplish it, we'd need tens of millions of tons of mass in orbit. Launching all that mass up from Earth would never work because all those rockets would damage the atmosphere, too. However, with your lunar mass-driver—and the ones that follow it—we could make this work. This is why I'm here."

Those around the table pondered this. For the moment, even Voloshin was silent.

Boutros asked, "Is it not risky to tinker with the Earth's atmosphere?"

"That's what we're doing now, Sofia. This would just reverse what we've done and return Earth to the conditions we evolved in."

Chindarkar pointed to the virtual spreadsheet. "Does that seventy-two trillion dollars include the cost of the solar power satellites?"

"Yes. And doing nothing will cost us far more. Best estimates are that by the year 2100, continued climate change will reduce global GDP by 20 percent—which is about two thousand trillion dollars. Not to mention the cost of possibly losing civilization.

"But if, as your CEO Mr. Rochat says, we intend to prove the SPS concept at scale here in lunar orbit, well... then you will make this commercially feasible. In other words, you can make this future happen. Everyone else has talked it to death. The bean counters and decision makers back on Earth clearly won't do it, no matter how critical it is. And this needs to be started as soon as possible—before the situation on Earth gets truly untenable."

This book is not afraid to think big. That's what sci-fi is for, right? And it's extensively researched; there's a bibliography at the end of each book that I've used to start my own research journeys.

I like these books because they're ambitious. They never downplay the scale of the problems we face, but they maintain that these problems are solvable, and they expose me to new ideas I'd never heard of. I found them in my local library. Thanks for reading this wall of text!

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

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Reflect on the games you played this year.

Tell us about it.

Important:

• You do not have to limit your discussion only to games released this year. Anything you played this year is fine.
• This thread is much more interesting if you give details and explanations. Please don’t just list titles on their own.

Conversation starters:

None of the below is required, but feel free to use any of it as a jumping off point for what you want to talk about (if needed).

Consider the following categories:

• Your personal Game of the Year
• Highlights
• Hidden gems
• Surprises
• Disappointments
• Outliers (stuff you loved from genres you usually don’t)

Consider the following questions as well:

• What game resonated most strongly with you, and why?
• What did you keep coming back to, and why?
• What games was the most interesting or exciting to you, and why?
• What did your game playing habits say about your year?
• How did you change as a gamer this year?

I was reminded of that the first season (it's been greenlit for more) of the Netflix adaptation of One Piece came out, a good little while ago. How was it? Have you seen it? I've yet to see it - I've heard good things about it but never saw terribly much discussion about it online.

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.

One of my favorite rabbit holes is lost media. There are two definitions for how it usually comes up: first is media which is considered lost or otherwise inaccessible. The second isn't necessarily lost for sure, but simply relatively obscure media people can't identify. A lot of searches start with people recounting some vaguely traumatizing memory of some TV show, movie or book from their childhood, which can then turn into a vicious hunt that takes years to solve. The most famous example is probably the "Clock Man" which played a big role in drawing general attention to the concept of lost media.

Famous examples include the early seasons of Doctor Who, London After Midnight (and many, many, many other silent films), the first Superbowl, an extended version of the ending of Freaks, the original 9-hour cut of Greed... You can find countless ongoing searches today for all sorts of media ranging from songs to video games to commercials and even commercial bumpers.

It's a fun rabbit hole, particularly when you look into the searches themselves and how media gets found. Does anyone have any particular pieces of lost media you're looking for or invested in, or a search or piece you just find interesting? Feel free to talk about cases that have been found, too!

it's the end of 2023, and I figured it would be fun to put together a list of the games which made the best impressions on me throughout. Post yours! It's cool if it wasn't a game made in 2023; if you found it this year, that's good enough. It's your year, not this year lol.

I've written about most/all of these in longer form here on Tildes. I might end up repeating myself a bit, but if you want a more thorough description they'll be easy to find in my history. Goes without saying I'd recommend any of them. The order here doesn't mean anything.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon - this was my personal game of the year, and one I'll cherish long after. Armored Core has you building, customizing, and then piloting a mech. AC VI took ideas and mechanics from across its series, blended them together into a new framework, and the result is a fast, explosive experience. As it was in the past, the game takes you through first learning the ropes and exploring new parts, then pushes you to get as good as you can with whatever is fun to you. In the best way, it feels like a game from an earlier time in history - its straightforward mission structure makes for a game you can quickly jump into, make a lot of progress, and jump back out of without having to worry about missing much or forgetting what you were doing. Everything about it has been polished, honed to be about as nice as you could reasonably expect. It looks good, plays great, and tells a story that does with mecha what Fromsoft did with AC's mechanics - it's a little bit of everything, elegantly smashed together.

Exanima - This game is perhaps one of the most unique experiences I've yet to see, despite looking like a lot I have already seen. Exanima takes a very detailed, simulation kind of approach to the objective of dungeon crawling. What makes it unique is its physics system. Controlling a character is more like moving a marionette, where you tug the character along to build momentum and aim your swings. Weapons feel significantly different to each other, and heavy armor changes how well you can move. Once you get used to it, the result of working with this system is a dynamic, visceral kind of combat where you may feel confident, but never certain. An errant slash or clumsy step can mean taking a heavy blow, and recovery is not easy. When the game was younger, folks played and loved the combat so much that it inspired an arena mode. The arena is a separate, distinct mode in which you are tasked with building a roster of characters and participating in tournaments. It is a game unto itself. If you're a fan of games with a very high skill ceiling, Exanima is providing you a system that can go really, really far. The game is a project being worked on by a small group of people, already has a lot of content available, and seems poised to continue development practically forever. Don't let "Early Access" put you off, this one is in a state where it's just good to get more of it. What's there is more than worth its price.

Kenshi - I just got into this one and have been blown the hell away by how much there is to it. In Kenshi you take the role of a person dropped into an alien world, and are tasked simply with surviving. How you do that is up to you, and the world is built to notice and react. There is no story, no main quest or objective. Rather, you can learn more about the world by engaging with it, and determine your own goals within it. As you do things like visit new places, eliminate important people, build your own town, etc., the state of the world will change. This can go in many directions, and there are hours upon hours of videos out there of folks pulling off all sorts of wild shit. Truly, it's a game where your playthrough will become a story the further you go. Mechanically, it's like someone combined Morrowind, The Sims, and Neverwinter Nights, with a big coat of Mad Max paint all over it.

Cyberpunk 2077 - I had played this before, when it first released, and though I did like some of what it was trying to do, the gameplay was busted to the point I didn't care to come back. Now that it's had its expansion and a lot of bugfixing, this game stands pretty tall and I was really impressed with it this second time through. Definitely a case of "they fixed it"; they really, actually did. It's not a No Man's Sky-scale redemption arc but a redemption arc nonetheless, I guess. The big ball of stories and systems rolls along and you roll right up in it, with missions playing out similar to an episode of a higher end tv show. They weave and wrap up satisfyingly, and by the end I feel I had a pretty complete experience of having been a Night City mercenary.

Tactics Ogre: Reborn - Tactics Ogre was always one of my favorite tactics games and this remake both ups its presentation and provides a different kind of challenge. Specifically, it eliminates the ability to power-level anyone; your level is capped as you make your way through the story, forcing you to engage with the game's other systems in order to work out an advantage. The best way I can think to put it, is that it goes in a more Chess-like direction, where you need to be carefully considering how your individual pieces work and planning out a sound approach, because you can no longer action-rpg your way out of it by grinding. At least for me, it felt like a fresh take on something I've enjoyed for a long time, and so became the version I most enjoy playing. If you like Final Fantasy Tactics, TO is its precursor. Give it a go and see what you think - at least for me, it won.

Lunacid - Lunacid is a simplistic game that does what it does exceptionally well. Borrowing primarily from King's Field, it's a first person dungeon crawler in which you piece together the weird place you're in by finding stuff and opening up new paths. It's playing the King's Field influence pretty straight; it lives off being spooky and weird, and spruces up combat to suit a more modern sensibility. What impressed me was just how good of an iteration it is; King's Field is a tough series to get into these days and this game feels like a successful effort to bring it back.

Honorable Mention - Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries - this one gets an honorable mention because just to be frank, the base game is kinda mediocre. It's through mods that I had a fantastically good time with it. I was never into Battletech, but did play the old Mechwarrior games, and while I did miss some of the more simulation-ish aspects of the older games, MW5 + the mods I used gave me enough to do and experiment with that it just didn't matter in the end. In particular, Coyote's Mission Pack, vonBiomes, and Yet Another Mechlab added just a ton of stuff, and of course you can go much much further with it if you want. The base game is not bad on its own, it's just easy to see all it has to offer really quickly. The mods primarily add variety, to tasks and options, and it's in that swirl of ideas and systems where I found a lot of the fun I had.

Post your picks! Just about all of this is on sale right now, so hopefully too we'll all find some neat stuff to check out.