Editor's note: posting a bit late, sorry.

Albums typically release on Fridays. This is a thread to discuss week of May 03, 2024 releases that have recently arrived on our doorstep, or been announced for the future. Feel free to share albums, singles, EPs or reissues that have caught your eye and interest, or share your thoughts about any new music that you've had the chance to listen to this week. I suppose let's try to keep the focus mostly on stuff that was released or announced this week, since we already have a "What have you been listening to?" thread.

Discussion Points
Is there anything you've been looking forward to listening to?
Any releases that have surprised you?
Have you listened to any new music recently? What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past? How does their latest work compare?

Links:
Pitchfork - Out This Week
AllMusic - All New Releases
Stereogum - New Music
Shreddit Release Tracker
New Metal and Hardcore Releases - Lambgoat
Heavy Metal Album Release Calendar - Heavy Music HQ
Upcoming albums - Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

I rode a V65 Magna for 20 years til a minivan took me out in 2005 and nearly killed me. After that I hung up my leather gloves for quite awhile and lately have only ridden a small dirt bike. But the idea of getting back on big bike keeps popping up.

But Im already in my 60s. Comfort means a LOT at this point. And yet I dont really want to be riding an big ol' Aspencade either. So it seems like an older sport tourer would fit the bill. Like a Honda ST1300 or a BMW R1200RT or maybe a Yamaha FJR1300. Something with plenty of torque but still enough power and comfort that I can bring the wife along on the occasional ride. I also still have a mini trailer that I used to pull behind the Magna so I might want to use that again, although my tenting days will probably give way to staying at more hotels.

The biggest comfort feature on my bike was the day I got a Corbin saddle, but I can imagine that now Id definitely want heated grips and maybe a heated seat, heated vest. And Im tall so the adjustable fairings are a bonus for sure.

Anyone drive any of those bikes and have an opinion? Seat comfort? Buffeting/wind noise? Smoothness? Handling?

Hey Tildes,

My husband and I are planning a trip to Barcelona and Lisbon at end of June.

I'm looking for any tips and things to know about Spain/Portugal.

Any thing I should get in advance like museum tickets or tours. Looking for a night life scene that isn't so much of a tourist trap. Also, any ettiquete I should know about. This would my second time in Europe, so any advice would be appreciated.

Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you.

I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so the stepdaughter could play the Sims.

She has called me three times to tell me it's completely frozen - like hard locked, dead freeze, screen is displaying the last frame it was on but you can't interact with the PC in any way until you reset it with the power button.

She let it sit for an hour before she gave up. Two times this happened while stepdaughter was playing the Sims 4 and once it happened while my brother-in-law was watching YouTube videos.

Obviously, I went through the usual things you'd think in this situation and I had her bring the PC over so I could do some digging. Fully expecting to find a hardware issue, I tried the following:

1. I ran the Sims while also watching multiple YouTube videos in the background. Couldn't replicate the issue after about two hours.

2. I obviously checked the temperatures while gaming and YouTubing, checked the usual performance metrics and everything was great.

3. Ran OTTC stress tests - all of them. Under heavy loads, this thing was doing fine. Even at 100% utilization, the memory, graphics card, and cpu were fine. Did a power test too, fine. Did a "combined" stress test and all was fine.

4. Ran mem86, no issues with the memory, no bad sectors or errors.

5. Played Skyrim on ultra for several hours. This was a really fun way to troubleshoot.

6. Checked the event log from the day she had freezes. I can see where the event happened because leading up to the unexpected "power off" event, there were a ton of events related to various processes timing out. Seems like it was unable to connect with services and run certain background processes while it was frozen? I didn't see anything that really stood out to me as being a possible cause except...

7. in the event viewer, there were a few events related to Microsoft family safety. I set this up at the request of SIL so stepdaughter wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't. In the Event Viewer, it seems like maybe it wasn't verifying something correctly or didn't have permissions it needed? Upon Googling, I found some other folks with this error but I couldn't find anything about whether it caused freezing or not. Seems like one of the many events that just gives a warning but doesn't have any effect. One guy who had this issue had his computer freeze but disabling the family safety entirely did nothing. People in the comments thought it probably wasn't related. I also found another event that Google wasn't very helpful with. Might have been related to sound card but my sound card drivers are up to date and again, I have not been able to replicate the issue even when gaming and watching videos, so I don't know if it's related.

8. I ran the Windows System Files Checker and found no issues related to my Windows install.

I can't figure out why this would be happening only at her house. She says it froze after one hour of use every time. This brings me to the title of this post. My SIL moved into a really old house with sketchy wiring. My FIL told her the wiring is so bad that she needs to get it fixed immediately or risk a fire, so she's working on that. This house has a butler stairway, asbestos, and plaster/lathe walls if that tells you what we're dealing with here. This is the ONLY thing I can think of that would possibly be different between the two setups and maybe explain the freezing, but it just seems so unlikely to me that this is the cause.

Help?

No, I don't just mean "I don't really like my clothes" or "my clothes aren't universal enough" or whatever. I literally have almost no clothes: maybe like 5 T-Shirts in total, 2 pairs of jeans, some socks and underwear. The issue is not just with me disliking my clothes - the issue is that half of the time I'll wake up and find out that I have zero clean clothes to wear.

Luckily, this is not a financial issue, and I can afford to get clothes. However, I have absolutely no idea where to start. Most of the information online exists with the assumption that you already have some sort of a wardrobe that you want to expand. I tried just going to a mall and going into every clothing store, but I end up not liking most of the stuff there and only buying like a single shirt. I know that that's how most people buy clothes, but again, those people usually already have enough clothing, so buying a single shirt is fine for them.

At this point, even just thinking about any clothing-related activities immediately trigger severe anxiety and dread in me. I feel very lost and don't know what to do.

Can anyone please suggest what to do in a situation like this?

Edit: I live in Russia, so well known brands aren't that easy to buy

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like double lives, bird flu.h5n1 and cannabis. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was studious.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

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.

...and within a few weeks I was banned from r/iphone for "ban evasion", which I most definitely did not do.

I've had the same reddit account for over 16 years and other than a surprisingly HUGE number of deleted comments and posts (according to sites that track that) that seem perfectly benign to me (mostly deleted for stupidly trivial technicalities), I've never had any problems on the site. Sure, a few unpopular opinions here and there that get downvoted a little but, but nothing offensive, no trolling, etc.

So, I tried to respond, and here's how the conversation went:

Hello. I’m very confused by this ban notification. The only recent activity that I’ve had on this subreddit is to answer somebody’s question, and I cannot imagine how that answer in any way violated the rules. Can you please help me to at least understand what led to this?

...to which the mod replied:

Ban evasion not that hard to get

...and I responded:

I honestly do not know what you're talking about. It appears that you think that I have been posting with multiple accounts, but I have not. I've been using this same account for over 16 years without ever being accused of such a thing. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look and reconsider.

...to which I got:

No the system detects ban evader like you automatically

...

I'm sorry that you think that I have done such a thing, but I have not. I even co-moderate another subreddit that is a very serious one with its fair share of trolls to deal with, so I get it, but I honestly did not try to evade any prior bans.

... and the only response I get back is:

Stop

I'm so sick and tired of that site, I don't know why I went back after doing so well avoiding it after the somewhat recent events that caused me to uninstall all of the apps and stop using the site. The mods there are abusive and power-hungry and it's a toxic place to be. It's a shame because my account is over 16 years old and I remember the old days when it was nothing like it is now. :(

So, hopefully this time I'll stop using the site for good, this was the reminder that I needed. I've avoided Facebook and other social media due to the toxicity, I don't know why I expected reddit to be any better; please stay above the fray, Tildes!

If you're me, you would be someone who would be mildly interested in VR for almost 8 years but never actually managed fork over the money to get a headset. Maybe because you couldn't or because you were afraid to spend so much money on something you don't even know if it would give you motion sickness.

Last week, I decided that now is the time. I've looked over several devices, like Valve Index, Pico 4, Meta Quest 2 and 3. But my mind was kinda made up, I knew that I would either go for Valve Index or Meta Quest 3. I picked up MQ3.

The thing arrived on saturday morning. Time to play some games.

I boot up my desktop and install Steam VR, time to play Half Life Alyx... Cards on the table: I don't consider myself a Half Life fan. Not because I disliked the games, it's just I never played them when they came out. I can see why they are fan favorites and how impressive they were at the time, but I missed the chance to be wowed by them when I played them so many years later.

But HL Alyx is fixing that.

First, being "inside" the game was new. As someone who always played games on a 2D screen, I spent way more time than I care to admit looking at different objects, rotating them, interacting with them, etc. Once that novelty wore off, I proceeded with the game.

There's a scene where someone throws you a weapon. He tells you not worry, it's not loaded... Well, except it was, and when that thing dropped on the floor, it fired, I legit got jump scared. Later, when the crab thingies jump at you, I legit panicked and started shooting hoping that I would hit them. Dark sections? Legit horror.

I... Do not remember the last time I felt any of these things. If this was a conventional game, the gun falling would at best get a chuckle from me. Crab thingies? Meh, just aim and shoot them. Dark sections? Just another gaming section.

I think I get it now. I get why so many people like VR games. It's different. Because it's more immersive, you feel more involved with what's happening. Now that I'm writing this, yeah it sounds obvious, duh, but in a VR game it feels like it's you who is inside the game, in a 2D screen it feels like you, but at the same time you also understand that it's not you, it's your character who is inside the game.

I've been also trying Job Simulator.

As far as games go, this isn't really a "game". It feels more like a fun tech demo "hey, this is what you can do with a VR". An equivalent game with conventional 2D screen and controllers wouldn't get any attention from the public, and as for me, I would turn it off after 5 or 10 minutes.

But, it was legit fun. The Gordon Ramsay Robot yelling at me to cook food just made me grab everything and throw them at his face. In the office, I would throw things over to other cubicles like an annoying kid.

It's exhilarating to rediscover the joy and immersion that gaming can offer through the lens of VR. The sense of presence and tangibility breathes new life into familiar experiences, reigniting that childlike wonder I once felt.

Do you go by gut/heart feeling?

Do you analyze by head?

Do you write out long lists of pros and cons on paper?

Do you consult a lot of family and friends and then go by consensus majority?

Do you overanalyze and agonize and hit decision paralysis? If so, how do you get over that or push through it?

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.

I saw a video about the failure of a product, and they mentioned TV advertising, which got me to wondering… do people still even watch traditional TV anymore? It seems to me that everybody that I can think of that isn’t 70 or older just streams everything. How is the old business plan still operating?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

So I have heard of the game for a while, but I am not a fan of zombie games. I was recently shown a video apparently about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XuKU2RziLo), and the game itself looks pretty awesome from my point of preferences.
The problem? None really, except... zombies. Just not a fan at all.

Edit: I like the menu options, though they seem like they could be clunky. I like the survival and crafting aspects.

So my question is this: Are there any games similar to this style of gameplay that might do without the zombies?

Would prefer on Steam/Linux, but if you have a similar equivalent that's great. Thanks. :)