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!

So I bought my SP3 in '17 as an old-ass student attempting to graduate. It was amazing as I was able to disable most cloudy things (nothing like today with 365 and the general cloud storage), but still use it as a laptop, and finish up my degree. Since then, I've swapped to Linux and wanted to do it too (did it briefly with Ubuntu, but it was still pretty rudimentary back around '19... no touch screen, not even bloaty, was a bit too small of a UI -- can't remember which DM I used, though I know it wasn't xfce which I prefer when I use a DM, though I use i3 on my desktop).
That being said, it seems like there are great options for the Surfaces now, but for newer options. So I wanted to ping y'all and see... have you used Linux on any Surface, and preferably, would like to know for the older version.

I hear Manjaro has gotten a decent option, as I know they have the PinePhone (which I own one but... I haven't had time to mess around with, sadly). I'm not really looking for the touch screen but as it seems the blutooth is dying on the Surface (possibly unrelated or due to the latest Windows update that has borked so much - I have a firewall that prevents/shuts down a lot of Windows "protections" so I may be the culprit but I prefer to think that if I can't do what I want with what I own, the software is the problem), whatever will make it rejuvenate would be appreciated.

Honestly, it's had an awesome battery life (it can be in standby for a week and lose about 1/3 of the battery), and overall, I feel it's the last best thing Windows ever did. That being said... does anyone have a Surface and would you have recommendations (for any Surface)? If so, why, what distro, and what might you want to share?

Thanks in advance!

Howdy fellow humans. So I need help finding ways to teach my technophobe mother how to not get caught out by scam websites and how to just generally navigate the internet like a tech savvy person.

Recently, she got caught out when applying for the Thai Digital Arrival Card. She paid $80 for the "service". She only realised afterwards that this should not be the case. This angered her and reinforced her thinking that she can't do these things online and will always say she doesn't know what she is doing etc etc. When I googled the thai DAC the first hit on google was the official site and I had to go out of my way to find the one that she got. As I mentioned before she is a technophobe but then won't take the time to learn how to properly navigate the internet or improve her media literacy skills at all. I am also sure that there may be some other more personal issues around her refusal to learn how to use tech but thats a problem for another day.

Anyway so far Iv found 2 crash course series that would most likely help but if anyone else here has other resources for me to suggest to her id really appreciate it.

In light of the stated desire of group members to also read books reflecting minority or disadvantaged perspectives, here is a second book nominations thread.

I'm drawing the boundaries of the category as broadly as I can and feel free to include a book (within the length limit of 600 pages) that you think fits within these parameters. Also, diverse or minority or disadvantaged can apply to either or both of author or main character. Of the books of this type we have read so far, Born a Crime and Kindred were the most popular.

Here are some examples of what we might choose. This is not meant to be a set of hard boundaries, just a descriptive exploration.

Books that qualify include but are not limited to: being from a poor or formerly colonized country, being an immigrant or refugee, being a political/ethnic minority such as basque, tibetan, romani or catalan or kurdish, being indigenous, being poor or ethnic minority in a dominant country, being a sexual/gender minority, being disabled etc.

Nearly two years ago, I made a post titled "On the superhero question" and three years ago I made a retrospective on the box office since theaters closed in 2020.

So I figured it was time for an update.

Re-reading those posts makes me realize how optimistic the theatrical landscape seemed in the wake of Barbenheimer. I don't think I was alone in that; I think the industry felt optimism from that cultural moment as well. That same year was when superhero films imploded, so there was this idea that audiences wanted "real" films. They wanted films by "real" directors, and now there was some discernment from audiences. Grouping both Barbie and Mario, it spoke to the value that other IP now has.

The landscape became much more depressing in 2024. It seems like the idea of audiences flocking to other types of films did not happen. After consistent growth, the box office fell in 2024 from 2023. I remember the panic that the industry felt after both The Fall Guy and Furiosa: A Mad Max Story flopped at the box office. But Inside Out 2, Deadpool and Wolverine breaking out balanced out those disappointments.

Speaking of Deadpool and Wolverine, I remember my prediction of the film being that it would be the lowest-grossing of the Deadpool franchise. Not only that, but I predicted that Joker 2 would outgross it, and we all know how that played out.

Because Deadpool and Wolverine did so well, it delayed the narrative that had been forming throughout 2023, the "superhero fatigue" narrative. It wasn't until now that the narrative is back, and it seems like Deadpool and Wolverine was more of an exception. The film needed 20 years of nostalgia to power it to those numbers. Something under-discussed about D&W's performance is that it was more domestic-heavy than a lot of billion-dollar MCU films (47% DOM split when many of them were in the 30% range throughout the 2010s). Spider-Man: No Way Home also had a split in the 40s, which perhaps was an omen for what was to come.

There were other overperformers throughout 2024, don't get me wrong. Wicked, making over 400M DOM and 700M WW, was not something people were expecting early on. Mufasa: The Lion King still made over 700M WW despite a mediocre reception and a "why would you make this?" issue. But there was certainly a depth issue. Fewer films hit the 100M DOM mark in 2024 than in 2023, and the rest of the top 100 films made less in 2024 than in 2023. It did feel like many films underperformed or did not reach their full potential, which would have helped out the overall box office. Many horror films like Abigail, Night Swim, MaXXXine, could have done better but didn't. Gladiator II would have likely done better if it had been better received. Twisters and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did well, but didn't get the late legs that would have driven it to 300M totals. Bad Boys: Ride or Die decreased from the previous film. Red One and Bob Marley: One Love didn't crawl past the 100M DOM mark. Little things like that that add up.

So how's 2025 looking so far?

In short, not great. We're currently lagging behind 2024 during the same calendar year. Inside Out 2 and Deadpool and Wolverine contributed over 600M DOM each, while our highest-grossing film this year so far is still A Minecraft Movie, and that didn't even hit 500M DOM (it probably would have if word of mouth wasn't horrendous). We do have three big films left for the year: Zootopia 2, Wicked: For Good, and Avatar: Ash and Fire. All three are potential 500M DOM grossers, although Avatar will be making a majority of its money in the 2026 calendar year. There are also smaller-scale studio films hoping to break out, such as The Running Man, Tron: Ares, and Predator: Badlands.

The issue, though, is that many of these films can underperform, and that's been a common theme this past year. The well-received Thunderbolts could not get in the black, and the much-anticipated Fantastic Four is going to barely break even theatrically. Even Superman, with its great legs, will end up below what many superhero films did during the peak, even mediocre or lesser-known superheroes. It does seem like the box office will continue to collapse since nothing is filling that Disney-sized void. Outside of superhero films, Lilo and Stitch didn't perform as well as it could have and neither did Minecraft.

So it's kind of grim. I mean, in reality, movie-going reached its peak in 2002. It has been declining in admissions ever since. So it was perhaps naive to think that the growth we experienced from 2021 to 2023 would continue. But it really seems like the domestic box office will continue to decline, and the international box office has collapsed for a lot of Hollywood films, specifically comic book films. So we're entering a very different landscape, a much more muted world for films from now on. And it will likely continue to shrink.

Now markets shift, they can shift back up. The international market can be brought up again (Superhero movies used to always play better with domestic audiences). But I'm certainly not as optimistic as I once was.

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.

Some days ago, I posted in the monthly ~health.mental thread and it turned into such a long aimless ramble that I deleted it after a couple of hours. I was embarrassed how childishly whiny I came off with that ranting/venting or whatever it was that went through my head at that time, in a vulnerable emotional state. When it gets even worse, during breakdowns, it even becomes that I'm fully incapable of speech which I even less know how to work on.

But it's not just limited to these two states. During more "reasonable" moments, if I can call it that, I still have the sense that I don't know how to express myself. Sometimes I catch myself thinking it's a lack of education or because of not reading enough literature, so my vocabulary is poor. Because even when I use tools full-on graphs of words with emotions and variants and synonyms of those words etc. etc., it still seems like it's not enough.

The best I can usually do is saying that I have a feeling of being overwhelmed, that it's all too much, feeling the feelings too much, extreme emotions, that I can't fit into my body. But I feel like it's still more than that.

Anyone else deal with this too?

I feel like writing another rant, why not.

I guess it visibly started about the time Windows 10 released and probably earlier with smartphones but it is really going into overdrive lately. Especially with all the AI(it is like exponential being used to mean a lot, really. Words have meanings, being minimally precise is not waste of time) being shoved into everything.

Statistical based autocomplete being added everywhere whether it makes sense or not or whether the user wants it or not. They will get it anyway. It makes sense somewhere, in some situations when the user deliberately invokes that.

Settings that really should be standard user accessible are just not and in very lucky cases there are not too painful workarounds. Just several examples. Search bar in address bar(I could write a rant on this alone, is having to decide before using one or the other really that inconvenient?). Forced internet search in Windows start menu search. Automagically starting downloads without any user involvement. Also defaults such as hiding extensions automatically on Windows explorer.

Constant ui reshuffles, generally for the worse(at least from the point of valuing utility and good sized monitor). Less information, straight up insulting language. Uh, oops something broke. This is prevalent even in Linux on some distros. What the hell, why? What broke? Would it be that much effort to link high level overview and logs locations? Or at least start treating the user like an adult again?

Search engines straight up ignoring the actual query entered. I can get any amount of low quality and irrelevant results(not even one or the other, they have to have it both ways) I want but a relevant result on the first page is a miracle regardless if it is actually useful or not. My guess is they simply throw the text into the nearest mainstream bucket with zero regard for nuance and specificity.

Algorithmic content recommendations. That is to say black box content reshuffling made by entity concerned with ads and engagement. Hiding crowd sourced signs of content helpfulness(dislikes).

Forced internet connection, forced online accounts, forced permanent or regular internet connectivity. Forced updates, forced telemetry.

Inability or strong discouragement to take control of the user owned devices. Smartphones, consoles, smart things generally.

Zero chance of being able to read and understand all of the TOS that are thrown everywhere but a strong pressure to accept them anyway. Sometimes after the end user paid already.

It is not hard to see the benefits for one side but I don't understand end users who embrace this. Do they really think it benefits them? It does not take all that much effort to be a generation or two behind the latest user hostile trends even if opting out completely is next to impossible.

Edit - Nominations are closed

This is the fourth nominations thread for Tildes book club.

If you think you might be interested to read with us, please name between one and five books you find intriguing and think others might enjoy. We will later have a voting thread so that each nomination gets an equal shot to win votes with no early nomination advantage. Our next book in August is Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Followed by Ted Chiang Stories of your life and Others in September.

Please feel free to nominate both fiction and nonfiction. Books should be 600 pages or shorter. The first books in series are fair game for nominations if they tell a complete story.

Sometimes I feel like there's something wrong with how I use technology, or I'm just incredibly biased and predisposed to cynicism or something, so I wanted to get a pulse on how everyone else feels about AI, specifically LLMs, and how you use them in your professional and personal lives.

I've been messing with LLMs since GPT-3, being initially very impressed by the technology, to that view sort of evolving to a more nuanced one. I think they're very good at a specific thing and not great at anything else.

I feel like, increasingly, I'm becoming a rarity among tech people, especially executives. I run cybersecurity for a medium sized agency, and my boss is the CIO. Any time I, or any of her direct reports write a proposal, a policy, a report, or basically anything meant to distribute to a wide audience, they insist on us "running it through copilot", which to them, just means pasting the whole document into copilot chat, then taking the output.

It inevitably takes a document I worked hard on to balance tone, information, brevity, professional voice, and technical details and turns it into a bland, wordy mess. It's unusable crap that I then have to spend more time with to have it sound normal. My boss almost always comes up with "suggestions" or "ideas" that are very obviously just copy pasted answers from copilot chat too.

I see people online that talk about how LLMs have made them so much faster at development, but every time I've ever used it that field, it can toss together a quick prototype for something I likely could have googled, but there will frequently be little hidden bugs in the code. If I try to use the LLM to fix those bugs, it inevitably just makes it worse. Every time I've tried to use AI in a coding workflow, I spend less time thinking about the control flow of the software, and more time chasing down weird esoteric bugs. Overall it's never saved me any time at all.

I've used them as a quick web search, and while they do save me from having to trawl through a lot of the hellhole that is the modern internet, with blogspam, ads, and nonsense people write online, a lot of times, it will just hallucinate answers. I've noticed it's decent at providing me results when results exist, but if results don't exist, or I'm asking something that doesn't make sense, it falls flat on its face because it will just make things up in order to sound convincing and helpful.

I do see some niches where the stuff has been useful. Summarizing large swathes of documents, where the accuracy of that summary doesn't matter much is a little useful. Like if I were tasked to look through 300 documents and decide which ones were most relevant to a project, and I only had an hour to do it, I think that would be a task it would do well with. I can't review or even skim 300 documents in an hour, and even though an LLM would very likely be wrong about a lot of it, at least that's something.

The thing is, I don't frequently run into tasks where accuracy doesn't matter. I doubt most people do. Usually when someone asks for an answer to something, or you want to actually do something useful, the hidden assumption is that the output will be correct, and LLMs are just really bad at being correct.

The thing is, the internet is full of AI evangelists that talk about their AI stack made up of SaaS products I've never even heard of chained together. They talk about how insanely productive it's made them and how it's like being superhuman and without it they'd be left behind.

I'm 99% sure that most of this is influencer clickbait capitalizing on FOMO to keep the shared delusion of LLM's usefulness going, usually because they have stake in the game. They either run an AI startup, are involved in a company that profits off of AI being popular, they're an influencer that makes AI content, or they just have Nvidia in their stock portfolio like so much of us do.

Is there anyone out there that feels this technology is actually super useful that doesn't fall into one of those categories?

If so, let me know. Also, let me know what I'm doing wrong. Am I just a Luddite? A crotchety old man? Out of touch? I'm fine if I am, I just want to know once and for all.

Inspired by the recurring topic every Steam sale over at /r/GameDealsMeta:

• What are some lesser-known Steam games that you recommend?

• Are there any genres you’d like hidden gem recommendations for?

If you're interested in previous Hidden Gem topics, you can find them here.

For popular recommendations and general purpose sale discussion, please use the main Steam Sale topic.

Optional: Feel free to categorize your recommendations by number of reviews (as a proxy for popularity)

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?