As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

It's spooky month again! I've asked in the past for people to share scary, creepy and unexplained stories in October. But I figure the community doesn't grow enough to guarantee new people with new stories every year. So this year I'll mix it up:

What are some of the creepiest, spookiest and scariest places you've been?

Can be genuinely scary with a personal story attached. Can just be a spooky haunted house exhibit. Can be a place you just found really creepy for no specific reason. It could be as big as a historic mansion with a macabre background, as simple as abandoned buildings, could be that weird attic room with a lock on the outside of the door...

So share away!

I've been trying to use Gimp to replace other options for years now, but it feels so abstruse and severely inefficient. I used to use Photoshop around 15 years ago but have stuck with Paint.NET since - my problem is that I now use Linux and paint.net isn't available natively. I was using Pinta, but it just is like temu paint.net, and I wanted something more/better (also it has a number of bugs that can easily frustrate me and often crash/hang when doing work on larger files or for longer times).

And for decades, people (both Windows and Linux users) have tried selling me on Gimp. I've tried over and over to get into it, but nothing made sense and it took way longer to do simple things than I thought it ought... but I'm trying for reals about 10 years since my last attempt.

Please does anyone have a page that explains how to do things without everything being convoluted? There seem to be no ways to turn commands into keybinds or icons I can just click, and all the keyboard shortcuts I find are in relation to nothing I want to do. Ultimately, I prefer keyboard shortcuts, but I can do icons as well.

Latest example: I want to draw a rectangle outline. Should be simple, but there is no tool to draw shapes (at least that I can find, and the tutorials online don't seem to imply the existence of one either). Okay... I have to select the rectangle select, then I have to go to the menu (Edit) and choose Stroke Selection... which pops up another menu with a ton of options. That's great and all, but in every other program I've ever used (even MS Paint!) you just click an icon and make the rectangle. If you want to alter the shape or something you right click or hold click, or maybe you can bring up a menu. But if I want to make a number of rectangles over and over? Even with keyboard shortcuts I have to make the rectangle (no issues there), then click Edit, "s" apparently takes me to the stroke menu, then enter. Bloated at best.

So, if anyone has a good tutorial or something similar that can help me out here, or an alternative Linux-based raster graphics editor that is free, I would greatly appreciate to know of it/them. I really want to like Gimp, and I'm hoping someone here can either help me get into it or direct me elsewhere. Thanks!

Edit: I realise I forgot to mention, I did use Krita for a bit. It felt like an in between Pinta and Paint.NET, but iirc, it crashed somewhat often or had enough bugs that I went back to Pinta.

Hey Tilderinos.
I've been looking into buying several flash drives since my largest flash drive is a 32GB sandisk, and I use or interact with all the 3 major OSes, I use Linux on my desktop and on a secondary laptop, I use MacOS on a Macbook and everyone else I know uses Windows(So I'll need an exFAT drive for them).
My recent experience with flash drives though makes me more willing to trust my data to a system's RAM than to a flash drive. At least RAM wouldn't lure me into a false sense of security then spontaneously fail, I know that my data isn't going to last a reboot.
I've got 3 sandisk cruzer blades fail on me, once was an error on my part where I accidentally hit it with my knee while plugged into a device(device unharmed, the drive is dead), one time I upgraded the SSD on my SteamDeck and flashed the steamdeck recovery to an 8GB stick, it worked fine while restoring and it still can be read... it's stuck on read only and, Gparted, Windows formatter, Rufus, Mac's disk utility nor mkfs can make it reusable, I assume it entered read only because it tripped some "whoops I'm dying" thing like some SSDs have(from what I know). The last one is effectively a resistor that connects to a USB port, it heats up, SOMETIMES appears on PC, Linux can open it, copying things into it via Nautilus works albeit very slowly, then when I try to open the root of the flash drive it is stuck perpetually trying to load, when I unplug it and plug it back in again, I can see the folders but entering any of them immediately goes into the permanent loading state, mkdir, cd and ls can work on the drive... intermittently, but I'm treating it as dead.

This leaves me with only 2 other drives, my largest drive, is a 32GB Sandisk Ultra, and my smallest drive which has been more reliable than the Cruzer Blades is a 4GB Sony... USM4GP thing, which I have no idea what year it was from and a quick googling didn't bring up any release date, but it had faster read/write than the cruzer blades, and it's been my main drive for things like installing an OS/burning an image into it yet it lasted all these years.

I'm trying to get a USB-C drive specifically since all my laptops that are in use and my PC have a USB-C port, but all I see in local big retailers are Sandisk, Sandisk and more Sandisk, Amazon however has some that aren't Sandisk.

Does anyone know a USB-C flash drive that is genuinely reliable? Was it specifically Cruzer Blades that is garbage? I've not had a Sandisk SD card fail on me yet, should I just avoid Sandisk for anything but SD cards? Should I just say fuck it and buy a bunch of enclosures and NVMe drives?

I've read that flash drives get bottom of the barrel NAND chips that can't be used on SSDs, too. I know that flash drives aren't meant for long term storage/backup but a drive that old shouldn't be still going on that strongly against new ones.

I've been looking at PNY Elite V3 with USB-C as a connector that I've seen a few listings on Amazon but it's 1TB price is almost the same price as a 1TB NVMe SSD(Though not factoring in the enclosure).

Ive been using Linux Mint for like 10 years now but my s/o still wants to use Windows

Win 10 is about to lose support, and they cant upgrade to Win 11 cause its missing some new chip?

Anyone have details or fixes? Im way out of the loop cause Linux is just plug and play for me so I don’t keep up with this stuff any more

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like performance, emiru and crown jewels. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was paying attention.

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!

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?

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?

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.

I keep seeing this term but I have no idea what it means ?

and what does it actually mean in practice. for example, what it can actually do, it seems to only be used for algorithms and such. not personal computing. I assume I don't understand because I'm unfamiliar with Quantum mechanics