I've been on an interesting train of thought these past few days. I came across some criticism of a random old movie and I started thinking that the reason why I actually hate most modern movies is because they are all cowardly avoiding having any possible political interpretation for anything that happens in them. I've experienced movies that when the big fight scene starts, I'm falling asleep because I'm just so negatively invested in the characters or what will happen to them. That made me think about why so many boring, bland movies and shows keep being made, and it made me think of an opinion that the biggest reason why studios keep betting on blockbusters that are as boring as possible is that they are dependent on theatrical box office takings because streaming killed post-release revenue streams such as movie purchases.

I think that the reason for this is at least partially a symptom of the death of desire for physical media itself. Why deal with the inconvenience of physical media when you can just press a button and the movie starts playing? But at the same time I don't think this is entirely the fault of streaming services, but the fault of movie companies attempting to exert too much control over how people access their films.

I won't bore you with explanations of the limitations of streaming services. We've all been there, surely. They don't have what we want, the stuff we do want to see is spread out on a hundred different subscriptions, yada yada yada. So why do we not deal with them piecemeal? That answer comes with good news and bad news. Good news: you can! You can both buy and rent most movies that have ever been made. Bad news: it's an absolutely terrible deal if you do.

Right now there's at least three major services that allow you to buy digital movies: YouTube, Apple TV / iTunes Movies, and Prime Video. There's also the vestiges of the industry's "digital movies" initiative called Fandango at Home, previously Vudu - the one where you'd use a code you got with a DVD that said it included a digital copy. The problem with all of these services is obvious: if you buy a movie from them, you don't actually own it. They can and will take away access from you at any time for any reason they see fit.

There's an obvious solution to this: rental. It doesn't matter if they de-list a rental because you never had the illusion of ownership to begin with. But that has it's own problem: it's way too fucking expensive.

To put things into perspective, Blockbuster, before it closed down, would let you rent new releases for between $3-5 for a 1-2 day rental, while older movies could be between $1-3. Granted, this was before a lot of inflation, but those rentals also had the costs of running a store in expensive commercial real estate as well as the people who had to manage it, the cost of purchasing the media - sometimes at retail prices - and the cost of maintaining them (rewinding cassettes, cleaning and resurfacing discs, and replacing worn media).

Lets compare the cost of renting on Prime Video today.

Dicks the Musical is a somewhat niche movie unavailable to watch on streaming sites that came out more than two years ago, and the current price to rent it is $4.99. Five bucks. I should mention this is for a movie that I already watched on Hoopla via my library card for free.

Batman Returns is a blockbuster from 1992 and is available for $3.99. Four bucks. You get a one dollar discount if you want to watch something 30 years old. Fantastic.

The category that will really open your eyes is new movies. Zootopia 2 just became available for digital purchase, with no physical editions, and is not yet available on Disney+. If you want to purchase the film, it costs $29.99. Rental is $24.99. Frankly I cannot imagine a world in which the number of people who would pay for that rental exceeds the number of people who opted to pirate but would have paid if the price was at least half that.

If you forget that the major studios own their own streaming services, then this math really doesn't work out. Surely they are getting more money per stream through purchase and rental than they are with the fractional payment they would get from licensing it.

But of course you have to remember that they do own their own streaming services - it's part of why everyone's complaining after all. The major producers, by discouraging short term rentals and pushing streaming services (note that Prime Video will try to sell you one of those subscriptions if the title is available on one), they are attempting to move from producers of cultural products to yet another industry of rent seekers.

I'm frankly all out of ideas on how to solve an issue, so I'm hoping that the Tildes community might have a suggestion for solving this issue.

I have an 8tb HDD that spins up and is recognized by windows when plugged into a USB HDD dock, but in another machine (also running windows 10) the drive can't be seen (**this is using data connections directly to the motherboard).

There is:

• Nothing mechanically wrong with the drive as it reads/writes on the HDD dock.
• I've tested the drive as an NTFS formatted drive and as unallocated.
• Neither Disk Manager nor the bios sees the drive.
• Multiple SATA cables and Power jacks tested on working drives and the non working drive.

Open to thoughts, prayers or possible solutions.

Thank you!

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 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!

Here is the schedule for the upcoming year

Last week in August - Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut,

Last week in September - Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

Last week in October - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine by Deborah Blum,

Last week in November - We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor,

December break for the holidays.

Last week in January - Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bissen,

Last week in February - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

Last week in March - The Metamorphosis by Kafka,

Last week in April - The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See,

Last week in May - Pnin by Nabokov,

Last week in June - How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Wexler,

Last week in July - A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers,

Last week in August - Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Last week in September - Dr. No by Ian Fleming

Was there ever a write-up on why Tildes was architected the way it was? For example, why Pyramid instead of the usual suspects like Django or Flask? I'd be curious to read the reasoning from the developer(s) themselves.

Calling to all houseplant experts,

I've had my plants for a couple of years, and they seem happy and growing well. I currently have a flamingo flower and a philodendron (here is a picture of them).

Over the years, I think I have gotten pretty good at taking care of them. One thing that still remains a mystery, though, is repotting and when to do it. I have never done it before, and info online seems confusing and often conflicting.

I live in a small space, so I would prefer not to have to do it, but I can see roots growing out of the bottom of the vases, and the plants are getting rather big: so much so, that my philodendron needs external support to not fall down. Nevertheless, they both keep growing.

So, onto the questions: how does one know when it is necessary to repot a plant to a bigger pot? What happens if I do not do it? And if I must do it, how should it be done? Ideally with minimal resources, since I am very limited on storage space...

And since we're at it: any houseplant-related pro-tips from the veterans?

I typically don't play these kind of games, the few times I've played Souls games, I found issues I had with every game I've played more or less, I've tried Demon Souls around the time where Dark Souls was a thing on PS3, it didn't take too long to get used to the general idea and flow of the game, slowish/sluggish controls on purpose, overall being very difficult, parrying being something that could make or break battles, healing items are consumables that you need to farm, dying makes you lose souls, EXP is the currency, etc.

It's been so long since I've played it, but I recall it being an interesting enough experience to stick around for a little bit, Bolterian Palace being somewhat memorable from the first 2 zones or so including the first area, but I absolutely did not finish it.
I've played the first part of the game by myself, but ended up watching my friends play it more than I did play it, so I ended up knowing that Shrine of Storms has that weapon that makes farming souls super easy, I ended up going there.
Then I encountered the rolling skeletons, I don't think I was aware at the time that Turpentine is how you fight them ,so I had miserable experience there, I think at the end I got tired of it that I ended up just quitting the game to reload to not lose my souls and halve my HP, which in hindsight, I didn't know that. you take half damage as a soul(iirc) at the time and compounded with the PS3's insanely long loading times, which eventually made me to simply quit and never return to it, not having shortcuts also doesn't help, killing the same mobs over and over just to try fighting a boss once isn't fun.

I've not played Dark Souls 1 or 2 myself, so I have nothing to say aside from that I've seen my friends play PvP a lot in DS2, and that Bed of Chaos apparently is a rushed boss by the devs to complete the game, and it shows.

Despite what the title may imply, I did play Bloodborne a little bit, I did get to the first boss(Father Cosguine?) and getting a parry on him was one of those memorable moments for me playing the game, but phase 2 happened, and I'm going to blame the camera or locking-on for my death because 3D games from that era had dogshit cameras.
I have also seen some of my friends play the game, and the weapons BB has looked so fun, of note is the Chikage, which I wanted to use when I played BB, but apparently it's not a good weapon to get on your first run of the game.

Might be worth noting that I gave Little Witch Nobeta a try to see how non Fromsoft Souls-likes are like, I also didn't really go back to it after defeating the first boss.

Then a year or two ago I decided to give Elden Ring a go, being pushed to it by an irl friend.
I rarely get a game and go "Wow I regret buying this", but ER was exactly that.
As usual, I did see a friend stream it in discord or play it while I'm at their house, so it's not that I didn't know what I was into, but I assumed it would be similar to my previous experience with souls games.
 
I picked up a Sorcerer, so my spells are barely better than hitting things with bare fists, my melee weapon is adequate at best, and my base stats were sort of gimped, I leveled up Intelligence to make my spells do more damage and for mobs, they are ok. I leveled up Dexterity as my main source of damage and that was... ok enough, at first.
 
I didn't get to Margit until a couple of hours in, I was wandering around and activating Lost Graces, just to avoid combat.
When I got to Margit, I died a lot but I did have some fun, it didn't feel unfair as much as it felt like my weapon limiting me and my spells barely tickling the boss.
Similar to how my previous Souls attempts went, I stopped playing, until one day I did accept my friends assisting me with the game instead of trying to do everything solo, and we felled Margit but with minimal intervention from my friends, we then got to Godrick and I don't remember much aside from the stairs and the stupid hitboxes.
After Godrick though, my lack of damage was even more apparent in the overworld areas after him, I can't really pick most battles in the world by myself because almost everything there is a group of enemies that notice you when you start attacking one of their group.
They handed me these souls giving item to level up my stats but despite leveling up a fair bit, my damage still felt pitiful and I didn't want to over level. When we called it a day that day, I never really returned to Elden Ring and I don't plan to, I "got" Souls games even less after that. Nightreign however seems to be a much more interesting game in general.
I think you'd need to be a big fan of Dark Souls in the first place to even find fun with ER.
 
This leads us to the past week or two where the same friend that got me to buy ER convinced me to play Dark Souls 3 with seamless co-op in memory of a recently deceased friend who has played the PC Souls games except DS3.
 
And I'm having fun, for change? I'm getting, guided, sure, and I'm not having the full experience by hitting the noob traps, and the bosses seem to get mowed down by playing with more experienced players.
Maybe it's a change in mindset, or maybe I'd only enjoy Souls games co-op.
My issue with DS3 however, is that everything looks the same to me, as in I'd get lost very easily because of how similar everything looks, which is in contrast of what I remember Demon Souls being like.
Not having a map of sorts makes me it difficult to navigate areas in games like these.
 
 

Given my struggles with the other Souls games, the fact that I really like what I've seen from BB's gameplay, the weapons, the fact that you can parry at range, what I've read of the story and lore that makes it very compelling. Are there any tips or ways that I can change my perspective so that when/if I undust my PS4 and my friend's copy of BB, I can have fun? I get that I don't need to like Souls games, but this feels like it'd be my best shot.
 
I don't intend to play it co-op because of both wanting the "full experience" and my PS4 can be modded on its current firmware.

I occasionally watch some travel videos and lately I've been getting a lot of videos of middle east countries on YouTube, I'm just curious why. I know there have been some new developments like the shebara resort and Ain Dubai. but is that the only reason?

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.

Intro

Honestly this is just something i've been ruminating about recently with the new Marathon game on the horizon.

I've consumed a lot of sci fi compared to a normal person, and probably not that much compared to a serious fan. Wolfe, Asimov, Ellison, Sanderson, Card, Strugatsky, Crichton, etc for novels. Blame! jumps to mind for Manga, and I'm sure I could name shows and movies for quite some time even ignoring adaptations and re-tellings.

In general, I like novelty to some extent in my narrative media. Once you've seen enough, you see the patterns, and that can ruin some of the fun. You can have people who just execute a well known narrative perfectly, but it's nice when you stumble across something doing things you haven't seen before, or doing things you'd thought of but hadn't seen executed.

Video games have the potential to do some interesting things, but it's not a surprise that for FPS especially it gravitates to Power Fantasy. "OH GOD EVERYTHING IS WRONG! QUICK HERE'S A SHARP STICK INVADE HELL!" started with Doom (with 2016 actually having some great Pixaresque storytelling itself) and obviously does it well. Being the lone fighter vs hordes is at the bare minimum a fun gameplay loop.

The Games

However there are a shocking number of interesting or well executed plots in the genre as well. I think the big 3 that stand out to me are System Shock (which is sorta cheating as it's also an ImSim), Half-Life, and Marathon (but honorable mentions to both versions of Prey and E.Y.E. and I'm sure I'm forgetting others).

I'm going to skim over System Shock as "oh no the AI has gone crazy and evil" has been done before, and done better (in the same year...by another game on this list). Suffice it to say that Shodan is still a wonderful take on the whole concept. However System Shock does devolve into a larger power fantasy (save the day, stop the bad guy) despite starting as a small and helpless fool.

Half Life, in comparison, you spend most of the time running around doing your best to even figure out what the fuck is going on, and ultimately fail to accomplish much of anything meaningful. The Combine is so soul crushingly vast that even some super fighter like Freeman (which itself has always been odd) amounts to little more than a blip on a dashboard somewhere (as the 2017 spoiled HL3 ending showed...although I can find no working link to that as of right now).

Likewise Marathon, which has some fantastic storytelling in its use of terminals, has you as the objectively broken superhuman slaughtering enemies left right and sideways, and yet you're little more than a Rook or a Bishop for something SO much larger than you, only to find out that it's stumbled upon something even larger than it.

I won't dive into every detail (lots of good ways to do that. Mandalore, Emms, and the classic story website ) but Marathon takes the vastness of space, the standard "what if the AI went nuts/sentient", and so many other tropes and combines them into something quite unique. It's got the feelings of cosmic horror without falling back on "oh look its Lovecraft again" and I wish more games would take notes. Naturally Bungie even then was famous for connecting ALL their lore and that's probably part of it, but I also suspect any payoff for that is long gone after decades of riding the Halo and Destiny "what if heroes shot more bad guys" plan.

The End

With a new Marathon proper finally on the horizon, I'm more optimistic than I should be. Logically I know this is the company that made Destiny and they're still looking to just milk profit out of these things. That said I don't mind it being an extraction shooter or possibly a retelling (or alt telling...) of the Marathon story, and they even seem to understand the vibe that should be underpinning all of it. Either way it had me thinking about just how well the original Marathon and Half Life immersed you into the scale of what you were dealing with by letting you be the badass you are in just about every other game, and having it basically not matter. Either because your deeds accomplished nothing in the scheme of things or because your agency is utterly denied.

I think what really drew me to these games was finally seeing the idea of something like Lovecraft without the literally copy paste of the small port town and the tentacled cthulu monsters. I'd love to know what other games really stood out to people when it comes to SciFi and/or Cosmic Horror specifically. Or if you just agree/disagree on the ones I've rambled about.