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    1. Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of August 16

      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...

      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.

      5 votes
    2. Boost for Tildes

      This is an unofficial Boost for Lemmy port. With the Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely topic (and the Tildes successor one) from the other day about how this site was now in...

      This is an unofficial Boost for Lemmy port.

      With the Any significant changes to Tildes are extremely unlikely topic (and the Tildes successor one) from the other day about how this site was now in minimum maintenance mode, that gave me the motivation to finally look into porting Boost to work with Tildes. Knowing that the site won't change felt like a good time to "make" an app for it. For the longest time, the two mobile apps that I used for browsing Reddit were Reddit is Fun (which Tildes already has with Three Cheers thanks to @talklittle) and Boost. I've been using Three Cheers from the day that it came out. The original Boost creator (Rubén Mayayo) went to Lemmy instead of here and he created and maintains Boost for Lemmy. While Tildes isn't federated, it still has most of the features that Lemmy has, and it's also similar enough to Reddit. In the past few months, a project called Morphe has spawned to patch Android apps. A user on GitHub called Breal, has been maintaining Boost for Reddit by providing patches compatible with Morphe. He himself built his patches off the work from wchill though he's been mia for a few weeks. He's been fixing issues and backporting the new features that were implemented in the Lemmy app. That gave me the idea that something could be done for Tildes.

      Anyway, I got a Claude subscription for the summer and I'm trying to test its limits. I've been a programmer for 16 years and it has been blowing my mind. The more I work with LLMs the more they feel like masochists (the techniques that they use to solve various problems are truly wild). Some projects that should usually take months or years can be done in only a few days through sheer brute forcing. I got a proof of concept done the other day to see if I could connect Boost for Lemmy to Tildes. It worked within only a few hours which was promising. It turns out that implementing this well though was a lot harder than I expected. It took some really heavy modding to keep it seamless. I really wanted it to feel like native Boost while still following Tildes' way of doing stuff. After a lot of trial and errors, here it is. I was able to maintain compatibility so that it can live alongside Lemmy. Boost's account switcher lets your easily switch between Lemmy and Tildes.

      To install it:

      1. Download the Morphe Manager to your phone.
      2. Add my repo as a source URL in Morphe:
        github.com/Apostolique/apos-morphe-patches
        
      3. Select Boost and follow the instructions to patch.
      4. Install the patched Boost for Lemmy.
      5. In Boost for Lemmy, select tildes.net as your instance and connect to your account.

      Here's to multiple more years of talking with you guys on Tildes.

      Report any bugs that you find, or issues with my instructions.

      Edit: Some screenshots (low battery because this took a lot of testing to get right):

      36 votes
    3. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      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.

      8 votes
    4. Looking for an effective self-block application for Android

      My phone is a Samsung A55. Fully updated. I have ADHD and autism, which is to say that I have a very obsessive personality. I have used various blockers over the years to prevent me from wasting...

      My phone is a Samsung A55. Fully updated.

      I have ADHD and autism, which is to say that I have a very obsessive personality. I have used various blockers over the years to prevent me from wasting time on apps and websites.

      Lock me Out has helped me for many years to curb my smartphone usage. Unfortunately, it stopped working, as it became easy to circumvent by either forcing the program to stop or uninstalling it. I have been in contact with the developer, but they weren't able to find a solution and eventually stopped responding to my emails.

      So I need an app that prevents me from disabling blocks at all.

      While I can pay for an app even if it is a little expensive, I cannot justify an expensive subscription priced in US dollars (although I might do so if there's no other alternative).

      Any suggestions that could help me out? I'm using my phone 24/7, I can't stand it anymore. And I cannot simply turn it off because I have a toddler, and I must be accessible to my wife for emergencies when she leaves the home with him.

      There are also many ways to use a smartphone that are actually useful, positive, and non-addictive. And I'd rather be able to access these functionalities.

      Thanks!

      17 votes
    5. Which privacy-friendly home appliances exist? e.g. robot vacuum cleaners.

      I'm curious as I'd be possibly interested in a solution that works for me. I'd be looking at devices (mainly a robot vacuum cleaner) that are able to operate without a mandatory internet...

      I'm curious as I'd be possibly interested in a solution that works for me. I'd be looking at devices (mainly a robot vacuum cleaner) that are able to operate without a mandatory internet connection that send over data to a datacenter to collect your information without your explicit knowledge (nearly everyone just clicks 'accept' when reading the ToS after purchase).

      39 votes
    6. Curious about Android forks (/e/ OS, LineageOS, etc) for old Samsung tablet

      I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2022) which has reached end of life and no longer receives updates. I was wondering if it was possible to revive it using one of these alternate Android...

      I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite (2022) which has reached end of life and no longer receives updates. I was wondering if it was possible to revive it using one of these alternate Android versions, but I was very frustrated to see that LineageOS (the one I've seen mentioned the most besides Graphene) supports both the 2020 and the 2024 model of this tablet, but not mine.

      I wanted to hear from fellow Tildes users if installing one of these OSes would be worth it to get continued security updates for an old tablet like this, which OSes are out there (I've only heard the names of a few of them), which ones to avoid (maybe it's abandoned or there's some drama around a particular OS for whatever reason), and if anyone knows of one that specifically supports my model.

      I'm also curious if S-Pen stylus support would work on any of these other OSes.

      9 votes
    7. Is there any interest in building a Tildes successor?

      I love Tildes. I am not the most active member here, but I do make an effort to contribute. This site fills a hole for me not even close to be filled by other sites. It has that small local pub...

      I love Tildes. I am not the most active member here, but I do make an effort to contribute. This site fills a hole for me not even close to be filled by other sites. It has that small local pub feel. All names are familiar, even if I haven't interacted with people directly and there is a general sense of people being aligned with wanting to be part of a 'better' community.

      I know there has been a lot of discussion about missing features here and that ultimately leading to some users wanting to leave, because they can't block the content they don't want to see.

      With Deimos's announcement that the site is being sunset, it immediately made we ask: Can we build a successor?

      That has to be immediately followed with acknowledgment that it would be extremely hard (both in building the software and building the community) and very unlikely to succeed.

      With that out of the way, is there any interest?

      If there is, I'd like to here from you in this topic with your thoughts on how it should be run, must have features missing from Tildes, any features of Tildes not needed in an MVP (minimum viable product) and really any thoughts you have on the subject. What would be a deal-breaker?

      I am especially interested to hear on thoughts of how it should be administrated. Do we like the benevolent dictator model? Would a committee be better? Are there other examples of systems that work well?

      Tildes isn't going anywhere for a long while by the sounds of it, which I'm really grateful of. Please don't read this as any kind of descent, mutiny or call to leave. I mostly just want to make sure that if there's desire for this community to NOT be sunset, there's at least an option.

      53 votes
    8. D6 TTRPG suggestions

      I have a group of work friends where we were playing D&D 5e (pretty infrequently) for a year and a half. We've been on a long hiatus from TTRPGs since last year after a couple problems with the...

      I have a group of work friends where we were playing D&D 5e (pretty infrequently) for a year and a half. We've been on a long hiatus from TTRPGs since last year after a couple problems with the game came to surface that some of them didn't like. One of which is the 5e gameplay. Out of the 3 players, none had any hands on play experience with any TTRPG. I had extensive experience with 5e so naturally I was the GM and it was the simplest way to jump in a play with my solid grasp of the rules. One player in particular did not have experience with games (table top or video games) beyond a few simple card games and classic games like chess and was more there to be happy to socialize and have fun with a story. She had a lot of trouble grasping the rules and feeling comfortable with polyhedral dice sets. The other issue was mainly the infrequency of playing and the players remembering the story and previous sessions, so that isn't really related to the system.

      Having said all of that, several months later that less familiar with games player came to me and said one of her main issues was she would get stressed when told to roll, then blanking on which dice is which and what she is rolling for. She thinks a big fix to this is playing a game "like" D&D 5e with story and socializing (a TTRPG), but with "normal" dice (D6's). Until then I had given up on the idea of a TTRPG with them but that reinvigorated me. I wanted to find a game that is D6's only, with simple enough rules for those inexperienced, but preferably with some numbers, crunch, and customizable characters to satisfy those with more gaming experience. Do any come to mind as favorites of yours that you'd suggest?

      TL;DR suggest your favorite D6 only games. Preferably simple on the surface for the inexperienced, but enough numbers and customizable characters underneath to satisfy more experienced gamers.

      21 votes
    9. Autistic/neurodivergent/"just stubborn" members: how did you [happily] learn to do something you couldn't just instantly do?

      I know each person is different and if there's one autistic person's experience that's one person's experience. I'm aiming to spread a wide net here and gather stories to see the diverse range....

      I know each person is different and if there's one autistic person's experience that's one person's experience. I'm aiming to spread a wide net here and gather stories to see the diverse range. What I'm looking for is something beyond the "well, you just do it / you start with small steps" experience: assume one can't.

      Second hand accounts welcome if you know someone who has difficulties they were able to overcome.

      I was talking to someone who could visualize something with microscopic clarity in their mind and that's why they couldn't draw, because any approximation, no matter how close, is not 100%, and that produces enough internal suffering that the task can't be done.

      That the sentence "if it's good enough it's good enough" is nearly offensive and also nonsensical: there is the perfect and then there is failure which causes suffering, nothing exists in the middle.

      So I'm curious: as an individual, do you have difficulty with .....

      • breaking down a complex task into smaller achievable tasks?

      • competing very simple tasks that have been broken down for you that leads to that complex task, whether because it's trivial or because now you're being told or some other hurdle?

      • mentally being okay with practice / rudimentary exercises because it's not the whole completed perfect thing?

      How did you learn to do something that requires practice [from you] to become good at? Do you tend to over rely then on skills that came "for free" to you? If you can see yourself getting better with practice doing that free talent, and you have a hard time learning a new thing that you couldn't also instantly do, why does the experience of improvement from one area doesn't translate into feelings of possibility that it could apply to another?

      42 votes
    10. Moving US to Japan: Things to bring? Things to leave behind?

      Hi, my family is moving to Japan in November, from US Midwest to Noto/Kanazawa area, and I’m wondering if there are things recommended to specifically bring from the US or things to wait to buy in...

      Hi, my family is moving to Japan in November, from US Midwest to Noto/Kanazawa area, and I’m wondering if there are things recommended to specifically bring from the US or things to wait to buy in Japan due to quality or price differentials (or straight up availability).

      I’m 6’3”, so I’m buying shoes/boots/sandals in US, as well as pants/shirts. My wife is similarly tall. Kids are tall for their age, but still will get clothes in jp.

      We are moving solely by plane, so no shipping containers or other moving services— it has to fit in suitcases.

      If anyone can speak to online shopping in rural Japan, let me know if that’s as ubiquitous as it is here (it’s something I personally almost never do here, but i assume I’ll have to do more in jp just for sizing when it comes to clothes, though I’m not a big wardrobe guy anyway).

      Bonus question: family cargo ebikes in Japan? Is that common yet? I’ve got an Urban Arrow here and it’s probably by favorite object of mine, and would love to get something similar (or long tail passenger rack) in jp.

      Thanks!

      25 votes
    11. A simple fix for exemplary tags - only give it to posts you disagree with

      There's been a fair amount of discussion lately about the way Exemplary tags are used. Speaking only for myself, it seems like they're increasingly being used as a "super-agree" button rather than...

      There's been a fair amount of discussion lately about the way Exemplary tags are used. Speaking only for myself, it seems like they're increasingly being used as a "super-agree" button rather than a "this post is really good" tag. That always has been (and always will be) a problem, but I think it's been getting worse - particularly when threads turn argumentative.

      That's not good. It makes contentious threads more contentious and it contributes to polarization -- I've seen users explicitly say that it feels like a slap in the face to see a poorly-constructed post get tagged "exemplary" for what seems more likely to be ideological reasons than the actual quality of the thing.

      There's an easy fix for all this. Not a technical fix, but a cultural one: if the majority of us resolve to only give exemplary tags to people we disagree with, but who deserve it anyway because they are posting compassionately, cogently, coherently, or whatever else we think constitutes exemplary behaviour, it will improve the discourse immeasurably.

      I'm not saying that needs to be (or should be) a hard-and-fast rule. But as a general principle like "don't be an asshole," I think "save exemplary tags for posts you don't agree with, but which deserve it anyway" will do a lot to resolve the issues we're seeing. It shifts the reward signal from "demonstrate ideological alignment" to "write posts so good and so fair that even your opponents like them."

      I've caught myself giving the tag to opinions I agree with for something along the lines of "finally, someone's saying it." That is bad, it's exactly what polarizes the site, and I'm going to try not to do it any longer.

      Hope you'll join me.

      37 votes
    12. Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like positivity, browsers and dungeons and dragons. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if...

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like positivity, browsers and dungeons and dragons. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was inquisitive.

      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!

      9 votes