• Activity
  • Votes
  • Comments
  • New
  • All activity
  • Showing only topics with the tag "ask". Back to normal view
    1. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows 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.

      10 votes
    2. Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like viktor orban, sam altman and autism. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was...

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like viktor orban, sam altman and autism. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was taking note.

      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!

      16 votes
    3. Ring camera is getting more and more annoying

      I've had a ring camera for several years. Historically I've been mostly satisfied with it, but lately they are adding some features that are pretty annoying. The worst is that they've been adding...

      I've had a ring camera for several years. Historically I've been mostly satisfied with it, but lately they are adding some features that are pretty annoying.

      The worst is that they've been adding neighborhood alerts and other proximity alerts, with categories for traffic and weather and lost pets and things like that. Today I got a "community alert" which was actually an advertisement for a local animal shelter. I don't have anything against animal shelters, but my motion detector camera alter is not the correct venue for this message. It's clear that amazon is trying to muscle in on Nextdoor. I don't use Nextdoor. I find it to be like facebook, full of cranks and advertisements and nosey annoying people.
      So now I had to wade through a few pages of menus to find where to turn of this new annoyance. Obviously, if I could I would opt out of all new features.

      The other annoying thing is that they turned on some AI evaluation of what the camera sees. So I was getting messages like "there's someone with a garden hose on your lawn" or "a person is carrying a cardboard box". There were a few things wrong with this

      • I didn't sign up to have this and it slows down the alerts so they are up to 30 seconds after the motion is detected
      • The AI sometimes made errors, especially at certain times of day where it misidentified different things in the yard (for example, some place marked by shadow was interpreted as a sidewalk when there isn't a sidewalk there). This happens of course because the AI doesn't know anything about my property, it evaluates everything from scratch each time it looks at an image.
      • The ring app started bugging me with upselling messages to pay extra for the AI messages

      So yeah. I just wanted to vent about the enshittification of this thing. I'm also aware of the privacy issues of ring cameras and how they're going to use the "pet finder" functionality to keep track of everyone. But this rant isn't really about that more important stuff, just the frustration of how these tech companies won't just leave anything alone because they have different goals than us.

      33 votes
    4. How to find (a) new music (community)?

      i'm a huge lover of music. i listen to music, i collect music (digital and vinyl) for 25 years now. i organize and go to festivals. i play music as a dj (mostly cumbia, afro and house). i looove...

      i'm a huge lover of music. i listen to music, i collect music (digital and vinyl) for 25 years now. i organize and go to festivals. i play music as a dj (mostly cumbia, afro and house). i looove pop, but as a genere. just everything that is authentic and makes me feel and groooves.
      my heart beats to the beat of this amazing hip hop beats. jazz-funk-house and everythig around and in between. and mexican music, be it traditional. modern traditional or pinche rancheras que escuchaban los abuelos. but fuck generes, if it grooves and makes me happy or a special kind of sad, i love it.
      but as i get older, it just seems to be getting harder and harder to find and connect to music.
      i think part of it is that i just know soo much already. but in comparison to what exisit... thats just bullshit, is it me taking less time and love for music or is it that i get less sensitive to music as i grow older?

      i dont know where i'm going with this. but i think i want to connect to other people who i can share music i love with. but its so hard to find people who share my kind of taste.

      whatever this post nothing structured, but if you like some of the following please reach out.

      Natalia Lafurcarde

      Fat Freddy's Drop

      Lineli Concept

      or Griz, or Gramatik, or St.Germain or ASM or soooo much more i can not even grasp what i like., its just too much and diverse.

      i just miss discovering music.. maybe its my process.. i dont use any streaming sites, exept for youtube sometimes for its accesibility to share. i pirate and buy and go to concerts. but it seems everybody arround just shares spotify playlists... and i'm just not getting into that, fuck algorithms deciding my taste. fuck big music.

      what do i do? can i find back to the joy of finding a new album i like and loose myself for days and weeks in it? is this a possibility? do i need to find a new way to enjoy and discover music?
      is it me? or is it getting harder?

      just as a disclaimer, i like what happens here on tildes music wise, but it mostly feels quite far from my tastes. no bad feelings, i like you anyways ;-)

      edit: the covers topic going hot atm is just the best in a long time.

      26 votes
    5. What are the current channels to find remote work?

      I haven't been on the market for a couple of years, but I might be soon-ish. I used to browse websites such as remoteok, or look on LinkedIn but it seems that those are mostly full of ghost...

      I haven't been on the market for a couple of years, but I might be soon-ish.
      I used to browse websites such as remoteok, or look on LinkedIn but it seems that those are mostly full of ghost offers...
      Does it all happen through personal network nowadays?

      49 votes
    6. Tildes Gardening Group: Week 13/4/26

      Sorry for the late posting (life got in the way). Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion! Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or...

      Sorry for the late posting (life got in the way).

      Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion!

      Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

      ‘Seed’ questions:

      1. Would you like to garden in a different climate, if so where?
      2. Who shares in the your gardening outcomes? Friends/family, or is it more personal?
      3. What if your motivation to garden? Is it the reward at the end, the journey or something else?
      12 votes
    7. Tildes Gardening Group: Week 6/4/26

      Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion! Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success. ‘Seed’ questions? Has the weather been...

      Welcome all to our weekly (ish) gardening group discussion!

      Feel free to discuss anything related to gardening, beginner or advanced, challenge or success.

      ‘Seed’ questions?

      Has the weather been working out for you?
      What is your favourite gardening tool, or are you looking to get a new one?
      What is your biggest error this year?

      19 votes
    8. Vibe coding is just the return of Excel/Access, with more danger

      I probably triggered some PTSD right there. Was just in a meeting at work, where we listed off everything that makes software development hard and slow. An excersize for the thread would be to...

      I probably triggered some PTSD right there.

      Was just in a meeting at work, where we listed off everything that makes software development hard and slow. An excersize for the thread would be to replicate that list. It turned out that Claude helps with like 1/5th or less of it....especially in a collaborative environment.

      So, the situation we're now encountering is that random business areas can vibe code out something, tell nobody, throw it in AWS, have it become a critical part of a business process that fails when they quit, and nobody even has access to look at what was made.

      It gives me comfort that in about 5 years there will be a new surge in demand for programmers to reign in all the rogue applications that need shutdown because of the immense risk to continual operation of a company, from data leaks to broken payroll.

      It'll be Y2K all over again.

      45 votes
    9. What did you do this week (and weekend)?

      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...

      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!

      10 votes
    10. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      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...

      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!

      8 votes
    11. Is there any interest in regular short Tildes surveys?

      I've been thinking about the demographics surveys recently and how they usually draw a good reception, but are difficult to compile in a privacy-minded way and finally visualize the data. I think...

      I've been thinking about the demographics surveys recently and how they usually draw a good reception, but are difficult to compile in a privacy-minded way and finally visualize the data. I think the 2024 survey never ended up getting its results published?

      So I thought maybe instead of one big yearly survey we could organize smaller weekly or monthly surveys that ask one or a couple questions at a time. And then while the current survey is running the question+answers for the next survey could be plannedy out. And the questions could be about anything and not just demographics related things.


      In terms of technical setup I've been using a self-hosted n8n instance for a while and with tinkering around with it I've come up with a decent proof of concept to make these surveys happen via n8n's Form nodes. This makes it so all the data is in our own control and it's just a matter of building out any visualizations we may want.

      And at the end of a survey the data could be anonymized and published so any further analysis can be done by whoever wants to.

      One other thing I've come up with is a way to "authenticate" responses so we can know when a response was made by a real Tildes user. In the survey flow the server can generate a UUID and give it to the user to put in their profile bio. Then we scrape the user's bio and check if that UUID is present and now we know that yes, this is a real user. And then the UUID can be removed again from the user's bio (so it can't be linked back to them). This would also enable us to not have to save usernames at all (yay privacy). Edit: this would be entirely optional if it were to be added. There would be no requirements to fill in the survey unless we start seeing a bunch of spam or bogus responses.


      What do you Tildoes think? That's what we settled on right? Is this something you'd be interested in?


      Edit: Since the topic has a good amount of votes I quickly set up a server and a form to collect questions for anyone that has ideas! :)

      -> https://survey.tildes.community/form/submit-your-question

      35 votes
    12. Any male victims from female abuse?

      I was talking to a dear friend of mine who told me years ago how he has been physically abused by his wife and how hard it was for him to share this, because so few people believed his story. Or...

      I was talking to a dear friend of mine who told me years ago how he has been physically abused by his wife and how hard it was for him to share this, because so few people believed his story. Or laughed when he dared to share. Yesterday we talked about how hidden these stories are. He believes it is a lot more prevalent than it seems. People are just to ashamed to share or afraid they won’t be believed.

      I recognised his trouble. I was abused by my mother for years, physically and mentally, after she separated from my dad (who she abused as well). In my life I have shared this story to only a handful of people, often being disappointed by their reactions.

      What made this especially difficult was how my mom managed to convince me and the people around my family that my dad was actually the aggressor. ‘Woman gets beat up by man’ is just a lot more believable.

      In hindsight, it feels like such a twisted dynamic, where my mom as a female abuser used the stories of actual female victims to hide or defend her own abuse.

      Of course I do not in any way want to diminish the aggression that women experience. It is a lot more prevalent, and this issue needs all the attention it can get.

      I was just wondering if there are any other men here who are victims from female abusers and if you recognise the difficulty in sharing your story as well.

      57 votes
    13. Medium term cold storage options?

      Increasingly I'm looking at my backup solution and I'm not totally happy. My "threat model" I guess is if the house burns down and we only make it out with the shirts on our backs. Alternatively...

      Increasingly I'm looking at my backup solution and I'm not totally happy. My "threat model" I guess is if the house burns down and we only make it out with the shirts on our backs. Alternatively if I get hit by a bus I'd like a backup of passwords and maybe some instructions for my wife.

      Mostly irrelevant discussion on my current backup or lack of situation

      Up until recently I had a VPS running syncthing as a central backup for all my devices but it kind of looks like that got randomly wiped or something... my plan up until that happened was that I have a computer in a locker at work that I occasionally fired up to sync my syncthing stuff. This has some issues, the big one being that it doesn't deal with bus factor.

      My next plan (and the point of this topic) is to have some data stored offline in a safe deposit box at the bank or some other secure location and swap the data out at some interval like 6 months or 1 year. The stuff I REALLY care about is easily under 1gb and stuff I kind of care about (photos and that kind of thing) is < 1tb.

      Also currently I'm paying for iCloud each month even though I've mostly left the mac-osphere. This is where my < 1tb of photos are. I intend to download all of that and stop paying for iCloud in the coming months.

      TL;DR What are decent medium term cold storage options for < 1gb that I can be really sure will be good for several years (maybe 10 or 20 years at the extreme end) and is fairly cheap. I was thinking optical media but I'm kind of lost as to what specifically to get and how to not get conned by buying fake media (m discs). I (somewhat randomly) have an m disc drive in my computer but I don't know if thats overkill or not? My important stuff may even fit on a CD actually...

      24 votes
    14. “60s lounge” and Laufey

      I was really taken by the sound of Laufey’s Madwoman and am looking for the older music which inspired her. The internet, however, has not been helpful. Between citing “The Great American...

      I was really taken by the sound of Laufey’s Madwoman and am looking for the older music which inspired her.

      The internet, however, has not been helpful. Between citing “The Great American Soundbook”¹ as her inspiration, or declaring its “clearly” bossa nova², i’m really lost. One person said “60s lounge,” which seemed promising³ but searching that brings a ton of AI-generated slop-and-slop-byproducts.

      Is there a better term for what she’s referencing? Specific artists? Specific regions even?


      1. which doesn’t sound the same to me at all
      2. which no the fuck it is not, i, a brazilian, say
      3. another person said “70s lounge”
      14 votes
    15. Static analysis, dynamic analysis, and stochastic analysis

      For a long time programmers have had two types of program verification tools, static analysis (like a compiler's checks) and dynamic analysis (running a test suite). I find myself using LLMs to...

      For a long time programmers have had two types of program verification tools, static analysis (like a compiler's checks) and dynamic analysis (running a test suite). I find myself using LLMs to analyze newly written code more and more. Even when they spit out a lot of false positives, I still find them to be a massive help. My workflow is something like this:

      1. Commit my changes
      2. Ask Claude Opus "Find problems with my latest commit"
      3. Look though its list and skip over false positives.
      4. Fix the true positives.
      5. git add -A && git commit --amend --no-edit
      6. Clear Claude's context
      7. Back to step 2.

      I repeat this loop until all of the issues Claude raises are dismissable. I know there are a lot of startups building a SaaS for things like this (CodeRabbit is one I've seen before, I didn't like it too much) but I feel just doing the above procedure is plenty good enough and catches a lot of issues that could take more time to uncover if raised by manual testing.

      It's also been productive to ask for any problems in an entire repo. It will of course never be able to perform a completely thorough review of even a modestly sized application, but highlighting any problem at all is still useful.

      Someone recently mentioned to me that they use vision-capable LLMs to perform "aesthetic tests" in their CI. The model takes screenshots of each page before and after a code change and throws an error if it thinks something is wrong.

      10 votes
    16. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      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...

      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?

      11 votes
    17. What's a battle that nobody knows you're fighting?

      The "nobody" in the title doesn't have to be literal -- it can be a battle that very few people know about. The important thing is that it's mostly hidden. What is the struggle? Is it hidden by...

      The "nobody" in the title doesn't have to be literal -- it can be a battle that very few people know about. The important thing is that it's mostly hidden.

      What is the struggle?
      Is it hidden by choice?
      Do you want more people to know about it? Why or why not?

      27 votes
    18. That one study that proves developers using AI are deluded

      I've found myself replying to different people about the early 2025 METR study kind of often. So I thought I'd try posting a top level thread, consider it an unsolicitied public service...

      I've found myself replying to different people about the early 2025 METR study kind of often. So I thought I'd try posting a top level thread, consider it an unsolicitied public service announcement.

      You might be familiar with the study because it has been showing up alongside discussions about AI and coding for about a year. It found that LLMs actually decreased developer productivity and so people love to use it to suggest that the whole AI coding thing is really a big lie and the people who think it makes them more productive are hallucinating.

      Here's the thing about that study... No one seems to have even glanced at it!

      First, it's from early 2025, they used Claude Sonnet 3.5 or 3.7. Those models are no way comparable to current gen coding agents. The commonly cited inflection point didn't happen until later in 2025 with, depending on who you ask, Sonnet 4.5 or Opus 4.5

      The study was comprised of 16 people! If those 16 were even vaguely representative of the developer population at the time most of them wouldn't have had significant experience with LLMs for coding.

      These are not tools that just work out of the box, especially back then. It takes time and experimentation, or instruction, to use them well.

      It was cool that they did the study, trying to understand LLMs was a good idea. But it's not what anyone would consider a representative, or even well thought out, study. 16 people!

      But wait! They did a follow up study later in 2025.

      This time with about 60 people and newer models and tools. In that study they found the opposite effect, AI tools sped developers up (which is a shock to no one who has used these tools long enough to get a feel for them). They also mentioned:

      However the true speedup could be much higher among the developers and tasks which are selected out of the experiment.

      In addition they had some, kind of entertaining, issues:

      Due to the severity of these selection effects, we are working on changes to the design of our study.

      Back to the drawing board, because:

      Recruitment and retention of developers has become more difficult. An increased share of developers say they would not want to do 50% of their work without AI, even though our study pays them $50/hour to work on tasks of their own choosing. Our study is thus systematically missing developers who have the most optimistic expectations about AI’s value.

      And...

      Developers have become more selective in which tasks they submit. When surveyed, 30% to 50% of developers told us that they were choosing not to submit some tasks because they did not want to do them without AI. This implies we are systematically missing tasks which have high expected uplift from AI.

      And so...

      Together, these effects make it likely that our estimate reported above is a lower-bound on the true productivity effects of AI on these developers.

      [...]

      Some developers were less likely to complete tasks that they submitted if they were assigned to the AI-disallowed condition. One developer did not complete any of the tasks that were assigned to the AI-disallowed condition.

      [...]

      Altogether, these issues make it challenging to interpret our central estimate, and we believe it is likely a bad proxy for the real productivity impact of AI tools on these developers.

      So to summarize, the new study showed a productivity increase and they estimate it's larger than the ~20% increase the study found. Cheers to them for being honest about the issues they encountered. For my part I know for sure that the increase is significantly more than 20%. The caveat, though, is that is only true after you've had some experience with the tools.

      The truth is that we don't need a study for this, any experienced engineer can readily see it for themselves and you can find them talking about it pretty much everywhere. It would be interesting, though, to see a well designed study that attempted to quantify how big the average productivity increase actually is.

      For that the participants using AI would need to be experienced with it and allowed to use their existing setups.

      I want to add that this is not an attempt to evangelize for AI. I find the tools useful but I'm not selling anything. I'm interested in them and I stay up to date on the conversations surrounding them and the underlying technology. I use them frequently both for my own projects and to help less technical people improve their business productivity.

      Whether AI agents are a good thing or not, from a larger perspective, is a very different, and complicated, conversation. The important thing is that utility and impact are two different conversations. There isn't a debate anymore about utility.

      I know this probably won't stop people from continuing to derail conversations with the claim that developers are wrong about utility, but I had to try. It's just hard to let it pass by when someone claims the sky is green.

      I understand that AI makes people angry and I think they have good reason to be angry. There are a lot of aspects of the AI revolution that I'm not thrilled about. The hype foremost, the FOMO as part of the hype, the potential for increased wealth consolidation really sucks, though I lay that at the feet of systems that existed before LLMs came along.

      It's messy, but let's consider giving the benefit of the doubt to professionals who say a tool works instead of claiming they're wrong. Let them enjoy it. We can still be angry at AI at the same time.

      82 votes
    19. Bluesky is down (at least for me)

      I noticed bluesky is down. I haven't seen news about this yet so I wonder if it is just a temporary tech problem or a DOS. I'm getting this error or an error about rate limiting: Hmm, some kind of...

      I noticed bluesky is down.

      I haven't seen news about this yet so I wonder if it is just a temporary tech problem or a DOS.

      I'm getting this error or an error about rate limiting:

      Hmm, some kind of issue occurred when contacting the feed server. Please let the feed owner know about this issue.
      Message from server: Upstream server responded with a 503 error

      9 votes
    20. 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.

      9 votes
    21. Megathread: April Fools' Day 2026 on the internet

      Over the next day or so, the internet will be filled with jokes, pranks, fake "announcements" from companies, fun interactive activities, games, and so on. A lot of these can be quite clever and...

      Over the next day or so, the internet will be filled with jokes, pranks, fake "announcements" from companies, fun interactive activities, games, and so on. A lot of these can be quite clever and interesting so I think posting about them in general is fine, but in the interest of preventing them from completely taking over Tildes, let's try to keep as many of them restricted to this thread as possible. Ideally, a separate top-level comment for each individual item would be good.

      If something particularly discussion-worthy comes up (like an ARG or activity that a lot of people want to talk about), a separate thread is reasonable, but please make sure it has the "april fools day" tag. That way, if anyone wants to avoid seeing the April Fools' Day threads, they can use the topic tag filters and filter that tag out.

      I'm going to use the "official" styling for this topic (that's usually only for ~tildes.official topics) to make it stand out more to try to encourage people to notice it. If you notice people making individual topics for April Fools' Day things that don't really warrant their own topic, please (nicely) encourage them to delete and post in here instead.

      101 votes
    22. Things that don't suck

      So much of what the algorithms surface is negative. For all of the reasons that mostly everyone's aware of at this point. It's easy to get the general impression that times are dark without...

      So much of what the algorithms surface is negative. For all of the reasons that mostly everyone's aware of at this point.

      It's easy to get the general impression that times are dark without realizing it. I think sometimes it's good to intentionally offset algorithmic (and general human) negativity bias.

      Lets do a positive news thread, I'll start:

      Hungary votes out Orbán after 16 years

      Perovskite solar cells hit 34.85%

      Portugal hits 80.7% renewable electricity

      Hidden drainage system found in human brain

      First lab-grown oesophagus using hosts own cells (fully incorporated with muscles, nerves, arteries within 6 months)

      And of course Artemis II! Why is space exploration somehow more positive than the sum of its parts?

      Please post anything, it doesn't have to be "news". The full range of the humanities works too

      76 votes
    23. Looking for more pop / rock songs with sick sax solos! Got any ideas?

      I've been working on a playlist for a while of rock / pop songs with sax solos. The rules are: Must be from this millennium sax can't be a primary instrument pop or rock genres preferred Here's...

      I've been working on a playlist for a while of rock / pop songs with sax solos. The rules are:

      • Must be from this millennium
      • sax can't be a primary instrument
      • pop or rock genres preferred

      Here's what I've got so far: https://link.deezer.com/s/323YPvabsQgEuS8BOTCXj

      27 votes
    24. What creative projects have you been working on?

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on. Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just...

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

      Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

      If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

      11 votes
    25. Do I not need to use blue light filter on my screens if I already have eyeglasses with Anti-Reflective coating?

      I mean the blue light filter that's built-in in most phones and computers. on Windows, it's called "Night Light" and on most android phones, it's called "Reading mode". so my question is, do I...

      I mean the blue light filter that's built-in in most phones and computers. on Windows, it's called "Night Light" and on most android phones, it's called "Reading mode".

      so my question is, do I need not that at all and if the glasses accomplish the same thing? or if they're completely different things. I don't even know if the Anti-Reflective coating provides any protection from blue light.

      also I read that blue light can disrupt sleep but I don't really have any problems sleeping, even though I don't use the night light/reading mode

      7 votes
    26. Cell phone advice

      My current phone is about 6 years old and has a lot of signal problems and I replaced the battery about 6 months ago and the new battery is even worse than the original one was and I think it's...

      My current phone is about 6 years old and has a lot of signal problems and I replaced the battery about 6 months ago and the new battery is even worse than the original one was and I think it's time to get a new phone.

      Things I want in my phone:

      • Android
      • I would love to have a microSD card but that seems impossible
        • if there's not microSD then I need min 512GB of internal storage and I would prefer 1TB if that's not like +1k to the cost
      • Headphone jack
      • If there's AI, then I can disable it
      • Excellent battery life
      • On the smaller end

      Things I don't really care about:

      • Camera quality (I'm a shitty photographer, the camera wont help)

      Things that might be nice:

      • Having a stylus but not at the cost of the phone being enormous. Reason I want this is because it gets cold in the winter in Chicago

      I hope this phone lasts another 6 years and will be pissed if it lasts under 4 years; at that lifespan and amount of use I get out of it I'm pretty price-agnostic. I live in the USA but expect to travel to Europe a few times next year so it should do decently well when traveling. Network is T-Mobile.

      This is not SUPER urgent right now so if your advice is "wait til January because the XYZ phone releasing then is probably better than anything available right now" I would be willing to do that. But my current phone is really not doing great.

      Happy to answer any other followup questions if anyone has any!

      Thanks!

      26 votes
    27. Session 1 of AD&D's I6 Ravenloft

      AD&D 1e. First session of the module I6 Ravenloft, adapted to my campaign setting. Two of my regulars will be unable to join us, and we recruited two new players from friends, for a total of five...

      AD&D 1e. First session of the module I6 Ravenloft, adapted to my campaign setting. Two of my regulars will be unable to join us, and we recruited two new players from friends, for a total of five players. One of them has only had experience playing and running D&D 5e, while the other has only touched D&D briefly, back in the 3e days. Funnily enough, he played through 3e's Ravenloft.

      Module spoilers will be found ahead. Given that it's expecting mid-high level characters (six to eight of levels 5-7), I allowed the new players to create their PCs with 55k total XP, which is ~11k less than the next highest among my regular players, and rolled for magic items per DMG Appendix P. The full party is:

      • Rowan, Human MU 7
        • Henchman Freya, Human Fighter 5
        • Henchman Rikka, Human Fighter 5
      • Iskandar, Human MU 8
        • Henchman Thorgisl, Human Fighter 2
      • Bo'Bert, Human Cleric 7
      • Elowyn, Elf Fighter 5 / Magus 5
      • Nobar, Dwarf Fighter 5 / Thief 6

      After introductions were made, we got right into it. They dismounted in the courtyard and their horses led to the stables in the back. They're led through the foyer, into the dining room, and begin to eat as they have a short conversation with the Count. After a few minutes, I kick the module proper off with the doors slamming shut, lights going out, and the Count disappearing.

      A couple of them pull out glowing magic weapons while Bo'Bert removes an amulet of continual light from under his clothes. They set up a marching order and set out, heading up and discovering the accountant's office, where they have a rather befuddling, albeit cordial, conversation and push forward into the audience hall. After a little poking around, they find the secret door on the southern wall leading to a turret and a set of stairs, but they forgo these to move through some ornate doors into a large, 20'x70' hall.

      As they move through the halls, they're set upon by a baker's dozen gargoyles, swooping in from above. Despite best efforts, several characters are whittled down, a spell is lost from damage, and general pandemonium is at hand. Iskandar uses knock to get the closest set of doors open, Elowyn tries to open with magic missile but a tail swipe knocks her off balance, Bo'Bert blesses the party, Nobar is attempting to train his crossbow on a gargoyle, and everyone else is fending them off with their weapons. On the second round, the party splits into two groups to try and mitigate attacks going towards the casters while Freya stands her ground and continues attacking. By the end of that round, Freya, Rikka, and Thorgisl have formed one group while everyone else formed a second group. The gargoyles ended up splitting between them in groups of 10 and 3, respectively. On the third round, Iskandar releases a monster summoning 1 as Elowyn successfully looses her magic missiles and Bo'Bert eases some of the damage taken by Rowan with a cure light wounds. Everyone else is doing their best to remain alive while in melee with these creatures. They managed to kill one of the thirteen gargoyles this round. On the fourth round, Rowan attempts to withdraw further away from his group while Rikka and Thorgisl do the same from theirs, both incredibly injured by this point. Iskandar looses his own magic missile and, with the efforts of others, kill another two gargoyles. At the end of the round, several manes demons form out of the shadows, and the gargoyles seem to break, choosing to flee from the fight.

      Surprised to have made it through that endeavor without anyone dying, the party takes a few minutes to tend to their wounds and distribute a few magic items, before taking a set of stairs down to the chapel. After noting the age of the place and its apparent disuse, they strip the long-dead corpse of a cleric and Bo'Bert removes the Icon from the altar; being Neutral Good, he stands unsmote.

      The party has decided to attempt to rest a few hours, just enough to get a couple of 1st level spells memorized. The general state of the chapel has led them to believe that this chamber is the closest thing they'll find to a... "safe"... room. Even if that simply manifests as a lower rate of encounters, it's better than nothing, in their eyes.

      That's where we left off for the evening. I've not yet rolled the encounter checks to see if they make it through unbothered.

      6 votes
    28. How worried should I be about plastic water bottles?

      I'll be brief. I have a collection of plastic water bottles including a large 12 liters container. I am in the process of replacing them with metal, but large metal containers can be expensive...

      I'll be brief.

      I have a collection of plastic water bottles including a large 12 liters container. I am in the process of replacing them with metal, but large metal containers can be expensive (I'm not in the US). How much risk do quality plastic water bottles really poses to my health?

      Thanks!

      22 votes
    29. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows 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.

      11 votes
    30. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      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...

      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!

      11 votes
    31. What might be going on with this indie game "fansite"?

      I recently came across an interesting-looking indie game, Idols of Ash. Basically, you have to use a simple grapple-and-swing mechanic to descend through an eldritch underground complex while...

      I recently came across an interesting-looking indie game, Idols of Ash. Basically, you have to use a simple grapple-and-swing mechanic to descend through an eldritch underground complex while being pursued by a dangerous "murderpede" monster.

      I first played it on what I thought was the official site, idolsofash.fun. It's a pretty spiffy design, with a playable web version, extensive FAQs, strategy guides, and embedded images and video of the game. But I ran into some bugs while playing -- no sound effects, weird lighting. When I mentioned these flaws on the developer's Itch.io page, they responded that they had nothing to do with the site.

      Turns out it has a disclaimer at the very bottom: "Unofficial fan site. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Leafy Games." Buying and installing the actual version solved my tech issues. And in playing the game more, I noticed that the various guides on the site were subtly wrong in a lot of ways. The About page claims it's maintained by a big fan of the game, but in hindsight the whole thing seems AI-written and full of hallucinations.

      Thing is, I don't get the angle here. There's no advertising on the site. It prominently links directly to the game's official Steam and Itch pages, so they're not trying to deliver malware or intercept the developer's sales. I assume the glitches are from a poor decompilation and rehosting of the original Godot engine game, but there's nothing to be gained from that. The presence of images and video suggests some level of human involvement in the site design, meaning it's not some cheap fire-and-forget thing. The URL and content are far too specific to flip into something else after gaining SEO rank. It presents (and acts) exactly like a non-commercial labor-of-love fansite (albeit one that shares the paid game for free in a broken state).

      Could this be a genuine, if misguided, attempt by an actual fan to share the game using AI tools? Or is there some kind of scam I'm not seeing? Is this sort of fake AI fansite with embedded versions of the game a widespread problem with indie titles now?

      23 votes
    32. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      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...

      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?

      9 votes
    33. Does anyone want to buy an unused Pixel 10?

      I got a new Verizon account in December 2025, and was surprised to learn they'd give me a free phone. I chose a Pixel 10 (128GB, Obsidian). When I opened the Verizon account, the Verizon employee...

      I got a new Verizon account in December 2025, and was surprised to learn they'd give me a free phone. I chose a Pixel 10 (128GB, Obsidian).

      When I opened the Verizon account, the Verizon employee touched this Pixel 10 just enough to make sure the eSIM was configured, but we never even set up the OS. I moved the eSIM to my phone, so this Pixel 10 has never been used, never even finished the initial boot process.

      I think Verizon carrier-locks their phones for 60 days. I got the phone on 12/17/25 so it should be out of carrier lock now.

      This Pixel 10 is boot-loader locked and I use GrapheneOS, so it's of no use to me. I tried to sell it on eBay, but they wanted me to upload photos of my ID or some such nonsense, which I won't do. I tried to sell it on Swappa, but they refused because the phone is "financed"*.

      This phone is technically in new condition except the plastic seal on the box has been broken.

      If you'd like to buy an unused Pixel 10 for $500 + shipping, please send me a private message and we'll work out the details.

      Photos can be seen here (link available until 4/30/26): https://immich.thewooskeys.com/s/pixel10

      Let me know if you have any questions about the phone.

      Offers will be considered.

      *The "free phone" deal with Verizon is that they charge me the cost of the phone ($800) prorated monthly over 2 years, and each month they also credit me that same amount so the total charge each month is $0.00. If ever I cancel my plan with them, they will charge me the balance.

      20 votes
    34. Suggest media in which the antagonist is an idea or an abstract concept rather than a person or intelligent entity

      the two examples that I have are Final destination movies and junji ito's manga "Uzumaki". it doesn't have to be a manga or movie of course, I just would like something similar but it can be any...

      the two examples that I have are Final destination movies and junji ito's manga "Uzumaki".

      it doesn't have to be a manga or movie of course, I just would like something similar but it can be any medium. books, movies, games etc

      48 votes
    35. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      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...

      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?

      20 votes
    36. Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like vent, reciprocity and strait of hormuz. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was...

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like vent, reciprocity and strait of hormuz. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bewildered.

      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!

      17 votes
    37. What have you been listening to this week?

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as...

      What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

      Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

      You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

      http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

      Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

      4 votes
    38. What did you do this week (and weekend)?

      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...

      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!

      5 votes
    39. US to Canada package forwarding service?

      Hey Tildes, There's a product that is sold in US Costco, where the Kirkland brand is a fraction of the price of the Canadian Costco brand name version. Without knowing anything about tarrifs or...

      Hey Tildes,

      There's a product that is sold in US Costco, where the Kirkland brand is a fraction of the price of the Canadian Costco brand name version. Without knowing anything about tarrifs or customs clearing, do you guys know of a service that I can ship to in US, that will forward my package to a Canadian address? Or is that all kinds of illegal or was possible but not anymore? Brief search on Reddit turned up AI and astroturfed results sadly

      16 votes
    40. 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.

      7 votes
    41. AI Coding agents are the opposite of what I want

      I've been thinking a lot about LLM assisted development, and in particular why I keep dropping the available tools after a few attempts at using them. I realized recently that it's taking away the...

      I've been thinking a lot about LLM assisted development, and in particular why I keep dropping the available tools after a few attempts at using them.

      I realized recently that it's taking away the part of software development I enjoy: the creative problem solving that comes with writing code. What's left is code review tasks, testing, security checks, etc. Important tasks, but they all primarily involve heavy concentration, and much less creativity.

      Why aren't agents focused on handling the mundane tasks instead? Tell me if I've just introduced a security vulnerability or a runtime bug. Generate realistic test data and give me info on what the likely output would be. Tell me that the algorithm I just wrote is O(n^2).

      Those tasks are so much more applicable to matching against existing data, something LLMs should be extremely good at, rather than trying to get them to write something novel, which so far they've been mostly bad at, at least in my experience.

      46 votes
    42. The ethics of buying, playing military, war or games inspired by them?

      I liked playing Ace Combat since I've been a kid, Ace Combat 2 was one of my favorite PS1 games alongside Crash Team Racing at the time, and I did play AC3 as well but don't remember much of it. I...

      I liked playing Ace Combat since I've been a kid, Ace Combat 2 was one of my favorite PS1 games alongside Crash Team Racing at the time, and I did play AC3 as well but don't remember much of it.

      I completely skipped PS2 generations since I was on handhelds instead, so my first interaction with Ace Combat since 3 was ACAH(Yuck) on PS3, but I ended up buying Ace Combat 7 since that was actually a good game, but being bad at committing to one game hasn't allowed me to finish it, with AC8 being announced to come out soon, I decided I should try and focus on clearing AC7.

      I never gave it a mind at the mind but since now I'm aware of what Lockheed Martin is, I noticed it when I started up the game the past few days at one of the splash screens at the start of the game, and given that Lockheed Martin's involvement with the current ongoing wars, it's safe to assume that Bandai Namco have had an agreement that most likely has had financial and monetary incentives to license their planes.

      licensing weapons and arms aren't particularly a new thing afaik in games, I'm not much of an FPS person myself since I stick with Doom and Bioshock if I want a more "traditional" FPS experience (But prefer things like Ultrakill or Metal Hellsinger) and never been into CoD or other military shooters.

      So depending on their license agreement, they either have paid the royalties upfront(Unaware of how licensing typically goes but I assume it's most likely to be this one?) just to have their arms in the game, or they get a portion of their sales. If it is the former then sales of the game do not directly(as in unless sequels or relicensing occur) contribute to their bottom lines, if it is the latter then every sale contributes to wars.

      Posting this in places like reddit or other gamer spaces I'd imagine would elicit a "Don't bring politics to my games" kind of response.

      I'm curious what Tildes users would think of this, I think that would make pirating these games or buying them secondhand(impossible on Steam though Steam family could count) be more ethical than buying them in a way, though I imagine some may advocating for separating the art from... whom the artist pays?

      27 votes
    43. Help disabling flashy "animation" on my dumb watch

      This is the "animation" (video, image). It is the circle on the upper left. The watch is a very cheap one, a Chinese concoction called "Skmei El Luminous Dual Time". It looks great for my taste,...

      This is the "animation" (video, image). It is the circle on the upper left.

      The watch is a very cheap one, a Chinese concoction called "Skmei El Luminous Dual Time". It looks great for my taste, but the insanely flashy, continuous animation is unpleasant. I bought it online, and the animation didn't look as annoying in the videos as it is in real life.

      Yes, I know most people wouldn't care about that, but I'm neurodiverse etc.

      The official manual makes no mention of the "animation", and asking AI was useless. There is a real possibility that the animation is hardcoded, in which case I will probably keep the watch as jewelry for special occasions.

      Perhaps someone has the same watch and can help me out?

      Thanks!

      18 votes
    44. 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.

      6 votes