Every generation has their "I remember when I heard about _____" event. If you were old enough to know what was going on in the world in 2001, you probably remember finding out about the attacks. What were you doing? How did you find out? What do you remember from that day?

TW: AI discussion.

Recently, things have been getting rather crazy with AI to the point that I think many are being forced to reckon with its potential. It has been demonstrated that this technology is capable of solving things like millennium math problems, which has drawn response from many fields medalists. There have been very public instances of big tech losing control of their experiments. Many top researchers are expressing discomfort. Now, of course you could dismiss this all as marketing but I personally think that would be a bit of wishful thinking.

I would like to have an open discussion about the current moment in time. Therefore, I ask you, people of tildes, where do you think we are and where do we go from here? Please feel free to pull out your crystal ball and speculate wildly. Or, please feel free to call it all bunk. I just want to hear your opinion.

• Do you feel concerned about AI or are you still unconvinced?
• Do you think AI will take your job? Why or why not?
• Are you considering a career change or any other big life decisions because of the changing world?
• How are you advising your children, regarding schooling and careers?
• Do you have a subscription to an AI service? If you have one, how do you feel about it?
• Do you think that this technology will be a net positive or a net negative?
• How do you think the human race will change, if at all?
• Do you think we will see a serious incident driven by AI in the near future?
• Does it bother you that humans may not be the dominant intelligence at some point? Do you think this is even possible?
• Does any of this affect your sense of identity or individuality? How do you feel about your skill set and hobbies?
• What do you think it means to be human in a machine dominated world?
• Overall, are you feeling optimistic or pessimistic?

For me personally, I have shared my opinion many times before. It is a rather pessimistic one.

I recognize that this is a heated topic, and I would like to request that even if you disagree with someone, that we treat each other with respect and kindness. Thanks.

I am helping a small business owner make and host a static website. What are the best options for hosting the site and paying for the domain?

For hosting, I was considering GitHub Pages, since it's free and just built in to GitHub.

For the domain registrar, I see a lot of people on places like Reddit discussing Namecheap, Porkbun, Cloudflare, and Ionos. I was originally considering GoDaddy, but I saw a lot of posts were saying that was the #1 place to avoid. I saw a lot of older posts recommending Google Domains, but I see that has since been killed by Google.

So, for about 3 years now, the only game I pretty much play has been Slay the Spire. I have about 650 hours on the first game and almost 400 hours on the 2nd one (which came out in march of this year...). I recently beat (again) A20 with all 4 characters and A10 on all 5 characters in STS2.

I have tried playing other roguelikes, but I always come back to StS because it's the only one that is 1) a difficult enough challenge 2) fun 3) turn based combat 4) intellectually challenging 5) playable with a controller

I tried Balatro, Dicey Dungeons, Slice and Dice, Darkest Dungeon, Vampire Crawlers, Brotato, TFT, Binding of Isaac, Hades, Gungeon...

I liked them all, but none of them provide all my 5 criteria, really.

You guys have any recommendations?

This is your chance to try to sway people's votes in the upcoming Voting Topic by endorsing certain titles!

Let people know why a certain game is awesome, or how a particular entry is of historical value, or why others really need to play this gem of yesteryear.

Parameters:

• The topic will remain open for 2 days (48 hours).
• Lobbying is not limited in any way, so you can endorse/support as many entries as you like.
• Negative lobbying IS allowed (but please make it fun).
• Anyone can participate. CGA does not require membership and is always open to all.

Game List

All nominations and boosts have been added, so this is the final list of games and their vote totals that we will be deciding on.

Just wanted to start another general cycling discussion thread, this time about longer rides.

I did my first metric century (100km) ride last Saturday, as part of an organized event here in the Bay Area. The ride took us through Marin county, which is the region just north of the Golden Gate bridge for those unfamiliar, and it was absolutely beautiful the whole way. The ride itself was wonderfully organized and supported: there were rest stops / feed stations every 20 miles or so, stocked with really great food, water, and sport drink mixes. There were also medics riding the course and support vehicles to help with mechanical issues, or to give you a lift back to the start if you had to tap out.

It was my first time doing a longer ride like this. I only signed up for it about 6 weeks ago and I am so glad that I did. Training for this really forced me to learn about cycling longer distances, from planning routes, to essential items to bring with, to proper nutrition, and beyond. I went from doing 10-20 mile rides a couple of times a week to doing this 62ish mile ride (with 4000ft of elevation) in 6 weeks, which I am super happy about!

Now that I can ride these distances, it's totally changed the options that feel open to me and I've been having a blast exploring my area. I'm no longer intimidated by routes with decent climbs or long distances, which has really opened up a lot.

Anyway, I absolutely loved it, and if anyone has been thinking about doing something similar take this as your sign to 100% do it!

The first day of BlizzCon is happening. A lot of trailers popping and news spreading.

What are your thoughts? Ideas? Will you be playing their upcoming new titles?

• Starcraft (New Shooter coming 2030)
• Diablo 4 Expansion + Diablo 5 Teaser (2029)
• Overwatch new Hero
• Heroes of the Storm new Hero
• Hearthstone new Expansion pack (The Black Empire)
• World of Warcraft Midnight Eclipse Update Patch
• World of Warcraft Forever (Classic +)

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.

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!

I've only watched the 1995 movie before, so it was a pleasant surprise this closer adaptation turned out to be straight crime drama with dense political intrigues and social commentary. The world feels more detailed and not just backdrop for philosophical musing, and so the questions being raised are more multi-faceted.

A particular highlight for me is the child-trafficking /ghost dubbing subplot. Not only does it further blur the lines between artificial and organic intelligence, but does so in a way that put more emphasis on the ethical dimension and not leaving it abstract.

Another example is her court statement questioning whether her shooting the kid or whoever brainwashed him in the first place should be more responsible for his death. The philosophical question is whether the death of a person should be marked when their mind or their body ceased to function, but the context of this being a defense for police unlawful killing gave me second thoughts.

Major's more lively characterization here also makes for an interesting contrast especially regarding her final act. In the 1995 version, she was morose since the beginning and just generally passive overall, so I interpreted her merging with the Puppet Master as due to being coerced, or her not very attached to living to begin with and so this is akin to a suicide on her part.

However, this version of Major is sexually active and enjoys indulging in life many pleasures. Crucially, merging (which was heavily implied to be analogous to digital procreation) was her choice, which makes that final decision more as embracing the call to adventure and choosing to enjoy new experiences, hence more life affirming.

Most of the political conspiracies went over my head though so if anyone can help explaining that side of the plot to me that would be great.

We are up for another round of nominations for Colossal Game Adventure, Tildes' very own retro video game club!

These nominations will form the ballot for the next round of voting, in which will we choose the next SIX games to play after we finish Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 this month.

Nominations for CGA do not start fresh each time. We rollover the top 50% of nominations from the previous round, and we decay their vote totals by 70%. So, many of the previously nominated games are still eligible to win in the upcoming voting.

Procedural Details

• Nominations will be open for 96 hours (4 days) from the time of this posting.

• Anyone can nominate. You do not have to have previously taken part in CGA in order to participate.

• Anyone nominating in this topic will be added to the CGA notification list if they're not already on there (unless you request otherwise).

• There is no hard definition for "retro." Choose whatever you feel fits that label.

• Games that have been nominated in the past but were cut are still eligible for nomination again. They do not get "locked out" of CGA.

Nomination Process

Everyone has the ability to take one (and ONLY one) official action for the nominations topic.

EITHER: Boost a rolled-over title.

• This will add 3 points to the title's rollover points from the previous round.
• You will also be able to add points to the game during the voting round.
• The purpose of this is to limit new nominations if there are games already in the list that strongly interest you.

OR: Nominate a new title.

• This will add a new game/arcade special to the ballot.
• An Arcade Special is a group of shorter/smaller games meant to be played together.
• Any new title starts at 0 points.

Nomination Formatting

Please do the following:

Bold your action (boosting/nominating).

If nominating, please link to your title on MobyGames. (You do not need to do this for boosting since the links are already in the list.)

Examples:

Boosting a game:

• Boost: Lode Runner

Nominating a game:

• Nomination: Portal 2

Nominating an Arcade Special:

• Nomination: Windows in the 90s
  Minesweeper
  Chip's Challenge
  JezzBall

It is recommended (but not required) that you share why you are nominating/boosting a particular game as well.

Rollover Titles

Hey, wanna listen to some tunes? throws a tape at your head, causing Out With The Old to play

Introduction

Legends come in many forms. For some, it's charting unknown space in a wildly complicated ship. For others, it's carving their own path as a pirate on uncharted seas. And for many gamers, it's stopping every "big bad" you can think of: chaotic embodiments, pantheons of mythic gods, egocentric wizards, and so on.

But this month, we're not chasing cosmic threats or fantasy epics. We're hitting the skatepark to prove our mad boarding skills, with Tony Hawk himself as the centerpiece.

He's the same guy who landed the first-ever documented legendary 900° aerial spin in competition on June 27, 1999, popping it out of a half-pipe in a single leap. He'd later land two more 900s in the 2010s, get credited with inventing 88 named tricks, and appeared in countless videos, films, and TV shows, both as a skater and as himself.

Just ten days ago, the second and final day of Vert Alert, his own vertical skateboarding competition in Salt Lake City has wrapped up. That pedigree is exactly what backs the entire Tony Hawk's franchise, especially the first four Pro Skater games and the gloriously unhinged Underground series.

Pro Skater 1 took the bare-bones fundamentals of real-world skate tricking and mapped them onto a video game blueprint. Suddenly, you could chase mastery without wrecking your body through endless falls.

The core loop has you choose a skater and board from a roster, each with different tricks and stats that shape your playstyle. Then, drop into one of several skate parks to chain stunts for big scores and complete literal fetch-style goals within a tight time limit.

Our CGA Game of the Month, Pro Skater 2, expands and refines that foundation in almost every way, including:

• Manuals: The game-changing addition that lets you chain tricks on flat ground without being forced into a stop when you run out of rails or airtime.
• Bigger, more varied levels: More complex park design with more routes and secrets.
• Deeper Career Mode: Instead of just grabbing tapes, smashing objects, and chasing high scores in 2-minute runs, you get more varied and elaborate objectives.
• Expanded roster and tricks: More skaters, more moves, more ways to play.
• Create-a-Skater and Create-a-Park: Full customization for both your rider and your levels.

The one big mechanical piece still missing? Reverts to chain aerials into each other. That wouldn't arrive until Pro Skater 3, and is finally addressed in the 2020 remake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, which also folds in various gameplay tweaks from later entries up through Underground 1.

My Personal Background

When I was a kid, I vaguely remember seeing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 everywhere: for sale and rent in every store, featured in strategy and tips magazines, and even in those massive Sears holiday catalogs. We also had friends who were always messing around on real skateboards.

All of that eventually convinced my brother to rent Pro Skater 3 on GameCube. We both took turns with it. We loved how addictive and technical the gameplay loop was, but we didn't end up buying it, or any of the sequels, because we assumed it would be a short, shallow experience that wouldn't stay relevant.

We were wrong.

In 2004, our parents bought us a PS2 copy of Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 instead of renting. That game blew us away: twice as many intricate, unique levels, plus new gameplay elements layered on top of the already addictive core.

A few months later, I beat both Story and Classic modes, which unlocked a set of hidden characters. The most shocking (and hilarious) one is tied to a movie finally coming out in 2027, an icon of the 2000s both commercially and as a meme.

The fun didn't stop there. I accidentally discovered a bunch of out-of-bounds glitches thanks to weirdly programmed boundaries (the Los Angeles level sticks out in my mind; I loved those rebounding invisible walls I could endlessly jump off). I also managed to clip Player 1's position marker into odd places in Create-a-Goal mode. We felt like we were game developers, which might be what inspired my brother to pursue a career in the video game industry. Good times.

Fun fact: at one point, he even helped debug the then-upcoming Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. Many of the bugs he found and documented still made it into the critically panned final release, because the game had to ship before the licensing deal between Activision and Tony Hawk expired at the end of 2015. And it barely had any development time… Yikes!

Regardless, I'm looking forward to trying the original PS1 version of Pro Skater 2 for this month's CGA, warts and all. It has the gameplay loop I know and love, and I can get over the fact that I can't walk off my skateboard anymore, something I haven't dealt with since beating American Sk8land on Nintendo DS over a decade ago.

Game Information

Years of the release: 2000, 2001, 2006, 2010, 2020, 2021

Platforms: PS1, PC, GBC, Dreamcast, Mac OS, GBA, N64, Xbox, Windows Mobile, iPhone, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 1

Genre(s): Action, Sports

Links: Original - Mobygames, Original - Wikipedia
Windows - Mobygames
GBC - Mobygames
GBA - Mobygames
2x - Mobygames, 2x - Wikipedia
1 + 2 - Mobygames, 1 + 2 - Wikipedia

A brief overview at some of the versions:

• PS1

  • Easiest to access in terms of controller layout and emulation.
  • Great baseline "classic" feel.

• Windows

  • Potentially the most authentic way to experience Pro Skater 2 if you're comfortable with modding and tinkering.
  • Requires tracking down a out-of-production software and configuring it properly.

• Dreamcast

  • Similar to PS1 in feel, but with a noticeable visual fidelity boost.
  • Often considered the best-looking original-console version.

• N64

  • The most technically compromised 3D version.
  • Still functional, but stunts feel awkward with the C-button layout.

• Xbox (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x)

  • Essentially "what if Pro Skater 1 + 2 came out right after Pro Skater 3?"
  • Adds mechanics and quality-of-life improvements from later entries.

• GBA

  • A surprisingly playable top-down/isometric conversion of the full Pro Skater 2 experience for a low-powered handheld.
  • Requires adjusting to the perspective and controls, but it holds up.

• GBC

  • Drastically different due to hardware limits and too few buttons.
  • Becomes a sidescrolling, scope-limited version of Pro Skater 2 with mediocre controls, despite being an improvement over the GBC Pro Skater 1.

Where to find the game:

• Physical Release: Prices seem to be fairly reasonable on eBay. A loose cartridge/disc is usually much cheaper than a Complete-in-Box copy (which includes the game, manuals, and box), but not by much.
• Digital storefronts: A convenient fallback solution, especially with its frequent sales. Only applies to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

IMPORTANT: Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

IMPORTANT: Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

Without further ado, let's hit the parks and go buck wild with tricks and stunts!

> CONTINUE

(Credit to @Boojum for the splash screen. Still rock-and-rolling after a year!)

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.

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.