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!

Hi

I figured before I start venturing into other forums dedicated to this sort of thing, I'd ask here on Tildes since I'm at least comfortable with the community and how helpful they can be here.

I'm tired of all of the subscription services I have, movies and TV shows disappearing from them, buying a film on Prime and only being able to watch it offline through a specific app. Even then, half the time we're watching comfort TV shows that we have on DVD already (X-Files and Friends for instance).

So I figured that building a home media server would give me the chance to cut the cord with a couple of these services and allow us to start using and controlling our own data again.

I have a budget of around £300 (I could perhaps push to £400 if needed) and I'm honestly not sure at all where to start. I have knowledge on how to build brand new, medium to high end gaming PCs as I've done it since I was in my late teens and built my first PC with the wages from my very first job but building a budget minded PC for use as a home media server goes completely over my head.

I've noticed that a lot of the pre-built NAS or media server boxes are very expensive so my first thought was to buy a refurbed workstation or small form factor PC that has enough "oomph" to do the trick but I don't know what ones to even start looking at and then I start to feel a little bit out of my comfort zone.

Things like getting the right CPU in these refurbed machines that offers the features I'm looking for like hardware transcoding etc., integrated GPU's, ensuring there's enough SATA ports for multiple hard drives and an SSD for a boot drive, and then to top it all off ensuring that while achieving these features the thing shouldn't draw too much power when idling as it'll be on for long stretches of time, if not left on 24/7.

I've also got no knowledge of Linux, I've never even looked at it but if it's genuinely easy enough (for someone with next to no Linux experience) then I'd be happy to give it a shot if it offers better performance compared to using Windows 10 or something.

All the server will be used for is watching TV shows, perhaps the odd film, listening to a bit of music perhaps and the odd podcast now and again. Simultaneous streaming will be fairly minimal, perhaps 2 streams as me or my partner watch one thing and our daughter watches another on her tablet. In regards to streaming outside the house that will also be almost non-existent, perhaps, again our daughter watching a kids TV show like Pokemon or Fireman Sam on her tablet when we're out but me and my partner don't tend to watch anything when we're outside the house, certainly not TV shows or movies anyway.

Redundancy isn't something I'm too horrendously worried about, I wouldn't be storing anything like photos that we wouldn't want to lose on it and while it'd be annoying, losing a drive with TV shows or films on it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Any help would be massively appreciated, thanks.

What is a classical music piece you enjoy and what do you like about it? Maybe we can help each other find new classical music or even different styles of classical music to listen to. I like classical music a lot but I'm far from well versed in the different periods or much more than the most famous composers and performers.

One (far from obscure) piece I like a lot is Paganini's Violin Concerto No. 1. It is full of explosive energy and the diversity and emotion of the violin part always amazes me.

And bonus question: how do you listen to classical music? I primarily listen to the local classical music radio station but occasionally attend concerts.

Greetings Folks, I apologize if this is the wrong spot for this but I'd like to cast a net to see if I can get any additional thoughts or help.

I recently started a new job as NGS Library Prep Tech - sadly I had only begun training on this briefly at my last position but only got an introduction to Speed/Mag Bead clean up. I was hired because the lab is growing quickly and has had issues with organizational stuff in the past and that is my strong suit (my last position I did a lot of clonal DNA / miniprep stuff as far as the wet work went).

The person I was replacing at my new job was only there for two days and didn't really help a whole lot other than hand me a haphazardly written protocol and said "practice by cleaning ladders at different bead concentrations and running them on a gel."

Did that and was told they look good.

Fast forward to using actual samples: There were a set that needed to be redone because the final pool was lost. When I did my first qubit quants after the post PCR speed bead clean up I noticed that the quant concentrations were ~80% less than what they had been previously.

Today I have some remaining sample that I can push through PCR, my plan is to quant 8 out of the 53 samples of the pre / post PCR plate and then again after I do clean up.

As far as clean up goes I had been trying to do the whole plate at once, but I'm going to go back to just completing a column at a time to ensure my timing is better.

Are there particular spots in the Speed / Mag Bead clean up process that I should be aware that I could be washing away / losing DNA?

Do people have any tips on how to be more 'sure footed' in this process?

Ways that I can better practice and say "yup, I've got this!"?

Thanks for the help, and if this should be posted somewhere else please let me know, but as this is 'science' related I thought it fit best here.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like plagiarism, greedflation and grand theft auto.6. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was half interested.

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!

Good morning ~ This is a thread to discuss new album releases that have arrived on our doorstep this week. Feel free to share albums and EPs that have caught your eye and interest.

Discussion Points

What are you looking forward to listen to?
Have you listened to any of these releases?
What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past?

Why Friday?

Most (but not all) new LPs/EPs release on a Friday, as labels want to give the release a full week of sales before entering the charts.

~~ Feedback on the format welcome

So I've just been using basic earbuds my whole life, never felt like spending big bucks on good headphones. Recently though, I've been really interested in what I've been hearing about IEMs. Youtubers and forum users have been name dropping a few of them, such as Moondrop Chu/Chu II, Salnotes Zero, etc. So I looked them up, and was shocked to find how cheap they are. They're like $20, in the same price range as the crappy earbuds I buy anyways! These kind of headphones seem like a whole world I know nothing about, with pros and cons I don't fully understand, so what would be the best recommendation for a first set?

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/8

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Server host: tildes.nore.gg
Dynmap: https://tildes.nore.gg
Playtime counter: https://tildes.nore.gg/playtimes.html
Verification site: https://verify.tildes.nore.gg
Tildes website extension (show online status): Firefox (Desktop and Android) - Chrome

The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.

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.

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?

This thread is posted weekly on Thursday - please try to post relevant content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Especially significant updates may warrant a separate topic, but most should be posted here.

If you'd like to help support Ukraine, please visit the official site at https://help.gov.ua/ - an official portal for those who want to provide humanitarian or financial assistance to people of Ukraine, businesses or the government at the times of resistance against the Russian aggression.

Sorry for the delay in posting this month.

December's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games:

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

Hi all,

There is a tar.gz whose contents I would like to access. The file itself is quite old, last being updated ~20 years ago if I had to guess (I am not sure if this is relevant). The file contains legacy scientific code that I would like for archival purposes and can be found via the "code site" link here. However:

• When I download the file and run tar -xvzf radpack.tar.gz I get an error: tar: Error opening archive: Unrecognized archive format.
• Likewise, if I try to gunzip it I get gunzip: radpack.tar.gz: not in gzip format.
• Running file radpack.tar.gz only yields radpack.tar.gx: data, indicating file cannot find anything out about it.
• head radpack.tar.gz outputs a string of unintelligible unicode.

These are the different solutions I have come across after searching this problem, and to me is good evidence that the file has been corrupted in some way and that may very well be the case. However, for archival and historical purposes it would be great if I could access the contents, so I am compelled to search out other solutions. Are there other options I can try here? Is there some way to confirm that the file is in fact corrupted beyond recovery? Any help on this point would be greatly appreciated. I posted this on stack exchange as well but figured maybe the smart folks here might know.

EDIT:

Just to be clear this has been solved — a functioning copy of the archive was found.