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

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I’m going insane from the bland ass Xmas music at my work and I’m looking to zhuzh up the playlist with some more interesting Xmas music. Think “Christmas at the Zoo” by the Flaming Lips or “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)” by The Ramones.

I would also like some non-Christmas holiday songs, so we can get some representation for holidays besides the Christian one, or even just “Winter Songs”

Thanks!

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2023/day/9

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>

hey there folks!

a couple of friends have been encouraging me to share my music online. it’s hard for me to share things i’ve made because self-promotion mostly feels weird and out-of-place but tildes has felt like a welcoming environment, so i figured i would share it here.

i checked the code of conduct for tildes before making this post to make sure it was acceptable, so i hope this is alright

my music

i make slow, moody instrumental music and sometimes ambient music. no vocals but there are samples of dialogue from film and tv. it’s not “fun”/upbeat music, but i hope you enjoy some of it.

recent releases

mabry - vulnerary (a mixtape)

mabry - miles away (ep)

if possible, listen with headphones for the best experience.

share your music

i would love to hear what music other tildes folks make. also curious what software you like using (i use Logic).

This is a thread for game recommendations, but not just any standard game recommendations.

This is a thread for game recommendations where you have a very specific thing that you're looking for.

Maybe you're looking for a certain type of experience that can't easily be summarized with genres and tags. Maybe you're looking for a game that will evoke a particular feeling that's hard to put into words.

Whatever you're looking for, share your desired specificity below, and let people try to recommend games that fit it.

Hey folks, I have been following The Trevor Project's survey for a few years now and their 2023 one is just presented in a fantastic, easy to read and understand way so I think it's a great resource and worth sharing

The Trevor Project 2023 Survey on Mental Health in LGBTQ young people

BUT, I'm also looking for similar reports focusing on other minoritized populations in particular, or (whether in part or in full) focusing on the age ranges covering college students. I'm struggling to find something nearly so comprehensive, but I'm also not sure I'm looking in the right way. The Steve Fund seems to be a great resource for mental health for students of color, for example, but doesn't have obviously available data like this

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.

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>