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.

My previous phone was a pixel. My tech life generally is a weird mix of things that are bad for privacy that I accept for convenience but also in other ways I choose to sacrifice things to protect privacy.

Does not registering the phone with Samsung actually cost me any functionality as a user?

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/3

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>

These past few days I went through the rabbit hole of people complaining about the Cybertruck, main the subreddit /r/cyberstuck. From my standpoint it really seems like this car has no redeeming qualities and is basically that car Homer Simpson designed once. That said, internet forums are not known for their restraint. This is just a curiosity, I couldn't buy this car even if I wanted to. Objectively speaking, is the Cybertruck a complete failure?

There's a million of these adaptations, both direct adaptations of Scrooge himself, and parodies featuring various other characters. Which one did you grow up seeing the most? Which one do you find yourself coming back to? I just rewatched the Patrick Stewart one myself, which is the one I've seen the most.

I've always found this to be a fun conversation topic among geeky, mechanically-inclined, or DIY-enthusiast friends, and it might be interesting to what see bubbles up from the Tildes crowd:

Other than standard things like dishwasher detergent or window cleaning spray, what chemicals or other substances do you keep at home? And what do you do with them? And if you need to take any special precautions for storage, use or disposal, what are those precautions?

Mine are not actually all that interesting, but I'll start:

• Powdered citric acid - for descaling plumbing or kitchen appliances
• Acetone - cleaning gunk off of all sorts of tools, labels off glass items, etc.
• WD40 - cleaning greasy car or bicycle parts
• Glycerin - making "fog juice" for a fog machine

I've made a strong effort toward intentional news exposure by trying to limit the times I run across news articles. This has "minimized" my exposure to the times when I specifically look to read news sources.

I'd be curious to know if anyone here is accomplishing something similar by filtering out Tildes tags and, if so, what does your list look like? Seems to be a hard balance between quieting the unwanted news posts and not limiting exposure to posts and articles I'd like to see.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/2

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>

This is the ninth of an ongoing series of book discussions here on Tildes. We are discussing The City We Became by N K Jemisin. Our next book will be Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson at the end of January.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.
And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

With Christmas around the corner I'm wondering if anyone has tabletop/card games they enjoy that are quick to play (in my mind less than 30 minutes). I enjoy longer games like Betrayal at House on the Hill immensely, but I'd like to add some games to my collection that are fun and light hearted, easy to learn, and idealy travel easy. I often play games with family over the holidays and want some that aren't as intimidating for my parents and older relatives to pick up and try. I often played with at least 2 other people, but I've been looking for fun 2 player games as well.

Can you please share what the gameplay is like and what you enjoy about playing it? Thanks all!

The November 2024 Backlog Burner event is officially over!

Over the course of the month of November, 17 participants moved 136 games out of their backlogs.

There were 9 bingo wins from:

• u/aphoenix
• u/AugustusFerdinand
• u/CannibalisticApple
• u/CrazyProfessor02
• u/Eidolon
• u/Evie
• u/kfwyre
• u/SingedFrostLantern
• u/Wes

Also, a big thank you to ALL who participated in the event, whether that was by playing games or joining in conversations.

It has been an absolute blast doing this with everyone. Thank you all for participating.

Use this topic to post your final bingo cards, give recaps of your games, and share any thoughts you have on the event itself.

See you again for the next Backlog Burner in May 2025!

Statistics

• We averaged 8.0 games per person and 31.7 games per week.
• There were 245 comments posted across 5 different topics.
• Two games were played twice: Hades and Monster Hunter Wilds
• We played games that started with every letter of the alphabet except Q.

Highlights

The following highlights were aggregated from participants. Thank you to those of you who wrote in! I'm sharing these as written, though I did make some minor edits to maintain anonymity.

• u/Wes made a great bingo site that works really well for this event.

• It's touching that u/Wes took the time to respond to nearly everyone. He really made this feel like a community.

• A special mention for @Wes, who seems to have read and thoughtfully replied to every single writeup this month, which was very kind (and I really liked their writeup of Praey for the Gods).

• I love the evolution of the Bingo card over the past several events, and I really liked this form.

• There were so many great entries that I enjoyed reading this time around, actually, and I really wanted to keep trying games that other people tried.

• @SingedFrostLantern for their hole-in-one golf

• The highlight for the whole event to me was @SingedFrostLantern's hole-in-one and the wonderful writeup that went with the game.

• My favourite writeup had to be @SingedFrostLantern with their Keylocker Hole in One, a fun little exercise that put me onto a new game that (regrettably) went straight back into the backlog.

• @JCPhoenix for creating full video reviews for many of his entries

• @Eidolon's Neverwinter Nights for bringing the classics back

• @kfwyre for Journey to the Savage Planet, and finally getting to be the dog

• u/kfwyre completely missing the joke

• @Evie, with basically every write-up she did. Dead Space, Prey, and Outer Wilds were all very good.

• @CannibalisticApple with Lost in Blue, finally tackling the game cartridge lost somewhere in a closet

• @J-Chiptunator with four unique console selections