March 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following games (2 EA, 6 Steam).

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?

I recently moved apartments and I'm leaving my beloved Google Fiber behind for some Spectrum cable internet that's included with the apartment (and I don't have any other choice). The issue is, it seems like I keep randomly losing connection and because I'm using my own router (but their modem) the Spectrum tech support hasn't been super helpful. For example, this morning I woke up and internet on my phone wasn't working, on my desktop I could ping stuff but it took ~20 seconds for the first packet to go through, but my router could ping things instantly. DNS was working if I got it from my router, but I have two PiHoles that I use for DNS with the router (running Unbound) as upstream. Rebooting the modem actually fixed it in that case, but I'll still have momentary drops here and there.

Anyone have any ideas of things to check? I've thought about going to Lowe's and buying one of those coax cable testers but I'm not really sure if that'd help much.

EDIT: For what it's worth, I live in Texas and there was a massive windstorm yesterday... and I think it's possible that that was the issue 🤦‍♂️ I haven't definitely confirmed that, but it seems to be stable since the wind stopped and the wind did cause at least a couple of outages in the area.

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 memory kit is G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32GB (2x16GB) 5600 CL36 Black. The CPU is i9-13900KS on Gigabyte Z790 AERO G.

I noticed that memory price has been dropped significantly so I think I might upgrade to 64GB.

Online information seems to be conflicting regarding XMP and dual/quad channels, so I'm asking for advice here:

1. Can I buy one more of the same kit to upgrade to 4x16GB? Will it affect XMP or dual channel?
2. Can I buy other sticks of the same size (2x16GB)? The leftmost slot is obscured by the CPU cooler fan, so I'll need to either move it up or use low profile one.
3. Can I buy 2x32GB sticks so I end up with 2x32GB + 2x16GB?

From what I understand doing any of those options might cause XMP to not work and it'd be the best (but costly) to have 2x32GB as the only sticks in the system.

What anime out there would you recommend to those craving a "complete" experience?

With all of the shows out there that may or may not get another season to someday catch up with their source material, it's kinda risky starting something and being able to see it through to the end.

One I recently remember watching, but never watched serially is Yu Yu Hakusho.

Finding a list probably exists, but interested in others folks would recommend that end on a bang while leaving you complete!

So I have heard/read that LLMs available to the public can be useful for generating tailored cover letters more quickly. I've up to now avoided using artificial intelligence. What recommendations do you have and do you have any advice for getting up to speed?

Thank you.

The word "content" in this text means works that you can consume for knowledge or for entertainment, e.g. books, films, TV-shows, video games, scientific articles, podcasts, poems, music, all of those Youtube-videos you have saved for later never to be watched again, etc...

With streaming services, apps and tools becoming worse and harder to use while also increasing their subscription costs more often to appease investors, AI is taking over not only our future jobs but also our hobbies and passions, i.e. the very thing we were supposed to be able to make more of. Sponsored as well as subtle user-made advertisements are infesting site after site, but increasingly, the interactions these ads get also come from bots. Social media is no longer a place where I “trick” my peers into thinking I had a wonderful weekend - when in reality it was mediocre at best - but instead a battleground of different actors trying to inflate numbers for short-term gain. It feels like no film, no video game or book, no service, no image, no friend nor foe on the internet exists anymore for anything other than a fleeting moment of transactional gain. Nothing seems trustworthy anymore. Nothing seems genuine.

With the most recent YouTube video by Technology Connections (“Algorithms are breaking how we think”, 22. February 2025) that talks about “algorithmic complacency” and how people today let themselves be fed curated content instead of finding the content they are interested in, it highlights a shift I have felt the past year but never have had the words to express clearly, which is the following: People don’t care anymore.

And why should they? It’s much easier to come home from a long school or work day and just get cheap dopamine without having to put brain power into searching for entertainment. After all, I’m not trying to learn anything right now.

Now, I know I am preaching to the choir on this site. I don’t need to tell you of the bad effects today’s customs and practices on the internet will have on us and especially the next generation, both short-term and in the long run, but the worst one I can see is not back pain, short-sightedness, decline of web-searching skills or even gullibility. It is apathy.

Propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, manipulation, advertising, reaching voters, gaining consumers, decreasing attention spans and a willingness to pay more as long as no additional effort is required on my part. Escaping this fate seems to require an ever-increasing supply of vigilance and effort. The thought arises: What exists behind us?

Now, this might seem nonsensical. We all love to go back to older things from time to time. Stuff from previous generations has always intrigued us. But I am asking you, have you given any thought to the mind-boggling amount of content out there that has already been made? Think about all the books, movies, music, video games - although all this most probably was made with profit in mind, it was still made by people who chose to make it because they could.

The other side of the coin is realizing how small a portion all of this represents, when compared to the amount that has been lost to time, in one way or another. Why then, does it seem like the minuscule amount of content we have left from times gone is not treated with any respect at all? Why are alternatives to modern content taken from us just because they do not entail profit? Libraries have fever books, video games are taken offline, free software starts selling your data or making the free version have big restrictions, and then there is of course the whole case of The Internet Archive. I have even had to sail the seven seas to get ahold of books that don’t come in a format that confines them to a specific, paid app. This last part is seemingly becoming the only way of accessing a whole lot of stuff nowadays, which is a shame.

In essence, as archives and physical media die, we look to the corporations of today to satiate our craving for quality content, and in so doing, we alienate ourselves from our uniqueness and our soul. Why read a boring book when this streaming service is constantly getting new movies? Why make art when AI can make it for me if I ever need it?

It is precisely for these reasons that we need to keep a steady grip of the very thing that makes us human: our interest in creating. It is good for the mind, for the body, for the personality, for the diversity.

Thus, this is an argument for - or rather, a call to action to - spending time with content that was not made for one-time use, but rather, content that respects the time you put into it, be it book, film or game, not forgetting to let yourself be inspired and expressing yourself in the process.

I'm going to be in NYC with my daughter next week for a school conference. There are already some planned tourist things: the One World Center observatory, South Street Seaport, the Roosevelt Tram ride, and a Broadway show.

There is a pretty full schedule of scheduled activities. The primary degree of freedom is that almost every meal, breakfast lunch and dinner, is "on your own".

We're staying right in Times Square, so the expectation seems to be that everything you could want for food is within walking distance of the hotel. I plan to find a grocery store and get some fruit and snacks to keep in the hotel so we don't have to go out for every meal if she's exhausted.

Keep in mind also, it will be myself, my 4th grader, and whatever of her 4-6th grade friends we pick up, so we're not looking for bars or haute cuisine. If there's something "special" or uniquely new york, I can probably sell it as a new experience, but it needs to be in their overton window.

She's a pretty good eater but prefers familiar food. She's a fan of American staples like pizza, dogs, and burgers. She does well with Italian and Mexican, but rarely likes Thai, Indian, or Chinese.
Her best friend is vegetarian, so at least some vegetarian- friendly options would be good.

We won't have a ton of time for other touristy stuff, but I'm open to recommendations for something simple and short we could do in the evenings. In this thread people mentioned riding the ferry, so if that's a thing we can easily do from there, maybe grabbing some street hot dogs and sitting on the ferry would be a good option?

So, Tilderistas what Times Square recommendations (or anti recommendations) do you have?

This is a bit of a round about story, but bear with me.

I like PowerPoint, I love using it, it's intuitive to me. Google slides is okay, (I never delved into OpenOffice or any other offshoot really), but when I have a choice, I like using PPT.

I consider myself a comfortable Apple user as well, I prefer it for most of my computing needs, but not all, so it's not like I am not capable of using the Apple ecosystem.

However, whenever I have tried Keynote or Pages or any of the "office" tools, I don't like them.

I cannot tell if this is because these products or projects were killed off because of lowspread adoption at their onset, and thus did not get any development or improvement. Apple often does not release things and then just let them die, it usually waits a long time before it releases something, so they don't release things with potential failure (maybe I'm wrong, my memory doesn't recall anything like that other than this very example lol, and I guess their camera, but I digress).

I guess my rambling is, is PowerPoint just good and Keynote just bad or is there some more interesting story to it?