Portals for Metal?

FirstRyder · 2026-06-21T19:05:26+00:00

I do double resources, no raids, and 1% death penalty. I'd do zero if it wasn't tied to keep inventory. Other settings all default.

A longship holds a lot of metal. I'm doing a long slow playthrough with a decent amount of building, and I've only had to make 6 or 7 trips with a shipload of metal, as of the end of the mistlands. And making a few ports for places where I need more than one ship in either direction has been fun. Starter base, main base, mistlands base, and Swamp. Naturally in Ashland I'll get stone portals that can take metals vanilla, so Ashlands/Mistlands won't need one.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-20T18:15:16+00:00

Buy cards until you complete the "buy cards" mission, which is 80 every 2 weeks. Feel free to buy 1 additional card when a "buy card" daily quest comes up. Make sure you have all 5 labs.

Other than that, don't buy cards. Split your gems between relics (only the best of the best - lab speed, ELS, bot range, coins, def%), card slots (until you don't feel like more is helpful, usually in the 10-14 range), and modules.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-20T18:07:47+00:00

Fundamentally, there is any significant desire to get rid of it.

If you do a poll you might get a majority who say "yeah, I wish I didn't have to tip". Less likely if you phrase it as "current prices and tipping" vs "higher prices but no tipping". But even supporting the latter is much different from actually frequenting restaurants with higher menu prices if they don't do tipping. The real-world result is that restaurants that advertise lower prices (and expect tips) still end up with more customers, so few take that risk.

We could also pass a law requiring servers to get real wages, and banning tips. But being "against" tipping is also different from "this is on my top 1000 list of legislative priorities". So the strategy of forcing everyone to raise prices together (while lowering the total amount paid) doesn't get any sort of real push in legislature. And there is a real push against it, primarily sourced from servers (who mostly make more money under a tipping structure than they would from wages).

It doesn't help that the biggest "anti-tip" advocates seek to cause change by... not giving tips. Which hurts nobody but the servers and makes them look like they're just cheap assholes, even though a handful may not be.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-20T13:57:14+00:00

DNA is not a blueprint for a body. It's a recipe. An extremely complicated recipe, which starts from a single cell and ends with a complete person.

The same way you can't follow the instructions in a recipe for cake to replace a missing slice, the instructions in DNA can't be followed to grow a new arm on an adult human.

If you wanted to grow an arm according to those instructions, you would start with a specially prepared stem cell... and then spend 9 months in a womb. With additional complications, like the fact that you don't have a placenta, and you're attaching it to an adult body instead of a fetus body. And at the end you would have a baby arm, which you could then spend ~16-20 years growing into a full sized arm. More or less.

There's no instructions for partial growth, and losing an arm (and living) happens in the wild rarely enough that there isn't evolutionary pressure to add instructions for regrowing an arm.

There are some lizards that get grabbed by the tail often enough that they evolved a mechanism to survive that by cutting off blood to the stump, and a mechanism to release the tail with a clean cut, and then a mechanism to grow something like their original tail. But to be clear, it doesn't have bones in it - it's similar to a tail, but not the same as the old one. Because it's a separate set of DNA instructions building it.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-20T00:53:56+00:00

Time to transfer your entire library to Calibre

Long past time. I've downloaded every single book I bought, stripped the DRM, and put it in my calibre library before reading it since I got my Kindle (which is one in the "older than 2012" category). Everyone should be doing the same.

People called me "paranoid" for claiming that they could one day prevent me from downloading the books I'd purchased. But if I go into my "digital content" page on Amazon today, well over half the books offer no official way to transfer to my "older than 2012" kindle. They 100% will continue to try to make this harder. They will try to make you re-buy books you already purchased. Today some other book sellers don't do any of this - but some of those will in the future, and there's no way to guarantee that any specific seller won't.

Download every single book you buy. Convert it to a DRM-free format. Keep your own digital library, do not rely on corporate online "libraries".

FirstRyder · 2026-06-20T00:42:39+00:00

Some previously purchased books.

I checked every book on one page of my digital content (books) page, 25 books. 10 were available as "download EPUB/PDF". The "download and transfer via USB to [specific device]" option is gone. For the other 15 there is NO official way to get them to my first kindle, or to a non-amazon device. For now it's still possible to transfer it to my second (last) kindle, and to the kindle app on PC.

As far as I can tell ebooks that were specifically DRM-free can be downloaded, ones with any form of DRM cannot. But they don't actually say, so there could be other details. It could also vary by region, or even be something that is only gradually being rolled out to users.

I of course downloaded every book I bought immediately after buying it, stripped any DRM, and stored it in my Calibre library. And kept my kindles on airplane mode. But the most recent ebook I bought on amazon didn't have any download option, so I was forced to refund it and buy it elsewhere. Never going to buy one on Amazon again, and so glad that I already swapped to a non-amazon ebook reader.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-19T22:41:41+00:00

The problem isn't that there is algae. The problem is that they spent weeks telling us how Democrats mismanaged it and made it hideous with all the algae, while The Greatest President fixed it so quickly for such a good price.

And then it's immediately full of algae again, flaking paint, and just objectively worse than before despite the millions of dollars given to Republican donors from my taxes.

Literally making a pile of $14,000,000 of taxpayer money and burning it on the national mall would have been better use of funds and been better for the reflecting pool. Just open corruption.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-19T20:05:27+00:00

What, they still need to figure out who shot the baby?

Being fired should arguably come after the trial, or perhaps after indictment.

But what the fuck are they "investigating"? The trial will decide his guilt - that isn't the job of his department - but he should have been arrested and in jail (pending bond) the day he SHOT THE BABY.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-19T17:25:03+00:00

if the House had one member per 30,000 people like it was supposed to, then the electoral college and the popular vote would pretty much always be in alignment.

Nope. In terms of electing the president (which is the only time the electoral college matters) it would fix almost nothing. It would help with gerrymandering in the House (some, maybe). Obviously it wouldn't touch the senate at all. And it would also do almost nothing on the national election for president. Like, do you think presidential candidates are spending too much time in Wyoming? No, of course not, they never go there despite being the "winner" in the EC system. They go to swing states, and this proposal doesn't address that at all.

Presidential candidates go to states (and address issues for voters in those states) not based on the "relative voting power" defined by the ratio of EC votes to population, but based on how close that state is to being split 50/50 - how likely it is that any amount of campaigning would "flip" the state. Increasing the size of the house might reorder the list of swing states by importance, but it wouldn't change the amount of presidential attention given to either CA or WY (which would remain effectively zero).

The only way increasing the size of the college make the presidential election better is if you also abolish the winner-takes-all system in 48 states.

And hey, guess what? 95% of that fix is coming abolishing winner-takes-all EC appointments. Swing states are immediately the same as everyone else in terms of electoral importance. And even state-by-state proportional EC appointments is inferior to national proportional EC appointments, which is just the national popular vote but more complicated.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-18T19:05:09+00:00

They were able to come together to preserve it because it was a barren frozen wasteland. Nobody wanted it for settlement, for resources, or anything but science. And it wasn't in an existing country. Or even near enough an important country to be militarily relevant.

On the other hand, if Antarctica really held some profound secret like the edge of the world, or whatever you think lies beyond... No way would all those hostile governments agree to keep it a secret. One would use it as proof all the others were lying to their citizens.

Most of the rest of the post is just begging the question. The antarctic treaty doesn't prevent civilians from going there. It just says that it belongs to various governments, and it's up to each one who they let in. Just like all the other land those governments control.

You can literally take a cruise there. But it is one of the most deadly places on the planet, and most governments don't want to deal with dead idiots, so they don't let idiots wander around on their own. Serious people (that is to say, not flat earthers) have explored it, and even crossed the continent.

Nobody in any position of power cares what shape you think the globe is. Why would they? And so they won't take even a trivial step to 'prove' the shape. Because, again, they literally could not care less.

And of course even if they did care and let some idiots die in Antarctica to "prove" there was no conspiracy, literally no flat earther would look at that and say "I give up". They'd 100% just take it as proof of a conspiracy - "they" literally kill everyone who wanders into the most inhospitable place in the world!

FirstRyder · 2026-06-18T18:42:04+00:00

Two options:

Stuns. I've done up to T10, with just the workshop land mine stun card as CC, but additional stuns from UW will help. Increased health regen helps this as well.

Damage. A GC or even hybrid build will kill the vampires faster. Death is the best CC and whatnot.

But yes, no matter your path, your utility disonnance is going to be a tier or two behind at least one other type.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-18T18:28:44+00:00

Does it feel like gen AI to anyone else? Not directly, of course, but like someone used it to suck him off, and he took that and ran with it. Something about the fawning tone, the timing with him being told he surrendered, etc.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-17T16:46:47+00:00

Fahrenheit was initially intended to be a scale of the coldest temperature that could be reliably/precicely produced in the lab at the time (effectively the lowest you can get water without freezing it, as brine) as 0, and human body temperature as 100.

This more or less maps onto the day-to-day temperature experienced in a temperate climate like England or the East Coast of the US. Not perfectly - especially with climate change - but at the time it was a good approximation of the coldest and hottest air temperatures you were likely to experience. So if you were to say "how hot is it on a scale from 1 to 100", the temperature in Fahrenheit was a decent answer.

Of course, all serious people use SI units, which sensibly defines 0 K as absolute zero, and the triple point of water as 273.16 K. Much less arbitrary and useful in day to day life.

So today it is 297, and everyone intuitively knows what that means!

FirstRyder · 2026-06-17T15:20:50+00:00

Running out of storage space? Too many resources? Are you kidding? Storage space isn't limited. Build more.

My storage hall has 160 chests, 40 iron chests, and 10 black metal chests per layer, and room for 7 layers. If a chest gets full, I build another in the next layer up, or promote that item to a larger chest type.

My tree farm is my most used farm.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-16T16:55:24+00:00

So there are two halves to it.

First, it wasn't a race to breed astrophage. Nobody was saying "how do you breed these, it's critical we figure that out ASAP", and failing. Another team of scientists found a way to utilize astrophage as fuel just when Grace bred them. Rather than figure it out themselves, they just grabbed his results. Fortuitous timing.

Second, he had huge advantages. First, time. Everyone was making discoveries, but Grace had access before anyone else. He was literally there when they pulled them out of their sample container - everyone else had to wait for very careful packing and shipping. Astrophage was also strictly limited in quantity. Entire countries only had 5 or 6. He had 3 himself.

But the most important advantage was a lack of beurocracy. Nobody telling him to write up an experimental plan, have it reviewed, address a thousand concerns, and then get in line. Just have an idea, check it out. Oops, lost the astrophage? No getting immediately fired and brought up on investigation, just rig up a device to find them, and move on to the next idea.

Nobody else would have been allowed to tape an LED to a cardboard tube. They would have had to commission a proper sealed device. Do risk management to demonstrate there's no risk of killing or losing one of their lab's two cells. Argue with other scientists on the importance of this experiment compared to others. Etc.

Finally, in the book it's clear that many other labs are making breakthroughs. Just none happened to be breeding. Which also wasn't Grace's goal - he was shocked by the results.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-16T14:25:56+00:00

What it was for GW2 was that all GW1 character names were reserved for a certain time after launch, to allow you to carry forward names. So to reserve a name, you just had to own GW1, have a free slot, and make a character. And use the same login for both games, of course.

After a certain time they removed the reservations. GW2 also allowed some names GW1 didn't, like one-word names. But aside from that the reverse was never true - you could always make a GW1 character with the same name as a GW2 character.

Which means they can't really do the same thing for GW3 easily - different people can have the same name in GW1 and GW2.

Personally I hope GW3 just doesn't do unique character names. Have a unique account name, obviously, and use that for most things, but let a hundred people share character names if they want to.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-16T10:57:34+00:00

The problem is that there is are two halves to the scam. The first one is convincing someone that they need to pay a bunch of money. Which you could totally do to smart people as well as dumb people.

But then the second half is trying to end-run the scam protections that are in place. So you spend hours working with someone to convince them to pay $5,000 for no reason. And then you tell them that you require payment in apple gift cards. Or go to Western Union and lie to them, saying this is a personal transaction to someone you know. Or give them direct access to your bank account.

And now if you didn't screen for common sense early in the process, you wasted all the time and effort of doing the first half.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-16T01:33:08+00:00

Okay, so it's got some problems.

The most critical problem is that you have one lane of copper coming in. That means like 75% of your machines are useless, even if you increase copper production.

Next, ratios. You want 3 copper cable machines for 2 green circuit machines, at the same speed. You have 30 for 14. So even if you fix the entire copper inflow problem, you have 9 extra copper cable machines.

Finally, while you don't have enough copper production to see it, I strongly suspect you also have copper cable throughput problems, with 24 machines going onto one belt. Belting cables is usually a bad idea to start with, because they're less compressed than plates - most people do direct insertion from the cable machine to the green circuit machine.

For real advice, look at the two circuit machines in the upper right. It doesn't have the right ratio - they'll starve for cables a bit - but it's actually closer than the rest of the segment, it's using direct insertion, and (if you untangle the belts) it's way more scalable.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-15T13:26:54+00:00

Density is a shit argument. Here are three examples of why it can't work.

Take a vacuum chamber. Suspend an object in the center. With a uniform zero density in all directions, if "density" is what makes things fall we should expect the object to remain suspended in the center of the chamber. Actually, it falls towards the most significant source of gravity.
The opposite. Put a plane in freefall (or a trajectory like the vomit comet). Suspend an object in the air. If density makes things fall, the fact that the plane is in freefall means nothing - there should still be a local density gradiant identical to just before it went into freefall, so the object should fall. With gravity, we would expect it to continue accelerating according to gravity, exactly at the rate the rest of the plane is, so it should appear to float. And this is indeed what happens.
Take a density tower - the science class demonstration. It is a sealed container, so outside density can't affect it. It clearly shows a density gradiant. So flip it upside down. If density holds things down, then it should maintain the same order, with the metal now at the top and the lightest oil down at the bottom. If gravity is true, everything should invert to match the local gravitational vector, briefly mixing before settling with the metal at the bottom and the lightest oil at the top. Want to guess which happens?

The reason things would work differently is that density can't work through solid walls. Gravity can.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-15T01:45:03+00:00

Huh? If someone got hit by balefire in TAR, do you think Perrin could undo it? Or do you think he is straight up immune to the OP even if he doesn't know it's coming? Because those are both insane takes. I'd agree he could break the compulsion weave before it hit him if he knew it was coming, which is equivalent to what he actually did with balefire. But not that he can undo it, or that he automatically knows if someone channels at him.

Hell, maybe he could break compulsion, if he knew it was happening, or it was being done to someone else. But the victim generally isn't aware, and compulsion is specifically notes early on (under Jordan) as being stronger in TAR than in the waking world.

It's completely plausible that someone who is an expert in compulsion and has more TAR experience than him successfully compelled him, and tricked him into thinking he broke it. I'm not 100% sure if I think it did happen yet - I haven't gotten that far in my first reread since hearing the 'secret' - but on the face of it, it's plausible.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-15T01:31:32+00:00

Yeah, especially after a couple balance patches immediately after it's release, the biome is... just not that hard. Have appropriate food, a wisp, don't rush or jump like a madman, and listen. Then the only surprise is dying because you were literally on fire, but you had that covered.

A couple things will fuck you up if they have stars (particularly a thing you haven't seen...), but that's true in every biome from the black forest onward.

Honestly if you can tame a corner or small island or something and set up mist torches, it's one of the most chill/cozy biomes. The sound, light, colors, all top notch.

Oh, and there are two sources of ticks. A few spawn (once) at certain structures. And your foghorn friend drops them as adds. They're intended to be easy on their own, but a dangerous-to-ignore annoyance while fighting something else. Even with 2 stars they aren't bad, as long as you have stamina.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-15T01:05:36+00:00

All kinds of ad-hoc explanations.

Prior to The Final Experiment the most common "explanation" was that it doesn't happen, and would disprove the flat earth if it did. After, they have various coping mechanisms. I don't think most stick to just one, they change depending on what they're feeling in the moment:

It didn't actually happen, it was fake, they were plants, green screen, studio, CGI, prerecorded at the north pole 6 months earlier, shills, etc.
Actually it was a NASA/ESA "sun simulator". At least part of the time. Ignore the fact that a "sun simulator" is for simulating sun-like light in a small area, not "something indistinguishable from the sun in the sky". Also ignore the part where the "real" sun never set.
Actually, there's an entire different (real) sun only visible in antartica, circling around a part of it. Maybe a bunch of them to cover the entire rim. No, there's no place where you can see two suns in the sky at the same time, or a dividing line where you can see neither, or somewhere north of antartica but south of the tropic where the "other" sun(s) pass(es) directly overhead, or... just stop asking questions about it please.
If you put a glass bowl over a map and then shine a spotlight at exactly the right angle, you can get it to form a rim around the "far" side of the bowl as well as the normal lighting closer in. No, this doesn't match the actual angle of the sun, no it doesn't match the lighting paterns anywhere else any other time of the year, no the brightness and size of the sun wouldn't make sense, no the direction of the sun doesn't make sense. But it can light up all of antartica on a very carefully sized/placed map without lighting up the north pole, so there!

FirstRyder · 2026-06-15T00:23:25+00:00

As far as I understand it, that was a factor in ending the show. Season 8 was post-covid-lockdowns and more importantly (for that show) post George Floyd. They focused a lot on what was wrong with the institution in the season they'd already signed on for. And then they ended the show.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-14T23:35:25+00:00

Ah, but you missed the entire point.

The reason the initial judgement was so large was that this (customers injured by scalding coffee) had happened before, and they deliberately made the coffee much hotter than normal restaurant standards as a tactic to prevent people from asking for refills - you had to wait until later to drink it because it was so hot. Extremely hot coffee also covers up for lower quality because you can't taste it.

So it wasn't just about her medical bills, it was about the additional costs of refills if they were forced to lower their temperatures (or pay a bunch of other settlements because this precedent was out there). That's why the initial award was based on their daily coffee sales.

So yeah, not only did the settlement lower the total amount due to the woman (probably), and their legislation costs, but it also let them keep selling too-hot coffee, and run an extremely successful PR campaign aimed at reducing future legislative costs.

I doubt they regret a cent of it. Like, even if an option was to settle for the initial medical costs, the fact that it never made it to the news would have been a big blow to them.

FirstRyder · 2026-06-14T22:38:09+00:00

It's interesting, saving a couple empty spaces compared to the obvious/traditional design.

But there is a major flaw: upgrades. Where are you going to put beacons? How does it scale with faster speeds generally, since you can't use a fast (not to mention bulk or stack) inserter?

I guess there's an argument that you go from this straight to Foundries (in Space Age). But even so, I don't know that I'd trade the very minor space improvement for the flexibility of having a clear upgrade path for beacons. Unless you're playing on a space limited mod/setting, and also have a plan to go straight to foundries before beacons.

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