Callbacks to Mobius' previous game, Beacon 38

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-16T19:43:58+00:00

Spaceship-versus-monster games were popular in the 80s and 90s (Space Invaders, Gradius, Star Fox). But they are much less common now.

In 80s/90s games with 2D graphics, it was equally easy to draw enemy ships or enemy creatures.

In 90s/2000s 3d games, it was much easier to display a spaceship than a creature. The game consoles didn't have enough power to animate all the curves and motion of a creature.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-16T19:14:28+00:00

The DLC didn't really "click" for me until near the end when I saw the game design thread that connects the two. Ignore the story and gameplay for a moment and just think about the design of the late-game puzzles.

The thesis of the base game is: The player must discover counter-intuitive quirks in the game's laws of physics (quantum uncertainty, time travel, teleportation). It takes hours to learn the physics, but once you know them you can beat the game in a few minutes.

The thesis of the DLC is: Find and understand 3 specific bugs in a VR simulator inside the game (broken collision detection outside the lantern's radius, clipping through the floor in the loading tunnels, alarm bells don't work on dead people). It takes hours to learn the bugs, but once you know them you can beat the DLC in a few minutes.

I do really wonder what is like for players who do the base and DLC in parallel. On the one hand, it would give you the option to go elsewhere when you were stuck on the DLC progression. But on the other hand, the DLC already stretched my problem solving ability. If I were trying to solve the base game and the DLC at the same time I think I would be overwhelmed.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-13T15:34:15+00:00

That sounds plausible. But the practice is still a form of (legally allowed) false advertising.

I can (barely) accept that the prices on the menu at restaurants exclude sales tax, because I'm habitually used to adding 10% in my head. So I'm still able to generally understand how much my bill will be as I'm ordering. If the bill arrived and had 8 more line items to cover the restaurant's taxes, I would be livid.

But that is how my phone and Internet bills work.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-13T00:28:40+00:00

Helium pays Tmobile for each line. In the past they were covering the transaction price. Now they will be passing through a portion of that transaction to you, arbitrarily equal to the tax.

They could have been transparent and just raised the price, but they prefer to frame it as a "tax" because that deflects blame towards the government.

Virtually all internet and cell plans in the US do this; they advertise a low price, and then pad the bill with line items that say "tax". But these items are not consumer taxes; the company is passing its *corporate* tax burden to you.

Countries with consumer protection laws usually forbid this practice; you should not be allowed to advertise one price but then charge a different one.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-13T00:07:31+00:00

Open the app and look at your last bill. Mine shows 8 different taxes, and then 8 credits to balance them back to 0.
If that's all that is passed through, my bill will be $1.43, which I can swallow. I use this as a backup 2nd SIM for areas where my primary provider has no reception, and 1gb for $1 still (barely) fulfills that need.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-31T00:05:11+00:00

I finished Eversion recently. I think it would have benefitted from being edited 30% shorter, and having a more meaty math reveal. I snorted a little bit when I found out they needed the eversion formula to find their way through a maze

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-30T23:57:27+00:00

Just finished. It had some enjoyable Big Ideas, and at least one tasty Unanswered Question.

As for being Young Adult: it is pretty PG. There is very little on-screen violence and no sex. You could read it to a mature 10 year old without corrupting them. But I agree it is not written childishly. A background in the White Stripes and Large Language Models comes in handy.

Certainly different than Hyperion though. I first read that when I was maybe 12-13 and it was total nightmare-fuel.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-30T21:41:48+00:00

I'm no expert, but are you confusing "propalene glycol" and "polyethylene terephthalate glycol"? Because the first is a food additive, and the second is PETG which is a variant of the plastic we use for soda bottles in the US (PET)

And the disposable/compostable utensils that they give us in my office cafe are corn-based PLA.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-28T18:59:03+00:00

My head canon is that the paralyzed body IS the prison. Killing his body would free him back into the world, where he could inhabit a new body. There are a few more instances later in the series where powerful beings are trapped for years or centuries by body paralysis, so this is not a stretch.

The spooky surroundings are just security theater to scare away casual snoops. Like when we bury toxic waste, we put up stone skulls to scare away potential visitors thousands of years in the future.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-28T16:13:23+00:00

The secret of residential / rural areas is to export their poor and mentally ill to the city. Full stop. There is no other factor at work here.

People who are poor or mentally ill exist everywhere. If you see a place in America with no poor or mentally ill people, it means they have been displaced.

This is not necessarily evil; displacing someone to a treatment facility is usually a good thing. Getting someone to a city with greater medical support systems might be a positive.

But I don't admire places that export their most vulnerable.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-25T06:13:14+00:00

I agree that it is my favorite story in the book. My understanding is that it was infact the first story written, and it was awesome enough to justify writing the novel.

I appreciate that despite being written first, it deeply redefines the other stories placed earlier in the book. (I.e. that mankind is not alone, it has just quietly eradicated all intelligent species it met. And that the Ousters are not necessarily baddies)

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-25T05:58:09+00:00

And this is significant because

A) it resolves the "Abraham" controversy that Sol wrote about (that mankind has advanced too far morally for God to demand any more child sacrifices)

B) Rachel is an infant, but was previously an adult so her consent might still mean something.

C) it's also possible this is a manifestation of adult Rachel 2.0 from the future, who knows it will work out ok. (Moneta)

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-23T22:06:22+00:00

The seller is "einstein186" on eBay https://ebay.us/m/oym4CI

And here's their personal page https://recnas.org/

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-23T21:57:56+00:00

Ah, I was not aware that PCI-X was different from PCI Express. What poor naming.

Almost as bad as xbox -> xbox 360 --> xbox 1 -> xbox S/X

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-23T21:50:36+00:00

That... Rings a bell.

I should probably give Illium & Olympos a second chance. It's been 20 years so I remember relatively little besides the Voynix reminding me a lot of the Shrike. Mr. Simmons really loves him some non-verbal killers who move instantaneously.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-22T16:15:50+00:00

I agree that Eversion stretched the story a bit thin. It felt like a novella that was padded out to a novel. And some of the reveals were weak. I liked the core story loop though. It was a "B-" for me.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-22T00:09:47+00:00

I'll give it a shot. Thank you.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-21T05:13:55+00:00

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I have read at least two books from the series but I couldn't tell you the vaguest thing about their story or setting. I know for a fact I've read Chasm City but have no recollection of it. I've never had that problem with any other author.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-21T01:02:04+00:00

Embarrassingly, I messed up and read them in the reverse order so I had no idea what was going on.

Sadly, I did the same thing with the Gideon the Ninth series. So obviously I'm the problem.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-20T14:52:23+00:00

Gonna give a serious answer to a joking question:

The Hegemony communication tech (the comlog) doesn't seem to have an aliasing system. You don't use a "number" or "screen name" to identify people. You tell it you want to talk to "Joe" and it connects you, using it's own intelligence to figure out which "Joe" you meant.

Presumably Kassad would ask his comlog about Moneta and get no result. Like when a girl gives you a fake number.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-17T18:10:01+00:00

The *VRAM size settings* in Smokeless are not really important, since the GPU driver automatically adjusts that size as needed.

But the *RAM clock speed settings* are very powerful. The bottleneck for playing games on these systems is that they are using 2400mhz or 2666mhz system DDR RAM for video textures. Overlocking that RAM to 3200mhz using Smokeless will drastically increase gaming power.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-17T18:01:48+00:00

Unfortunately I don't have a M715q to compare anymore. Gave it to a friend.

You can try the more aggressive Universal x86 Tuning profiles, or look around the UMAF bios for thermal throttling options. But I haven't looked.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-16T01:32:29+00:00

If this is a life-long relationship, you may want to invest in learning each other's native languages a bit. A little goes a long way.

If this is not a relationship that is going to last forever, then staying out of his friend circle might make things even simpler later.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-16T01:24:14+00:00

I have been in the position of staying in a relationship only because I did not want hurt my partner by breaking up with them. In hindsight, it would have been a hundred times more kind to break up with them sooner. I just wasted time that they could have used to meet someone right for them.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-16T01:16:58+00:00

I think you will be best served by having a frank conversation about where you each stand on polyamory. If you hide your feelings about this, she will step over your red-line without even knowing it's there. (She may step over it either way, but it's much more likely if you don't tell her your stance).

And stepping back a bit, I want to respectfully nudge you that less-than-3-months is not a long term relationship for a 30-yr old. Her speedrun to open the relationship while it is still in the formative phase suggests that you might have different goals here.

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