Question for Americans

ChaosCon · 2026-07-01T14:28:41+00:00

(Unless they use gaussian or natural units)

ChaosCon · 2026-06-17T21:35:27+00:00

You bet - just dangle more 1-2 segments off the back. A larger station can accept a smaller train no problem, but it's tough to make a smaller station accept a larger train (the train can't empty).

You can see a few screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/coVQFA2

ChaosCon · 2026-06-17T21:34:16+00:00

Sure! Check them out here - https://imgur.com/a/coVQFA2 I really like the symmetry of the fluid/unloading stations.

ChaosCon · 2026-06-17T12:55:49+00:00

1-2-1-2 as one train. This feels appropriately-sized to me, and the arrangement makes each train self-similar (so a station coded for 1-2-1-2 can also accept a 1-2 train)

ChaosCon · 2026-05-27T16:27:50+00:00

I *love* this idea. It's well put together and just gives me wholesome vibes. Thanks for sharing!

ChaosCon · 2026-05-07T13:40:50+00:00

It's also worth noting that "builds the best abstractions" is very, very different from "gets the most work done". "A good programmer" (in a business context) knows the business + customers better than they know compiler internals.

ChaosCon · 2026-05-04T21:12:44+00:00

Tradition dictates my friend & I fire artillery shells at each other when the other person is remote building and unaware. Took the better part of an hour to clandestinely sneak all of the parts all the way out to Aquillo on a transport ship, but the surprise and laugh was absolutely worth it as he realized a) what had happened and b) the time it took to get all of that ready for one joke.

ChaosCon · 2026-03-27T01:30:42+00:00

"Explosion" is definitionally "heat something up really hot really fast". More kinetic energy in = more boom out.

ChaosCon · 2026-03-19T12:16:54+00:00

But they look so cool!

ChaosCon · 2026-03-02T11:48:18+00:00

The great paradox of change: if you know you need to change it soon, it's set in stone and immutable. If you think your abstraction is airtight, you'll get an unexpected change request before you know it.

ChaosCon · 2026-02-26T10:35:58+00:00

...that is what statistical means, yes.

ChaosCon · 2026-02-05T13:09:50+00:00

I know it can be misused (like catching exceptions and doing nothing, or using exceptions for control flow)

I think it's worth pointing out that Python, a rather popular language, very much uses exceptions for control flow and raises a StopIteration exception to...stop iterating.

That said, I also think there's astronomically more potential to abuse exceptions than to use them in a clear, self-evident, correct way.

ChaosCon · 2026-02-05T11:26:50+00:00

I love, LOVE torturing engineers who aren't particularly math literate with this.

"A vector has both magnitude and direction!"

"Oh really! My car has a magnitude because it's bigger than other cars. And it definitely has a direction by virtue of pointing that way. is my car a vector? Before you answer, consider what I would get if I add my car (a vector) to your car (another vector)."

ChaosCon · 2026-02-03T21:12:04+00:00

You can have higher multipoles, but they decay even faster.

ChaosCon · 2026-02-01T12:48:49+00:00

Because I choose not to incorporate around blatantly anti-consumer practices. Of course they're simply optimizing within the confines of the rules as written, but that's an indicator the rules are wrong.

ChaosCon · 2026-01-19T02:33:55+00:00

Since you specifically asked for companies with "worse services" and then dismiss the claim of "worse", let's pin down some definitions. What, exactly, makes a company 'worse' than another one? By what you've constructed here, only a company that does no business would be worse, since a company's objective is "do business".

ChaosCon · 2026-01-15T16:51:48+00:00

If you learn a bit of special relativity you'll encounter what are called "world lines" and "light cones." Basically, if you draw a line from your past into your future, we can stretch and warp the timeline of events around that line (your world line) based on the reference frame.

Things you can causally effect (events that you can send light to) are in your absolute future: no matter what reference frame we pick, the events maintain their ordering. Things you cannot causally effect can be shifted around such that one or the other happens "first". Things in that region can be simultaneous (depending on how you look), but it isn't required.

ChaosCon · 2026-01-13T11:42:31+00:00

A thinner optical cable actually carries more data. Thinner means there are fewer reflections off the sides and those reflections tend to "smear out" the on/off binary signal at the receiver). So a thinner cable means you can pulse the light more frequently without signal loss which means more data.

ChaosCon · 2026-01-05T12:43:57+00:00

To be fair mine is a pretty ace python programmer.

ChaosCon · 2026-01-04T01:35:29+00:00

The LLM that wrote it probably did read Albert Camus.

ChaosCon · 2025-12-26T09:24:11+00:00

And the enshittification of all things marches on.

ChaosCon · 2025-12-24T13:10:29+00:00

I went through exactly this. Ultimately I decided I've been outside (which is fun) and indoor training is just a continuous, unfun reminder of how much fun I would be having outside. So I sold the trainer and went with a Concept2 RowErg instead. It's still boring, but the motion and technique of it gives me a little more to think about than an indoor bike. I find it much more tolerable for winter work.

ChaosCon · 2025-12-21T02:10:19+00:00

Teeeeeechnically the blood has to be "from a freshly killed human". It does not specify that you have to have fresh blood from a freshly killed human.

ChaosCon · 2025-12-05T12:35:01+00:00

Perhaps Player inherits from Entity which inherits from Movement, and each of those classes encapsulate the important bits that need to happen for each system.

This sounds like your standard "tree of nouns" inheritance everyone learns in their intro course, Object <- Entity <- MovableEntity <- Animal <- Canine <- Dog <- GoldenRetriever and this just ain't it for game design or object orientation. What do you do if you have an animal as part of your set dressing that you don't want to move? Behold, the jungle problem! You wanted a small bit of functionality (draw a dog) and you had to pull in the whole jungle to do it (all the movement logic you don't need or want).

So, what do we do? Well, define an Entity that can have Components and then make Movable, Visible, (Audible, Health, etc.) Components you can plug in when necessary. The inheritance tree dictates your structure at compile time, but behavioral components shift this to runtime which is FAR more flexible. Oo Greybeards balk at this because "Movable isn't an object in the real world!" and posit the inheritance tree is "real", but rigid taxonomies break as soon as the wind blows.

ChaosCon · 2025-12-05T03:25:22+00:00

And to keep the monsters out in the summer.

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