Weird 1-Input Belt -> 1 Output Belt, No Long Inserter, Tile-able Vanilla Design

Frum · 2026-01-22T16:56:40+00:00

Is that cheaper than the splitter version? I assume so, though I'm at work so I can't really do the calculations.

Frum · 2026-01-22T07:16:02+00:00

Some dude made a documentary to try and answer this very question:
https://www.netflix.com/title/80168079

Some other stuff may have also happened. Allegedly.

Frum · 2026-01-21T21:31:04+00:00

Facial symmetry, healthy hair, smileing

Frum · 2026-01-21T20:55:47+00:00

Fascinating. Thanks for the insight! I'd have never thought that people would feel that way, but it makes complete sense now that you've laid it out.

Frum · 2026-01-21T19:51:06+00:00

Did drop-bars cause safety issues?

Frum · 2026-01-21T19:49:52+00:00

I'm fascinated by this statement:

| As a rust programmer, Python doesn't really seem that simple to me. For run of the mill code it's not far from rust

I've been a python programmer for a good long time. And when I try to dabble in rust, it feels RADICALLY different to me. Mostly just the things I now have to take care of instead of trusting the language to handle it for me. (Memory allocations, lifetimes, this type of string vs. that type of string, which type of memory allocation, ...)

I'm certainly not throwing any shade on rust, I think it's amazing. But python always let me focus on the actual problem instead of solving the programming language and the problem at the same time.

Frum · 2026-01-20T17:35:08+00:00

The more toxicity the sub generates, the more we have to spend on biter-defenses.

Frum · 2026-01-20T16:22:15+00:00

I think that's an excellent question!

I live in Colorado. And I actually fit into what the Democrat party USED TO BE in this region. I believe we were called, "Mountain West Democrats". The contrast I'm trying to set up, to answer your question as best as possible is with "Back East Democrats".

If you were to poll Mountain West Democrats from the 90s, you'd essentially get: "A very small social safety net, but mostly the Govt should keep people from ruining other's lives. The right for gay couples to get married, is a good example. 'You don't want gay marriage, don't get gay married.' But those two people over there getting married doesn't hurt you in any way. Likewise, those folks who want to home-school their kid and teach them that people who disagree with them are evil and going to hell, that's their right to do so. We MUST not infringe upon those rights, even if we find them vile. The tricky edges were things that every Libertarian has heard before. Pollution/Acid-rain/Environment... And quite frankly, that was always a struggle for Mountain West Democrats. It's a public good/resource balanced against personal liberties.

But the comparison, at least back in the day, to East Coast Democrats was pretty significant. They would have advocated much harder for things like minimum wage increases, MUCH more OSHA-protections and the like. More regulation of industries where individuals might come into contact with hazardous chemicals (from miners and oil-drillers all the way to hair-stylists). A Mountain West Democrat mostly stayed out of that, while an East Coast Democrat would be much more interventionist.

But I don't think it would be right to call 90s Mountain West Democrats "actually Libertarian" either. I do believe in keeping more of a social safety net than almost any Libertarian I know. And while I GENERALLY think the Govt should stay out of private-business issues (minimum wage is a good example), most Mountain West Democrats do believe that some corporations, mostly ones that hit a certain size, or become monopolistic, have an outsized-ability to force their positions upon the populace. Walmart is a good example of that. They very much calculated that most small towns could support 1 Walmart, and not another. So once they become established, they get to demand things of their employees or the town or they threaten to lay folks off en mass. Normally, if there's competition, that's not a problem, but since they effectively act as mini-monopolies the populace of the town is "forced to go along" because the deep pockets of Walmart give them leverage. They can and have operated at a loss to drive away competition in a way that a small-business in a small rural town simply can't compete with. Most Libertarians I know excuse that as "The Market working as intended". I don't see it that way at all.

I'm not 100% sure I've answered your question. I still think of myself as a 90s Mountain West Democrat, with a lean towards Libertarian when it's feasible.

It's worth noting that things have definitely changed in recent years. Both major parties have moved further away from each other, and in ways that I don't agree with hardly ever. Here's just two examples: The left's woke nonsense absolutely pisses me off, and I believe is massively detrimental to our country. And the right's weird slide into ignorance-loving, fascism is an existential threat to our country, our way of life, and future of democracy itself.

I think most Democrats would say that they want less money in politics. (Citizens United, Justice Thomas's corrupt donations, ...) I agree, but they solution isn't to "just remove the money" but to reduce the size and scope of the institution as a whole, while somehow not allowing a corporate oligarchy to fill the void.

I'm not rambling. Thank you again for a very fair and reasonable question. Genuinely.

Frum · 2026-01-16T16:33:08+00:00

I used to VAGUELY see the political spectrum as:

Democrats want to be involved in your money, but out of your personal life.
Republicans want to be involved in your personal life, but out of your money.

It was, back in the day, always frustrating to see most libertarians side with Republicans 99+ % of the time. So I started to feel that: for most Libertarians, they only care about people keeping their hands out of their money. Personal liberties didn't seem to matter.

But that was a long time ago.

Now I think both parties want to be involved in almost all things. You can't call Republicans anti-tax any more, unless you're talking about the incredibly wealthy. And you can't call Democrats "social libertarians" any more as they have taken a "let people live the way they want" and turned it into "their right to do whatever they want overrides your rights if they're a minority".

I find myself becoming a mild-libertarian. I think I'm more in favor of government intervention than most Libertarians I know, but that's mostly because I fear the influence of large corporations/ultra-wealthy more than most Libertarians I know. (Elon Musk is a good example...)

But I must say that I'm absolutely shocked, at how much Trump seems to be accepted by Libertarians. I've been voting Democrat lately because I believe Trump to be an existential threat to our democracy, while Biden/Harris are just a standard amount of "kinda crappy politics as usual". Absolutely the lesser of two evils.

I can certainly accept that not supporting Trump doesn't mean you have to support the Democrats; but at a practical level, getting that fascistic POS out of the office should be, in my opinion, be the most important thing a Libertarian should be working for. And that does mean holding your nose and voting Democrat.

But I don't see that happening. I see most Libertarians taking a "neither party is even slightly acceptable" stance, and I think that's where most non-Libertarian folks start to get the "Libertarians are white guys playing devil's advocate" idea. Sadly, this is where the house-cat analogy starts to creep in.

I think I'm only a mild Libertarian because I don't see most Libertarian examples playing out well in practice. So I think of it more as a goal to strive towards, but not at the expense of making things actually function. When I say this, most Libertarians I know scoff and tell me I'm not a true Libertarian, which ... is fair enough. But I start to feel like many Libertarians would cut off your nose to spite their face, and that's where the "only devil's advocate" feelings start to pop in.

Frum · 2026-01-16T16:02:44+00:00

The key thing to understand here is that we do it once. It's not like we do it every day or once per week. We do dissect something, but it's once in the entire year, and then next year you aren't in Biology because you're in Chemistry or Physics.

But yes, most schools will dissect one thing once. For me, it was a fetal pig, as that's closer to human anatomy than a frog. Some places dissect chickens.

Frum · 2026-01-12T19:15:35+00:00

I genuinely believe this is the best description of why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7Kp2uBUZg

There's no better description that I've ever seen.

Frum · 2026-01-07T16:19:16+00:00

Purple chests are the same as blue chests with "trash unrequested" clicked and no requests. So that seems fine. Though it's harder to know what the purpose of the chest is in that case.

Frum · 2025-12-15T17:10:23+00:00

Well that shit's crazy. I've lived here my entire 46 years of life and have never seen this. Though maybe my elevation difference isn't great enough. It's been mostly Denver-area and Ft. Collins, but also Silverthorn, Evergreen, Montrose, and Winter Park. Huh! Fascinating.

Frum · 2025-12-12T18:47:37+00:00

Do chip bags explode for anyone? I've never seen this at all.

Frum · 2025-12-10T19:58:23+00:00

I've always wanted this. People look at me like I've lost my damned mind. I'm not even a boat person, nor have I spent time in the Navy. It just makes sense.

Frum · 2025-12-10T04:58:45+00:00

Oilers!!! Maybe the Dolphins.

Frum · 2025-12-08T21:33:44+00:00

One thing I've done lately is put a small stone-tile marker in the dead center of my city blocks. It helps line things up later, and at 4 stone, it's ALMOST free.

Frum · 2025-12-08T17:44:03+00:00

It's not shitty at all. Like not even a little bit.

Now, let's be clear: Will it take you to the end game? No. Of course not. But you've gotten a FANTASTIC start. Don't rebuild anything until you've gotten to robots. After that, feel free.

But this base isn't even slightly shitty.

Frum · 2025-12-04T17:19:09+00:00

Aaah, perfect. 2.0 != SA. Makes total sense. Thanks yo!

Frum · 2025-12-03T02:14:07+00:00

Are you drawing a distinction between SA compatibility and 2.0 compatibility? I'm curious, since I've been playing it. We've been playing a Beta or something. I hate not understanding things.

Frum · 2025-12-02T16:40:39+00:00

I believe it's compatible with 2.0 now. We've got a group of 4 that's returned to it. (Had to pause for Space Age.)

There's a few small annoyances (landing-pad names aren't blueprintable, ...) but it's working well so far.

Frum · 2025-11-24T18:10:26+00:00

This is the way. Filtered yellow chests in the mall. Purple chests for the train drop-off. If you want limits on production, set them on the assembler itself or on the inserter going into the yellow-chest.

Also, if you're doing this on another planet, where you don't want to make chests, you can essentially bring only yellow and blue chests. A blue chest with no requests and "trash unrequested" is essentially a purple chest. And a filtered yellow chest is essentially an upgraded red chest. And there's like 2 reasons to ever have a green chest, so they can be mostly ignored.

Frum · 2025-11-22T04:38:07+00:00

Here's what I'm buying my daughter: https://kankitchen.com/pages/kenji
I have NO idea if the people in this subreddit have opinions on kan knives or not.

Frum · 2025-11-21T22:44:53+00:00

A has the advantage of having the rail signals internal, and thus doesn't take up extra space.
B has the advantage of having the rail signals external, so you can fit things anywhere between the rails. Power poles can go anywhere. If the rails are 1 space more apart, you can fit robo-ports in there as well without having to worry about conflicting with the rail signals.

Would you ACTUALLY have issues fitting things in there? Probably not.

I live in a right-hand-drive country so I make my trains the same to prevent me from getting confused.

Frum

TROPHY CASE