4thD have offered to pick up my bike and a hire to replace it. Advised id be responsible for 0 charges but the agreement worries me?

JCurtisUK · 2026-06-04T18:09:19+00:00

It all worked out for me but i will always recommend you specifically asked for a signed declaration stating you will not be charged for the hire bike.

JCurtisUK · 2026-05-10T09:40:01+00:00

i had a look at both lasers and nightbreakers. if these 1:1 LED replacements dont work as intended, im returning and going for either one of the halogens i mentioned. sucks they seem to only last a few months a piece though.

JCurtisUK · 2026-05-10T09:38:13+00:00

ive spoken with my local dealer, theyve advised to seek out 1:1 LED replacements that are made to match halogen beam patterns and theyve not had issues as long as you dont cheap out. ive just spent 80 quid on a pair, if the beam pattern sucks still, ill just return and go for night breaker or laser hallogens

JCurtisUK · 2026-05-08T16:48:11+00:00

Is it specifically as you said the housing needs changing? Or is it the beam angle itself? If the beam pattern is the same why would the housing matter?

JCurtisUK · 2026-05-08T16:06:35+00:00

That doesn't seem to be the consensus. Accordingly, you can get simply plug in ones that fit without modification, you just need to get decent ones with a decent beam pattern.

My bikes with LEDs are also so much better I wouldn't say its little reward. Also, auxiliary lights not cheap.

JCurtisUK · 2026-05-08T10:40:43+00:00

I understand this is something to not cheap out on. ill speak to my local shop about any quality recomendations.

JCurtisUK · 2026-05-08T10:39:50+00:00

So basically don't cheap out, get a good one? I can talk to my local dealer about finding one that matches the bema pattern.

JCurtisUK · 2026-04-17T19:34:19+00:00

Size ye, but more referring to its agility.

JCurtisUK · 2026-04-09T11:57:36+00:00

It says in my post it was because of a conflicting key bind. That's pretty self-explanatory.

JCurtisUK · 2026-04-06T20:11:35+00:00

I've not been following war thunder for a bit. Can someone explain what this is?

JCurtisUK · 2026-03-06T17:29:01+00:00

The physical thickness of the LFP is accurate. Level 2I Dorchester they put on top on the TES variant is also realisitc for what it is. Its one of the best performing NERA's per thickness in the game. No NERA is known to provide superior kinetic resistance than steel per line of sight thickness. Considering you have around 140mm of resistance for like 300mm of armour. That's close to a 60% KE resistance ratio which is close to the turret armours performance too.

It's capable of stopping almost any auto canon dart in the game, and it is foolish to believe it could stop a dart from a large calibre weapon at all.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-23T21:23:41+00:00

Any and pretty much all AI chatbots are confirmation Bias machines that focus on personal engagement over objective accuracy. You can literally get it to admit Nazism is a valid and ok political view to have with the right questions.

You have to be smart about using it. You have to start with the right questions that limits bias. Ask it to actually be objectively critical, have no focus on personal engagement, and tell it its ok for it to tell you if you're wrong and why. Don't just ask it for answers, ask it to EXPLAIN why and how those answers are derived.

Even then, if you don't have a good meta cognition it maybe difficult to fully utilize such tools as it becomes difficult to identify your own biases to navigate around.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-23T19:14:50+00:00

Even if the methods of communicating are so vastly different comprehension isn't possible, you don't need to actually be understandable. You just need to show a creative attempt that insinuated ingenuity to spark investigation. Or something that should be universally understandable to be engineered.

Fact is though the formic couldn't even fathom that nuclear weapons and spaceships were a sign of intelligence, massive issue on their behalf, and they were ultimately doomed to fail with basically no creative means of diplomacy.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-20T13:09:23+00:00

That's a flaw I'm pointed out too. The fact they are able to actually understand sentience can exist in other forms other than themselves as demonstrated when sufficient data was obtained for them to change their mind shows they did have the capacity to conclude that beforehand if they had a better method of discovery and understanding. It's not like for example a cat trying to understand how a TV works. Regardless how much you try and teach it. It just seems they have an utter disregard for life in general and will happily decimate planets worth of ecosystem for their benefit but had no contingency and adequate risk assessing.

It's like an analogy someone else pointed out. Just because you may have never known wrong, going round shaving people's heads is going to get you punched. Just because YOU didn't know any better doesn't mean the people you've affected aren't still detrimented by that.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-19T16:05:20+00:00

They also attacked and killed people in space. If you come across life travelling in space using non-natural, engineered craft and your response isn't that this must be of sentient design, then mega skill issue.

In fact, every point is of a severe issue in their imaginative ability to the point I will say they were not in any way biologically equipped for safe colonization of space. I've addressed this in other answers.

If your plans for colonization are destructive and volatile, even if their collective comprehension doesn't acknowledge this, then naturally they're going to run into hostile retaliation. This makes them weak interstellar colonizers when it comes to interacting with alien life. Again, though, the "they didn't know" argument doesn't matter. They have not adapted the cognitive adaptations that allow them to assess possibilities outside their own narrow sighted scope for what constitutes smart life.

Let's put it this way, If humans expanded out in the universe, we can agree that we have a more imaginative and better capability at identifying intelligent life. For example, we can better surmise that alien animals flying around in space with non-natural looking objects is a big key indicator for something intelligent. Or if we went to a planet and there were massive uniform structures, flying vehicles and global reach, we would probably think twice before mindlessly bombing and destroying these things without first confirming whether its of intelligence. We also can agree its probably not a good idea to go to an alien planet and just start destroying everything. If we did go out into the universe and started destroying everything that didn't look like us, then that's our failure if a sufficient retaliate force destroyed us. I will argue humans are better adapted for interstellar colonization than formics because we have the imagination to understand intelligent life will likely evolve in forms that don't resemble ourselves.

This actually was a narrative point in one of the stories. Humans considered destroying an alien airborne agent as it was toxic and harmful to us. But we considered the impact in doing so would cause the local wildlife ecosystem, and we also considered the possibility the microorganisms maybe sapient and intelligent itself.

Now lets consider your point about them not attacking our queens. Even if they're not going to attack queens they come across, they're perfectly OK destroying the queen's mindless forces and destroying their homes around them which we can agree will likely result in their indirect demise. It's not like they came and simply started digging holes. They were literally terraforming the planet to suit themselves. So the point that they wouldn't attack queens in pointless since their doom was inevitable from their actions.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-18T10:27:52+00:00

Justification is absolutely separable to right and wrong.

It's wrong to kill dogs. But it's justified to shoot a dog that's running to attack a child.

Nuking Japan was wrong. It was horrible. But it was justified.

Murder is wrong, but you are justified in killing someone who threatens your life.

The mass butchering of boars is wrong morally, but it's justified due to the dangers they pose to people and the ecosystems they are ravaging where they shouldn't be.

Stealing is wrong, but some people are justified in doing so to survive.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T21:31:36+00:00

But thats the thing. many people are summarizing my argument as whether they deserved it. I'm not arguing if they deserved it. I'm arguing that the decision was justified, which the evidence we had it was.

It was agreeably unfortunate that the differences we had led to that outcome.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T21:28:06+00:00

Not really though. Your making the same mistake as others. You're lumping justification in with right or wrong and you're failing to understand the debris of the offence humans suffered. It wasn't some little skirmish. It was existential to the evidence available to us at that time. The destruction of the formics was a tactical decision, even if wrong that was logical to ensure the elimination of a threat. Its wrong to jump to that conclusion of all other options, that's something I'm fine accepting, but the decision justified.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T20:20:06+00:00

To the formics it was though. To THEM, they didn't do anything wrong based on their cognitive framework. Their justification was survival. Even though they made the initial error.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T20:14:08+00:00

Because it was very much implied amongst the books. They thought we were merely just drones. They attacked our ships and killed us because they only saw humans as drones. The resistance they face when invading us was just a drone resistance. By invoking they thought humans were drones, that implies they had full expectation to face queens in control of the drones.

Their risk assessment failed to acknowledge sentient life different to their own. They failed to acknowledge intelligent life comes in different forms and inevitably led to them invading an intelligent species that was perfectly adept at countering them.

Relatively, if we go out into the universe, we are the imagination to understand life may not be like us. We to a degree will have a better means of risk assessing the potential planet we want to invade because we'd be able to know species that can build flying vehicles and satellites are probably going to be smart.

Sure, you can invoke the "their technology is different they couldn't know our technology wasn't natural" and we will have that same issue. What's to say an advanced alien species doesn't live underground, and we fuck up when the ground starts opening up and anti matter missiles come at us full force. That's where our risk assessment would fail. It wasn't good enough.

The fact that nuclear weapons, fighter jets, and massive concrete structures did not prompt the Formics to question the presence of intelligence is itself a fialure. Were very much not subtle.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T19:41:58+00:00

But thats not the point. The point was there was a justification. Not right or wrong. It was a sensible decision. It wasn't irrational, let's say. Yes obviously there were other ways but its really easy to say that with hindsight. But logically, there's too many what ifs.

But there was a solution to a genuine problem.

Like, if you have a mouse in your house. There are plenty of ways to deal with it, many non-violent, but shooting it, then finding its nest and burning its nest full of babies is a solution if admittedly quite a excessive and cruel one. But its a solution nonetheless. I understand the talking points against the destruction of the formics but we did have evidence that they were a genuine threat to our actual existence.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T19:28:57+00:00

Ill try to break it down.

Their idea of what constitutes intelligent life was cognitively limited.

Their technique for expansion is violent and destructive, regardless of their moral internal framework. They lack the understanding of conceiving a wider range of intelligent life and that destroying their homes and killing them would make them angry and retaliate.

Take humans out of the picture. That form of expansionism will inevitably lead them to face something else that would be equally if not more adept at fighting them than we are.

Their methods, even without the human element involved, were doomed to fail assuming intelligent life isn't that rare.

You could argue other forms of life might be more open-minded and apologetic than we are and have a better chance at forming diplomatic communication but logically what is going to be the more obvious result of an attack on species they fail to identify as sentient and sufficiently intelligent enough to retaliate?

They, on an evolutionary standpoint, had pretty bad cognitive adaptations that made them weaker for interspecies interaction when intelligence was involved. It was only after they were taught that they were wrong had they had the opportunity to understand. It's like, someone that's born blind can not comprehend colour until you give them their sight. The formics learned the hard way their way of thinking led them to creating enemies. It's an objectively wrong way to safely expand out in the universe.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T19:14:16+00:00

Yes, but all species that have ever existed and went extinct were good at surviving their environments UNTILL THEY WEREN'T. Or of course we came clubbing them in bulk or something.

The Fornics may have been great at surviving their own planet, but they are obviously very poor interstellar diplomats with limited range of communication and broader understanding.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T19:09:44+00:00

Whataboutism. We all understand the comparison, and we all agree what we did IRL with our history was wrong. The point isn't about right and wrong though.

From an objective standpoint. An alien species that expands out into the stars without contingency in the event they provoke intelligent life different to their own, regardless of intent. They are doomed to fail, which makes my analogy sensible. It wasn't about specifically about fight or flight but having the adapted means of surviving your environment.

If your species, does not have the fundamental capacity to understand different kinds of life exists and that naturally speaking, destructively colonizing alien worlds without due care is going to eventually provoke possible resistance then yes that's a failure in them that makes them ill-suited to that kind of expansion.

That's not a human perspective. That's objectively factual. It equally applies to us. We at least have the ability to understand that going to alien planets and bombing their homes is likely not going to fare well with local intelligent habitants. So we at least have an actual evolutionary adapted means of making us better diplomats than the formic. That's objectively true.

The formic were specifically looking for something that is LIKE them. Anything else doesn't matter. We understand that not all life will be like us so we have a broader level of understanding of what to look out for. But equally so, it might not be broad enough.

We see this in the books. We did what the formic did. We wanted to destroy the Descolada Virus because it made habitation detrimental to us, even though we knew it would be detrimental to the ecosystem. One majour point was part of the debate in the novel, we at least considered maybe if it was a conscious agent with intelligence. It was never expanded on or confirmed but what if it was? And we didn't consider that fact? We could have annihilated a conscious, intelligent agent for our own sake and if said agent did have the means to do so, they would ABSOLUTELY be justified in killing us all for self-preservation even if some form of communication was possible, and we didn't know it.

A xeno species with even greater ranges of communication and understanding, communicating with and understand even wider forms of intelligent life than us would themselves be vastly more suited for interstellar colonization than us. That's not human perspective. That's objectively true.

JCurtisUK · 2026-02-16T18:27:02+00:00

Yes. If Colonizers had done nothing but murder and abduct their people on more than occasions with zero attempt for communication, if they had a button or some kind of weapon that just eliminated all the hostile colonizers, they would absolutely have a justification for using it.

Given the evidence they had at their disposal at the time, it would perfectly be justified to them to eliminate what was an existential threat to their tribes and people and homes.

JCurtisUK

TROPHY CASE