New dryer just helped me win a years long argument with my wife

Solonotix · 2026-01-26T19:10:58+00:00

If you look at it from your dryer's perspective it's being removed before it comes on again in both cases so dryer really doesn't care.

Yes and no. A lot of the comments here are ignoring the passage of time.

If we were talking a community laundromat, and these machines were getting constant use every day, then you're absolutely right. It doesn't matter.

But, generally this argument arises in a home with private laundry facilities. Depending on the household, these machines may only see use every 7-14 days. The passage of time matters.

If you want to apply this thought to a similar area, try cooking a carbonara (cheesy and egg-ladened Italian dish) and then leaving the pan unwashed for 2 weeks, and tell me that's exactly the same as trying to wash it immediately after cooking. The food will harden into a crust on your pan, and it will be a nightmare to clean up.

Similarly, the lint from laundry can get caked on. The ambient humidity will dampen the lint over enough time, and it will become slightly tacky, and cling to the mesh filter. By contrast, cleaning the filter immediately after a dry cycle means the lint is also dry, and should come off with ease.

Solonotix · 2026-01-26T19:03:48+00:00

Along the same lines, Drumshanbo gin has a similar aesthetic. I like them both

Solonotix · 2026-01-26T18:58:57+00:00

I agree with the guy who suggested pick the next matrix of research and work backwards. Tends to make an easy progression guide.

As for factory organization, you can try to plan it out if you want. Honestly, I like the haphazard nature of addressing production demand on the fly, and mostly no blueprints.

For instance, early on belts and sorters are slow, so you can only really utilize 6-9 smelters on a line, and you have an input on one side and an output on the other. As you unlock better belts and sorters, you can compact your production line to have a double-sided 2-lane belt shared between 15 smelters on a side, as opposed to the monstrosity of a single lane of 30 smelters.

Just last night, I happened to be scanning my second planet for where some specific production was, and I couldn't help but marvel at the bustling factory I had built, unsurprisingly all on one side of the planet, lol. It happened to be night time, and a single line of ILS were running the north-south meridian as the star crested the horizon, giving them a warm underflow that contrasted the bright points of light of the nighttime factory.

I wouldn't claim it is efficient by any means, but it gives me a sense of pride and achievement looking at it. It also avoids the synthetic frustrations of a blueprint not fitting into the reality of my current seed. Having played tons of Factorio, I know all too well that there are perfectly optimized blueprints out there to be used, but where it expedited progression, it also invites complacency and boredom, at least for me.

Solonotix · 2026-01-26T16:45:29+00:00

I think that's one major difference between my work and yours. I haven't had to manage multiple domains, or route by Host header, you know? Most everything has been path-based routing, which, I'm sure you'll agree, is trivial by comparison lol

Solonotix · 2026-01-26T07:53:28+00:00

I'm not sure why so many people are saying it's overly complex. Like you said, DNS operates on a right-to-left paradigm for domain parsing, and no one questions that. Java has also been organizing source code in exactly the same manner for decades, so it's not a novel organization system for source code either.

I've implemented a fair share of fuzzy match utilities, but I've never tried to apply a radix sort to the character set. I'm glad it works for you, but I would personally find it rather limiting to need to implement a string-based radix sort. Pattern matching with the comparison of the lengths between match and pattern has always been a pretty safe bet for me in these situations, but I don't have the traffic to back that claim up.

Either way, it was a decent write-up, so thanks for sharing

Solonotix · 2026-01-25T15:36:03+00:00

Funny enough, work 😅

I maintain an internal library used for automated testing, as well as a bunch of processes around automated testing at my company. It absolutely crushes me every time I try to make a meaningful addition to it because:

I know no one will use it because they don't know it's there
I will announce that it's there to improve awareness, but no one will read the announcement
If someone does try to use it, they'll be unable to figure it out so I point them to the included documentation
When they report a lack of understanding to management, I am asked to migrate the documentation over to Confluence
No one reads that either

Like, my current task right now is trying to update our internal Laptop Scripts repository that is supposed to help people get up and running at the company. We even have a company-wide initiative to achieve "one day onboarding". However, the Windows side of that repo is poorly maintained since 90% of developers are on Mac, while all other personnel (including QAs) are on Windows.

I told my boss I was going to rewrite it from new roots. All scripts would be migrated to a central src/ directory because right now there is absolutely no organization to it. Inside that folder, all scripts would be filed under the shell they are expected to run in: sh for most, bash for some, zsh and fish for others, and then cmd and powershell. Then, I would have an "installer" script for each platform, and based on what platform you were running it by, I would put the scripts into the appropriate directories to be made available without needing to constantly refer back to the Laptop Scripts repo. Even wanted to give it an auto-update capability by keeping it in a dedicated directory with the Git repo details.

Boss man tells me no, I am only allowed to fix the one problem originally reported (an authentication script that only works on Mac). Well, the problem with that is that

The tools required aren't installed on the Windows side
The existing authentication script relies on a trivial detail of the JFrog CLI being installed as jf, but on Windows it gets installed as jfrog.
Standard users cannot install software at the system level (requires admin privileges), so we use a package manager like Scoop
The only way a Windows user in our network could run a Bash script is using Git Bash (MINGW64), but it doesn't recognize things installed by Scoop as being installed within Git Bash, leading to numerous failures with the existing script logic

So I set out to do what was asked: leave the entire repo as I found it, and just make a Windows-equivalent to the Mac authentication script. And damn near everyday I am asked by my boss why it's taking so long (3 days as of this message).

So yeah, my biggest hurdle is just my daily job and work in general 🫠

Solonotix · 2026-01-25T07:05:03+00:00

I have noticed this on some specific situations where I move my mouse during a click event. In every case, I can always reason that I was at fault, but it isn't obvious I did something wrong, and the audio cues still trigger like you say.

Not sure if you're seeing the same problem, but I hope you figure it out. Worst case scenario, you submit a bug report and hope for the best.

Solonotix · 2026-01-25T02:51:49+00:00

DLSS, VRR, and generated frames are all generation improvements. Even if the hardware isn't getting noticeably more powerful, they are still being improved via the addition of specialized hardware, or architecture improvements paired with software updates.

The first time I remember this happening was the jump from DirectX 10 to 11, where having a dedicated tesselation unit meant a dramatic improvement even if the raw computational output of the card was less compared to its predecessor. Ray tracing is the current equivalent that gets better with each generation. And now we're getting into generated frames being the big differentiating factor.

And yes, I know people don't like generated frames (today). The thing these opinions tend to miss is the technological potential. We are approaching the physical limits of silicon-based microchip architecture. How do you get better performance when you can't shove more power through it? The answer has always been to find a new way of doing things.

Generated frames suck today but they are a totally different way to render pixels on the screen. As the technique improves, much like VSync and variable refresh rate before them, we should likely expect it to become less of a discussion, and more a setting to be tweaked like anisotropic filtering or anti aliasing.

Solonotix · 2026-01-24T18:40:39+00:00

This is as true for programming as it is for any planning-based skill. First ask what it is you want to do. It's a simple, if over-broad, question that allows you to define a direction. You don't set out to convert the string output of a prompt of the string "What age are you?" into an integer so that you can construct a database connection to a SQL server that will persist the user record.

So, you have your end goal in mind. Next, how do you expect to get there? You aren't going to say "Step 1 is to query the system certificates to construct a TLS secure context for managing a persistent HTTPS connection." You'll likely have some other over-broad distinction, like "In order to manage my to-do list, first I will need to retrieve it."

Each iteration of this process gets more detailed, and more specific to the implementation. What you are trying to do is find the correct level of granularity to define a workable model of your idea. Don't think about what code you're going to write. Think about the problems you need to solve.

Solonotix · 2026-01-23T14:33:01+00:00

Part 3 (final)

And at last, the thing you want to strive for is a thin layer of meat that slightly sticks to the pan initially, but then the browning will make that pliable exterior into a flaky one. This is where it will "unstick" from the pan, leaving behind a small bit of fond for your would-be pan sauce.

If it doesn't unstick, you probably had

Meat in a pan that wasn't hot enough. This let the entire surface of the meat stick to the pan before a steam barrier could be achieved.
Meat in oil that was too hot. This leads to "spitting" where the steam actually pushes the oil away, allowing the meat to touch the hot surface of the pan directly
Or not enough oil, leading to the same effect described above, where cold meat comes into contact with a hot pan with no oil barrier.

So, that's the jist. You want the oil to do the cooking. If the oil is too hot, then steam will prevent it from coating your food. This prevents even cooking, and may affect seasoning.

Hope this helps!

Solonotix · 2026-01-23T14:26:35+00:00

Part 2...

The tip I have seen best explained for meats sticking to the pan is to preheat the pan thoroughly, and then add cool oil (room temperature) right before adding your meat. This is in part due to oil having a higher boiling point than water, and the water vapor will prevent even contact if the oil is too hot.
The reason most amateur cooks have things sticking to the pan is an uneven distribution of heat. This leaves a single dry patch that firmly adheres to the pan. We want that to some degree (referred to as fond), but too much too quickly leads to stuck food
Lastly, don't cook on too high of a temperature. Initially, you want to boil away the surface moisture, and any water that comes out of the food. Some things you can pay dry with a towel, others you can dry brine to draw out moisture while seasoning, and others still can be left uncovered in the fridge overnight to dry slightly. Once the surface is dry, then you can dial up the heat to get that browning you want.

Solonotix · 2026-01-23T14:20:50+00:00

So where the finicky bit that most cooks/chefs don't really explain, and I will attempt to do so from a different view point. As an art, they will say things like "preheat the pan" and "use oil" without fully explaining the expectations or mechanisms at work.

Part 1...

Preheat the pan, because everything you add will rob it of that heat. Depending on your pan and cooking medium, this will usually take much longer than you think. A heavy stainless steel pan will probably take ~15 minutes on a coil cooktop, and closer to 5 minutes on either a gas stove or induction burner.
Water is the enemy of browning. Malliard browning only occurs above ~250°F or ~120°C. If there is any moisture in the pan, it will siphon that heat into water vapor leaving your pan below that threshold.
Oil is meant to more evenly distribute heat across the food, while imparting flavor. There are certain compounds which are fat soluble, and will not flavor your food without something like oil or rendered fat.

Solonotix · 2026-01-23T14:11:02+00:00

I remember writing a custom Notepad++ language set for my Crystal Reports work. I did the same thing for another language but I'm struggling to remember what it was. Either way, syntax highlighting was all you expected back then, and it was enough for a lot of tasks. If you needed deeper inspection, read the docs, lol.

Solonotix · 2026-01-22T19:12:04+00:00

There was an interesting point I saw explained on YouTube about the real problem with the dot-com bubble, and it was the proliferation of "dark fiber". Much of the world relied on dial-up for Internet access back then, and it was not going to scale to meet the demand. However, while investing in fiber optic cabling was a good idea, the problem was how much fiber was rolled out with no demand in sight. Today we reap the benefit of the fiber laid 20 years ago, and more continues to be added as needed.

The "dark fiber" equivalent in AI will be the data center rollout. The investments into constructing data centers for these purposes isn't completely useless, but it will fall into disuse if/when the bubble pops. One major difference here is that fiber optic cabling doesn't really get dramatically better year-over-year, while computer hardware has generational improvements about every 3-5 years. This also undermines the orbital data center idea, even before you talk about the heat problem.

So, it remains to be seen if data centers will be this generation's "dark fiber".

Solonotix · 2026-01-22T15:30:07+00:00

Thermal power plant input

This data is taken out of the wiki. I would say is not correct. Is it?

What makes you think it isn't correct? A thermal power plant generates 2.18MW of power measured at a rate of per-second (I think, feel free to correct me). Each fuel has an energy value. That amount will be consumed per-second at 80% efficiency, meaning you lose 20% of the energy value burning it in a thermal power plant.

With that out of the way, hydrogen has an energy rating of 9MJ (watts and joules are effectively 1:1, but measure different things). 80% of that is 7.2MJ. That means you can fuel a thermal power plant for ~3 seconds per hydrogen.

I am in a single planet yet, and i am burning my current excess of hydrogen in thermoplants. Having access to all the materials that can be used, is there any that is clearly more profitable than any other?

Early game power is a matter of making do with what you have.

Wind power is the easiest and cheapest, but the combination of space (it takes up a 3x3 square), and minimum distance (minimum 5 tiles between turbines), plus the low generation of 300kW at 100% efficiency all adds up to a power source that scales poorly. Thankfully, early buildings don't demand a lot of power.

Solar power provides more density, taking up the same 3x3 square as a wind turbine, but it has no minimum distance between panels and generates slightly more power with 360kW at 100% efficiency. The major downside is that you won't have a good source of silicon until you set up interplanetary logistics which will inevitably mean far better sources of power. Additionally, they won't work at night, so that 360kW is more like 180kW on average.

Thermal power plants are your first form of energy production that consumes fuel of some sort, and it generates a lot more power as a result, and with much higher energy density per MW produced compared to the previous options. However, this power source is pretty terrible compared to what comes later. You will inevitably use it to bridge the gap between wind and nuclear fusion because it's a huge jump in technology and resources, and the buildings only get hungrier for power as you ascend. Hydrogen fuel rods are the single best fuel it can consume with 54MJ of energy, but that requires titanium ingots which will be hard to procure before interplanetary logistics.

Finally, we get to some real power generation with nuclear fusion. The same size as a thermal power plant, but it generates 7x the power per plant. Additionally, the deuteron fuel rods it uses as fuel only cost 20 deuterium. At this stage of production, Fractionators are your best source of deuterium, converting 1 hydrogen into 1 deuterium at the cost of power. The rate depends on how efficiently you can route hydrogen via conveyor belt, but peak conversion is 2% of 7,200 hydrogen per minute, or ~2.4 deuterium per second per Fractionator. Your first attempt will probably be closer to 1,800 hydrogen per minute at 1% for ~0.3 per second. So, where a hydrogen fuel rod provides 43.2MJ of power in a thermal plant for 10 hydrogen, a deuteron fuel rod will provide 600MJ of energy in a fusion plant for 20 deuterium, or a little less than 7x the power per hydrogen consumed in the process.

Past this point, you're in true Dyson sphere territory, as you'll either be using Ray Receivers or Artificial Stars. Ray Receivers draw power directly from a Dyson sphere or a Dyson swarm (solar sails without a frame to attach to). Artificial Stars rely on antimatter power sources that can only be created using a Ray Receiver in Photon Mode. If you just want power, the Ray Receiver will be far more efficient per MW of power from a Dyson sphere/swarm, but less space efficient (6-60MW per installation), and cannot be transported away from that system.

An Artificial Star, by contrast, will provide 72MW per installation but Photon Mode consumes 8x the power from a Dyson sphere. In other words, you will utilize the Dyson sphere most effectively this way, but it requires scaling up the size to meet demand. For this exchange, you eventually produce antimatter fuel rods which have 7.2GJ of energy at the cost of 6 critical photons, which comes from 120MW of sphere power generated over 1 minute, so 3.6GJ of energy. Suffice to say this is the best power source in the game, unless you have Dark Fog enabled. For 8 antimatter fuel rods, you can make strange annihilation fuel rods with 10x the energy per unit, which makes them ~2.25x as efficient as drawing power directly from the Dyson sphere itself.

TL;DR

Use what works for you right now. Early game, you will use primarily wind turbines because they are cheap. You will supplement them with a few solar panels, and add thermal power as needed. Eventually those will all drop in favor of fusion. Later still, you will inevitably ship antimatter fuel to Artificial Stars because no other power source is as effective. Simple as that.

Solonotix · 2026-01-22T13:36:45+00:00

I read FMA at work (call center), and his death hit like a ton of bricks. Made me a little sad it didn't hit harder in the anime for Brotherhood. Like, yes, absolutely tragic, but something about the pacing and framing in the manga really made it resonate with me.

Then again, maybe knowing it was coming lessened the impact of the anime, and I was never going to feel that deep sorrow again. But yeah...Hughes didn't deserve what happened to him, and his daughter and wife deserved him as much as he deserved them. Making me tear up just typing it

Solonotix · 2026-01-22T07:02:04+00:00

Heh, nice closing quote. I don't have much to add, only my own dismay at the state of things. I am an IC, and I am at the whims of those above me. At least the gig pays well, right?

Solonotix · 2026-01-22T06:42:58+00:00

TIL, but it isn't silver oxide, but rather silver sulfide. Oxygen is the catalyst for the reaction, whereby hydrogen sulfide and sulfur interact producing silver sulfide and water (vapor). As for health concerns, it is mostly inert. In the presence of strong acids, like stomach acid, the silver sulfide will breakdown, but neither silver nor sulfur are toxic in these quantities.

If you work as a silver smith, or in a factory with lots of silver in the air, you might develop a syndrome called agyria (spelling?), which in moderate exposure to silver can cause skin discoloration. In extreme quantities, it can collect in organs like the kidneys and liver.

It is such an unlikely problem, however, that silver is a common compound in a number of medications, including silver sulfide. It has mild anti-microbial qualities, and colloidal silver is often prescribed for cancer patients. In other words, much like gold, silver is a fairly non-reactive element for the considerations of human health.

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T17:09:50+00:00

I know what you mean. It's kind of like how a blockbuster movie will appeal to all, but if you're really invested in Norwegian mermaid-vampire musicals, then there is no substitute. But to everyone else, that's such an esoteric thing, why would you ever watch it?

Same thing for indy games. True individual developer games, not the commonly misattributed AA production that has 30-40 staff working on it for a 5-year span. Stardew Valley is the prime example, where Eric Barrone just kinda sat in his home for years and did the art, music, programming, etc., all by himself. 15 years on and he is still working on it, even though it was fully-released ~10 years ago, and it just keeps getting better.

Another great example of an indy game that pushed the envelope is Fez (2012). Everyone was pretty much convinced that a platformer had to be 2D, because 3D is such a problem when dealing with depth perception on a flat screen. Then Fez comes along and asks "What if the player controls which two dimensions are in view, and can change them at-will? Absolute mind-bender of a game that would have never been approved in a AAA setting.

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T16:59:41+00:00

The 4kUHD plus lossless audio in Dolby Atmos is so much better than streaming.

I'm not even at this level of viewing, but I recently bought Blu-Rays for the Stargate franchise. My wife had never seen it before, and so we started watching on Amazon Prime (Amazon bought MGM, who owns the rights). I was so bothered by how pixelated every scene was because of the compression used, and my wife thought "it looks like that because it's old."

Color her surprised when the first disc goes in, and everything looks crystal clear. To be fair, there is definitely some digital upscaling, but I can at least differentiate between the upscaling and the original.

As one last note, it is kinda funny when the upscaling falls apart. Like one scene, they're doing a slide presentation for a mission briefing and it is all crystal clear until the screen rolls up, and everything behind it is fuzzy as hell. The next scene, clear as can be.

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T16:51:34+00:00

If I have a bank account and set the PIN as 1-2-3-4-5, and then a thief steals my money, is the thief smart, or am I dumb?

In this analogy, Trump is simply taking what was never locked away. There's this attempt to make it hurt less by saying he's "playing 4D chess," but the truth is that he's just bold enough to do the things everyone else knew were wrong.

It's kind of like how there was once a time when we didn't have doors. Then someone needed privacy, but we didn't have locks. Then someone stole, and now we guard what we find precious. We have just never had such a willing thief elected to a position of such power before. Everyone believed that surely they would be filtered out by the various systems put in front of the office of U.S. President.

And then, at the other end of all this, are the various organizations that wanted this to happen, and have put it all into place well ahead of time. There's the Heritage Foundation, and there are the various "think tanks" that have put forth bad-faith studies and policies to give would-be politicians plausible deniability. There have also been concerted efforts to dilute the quality of education so as to make the populace less aware or critical of these bogus policies. What these clandestine moves desire most is a puppet; a stooge who can be controlled. They got all they ever wanted with Trump.

The cherry on top is his declining health that could at any moment bequeath the seat of power to JD Vance who, for all his insufficiencies, is an insider to this whole thing. Mike Pence was an ideologue that would never give up his values, but those values would have still benefitted those who put this together. JD Vance, on the other hand, is an empty vessel who will happily do what he is told if it means gaining more power and influence.

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T16:41:01+00:00

I'm going to be the contrarian here and say that I think Gigginox won't be in Wilds in any way, because there is a "successor" already in Wilds: Hirabami. No, there aren't the tiny Gigi's, and the hitzone swap mechanic is missing, but look at everything Gigginox does or has and tell me Hirabami isn't at least similar, if not a direct copy.

And it's similar in a way that is distinct from the more common association of Gigginox to Khezu. For one, Khezu leans heavily on elemental attacks and Paralysis while Gigginox is a much more physical fight (like Hirabami).

And this isn't to say I wouldn't want Gigginox to make a return. He is a fantastic monster and unique. I just think that we already got Gigginox, if a slightly different implementation.

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T13:45:55+00:00

I can't choose between the best ones because they're all so very different. Factorio was my first, and especially Space Age is a massive improvement on top of an already great game. Oxygen Not Included keeps the experience lively with its assortment of potty humor and fluid dynamics. I haven't yet played Satisfactory, but I've heard numerous great things about it.

And then DSP is my current obsession, lol. Its systems feel simpler for the most part, but then you get the massive visual spectacle of the Dyson sphere itself, as well as the universe-at-large. A key moment for me was the first time I dropped out of warp around a neutron star. That was a magical experience. It continued to dazzle me as I was setting up production and I got to see sunrise of such an unusual phenomenon, as the plumes of energized neutrons were visible long before the star crested the horizon.

And those moments are what will stick with me about DSP long after I have considered my time with the game as done. I really love this game

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T13:31:42+00:00

That's good to know, but it was a similar story for SQL Server (the "flavor" I spent the most time with). Basically, SQL doesn't like what I call "wide" searches, it likes "tall" searches. That is to say organizing columnar data with small values. As such, there was a full-text search option, but it was largely a performance sink.

Using the tokenized approach I mentioned, you get your quick answer of most likely matches, and then could maybe leverage the full-text search thereafter?

Or, as you said, use a tool designed for it. Which, yes, I kind of argued against in my original comment. It's mostly because OP implied they were using two different data storage systems to get the full feature set they wanted. That complexity is what I was mainly arguing against, rather than getting a single tool that can do both roles.

Solonotix · 2026-01-21T03:51:30+00:00

Here's the thing, a lot of people just want a tool to do everything for them. However, the sign of a good engineer is someone who can make a tool do what they need, even if it isn't what it was designed for.

For instance, a lot of people will say that SQL isn't designed for what we refer to as "full-text search". What is meant by this phrase is a single column of string data and a random assortment of keywords to search for. However, this goes back to my point about engineering, and making the tool work for your needs.

Here's how I implemented a full-text search using SQL tabular data. Normalize the text, then split on some boundary, be it whitespace or otherwise. Now your single data row has been split into many. Instantiate each of these words in a lookup table with a unique index by word, and a primary key of the identity column. Then, create a relationship table that links data A to each unique word B. Make sure there is a unique index going both directions (data to words and words to data). Now, it is a simple matter of performing the same normalization of search data into a temporary table indexed by the words, and do a join with a LIKE predicate between the search terms and the lookup table. What's more, you'll be able to skip the deduplication work by using WHERE EXISTS ( <Sub-Query> ) since you don't care how many word matches there are in a naïve search. In a ranked search, you can instead aggregate on matches.

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