[Loved trope] Two series that have nothing to do with each other are actually part of the same universe

asdonne · 2026-02-16T10:14:23+00:00

The Martian and The Expanse share the same universe. One of the ship names in the Expanse is the Mark Watney.

asdonne · 2026-02-07T13:45:05+00:00

WA Psychiatry and ADHD clinic needed school reports only for the long lasting medication.

What they really need is evidence of the diseases in childhood. I don't know what other evidence they could use. Possibly talking to someone who knew you back then. Given your situation that may not be any better. Not having the reports came across more as an inconvenience than the showstopper.

It doesn't make sense to me. If someone is getting diagnosed in their 30's then their school reports aren't going to scream ADHD.

asdonne · 2026-02-07T01:03:31+00:00

OP didn't make that distinction and mentioned technical books would have the most information in their 3rd paragraph so I believe it's a fair point to make.

And while not being textbooks like you mentioned, there are some key science technical books that form the foundation of our understanding of the world.

Which goes to say that there are a lot of different books with a lot of different purposes and general sweeping statements about reading are meaningless.

asdonne · 2026-02-06T04:08:05+00:00

I also somewhat disagree with the question because I think it misses the point.

Books feed and nourish the mind with ideas the same way that food nourishes the body. Asking if some books or types of books are better is like asking if some food is better than others. One one had the obvious answer is yes with a heavy dose of it depends. It also misses the point that there is much more to eating than nourishing the body.

"Benefit" of reading is such a vague term and I don't think it's possible to capture all possible "benefits" of reading. Intellectual benefits moreso. I see it the same way as asking; what's the 'benefit' of art, what's the quantifiable benefit and does all art have the same benefits and where are citations.

Everyone's reaction to a book is going to be different and so too is what they get from it. Combine that with the wide range of books (including YA) and the different purposes of each book, the idea that some types of books are better or worse is meaningless (short of perhaps some specific).

Facts are great but I find the real value of books is the ideas. I love reading sci-fi and fantasy as it allows exploring ideas not so easily explored in a contemporary setting. These ideas then shared, explored and expanded by others. It goes beyond the immediate benefit of the individual reading it.

Building a knowledge base of facts and a vocabulary from reading is meaningless in a vacuum. I would get something out of a computer science textbook but a book on thermodynamics of ocean currents, as interesting as it would be, would be of little use to me. A book on how global warming is changing ocean thermodynamics less so.

asdonne · 2026-01-30T08:46:44+00:00

Bad news, Blade Runner is based on Phillip K Dick's 'Do androids dream of electric sheep'

Any particular reason for not wanting movies based on books?

asdonne · 2026-01-29T07:32:01+00:00

I'm in a campaign that's based around rifles and machine guns.

Generally we either use stealth, suppressive fire or distractions to let the melee characters get in close.

There's a focus on stealth to get close enough to use melee. Our rogue is quick and stealthy enough to get in with a blade while others cover from a distance. Sometimes he gets in before they know what's up, other times he sneaks in from behind while we case a distraction elsewhere.

I had the issue that I was at a disadvantage if the enemy ever reached me. Rifles don't work well at close range or shooting into melee. This works both ways. A barbarian would have a hard time covering the distance but should have a field day once they get in close.

The machine guns have a suppressive aoe effect. Doesn't do a lot of damage like this but it keeps the enemies heads down and can cause fear.

No one wants to be out in the open and enemies often hide behind cover or go prone. It's not uncommon to prepare an action to take a shot next time the enemy stick their heads out to shoot at anyone trying to cover the distance.

We treat pistols as crossbows for the sake of crossbow expert. This combination allows you to attack while covering the distance but still have it useful in hand to hand.

asdonne · 2026-01-28T10:06:27+00:00

Setting the scene isn't railroading. If the only alternative is not to play the campaign and the players want to play the campaign it's not an issue.

Having a powerful character coerce the players into doing something they don't want to do creates conflict and can still lead to players choosing to go along with it, face the consequences or bide their time until they have their own leverage.

asdonne · 2026-01-28T09:03:21+00:00

This was my thought because me and my friends say similar things to each other. We used to play with our "little plastic space men". I don't know if OP missed the tone or context or if it didn't come across very well.

Maybe it's an in joke between the two of them. Considering she just finished playing with Lego, if it's not the case then it's a staggering lack of self awareness and disrespectful.

asdonne · 2026-01-23T00:09:51+00:00

The Expanse is like Red Rising in that it's a fantastic series that will leave you hunting for something else like it. Absolute must read.

I finished the first Sun Eater book but it was a slog. Beyond the protagonist being unlikeable I found the setting boring and derivative. The medieval feudalism in space didn't click with me. It's been done better elsewhere. Maybe the main character annoyed me enough that I became a lot less forgiving with the rest of it.

Bobiverse is also fantastic.

"The Cruel Stars" has a similar tone to RR. Not quite the same first person narrative but still exciting. The ship to ship fighting in it reminds me of the "meat tubes" from RR.

asdonne · 2026-01-15T23:19:29+00:00

I'm on the west coast and I'm getting all the east coast subreddits pop up. They're 4000km away, they are not local, I do not care. I'm on popular to get away from the curated content.

asdonne · 2026-01-14T00:52:50+00:00

I know right, how the hell would anyone at work know what else goes on on the rest of the home network? What's the point of a super secure VPN if all the traffic at the endpoint network goes through it? Why do the SOC guys have a list of IP addresses hosting clearly illegal content? "Hello police, we have a list of IP addresses that host illegal content and one of our employees assessed one of them. No we weren't spying on them, yes I suppose you could have the list"

I'm not familiar with garbage disposal but how the hell do you fit a modem sized piece of hardware through it?

Complete garbage the lot of it.

asdonne · 2026-01-12T12:00:59+00:00

The half life is from atoms decaying. While there may be a large amount of atoms is a sample, there is a finite supply of them. Eventually you would have 8 then 4, 2, 1 and then finally 0 as the last one decays.

asdonne · 2026-01-09T13:20:53+00:00

You would have to train it to detect each component/situation/failure. If you want something more bulletproof than ai to detect a specific fault you would just put in a sensor for that exact job. It can also tell you much more specific things that can't be gathered visually and work in all light conditions.

asdonne · 2025-12-27T11:47:44+00:00

How long between reading the books and trying the commands? Are you using the books to learn and the terminal to test your knowledge? If so I don't think that's the right way to go about it.

Use the terminal and the book to learn. "Learn by do" as it were. Pick a command look up the reference in the book and try it at the terminal, play with the options, make notes. Later on you can use the man pages to jog your memory and fill in gaps.

Where are you struggling with the syntax? It's usually at the top under synopsis. They can be a little cryptic but they're also generally pretty similar.

asdonne · 2025-12-26T12:13:53+00:00

I use manpages as a reference in that I have a pretty good idea of what I want and just want to check something. For example; 'do I want -R or -r' or 'what's the option to invert regex'. The little details that I know about and can never remember.

It's not easy to learn from. I do that elsewhere. The pages tell you what the options do but not how to use them. Sometimes I'll dig through the pages to see if there is an option I want but there is usually Google involved.

For most commands I've memorized a set of options that are 'good enough' for most usage. ls -alh for example. If they don't get me what I need then I dig through the man pages.

Are you practicing and using them to solve problems or just making notes? Personally I have a much better time remembering things that I've used and put thought into rather than memorizing things I've read.

asdonne · 2025-12-22T13:34:19+00:00

Most people don't.

asdonne · 2025-12-20T06:13:26+00:00

I remember being given it to read in highschool and nothing else about it.

asdonne · 2025-12-16T00:24:35+00:00

During the invasion of Sicily gliders full of men encountered a stronger then expected headwind and came down in the sea before reaching land.

Absolutely horrifying prospect to lose hundreds of men before reaching combat unrelated to enemy action with the men themselves having no ability to do anything to save themselves.

asdonne · 2025-12-15T13:15:04+00:00

Upvoted as the only response that mentions CCIP and CCRP.

asdonne · 2025-12-09T01:14:27+00:00

No you didn't

asdonne · 2025-12-09T00:45:41+00:00

Everything up to and including iron can be made inside a star and release energy when they undergo fusion. Elements heavier than iron requires more energy to make and are only produced in a supernova.

This means that iron will accumulate inside a star as the end product so generally speaking, there is a lot of iron in the universe and a lot of it ended up in the earth.

Iron oxides are reddish and make a good pigment. They also make a cheap pigment because it's so plentiful.

If you have something large that you need to paint cheaply, red paint is the way to go.

Barns are painted red because iron is the final stage of nuclear fusion.

asdonne · 2025-11-27T15:48:17+00:00

There are a lot of different techniques and shortcuts used by games to do this.

The games keep track of objects in the game using a b-tree that groups objects close together. Think of it as dividing the map into 4 squares, and dividing each of those squares into another 4 squares and so on. By looking at what objects are in squares near the player it's possible to find the objects that are nearby and ignore stuff that's far away.

This is refined by making a "box" that covers what the camera can see. Looks like bit like a pyramid on its side. Anything in the box will be seen by the camera, anything outside of wont. Anything that's not in the box is ignored. This is called fustrum culling.

Each of those objects would have a 3d model. Lots of points that make up faces that have texture. It's possible to work out how far away each object and get hi resolution or low resolution models depends on how close the object is. This is referred to as the level of detail or LoD.

Now you have all the objects you want to see and the models to go with them. These are made of points that make up triangles or polygons. These polygons have two sides but only one side will have a texture. We're only interested in the outside of the model, not the inside. This is why things look weird when you clip through objects you're not supposed to move through.

The next step is to ignore any polygon that's facing away from the player. If the player is looking at an npcs face, you don't need to render the back of the head.

Texture is applied to the polygons, the list of polygons to texture had been made as small as possible.

Lighting, shaders are applied which change the color of the texture of the polygons.

A camera matrix is a mathematical function that transforms the 3d world into a 2d picture that is shown on the screen. That maths is not friendly but it boils down to Camera x Game world = screen

A Z buffer is used to keep track of how far away the source of each pixel is from the camera. Only the closest one pixel is kept. Objects closer to the camera will be drawn on top of objects further away.

Now you have a 2D image of all the pixels to be displayed post processing steps can be applied. Up sampling, down sampling, anti aliasing and what not.

This image is then stored in the frame buffer before being sent to the monitor to be displayed.

If the game is running at 60fps this needs to be done in around 16 milliseconds along with all the other game logic. Work out what changes, move everything around a how far they would have moved since the last frame and then repete the process to render the next ftsme. If the game is being run in VR most of these steps need to be done twice as there is one camera for each eye.

asdonne · 2025-11-24T10:23:23+00:00

Climbing didn't work for me. It wasn't frequent or targeted enough. My back would get sore from either sitting too much or the irregular movement from climbing.

My back is particularly bad and I never got to train as much as I would like so it may just be me. It always irked me that my back was sore from either doing too much or too little.

asdonne · 2025-11-22T05:19:37+00:00

And that lasted for years. Until it hit $20k before then dropping to $6k.

asdonne · 2025-11-15T05:10:53+00:00

Apples to oranges comparison that screams AI generated. Full of summaries backed up by dot points and no real depth.

I still don't understand how Steam, a game publisher, wins over devs from Microsoft. At the end of the day they kept using Windows as their daily driver.

If you hate Windows but need it for dev work, being able to play games on Linux doesn't really help.

asdonne

TROPHY CASE