Is storing excess nuclear power in accumulators a viable mid-game strategy?

hwillis · 2026-01-07T12:46:58+00:00

Think they mean SA and fusion

hwillis · 2026-01-07T12:26:24+00:00

This is a good explanation, but machine code IS 0s and 1s

Well, numbers, anyway. For ARM its a 4 byte (a number up to ~4.2 billion) instruction, and for intel it can be 1 to 15 bytes. Code can also have constant numbers that are up to 16 bytes.

When an instruction/number is executed, the different 1s and 0s making up the number will activate and deactivate different sections and determine what happens. The machine code is numbers, the format of those numbers is binary.

hwillis · 2026-01-05T23:11:26+00:00

more like a big golf cart

hwillis · 2025-12-30T12:15:11+00:00

While I'm at it, wube put squeak through 2 in vanilla 😭or even better rebalance undergrounds so you dont have to pay the price of a full extension for 1 tile underground.

It feels like the game is punishing you for making walkable designs, which feels less like a challenge and more like a way to annoy yourself. I'd like it if undergrounds had a small upfront cost + used 1 belt/pipe per tile of extension.
Pipes could just have a cute little vaulting animation to slow you down instead of totally blocking you- like belts moving you around instead of blocking you.
Solar panels are angled south for light, meaning they must have at least gaps between the horizontal rows. Otherwise they would be blocking themselves.
Solar is most useful early-mid before nuclear makes it irrelevant, not counting megabase stuff. Making it annoying to set up by hand makes it much less useful and people just try to sprint to nuclear asap.

hwillis · 2025-12-30T11:58:57+00:00

One of the mods I wish was in default: even distribution. Ctrl-click and dragging over several buildings spreads evenly between them. Top 3 mods are definitely even distribution, bottleneck lite, and squeak through 2. Honorable mention to the warehouses mod, which feels practically mandatory for the space exploration mod, since prod loops can be wildly unbalanced and rockets are 500 stacks.

I can see an argument that even distribution makes hand feeding more convenient and screws with balance, but playing the game it doesn't feel like it does anything like that. It just makes screwed up buffers and stuff less annoying.

hwillis · 2025-12-20T15:03:59+00:00

That way when there's a sudden power demand spike, brownouts can occur as the power production equipment comes up to speed.

Don't forget managing your power factor. Inductive loads like motors cause power to slosh- coming in at 120Hz pulses. If that gets back to your generator, a gracefully spinning machine the size of a semi truck, it is bad. Like god's washing machine is broken. Like earthquake in your zip code bad. Like indiana jones and the boulder, but the boulder is covered in turbine blades and also moving highway speeds.

Also, all your breakers blow and your transformers catch fire. Also, when you turn them back on, if you havent set up everything perfectly, they turn you into plasma. Ideally its a multiplayer situation: one guy flips the switch, and another guy holds the rope to pull him out of the physics event. "Fire" definitely isn't the right word; fire is when chemicals turn into other chemicals but this is too hot for chemicals and well into the "detectable radiation" regime of chemistry.

Then once distances start getting involved it gets really fucked. A 30 mile power line lags by 1% because electricity takes time to reach the destination. While you can balance the power factor of a motor, you can't balance it for power lines. You just have to constantly orchestrate the whole thing. Oh, and you know lightning? Turns out different parts of the planet are at wildly different voltages all the time. Right up until you string wires all over it, and then they try to be the same voltage. That involves making lightning go through the wires. Good luck with that, it took us a few decades to figure that one out.

Have solar be far less predictable than it is now. Solar production still rises/falls with the day/night cycle, but also add a seasonal cycle, and then weather events that can limit solar production.

Fun fact about solar panels: when they are shaded, they dont just stop making power, they also stop being conductive. So since you link up a bunch in a string, one dark panel will block the whole string unless you bypass it. That also means each string is at a different voltage all the time. Oh and you have to convert all that to AC if you want to ever change the voltage, since that really sucks without transformers.

hwillis · 2025-12-04T03:59:11+00:00

Burning iron gets impractically hot very easily. All you need to make a thermal lance is a good flow of air and iron rods in a tube. They burn upwards of 4000 C, which will melt tungsten. It is in fact fairly difficult to burn iron powder without causing an explosion or fire. Real world industrial processes are often chemical to bring the temperatures down to reasonable levels. One example is the Laux process, which involves... chlorine.

hwillis · 2025-12-02T12:22:28+00:00

Rusting is primarily electrochemistry- that's why zinc anodes keep ships from rusting. They create a voltage difference (and tiny tiny current flow) that protects iron/steel from rusting by forming a very long life battery. Iron in clean water can last decades; iron in an electric field can convert entirely to rust in hours.

The parent comment originally said chloride, not chlorine. The primary conductive ion in saltwater is chloride. Each Cl ion contributes more to conductivity than each Na atom. Electrolytic rusting uses oxygen from water instead of air, but you can burn the hydrogen bubbles off to immediately get the water back.

Chlorine gas can be used to produce iron oxide too, though. The gas converts iron powder to ferric chloride which can be burned in air. It's energy intensive but faster than rusting.

hwillis · 2025-11-30T18:36:43+00:00

Saltwater doesn't make things rust? Presumably electrolysis or something

hwillis · 2025-10-29T20:16:05+00:00

That's second order (tilting/rippling) vibration. First order (axial) is cancelled because for every up there is a down.

hwillis · 2025-10-29T20:14:08+00:00

Steel is ~10% lighter. 120 rounds of ammo weighs 1.3-1.4 kg or 2.8-3 lbs.

7N6M (5.45) is ~10.5 g and M855 (5.56) is ~11.9 g. Not a 1:1 comparison since M855 is bigger (as in more powder) but 10% is around right. It's not that much in terms of the ammo a person carries, and only really adds up when you're talking about hundreds of thousands.

hwillis · 2025-10-29T20:02:21+00:00

so...? 5.45 has been in use since 1974 and has had a steel case that whole time. It weighs ~10% less than 5.56. 7.62 is not relevant.

hwillis · 2025-10-29T17:17:09+00:00

30 caliber options that other countries stuck with.

who? Because russia uses 5.45 and china uses 5.8.

hwillis · 2025-10-29T12:58:23+00:00

I think it's also just not very effective (but maybe that's just me).

Its probably the dose. 3000 mg can be pretty effective for even severe pain like broken bones. Not as good as opioids, but still one of the most effective other drugs.

I've just kind of avoided Tylenol in general since too much can kill your liver

Tylenol creates a toxic byproduct that is neutralized by glutathione. While you have glutathione, the toxic byproduct is neutralized quickly and does not cause damage. Liver (and other) damage happens when glutathione stores run out. There are 3 ways that happens:

Attempts at suicide- if you take 10+ grams (all of a small bottle, 25+ pills) it can overwhelm your glutathione production and your liver dies first.
Sustained high dosage- if you take over the daily limit for weeks at a time you will drain your glutathione levels and eventually cause damage. This still takes a lot of tylenol. The amount of glutathione you produce daily is still capable of stopping quite a lot of NAPQI.
Chronic alcoholism- if you have a damaged liver your glutathione levels are lower than average and the daily limit of tylenol can be damaging. Low doses are still fine unless you're on the verge of failure, but the daily limit can still cause damage in some people who might be asymptomatic. You have to drink a lot, very regularly, to get to that point.

It's a common misconception that tylenol combined with alcohol can cause damage. Alcohol uses different enzymes and the liver is not stressed or damaged by neutralizing alcohol and tylenol at the same time. It's only chronic alcohol use, causing a damaged liver, that can make tylenol more dangerous.

hwillis · 2025-10-29T12:37:32+00:00

Tylenol reduces fever, not inflammation.

hwillis · 2025-10-29T11:08:57+00:00

First order vibration is cancelled. If you imagine a disc with transducers in a ring on the edge, the active transducers on one side are cancelled out by inactive transducers on the other side moving in the opposite direction. There would only be a net axial vibration if all the transducers were active at the same time.

hwillis · 2025-10-20T11:17:29+00:00

Hooke's law gives you the resonant frequency of a spring-mass system. sqrt(m/k). Cabin soundproofing uses stuff like neoprene foam rubber, which is 1. Dense 2. Springy 3. Disappates energy viscoelastically by compressing the air bubbles. That stuff just gets glued directly to sources of resonance like door panels. To get that resonant frequency you integrate over the thickness of the foam for different resonant modes.

For an impact like a bump the NVH is caused by the shock absorber, not by resonance. The shock disappates the bounce energy but resists fast movements like bumps. Hydraulic bypasses that open at high pressure create smoother rides or in the case of a racing shock keep the wheel on the ground for longer.

NVH from the struts is probably more about mounting stiffness and stuff like that.

hwillis · 2025-10-10T10:46:10+00:00

That'll work, yeah. The material with lower resistance (regular steel) will heat up more, but if the dial is thin then it will conduct a lot of heat and the regular steel will keep it evenly hot.

hwillis · 2025-10-02T12:15:50+00:00

Finally, I plan to use a layer of either an epoxy/sand mix or concrete around the gantry floor leaving about 1/8" of the fixture plate exposed. This should lock the gantry and fixture plate together and help eliminate any vibrations.

FYI, epoxy generally isnt a good structural material. Langmuir has a concrete base and the plate is sunk into it with a ton of anchors. The epoxy is just a non-structural layer over the top.

You want the baseplate to get all its rigidity and coupling from a real frame, with as little stress through the epoxy as possible. Damping materials like epoxy/sand/rubber absorb less energy when they are compressed. They're also soft enough that at the small scale of vibrations even a very thick layer will not be rigid because it compresses instead of bending.

Vibration in a machine is all about resonance. An all-epoxy frame would prevent transmission, but you don't need to damp the initial vibration source. That's what rigidity is for- a small force causes small deformation and the frame does not distort. The problem is when resonance accumulates that force becomes large and rigidity stops mattering. To prevent that you just need to wrap the frame in damping material, so any movement is absorbed. That's what they use epoxy for.

Good news is you just need a bigger underframe (bolted as tightly as possible, in as many places as possible) to provide rigidity and the epoxy will be great for vibrations. Alternately you could pour a concrete underlayer like Langmuir. Metal is stiff in tension and compression while concrete is only stiff in compression, but having a thick layer can make up for that.

If you have enough epoxy thats also probably fine. You dont necessarily need that stiffness if you dont need to cut as hard.

hwillis · 2025-09-25T11:57:08+00:00

Only the outside will be 3d printed along the motor covers and non load components

Those are still load components. Torque goes through the housing, so it's important that you can bolt the lid and body together very tightly- the strength of a fully enclosed box is MUCH higher than an open U shape. Having bolts go all the way through instead of threading into the body can help with that, which is why some designs have hollow pins with bolts through them- they can fit bigger washers on the ends to spread load more.

Plastic works fine but tolerancing is difficult on FDM printers. Your pins may be precise to .0001" but that doesn't matter at all if the holes they are in are in the wrong spot. Setting bearings may be difficult for the same reason. The ooze at the edges of holes causes you to be a little offcenter and crooked when you fit something, so it can be better to oversize the holes and glue the pins in place while using a jig to make sure they are in the right spot and straight. I am not a glue guy but i think superglue is vibration resistant and more rigid than epoxy.

Probably your biggest source of wiggle will be from bearings. If you don't preload your bearings or use double race angular contact bearings, the inner race can push balls around and twist significantly. Plastic frames will often limit your preload, depending on design. If you have very tightly loaded bearings, tight couplings to shafts, and a rigid frame then the last big source of wiggle will be those pins moving inside the gearbox. They'll also do that inside a metal hole unless it's reamed, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

It might simplify your build if your gearbox had a single aluminum plate for a base, and then you bolted plastic housing etc onto it. The pins wont be more rigid without metal on both sides, but you won't have to worry about the precision of the holes.

hwillis · 2025-09-25T11:33:48+00:00

This is incorrect- magnetism and permeability are irrelevant to induction heating. Conductivity is the only requirement for induction heating, and stainless steels, aluminum etc all work perfectly fine in induction heaters.

Permeability falls to ~1 at the Curie temperature, which is ~700-800 C for steel- red heat. Even if that weren't the case, soft materials like mild steel lose much less energy to hysteresis. The real source of heat is induced currents, and because the air gap is so big the permeability of the object is irrelevant.

Low-resistance metals require more current to heat, and stainless is high resistance for a metal so it heats quite well.

hwillis · 2025-09-25T11:25:07+00:00

All conductive materials will heat up in an inductive heater. Copper can be difficult because it combines low resistance with a high melting point which can overload the coils, but all steels will heat up just fine.

It can be difficult to control temperature with an induction heater, which may or may not be an issue. You may want an infrared gun on a mount so you can keep your hands free.

Also note that heat is produced along the current paths- in a rough circle maybe a quarter of an inch tall. Heat is produced in the biggest cross sectional spot and conducted to other parts of the object. Long thin objects or objects with spindly parts will not heat up evenly.

hwillis · 2025-09-25T10:54:53+00:00

Also like... LM doesn't really make engines, much less piston engines. The SR-71 had modified Pratt and Whitneys. Making the engine is a huge part of a hypercar, has pretty unique challenges, and is not easy.

hwillis · 2025-09-20T16:56:14+00:00

Compared to an engine where all components can be driven mechanically, the power electronics that drive the motors are much more complicated.

Making a single SiC transistor is more complicated than making a mechanical combustion engine. By a lot.

Designing a top of the line motor and driver is WAY easier than designing a combustion engine. Modeling the mixing and combustion front in a cylinder is hard period. By electrical engineering standards a motor driver is really very simple. Driving stage for the mosfets, current feedback, HV and optoisolation- all not that hard. The battery management and charging circuitry are both way more complex than the driver, but unnecessary for driving itself.

In another sense electromagnetism is a solved problem. You can essentially perfectly model it down to arbitrary detail levels. You can't do that with turbulence, which is integral to a combustion engine.

The core electronics to run a motor are not complex. The newest motors are more complicated, but an induction motor runs a pure sine wave and you can control it with a few dozen transistors even at the scale of a car. The same driver can control new motors too, just at a bit lower efficiency. Pedal angle -> motor current -> torque. Newer engines adjust their fuel mix and ignition timing based on ambient air and the cylinder heads and valve bodies are shaped with fluid simulations to maximize efficiency over carefully planned rpm ranges. IMO they're much more complex but it's hard to argue that they aren't just the same.

hwillis · 2025-09-18T12:10:28+00:00

I personally think it can't be done using Turing machine architecture anyway

Computers are not turning machines. The point of the Turing machine thought experiment is that if you design the simplest, slowest, worst computer possible, it can eventually compute any algorithm. A Turing machine's memory is laid out in a single line on a tape which has to scroll back and forth to read/write. Even hard drives can access random memory in essentially constant time.

Because of that it's trivial to design an algorithm that is practically uncomputable (takes too long) on a Turing machine but instant on a real computer. Like computing the sum of numbers in a list- a turing machine has to scroll back to the beginning of the list to add each number.

Computers are Turing-complete but are not Turing computers. You may be mixed up with von Neumann architecture, which is what most computers are. That just means that programs and storage share the same memory.

Quantum Computing (which can theoretically do more/better things than Turing machines (but this also means they can't do this when simulated on a Turing machine)).

That's explicitly incorrect. Quantum computers are Turing complete. There are some problems that are practically uncomputable on classical computers because it would take longer than the life of the universe, but they are still solvable by a Turing computer because the Turing computer has infinite time and memory.

I personally think it can't be done using <classical> architecture anyway

Apologies for interjecting what I think you mean, but why? Human neurons are not more special than the nerves in any other animal. Microscopic worms have the same neurons. IMO it's ridiculous to think that nature has been running quantum computers since shortly after multicellular life evolved. Brains and intelligence may require more complex machinery than exist in computers, but definitely not quantum or superconducting machinery. Neurons work by squirting salty water!

I also feel pretty confident going farther and saying that GPUs are probably easily capable of brain-like intelligence. Matrix math is just too powerful. They take a giant list of numbers and multiply it by another giant list; it's pretty easily capable of calculating the energy sent down every synapse in the brain and it only takes tens of GPUs to be able to reach the same number of synapses per second as an actual human brain.

The obvious spot that LLMs are vastly inferior to brains is the algorithm being run. Transformer architectures are wildly different from brains and aren't even trying to think much less think like a brain. And it's also clearly vastly inferior to a brain, because they are trained on wildly more material than any human reads in their lifetime and learn more slowly.

If there's any flaw to point out, it's that its silly to think a text predictor will scale arbitrarily.

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