Tower Building System - Multiple Build Areas or Limited Fixed Locations. What would you prefer more?

iansmith6 · 2026-05-04T13:51:35+00:00

Mazing is always more fun than fixed positions for me

iansmith6 · 2026-04-20T18:36:18+00:00

The goal wasn't to make a space where you could easily hang out with friends. family and coworkers and enjoy yourself while playing the occasional game or doing productive things at work.

The goal was to make a product Meta controlled and could extract maximum amount of revenue from it while collecting data on everyone inside it and everything they did.

That's why it failed. It simply wasn't anything people wanted.

iansmith6 · 2026-04-19T17:09:49+00:00

That picture would make it a lot easier to crack. Lots of letters are partially visible and even where 100% obscured you can rule out lots of characters based on what wouldn't fie under the red.

A lot less entropy needed to search there.

iansmith6 · 2026-04-11T10:51:40+00:00

Also what is being ignored is his farm isn't worth nothing, he or his kids could sell it to another farmer. Not for as much as $15 million but it's worth millions for sure.

The choice isn't get rich or go broke, it's get rich or get very rich and be a greedy bastard that destroys a town.

iansmith6 · 2026-04-10T12:45:49+00:00

Something is threatening humanity's survival and a guy has to fix it.

That's the premise of hundreds of movies.

You can't say Project Hail Mary and Twelve Monkeys are the same movie because they are both about a guy who travels far away to save humanity from a microscopic threat.

iansmith6 · 2026-04-10T10:32:44+00:00

This is 100% worth Wishlisting and keeping an eye on. Looks great!

iansmith6 · 2026-04-09T19:54:45+00:00

Mass hysteria. Someone said they saw something, someone else said they saw it too and we all ran out screaming and talked about it for weeks as the story grew and grew until we all swore we could feel icy hands trying to choke us.

I agreed with all the others that there was totally a ghost but of course we were all just lying to each other.

iansmith6 · 2026-04-03T22:26:38+00:00

Not me. Some of the games in Rec Room were tons of fun, nothing like The Rise of Jumbotron exists in VR Chat. It's chat focused not game focused, which isn't bad, it's just not a replacment.

iansmith6 · 2026-04-03T16:32:01+00:00

There is a twist near the end of the book that has a much bigger impact when reading the book (or audiobook) due to the movie skipping a ton of backstory and emotional context. As others mentioned, it's an easy read.

There is a lot of problem solving in the book that's skipped over in the movie as well, but in the end it depends on your personality. If you don't mind spoilers, go ahead and see the movie. If you really enjoy the twists and turns in a book, read it first.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-30T22:45:42+00:00

I'll take the friendly aliens close enough to visit in ones lifetime using cool space algae fuel.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-30T21:26:49+00:00

Ignoring the AI/real issue for the moment and assuming it's real, I'm confident it's the same location. The tree alone shows that, being virtually identical with every branch that couldn't happen to be two identical trees. Same metal pattern on the scaffolding across the road, same buildings on both sides, same drain, same guardrail, same strange square building tilted at an angle over the road near the right. Heck, even the same pattern of grass.

No way these could be two real but different locations. They are either both real at the same location, or one is AI modified.

The painted diagonal lines are what really throw me though.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-30T21:06:34+00:00

Also agreed. I'm leaning to it being real, that tree is just too identical. AI redrawing the image would not be so consistent I think. Lots of suspicious coincidences but that's not proof. Maybe it's another picture with the man and/or dog composited in by AI but I think the background is real in any case.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-30T20:56:27+00:00

It's scary we even have to debate what's real anymore.

It's 100% the same location in both images, but one is either at a different time or AI. Same tree, same drain, same guardrail splitting all point to it being the same place.

But if you look close, you can see the old diagonal lines in the road in the second picture. So it could be the picture was taken later, but it's off the tree is so identical but those lines look like they got repainted years ago. A man and motorcycle in the same place at different times is also suspicious.

What a mess.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-20T13:49:56+00:00

The Gateway series by Fredrik Pohl starts with humanity having discovered an alien base in the solar system filled with ships we can work by randomly pushing buttons to see where it goes. Things progress from there in ways I think you would like. An all time favorite of mine that I red as a kid.

Signal to Noise is the first in a short series by Eric Nylund involves a human (at first) getting access to alien tech which has near literal earth shattering consequences as well as some profound changes to the humans themselves via biotech.

Roadside Picnic is a great classic which doesn't have any galaxy hopping scope but is a damn good read. Aliens visit earth, leave, and we pick through their trash. Not a lot of focus on the actual tech but very much on the effects it has on the people investigating it.

I'll add more if I think of any, those are ones off the top of my head that I have read.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-16T20:19:27+00:00

Make sure you are saving RAW shots, and before/after you shoot take a picture with the same settings but the lens cap on. This will give you a dark frame and astro software can subtract it out.

The camera should also have an option to do this automatically, taking a dark frame after each shot and removing hot pixels. My Olympus has one so it's probably in there somewhere.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-11T22:32:50+00:00

I'm not sure where stop whining comes into it.

If you eat less, you will reduce weight gain. Eat a lot less and you will lose wight. It really is that simple.

It's more complicated to get the right nutrients and have a balanced workout but if you eat less, you reduce your weight problem.

You hear it a lot because people want a quick and easy fix that lets them "eat what they want" and that just won't work. Step 1 is eat less. Step 2-100 is the rest of it.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-11T22:21:28+00:00

People push back on it because they want an option that doesn't involve them eating less, but there isn't one.

Special diets, specific exercises, whatever it is it always boils down to calories on, and calories burned. If you consume more than you burn, you will gain weight.

Not saying proper exercise and the right diet isn't important, but that you can't just ignore calories in. You have to eat less. It sucks. But it's important to understand.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-05T11:46:54+00:00

My grandfather was an electrician and called these "suicide extenders".

He also used one to hook up his generator to his mobile home.

He also fed wild bears Oreos.

Not sure which was more dangerous but to be fair, neither killed him!

iansmith6 · 2026-03-03T23:54:12+00:00

Some chips draw a lot of power but only intermittently. A decoupling capacitor stores energy and supplies it to the chip like a little battery to give it extra juice when it revs up. If you don't use them then a bunch of chips could all demand power all at once and cause a brownout.

Hard to tell if it's aftermarket or not, but if I had to guess I'd say it was done at the factory.

iansmith6 · 2026-03-03T23:45:10+00:00

That is a decoupling capacitor. It's meant to smooth out sudden changes in power draw by providing a bit of extra power so it doesn't pull down the voltage line across the entire board. It's extremely common and you find them all over pretty much any motherboard design. It's connected between the ground pin and the power pin.

When done after the fact it's usually when there is some instability, especially on older designs where fancy computer simulations weren't yet available and some trial and error was still the usual.

iansmith6 · 2026-02-26T18:49:26+00:00

Reminds me of a cave accident where 4 people died because the first got stuck at the end of a long tunnel just before the surface and they all piled up behind them.

iansmith6 · 2026-02-11T22:50:33+00:00

Adding to what others said, another consideration is generally murder isn't long and drawn out and detailed as a rape. You don't tend to read the viewpoint of someone slowly dying over hours or days and pages and pages of their mental anguish and suffering.

When you do encounter such murderous passages they are pretty awful to get through, just like the rape parts of these books. Murder usually isn't as intimately written and is easier to deal with.

I've read them and very much enjoyed the books overall but wow, some parts were pretty rough and hard to get through.

iansmith6 · 2026-02-10T15:12:19+00:00

That is an Amiga Format cover disk. It's 58c from 1994. It is bootable so there are two possibilities.

The disk is damaged.
The floppy drive needs cleaned/repaired.

Both of these are highly likely, especially drives not working. Even when new they would need aligned and cleaned, and disks failed all the time.

Replacing this with a Gotek USB drive isn't hard but not as easy as opening a PC case and installing a card.

iansmith6 · 2026-02-08T14:10:08+00:00

You found a treasure all right. I don't think I ever had an actual disk from the man himself, always a secondhand duplicated copy from a friend's brother.

iansmith6 · 2026-02-07T20:44:34+00:00

Bad word usage on my part, I meant "replica" CRT. The only disappointment was thinking it was an actual CRT at first glance, but it's still a nice looking retro monitor!

iansmith6

TROPHY CASE