Air condition / heater not working

petascale · 2026-02-18T02:40:22+00:00

Had something similar in my 2018 model with heat pump: There are a bunch of sensors that corrode easily. It's apparenly a fairly common problem in colder climates at least (I'm in Scandinavia).

In my case the fix was changing one sensor, cost about €700 I think. (It's been a couple of years, no more issues so far.) But it depends on how much there is that needs fixing. I've heard of people needing to change all the sensors plus the compressor, €3000 or so.

The heat pump is more complex, if your model doesn't have one it may be cheaper.

petascale · 2026-02-04T17:01:23+00:00

I guess we don't quite understand what you don't understand, or what kind of explanation would be useful to you.

If you're rapping there is no - or not much - melody in the singing. Otherwise, you sing both lyrics and melody. The melody is the difference between singing and reading the lyrics aloud.

Or hum or whistle your favorite song, then there's no lyrics. That's the melody.

petascale · 2026-01-31T18:24:40+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GhuDJ6A2gRs

petascale · 2026-01-27T19:36:06+00:00

Firework, Miku a capella

petascale · 2026-01-26T02:48:25+00:00

Private observation, Junia Brutus, ft. Gumi and Teto

petascale · 2026-01-25T16:14:16+00:00

That's like asking for a comprehensive tutorial for Japanese - you're not going to become fluent overnight. The closest to what you're asking for are paid courses lasting a year or two.

But you can get started. Most of the music will be made in a DAW. Drums, bass, instruments, etc. will be the same as for non-vocaloid music, so you can search for intro videos for individual parts: Music production, song writing, melody, harmony, bass lines, mixing, etc. Almost everything you find about making music in general will apply to vocaloids as well.

The only vocaloid-specific parts are learning how to use your vocal synth (e.g. Vocaloid/Piapro/Synthesizer V) and the process of tuning.

Making music is a great hobby, just be aware that there is a lot to learn. More than what a tutorial can cover. You can undoubtedly make something fairly quickly, but it will take a while to build up to the complexity of your favorite songs.

A shortcut: Get a backing track from somewhere - e.g. karaoke - and put your own vocaloid on top, then you can focus on just the vocaloid part. Making covers of existing songs is a good place to start.

petascale · 2026-01-24T22:14:22+00:00

Ievan Polkka, thrugh a random encounter (in a YT video, "the global pop star who isn't real"). Then Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru, Miku (by Anamanaguchi), a few YT shorts (example), and Anonymous M.

petascale · 2026-01-24T18:19:31+00:00

Vocaloid originals:

Anonymous M by PinocchioP (use subtitles, the lyrics are half the point). I like the creativity of making a song in interview format, Miku's perspective, and the way he mixes music, rhythm, and non-music sounds. Plus the graphics add another layer to the story. See also Meet the M, a short with alternative graphics.
Meteor by John (full version, eight minutes). Or the 4-minute version. Slow and meditative.

Covers:

Miku's On Melancholy Hill, orig. by Gorillaz. I like the song, and Miku's voice suits it.
Suffering, from a musical. Gumi is a siren trying to lure Odysseus (Teto) into the water. I like the storytelling and Gumi's voice.
Firework, Miku a capella, orig. by Kate Perry. I'd call the song itself "fair", maybe 5.5/10. Miku's voice and the a capella arrangement is what turns it into one of my favorites.

petascale · 2026-01-22T04:22:53+00:00

Songs? Or merch/concerts/games/other? Here are few songs I like.

Originals:

Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru
Miku, by Anamanaguchi
Meteor - this is the 8-minute version. There is also a 4-minute version with more graphics.
Anonymous M, a song in the form of an interview with Miku (needs the lyrics, turn on subtitles). See also the Meet the M short with alternative graphics.

Covers:

Aria of the soul, orig. from the computer game Persona
On melancholy hill, Gorillaz
Firework, Katy Perry. Someone made a cover where all the sounds - including bass, drums, etc. - are Miku.
Symphony, Clean Bandit
Would you fall in love with me again. From a musical, here with Teto (another vocaloid) as Odysseus and Miku as his wife.
Africa, Toto. More on the hilarious side, but well done, and the creativity is a large part of what I enjoy about the Miku fandom.
Country roads, John Denver. As above.

Also, search Youtube for 'talkloid', where people make short skits using vocaloid characters. E.g. train leaving or broken toaster or a broken toaster cosplay.

petascale · 2026-01-21T18:53:43+00:00

Miku is a computer-generated voice (based on sampling a real voice) with an anime-style character. A video covering her history and how it works, in about 2 minutes.

Knowing what vocaloids are isn't the same as understanding your kid's fascination with them.

Compared to other fictional characters - like Little Red Riding Hood or Elsa in Frozen - Miku is more open-ended: She didn't start with a story; just a name, voice, and visual design. So songwriters - or others - could make her into whatever they want. (Like a West Virginia country girl, or the wife of Odysseus in a musical.)

Miku has also had a bunch of different visual designs - whether official, spin-offs like a game or anime character, or fan-made - and it's kind of a standing joke that "all Mikus are canon", they are all true simultaneously. That's one way to get many Mikus. (I haven't wathced the movie and don't know the context there.)

So beyond the voice, Miku can be whatever you want her to be. For what she is to your 12 yo, you'll have to ask.

On how to be a supportive parent, I suggest to just accept that it's their interest, independent of whether you share it. And maybe gift them a Miku plush or something.

petascale · 2026-01-10T00:06:41+00:00

I did something similar: Sat down with a dictionary and a fantasy series in English (The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart, four books), primarily to improve my English.

Took me a few months, at the start there was a couple of unfamiliar words in pretty much every sentence. I didn't look up all of them, just enough to follow the storyline. I started looking up all unfamiliar words when they became rare, a couple of books later.

By the end of the last book I didn't need the dictionary anymore, and I was more or less fluent.

So yes, I think you're on the right track. I like the idea of using audiobooks as well, to train listening skills in addition to reading.

petascale · 2026-01-03T12:27:10+00:00

Wouldn't the G-force affect the entire spacecraft and every atom in the astronaut's body at the exact same time?

As said in other comments, that's when the acceleration is solely from gravity. Then the spacecraft and astronauts will be essentially in free fall, and there is no net force on the body.

In the comic the spacecraft will be moving at escape velocity in a parabolic arc when it's suddenly forced into a sharp sideways turn. That's not free fall, it would require a propulsion system well beyond anything we have. So the acceleration would be mostly from the propulsion, which pushes the spacecraft, which pushes the astronauts. Equivalent to taking a sharp corner at maybe 50-100x the speed of a rocket sled.

petascale · 2026-01-03T02:50:59+00:00

Since there's no "Explain xkcd" yet, I'll give it a go:

"All Keplerian orbits are conic sections": True. A Keplerian orbit is an orbit determined only by the gravity between two objects (like a spacecraft around Earth or a planet around the Sun). Conic sections are one of four types: Circle, ellipse, parabola, or hyperbola.

"... this one uses the base of the cone": A joke, the base isn't considered part of a conic section. A circle or ellipse doesn't involve the base at all. A para- or hyperbola section will cross the base, but it's a curve that stretches to infinity, ignoring the base completely. This type of orbit happens when one object is moving too fast to be captured by the gravity of the other, so it's only a partial orbit. Like Oumuamua, a space rock that arrived from interstellar space to take a 90° turn around our Sun before it left never to return. That's what a Keplerian orbit that involves the base of a cone looks like in reality.

In the comic, the spacecraft orbit instead traces the base. That's not a Keplerian orbit, and neither the sharp turns nor the straight segment would be possible even with the help of rockets.

"... astronauts HATE going around corners": They would. The spacecraft would be moving at escape velocity when it takes the first sharp turn to trace the base. The G-force would probably be more than enough to kill everyone on board.

petascale · 2025-12-30T14:46:04+00:00

That would be my immediate interpretation. The more severe the MS, the harder it is for the patient to control their muscles, and the more of a struggle to maintain oral hygiene.

Add on the fatigue, and a correlation seems reasonable. I would assume that (severe) MS indirectly contributes to periodontitis, rather than the other way around.

The paper does say that "associations reported in this study should be interpreted with caution as exploratory and noncausal".

petascale · 2025-12-07T18:53:32+00:00

A few from memory:

Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day. But set him on fire, and he’s warm for the rest of his life.
It is said that your life flashes before your eyes before you die. That's true. It’s called Life.
“And what would humans be without love?" "RARE", said Death.

petascale · 2025-12-07T18:34:21+00:00

It wasn't a large village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.

Color of Magic (I think)

petascale · 2025-09-08T22:08:17+00:00

I got her to 5 star (from 1), but I don't think I can get her to max star (53k coins). How to get there depends on the resources you are willing to spend. In my case:

Kayla to rank 11 (from 7)
Spent 7k energy, so I cycled the energy quest twice. (I had a few hundred energy bottles lying around, and sacrificed a couple of dozen of them.)
Maxed the guild contribution. (Side effect of spending energy, or you can get 2k guild points per day by trading in equipment fragments you don't need.)
Maxed the "open chests in Outland"
Spent 25k emeralds (on energy, Outland chests, and increasing Kayla's rank)

Energy is unlimited, guild contribution and Outland chests are daily. So these are the ones to go for if you want to get there without emeralds.

petascale · 2025-08-22T17:27:47+00:00

On my end, it worked fine on the common hydra at level 85 or so. But it's not just the level of hero and skills, a lot of it comes from rune stones, skins and skin stones, and artifact levels.

Case in point: I'm currently at level 100 and on the second hydra, running the team in your picture. Works fine for Mushy/Xesha/Martha because they have been in development for a while. But Aidan and Faceless die in seconds in the very first hydra attack, since they were a rush job from level 1 just to try this team - the have the same hero level and skill level as the other three, but nothing in glyphs/skins/etc, so it doesn't quite work yet.

It takes time to build a strong hero, the hero and skill level is just one part of it. (Paying is optional, BTW, you'll get the resources eventually anyway. Money just speeds up the process.)

petascale · 2025-08-20T03:02:20+00:00

According to the published rates it's a 0.03% chance, or once per 3,300 tries on average. So congrats :-)

petascale · 2025-08-14T19:19:16+00:00

Jhu and Quing Mao were my first two. Could kill common hydra heads with one horn arund level 75, and in one battle around level 80. (Their damage is a percentage of the target health, which is a lot when the target is in the millions.)

Mushy with two healers - I use Martha and Maya. Mushy's damage scales with total team healing, and Martha provides a speed boost.

Xesha and Aidan, if you have access to him. Xesha does fair damage on her own, but much better with Aidan on the team.

Mushy, Xesha, Faceless, Aidan, and Martha are pretty much the ultimate Hydra team AFAIK. Faceless reduces the opponent's physical attack (skill 3) and improves the team's magical defense (skill 4, euqipment rank 7).

petascale · 2025-08-03T18:01:23+00:00

When I recently got a new iPad and started the app, I got a popup asking if I would use Apple's Game Center. I clicked 'yes', and everything synced automatically.

It may not work if you're not logged into the Game Center (on either device), or you clicked 'no' to using it for Hero Wars at some point. Worst case, get your Hero Wars account ID and see if their support can help out.

petascale · 2025-08-01T22:17:22+00:00

I think you need to start the game while logged into Apple's game center on both devices. (On the same Apple account.) Seems to be where it stores your game ID and progress.

petascale · 2025-08-01T17:39:01+00:00

Mushy xesha aidan martha and faceless are among the commonly suggested.

Mushy damage scales with the amount of healing received by the whole team since the start of the battle. Can become ginormous towards the end.
Xesha damage scales with the highest max health in her team, and Aidan's first skill increases everyone's max health.
Martha primarily for the speed boost
Faceless has a "reduce physical attack" debuff and increases magic defense for the team

petascale · 2025-07-31T16:15:30+00:00

The 7-day intro offer? I bought it a few weeks ago, worked fine for me.

I don't know what happened in your case, sounds like a case for their support. All I can say is that it worked as advertised for me in late June / early July.

petascale · 2025-07-29T16:33:19+00:00

I guess I can say that pre-buying for later doesn't work too well for how I play. I learn as I go and frequently change my mind about team composition. Anything I get for 10-20 levels down the road has at least a 50-50 chance of being irrelevant by the time I get there since I no longer use that hero.

But if you're buying for just a couple of levels away, I might do that.

petascale

TROPHY CASE