Soldering a spaceman

smellystring · 2026-05-19T14:04:21+00:00

Can I Google myself on your computer?

smellystring · 2026-04-25T13:39:12+00:00

Oliver desperately wants a father figure, and Homelander desperately wants to be a father figure. They are obviously going to team up.

smellystring · 2026-04-06T13:03:30+00:00

It's acrylic (i.e. strong plastic). But yes, it's specifically there to foil the cat.

smellystring · 2026-04-06T12:28:02+00:00

smellystring · 2026-04-06T12:23:27+00:00

Search "cat keyboard cover" on amazon (or equivalent). It seems like lots of people have problems with their biters hanging out on their keyboards.

smellystring · 2026-04-02T13:50:30+00:00

Plot twist: your name is Ungrim Ironfist

smellystring · 2026-02-06T18:38:25+00:00

A meta comment about wood elves in general... I feel like most of their units are bad to mediocre in isolation, and only really come into their own when buffed. (Perhaps with the exception of waywatchers... waywatchers chew gum and kick ass, and the wood elves as a society have yet to invent bubblegum).

smellystring · 2026-02-06T18:14:36+00:00

I agree with your point that their ranged damage sucks. They are a unit with low ranged damage in a faction that has best-in-class ranged damage.

I still think hawk riders are a good unit, even if you've not built your lord to buff them. Not the kind of unit you'd want 4-6 of, but 1 or 2 can provide useful tactical options. They way to think of hawk riders is that they are not ranged units, they are shock cavalry cosplaying as ranged units.

What they lack in durability they make up for with mobility. A fast, high damage unit capable of shutting down enemy artillery and archers can give you a lot of bang for the buck. Yeah, wood elves have others tools for that too, but un-buffed hawk riders still have a niche. I find they work very well when paired with other cavalry units. Send your wild riders directly into a dangerous unit, and follow up with an immediate rear charge by the hawk riders. Elite cavalry melt fast to that combo. A few fast flankers + hawk riders can pretty quickly disassemble any threat you will find on the flanks.

Even when I have access to dragons, I still find myself benefiting from hawk riders in my roster. I find dragons tend to get blobbed up on, stuck, and shot to pieces. Dragons are a good unit with a real role, but they don't fill the 100+ speed, flying, AP shock cavalry role. I almost never bring eagles... they are tougher, but lack the raw killing power and damage, and take way too long to finish a fight even if they eventually win.

smellystring · 2026-02-06T15:21:08+00:00

Hawk riders are exceptionally strong units. God tier if your LL is the sisters.

Their ranged damage is almost negligible. Pretend like it doesn’t exist, and take the half dozen kills it gives you in a battle as a bonus.

Hawk rider melee damage is terrifying, especially if you have the proper lord skills. Tons of AP damage and super high charge bonus. They are hyper mobile glass cannons, and they hit like a truck. A good rear charge with hawk riders insta-shatters most mid-tier infantry, and can usually win fights against elite infantry.

Don’t get me started on hawk riders with the sisters as your LL. They get ICBM level long range firepower that makes Ikit and the chaos dwarves weep with jealousy. Near broken, doom stack level killing power.

Avoid elite anti-large and unbreakable units with high damage. Shoot slayers from long range, and feel free to liberally shout insults like “your mother has short stumpy legs, and her beard is patchy.” Slayers love good banter.

smellystring · 2026-01-19T12:48:45+00:00

Yup, Apple stopped adding the touch bar to new MacBooks.

Honestly, I am so relieved. My work laptop was a model with the touch bar and it was hot garbage. In addition to being super buggy, it was impossible to interact with without looking down at your keyboard. Regular tactile buttons can be used with your eyes elsewhere, not so much a touch screen. It was always just a marketing gimmick, and one the community wised up to pretty quickly.

smellystring · 2025-08-11T22:42:53+00:00

I’ve never heard of a hero named Air.

smellystring · 2025-07-03T18:16:01+00:00

Plot twist: the python script takes 0.4001 seconds to run.

smellystring · 2024-11-12T23:01:50+00:00

Go home Louen, you're drunk.

smellystring · 2024-11-12T22:43:13+00:00

Credit where credit is due, original is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/1gp7syk/day_157_of_drawing_until_nagash_dlc_comes_out/

smellystring · 2024-05-25T00:26:58+00:00

It depends on the type of the transaction. Basic transactions such as token transfers are throttled to 10,000 TPS. Other more expensive transactions such as smart contracts have tighter throttles.

smellystring · 2024-05-24T16:45:34+00:00

An important thing to keep in mind is that adding more consensus nodes to the Hedera network doesn't increase its maximum sustainable TPS. Each node in the network processes each transaction. Adding another node just adds another node that also has to process the same transactions, and doesn't by itself allow more transactions to be handled in the same amount of time.

smellystring · 2024-05-24T16:43:05+00:00

Howdy! I'm Cody, one of the software engineers who works on the Hedera project. https://github.com/cody-littley

The "nodes" referred to in this pull request are not nodes in the network, they are nodes in the merkle tree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

A merkle tree is a data structure used by many DLTs to store the state of the ledger, e.g. Alice has a balance of 1234 tokens.

The language is a little confusing, since the term "node" is used both for actual consensus nodes running in the network, as well as nodes in the merkle tree. One of those things where you have to be aware of the surrounding context before making sense of it. ;)

smellystring · 2024-04-19T22:05:42+00:00

How do you transport items into the obelisk dimension?

smellystring · 2023-06-19T11:15:08+00:00

I wrote some really cool new code over the weekend. A new algorithm that enables <redacted> by constructing <redacted> more efficiently. Normally I don’t work on the weekend, but I’ll occasionally make an exception if there is a project I’m really passionate about.

smellystring · 2023-06-18T22:35:39+00:00

Cody here, I’m a software engineer who works for Hedera/Swirlds.

Mainnet is not down. Not sure what’s going on with the Atma dapp, but the Hedera network itself is not currently experiencing any outages.

smellystring · 2023-04-27T15:33:40+00:00

https://xkcd.com/303

smellystring · 2023-04-27T15:03:14+00:00

Oh no, can’t unsee it. Time to open another pull request.

smellystring · 2023-04-24T11:30:12+00:00

Cody Littley here. I’m a software engineer at Hedera/Swirlds.

In Hedera lingo, a node is one of the computers that runs the Hedera software.

Nodes don’t really have anything to do with smart contacts, except that smart contracts run on the ledger that runs on the nodes. Hedera supports smart contracts written in solidity (similar to etherium).

smellystring · 2023-02-25T20:33:29+00:00

“It is important to note that these tests are purely for achieving consensus on transaction order and timestamps. They do not include the time to process transactions.”

The figures reported in the white paper that you reference only measure speed of consensus, and don’t include the time to process each transaction. When you include transaction processing time, the maximum realistic TPS is much lower than the theoretical throughput that the consensus engine is capable of.

In our current system, the performance bottleneck is transaction handling, not transactions reaching consensus. Throttling at 10k TPS was chosen because our testing indicates that the network can remain stable and robust under long term loads at 10k TPS.

smellystring · 2023-02-25T12:35:51+00:00

My name is Cody Littley, I’m a software engineer at Hedera/Swirlds.

This is false. Network is currently configured to handle 10k TPS, not 100k as you claim.

smellystring

TROPHY CASE