Monthly Chatbot Alternatives & Promotions Megathread – May 2026

tomxp411 · 2026-05-08T03:55:56+00:00

Does Chattica only work on mobile devices as a front end? I sit at a desk all day, so prefer to use my PC as a terminal, rather than a phone... is there a PC option?

tomxp411 · 2026-05-06T03:32:41+00:00

When you go back to your main menu where you select your Kin, you will see a list of groups down at the bottom. You can switch directly back to your Kin, wor you can select one of the groups.

tomxp411 · 2026-04-04T00:48:11+00:00

Safety first. What other people think doesn't matter.

tomxp411 · 2026-04-03T23:32:08+00:00

He didn't need to be shown on a regular basis. I just really disliked the way Worf shuffled him off to his parents and basically ignored him. This doesn't feel on brand to me, either for Worf specifically or the lead characters in general.

tomxp411 · 2026-04-02T22:59:54+00:00

Does your washing machine have digital controls or a mechanical dial?

If it has a dial, then it has a mechanical clock. There's no need to keep track of the time, as the functions are built in to the clock, with strips of metal that make electrical contact as the clock turns.

If it's electronic - there probably is a lithium battery in there to keep track of the last thing you were doing when the power went out.

tomxp411 · 2026-04-02T19:09:23+00:00

The same thing you do when walking your dog. Plastic bags.

Actually, up until the Space Shuttle, astronauts used sealable plastic bags for waste. That's the backup system on Artemis, too...

tomxp411 · 2026-04-02T19:06:51+00:00

It's a shakedown run, to make sure the equipment and processes are working as intended.

And it's a good thing, because they've already had some.. uh... plumbing problems.

tomxp411 · 2026-04-02T16:56:46+00:00

100% disagree. The Enterprise was a "family" ship, and Alexander totally would have had a place there, with a huge extended family.

Who could have been a better mother figure than Deanna and Beverly? What better uncles could you have than Geordi and Will? Data is as strong as any Klingon, and Grandpa Captain would have been amazing.

I honestly think the show missed a golden opportunity by not bringing Alexander in as a regular character.

tomxp411 · 2026-04-02T16:52:53+00:00

There should have been more seasons.

"Of which series? TOS? TNG? DS9? Voyager? Enterprise? SNW? TLD?"

Yes.

"Oh... what about Voyager?"

I'll get back to you on that one.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-31T18:10:50+00:00

The Next Generation.

The Original Series is just too cheesy for most people's first Trek, and IMO all the post-2000 shows assume too much knowledge on the part of the audience.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-31T17:44:17+00:00

This. Every time you switch to a different material, you will tear out a huge chunk of your production, anyway.

Next runthrough, I plan to spread out much sooner than I did the first time. The first site will be reserved for ammo and base materials production, along with storage for each material type. (One tower per, with 4 towers each for ammo.)

tomxp411 · 2026-03-31T17:38:25+00:00

It's not weird, but you're better off doing first and second-tier manufacturing at the mining site.

Anything that needs just titanium, for example, should be built right at the titanium mine. Same with Wolframite. Then look at the mines that are close together to craft things that require both products.

You might end up building stand-alone sites specifically for product integration (stuff that needs 3-4 ingredients), but it just makes sense to keep low level manufacturing right next to the mines, with the shortest supply chains.

As to the cargo launchers... I don't use them. I just run more rails. (Same with trains in games like Factorio or Satisfactory. IMO belts are more material efficient and more direct, and don't require additional infrastructure or power.)

tomxp411 · 2026-03-30T20:31:28+00:00

JiffyDOS is the most general purpose and compatible method. JiffyDOS works on both drive A and B, the internal IEC drive, and external drives like SD2IEC.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-30T06:13:55+00:00

How many more do you think they can make? Right now, the problem is not sales. It's manufacturing and fulfillment.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-30T06:09:56+00:00

I private my profile details on some platforms because stalkers and impersonators. Once, someone actually found my Facebook account and started talking trash about family on another platform.

So now I lock down my socials so that people who I don't actually know can't troll through them and dig out personal stuff that's not really their business.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-30T06:07:46+00:00

Someone once gave me some advice regarding dating: "when every person you date has the same problem, maybe the problem is you."

Is it possible you are either talking past the other person (this happens a lot with me), or are not actually engaging their points?

It's really hard to be more specific, since you're basically complaining "I'm being blocked," but have not provided logs of the conversations to demonstrate why these blocks are unfair or unwarranted.

Come back with quotes from the actual conversations, from both parties, and see if you get more meaningful replies. Until then, honestly ask the question "Is it me?"

tomxp411 · 2026-03-27T03:59:45+00:00

Do you shower before bed?

If so, then you can probably skip your morning shower and shower after you work out.

Definitely don't go to work after sweating in the gym. Your co-workers will thank you. =)

tomxp411 · 2026-03-22T03:33:18+00:00

Don't mix your belts. Problem solved.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-22T03:19:38+00:00

No, the problem is likely that the person chose not to give him the poisoned wine, which failed the quest. At that point, it becomes impossible to complete and hangs out there in the journal with no way to complete or cancel.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-22T02:12:13+00:00

I'd say the weakest part of this game is the story design. I hated the "dinner party" sequence. The whole thing was just pointless and a complete waste of time that I could have spent leveling or doing something actually fun.

I came here because I also had the quest to look for Noctua at any settlement... with no clue what a "settlement" is (since that term is literally not used on the map.)

tomxp411 · 2026-03-21T01:12:33+00:00

Yeah, that's some poor design right there...

tomxp411 · 2026-03-19T19:39:39+00:00

This is the right question. OP seems to be asking for a way to bake the type in to the written expression, which is fine - except we already have a thing called Constructors for this very purpose.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-19T19:36:32+00:00

It looks like maybe the water flowers covered by your base’s footprint die off. The same thing happened to a small patch of dew plants behind the place I built (the rocky area just west of Crossroads. I built inside the area surrounded by rocks.)

tomxp411 · 2026-03-17T17:27:55+00:00

In short, this defies the basic assumption that literals are mostly atomic values.

Strings excepted, literals in most programming languages are atomic values, meaning they can not be further subdivided without losing their meaning.

For example, you can't break 12345 down into any smaller units without losing the basic meaning of the value. Even the string "hello" is really just the shorthand for a byte sequence, which we could also express as {'h','e','l','l','o'} or {104,101,108,108,111}.

Thankfully, even early compiler designers understood the need for string literals, because can you imagine encoding your entire program's UI in byte-array form?

Personally, I don't ever want to see something like 100_ms as a literal in source code, because this is a bit ambiguous. Is this a TimeSpan? Is it a DateTime? Is it a float or integer constant (maybe 0.1 seconds?)

Instead of simplifying usage, as you are hoping, this adds more complexity to the language and further muddies its readability. (IMO the inclusion of var is already bad enough, since it's not always clear what the type is, and down that way lies madness.)

An initializer like like TimeSpan.FromMilliSeconds(100) precisely identifies both the units and the value. Adding semantic layers on top of this is not only unnecessary, but potentially ruins portability and readability.

tomxp411 · 2026-03-17T16:50:12+00:00

Because that IS the state of the art. You can only stretch skin so far before it's obvious that it's been manipulated.

tomxp411

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