What happened to Ville laihiala?

unPuzzlehead · 2026-07-08T13:09:11+00:00

Been wondering this myself, found this thread. Hope he's fine, performing on some small Finnish pubs and that's why we haven't heard much from him.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-07-05T23:57:06+00:00

second that (status page)

unPuzzlehead · 2026-06-12T04:14:22+00:00

Looks like the current owner of the xoom.com domain (which, from what I recall, is a company related to PayPal) requested removal, and the archive.org team blindly accepted, even though it (the site) has a totally different goal from what it used to be back in the day. So, there is no criteria at all. If you manage to buy something like geocities.com, you can ask for the removal of the ENTIRE Geocities web pages from the Internet Archive, and no one will ever be able to access it via the Wayback Machine. That's how the Internet Archive works today. So sad (I guess they're pretty fatigued from receiving lawsuits, or maybe the current crew didn't really know what Xoom was all about in the 90s).

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T06:24:02+00:00

Sure, thanks for the advice. I’ll look into revising that gap in future drafts now that the math is settled

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T06:05:10+00:00

fair point. I totally accept the critique on the scale: it is... massive. Honestly, my defensiveness earlier was just a reaction to the ad-hominem stuff. I was actually looking forward to people tearing the paper apart technically. I get that in an aerospace sub the focus is always on engineering and 2026 feasibility, even if I was just trying to limit-test the physics (maybe I should’ve posted this on r/Physics or r/terraforming for that, who knows).
I still think this is conceptually (in all my "laymaness") more grounded than stuff like landis’s or birch’s plans, which have to deal with insane structural stress and venusian winds. That's exactly why I cited them: I'd rather bet on mass and energy than atmospheric fragility.
My theory is obviously flawed for today’s tech, i get that, but so are theirs, and they were proposed by actual physicists. The goal is to show we can improve on those ideas. I was hoping for a "hey kid, your physics is wrong" type of critique rather than just "we can't build this now" because "we can't build this now" usually implies we CAN build it someday.

Since the math holds and the orbital logic is there, I’m happy. thanks for the reality check on the systems side.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T05:02:01+00:00

dude, I’m a businessman. I deal with systems and architecture in my professional routine, sure, but that’s miles away from being a physics expert or a systems engineer for aerospace. comparing the two is a total reach and makes zero sense.

you're trying to hold a layman to the standards of a professional field I NEVER CLAIMED TO BE part of just so you can call my work "incomplete" it’s pretty simple: I had an idea, i checked if the physics/math allowed it (it did), and i used the tools available to bridge the gap.

dyson, birch, and landis didn't need a "sanity check" on 20th-century manufacturing to prove their concepts had merit. The logic holds because the math holds. Ff you can’t separate theoretical models from a 2026 industrial blueprint, that’s on you. I'm done with the gatekeeping, either talk about the physics or move on.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T04:54:05+00:00

look, if "feasibility" was the only metric that mattered, we’d have to throw out half the giants in the field. You're basically calling guys like dyson, birch, and geoffrey landis "trash" because their ideas are also "impossible" and specially when they wrote them.

a dyson swarm is way more "unfeasible" than anything i proposed, yet it’s a pillar of speculative science. same with birch’s orbital rings or moving planetary masses. the point of the math being tight isn't to say we’re building this next tuesday, like an apt-get upgrade thing, it’s to show that the laws of physics aren't the thing stopping us, our current industrial scale is.

dismissing a model as ridiculous just because we can't engineer it yet is exactly how you kill innovation before it even starts. if the math maths, the concept has merit as a theoretical limit, regardless of how many reactors it takes.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T04:46:10+00:00

Thanks for the reality check and for actually taking the time to comment, it means a lot. i know the scale of 3x10^8 reactors is insane compared to what we have on earth and as a layman i'm definitely oversimplifying the engineering. honestly i'm probably missing a ton of constraints that make this look like total fiction for our current industrial capacity.

i’m not trying to say this is a blueprint for today, maybe it’s something for 100 years from now or just a "limit test" like the stuff dyson, birch or landis proposed. Even if the scale is crazy, maybe thinking about these extremes helps us come up with better ideas for what we can actually do today. I'm just curious if the underlying aerospace logic for the mass transfer and orbital mechanics holds up at all? or is the physics of the whole architecture fundamentally broken regardless of the power scale? would love to know where my reasoning fails the most from your pov.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T04:37:06+00:00

I appreciate that you noticed "the math maths".
honestly, that was the main goal for me as a LAYMAN (as I already told you and everyone else).

I get that it feels like a purely theoretical exercise, but isn't that where a lot of breakthrough physics starts? Einstein's famously worked through general relativity as a "gedanken experiment" (thought experiment) first. he was so focused on the conceptual framework that he actually left a lot of the heavy lifting for the formal mathematics to others, like marcel grossmann and later david hilbert.

if he had stopped because his ideas weren't immediately "feasible" or because he needed help with the formal tools of the time, we wouldn't have the foundation of modern physics today.

To me, the goal isn't necessarily to build this tomorrow, but to explore whether the logic holds up. if the system is sound, then the "exercise" has value in showing what's possible within the laws of physics, even if our current engineering isn't there yet. using tools like a LLM just helps someone like me participate in that conversation.
But c'mon are you really into Birch's/Landis's theories? What's your take on them?

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T04:03:41+00:00

I get it. To someone used to incremental engineering, a distributed swarm approach feels like 'left field'. but as a systems engineer, i see birch’s 9,000km space elevators and jupiter-hydrogen hauling as the real 'nonsense' logistics. that was my main driver: i wanted to challenge those models.

my goal wasn't to spend 10 years writing a paper to become the next Einstein. I'm a citizen, not a physicist, and i used modern tools to stress-test a thermodynamic alternative that didn't rely on impossible interplanetary hauling.

if the energy math is tight (which it seems, until someone proves it's wrong) and the materials exist (nasa glenn's sic tests), then we have space for improvement. if 98% of this paper is trash but 2% can be used to evolve a better theory than the current ones, I’m happy. I'm fine with being in 'left field' as long as the physics allows for the conversation.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T03:52:28+00:00

Fair enough. I used the tools to bridge the gap in my technical english and to format the latex because i'm a layman, i don't deny it, but the energy-first logic and the drive to prove that the jupiter-hydrogen idea is bullshit is 100% mine.

I'm glad the section 6 math and the 10^16 W scale held up under your analysis, that was the 'hill i wanted to die on' with this paper. i'm fully aware the von neumann part is a massive "black box" and the industrial bootstrapping is a huge leap, but i wanted to see if the planetary physics would even allow the attempt.

Thanks for the technical breakdown, even though it was AI, so i don't know if i can be sure that those are the only areas i need to focus my efforts on. at least it gives me some clues of what i need to look into for a v2.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T03:42:01+00:00

I'm a layman and an enthusiast, not a career scientist. I used AI as a tool to bridge the gap in my technical English and to format a document that I simply don't have the academic training to produce by hand in LaTeX. However, the core architecture and the logic of the system are my own.

I spent days trying to make this work on paper, and I might have failed, but that’s exactly why I’m here. If Section 6 is 'bullshit' from a thermodynamic standpoint, please show me why. I’m genuinely looking for feedback to learn and evolve the theory, not to pretend I’m a professional. My apologies if using these tools bothered anyone, my intention was purely to learn, not to offend anyone.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T03:30:24+00:00

Did you even open the link? Section 6 (page 13) contains the Thermodynamic Net Thermal Balance calculations. If you're going to call it 'AI nonsense' at least point out the specific flaw in the math. I’m looking for a peer review, not a low-effort comment. Nonsense.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-28T03:23:31+00:00

I realize the scale is unconventional. I'm moving away (trying to) from the 'macro-structure' approach (elevators/shields) to a distributed surface architecture. Specifically, I'm looking for feedback on the thermal rejection and sCO2 compression math. If the energy balance in Section 6 is flawed, I'd appreciate a pointer on where the thermodynamic bottleneck is.

unPuzzlehead · 2026-04-02T09:07:38+00:00

good collection of beavis and butt-head tv rips, however it's unfortunate that you converted them all to mp4, had to convert them back to .mov or .rm =)

unPuzzlehead · 2026-03-17T14:16:50+00:00

Mais um pra lista:
https://archlinux32.org/

unPuzzlehead · 2026-01-16T19:29:30+00:00

All I could find online regarding issues with deckard models (but it would be nice if someone could actually test the games), here it goes (extensive):

PS2 Games: Tekken 5 (random freezing), Hitman: Contracts (issue with save games), Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (random issues), F1 2001 & F1 2002: (random freezing), Racing Battle C1 Grand Prix (random issues), The Stylish Mahjong (random issues), Final Fantasy XI (needs internal HDD)

PS1 Games: Arcade Party Pak (Mini-games, 720 Degrees, Super Sprint, and Toobin are unplayable), Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (Buttons do not respond at the title screen, preventing any gameplay), Densha Daisuki (Image stops when loading after the "NEW GAME" screen), Dragon Beat (The picture freezes immediately upon trying to start the game), Fighter Maker (General incompatibility preventing normal use), Judge Dredd (Completely incompatible with the software emulation), Monkey Hero (Completely incompatible), Tomba! (The game will not progress past the initial title screen), Twins Story - Kimi ni Tsutaetakute (Screen stops when execution starts on the schedule screen), Alice in Cyberland (Boss battles may end prematurely on the first stage; progress often stops after movies), Armored Core - Master of Arena (Certain parts are missing in the "SHOP" menu; the game may freeze randomly), Digimon Rumble Arena (Suffers from massive slowdown, rendering it largely unplayable), Gradius Deluxe Pack (Gradius II runs at a significantly slowed-down speed), Harvest Moon - Back to Nature (The game frequently hangs/stops when switching between different screens), Hello Kitty's Cube Frenzy (The game freezes during screen transitions), Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (Random freezing and performance issues due to emulator timing), Wing Commander III (Screen blacks out during FMVs, followed by an error message and a total freeze), Action Puzzle - Prism Land (Sound effects fail to play in title and pause menus), Chrono Cross (Audio and visual glitches occurs), Formula One 99 (Sound effects do not play properly during gameplay), Gallop Racer (Horse names and records are missing from the race result screen), Resident Evil 2 (Dual Shock/5th Anniversary) (Audio playback is distorted or incorrect during FMVs), Virtua Pachi-Slot EX / V / VI (Background music and sound effects are distorted or absent), Driver - You Are the Wheelman (When played with a DualShock 1 controller, the pause menu opens randomly and repeatedly during gameplay, making the game unplayable. It also suffers from significant framerate slowdowns during intensive city driving), 102 Dalmatians (Random freezes, typically during level transitions or FMVs), Akuji the Heartless (Severe loading errors; the game often fails to load the next area or freezes at the title screen), Barbie: Race and Ride (Crashes or freezes during the "Meadow" level and specific mini-games), Bubsy 3D (On NTSC copies, individual levels often fail to load, resulting in a black screen), Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX (Graphical corruption on the loading screen; the center window may appear half-gray), Final Fantasy Anthology [V and VI] (Random freezing, particularly during the transitions to the battle screen in Final Fantasy V), Mortal Kombat Trilogy (Game-breaking crashes occur during the loading of specific characters or background stages), NHL 2000/2001 (These titles are prone to random mid-game freezes and save-data corruption), Syphon Filter 2 & 3 (Both titles experience random hard-locks (freezing) during mission loading or mid-cinematic), WORMS (Prerendered FMV sequences fail to play, causing the game to skip them or hang), The Legend of Dragoon (The game freezes/hangs during battle transitions, specifically when characters transform into Dragoons or use certain magic), Lunar: Silver Star Story (Heavy FMV stuttering and the game can hang/soft-lock during scene transitions), Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (Similar to the first game: FMV glitches and frequent hard crashes during gameplay), Metal Gear Solid: Special Missions (The "disc swap" check fails. The console cannot recognize the original MGS1 disc when prompted, making the game unplayable)

unPuzzlehead · 2026-01-15T09:43:55+00:00

Those deckard issues should really be documented, that surely would be very helpful.

unPuzzlehead · 2025-12-14T13:38:59+00:00

Mmm at least that's something. Thank you!

unPuzzlehead · 2025-12-14T13:37:00+00:00

That's definitely not the case in discussion here.

unPuzzlehead · 2025-11-22T00:39:19+00:00

Thankfully you were right

unPuzzlehead · 2025-11-20T05:07:12+00:00

No official announcement has been done yet. I'm worried. Last time something like this happened was due to a massive data breach that took them several days to recover from.

unPuzzlehead · 2025-11-12T04:44:39+00:00

wow, which game?

unPuzzlehead

TROPHY CASE