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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Lucky for most, it’s a local inhabited system. Unlucky for you, it doesn’t sound like you’re local.

    Sounds like you may have been out for a few years. A lot has changed. I did drop it about 6 months ago, but the major things are: exploration pays now! But pretty much only if you have the Odyssey expansion for on-foot gameplay to search tirelessly for bacteria. Thargoids now have a powerplay-like mechanic and are actively attacking inhabited systems. They’re avoidable though.

    As for getting back to the bubble, you may be able to find a carrier passing by to hitch a ride. Did you play recently enough to have seen fleet carriers? Another player directs it and can transport your ship while you’re offline. Just remember to deboard on time!

    I don’t have a carrier, but can help get you on your way if needed. I love the lore of the game and can enjoy the mechanics, but I have a real life to tend to so I get it.



  • I still forget how to tell white dwarfs from neutron stars. Both can charge you, but I think it’s white dwarfs that have 1/4 the jet range for like 1/2 the boost. Basically a deadly waste of time. But I don’t really go far. I have an icy Dolphin that can park in the normal star scoop zone and stay cool indefinitely, so the boost benefit isn’t worth it to me. But I do enjoy that empty dread of the vastness of space and the inconceivable size of celestial bodies.

    And of course the dread from the excellent sound design surrounding the Thargoids, the alien enemies you can seek out. But that’s normal dread.

    You ever land on mitterand hollow? Or rather, you ever let the moon known as mitterand hollow land on you? That’s an experience. It’s actually incredibly safe due to the spatial reframing, but good luck convincing your brain






  • That was a popular distinction maybe 20 years ago, but the line is fuzzed and functionally, the term “crossover (CUV) is dead. But, like all terms automotive, it’s just marketing.” Crossover" seemed friendlier to women to get them to drive tall cars. Now everything is classed as a [size] suv. Some classic suv examples were always unibody like the jeep Cherokee. Edit: I see now your other comment touches on offroad capability. So does a 2wd “suv” (by your definition) then get declassified? Does a body-on-frame tall wagon with viscous coupling awd get declassified?

    And no (takes a deep breath to survive an emotional down vote onslaught), there is no legal difference between 4x4, 4wd, or awd. A manufacturer can choose any term to apply to any type of 4-wheel locomotion. Every definitive trait has some counter example that still counts because people “feel” it’s good enough.




  • Wild. I was just complaining that I used to follow Lockheed Martin on social because planes are cool, but it’s recently become filled with missile and other direct weaponry posts. I’m well aware of what the purpose of a fighter plane is. They used to at least have fun posts about the scientific work performed by the U2 and SR71.


  • If I make a gas engine with 100% heat efficiency but only run it in my backyard, do the greenhouse gases not count because it’s so efficient? Of course they do. The high efficiency of a data center is great, but that’s not what the article laments. The problem it’s calling out is the absurdly wasteful nature of why these farms will flourish: to power excessively animated programs to feign intelligence, vainly wasting power for what a simple program was already addressing.

    It’s the same story with lighting. LEDs seemed like a savior for energy consumption because they were so efficient. Sure they save energy overall (for now), but it prompted people to multiply the number of lights and total output by an order of magnitude simply because it’s so cheap. This stems a secondary issue of further increasing light pollution and intrusion.

    Greater efficiency doesn’t make things right if it comes with an increase in use.


  • That’s the neat thing. The speed of light is constant. It doesn’t change. It’s always 1c whether you’re traveling at +1c, - 1c, or 0c. Buckle up for some relativity. The wavelength can compress or expand, but it always travels at 1c.

    Let’s say you’re on a ship capable of moving at any speed between 0c and 1c. You’re passing a particular star and want to travel to a planet 1ly away. You have a powerful laser and the other planet has a powerful telescope to detect it. There are calibrated timers on both the planet and on your ship that are synced to each other. .

    T minus zero. You flash the laser at the planet as you fly at 0.5c, or 1/2 lightyear per year. The light travels at 1c, or 1ly per year.

    1 year after the flash, the planet sees the flash. It traveled 1ly in 1 year. 2 years after the flash, the planet sees your ship arrive. All is normal so far.

    From the ship, you know the light traveled at 1c away from you. You arrive at the planet 1 year after the flash, according to your on board timer. One. The light took half as long as you.

    Time is not constant, c is constant. The faster you go, the slower time passes. In 1 year of fast travel, you arrive 2 years later, according to the stationary planet. So all of the light physics apply the same, no matter the speed. Time dilates to make up the logical difference. If you reach 1c, time effectively stops and you arrive instantaneously, from your perspective. When we look up at the Andromeda galaxy, some 2.5 million lightyears away, the light we see was emmited 2.5 million years ago - from our perspective. If we see a star go supernova in Andromeda, it happened 2.5 million years ago. But those photons of light, created by a star that died 2.5 million years ago, experience no time passage at all. They instantaneously go from the star to your retina, from their perspective.

    That’s basically why lightspeed travel is effectively impossible within our current models. Traveling faster is out of the question because none of it makes sense. It’s not a simple matter of making a new model or believing scientists are idiots. There are many experiments that hold true to the model (such as the atomic clocks used on a plane to test the effect of speed and gravity on time dilation) as well as satellites using the current model to maintain time accuracy. The energy required to get to those speeds is not even remotely feasible. The fastest man made object at 450,000+mph, the Parker solar probe, is still in the 0.0005c range. We tried our best and it’s still just a tiny fraction of 1c. And that’s by using some gravity slingshots and spiraling down into the sun’s gravity well, nothing about leaving the solar system. The Voyager probes that slingshotted out of the sun’s gravity well are down to under 40,000mph.