Snark
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Posts posted by Snark
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"Tell me a joke about fluid dynamics."
SpoilerWhy was the hydraulic engineer always calm?
Because he knew how to keep his head under pressure! Ha ha! -
"Write an abstract for a research paper that proves that chickens are actually not a highly evolved form of cabbage."
SpoilerIn this research paper, we present evidence that contradicts the notion that chickens are a highly evolved form of cabbage. Using a combination of genetic analysis, comparative anatomy, and behavioral studies, we demonstrate that chickens and cabbage are distinct species with no evolutionary relationship. Our findings provide a more accurate understanding of the origins and evolution of chickens, and have important implications for our classification of these and other organisms.
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"Write a fictitious obituary for a vampire"
SpoilerObituary for Count Dracula
Count Dracula, notorious vampire and ruler of the night, passed away peacefully in his castle on Transylvania on December 14, 2022. He was an astounding 500 years old.
Born Vlad III Dracula, the son of Vlad II Dracul, he was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order established to defend Christianity in Eastern Europe. However, after being bitten by a vampire, he became the fearsome creature known as Count Dracula.
For centuries, Count Dracula terrorized the countryside, preying on the blood of the innocent. His legend grew, and he became known as the King of Vampires. Despite his fearsome reputation, Count Dracula was not without his charms. He was known to be a suave and sophisticated gentleman, with a taste for the finer things in life.
In his later years, Count Dracula retired to his castle, where he spent his time reading, listening to classical music, and enjoying the company of his loyal servants. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him, and his legacy as a vampire will live on forever.
Count Dracula is survived by his wife, Elisabeta, and his three children, Vlad, Ion, and Nicolae. A funeral service will be held at his castle on Transylvania, with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Transylvanian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vampires.
"Write a fictitious obituary for an eldritch horror"
SpoilerObituary for the Great Old One, Cthulhu
It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of the Great Old One, Cthulhu. Known to many as the ancient and powerful deity from the depths of the ocean, Cthulhu passed away on December 14, 2022, at the ripe old age of millions of years.
Cthulhu was born in the sunken city of R'lyeh, deep beneath the Pacific Ocean. He was the son of the great primordial deity, Yog-Sothoth, and the great old one, Shub-Niggurath. From a young age, Cthulhu was known for his immense size, his tentacled form, and his ability to inspire madness in those who gazed upon him.
As he grew older, Cthulhu became one of the most powerful beings in existence. He was feared and worshiped by many, and his name was whispered in the dark corners of the world. Despite his fearsome reputation, Cthulhu was not without his softer side. He was known to enjoy relaxing in his sunken city and listening to the whispers of his loyal followers.
Cthulhu's passing has left a great void in the world, and he will be greatly missed by all who knew him. A funeral service will be held in R'lyeh, with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Foundation for the Study of Eldritch Horrors. -
Out of curiosity, I tried putting the OP question verbatim (subject line + question) into the AI bot ChatGPT, and the answer it gave was surprisingly coherent and on point.
QuoteThere is no fundamental law of physics that prevents the creation of permanent magnets with extremely high magnetic field strengths, such as 1000 tesla or beyond. However, there are several practical challenges that make it difficult to create and use such magnets in engineering applications.
One of the main challenges is that the materials that are commonly used to create permanent magnets, such as iron, cobalt, and neodymium, become physically unstable at very high magnetic field strengths. This means that the magnets would likely break or shatter if they were subjected to such high fields.
Another challenge is that the magnetic field of a permanent magnet decreases with distance. This means that in order to create a magnetic nozzle with a sufficiently strong field, the magnet would have to be placed very close to the nozzle, which could be difficult to achieve in practice.
Finally, the cost and difficulty of creating and maintaining such high-strength magnets would likely make them impractical for most engineering applications.
Overall, while it is theoretically possible to create permanent magnets with extremely high magnetic field strengths, there are several practical challenges that make it difficult to do so in practice.
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Moving to Add-on Discussions.
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1 hour ago, ShuttlePilot said:
What if a user intentonally annoys a moderator, what are the consequences?
What @Gargamel said.
It's worth noting that a primary job requirement of moderators is that we are not easily annoyed. A thick skin is needed to do this job, and we're very picky about the type of person we invite onto the team-- being unflappable is important.
So, if a user just happens to have a really abrasive style, and they're rude or obnoxious to us in private (e.g. PMs to moderators), then as long as it doesn't rise to the level of actual threats or harassment, mostly it's no skin off our nose and we let them vent. (There's a good reason for that: We get a fair number of angry PMs, and we're okay with that. Few people like getting moderated, and it's not uncommon for us to receive irate feedback about our actions or inaction. We try to give people latitude in such private communication, because we should welcome feedback, to help keep us honest and make sure we're doing our job well. So as long as a person's not being threatening or engaging in harassing behavior, we try to cut them a lot of slack.)
Users who engage in inappropriate behavior in public, on the other hand (such as openly contesting moderation) are subject to appropriate consequences. But in such cases, it's because they broke the forum rules, not because they annoyed us personally.
"Never moderate angry." It's a pretty important principle we follow. We make a point of using the forum rules as our yardstick, not our personal feelings. (We are only human, though, so please don't push it, okay?)
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Some content has been removed.
Folks, we understand you mean well, but please don't discuss decompiling the game. It's not allowed (see section 9, "Legal boundaries", here), and discussion of it doesn't belong in the forum.
Thank you for your understanding.
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Is it a KAL-1000 controller problem, or a problem with the pistons themselves? (i.e. a "controller software" problem versus a physical problem)
For example, can you extend and retract the pistons using the PAW? (the right-click menu)
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23 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:
I have never seen a spam bot around here. You mods must be pretty good at your jobs.
It helps that the approval queue does a pretty good job of weeding them out, so we have a chance to spot them and remove them before they're publicly visible to regular forum members.
It also really helps that we have a thousand eyes helping us. On those occasions when a spammer slips past us, typically some forum member will notice something and
activate the Bat-Signalfile a report, which draws our attention and then we can clean it up posthaste. So we can't entirely claim all the credit for ourselves, much though we might like to.
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Some posts have been edited to add English translation.
A gentle reminder, folks: any posts outside the "international" section must be in English, per forum rule 2.3.c:
QuoteAll messages outside of the international sections should be in English or include an English translation.
If any user would prefer to post only in Chinese, please use the Chinese sub-forum here to do that. Thank you for your understanding.
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1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:
I don't see what that has got to do with anything? Modding =/= redistributing a game T2 doesn't want redistributing.
It has to do with modding in KSP2. Which is, after all, the topic of this thread:
QuoteModding in KSP 2
...right?
And, in the course of this discussion, the concern was raised about what if the Big Evil Corporation goes after modders and so we don't get mods for KSP2:
On 10/2/2022 at 12:25 PM, Motokid600 said:I think Take Two being the biggest scum bags in the gaming industry will shower KSP2 modders with DMCA and cease and desists.
So I was addressing that concern (which Motokid600 originally raised, and SciMan responded to, and you responded to) by pointing out that today's announcement addressed that fairly nicely and explicitly. Because "KSP2 being highly moddable" is something that lots of people care about (thus this thread, yes?), and I'd hate to think that there are folks out there who may be needlessly unhappy or anxious because they're worrying about a thing that's been announced is not going to happen.
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2 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:
Where's @Snark at? His mod is brilliant and Im sure he knows.
Thanks for the vote of confidence
... but the one mod I've written that's relevant to this (BetterBurnTime) doesn't actually "solve" this problem any more than the stock KSP1 game does. BBT assumes instantaneous burns, just like stock KSP. That's because assuming otherwise is a Hard Problem, which I for one do not propose to tackle myself.
FWIW, I am assuming that this phrase,
9 hours ago, Intercept Games said:the new non-impulsive maneuver planner
...means precisely what HebaruSan already suggested:
2 hours ago, HebaruSan said:I would guess that the maneuver planner will no longer assume a maneuver takes place instantaneously, for long smeared out burns.
The ability for the game to calculate brachistochrone trajectories rather than always assuming an instantaneous burn (i.e. a single impulse) should be a real (ahem) game-changer. Really make it nicer for low-TWR craft, even when they're just interplanetary rather than interstellar.
Kudos to the dev team for solving this-- it must have been a lot of work, and I expect it'll be totally worth it for the improved player experience.
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1 minute ago, Bej Kerman said:
Then Take Two sues them, game over. Really not a simple situation.
Good thing that Intercept established today that they're emphasizing moddability right from the start, then, yes? <see immediately preceding post here>
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3 minutes ago, CriOwO said:
Things are looking good in regards to the modding scene, in the latest dev diary it seemed like they wanted to make the game as moddable as possible
More to the point: in today's announcement about the KSP2 early access release date, they come right out and acknowledge how important modding is to the game, and explicitly say that it will be "moddable from day 1".
(Which is basically the same thing as they told us back at the original KSP2 announcement in 2019.)
6 hours ago, Intercept Games said:Modding: We expect modders to dig into KSP2 on day one. We recognize that the modding community has played a big role in the longevity of KSP, and we continue to be impressed by the mods that are released. The team aims to ensure that over the course of Early Access, the sequel is even more mod-friendly and release updates aimed to support the modding community. Additionally, the team will be collecting feedback and analyzing how to continue to improve modding support with the community.
So I think we're good here, folks.
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Great, glad you like it!
1 hour ago, panarchist said:I'd like to respectfully request if it's possible, (and if you have time and motivation) can you please add "Distance" (i.e. Semi-major axis) to the list?
That's not a bad idea. No promises, but I'll have a look-- thanks for the suggestions!
1 hour ago, panarchist said:Also, would it be possible to display the orbital period in days? The default in KSP is to display the orbital period in the most convenient unit - Kerbin shows as "1y", for example. Which works great in most cases unless one is playing in another scale, and one doesn't know (and is trying to find out) the year length in days at that scale.
Hm. That one's a bit niche (would involve a fair amount of special-casing of how things are displayed). I'll give some thought as to whether there's some reasonable way to support it via config or something. There's already a config setting that decides how much precision is displayed (e.g. "years / days / hours" versus just "years / days" or what-have-you), so there's that. But having it show "just days" instead of "years and days" is a bit different. Need to think on this one a bit.
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On 10/2/2022 at 10:27 AM, Bizobinator said:
Hello! I'm loving the mod!
I was wondering: is there any way to make this work with Kerbal R&D? It's a mod that lets you spend science to upgrade various aspects of in-game parts. I've noticed that the calculations seem to be using the stock/unimproved parameters of my upgraded engines. Would that be something KR&D would need to address?
Either way, I'm loving this mod ^_^. Thank you so much for making it!
Thanks, glad you're liking it
I have no idea what's going on here-- there are several possibilities.
One question: This discrepancy you're observing (where the stock/unmodified numbers are displayed): Is this something that affects BetterBurnTime only, or does it affect the stock burn time as well?
To be clear:
- The stock burn time is what's displayed for maneuver nodes.
- The BetterBurnTime display is there for target intercept, time to impact.
There may or may not be something that Kerbal R&D would need to address... and there may or may not be something that BetterBurnTime needs to address. Hard to say for sure, yet. The above question should hopefully narrow that down a bit.
The BetterBurnTime code that does these calculations is located here. It relies on ModuleEngines.ThrustLimit() and ModuleEngines.realIsp for calculating the numbers. If Kerbal R&D is doing something to the engine that changes the thrust and/or Isp, but is somehow not updating the above two quantities, then that would explain this discrepancy.
Whether fixing the discrepancy would require an update on KR&D or BBT remains to be seen.
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Thread locked at OP's request.
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3 minutes ago, CT-D37 said:
I have updated the OP and mod according to the guidelines, and I hope it is satisfactory.
Looks great! Thank you for the prompt attention.
(And thanks for sharing this cool mod with the community!)
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3 hours ago, se5a said:
you needed to start
Define "needed". Needed this to accomplish ... what, exactly?
Also, note that the new stock indicator's percentage is based on dV and not time. If you leave it set to the default "50%", that means "50% of dV before the node, and 50% afterwards". If it's a 1000 m/s burn that will take 1 minute total, the stock indicator (set to 50%) will give you a burn start time that will burn 500 m/s (and not 30 seconds) before the node time.
Which sounds to me like what you want?
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On 8/31/2022 at 5:35 AM, se5a said:
I'm trying to figure out how to calculate exactly when a burn for a maneuver should start, ie more accurate than "burn time / 2" .
That's... not really a thing. What do you mean, "more accurate"? It's exactly accurate no matter when you start it: it starts exactly when you tell it to.
The only thing that an aid can tell you is "how long the burn will take", and that can be more or less accurate. The old stock burn-time indicator was very inaccurate, which is why I wrote BetterBurnTime. Then they came out with a new stock indicator that is accurate, so I removed that feature of BBT.
"Should I split the difference 50/50? When should I start?" That's your call, nobody else's. BetterBurnTime has never done that. The stock navball has never done that.
The old stock indicator had a hard-coded assumption of a 50/50 split. BetterBurnTime was the same way. The new-and-improved stock indicator assumes a 50/50 split by default, but has a setting that allows you to change that to whatever other percentage split you want-- but it doesn't tell you what percentage to use, that's backwards. You tell it.
So, the short answer to your question is:
- No, BetterBurnTime has never done this
- Nor has the stock indicator
- There's no math for deciding this because "more accurate" isn't really a defined thing, here
- Basically everyone just does a 50/50 split, because that's simplest and it doesn't actually matter much anyway , as long as the burn isn't really long
- If the burn is really long, that's going to be inaccurate no matter what you do-- better to split into multiple burns, e.g. periapsis kicking
If you want to look at code for making automated decisions about burns, I'd suggest having a look at whatever MechJeb does, but since I've never used it myself, I'm in no position to vouch for how sophisticated it is (or isn't) about this sort of thing.
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Various content has been removed due to a lengthy off-topic derailment that had nothing to do with this company's rocket launches.
Folks, please try to keep things on-topic.
(Also, please bear in mind forum rule 2.2.b about politics, ideology, etc. and try to steer clear of the sort of topics that tend to generate strong feelings and thereby derail threads. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate discussions to be had about such things, but the KSP forum is not the place for them-- plenty of other places on the internet to discuss that sort of stuff, okay?)
Thank you for your understanding.
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We're sorry, but sharing mods requires complying with the requisite licenses. The content included here is licensed All Rights Reserved by the original author, meaning that nobody else can distribute it. Therefore, this sort of sharing is not allowed.
We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.
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On 8/28/2022 at 11:45 AM, Rutabaga22 said:
Do y'all get extra ksp2 info?
Nope. And not only don't we get extra KSP 2 info, we really don't get any "extra info" at all, about anything the company does. For example, back when original KSP was under active development, we found out about new version releases, or new DLCs, at the same time as everyone else-- we don't get advanced notice. In general, we never get any info about the internal development of KSP (or KSP2) other than what the public forum gets.
This is because we're not employees, so (among other things) it means we're not subject to the same NDAs that an employee would be. (We do have NDAs, but they're different ones, relating to moderating rather than development.) Companies need to play their cards close to the chest. The only "secret stuff" that we can see (that you can't) is stuff directly relating to the forum users (e.g. things like a user's history of warnings and the like)-- basically, just the stuff that we need to be able to do our job as moderators.
Beyond that... we never know anything beyond what you do, and we generally find stuff out in the same way that you do.
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Some content has been removed. Please refrain from personal comments, folks. We understand that people care about the game, a lot, so it's very easy for tempers to flare when one sees someone suggesting a course of action for the game that one disagrees with. But let's please remember that we're all friends here (right?) and keep things civil.
There has been a certain flaring of tempers in the thread, in general-- let's please take it down a notch, okay? And remember that everyone is entitled to their opinion. Which means that, 1. just because their opinion is different from yours, it's still just as valid as yours; and, 2. it's never worth getting angry or confrontational with someone about their opinion. If you can't keep your cool when posting, best to just stroll on by. (Or, at least, go do something else until you can post without temper flaring.)
Thank you for your understanding.
ChatGPT!
in The Lounge
Posted
"Write a totally wrong explanation of software engineering. The explanation should involve hamsters and rubber bands."
Software engineering is the process of creating software using a team of highly trained hamsters and a complex system of rubber bands. The hamsters are taught to write code using specialized hammocks, which they use to type out lines of code with their tiny paws.
The rubber bands are used to connect the hammocks to a network of pulleys and levers, which allows the hamsters to communicate with each other and share data. The resulting code is then compiled using a giant hamster wheel, which powers the computer and runs the software.
This unique and innovative approach to software engineering has revolutionized the field, allowing for the creation of highly efficient and reliable software. And best of all, it's completely adorable!
"Write a totally wrong explanation of how airplanes fly. The explanation should involve bananas and porcupines."
Airplanes are able to fly because they are filled with hundreds of porcupines, each holding a banana in their mouth. When the plane takes off, the porcupines start running on their hind legs, creating a spinning motion that lifts the plane into the air.
As the plane gains altitude, the porcupines continue to run, using their sharp quills to grip the floor and maintain their speed. The bananas provide the necessary energy and nutrition for the porcupines to keep running for the entire flight.
Once the plane reaches its destination, the porcupines are rewarded with a feast of fresh bananas, allowing them to rest and recharge for the next flight. This unique and clever use of porcupines and bananas has made air travel safer and more efficient than ever before.