Hardware / software necromancer, collector of Weird Stuff, maker of Death Generators. (she/they🏳️⚧️)
I think the arch install guide may have been written by that guy who wrote the bomb defusal manual used on M*A*S*H.
“remove the tail assembly, and carefully cut the wires leading to the clockwork fuse at the head”
*next page*
“but first, remove the fuse”
it took TWO MINUTES for someone (@Loosf@yiff.life) to nominate the keyboard I was thinking of
@devlin@topspicy.social I’ve already got that, it’s called ADHD
@engineerjulia@mastodon.social exactly. when my electronics are annoying me, I take them apart and try to fix them. why can’t I do that to my stomach?
I should be able to attach a logic analyzer to my nerves
@aethylred@mastodon.nz @cstross@wandering.shop not if you’ve got portals! you can harvest remass from the bottom of a gravity well and transport it anywhere, for free!
@StompyRobot@mastodon.gamedev.place @cstross@wandering.shop planet destroying asteroids are the kind of thing that only civilizations without relativistic impactors have to worry about.
@rolenthedeep@rattodon.nexus valve’s got my resume, they’re welcome to hire me anytime :)
@michaelgemar@mstdn.ca @cstross@wandering.shop
that just provides an episode for our Torchship Explorers show. Captain Laser has to go help some ice miners working to set up a portal farm on the bottom of the European ocean, when their drills keep getting attacked, and the crew has to learn to communicate with the squids and figure out how to stop the miners from just going “fuck it” and poisoning the whole ocean.
@susul@misskey.heonian.org I was thinking that the portal would be very short-lived, because the surface you placed it on would be quickly destroyed, but there’d be a short period where the initial gamma rays make it through.
but yeah, if you can somehow keep it open longer than milliseconds after the instant of the star’s collapse, you’d absolutely wreck anything near the endpoint
@adehnert@mastodon.mit.edu @cstross@wandering.shop unfortunately the Half Life universe has the oceans already having dropped by a significant amount, because someone else (The Combine) is already draining the oceans. So using the ocean as remass is not the best idea, as easy as it is.
But yeah: you could use it just enough to get to Jupiter or some other source.
anyway the fact the aperture science facility extended so deep underground in portal 2 was interesting.
hey, you know what a very deep underground facility would be real useful for? dropping stuff through portals and having it fall a long time, accelerating as much as possible.
I bet there’s a borehole we never see that’s just top to bottom and has as much atmosphere as possible evacuated from it, to lower air resistance
and the ghost trick generator looks to be joining it
this is why the phoenix wright generator has been “in progress” since 2018
like, in the game’s specific scenario, the distinction is irrelevant, but the portal gun is mobile after all. what if you set up a portal on earth, then hop in a rocket to pluto, then when you land, you fire it at the surface of pluto.
The distance between the gun and the surface is minimal, but the portal pair you just set up is about 5 light-hours long.
Does it take 5 hours for the portal to open? or does it open instantly?
anyway so there’s a point in Portal 2 where you fire a portal at a surface that’s far enough away that there’s noticeable light-speed delay before the portal opens, right?
but is that based on the distance between portals or the distance from the gun?
my guess based on how big supernovas are (bigger than that. no matter how much you estimate “that” to be), the answer is “enough”
@lispi314@udongein.xyz @abursey@me.dm @cstross@wandering.shop true, but the fun part of a portal-ship is that there’s really no difference between a crewed lander and a remote-controlled doomsday missile.
if you land somewhere uninhabited and/or friendly, you can drop a portal and then send people through. if it’s unfriendly, you open the supergiant portal, and have the portal gun throw itself through a return-home portal that instantly closes. you build another ship
@vga256@dialup.cafe I see at least one that is, and I know because I remember connecting to it.