Grrl Power #715 – Wormhole 101
So Sydney now has a passport to the galaxy. Sort of. She can’t really go zipping off to just anywhere… Well, she can, she just kind of has no idea where she’s going at the moment, unless she has a pathfinder. Fortunately, the orb’s “history tab” seems to remember some of the locations it’s been to, so she can probably explore and always have Earth marked as a recent travel location.
Unless that so called history tab is actually a bookmarks tab, in which case, Earth won’t appear on it unless she can figure out how to add it.
To Sydney’s point about the Nth leaving out useful features from the orbs, I think a lot of super advanced alien tech would be that way, even if it wasn’t god tier tech. If you were smart enough to do 11th dimensional math in your head, and you were the only person using the gadgets you created, it’s likely that your user interface would be an absolute nightmare to anyone but you. Quite frankly, it’s amazing the orbs are as user friendly as they are. Imagine if before firing the PPO, Sydney had to calculate the power used, the frequency of the wavelength, whether or not it was pure EM radiation or a particle beam what sort of particles to use, density, interval, aperture, distance to target, half-life of particle decay, etc, etc.
Obviously the orb would be less useful as a weapon if it took 5 minutes of fidgeting with it to get it to do anything, which is probably why there’s just a (mental) button to push to get it to work. But underneath the one button interface is probably a host of options that Sydney would never be able to muddle her way through, and if she did ever start playing with the settings, the PPO might wind up firing area effect gamma burst death fields instead of the neato cutting beam.
I’ve updated the vote incentive, but before you click on it, let me say something about it as it’s not my usual fare. I painted over a picture of a fitness gal helpfully showing her physique. The point of the picture wasn’t to impress with my knowledge of anatomy, I was using it to practice drawing shiny Maxima, so I thought I’d save some time and work from an existing picture. Turns out that didn’t actually save me a whole bunch of time, as I wound up repainting almost every part of the woman cause it had that jpeggy dithering all over it and it bugged me and I’m OCD that way.
So, after all that, I’m not too pleased with the results for a few reasons. One, it took forever, which means it’s impractical to do in the comic. Two, honestly it doesn’t look as good as I’d like. Of course, I was comparing myself to paintings like Alex Ross’s pictures of Silver Surfer and Iron Man, and that’s admittedly a high bar. My piece isn’t bad, but it could be a lot better. Whether or not it could be better and be done at a reasonable speed is another question. Three, there’s another problem with making Max shiny in the manner that I did, is that it relies heavily on sort of… subdividing Max by muscle groups and using those edges to cordon off the edges of the reflections. While that’s more or less how it works if you look at a polished chrome or gold statue, it makes make Max look like she’s cut to the bone. She is, like all supers, in very good shape, but she’s not 0% body fat, and I don’t want to draw her looking like that. She has some feminine softness to her, perhaps unless she’s really flexing and making her muscles pop, but the point is that this method of making her look shiny isn’t what I want it to ultimately look like.
But I learned a bit from doing it, plus now we have a kind of cheaty picture of Max to look at, so it’s all good.
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And she’s all back to normal. “Let’s do it” made me snigger. Go Sydney!
Despite that, she still been pretty calm and collected, I would have thought her meds would have run out by now, unless Cora was able to supply something similar, with no side effects.
As long as Maxima don’t learn about it!!!!
Things that are exciting trigger different neurotransmitters than everyday things. So learning about how to use her orbs for space travel is easy for Syd to focus on. But she got that lesson because she was distracted away from cutesy-time-with-Frix by the shiny offer of the navy lessons.
Seriously, Sydney has some moments that are nearly Monkey D. Luffy-esque in their “That sounds fun, I’m gonna do that!” ish way.
She is a typical chaotic good character.
Atypical :P
Whats that “spot” on Syd’s collar?
And I’m thinking one of the “unknown” orbs is an AutoDoc, the other is the “ships AI”, if she can awaken it somehow, it can show her what she can REALLY do with the rest of the orbs.
There’s only one remaining unknown orb. “Life support” seems pretty accurate for the green orb.
I think life support is something automatically added by the shield orb. No, if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a power source and AI for the orbs.
If the orbs can open up literal wormholes, that means that the amount of negative mass they’d need to use in order to hold that sucker open for more than a microsecond and larger than the radius of the cross-section of your pinky would be on an order of a large moon at the very least, maybe Mars more likely given the size of that causeway we saw. Not to mention the light-hook which is basically stable matter contained within a field with hundreds of thousands of points of articulation, which would require serious processing power, especially with a seamless 1-1 interface with minimal signal lag time to the person’s mind. And that’s not even touching on the PPO. Consider Sydney’s comment, “It felt like touching a star” I think that’s not an inaccurate comment. If it’s a power source, it could very well be a pocket universe. After all, if you need whole planet’s worth of negative matter to hold open aetherium causeways, having your own universe to pull matter from, while not infinite, is effectively so.
It would also explain the ease of the causeway’s creation and navigation. If you can generate, link to and seamlessly draw from the power of a pocket universe, that implies a fairly impressive mastery of spacetime. Likely there’s a Kemplar Rosette of stars or something similar for power in that microverse.
It might also create an explanation for where the folk that made these are. They skipped town, basically, and went to another dimension.
Of course, putting hard science into this comic probably isn’t the way to go, but it creates a rather elegant solution that solves several problems.
Except for one thing.
HOW. THE HELL. ARE STAT POINTS AWARDED?
It’s been hundreds of pages since that was last brought up and I for one am dying to know.
Stat points make sense if the devices were actually a TOY.. Part of a Advance RPG game, where you play the part of a Mundane and work your way back up to Ascension (If you can use a stargate, I can steal that term too :P)
I am part way in the theory that this is a case of ultra tech toy in the hands of those to whom such a thing would be a weapon.
On another note, Star Gate didn’t invent “Ascension” ascending to a higher plane is a classic concept. Including as a way to transcend humanity and become like a god…even a god like alien in older sci-fi.
Looks like blood a bit. Slightly plausible, given she got head-stabbed by that guy’s horns, at least.
Brain-juice, from when Altus’ horn penetrated her aural-cavity (nice attention to detail :D)
I THINK that looks like blood. Can’t tell for sure, though. And it could only end up there if that guy really sharpened his head horns.
Ignore this comment. Somehow ended up double-posting. Probably a programming error.
It’s a known issue, even if the cause and reason isn’t exactly known, just, if you don’t get an actual error message, then know that your post did go through and just give it time
I’ve found that, if my post doesn’t show up at first, then it might appear after I’ve refreshed the page. If that doesn’t work, I try loading another webpage at another site, then come back here. If that doesn’t work, I just say “Eff it” & don’t bother posting.
Since DaveB started reformatting his page here, I couldn’t even get a reply to anyone else’s comment to show up. At all. No matter what I did. Only as of last Thursday update did any of my posts actually post.
Maybe she is bleeding a bit from the horn poking her.
I would say that it is blood from when her cheek was injured by the piece of debris, while she was fighting mechacthulhu.
Looks like she shouldn´t have undressed while taking the bath, after all.
Interesting that higher tech laundering has trouble taking out set in blood stains, that is, if Sydney’s clothing has been laundered, which I think has happened as she has been sleeping and such.
I can’t blame her for undressing under those circumstances.
Frix healed that, when Sydney had just met him.
Leftover blood from the horn stab into her ear
Well, that makes sense. Must be tired if I missed the obvious so badly.
BTW, when did Sydney become a girl? And what are those seven balls flying around her head? And who are the weird aliens?
better question where her collar are then not meant to wear it at all times?
Too much talk of nth artifacts. Only a matter of time before someone powerful tries to steal them.
VERY bad idea with a panic induced chaos fighter like Syd……
She’s just crazy enough to do something that will actually WORK.
If its crazy and works then you are just lucky but still crazy.
My bet is on the girl with random cute stuff on her mask.
Someone with that much power already probably doesn’t need the orbs.
Does she still Qualify for frequent flyer miles?
That only works when she flies on an airline. She is flying independently, so the only thing frequent flying does for her is let her get better at controlling her path. Hmm…
NTSB Investigator: The pilot of the craft was Sydney Scoville, Jr. She reports 320 flight hours with an experimental? aircraft, which is what crashed here.
Sydney: I keep telling you. I’m all right! Well, any crash you can walk away from and all that.
Farmer: She still took out 45 of my mature trees. That $400 less maple syrup for each of the next 40 years, until new trees can grow in to replace them!
Lets check the numbers on this.
A tree will produce between 10-20 gallons of sap. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to produce one gallon of syrup. So 45 trees producing an average of 15 gallons of sap nets us 675 gallons of sap.
Syrup is $40 a gallon at the moment but is a commodity item so there are no price guarantees for the farmer as the numbers are a wash at the moment so it’s about $1 a gallon of sap effectively.
The thing here is 45 trees will take up an acre of land with younger trees interspersed so that is one heck of a big crater or the farmer is fudging the numbers.
I may have gone off from the main topic just a bit XD
She didn’t need to make a crater per-se, she could do it with a sliding oopsie resulting in a gash across the ground and uprooted trees that way.
I was thinking of some air crashes where a plane slowly descends into a forest. The first trees hit lose their tops, then further down as the airplane continues to descend, until it hits the ground and chops down the entire tree, well at least until the wings are ripped off.
That, and I total just guessed at the numbers.
sooo…..she needs to secretly get herself registered as a plane with american airlines since she regularly flies people in her bubble? then she can count herself as a passenger and also get a few of the gang miles too.
eh to much work.
Sydney doesn’t have to register or obtain license as as long as she doesn’t accept payment in exchange for riders. The license only designates the operation as a for-profit business. “Passengers” are legally defined as paying riders, but people freely invited to ride are “Guests.” Yes, this is how the laws in the US are written.
You can look up the legal definition of “Driving” & find that there are only 4 or 5 specific activities listed that constitute the act of Driving…One of the other specified activities includes “Official Activity” which means “Government Operations.” Anything else that is NOT listed under that definition is “Traveling” & is exempt from Driver’s Laws laws & regulations. This has been upheld up in literally hundreds of cases across numerous states for several decades.
Check with a lawyer.
True, but the cop is not going to believe you. You will have to go to court to get the ticket dismissed.
Yeah, that’s what all of those court cases that I mentioned were all about. But by federal law, the loser in such cases have to reimburse the winner’s legal fees & court costs (instituted to try cutting down on Nuisance Lawsuits). In order to make the police charges stick, they first have to prove that the the person controlling the car was engaged in any of those specific activities as defined under the law.
That wouldn’t apply to Sydney though because she’s in the employ of the US Military. Everything she does is “in the line of duty,” subject to being “On Call” 24/7 even when on Liberty Status. She would be covered for training & licensing by the Federal government though.
She is subject to Martial Law.
I think that’s called ‘XP’, so, yes.
I honestly hope you’re not writing yourself into a corner. By now Sydney’s power level must already be on par with Maxima, and when you add the space travel and future updates, well…
Maxima still has the combat experience, plus the imposing persona.
But to be fair, Sydney DOES have the whole “chaos fighter” thing going for her.
She thinks FAST and is willing to try things that make little to no combat sense, which is why they work.
Scoinia defeated her pretty fast… and on paper she should be able to hold her own against her… the hands only 2 ball limit, is a pretty powerful limiter.
Agreed, Syd is only invulnerable with her orbs, and only once she gets her shield up; on her own she’s just a small squishy human with no hand-to-hand training to speak of. Anyone catching her by surprise – or through a scope – could easy take her out.
I’ve wondered if maybe the life support orb and the force field orb have a “lock” on them, so she can activate them and let them go, then reach for the flight orb and the PPO and REALLY get into the fight. It would be nice if there was an autodoc orb and she could lock it on too, to fix things as the need arose.
As Sydney herself has said, one of her biggest weaknesses is getting riddled by bullets…
0.o
Which… is why the two-ball limit: she is goddessly-powerful, butt has limits and can be beaten
You don’t need to have villains able to beat the heroes. An excellent example for it is One Punch Man. He is the most overpowered hero ever, but still fun. Most of the fights could have been ended by Max in moments. They where fun anyways. Besides Dave can just invent an enemy with a shield barker beam or Nth tech shutdown ray. Superman was only ever beaten with Kryptonite then doomsday and that general came around. There are only limits when the creativity of the author lacks.
We are assuming there is only one set of orbs. There may be others. Who knows, there may be a set of 8, or more, orbs.
Effect of Altus’s horn stabbing her ear? She doesn’t seem to have it there two pages back.
I checked. That part of her collar is not visible in any previous page.
Shiny sexy Maxi still looks good, for an experiment
Just means one thing: need to do it more, for SCIENCE!! andsexygeod’s :P
I find it hard to believe there is not a high level map. I think the Orb builders clearly like showing off with their UI. Like the facility to display all the inner workings.
It’s probably not unlocked, yet.
That seems to be the most likely option. We do have at least one orphan node setup on the flight orb after all.
Actually, a lot of our own tech is like that,
I worked for a while as a driver for Hertz; there re assumptions we make about the ability to drive a car they’ve never seen of people who hold driver’s licenses that might not be accurate: i once had to explain to a German businessman how the shifter for an automatic transmission worked.
Take our computer operating systems for example.
Unix? Very hard for a non-computer-savvy person to use.
Linux – also very hard for a non-computer savvy person to use.
DOS – a little easier for a non-computer savvy person to use
Windows 3.0 – even easier for a non-computer savvy person to use
Windows 95 – VERY easy for a non-computer savvy person to use
Windows 98 – even easier for a non-computer savvy person to use
Windows XP – your grandma can use this
Windows Vista – your grandma can use this but might call you to tell you her computer has a virus when it just ran out of memory
Windows 7 – your grandma is happy again because she can use the computer without thinking about what to do
Windows 10 – you have to put on Start 10 or something else to make it look like Windows 7 so it can be easy to use again. :)
Pure Linux is a lot easier to use compared to DOS. Then there are the window managers and GUI suites. They make is a lot easier again. I would say the modern Linux distributions are about as easy to use as windows is, just different. I would also say W10 is about as easy, maybe easier then W7 is. You are just used to W7.
DOS was not easy for a non-savvy person to use, as anyone who ever had to tinker around with HIMEM.SYS would attest.
DOS also had the trait that it would do whatever you told it to, even if it was something stupid.
It also allowed spaghetti code without qualms in its part but try and debug something you wrote the week before for your lab assignment.
Also no love for FORTRAN?
I loved it as an introduction to programming because it made you use structured programming and the assembler told you what an idiot you were with missing bits and dangling pieces and the instructor chewed you out for not commenting each and everything.
[Annonymouse]:
To be ruthlessly fair, ALL computer languages are the same in this regard — What gets done is NEVER what you WANT, only what you SAY for it to do. The onus is always upon the human to try & make the WORDS align with their DESIRES.
Some languages are better-designed than others for shielding us from our own mistakes, but none will ever be good-enough to be called ‘fool-proof’. Language is simply too flexible, & over time, our needs always change faster than our software-revisions can keep up.
When I’m faced with ‘spaghetti-code’, humility tells me that I’ve been guilty of ‘cutting corners’, to get something done faster (usually due to a looming deadline), rather than in a manner that is easier to debug, update, expand, &/or document. I tell myself that there’s no such thing as a “Computer Error”, just a computer’s report, documenting a human-error. Our fragile egos just try to hide the truth, that it’s OUR FAULT, for failing to accurately translate our desires into instructions that are machine-actionable.
Yes, DOS was-&-still-is primitive.
(I’ve learned that there are groups out there who still preserve-&-love DOS, much like ‘gear-heads’, who still preserve-&-drive vintage cars, or early aircraft)
Still, even the most sophisticated tools had to start SOMEWHERE.
All of our program-code is still just ASCII text-files, employing a specific syntax that’s dictated by the language in question, which must then be translated into something the machine can act upon.
Even the most human-friendly programming language is still at some point translated into Assembler, & the Assembler into Machine-code, before the computer can perform the instructions you’ve written.
Chipped-flint rocks & rounded stones paved the way for our modern knives & hammers.
Every field of human endeavor (including language itself) can tell a tell a similar story of their own progressive rise in sophistication.
I like programming microcontrollers using assembly language. You’re right in there, with your hands on the levers as it were, and can account for every clock cycle: which, for some serial applications, is essential. There’s no messing around with someone else’s fussy OS: you boot straight to the application code and get on with it.
[Spanners]:
When I’m able to program in a less hasty time-frame, I try to use the style used in higher-end gaming systems. Keeping as much code as possible in a high-end, language that’s easy to read, debug, revise, etc., but keeping the most execution-intensive functions in Assembler. If done right, my code stays easy-to-understand, & the only performance-bottleneck is the reaction-speed of the user.
FORTRAN was not an operating system. I only was mentioning operating systems that had a significant following. Btw when I say DOS, I mean MS-DOS 1.0 to 6.22
Hence not mentioning BeOS, Hyperdos, RISC OS, CP/M, CDOS, HeartOS, OS/8, etc.
And Linux is harder to use than MS-DOS was. You could use MS-DOS without fiddling with the himem.sys. But if you wanted to make things work well fiddling was useful. It’s still easier than Linux though.
If you’d like, I can use web browsing instead.
newsreel (.nn) was difficult.
Mosaic was difficult but less so than .nn
Lynx was difficult but less so than Mosaic
Netscape was easier
Explorer was easier than Netscape (arguably)
Firefox was easier than Explorer
Chrome was (originally) easier than Firefox and Explorer. But then decided it was too intuitive and easy and streamlined so google made it a memory gobbler and hard as hell to configure because Google decided ‘Don’t be evil’ was passe.
Yah, FORTRAN (Short for “FORmula TRANslation”) is a programming language designed in the days when computers used punched cards to store programs. I learned it when I got my degree in computer science (our first assignment was to write the infamous “Hello World” program that every programming class ever writes as their first assignment) in fortran ON PUNCH CARDS. I think the university was trying to find a way to use the last few punch cards they still had, since this was about the time the first MSDOS was coming out and punchcards were already on the way out)
Fourth Doctor: “The trouble with computers, of course, is that they’re very sophisticated idiots. They do exactly what you tell them to at amazing speed, even if you order them to kill you. So if you do happen to change your mind, it can be very difficult to stop them obeying the original order, but not impossible.”
I’m “One of those weird ones” who would prefer Windows Vista (Ultimate) over any other modern PC OS. Loved it! Never had any issues with it. Didn’t even need to simulate DOS on it like newer operating systems so I could play certain games or use DOS based programs without any issues. Never really noticed that “Cancel or Allow” thing that people were up in arms about…
I also have around 20 external HDD’s that will not work on anything higher than Vista or 7 without copying drivers from an older OS to a newer one and it’s not exactly stable. “Updating Drivers” won’t work because it’s windows 10 specifically that hates them. On that note, having to go into Registry or elsewhere to change “Ownership” of files/folders/apps The frack is this?!
DreamScene on Vista Ultimate (Not sure if others had it) was also something I enjoyed using as long as I wasn’t running off a laptop battery.
I have an upgrade disk for windows Vista and have been debating trying to use it to downgrade my computers from 10 because screw 10 with a magnet it gets irritating. I’ve been told using one of those recovery thumb drives you need to make for OS’ above Vista/7 can also do the same thing… But I’m kinda scared to try it after I had an issue on a laptop when I defaulted an HDD and it got stuck in a loop then had a power outage and screwed it up. Had to make and use one of those thumb drives to get it running again and every so often it actually asks me what OS I want to use on boot. Though it doesn’t mention vista on the list.
Linux is very user-friendly. It’s just very choosy as to who it’s friends are.
(Not mine originally, but I love it.)
What about Bob?
The planet? :) (Titan AE)
To be fair, most European cars are manual transmission. Owning an automagic is almost unheard of.
From my own experience I’d say we need to add more instructions to the controls in automobiles. Seems like nobody except me has figured out how to use a turn signal.
My grandpa had an interesting solution. take off all the cars on the road that are not paid for.
She’s just gonna tell EVERYONE she’s got NTH tech isn’t she? -.-‘
Only those she trusts, specially if they can help her figure out how to use the damn things
I like the vote picture. That being said for a look like that she would have to be seriously dehydrated. That is the way the body builders get the really thin skin look. I can’t see Max doing that, as it’s just for looks and seriously harms your other abilities.
My only problem with the picture is the size of the barbells. Maxima forgets stuff has weight.
That’s because DaveB used a photo of a fitness model as the base in an experiment
Those aren’t barbells. They’re dumbbells. Barbells consist of a bar that’s over a meter long (how much over depends on the bar) and plates that are placed on the ends to adjust the weight being lifted. They’re generally used two-handed. Dumbbells are designed for one-handed use and are typically fixed weight. There are adjustable dumbbells available that use plates like a barbell, but I’ve never seen them at a gym.
Yeah, the adjustable dumbbells are for home use or for travelling: instead of having ten (or more) dumbbells taking up room, you simply have the plates and bar that can be easily stored (bought one of those about ten or more years ago, apart from opening it when got it to see what it looked like, have never used it :( )
The more advanced technology gets, usually the more intuitive it gets.
Unless you’re Google Chrome, in which case the more advanced it gets, the more complicated it gets to make it look the way you want it to without Google strongarming you into accepting the new look because they can’t seem to leave simple-and-intuitive alone.
Kind of a pet theory but I dont think thats necessarily true so much as it is that technology enters the zeitgeist. Take a car; basically everybody, by the time they get in the driving seat, knows what an accelerator is, knows what KM/MPH is, revs, brakes etc. but very few people understand traction, maintenance or road markings. Not because tech is intuitive but because its present in media, in entertainment, socially.
You’re exposed to it daily without even realising it and learning how to use it through the same social queues that told you when your dad was in a mood.
Actually when you use my theory with cars, it DEFINITELY works.
The first cars needed to be cranked, sometimes get a running start, then you needed to know how to use a clutch, etc. Nowadays you don’t need to have to know that much to know how to drive.
It would be a lot harder to drive a Model T than a 1940 Jeep Willys, which I know is harder to drive than a 2019 Honda Accord, because I drove a 1940 Jeep Willys and it was really hard to drive it (my uncle had one)
Like, when you want to go to a specific URL, it refuses to let you paste into the URL box, so you have to go to the search box, paste there, and it IMMEDIATELY puts it into the URL for you. Like, WFT is wrong with these people?
In Linux / Chrome, to go to a URL that’s in the clipboard (ie has been copied) middle click on the new-tab + .
(I’m reposting this comment, hopefully now in thread, instead of as a non sequitur top-level comment)
As an employee of the Commonwealth of Virginia, I get upgrades to MSOffice Professional for just $10.00 each, the most current being Office 2019. As a victim of Dell Computers, I have a large paperweight on my desk. I bought an Acer Chromebook laptop confuser – it was extremely inexpensive – which permits me internet access using Chrome, built in (like IE or its successor on a Wintel confuser). It operates on ChromeOS, which doesn’t seem to have a Windows emulation mode. I can’t install Office, nor Kindle for PC, nor Calibre, nor any of my accessories.
But Chrome operates seamlessly.
“To Sydney’s point about the Nth leaving out useful features from the orbs, I think a lot of super advanced alien tech would be that way, even if it wasn’t god tier tech.”
Actually, a lot of our own tech is like that,
I worked for a while as a driver for Hertz; there re assumptions we make about the ability to drive a car they’ve never seen of people who hold driver’s licenses that might not be accurate: i once had to explain to a German businessman how the shifter for an automatic transmission worked.
There is a tendency for knowledge of some things to just be assumed – even in fairly technical fields. George O. Smith’s story “Lost Art”, one of the “Venus Equilateral” stories, involves the problems in getting an ancient Martian electronic device working, even if you have a fairly accurate translation of the tech manuals – there were things that a tech working on the thing was simply assumed to know.
I know parts of Europe still don’t like automatic transmissions, so many there have only ever driven a manual. I had the pleasure of watching several people learn to drive auto after years with a stick. Generally with commentary that sounds hilariously naive once you’re used to it.
“So I just push the gas and it goes? Just like a regular car? But how do I stop without the engine dying? How much do I let off the gas when I want it to change gears? This just seems more complicated.”
That’s my one of my huge issues with automatic transmissions. They shift way late, and they are constantly trying to go faster. Unless the trans is almost shot, its pretty much impossible to go a steady speed. Try this on a back country road….put it in drive, don’t press on the gas at all. measure how long before you’re doing 50.
The other issue is that when you brake, the transmission doesn’t disengage. So you are braking against the engine trying to accelerate the car. Besides wasting gas, when you are on snow or ice, all of these things combine to reduce your handling. The reason why people are taught to turn in the direction you want to go in a front-wheel drive vehicle skidding is because the vehicle cannot be told to not accelerate. In a manual transmission you can disengage the engine which causes the vehicle to slow down and regain traction.
If you’re having issues with maintaining a steady speed with a slushbox then you are having an engine control problem. If your engine is full computer control then I would check the idle speed control, particularly on a fly-by-wire throttle that is controlled by the computer. In a car without computer control what you describe is a car that has idle screw set too high and a torque converter with too low a stall speed. This is a known issue with hot rods with really big engines in relation to their weight like T-Buckets that are basically 4 wheels and an engine, with enough frame to keep the wheels pointed in the right direction and enough bodywork to keep the driver and any passenger from falling out.
Now on the other I used to race FWD cars and that is just how you do it manual or automatic, and if you really want to get the car to rotate use brake and throttle at the same time. I could use that to drive my old Escort, and the CVCC before it on ice too slick to stand on when delivering pizza.
I’d like to read ‘Lost Art’ again… thanks for the title!
It’s right up there with ‘Omnilingual’.
I think there’s a TED about how we’re at a point where in case of catastrophe we couldn’t rebuild civilization, not a technological one anyway, because all the manuals are PDFs.
I remember an old episode of ‘Cheers’ where Woody the bartender wanted to set up his VCR and when asked if he needed any help said “Don’t worry. I got the instructions right here on this video tape.”
Which is why have been personally saying for years: the best long term storage device is microfiche
If the power goes out, all you need is a light source (a window on a sunny day) and a magnifying device (an upside down clear glass will do in a pinch)
DaveB, Since i had time to spare I wrote Tags down for the comic. They are one line every page so the Linenumber represents the comic number. I posted them at pastebin since it´s 715 lines atm: https://pastebin.com/nES1Dbb0 (hope it´s ok to post this link here)
I don’t think it’s that easy. I think Dave mentioned some time ago that he has several tags for one character, to reflect what reader knows about them at that point in story (and avoid spoilers for new readers). On the plus side, you got to reread the comic.
There is a difference between a ‘tag’ that tells you who someone is (it also lists where they are), and a ‘bio box’ which has a few more details
There are plenty of webics that use tags successfully, “Grrl Power” is one of the few that also has a “Who’s Who” that lists a short description
I know the Problem with spoilers but tags are useless if they don´t reflect every occurence of the character when you search for it even if you did not know then. Maybe add them in a spoiler tag? I am sure we could sort them for spoiler and non spoiler tags but well normaly you should use tags only if you can´t be spoilered. Also normally only a name is no real spoiler since you don´t know what that name means. The page itself has huge name spoilers at the top like Dabbler and Halo.
Nicely done. If Dave is working on the tagging / who’s who box, this should be very useful. It could also be turned into a reverse search or appearance index for each character.
Not sure if whoever manages the wiki would be interested in something like that?
That’s usually what Tags are for: a custom search to show all pages that that tag is connected to
For example, you can’t remember when a certain character was first introduced, you click on their Tag and it will list every page they were in (or at least Tagged)
There’s a double “you” (“I think you you can”) in the third bubble in the first panel.
Also “on top on” instead of “on top of”.
(Just proof reading, not criticising).
fastest way to get into trouble. ask WWMD? and then do the opposit. lol
That entire spiel about advanced tools reminds me of this example where a 5th century roman found a laser gun. For years he thought it was just a way to heat food and make toasted meals. Had no idea how to just ‘turn up the power’ and actually use it as a weapon.
Oh yes time to hook Sydney up with a GPS a Galaxy positioning system.
“Continue straight ahead for 2.5 million light years and turn left at Andromeda.”
That’s quite a bit outside the Galaxy.
My GPS maps the position OF galaxies, not position IN galaxies.
(Much more useful for those ‘intergalactic invaders’ you keep hearing about in the movies)
A bit of a soap box moment here. Hollywood went from ‘interplanetary’ invaders in the ’50s to ‘intergalactic’ invaders in the ’70s. They left out the villains from all the other stars in our own galaxy. That’s just rude.
That’s because General Masses didn’t know what the term was for those within the same galaxy (you say ‘intragalactic’ and they will think it’s a typo, like the autocarwreck just did)
Interstellar applies to either inside or outside our galaxy, but works as an in-between for planetary and galactic.
I can’t see user icons on the new page. To make it really odd, the very first icon always shows as a slightly rotated gray square, no matter which user it actually is.
I am viewing this at work, which enforces an internet filter, but I could see icons before the new page design.
The CSS styling now adds a slight tilt to the user images, so the rotation is expected*. The gray square may be the result of your work filter blocking Gravatar?
* I did note the repeating left-center-right loop immediately, it’d be fun and simple to add some randomization via nth-child rules and the cicada principle (hands on writeup here), but not a big deal either way.
I’ve noticed that while most of the functionality issues created by the recent coding change have been fixed while I’m viewing the site on my laptop (Chrome browser) there are still some issues when I access the site from my Kindle using whatever browser Amazon installed on that thing. It is an older Kindle (@ 5 years old) so I’m thinking it just cannot handle some of the newer HTML and CSS enhancements.
The art in this comic seems a bit different. Especially Sydney. I like it.
I like how Syd decides what to do without Max around.
“Max would disapprove of it. Well she’s not here, so I can do it!”
Gonna be that guy: Linux isn’t hard to use, these days. Used to be, but now it’s pretty damn easy (depending on the distro, obviously.) Easier in some places than Windows, harder in others.
The hardest thing for most people seems to be the lack of a GUI for those who were trained by Windows to need one. But almost all (all?) linux distros come with a GUI these days, so that isn’t an issue any longer.
I still remember with fondness the day that a friend of mine who I had taught Linux to and whose biggest complaint was that there was no GUI (I installed one for him later after pointing him to the places to do the things he wanted to do) said at an office meeting that the command line interface was the way to go.
got me a job at his office where
She didn’t show them the “history list” that she got the Fracture jump from? They could (Carefully) check the tabs out and see what’s on the other end of each one.
That’s probably going to be next
Super ready to be back with the rest of the group. Seems like forever since we’ve done anything but space travel
There’s probably a sound reason why Cora can’t text Dabbler that Sydney is ok.
The SETI guys might get a second ‘Wow!’ signal and open the Champagne in the fridge.
Um excuse me, I believe she is also missing a smoothie maker.
Rations is part of life support.
Maybe at higher levels, but she’s only got one pip in it. Just air, for now.
I’ve been assuming in my head, that the orbs are all one artifact, and are essentially projections into our dimensional space from the core system (something like pushing your fingertips through a sheet of paper– looks like 4 or 5 little rounded nubs on one side of the paper, but a whole hand, arm, etc. on the other side). The “brain” of the artifact would have to be fairly advanced, and is guiding Sydney towards full capability through the skill-tree, as well as enforcing certain safety protocols to keep her from accidentally blowing up the moon or something.
Essentially, the UI shouldn’t show her anything she can’t adapt to– so no instructions in infrared lighting, or n-dimensional interfaces.
It’s possible I think about these sorts of things too much.
The function of the ‘mystery’ orb is no mystery at all. It clearly projects the user guide for the orbs in the user’s native language. Unfortunately the display is still calibrated for the previous owner and shows up in ultra-violet.
Hahahaha, oh dear!
I think this may be my favorite webcomic right now (with Schlock Mercenary in close second, primarily only due to lack of hot cheesecake and beefcake). It’s got great sci-fi characters, believable sci-fi stories, lots of humor, awesome tech (with minimal gobbledeegook to explain it) and doesn’t force to you think so hard that the entertainment value is nullified. And if we want to overthink it, the comments section is great for discussion, without devolving into people screaming about politics (please don’t start screaming about politics over this comment). Yep, definitely tops my list.
POlitics. *SCREAMS*
But, yeah….it also helps that the characters have fun personalities, though it DOES suffer a little bit of “Halfway plot switch” sometimes…the new plot is genuinely interesting.
A comparison might be made to stuff like Financial Calculators and such. Or, certain computer programs. Most of it is automated, but you still need to know how to use it. And it doesn’t automate stuff that you wouldn’t need automated.
[Sigurther]:
The only “Politics” I care to consider is if-&/or-when the parrot swallows a wristwatch.
If I was Sydney I think I would find the mountain of red shirtless beef very distracting.
Altus gets most of the dialog in this page and still doesn’t get a mention in the Who’s Who. :(
The relative size makes me think of how ship designers could set up ‘standard’ seats for ships with multi-planetary crews. Either they’d have to be self-adjusting, or Sydney-sized persons would need to carry around a booster seat.
Scary and serious Maxima is the best Maxima.
‘Soft’ and vulnerable Maxi is the best, butt opinions differ :D
DaveB’s panel-border quip: “Now Sydney has unlimited miles. Literally unlimited.”
Well…Maybe. From whaqt we can see from Earth, astrophysicists estimate the size of the universe at about 13.772 Billion Light Years in each direction from here as a starting point. There’s at least a theorectical chance that if Sydney went out to that far edge, out into the Wild Black Yonder, that there might still be more actual universe, out beyond that edge that we simply cannot detect from here. There’s also at least some theoretical chance that is where the universe loops back upon itself & Sydney might just wind up back on Earth again eventually, essentially coming around “full circle.” There’s even the theorectical chance that out at that far edge space itself actually comes to an end, but is still expanding (which raises the question “what is space expanding into?”).
In essence, if the universe itself is a finite (though tremendously & mind-bogglingly huge) space, Sydney’s “miles” might not be “literally” unlimited. No matter how I look at it, her miles do have a practical limit because there’s a limited amount of destinations that Sydney could visit…Most of space is just open, empty space & lacking a place to stop for a pee-break; then again, it could also be argued that the entire universe is just one big restroom.
Well if she travels in circles she have unlimited miles. Well limited by her lifespan but still from the perspective of a human life it’s all the miles you want. But she and all other Earthians are already travelling in circles as we spin around the Sun and the galaxy. Actually it’s elliptical trajectories, not circular, but close enough for me.
We have had only just shy of 14 billion years for light to move, but the edge of the visible universe is closer to 45 billion light years away. For each unit of space for light to move in, space itself has stretched by about another 2 units. (This also stretches the light waves themselves, resulting in the red-shift astronomers use to measure distance.)
““what is space expanding into?”).” It isn’t. There is no place, for it to be expanding into.
I was conjecturing in relationship to some of the various therories, not stating any of it as proven fact.
Might it be that the ease and user friendliness Sydney has with the orbs is that she has a familiar family connection to them? Further, maybe she did not find the orbs as much as they found her and her fondness for them is a programmed need built into her DNA? It is just a thought.
I’ve often wondered about that, they were waiting for the right person to come along, then made their presence known.
I think Syd probably shouldn’t have mentioned nth. If she has to talk about it, it would be enough to express an opinion that, “Well, the previous owner probably had the galaxy memorized or something,” without saying words that might get someone overly excited about what kind of previous owner that might be or where the orbs came from.
Also, I think vote incentive Maxima is very pretty, but looks dehydrated and physically distressed. I would be handing her a a tall glass of water, or lemonade or gatorade or whatever, immediately. Then I would hand her a big fluffy sweater and recommend a nearby sandwich shop. I get that physically-stressed and dehydrated feeling from a lot of bodybuilders when they’re doing “pose” stuff. It sort of makes me feel a bit physically sick out of sympathy for them. But the same people, most of the time, when I see them and they’re just working out, or at work or whatever, they look healthy. I dunno what that’s about.
“the PPO might wind up firing area effect gamma burst death fields”
… I VOTE THIS OPTION!
Now she needs to ask what’s up with Earth as a destination. She went to the Fracture because the most recent destination looked weird, and obviously something happened to the previous owner of the orbs.
The ability to go anywhere in the universe has a bit of a limitation if she can’t go home again. And if there’s something about Earth that makes taking an Aetherium Causeway a bad idea, there could be other places too.
All that said, that’s gotta be one hell of an interface. There’s usually a tradeoff between “intuitive” and “powerful”. Like, it’d be obvious how to open a causeway, and it corrects for time dilation effects and gravity and such, but telling it to make a big enough aperture to let a starship through, or blocking EM emissions, is *possible* but the interface doesn’t give you the option. Granted if anyone can make a powerful AND intuitive interface it’s be Nth-level space wizards.
[DaveB]:
Not sure if I’m the 1st-or-not to tell you this, but in Altus’ last word-balloon in Panel_1, he says “you” twice in a row:
“I think you you can override it …”
Dave was merely conducting a well known psychology experiment on his audience to check their cognitive awareness. Congratulations, you passed.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/metacognition-and-the-mind/201806/why-we-stop-noticing-the-world-around-us
Yesterdays or was it yesterdays yesterdays Dilbert explained that better.
https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-03-03
Isn´t there also a mistake in the first panel, second bubble? I think “on top on a black hole” should be “on top of a black hole”? Sorry if i got that wrong english is not my native language.
Would they be able to do “11th Dimensional Math” in their head? Or is their technology like our AI’s, where we can tell you how they got made, but we can only shrug when we try understand or explain how the fuck it actually works? Or when they produce mathematical proof’s too big for humans to check?
It’s entirely possible that the user understands nothing of how it works, they just know how to use it. And the UI is created to simplify that as much as possible. Especially if it’s in training mode like I suspect, what with the upgrade points.
Some of the attractive seems to be rubbing off on her
And she seems to be gaining some tolerance for the presence of the beefcake.
Yeah, she’s starting to relax a bit more, and be comfortable with her own body
Plenty of readers who will say she has always been attractive, just her level of attractiveness is starting to match others’ ideas of ‘attraction’
Lots of our tech is simpler than an advanced user would need it to be. We keep it simple because there’s a range of users, some of whom can do math in their heads, some who can’t. And even the ones who can may not want to (like weapon comparisons in CRPG games, green on stats where the new weapon is better, red where it is worse, displayed visually because even if you can do the math it’s easier to just view). Also so you can do it when drunk. Hopefully the “jump to black hole” function comes with multiple “are you sure” prompts and a breathalyzer.
Case in point: iOS.
Ever, hear of the KISS principle? “Keep It Simple Stupid.”
There’s probably a menu option somewhere that says, in the language of whoever made the orb “Tutorial.”
Is there a distance limit on the aetherium causeway orb? For example, is it limited to star system-to-system travel, or can it be used to travel to, say, Mars, coast-to-coast, or from the ground floor kitchen to the third floor bathroom?
It is probably a good thing that Sydney leveled up after the battle on the Alari homeworld. If she had the causeway when the attack came she may have tried to create a local one through Sciona’s portal to get back to Earth and created a feedback loop that blew up the universe.
Well, if Sydney is able to fly at Mach 16 now, then to get from Earth to Mars, it would take ….
lets see…
54,600,000,000 meters between Earth and Mars.
Mach 16=5488 meters per second
54,600,000/5488=9,948,979.59184 seconds.
9,948,979.59184 seconds = 2763.605442177778 hours
2763.605442177778 hours = 115.15022675740742386 days
0.15022675740742386 * 24=3.60544217778 hours
0.60544217778 * 60=36.3265306668 minutes
0.3265306668 * 60=19.591840008 seconds
Round up to 20 seconds.
Going from Earth to Mars without an Aetherium Causeway would, at Mach 16, take her 115 days, 3 hours, 36 minutes, and 20 seconds, with an error of a little less than half a second in that computation.
Nice math, but that is only if they are on the same side of the sun. If they are opposite, the distance is 401 million km (plus a little bit since you probably don’t want to fly directly through the sun).
Hate to be “THAT GUY” but you made a mistake by a factor of 1000. You dropped a full thousand off of your initial calculation number, going from 54,600,000,000 to 54,600,000. Yes, its 54.6 million KM, and you correctly converted to meters, but then you kept it in km when you did the measurement :) to get there in 3 hours, 36 min, 20 seconds would require a speed of 5488 KM per second = Mach 16000 =1% speed of light.