#Basic Input/Output System

[uvaldecomputerrepairsstuff]

Troubleshooting BIOS Issues: When to Repair, Reflash, or Replace

Understanding BIOS Chips and When You Might Need a Replacement When it comes to troubleshooting computer issues, one of the components most people overlook is the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) chip. This small, unassuming chip is vital for your computer’s operation, storing the essential firmware needed to start up your machine and manage the communication between your operating system and…

[thydungeongal]

So the thing about JRPG damage math is that the JRPG from whence all JRPGs are descended from, Dragon Quest, used a very straightforward damage formula, and most JRPGs have been just iterating on it. I won't spell out the Dragon Quest damage formula but suffice to say that it produces largely consistent results. The rate of variance of course depends on the exact game in the series you're playing, but if the damage formula outputs 8 damage then most damage numbers are going to be within, like, ±20% of 8 points.

This actually presents a unique sort of issue for anyone looking to replicate JRPG damage math in a TTRPG (whether this even should be a design goal is questionable to me, but I will admit that numbies can communicate a certain type of vibe and be useful for establishing tone): at low levels, when damage numbers are small, you have to make sure the variance produced by dice is minimal but still exists, while at high levels there should be MORE variance in terms of the actual numbers output by the system while the numbers still stay mostly predictable.

There are a bunch of approaches one could take but each of them have their drawbacks:

Damage dice as usual but high modifiers. This makes the math straightforward but eliminates a lot of variance at high levels.

Buckets of dice. Characters will produce consistent damage once they have enough dice in their pool, but it is impractical.

Some combination thereof, with both number of damage dice and modifier scaling at the same time. Might actually be workable but shares many of the issues of both approaches.

Anyway there is one more approach which is actually the best one because it involves a table: Anima: Beyond Fantasy, a Spanish TTRPG heavily inspired by both the Final Fantasy series and Rolemaster, basically had a Rolemaster style attack table where the final input, instead of being a damage number, was % modifier to a static damage value. Which could theoretically be it, and depending on how well you construct your table you could theoretically even have all the necessary numbers already included in that table. But idk.

[talenlee]

M.O.S.H.A

In your world, how can magic go wrong?

Magic is really powerful. Worlds with magic tend to treat it as fundamental to how the world works, it tends to lead to big societal change, and it’s generally, something you put in a story because you give a crap about it. Unless you’re me. But the point of magic system is that they impose themselves on the world, and they change the world. Anything in the world, as you may notice, impacts the world and has by necessity, ways to fail.

Like, bricks are pretty well known and there are still ways that we have rules for handling them in the case of causing dangerous problems. What kinds of things in your universe keep magic from going wrong? And if they’re not there, can magic go wrong?

Noob Trap

In The Belgariad, middling fantasy author and serial child abuser David Eddings describes the idea of the Will and the Word, where a sorcerer can do anything, by shaping their ‘will’ (which is a wonderfully abstracted thing, impossible to meaningfully describe) and uttering a word to give that intention shape. A sorcerer can do anything they imagine in the dreadful world of The Belgariad but there’s one thing they can’t ever truly do: They can’t unmake anything. If they tell anything to un-be, the universe snaps back and they stop existing themselves.

Now, the idea of making something disappear versus turning something into air, that’s a distinction without much difference. The sorcerer who learns that trick suddenly learns that hey, they don’t have to worry about this one potential backfire, because it’s meaningless.

Basically, your magic system might only ever mess up in a way that kills new practitioners who don’t know what they’re doing, concentrating magical power in a larger body of the older folks who got lucky enough to have a mentor or not kill themselves trying anything weird.

Education is the Regulations

Many magic systems that rely on representing colleges or universities (like my own, in Cobrin’Seil) treat the process of learning magic as not being so much as about getting the first spell to work but to make sure the second or third spell don’t blow your hand off. In the context of magic of this type there’s a reference to the idea that there are predictable behaviours, and, as a system that people interact with through thought and intonation and maybe some speckles of fluid or dust, there’s a meaningful problem with attenuation. Basically, if your input is infinitely malleable, your output can be incredibly flexible and if some of your outputs can be, say, explosions then you’re going to be much more interested in making sure those inputs are within reasonable safety means.

This is similar to the ‘noob trap’ situation, but instead of ‘if you learn this one thing you can do dangerous stuff all you want,’ but instead ‘every successful stage of safety you learn opens up near forms of potentially dangerous stuff you can do.’ I particularly like this model (but I would, wouldn’t I), because of how it shows the value of education and infrastructural practice.

Which again: I would, wouldn’t I.

Privileged Administration

You could have magic’s backfires and misapplications being handled by a central authority. Throw magic around in a city and the authorities come along and beat the snot out of you. Of course, if you’re talking about having magic, you can probably use that to harm conventional authorities. In order to properly escalate and respond to magic, then, you need a magical enforcement methods.

This is what Baldur’s Gate 2 calls the ‘Cowled Wizards’ model and it works great if you want a large institutional powerbase your characters can struggle with and which will inevitably be corrupted and exploited by bad actors, as if all power systems of this like have some degree of inevitable corruptibility as they cede sense in the name of maintaining and prolonging their own power like the Catholic Church. Wait we got a bit Brothers Karamazov there. Point is, that this is just cops, but magic, and that works great for all the things you need cops to do, including killing people without any kind of cultural moral reprimand.

Magic Is Inherent and Too Specific

Sometimes a magic system is kept from failures by being isolated to individuals, expressed by the inherent talent for magic that is unlocked often by some kind of traumatising experience, and then after that point, people explore that power. This is a system that expresses magic as a sort of single, specific power tha an individual has and which they have to learn about on their own, or maybe through the benefit of learning a system of magic that other people have in common.

I don’t like this kind of system, because I don’t like when magic is a special gift bequeathed on a minority through accidents of birth. That tends to get you towards the eugenics of the X-Men (but y’know, the X-Men are at least in a universe with eugenics as an established idea where there are people who make meaningful arguments against such things). Inherent, inborn magic and special abilities can work great for controlling the way it changes the world, but it comes along with two questions:

What the fuck is happening

Why haven’t people dedicated their effort to explaining this most important thing in the world?

You see this kind of magic system a lot in some really hack stuff. The only example I can bring to mind that’s worth mentioning here is Twilight but know I also was thinking of some other stuff you might think about but I try not to mention on this blog. But let’s pretend I know enough about Brandon Sanderson to say, yeah, that happens in his work, sure.

Conclusion

One of my favourite things about magic systems is the ways they betray authors not thinking about them out of the immediate experience of the protagonists. I know this is a funny thing because I think I did it in one of my stories and I think in hindsight while I thought about the magic in that world quite a bit, I didn’t do a very good job or present something that was that interesting once you got past the idea that ‘crabs had magic, and humans didn’t.’

But if you’re talking about fantasy cities where people can buy magical scrolls or wands, if you’re talking about a place with magical colleges and magical songs, then you’re going to want to think about them a step further: what’s to stop massive damage to the world and the people using it?

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 14: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar - Atari 400/800🎄💾🗓️

The Atari 8-bit computer line was launched in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. Both were advanced for home computers at the time. Both were driven by a 1.79 MHz MOS Technology 6502 CPU, with ANTIC and CTIA/GTIA custom chips for advanced graphics and the POKEY chip handling sound and input/output duties. The Atari 800 was the premium model, featuring a full mechanical keyboard, user-expandable to 48 KB of memory, more metal shielding, and more durability. The Atari 400 was a lower-cost alternative with a membrane keyboard, limited to 16 KB of RAM, and a simplified construction.

With hardware-accelerated scrolling, Player/Missile graphics, and rich sound, the Atari 8-bit systems were known for gaming and creative applications. They were a versatile platform with cartridge-based software, cassette, and floppy disk storage. Atari's proprietary SIO (Serial Input/Output) port allowed daisy-chaining peripherals such as printers, modems, and disk drives, making connecting them easier than with other systems.

Newer models were more compact, combined memory expansion to as much as 128KB, and compatibility with developing software and peripherals improved. Atari's 8-bit computers are remembered for having groundbreaking hardware and a very colorful game library, and they are still being used by the retrocomputing community.

While doing research for this, I saw the XE Game System, never saw it before, very 80s for sure!

The Atari XEGS (XE Game System) was launched in 1987. A repackaged 65XE with a removable keyboard, it boots to the 1981 port of Missile Command instead of BASIC if the keyboard is disconnected.

Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!

[whetstonefires]

So the thing with the Matrix for me, right, was I could never get past the assertion that the motivation for keeping humans alive was as a power source.

That pinged as so so stupid, and was presented so late and half-heartedly, that I could not understand it as a sincere part of the premise. Like. We're told very dramatically and pretty early that the world was mostly destroyed by humans 'scourging the skies' to block off all solar radiation in the effort to shut down the solar powered robots, evidently forgetting that all life on Earth is solar-powered also. Too comedically dumb to be really tragic imo.

So to pivot from the premise 'there is no life on earth, other than human beings, because the sun is gone' to 'the humans were kept alive as batteries' is an impossibility for me. Our ludicrous mammalian bodies, incredibly inefficient engines entirely reliant on continuous indirect consumption of solar energy to even survive, were somehow yielding a net output? Not only that, but one superior to nuclear or geothermal???? Bullshit.

I mean. Bull. Shit. I cannot. We just underlined in the backstory how all life on earth relies on the sun! Because life is expensive just to maintain and requires constant external energy input! We get milk from cows by keeping them alive, but that's because they turn the grass energy into something easier for us to process; no such mechanism is proposed for humans consuming dead humans and somehow producing a form of energy more useful to the Machines than just waiting for the corpses to dry out and then burning them to run a goddamn boiler.

This makes the direct opposite of sense.

It had to be in-universe propaganda, right? Another layer of the deception? It couldn't be the real reason. It was too implausible. Which meant I was still waiting to find out why the machines were really bothering with humanity and the Matrix.

I would have accepted without quibble the revelation that humans have special psychic energy that the machines were harvesting; that's dumb but in a comfortable, comprehensible, and above all internally consistent sci-fi kind of way.

I would have been quite open to the idea that the machines relied on human consciousness for their own development to true sapience, and the Matrix was primarily an AI nursery with the enmeshed human brains providing complex inputs, that one's actually cool.

There are a lot of explanations out there aside from the dumb official one, or the Occam's Razor one where they were just keeping some humans alive out of sentimentality! I'm really not that picky!

So anyway I never managed to emotionally engage with the Matrix films well because I had this unresolved 'motives of primary antagonist??? cause of fundamental scenario??????' thing making most of the actual plot twist and drama feel kind of boring.

My sister maintains that this is something wrong with me, that I'm refusing to suspend my disbelief and engage correctly with the text, and this constitutes a hostile, bad-faith and therefore illegitimate reading.

(She hasn't actually said this last part and I'd respect her position more if she did, but this seems to be the broad thrust of her emotional position when she starts shouting.)

I maintain that if a central plank of your sci-fi premise relies on going 'fuck the basic principles of thermodynamics and biology this is a vibes-based system' you should be very careful to avoid invoking the relationship between basic thermodynamics and biology in your core worldbuilding.

[pizzaronipasta]

READ THIS BEFORE INTERACTING

Alright, I know I said I wasn't going to touch this topic again, but my inbox is filling up with asks from people who clearly didn't read everything I said, so I'm making a pinned post to explain my stance on AI in full, but especially in the context of disability. Read this post in its entirety before interacting with me on this topic, lest you make a fool of yourself.

AI Doesn't Steal

Before I address people's misinterpretations of what I've said, there is something I need to preface with. The overwhelming majority of AI discourse on social media is argued based on a faulty premise: that generative AI models "steal" from artists. There are several problems with this premise. The first and most important one is that this simply isn't how AI works. Contrary to popular misinformation, generative AI does not simply take pieces of existing works and paste them together to produce its output. Not a single byte of pre-existing material is stored anywhere in an AI's system. What's really going on is honestly a lot more sinister.

How It Actually Works

In reality, AI models are made by initializing and then training something called a neural network. Initializing the network simply consists of setting up a multitude of nodes arranged in "layers," with each node in each layer being connected to every node in the next layer. When prompted with input, a neural network will propagate the input data through itself, layer by layer, transforming it along the way until the final layer yields the network's output. This is directly based on the way organic nervous systems work, hence the name "neural network." The process of training a network consists of giving it an example prompt, comparing the resulting output with an expected correct answer, and tweaking the strengths of the network's connections so that its output is closer to what is expected. This is repeated until the network can adequately provide output for all prompts. This is exactly how your brain learns; upon detecting stimuli, neurons will propagate signals from one to the next in order to enact a response, and the connections between those neurons will be adjusted based on how close the outcome was to whatever was anticipated. In the case of both organic and artificial neural networks, you'll notice that no part of the process involves directly storing anything that was shown to it. It is possible, especially in the case of organic brains, for a neural network to be configured such that it can produce a decently close approximation of something it was trained on; however, it is crucial to note that this behavior is extremely undesirable in generative AI, since that would just be using a wasteful amount of computational resources for a very simple task. It's called "overfitting" in this context, and it's avoided like the plague.

The sinister part lies in where the training data comes from. Companies which make generative AI models are held to a very low standard of accountability when it comes to sourcing and handling training data, and it shows. These companies usually just scrape data from the internet indiscriminately, which inevitably results in the collection of people's personal information. This sensitive data is not kept very secure once it's been scraped and placed in easy-to-parse centralized databases. Fortunately, these issues could be solved with the most basic of regulations. The only reason we haven't already solved them is because people are demonizing the products rather than the companies behind them. Getting up in arms over a type of computer program does nothing, and this diversion is being taken advantage of by bad actors, who could be rendered impotent with basic accountability. Other issues surrounding AI are exactly the same way. For example, attempts to replace artists in their jobs are the result of under-regulated businesses and weak worker's rights protections, and we're already seeing very promising efforts to combat this just by holding the bad actors accountable. Generative AI is a tool, not an agent, and the sooner people realize this, the sooner and more effectively they can combat its abuse.

Y'all Are Being Snobs

Now I've debunked the idea that generative AI just pastes together pieces of existing works. But what if that were how it worked? Putting together pieces of existing works... hmm, why does that sound familiar? Ah, yes, because it is, verbatim, the definition of collage. For over a century, collage has been recognized as a perfectly valid art form, and not plagiarism. Furthermore, in collage, crediting sources is not viewed as a requirement, only a courtesy. Therefore, if generative AI worked how most people think it works, it would simply be a form of collage. Not theft.

Some might not be satisfied with that reasoning. Some may claim that AI cannot be artistic because the AI has no intent, no creative vision, and nothing to express. There is a metaphysical argument to be made against this, but I won't bother making it. I don't need to, because the AI is not the artist. Maybe someday an artificial general intelligence could have the autonomy and ostensible sentience to make art on its own, but such things are mere science fiction in the present day. Currently, generative AI completely lacks autonomy—it is only capable of making whatever it is told to, as accurate to the prompt as it can manage. Generative AI is a tool. A sculpture made by 3D printing a digital model is no less a sculpture just because an automatic machine gave it physical form. An artist designed the sculpture, and used a tool to make it real. Likewise, a digital artist is completely valid in having an AI realize the image they designed.

Some may claim that AI isn't artistic because it doesn't require effort. By that logic, photography isn't art, since all you do is point a camera at something that already looks nice, fiddle with some dials, and press a button. This argument has never been anything more than snobbish gatekeeping, and I won't entertain it any further. All art is art. Besides, getting an AI to make something that looks how you want can be quite the ordeal, involving a great amount of trial and error. I don't speak from experience on that, but you've probably seen what AI image generators' first drafts tend to look like.

AI art is art.

Disability and Accessibility

Now that that's out of the way, I can finally move on to clarifying what people keep misinterpreting.

I Never Said That

First of all, despite what people keep claiming, I have never said that disabled people need AI in order to make art. In fact, I specifically said the opposite several times. What I have said is that AI can better enable some people to make the art they want to in the way they want to. Second of all, also despite what people keep claiming, I never said that AI is anyone's only option. Again, I specifically said the opposite multiple times. I am well aware that there are myriad tools available to aid the physically disabled in all manner of artistic pursuits. What I have argued is that AI is just as valid a tool as those other, longer-established ones.

In case anyone doubts me, here are all the posts I made in the discussion in question: Reblog chain 1 Reblog chain 2 Reblog chain 3 Reblog chain 4 Potentially relevant ask

I acknowledge that some of my earlier responses in that conversation were poorly worded and could potentially lead to a little confusion. However, I ended up clarifying everything so many times that the only good faith explanation I can think of for these wild misinterpretations is that people were seeing my arguments largely out of context. Now, though, I don't want to see any more straw men around here. You have no excuse, there's a convenient list of links to everything I said. As of posting this, I will ridicule anyone who ignores it and sends more hate mail. You have no one to blame but yourself for your poor reading comprehension.

What Prompted Me to Start Arguing in the First Place

There is one more thing that people kept misinterpreting, and it saddens me far more than anything else in this situation. It was sort of a culmination of both the things I already mentioned. Several people, notably including the one I was arguing with, have insisted that I'm trying to talk over physically disabled people.

Read the posts again. Notice how the original post was speaking for "everyone" in saying that AI isn't helpful. It doesn't take clairvoyance to realize that someone will find it helpful. That someone was being spoken over, before I ever said a word.

So I stepped in, and tried to oppose the OP on their universal claim. Lo and behold, they ended up saying that I'm the one talking over people.

Along the way, people started posting straight-up inspiration porn.

I hope you can understand where my uncharacteristic hostility came from in that argument.

[enki2]

The more persistent control you have over a device, the more you and the device adapt to each other, becoming a more effective group organism. The higher the input and output bandwidth of the interface (i.e., the greater the number of distinct ways you can interact with it / it can respond to you), the faster the system can adapt.

So, the horse metaphor makes perfect sense: your desktop ships with a real keyboard on which you can probably do 300 WPM without blocking part of the display, and has a display that can hold half a dozen legible non-overlapping windows. If you have a screwdriver, you can open it up and replace basically any part. Even without a screwdriver, you can generally out of the box persistently dramatically change the UI settings to fit the needs of your environment (light vs dark mode, font size and style). You can stick linux on & that opens up a lot more. On a desktop computer, it's possible for a motivated 10 year old of average intelligence to progress from normal computer use to writing non-trivial application software for their own use within a couple years -- I am proof, & I'm far from alone.

Tablets are on the opposite end of the spectrum: simplified, locked down. The user does not collaborate with the tablet; instead, the tablet has only those affordances that channel the user's behavior into habits the developers of the tablet software consider desirable.

Mobile & web achieved the dream of proprietary software people: user-facing software that the user can't even disassemble because the important parts aren't accessible; since they did this through physical distance rather than the legal system, they can profit from other people's open source software too, circumventing many of the restrictions intended to keep improvements folded back into the community or to limit commercial use. But the side effect of this is that it gives professional computer touchers much more control over regular people's computers: not only can you not fix bugs in someone else's web app yourself, but you can't refuse to upgrade to a version that's a worse fit for your purposes. Where desktop computing encouraged the development of communities of amateur computer hobbyists who, together, would adapt or create alternatives to things that didn't work right (as well as creating lots of interesting, funny, unnecessary stuff that can only be classified as Art -- little games and toys, elaborate shitposts, weird mods and skins), mobile does not. The only thing you need to make your desktop computer do something brand new is a desktop computer, the software development tools & documentation that ship with the OS, and some free time -- you don't even need an internet connection; developing for web or mobile also functionally requires a desktop, on top of your mobile device for mobile (and if it's an iPhone you gotta have a Mac & pay Apple $99/year), & for web you need to pay for hosting and a domain name.

[horny-jailbreak]

Okay here's my treatise on why mechs are so got to me: theyre a combo of computer and automobile.

Computers are hot because they're just a bunvh of logic processes that all do One Thing, but interact in such a way that they do Many Things at a massive scale. Working on a computer involves balanving all of the little logic processes that are all so interconnected that it feels and looks like manipulating magic runes. With enough knowledge, you can make any computer do any thing, you just have to manipulate it JUST right, and at that point it looks like negotiation with an intelligent human. In fact, at a certain point, a sufficiently complex robot looks a lot like the human brain, and hey isn't psychology just kinda looking at all the little logic processes that our nervous systems make in order to interact with the world? What really is the difference between the way operant conditioning takes in input in order to adjust future output and the way a computer adjusts its variables to be more precise? In this way, computers are kinda just brains that are a little less plastic and a lot more susceptible to being directly edited on the basic code level.

Automobiles, on the other hand? They are highly specialized, extremely well engineered parts all put together in order to make something that does one job Very Well. This ball joint is engineered to perfection, and when combined with this motor (also engineered and tuned to perfection) and a couple other parts (that are, likewise, engineered to perfection) they make a machine that moves an arm in a specific way Very Well. And then that arm is combined with other parts, and you get the picture. An automobile (or mech) is a big machine that's made up of increasingly smaller groups of extemely well-engineered parts, and those tiny parts have to be maintained and cared for or else they'll fuck up the whole system, cascading outward. The general wear and tear of being in the physical plane makes is so that you Have to get in there and maintain and replace parts, but with such care that the delicate, graceful balance of engineering isn't lost. And once again, with enough knowledge, you can navigate this delicate landscape and make that machine do whatever you want.

The idea that these specialized things that are only supposed to be used Like So can then be adjusted to be able to do something else, only accomplished by having an intimate knowledge of what these parts and processes' limits are and how far you can push an individual component before damage is done, then lends itself very well to the idea that that intimate knowledge is no different than the love and care you could feel for a human being. After all, a human brain is a squishy, extemely complicated computer, and the human body is a squishy, very complicated piece of machinery. If you take out the squishy part (and hinestly sometimes you dont even need to do that) and scale it up so that someone can pilot it, thats a mech babey!

Anyway i hope this was coherent enough that I'll someday find something that scratches that itch, or maybe i'll write it myself. Just know that that's the fantasy im aiming for with the #robot fucker tag

[stevebattle]

Robodroid (1984), The Robot Factory Inc., Cascade, CO. "Robodroid is a self-contained robot for the experimentalist, hobbyist, and educator. Robodroid's sensory inputs include three sonar transducers on a rotating head, a head position sensor, and two wheel odometers with several options available. Its controlled outputs include two drive motors, a head motor, a sound/music synthesiser and a speech synthesiser with several options planned for the future. Its microprocessor is a MOS Technology 6502. Its memory consists of 64 Kbytes programmable memory and 28 Kbytes read only memory. Its I/O system includes a full upper/lower case keyboard with function keys and eight I/O ports. The interface is an RS/232 with several options. The standard software is Robot Extended BASIC, English text-to-speech conversion and a joystick control program." – THE ROBOT FACTORY.

[stefanelectric]

Low Voltage Relays Explained: Types, Functions, and Applications

In the complex world of electrical systems, relays play a crucial role in ensuring safety, efficiency, and automation. Among these, low voltage relays stand out as versatile components that manage and protect circuits operating below 1000 volts. Whether in industrial automation, residential power distribution, or commercial infrastructure, these devices act as the nerve center of electrical control and protection.

In this comprehensive guide, we will break down what low voltage relays are, explore their types, explain their functions, and highlight their diverse applications across industries.

What Are Low Voltage Relays?

A low voltage relay is an electrically operated switch that uses a small control voltage (typically below 1000V AC or DC) to switch larger electrical loads on and off. These relays act as intermediaries between control circuits and power circuits, providing isolation, control, and protection.

Unlike manual switches, relays automate the process of circuit management, responding to electrical signals, fault conditions, or system commands without human intervention.

Types of Low Voltage Relays

Low voltage relays come in several forms, each tailored to specific tasks within an electrical system. Here are the main types:

1. Electromechanical Relays (EMRs)

· Use a coil and a movable armature to open or close contacts.

· Provide physical isolation between input and output.

· Common in traditional control panels and basic automation.

2. Solid-State Relays (SSRs)

· Use semiconductors (like thyristors or triacs) instead of mechanical contacts.

· Offer silent operation, faster switching, and longer lifespan.

· Ideal for high-speed applications and environments requiring low maintenance.

3. Overload Relays

· Specifically designed to protect motors and equipment from sustained overcurrent.

· Available as thermal overload relays (using bimetallic strips) or electronic overload relays (using sensors and processors).

4. Time Delay Relays

Provide a deliberate time lag between the relay receiving a signal and switching.

Used in motor control circuits, lighting systems, and sequential operations.

5. Overcurrent and Short-Circuit Relays

· Detect and react to current exceeding preset thresholds.

· Essential for system protection against faults and overloads.

6. Voltage Monitoring Relays

· Monitor voltage levels and trip when voltages fall below or rise above safe limits.

· Protect sensitive devices from under voltage and overvoltage conditions.

Functions of Low Voltage Relays

Low voltage relays serve multiple vital functions in electrical systems:

1. Switching and Control

Relays control the opening and closing of power circuits in response to low voltage signals from controllers, timers, or sensors. This enables remote and automated control of large electrical loads.

2. Protection

Relays detect abnormal conditions like overloads, overcurrent, under voltage, and phase failures. When such conditions arise, they disconnect the affected circuit to prevent equipment damage or fire hazards.

3. Isolation

They electrically isolate control circuits (usually low voltage, low current) from power circuits (high voltage, high current), ensuring safety and reducing interference.

4. Signal Amplification

A small control signal (from a PLC, sensor, or microcontroller) can trigger a relay to switch much larger loads, effectively amplifying the control power.

5. Automation and Sequencing

In complex systems, relays help sequence operations by ensuring that processes occur in the correct order and at the right time intervals.

Applications of Low Voltage Relays

Low voltage relays are the backbone of automation and protection in various industries. Here are some key application areas:

Industrial Automation

· Control of motors, pumps, conveyor belts, and production lines.

· Use in programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and distributed control systems (DCS).

Power Distribution Systems

· Protect electrical panels from overload and short circuits.

· Monitor voltage and current levels in distribution boards.

Building Automation

· Lighting control systems.

· HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems.

· Elevator and escalator controls.

Renewable Energy Systems

· Manage and protect solar inverters, battery banks, and wind turbines.

· Automatically disconnect faulty sections to prevent system-wide failures.

Data Centers and IT Infrastructure

· Ensure stable power supply to servers and networking equipment.

· Protect sensitive electronics from voltage fluctuations.

Transportation

· Railways, metros, and automotive applications for control and safety circuits.

Home Appliances

· Found in washing machines, microwave ovens, and HVAC units to automate functions and provide protection.

Advantages of Using Low Voltage Relays

· Enhanced Safety: Isolate control and power circuits, reducing electrical shock risks.

· Automation Ready: Easily integrated into automated systems for smarter operation.

· Cost-Effective Protection: Safeguard expensive equipment from damage due to electrical faults.

· Versatile: Available in many forms to suit different voltage levels, currents, and response times.

· Reduced Maintenance: Especially with solid-state relays, which have no moving parts.

Future Trends: Smart Relays and IoT Integration

As industries move toward smart grids and Industry 4.0, low voltage relays are also evolving:

· Digital relays offer programmable settings, self-testing, and event recording.

· IoT-enabled relays can send status updates and alerts to centralized monitoring systems.

· Energy-efficient designs reduce power consumption while providing reliable protection.

Conclusion

Low voltage relays are indispensable in modern electrical engineering, seamlessly combining protection, control, and automation. From safeguarding your home appliances to managing the power in a sprawling industrial plant, these devices ensure that electrical systems run smoothly and safely.

Understanding the different types, functions, and applications of low voltage relays empowers system designers, engineers, and even DIY enthusiasts to build safer and more efficient electrical setups.

As technology advances, the role of these small but mighty devices will only grow, driving the future of safe, smart, and automated power systems.

[third-time-charmed]

Never Learn (It's Pointless)

A Rota Fortunae oneshot

Rated T ~5k words Aventurine/Dr. Ratio | Experimental Style | Mutual Pining | Emotional Baggage | Hurt/Comfort

In the aftermath of Rota Fortunae, an android has a mild emotional crisis immediately upon reboot.

Preview:

His language module was working. Coupled with the personality module, it was what granted him his overall awareness and sense of self, allowed him to think and process manually through the analogue diagnostic check. Though whether it had been booted by the system in response to the failed diagnostic or had been activated some other way, he was unsure.

Regardless, language output was still out of the question, because it required his motor function to actually work. It was an unfortunate side effect of his more human design — if he couldn’t move his mouth, he couldn’t speak.

Not that he’d be able to hear it if he did make any sound, as his audio receptors were also malfunctioning. Basically, his awareness and assessment of his internal systems was pretty much all he had at the moment.

He fought to suppress the flutter of panic that tingled along the circuitry in his chest.

[Core systems access requested]

[Access denied]

Something was trying to breach his core systems firewall. But without the internal power supply, it would have to be doing so manually.

Through the hardware.

Sensory input being offline meant he couldn’t feel if someone were rummaging around in his casing, but deductive reasoning indicated this was the most likely scenario. He tried again — to move, to speak, to access his memory logs, something. But all to no avail.

Wait.

Not all…

Something snapped into place, power flooding through his copper veins in a rush, and at last there was a response.

[Memory storage reconnected]

Oh.

Oh.

Emergency backup RAM finally started filing into storage, and he was suddenly intensely glad his sensory input was offline. Though he had to assume that the majority of his core systems wiring had actually been severed by the gunshot to his head.

A flicker of surprise registered in his emotional cortex, though.

...why was he back online at all?

The well-placed shot would have exploded his power core, ripping through the wiring and essentially halting every system and function that made him — for lack of a better term — alive. Any hope of a system reboot would have required replacing the power core, or connecting to an outside power source of some kind.

Which, being immobilized as he was, would obviously have been entirely out of the realm of possibility for him to accomplish on his own.

So the question then was…

...who had saved him?

[File corruption detected]

He had a singular guess. But he wouldn’t let himself hope. Not just yet.

Hope.

What a ridiculous notion to apply to a piece of unfeeling machinery. Almost as ridiculous as the notion of it being alive. He could almost imagine him saying exactly that, in that clipped baritone of his. Dismissively, gaze not even deigning to grace the subject of his disdain with so much as a glance.

[I should have told him…]

(Read the rest here!)

[thydungeongal]

Social interaction mechanics are my gleeblor. I've really mostly played D&D and D&D-likes (and a single one-shot in Star Trek Adventures where we mostly repaired stuff), so the only idea of social mechanics I really have is reaction rolls.

(don't get me started on 3e-style skill checks. those are worse than nothing.)

Anyway I do kind of want to understand this concept. Would you mind providing an example or two? Assume I have never played a PBTA game.

Absolutely! I'm going to use Apocalypse World as my example here!

Apocalypse World only has one social interaction mechanic: the "Seduce or Manipulate Someone" move. Moves are PbtA parlance and even though a lot of ink can be spilled on the subject at the end of the day what a move is is a specific situation in the game where the game steps in and says "I have input on this." Apocalypse World especially really emphasizes the fact that if moves are not being triggered then the game basically progresses as free play, but once a move is triggered it happens and its specific mechanics kick in.

It's a fancy way of saying "here's a social mechanic and here's what sorts of situations you'll use it in."

This is the trigger for Seduce or Manipulate Someone:

When you try to seduce, manipulate, bluff, fast-talk, or lie to someone, tell them what you want them to do, give them a reason, and roll+hot.

Roll+hot here means rolling 2d6 and adding the character's Hot stat (usually between -1 and +2) with static thresholds: a result of 10+ means a full success, 7-9 means partial success, and 6 or lower means failure (and there are specific principles about what happens on 6- which I won't get into here).

Interestingly, this is where the move actually splits into two, giving different outcomes depending on whether it's being used on an NPC or a PC:

For NPCs: on a 10+, they go along with you, unless or until some fact or action betrays the reason you gave them. On a 7-9, they'll go along with you, but they need some concrete assurance, corroboration, or evidence first. For PCs: on a 10+, both. On a 7-9, choose 1:

• If they go along with you, they mark experience.

• If they refuse, erase one of their stat highlights for the remainder of the session.

What they do then is up to them.

On a miss, for either NPCs or PCs, be prepared for the worst.

At the end of the day it isn't that different in principle from a modern D&D style "make a Charisma (Persuasion) check" but there are two things that stand out here: first, even for NPCs, a clearly stated part of the action is needing to present the target with a reason for going along with you. Whether the target "complies" or not is entirely rules-mediated, but the character still needs to present some reason for the NPC to go along.

Secondly, the same mechanic can be used to manipulate other PCs, but because player characters are controlled by other players they can't be simply mind-controlled: instead, manipulation is handled via carrot (reward of XP for complying) and stick (loss of a highlighted stat, one of the potential sources of XP, for refusing), but at the end of the day the character is not robbed of choice.

Monsterhearts uses a similar system BUT it specifically turns seduction into its own move which is used to gain Strings (an abstract social currency) over other characters. Strings are always specific to a character and spending a String on someone else comes with a multitude of benefits, but one of the most important ones is that spending a String on a player character in Monsterhearts allows the character to do the "If you go along, experience, if you don't, punishment" part of the move without needing to roll.

But yeah, the main takeaway here is that it takes in an input of both describing what the character is doing and saying and what they are offering, a roll (to take some of the arbitration out of player hands), and then outputs a result that is specific but imprecise. It is, at the end of the day, a game played through the medium of language, so like the result of the action is still expressed in those terms. Instead of like. They take 5 points of rhetorical damage to their argument.

Now, having said that, there absolutely are games out there that do model social mechanics in a "deal rhetorical damage to the enemy's argument" type of way, but they differ from the typical "numbers game" model that I presented in that they usually require more specific inputs from players than simply pointing their character's charisma at a target and rolling. Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits is a great example of this, and it's basically almost akin to old-school D&D psionic combat in how its various arguments and defences bounce off each other. But it's absolutely not the norm when it comes to social interaction mechanics in games.

[techav]

On Keeping Time

To run a simple program, a computer needs some kind of storage, and some kind of input/output device. To run a simple operating system, a computer will also need some random-access memory for holding onto information temporarily. To run a sophisticated operating system that supports many users and programs reliably, a computer will also need some way to make sure one user doesn't hog resources and prevent other users' programs from running.

My Wrap030 homebrew computer currently has a flash ROM which holds a bootloader program from starting other programs from disk. It has 16MB of RAM. It has 9 total serial ports for I/O. It just needs that last thing to be able to run a sophisticated operating system.

I've written before about how computers can share a single processor between multiple users or programs. The simplest option is to have each program periodically yield control back to the system so that the next program can run for a little while. The problem with this approach is if a program malfunctions and never yields control back to the system, then no other program can run.

The solution is to have an external interrupt that can tell the CPU it's time to switch programs. Each program can be guaranteed to have its chance to run because if a program tries to run too long, that interrupt will come to force a switch to the next program.

The way this is typically accomplished is with a periodic timer — ticking clock that interrupts the CPU regardless of what it's doing.

And that's what my Wrap030 project is missing. I need a timer interrupt.

The catch is, my system has always been a little fragile. I have it running well right now with three expansion boards, but there's always a risk of it being very unhappy if I try to add another expansion board. If I could somehow pull a timer interrupt out of what I already have, that would be ideal.

Nearly all of the glue logic pulling this system together is programmable logic in the form of CPLDs. This gives me the flexibility to add new features without having to rework physical circuitry. As it happens, the logic running my DRAM card currently consumes under half of the resources available in the card's CPLD. It also has several spare I/O pins, and is wired to more of the CPU bus than any other chip in the system.

So I added a timer interrupt to my DRAM controller.

It is very minimal — just a 16-bit register that starts counting down every clock cycle as soon as it's loaded. When the timer gets to 1, it asserts one of those spare I/O pins to interrupt the CPU.

And all it took was a couple bodge wires and a little extra logic.

I put together a quick test program to check if the timer was running. The program would spin in a loop waiting to see if a specific address in memory changed. When it changed, it would print out that it had, and then go right back into the loop. Meanwhile, the interrupt service routine would change the same address in memory every time the timer expired.

This is great! It was the last significant piece of hardware I was missing to be able to run a proper operating system like Unix or Linux — which has always been a goal of the project. While I still have much to learn before I can attempt to get a proper OS running, I can still put this new timer to use.

I had previously built my Multibasic kernel to run cooperatively. Each user instance of BASIC would yield control whenever it needed to read or write to its terminal (which it does at every line while running a BASIC program, checking for the Ctrl-C stop sequence). This worked well enough, but a particularly complex BASIC program could still slow down other users' programs.

Converting my Multibasic kernel from Cooperative multitasking to Preemptive multitasking was actually fairly easy. I just needed to initialize the timer at startup, and add an interrupt service routine to switch to the next user.

(It's not really something that can be seen in a screenshot, but it's doing the thing, I promise.)

Now that I have all of the requisite hardware, I guess I need to dive into learning how to customize and build an operating system for a new machine. It's something I have always wanted to do.

[anarchy-and-piglins]

I have been infected by your AU. As such, have thoughts.

The thing that catches Technoblade in the end is his empathy. That, more than anything, is what keeps him trapped.

He knows the others are androids. How could he not? He knows this. He knows everything about them, from their personality to their responses, is artificial. It's not real, it's an approximation of what would work best, an amalgamation of code and psychology all jumbled up in the most efficient attempts to make him stay. The guilt trips don't work, or at least they shouldn't, because there's nothing to hurt. No soul, no personality aside from what they manufactured.

But they do. They make him hesitate, every time. He knows ways to take out androids (all risky, hypothetical at best, but a chance), but they're the type of thing androids don't come back from. He can't take the thought of ToMM1's eyes blinking shut and never opening, the thought of PH1lZa's hurt and W1LbuR's bitter resignation when they realize the betrayal. (And really, that's assuming it works and there isn't something worse that comes of it. Failure is a specter of its own.)

He just. . . can't.

Because who is he to draw the line between artificial and true, between worth it and not, between person and tool.

Because really it can all be summed up in one line.

"I'm a person."

I'm going off of character Technoblade here and assuming his personality in the AU would be mostly the same. So he's the guy who tore down governments and thought they'd be fine, because all he could see were the people inside. The guy who stared down a kid who was supposed to be executed and saw just that. A kid, an ally, someone with friends and fears, not a threat. (Which in that moment Tubbo was, not in and of himself, but due to the circumstances around him. Tubbo was the linchpin which held Technoblade's life and the revolution on its back.) He's the one who fought so hard to be a person, only to never be believed. This is the man who knows how it feels to be a threat (The Blade) and how hard it is to be anything different when that's all you are to those around you.

And that's part of the tragedy here. Technoblade can't help but see them as real, as people. And they can't help but not.

Thanks to the programing, all they can ever see is a problem, a solution, a possession. Something to be protected, but only. Ever. Some. Thing.

While he can't help but see them as human, they can't help but see him as machine. A mess of inputs and outputs; made to be manipulated.

(As for possible AU names. . . Mechanisms of Captivity? Mechanisms of Trust? Machine AU? I don't know if any of these are what you were looking for, or if they'd work, but you asked.)

I've been thinking a lot about Techno in this AU, the sort of person he is.

I'm inclined to actually make him a bit younger. Think in the older teen ballpark (16-18 years old?). But very much still an anarchist. The thing about this AU is that even before the whole literal apocalypse started, it was basically a cyberpunk dystopia.

Through the advancement of technology and capitalism, as well as the environment being ruined and people's jobs being increasingly threatened by automatisation, the wealth gap has only become wider. The middle class is all but gone. There's only low income citizens struggling to get by (and often dying in the process) and the rich elite that rule everything living a cushy life full of luxury. Androids and robots are everywhere - service jobs, public transports, security, everywhere - but highly advanced androids with intelligence for personal purchase are really just a commodity for the rich.

Techno is an orphan, and he's been on the very bottom of this wretched society, trying to scrape by. An anarchist who hates the oppressive, controlling government, and hates androids by extension. He's a bit of a hacker (his bestie Skeppy even more so) and isn't unknown to the law system, though it's mostly petty crime, so him being a minor and his own resourcefulness has allowed him to stay out of real trouble. He's not upgraded to full on terrorism yet. Theft to get by, moving contraband around for money, sometimes street art or vandalism, that sort of thing.

(Maybe even a Robin Hood type vibe, steal from the rich give to the poor!)

But Techno has learned how to work around androids (again, security is mostly machine-based. Techno knows how to be tricky with them). And that's what saves his life when the killing machine apocalypse gets into full swing.

It's also another layer to his dislike for SBI. Techno is going to be even more hostile and distrustful towards them regardless of the apocalypse thing. And he knows androids are just machines, but it's hard when SBI are so humanlike...

And then again, they are the most advanced models ever. The bug has even further boosted their cognitive ability. At what point does one get personhood? At what point have these machines become people?

(Some people had other ideas but 'Mechanisms of Trust' is banger I'm stealing that /lh)

[wiresclick-nowimsick]

(( ooc - incredibly long infodump below the cut about how helmtech works in this verse / my fics / my headcanons! warning for body horror and all that stuff :3

This is half a rewrite of something I wrote up in discord ages ago when working on Shadows fics, half new writing because I'm changing some stuff.

Ok so I think what canon timeline helmsman, in my interpretation of the shit, had, is what I'm calling zero-interface type.

Zero-interface, as the name implies, doesn't involve any interfaces between the biotech and the dude. It's just the… well I don't call them biowires in my fics, but those things. They're not organic creatures, more like biotechnological flesh cables. Probably grown in a lab or something.

They're basically structured like electrical cables, but flesh. The outer surface has a texture somewhere in between rubber and tendon. A little bit springy but very tough. It's basically a layer of protective cladding. Artificial skinlike material that's extremely resistant to electricity, temperature, cutting, crushing, burning, melting, basically everything. It's the only part that's fully pink… maybe it's got fuchsia troll DNA somewhere in it for the toughness? And then a lot of the internal structure of the cables is just more insulation that also provides stability, and maybe also some synthetic muscle fiber so the cables can reposition themselves when needed. Then in the center you've got the actual synthetic nerves. Those are more fragile, though still a lot tougher than organic nerves. Through the length of the cable, the nerves are pretty much bundled in the center, but when it reaches the end they spread out more, becoming roughly evenly spaced - think lamprey teeth. At least for the peripheral nerve override cables. The central nervous system integration cables have a more clumped in the center layout at the ends, because what those do is burrow into the spinal cord. Peripheral override cables pretty much take over the nerves and hijack them, replacing sensory input with ship data. Central integration cables actually integrate the central nervous system into the ship. The headpiece (which I'll get into more later) and the top two spinal cables are what connect the brain into the ship's computers, while the rest of the spinal cables take nerve output from the spinal cord (what would have once sent signals to the muscles and stuff of the body to move) for controlling the ship. Also, there's probably a few cables that have peristaltic transfer tubes inside, for removal of waste, transferral of nutrients, filtering/replacing blood, everything else needed to keep the body alive.

Zero-interface installation is pretty simple: apply cables directly to skin, for the most part. The ends of the cables exude a little bit of acid that melts the skin underneath, and then the lamprey-teeth-like synthetic nerve points burrow into the skin. Because there's no interfaces directing the growth of the things, they just grow directly and organically into the body, spreading and branching, to connect to as many nerve branches as possible. (And, because there's no need to surgically install ports beforehand, a typical installation involves as many cables as physically possible, pretty much entirely covering the limbs in cable up to a certain level. Probably only stopping at elbows and hips because going further would take up too much space with the sheer mass of cable.) Oh, and the acid also basically fuses the end of the cable to the skin beneath it.

On the one hand, this results in extensive integration, making the combined ship/troll pretty much a single entity. On the other hand, well, exactly that. The sheer amount of synthetic nerve growth within the body means that removal from the helm is essentially impossible. (Sure, surgically removing all of it from the peripheral nerves would technically be possible, but with synthetic nerves growing directly through the surrounding flesh, the limbs would get super duper mangled. And that's just the peripheral nervous system - zero-interface gets so deep into the spinal cord and brain that over enough time the synthetic nerves start branching on a micro-scale, and then a cellular scale, and pretty much start replacing brain cells with their own.

What Shadows!Tunes has is a 1-interface rig. So called because it's got one layer of interfacing in between the cables and the body. The first step of 1-interface installation is the interface - surgically installed ports. They're made of a weird slightly-organic metal stuff, maybe it's got nanomachines or something. I like nanomachines they're a fun excuse. Basically they like root into the body on a very small scale, not very far but enough to lodge them in real good. These roots aren't organic like the synthetic nerves, so they don't integrate on a cellular level, just physically. It anchors it firmly enough to stay in despite any tension on the cables (1-interface is the most likely to have a large amount of tension on the cables, due to using fewer of them than 0-interface without allowing freedom of movement) but also results in damage to the surrounding tissue, on account of the roots going through skin and muscle and all that sorta stuff. In addition to the tissue that's removed to expose the nerves and install each row of ports in the first place.

The cables are usually installed after the ports have had time to heal and root into the skin. The structural section of the cables fuses to the inside of each port, and the synthetic nerves connect to the exposed nerves without having to grow through any intervening flesh. This type of connection allows for some removability, but not very easily so. It is easy to actually get the ports and the cables to separate, using the right uhh, enzyme or chemical trigger or whatever, which makes the cables separate from the metal stuff and detach from the nerves. However, because there's only so many points of connection for each nerve branch and the nerve itself is generally only exposed rather than fully laid open, installation and uninstallation usually result in some nerve damage as the synthetic nerves have to sorta dig in to get the needed connections. (Well, I say installation here, but when the cables are in place it's irrelevant whether the nerves are damaged or not, so any damage from them going in only becomes apparent when they come out.)

Also, the insides of the ports often get kind of… weird… once the cables are removed. The metal of the ports sort of grows into the support structure of the cables (this is part of why some of Tunes' cables initially couldn't be removed all the way down to the top of the ports) and has to be filed down after a typical uninstallation. (This is a very careful task as it's done so close to the exposed nerves, and it's not good to nick those or get bits of metal in there.)

Now, that's mostly for the peripheral and spinal stuff. The central nervous sytem integration, or specifically the brainstem and brain, is a bit different. The… sort of goggles looking bit, actually has two functions. There's the psionic power extraction/channeling, and the brain stuff. (All the like, bits like straps that go over the top of the head and stuff, that's that.) Focusing on that second one for now. Canon timeline helmsman's is fully 0-interface, with the thing itself having synthetic nerve roots that bore through the skull (with the help of some acid again) and grow into the brain, integration just as extensive as with the peripherals.

Tunes' head bit is sort of a modified 0-interface, with synthetic nerve tissue introduced through thin slots cut into the skull and through the base of the horns, and that integrates into the brain and then connects to the actual cables with a sort of interface in the strap bits themselves. Meaning the headpiece thing isn't meant to be removed, and would stay on after a normal uninstallation, just the cables would be disconnected from it. This means that a helm who's been taken out of one ship and put into another would be able to adapt quickly if the ships were similar enough, since their brain is already set up for that sort of ship, but a transfer to a significantly different ship would mean a long adjustment period while the stuff in their brain literally rewires them. Also, the actual straps themselves are the same pink stuff as the cables, which is why they leave scars when removed, as they sorta fuse to the skin.

The headpiece thingy also handles the psionic extraction/channeling functionality. Tunes' had little bits of the same material as the straps to hold his eyes open, while canon timeline helmsman's eyes are just kept open by the flow of extracted psionics. (Like putting your thumb over a fire hose… or more like your eyelid over a fire hose. You just couldn't.) Idk how the actual psionic extraction works, maybe it's like a battery where connecting stuff that needs power makes the power automatically flow? Idk I'm a computer scientist not an electrical engineer. It also prevents the helm from voluntarily using their psionics to fuck with things within the ship. Also, it causes constant bleeding from the eyes, sort of proportional to the amount of power being extracted. The blood can start coming out of other orifices if it's really a lot, but by that point you're practically edging burnout. (My HC is that psionics start bleeding when they're forcing out more power than they can naturally/easily access, but in the helm they're always bleeding a little bit, even if it's not as much as that, because the power is being forced out.) Oh yeah and also forcible psionic power extraction Hurts. Having all those cables in you already hurts (unless you've got a double-interface (see below)) but the extraction adds more onto it. Although the nice thing about essentially being a ship is that you can focus on the part of yourself that's ship, and try to ignore the bit that's flesh and in more pain than you ever knew was possible.

Havery (an OC featured in the Shadows fics, who's pretty much the only voluntary helm, and not affiliated with the empire, and designed her rig herself) has like, double-interface. She's got the regular cables, but with an interface on the ends, and that connects to a similar interface on her ports - which actually contain synthetic nerves that're grown down directly into her body, like the 0-interface. This gets the combined advantages of being both removable and having high integration, although it's more fragile than either of the other ways, so the cables can't support her weight. Her like, head thing, is sort of similar - the goggles with straps part is removable (it's made of modified cable material that doesn't attach to her skin) and she's got extensive artificial nerve growth throughout her brain, all connected to lil connecty bits that connect to it. Because she's helming voluntarily, the psionic extraction isn't by force. It does technically have the capacity to do that (except that it doesn't physically hold her eyes open) but because she's in control, it basically just helps her pull out more power at once if she needs to, so she doesn't have the constantly a little bleeding thing.

Also, this isn't about the helm rigs, but still interesting imo - a few details about how the ships work. Spaceflight isn't through hyperspace or wormhole jumps or anything of that sort, just going really really fast through regular space. Psionic power sort of… lets shit ignore special relativity? Maybe it creates an Alcubrierre-drive type of bubble around the ship, idk. Probably not. This is homestuck not a scientifically grounded hard-scifi world, I can just say it make ship go fast. Because it's ignoring special relativity, it can go faster than the speed of light, but things work a bit different than sublight. With sublight space travel, you don't need constant acceleration to have a constant velocity - just accelerate to your desired velocity and then you can coast til slowdown time since there's no air resistance in space to slow you down. However, past lightspeed, the laws of physics themselves act like air resistance, so a helm has to constantly apply acceleration in order to keep the same velocity. Because of this, they can't get too fast - typical maximum cruising speed for the Helmsman (Shadows!Tunes and regular canon timeline both) is about 10 lightsweeps per hour (22ish lightyears per hour), but this is extremely painful for him, and impossible for other ships to keep up with, so the usual speed is lower than that. Psionic powers also enable sending transmissions at a speed faster than c - not sure how fast, but definitely faster than the ship can go. As a result of this, interstellar communication in real-time is possible, though only for psion-powered systems, so each troll-inhabited planet still has its own mostly-isolated internet. Also, while there isn't air resistance in space, there is a little bit of space dust and gas, which becomes a pretty big problem when you're going at speeds of crazy fast. To resolve this problem, helm ships have something called a "streamlining field" - basically a little psionic forcefield that surrounds the ship more closely than the shielding does (Shielding is also a psionic forcefield, but further out from the ship and less form-fitting, and only activated during combat situations. Or reentry, but big ships like the BC aren't meant for landing on planets.) and basically like… keeps it from stirring up the space it travels through. Small bits of gas and dust and whatnot pass along the streamlining and then are left exactly where they'd once been, with roughly the same velocity that they'd initially had. If the ship passes through a dense region, such as a nebula, the streamlining field ensures that it doesn't leave a ship-sized hole in the cloud of space dust. Probably does leave a little bit of disturbance in its wake though, nobody's perfect after all.

[m4y4vi]

I stan this idea very much

Warming. Contains info hazardous bias.

--

The beast of instinct.

It is a class of design concepts in my delusion magic system, in the bronze age world. There have been a lot of these beasts in this time period, that's just an excuse to slowly introduce the concept and therefore slowly brainwash readers to like my ideas, the magic of Mystique...

tl;dr of the Delusion magic system is that all ideas in your head, that have no contradiction in your entire neural circuitry... Are made manifest. The only limit of abilities is that no one here can violate the conservation of information.

The beast of instinct serves as an equal to its opposite concept in the magic system, to the various demons of reason.

--

When an intelligent creature is rid of delusion. It's inefficient neural pathways that sustain its own narrative is burned away... in order to perfect its sensory input to the motor reaction output loop...

That is the beast of instinct. A creature of pure emergent function of their respective chain of chemical reactions that sustain them. Just biology. Nothing 'alive' in it...

The beast of instinct is actually an evolution line from the 'artsy' type of poke- ahem... characters... Because all their senses converge into one level of Gestalt like act of observation...

They have reduced their craft to mere hardwired instinct. Art without interpretation. Art is in the interpretation, they cannot hold higher thought. There is no interpretation. Distilled objective sensory observation.

This act of observation and reaction loop causes neural synergy. Their movement becomes choreographed, a dance set on the rhythm of information continuity... a markov chain stitching its path only in eternal now

Think of it like your body moving in a deep flow state... You don't need to justify any action, there is no action, you just are... imagine how flight or flight works.

--

Their nervous system become more hardwired, the input signal moves to the Permutations of nerve cells that lead to motor output. No lag, no higher processing that can take them out of their contradiction free observation of reality.

--

What do they do!!!???

Well, I have some examples...

--

There was a wild 'notorious' tiger that had perfected its art, the hunt.

THE SHADOW.

Its targets could never track it while simultaneously recognising the contours of its shape, 'camouflaged'. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle flavoured.

Basically if you see it still? then it has already left the field of your active vision... And if it is tried to track? Its patterns become 'blurrier'

Scary camouflaged danger cat be real sneaky!

--

Another is, hehe boi, this shit is why I do all these

THE DEAD MAN WALKING

A malevolent bag of matter and energy performing emergent behaviour.

It's a he... I am sorry... it is an unorthodox villain character so it's fine. He 'bad boy' hot!! ... Atleast ...

This being has burned away everything. All neural pathways that are deemed inefficient.

In transcendental rage... (revenge subplot but the spicier version, powerless human on a quest for revenge, and in his hit list are some protagonists... and he's Machiavellian but unga bunga version. Bronze age min maxed sweaty ape ass.) His body has burned everything away inside it that could stop itself anymore... it began with the symptoms of never stopping, even though he's clearly spent... and the ones on his hit list are sometimes delusion magic wielders... and his condition is kinda okay but still bad... even chemically resource starved sometimes...

Think of this man moving like a Fourier transform of the music this man runs on

Or better think of it like the collapsing wave function. Its curvature flowing, being dictated as observed by objective reality.

An animated squiggly line. Extrapolate that squiggly line to 3 dimensions and you can see my boi animate in every frame of the causal reality he observe... Its slow... It's only biological ofcourse... Give it some time... Speed up the animation frame rate to our scale bruh!

++

Retrograde amnesia, Anterograde amnesia, aphantasia, there is simply nothing left in this man that can hold higher thought. Not even recognition of its own geodesical individuality. There is no separation of 'me' from the larger universe in him left.

It has all been burned away.

A martial indifference walking in perfected malevolent instinct.

++

Much like Clive Wearing, a real dude! Look him up!

Music allowed Clive to stitch his distorted continuity for a suprising good length... Otherwise, he couldn't recall his memories and cannot make new memories... long term and short term memory loss.

That is because of the 'Musicality' of our systems, a very well oiled part of circuitry in your cranium, the thing that creates meaning from pattern-ed sequence of sound... is so connected with out voluntary motor functions that we can't help but vibe. Fact! the taping of your feet!? That vibe? Craving for Chris Christodoulo synthwave? it's hardcoded!!

And Clive was a brilliant musician!! so the music part of his neural circuitry was still going good!!

Continuity in motor function? Better sense continuity of reality! All because Music moves us... quite literally.

++

Copy that shit one to one shamelessly, exaggerate, and slap it to the Dead Man Walking. Add some more too.

Aphantasia so he can't voluntarily simulate shapes in his prefrontal cortex.

Synesthesia because his reduced neural circuitry sustains the seamless sensory information convergence into a Musicality led rhythm. We all have it, it's just not required and therefore it's unique neural paths are not strengthened (unless you do have Synesthesia, in its numerous variations, my boi here has the complete one... Brain less fibry dense as normal? Remaining fibers circuitry are taken as new normal, strengthened and are then is more 'hardwired')

Since normal symbolic context driven language is not possible for its mind... Think of the music as a language his circuitry runs on... that labels all levels of raw sensory information in one neat, low mental level, yet surprisingly rational, compressed packet...

And this Musicality stitched rhythm is what keeps it in this continuity of the eternal now. A malevolent algorithm, an else-if ladder.

++

Its shitty 'machete on a good stick' glaive is a sight to behold. Not for it's crude, flavorless... Yet surprisingly ergonomic?!... Makeshift design... That is... Only if your body has a similarly chiseled epigenetic expression to his...

Its path never meets resistance. Eviceration itself left behind its tail wind. Not because its blade end is impossibly sharp, or is a 1024 times folded katana... but because its path is never allowed to meet a material that could resist its cleave... (Maybe the blade end is a 'foraged' Damascus made, short fat, Ramdao... It is in fact from the harappa side of things)

Only after he has completely 'understands' what it is fighting... is. and 'is' as in objective reality... think of it like him starting from the 0 of understanding of hiss opponent's unique induviduality... all potential behaviour and bias in shape and permutation of material... It takes time... Maybe less every other opponent that makes him reach the weapon's full 100% smooth path...

The crude weapon's sheer girth is used to balance his borderline animated smooth wonky posture... Imagine he pushes the waxy stick blade first forward while in air... It's mass and acceleration pulling his surprisingly light body, for a surprising amount of centimetes in that direction... Oh and he's also is on a very strict... very Surprisingly varied, forager diet... Only take enough resources that are recognised to 'continue efficient function' type diet... Unga bunga variant.

Shit like this happens with many different weapon flavours since he gets bland fast...

His fighting style is anything that works as long as he is the one who survives in the end. Getting better and better to the point if there is even a fraction of a chance a human of his build and calibre can win... He wins and his opponent mostly dies... Getting more efficient with each iteration of causal action, that is the speed cap of his limit.

++

The events that lead this man to this pokevolution are truly some edgy sad offscreen dark souls lore... and anime ass hell fights!

His art is the art of malevolent survival. Sad artist stuff I know...

He actually is made to go even lower from this state of being a beast of instinct... That's a secret for now!

--

Wait a minute!

If a beast of instinct runs on a sense of self expression put in continuity of motion, in reaction to obervation of objective reality... Basically doing Art without interpretation...

Does that mean art is a true emergent behaviour of the universe? Not just something one does in their cranium... Not just in their subjective simulated reality in their prefrontal cortex...

Since the nature of the beast is reduced to mere biology functioning... And biology is already a true emergent property... Duh

So is art... Real?

I mean this in terms of functioning, labeled as art... And functioning is real...

That matters more to my narrative in retrospective... because I have a concept of 'true lies' somewhere in the story...