#magnetic speed sensor

[lair-master]

Random Tricks for D&D

In D&D, tricks are like traps only weirder and less lethal. They're placed on objects by dungeon inhabitants and ambient magic. A tricked object is triggered when creatures interact with it. Roll d100 on this table for a random Trick Effect (text table under the cut).

01-03. Causes a character to speak and hear speech only in Goblin 04-06. Sprouts a mouth, bites a character, and won’t let go 07-10. Relocates and conceals itself (if found, a lantern appears) 11-13. Imposes order, replacing every d20 roll with a 10 instead of rolling 14-16. Polymorphs a character into a clone of another character 17-19. Projects a powerful magnetic field in a 15-ft. radius 20-22. Creates an extradimensional pit 23-26. Polymorphs into a black cat that characters are frightened by 27-29. Greases held objects, they’re dropped and can’t be picked up 30-32. Causes characters to sprout one additional arm or head 33-35. Taints all that surrounds it with an unidentified smell 36-38. Expels a cloud of thick purple smoke in a 20-ft.-radius sphere 39-41. Shares the senses of an accurate (or inaccurate) scrying sensor 42-44. Grants invisibility 45-47. Creates three illusory duplicates of itself and bounces around 48-50. Casts irresistible dance on the characters 51-53. Engulfs itself in a gelatinous cube that can’t deal damage 54-56. Sows discord, allies incapable of meaningful communication 57-59. When touched, summons a frog and hops 10 feet away 60-62. Produces or dispels magical darkness 63-65. Conjures a snake (if grappled, becomes a staff of the python) 66-68. Changes each character’s creature type to beast or plant 69-71. Casts resilient sphere on the characters 72-75. Binds a character in manacles (if escaped, fine clothes appear) 76-78. Cries and sheds tears, as do objects being worn or carried 79-81. Conjures a feast that is poisoned or free of poison 82-84. Inflates like a balloon, expanding until it is popped 85-87. Casts zone of truth centered on itself 88-90. Freezes a character in a block of ice (AC 13, 20 hp) 91-93. Bestows a vision of the past that involves the object 94-97. Transports characters back in time or into the future 98-100. Fuses two characters together, they move with each other at half speed

[jinjeriffic]

DCxDP Prophecy Universe Part 2

Part 1

Damian glared at the envelope. He and Father were in the process of analysing the letter for any signs of toxins, explosives or other traps. Obviously he wasn’t fool enough to open a missive from a questionable source without taking precautions. So far, all their scans had come up empty. Literally. The letter was defying all their attempts at chemical or spectroscopic testing, x-ray and magnetic resonance scans were inconclusive, it defied all properties of ordinary matter. It was frustrating. It was vexing. He was blaming magic.

For all intents and purposes, the letter looked like ordinary paper, with an ordinary wax seal, bearing the initials CW. The looping handwriting addressing it to Damian was precise and neat. Swiping the surface of the letter for chemical traces yielded no results. When Damian had tried to cut off a corner of the paper for analysis it had resisted all attempts, including a laser and a diamond headed cutting tool. Damian’s only satisfaction was that when Father had grunted and taken over the task from Damian, he had no more success than his son. As if Damian didn’t know how to perform the standard array of tests!

It certainly didn’t help that his siblings wouldn’t stop their incessant chattering!

“I’m just saying, ghosts wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve encountered, Red. I’m not sure it would even make my personal Top 5.”

It seemed gossip among heroes travelled faster than the speed of light.

“Really, Nightwing? Ghosts? It’s far more likely to be a meta with something to hide. Or a few screws loose.” Damian could practically hear the eyeroll in Drake’s voice “And since when do ghosts act as glorified mailmen?”

“I don’t know Red, since when do aliens pretend to be Kansas farmboys? C’mon, we deal with magic users all the time!”

“And lets not forget people coming back from the dead” Red Hood interjected over the open comm line.

“Magic is just science we don’t understand yet. Any sufficiently analysed magic becomes indistinguishable from science!”

“B, a little help here?”

“Hn” Father straightened up from his position at the lab table “Oracle, any progress on clearing up the footage from Robin’s mask?”

Grayson threw up his hands with a frustrated huff while Drake smirked.

“The program is almost finished rendering. Whatever scrambler they used did a real number on the video quality. I’m surprised the audio is as clear as it is.” Oracle replied.

“Hn. And the isotope tracer on the money?”

“Sorry B, no hits on the local sensors. Wherever the guy went it’s either outside Gotham or shielded somehow.” she said, mildly frustrated.

“Maybe it’s ghost magiiiiic” Drake sing-songed. Grayson lightly cuffed the back of his head, to which the former Robin responded with a firm shove. Their interaction quickly devolved into a childish tussle.

Damian gave an annoyed huff. “Don’t you two imbeciles have anything better to do?”

“Aww, we’re just here to look out for our baby brother!” Nightwing teased.

“Yeah, we gotta make sure your ghost encounter didn’t leave any lasting psychological damage!” Red Robin added.

Before Damian could retaliate for their needling, Oracle chimed in. “Uh, guys? You’re going to want to see this. Most of the footage was corrupted beyond repair, but I was able to pull some partial stills and, well…” she threw a handful of pictures up on the screen. There was artifacting marring them, but parts of the stranger were visible in each of them. Oracle magnified one that had a pretty good view of his face.

“Holy shit” Drake whispered.

Damian frowned. “What?”

“Dami, he looks like you. Just… older.” Grayson said softly.

“What are you talking about?” Damian snapped.

“Disregard the pale colouring for a second. The nose, the chin… he looks like you if you had a growth spurt,” Drake wrinkled his nose “and went through puberty.”

The commlines erupted into chaos. 

“Wait, wait, wait,” Spoiler exclaimed “are you telling me there’s an older version of Robin running around Gotham?!”

“Copy?” Batgirl inquired.

“Don’t tell me Talia cooked up Demon Brat 2.0!”

“Given that he looks older it’s more likely version 0.1 if anything,” Drake snarked, “though there’s the possibility of artificially accelerated growth rates…”

Damian had had enough. “Tt. You are ignoring the obvious - if this is some kind of supernatural entity it likely copied aspects of my appearance in an attempt to engender feelings of familiarity.” he said haughtily, pushing down the uncomfortable churning in his stomach. There was no way Mother would replace him with a cheap copy. She couldn’t! “Besides, the creature has obvious powers and neither of my bloodlines has any trace of the meta gene.”

“That’s ignoring the ghostly elephant in the room.” Grayson chimed in, “Maybe it’s a dead ancestor?”

Drake gave their older brother an annoyed look “Even a time travelling descendant from the future is more likely than that. And delivering a ‘prophecy’ to boot?”

Oracle pulled up an aged up picture of Damian next to the stranger’s, highlighting several reference points. “On closer inspection, there’s a couple of discrepancies. The cheekbones for one - Robin definitely takes after his mother, while our mystery meta looks more like… well… Robin’s grandmother on the paternal side.” she finished hesitantly. “B?”

They turned to look at Batman, who had remained silent during the whole exchange. If they hadn’t known him so well they would have thought him unaffected, but the tightening around his mouth betrayed his agitation.

“There’s no use in pointless speculation until we have more data to work from,” he growled, “Oracle, look for any reports of a meta matching the target. Since our regular methods have failed to yield results, I will contact the JLD about running tests on the letter.” He turned to Drake, “Red Robin, see what you can find on recent League activities. If this is another scheme by Ra’s or Talia we need to know about it.”

“The last thing we need is more demon spawn running around!” Red Hood groaned over the comms.

Damian was furious. This was absurd! To even indulge the possibility that that creature was in any way related to him was making him feel like he had swallowed battery acid. He was the Demon’s Heir! He was not replaceable! There was only one thing to do.

“Robin? Stop!”

He ignored his Father’s shout. He stomped over to the lab table, snatched up the envelope and broke the seal.

Nothing happened.

He unfolded the paper and saw the same handwriting that had been on the outside.

Brother of blood, brother of soul

Never buried but already mourned

In lightning and ice the scorned child returned

To strike down the Demon’s Head

With all that Death earned

Damian’s hand shook. He reread the lines over and over again, refusing to comprehend. He could feel his Father standing behind him, scrutinising the letter as well.

“Son…”

Suddenly, the paper burst into green flames, going up into smoke that dissipated unnaturally quickly.

Silence reigned for a few moments. Then…

“Well that was needlessly melodramatic” Nightwing remarked.

Part 3

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Solar is a market for (financial) lemons

There are only four more days left in my Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Rooftop solar is the future, but it's also a scam. It didn't have to be, but America decided that the best way to roll out distributed, resilient, clean and renewable energy was to let Wall Street run the show. They turned it into a scam, and now it's in terrible trouble. which means we are in terrible trouble.

There's a (superficial) good case for turning markets loose on the problem of financing the rollout of an entirely new kind of energy provision across a large and heterogeneous nation. As capitalism's champions (and apologists) have observed since the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, markets harness together the work of thousands or even millions of strangers in pursuit of a common goal, without all those people having to agree on a single approach or plan of action. Merely dangle the incentive of profit before the market's teeming participants and they will align themselves towards it, like iron filings all snapping into formation towards a magnet.

But markets have a problem: they are prone to "reward hacking." This is a term from AI research: tell your AI that you want it to do something, and it will find the fastest and most efficient way of doing it, even if that method is one that actually destroys the reason you were pursuing the goal in the first place.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/engineering/failure-modes-in-machine-learning

For example: if you use an AI to come up with a Roomba that doesn't bang into furniture, you might tell that Roomba to avoid collisions. However, the Roomba is only designed to register collisions with its front-facing sensor. Turn the Roomba loose and it will quickly hit on the tactic of racing around the room in reverse, banging into all your furniture repeatedly, while never registering a single collision:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html

This is sometimes called the "alignment problem." High-speed, probabilistic systems that can't be fully predicted in advance can very quickly run off the rails. It's an idea that pre-dates AI, of course – think of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But AI produces these perverse outcomes at scale…and so does capitalism.

Many sf writers have observed the odd phenomenon of corporate AI executives spinning bad sci-fi scenarios about their AIs inadvertently destroying the human race by spinning off in some kind of paperclip-maximizing reward-hack that reduces the whole planet to grey goo in order to make more paperclips. This idea is very implausible (to say the least), but the fact that so many corporate leaders are obsessed with autonomous systems reward-hacking their way into catastrophe tells us something about corporate executives, even if it has no predictive value for understanding the future of technology.

Both Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross have theorized that the source of these anxieties isn't AI – it's corporations. Corporations are these equilibrium-seeking complex machines that can't be programmed, only prompted. CEOs know that they don't actually run their companies, and it haunts them, because while they can decompose a company into all its constituent elements – capital, labor, procedures – they can't get this model-train set to go around the loop:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Stross calls corporations "Slow AI," a pernicious artificial life-form that acts like a pedantic genie, always on the hunt for ways to destroy you while still strictly following your directions. Markets are an extremely reliable way to find the most awful alignment problems – but by the time they've surfaced them, they've also destroyed the thing you were hoping to improve with your market mechanism.

Which brings me back to solar, as practiced in America. In a long Time feature, Alana Semuels describes the waves of bankruptcies, revealed frauds, and even confiscation of homeowners' houses arising from a decade of financialized solar:

https://time.com/6565415/rooftop-solar-industry-collapse/

The problem starts with a pretty common finance puzzle: solar pays off big over its lifespan, saving the homeowner money and insulating them from price-shocks, emergency power outages, and other horrors. But solar requires a large upfront investment, which many homeowners can't afford to make. To resolve this, the finance industry extends credit to homeowners (lets them borrow money) and gets paid back out of the savings the homeowner realizes over the years to come.

But of course, this requires a lot of capital, and homeowners still might not see the wisdom of paying even some of the price of solar and taking on debt for a benefit they won't even realize until the whole debt is paid off. So the government moved in to tinker with the markets, injecting prompts into the slow AIs to see if it could coax the system into producing a faster solar rollout – say, one that didn't have to rely on waves of deadly power-outages during storms, heatwaves, fires, etc, to convince homeowners to get on board because they'd have experienced the pain of sitting through those disasters in the dark.

The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you.

These hustlers tricked old and vulnerable people into signing up for arrangements that saw them saddled with ballooning debt payments (after a honeymoon period at a super-low teaser rate), backstopped by liens on their houses, which meant that missing a payment could mean losing your home. They underprovisioned the solar that they installed, leaving homeowners with sky-high electrical bills on top of those debt payments.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it shares a lot of DNA with the subprime housing bubble, where fast-talking salesmen conned vulnerable people into taking out predatory mortgages with sky-high rates that kicked in after a honeymoon period, promising buyers that the rising value of housing would offset any losses from that high rate.

These fraudsters knew they were acquiring toxic assets, but it didn't matter, because they were bundling up those assets into "collateralized debt obligations" – exotic black-box "derivatives" that could be sold onto pension funds, retail investors, and other suckers.

This is likewise true of solar, where the tax-credits, subsidies and other income streams that these new solar installations offgassed were captured and turned into bonds that were sold into the financial markets, producing an insatiable demand for more rooftop solar installations, and that meant lots more fraud.

Which brings us to today, where homeowners across America are waking up to discover that their power bills have gone up thanks to their solar arrays, even as the giant, financialized solar firms that supplied them are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to waves of defaults. Meanwhile, all those bonds that were created from solar installations are ticking timebombs, sitting on institutions' balance-sheets, waiting to go blooie once the defaults cross some unpredictable threshold.

Markets are very efficient at mobilizing capital for growth opportunities. America has a lot of rooftop solar. But 70% of that solar isn't owned by the homeowner – it's owned by a solar company, which is to say, "a finance company that happens to sell solar":

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solarcity-maintains-34-residential-solar-market-share-in-1h-2015/406552/

And markets are very efficient at reward hacking. The point of any market is to multiply capital. If the only way to multiply the capital is through building solar, then you get solar. But the finance sector specializes in making the capital multiply as much as possible while doing as little as possible on the solar front. Huge chunks of those federal subsidies were gobbled up by junk-fees and other financial tricks – sometimes more than 100%.

The solar companies would be in even worse trouble, but they also tricked all their victims into signing binding arbitration waivers that deny them the power to sue and force them to have their grievances heard by fake judges who are paid by the solar companies to decide whether the solar companies have done anything wrong. You will not be surprised to learn that the arbitrators are reluctant to find against their paymasters.

I had a sense that all this was going on even before I read Semuels' excellent article. We bought a solar installation from Treeium, a highly rated, giant Southern California solar installer. We got an incredibly hard sell from them to get our solar "for free" – that is, through these financial arrangements – but I'd just sold a book and I had cash on hand and I was adamant that we were just going to pay upfront. As soon as that was clear, Treeium's ardor palpably cooled. We ended up with a grossly defective, unsafe and underpowered solar installation that has cost more than $10,000 to bring into a functional state (using another vendor). I briefly considered suing Treeium (I had insisted on striking the binding arbitration waiver from the contract) but in the end, I decided life was too short.

The thing is, solar is amazing. We love running our house on sunshine. But markets have proven – again and again – to be an unreliable and even dangerous way to improve Americans' homes and make them more resilient. After all, Americans' homes are the largest asset they are apt to own, which makes them irresistible targets for scammers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

That's why the subprime scammers targets Americans' homes in the 2000s, and it's why the house-stealing fraudsters who blanket the country in "We Buy Ugly Homes" are targeting them now. Same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where the money is":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/

America can and should electrify and solarize. There are serious logistical challenges related to sourcing the underlying materials and deploying the labor, but those challenges are grossly overrated by people who assume the only way we can approach them is though markets, those monkey's paw curses that always find a way to snatch profitable defeat from the jaws of useful victory.

To get a sense of how the engineering challenges of electrification could be met, read McArthur fellow Saul Griffith's excellent popular engineering text Electrify:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And to really understand the transformative power of solar, don't miss Deb Chachra's How Infrastructure Works, where you'll learn that we could give every person on Earth the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, but colder) by capturing just 0.4% of the solar rays that reach Earth's surface:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

But we won't get there with markets. All markets will do is create incentives to cheat. Think of the market for "carbon offsets," which were supposed to substitute markets for direct regulation, and which produced a fraud-riddled market for lemons that sells indulgences to our worst polluters, who go on destroying our planet and our future:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

We can address the climate emergency, but not by prompting the slow AI and hoping it doesn't figure out a way to reward-hack its way to giant profits while doing nothing. Founder and chairman of Goodleap, Hayes Barnard, is one of the 400 richest people in the world – a fortune built on scammers who tricked old people into signing away their homes for nonfunctional solar):

https://www.forbes.com/profile/hayes-barnard/?sh=40d596362b28

If governments are willing to spend billions incentivizing rooftop solar, they can simply spend billions installing rooftop solar – no Slow AI required.

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28 - TOMORROW!) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/#sign-here

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image:

Future Atlas/www.futureatlas.com/blog (modified)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/3996366952

--

CC BY 2.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

J Doll (modified)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Sky_%28140451293%29.jpeg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[seat-safety-switch]

When someone tells you that they put their ducks in a row, don't listen to them. Waterfowl, and ducks in particular, are nearly impossible to align. Even if you only have two ducks – which is hardly anything to brag about – the axis formed by placing them side by side will last about five minutes before they're running off to eat snails in your yard.

Hello, I'm Seat Safety Switch, and this is Cosmos. We found the rights to the show at a garage sale. Even though the owner tried to chase us down on foot to get them back when he realized what happened, it turns out that Medium-Sized Mike's wheezing 3-speed-auto first-gen Dodge Neon was still much faster than a middle-aged dude wearing Vibrams who didn't pay enough attention to ominous folders marked "PBS Legal" before selling them for fifty cents.

In this, our spaceship of the imagination, we will soon visit: ducks. Humanity has long lived aside these quacking nightmares, but we don't know what makes them tick. Even accomplished biologists and veterinarians have looked inside them and written what I am assured is the equivalent to a Haynes manual, but we still don't know why ducks do what they do. The only thing we do know? Motherfuckers hate being in rows.

Some think that it's because of the magnetic sensors in their bills, which also force them into sleep mode when you accidentally bump them against the phone in your pocket when you're trying to steal their bread from the pond. Others believe that the ducks are merely more understanding than most animals of their true lack of purpose in the disordered chaos of the universe. Perhaps we'll never know. The one thing we do know is that anyone who tells you that they cleaned their garage up is a total liar. I guarantee you that if you go over there right now, and open up any of their cupboards, a ton of hoarded tools and paint will fall out. Ducks. Don't trust 'em.

[houd1n1]

[SPECIALIZED]TURBO LEVO SL Comp (Update1)

[RD] [SRAM]GX EAGLE AXS [CASSETTE] [SHIMANO]CS-M7100 12s 10-51T(024681483951) [HASNDLE] [NITTO]B840AA-SSB [STEM] [THOMSON]MTB STEM X4 31.8 40mm 0°BLACK(SME174BK) [THOMSON]STEM CAP SMA001BK BK [WHEEL] [INDUSTRY NINE]HYDRA Hub F&R BOOST [FORMOSA]Aluminum Rim BLACK 29in 35mm幅 32H [HUTCHISON]SKELETON RACING LAB 29.0x2.15 [Galfer]Speed Sensor Magnet for E-bike(MG002) [BRAKE] [MAGURA]MT7 Pro brakes Black [SEAT CLAMP] [Wolf Tooth]Seatpost Clamp Purple(38.6mm) [SEAT POST] [BIKEYOKE]Revive MAX 3.0 dropper seatpost Black (381 mm, 34.9 mm, 125mm) [PEDAL] [CRANKBROTHERS]STAMP1 フラット ペダル S(パープル)

[colinmkl]

Kamen Rider NRV Lore Dump!

Manticore

Manticore LLC is a major medical technology company. Publicly, they are most known for their artificial organs and limb prosthesis as well as several other medical devices and equipment used in hospitals worldwide. Less widely publicized are their numerous military contracts, developing cutting edge medical treatment technologies but also advanced weapons, drones, and other offensive hardware.

Nanoderm

The scientific breakthrough that lead Manticore to dominate in the field of med-tech is the invention of micro-sensors that are capable of reading brain signals in the nervous system and translating them into data a computer can interpret with absolute precision. These microscopic sensors can be integrated into programmable nanomachines that interlock in a mesh that forms durable skin-like material called Nanoderm.  If an exposed section of human tissue is covered in Nanoderm and then allowed to heal, the Nanoderm will become integrated with the tissue like a layer of natural skin. Any impulses or signals sent by the brain to that part of the body will be received by the Nanoderm and translated into data. That data can then be read as motor commands by a Manticore prosthesis. Basic prosthesis models can receive this data via magnetic nodes embedded in the surface of the Nanoderm but more advanced models, capable of finer dexterity/expanded functionality, require a “bone spike,” a rod-like data plug that interfaces with a port in the Nanoderm area that is connected to more advanced sensors. The socket and sensor hardware is imbedded in the body through a surgical procedure.

The catch with the Nanoderm system is it must be applied to the body before the exposed tissue heals over and the exposed nerve endings have a chance to close off, or in other words, while the wound is “fresh”, otherwise the healed tissue must be cut away and a fresh wound made. This means that in emergency situations a patient or their next of kin must make a snap decision to undergo the expensive Nanoderm compatibility surgery as part of their emergency treatment. Of course some insurance plans will cover some or all of this cost. Additionally Manticore has deals with some insurance providers that the surgery come standard with higher end coverage plans, forgoing the need for patient consent. Manticore has exclusive patent rights to the Nanoderm system, meaning once you are Nanoderm compatible, you are locked into the Manticore ecosystem of prosthesis and devices. Additionally your devises can only be serviced by Manticore certified technicians and only Manticore doctors are trained in Nanoderm patient care.

Remote Command (RC)

Manticore is a sprawling corporation with many secrets. One such secret is the Remote Command program. A project Manticore has been working on behind closed doors, the Remote Command program involves research into sending brain signals over great distances without a physical connection between the sensor and the receiving devise. With RC a person could control a prosthetic arm in another part of the world as though it were part of their body. This is achieved by broadcasting the impulses across a proprietary electromagnetic wave length to the receiving nodes. The signal travels point to point and back again at light speed. The potential RC has for the future of drone warfare is staggering, not to mention the potential for profit.

Sensitive as this information is, there’s another layer. All Nanoderm currently in use by people around the world is capable of receiving Remote Command. With the right inputs it can reshape its self, self-replicate, and even, under certain conditions, send signals back to the user’s brain, causing brain damage or, theoretically, controlling them. Whether this functionality of Nanoderm was an intentional feature or not is unknown to anyone currently employed at Manticore but the company has no pans currently to use the Nanoderm in this way. What is known, however, is that if this function ever becomes public knowledge it would be disastrous for Manticore, not to mention the chaos that would ensue if a bad actor were to exploit this function for malicious purposes.

Manticore Special Security (Spec-Sec)

Manticore LLC has secrets, and it has enemies. To protect its secrets, combat its enemies, address the threats to public safety those things pose, (and protect its corporate interests), Manticore formed the Manticore Special Security Division. More than just your standard private security outfit, Spec-Sec is a fully equipped task force and strike force designed to identify, target, track, confront, and nullify any threat to the company and its assets. Thanks to Manticore’s history of generous donations and good standing with local police forces, the Spec-Sec Division is able to operate with a certain degree of discretion, allowing them to carry out operations without interference from police or the legal system. Lead by Special Security Director Sloane, her hand-picked crack team of Special Officers have carried out dozens of high risk operations with ruthless efficacy and, so-far, minimal casualties. Spec-Sec utilizes the most cutting edge technology and weaponry Manticore has, often before it’s even close to market ready. In some cases necessity dictates that Spec-Sec operations serve as ad hoc field tests for experimental equipment.

Core Drivers, Data Boosters, and the Kamen Rider program

The Core Driver is a piece of technology that was developed as part of research into the use of Nanoderm to enhance a soldier’s physical performance on the battlefield. The concept was to temporarily cover the user’s entire body in a layer of Nanoderm mesh that could respond to the signals from the user’s brain in such a way that would increase their strength, speed, perception, and reflexes. The solution was the Core Driver, a device that would house the billions of Nanoderm nanomachines and serve as the computational core for the whole mesh network. Along with the Core Driver was the Data Booster, a flash drive-like device shaped like a syringe. The data booster contained the information that told the nanomachines to deploy from the Core Driver and cover the user. Additionally the Booster came with its own payload of nanomachines that, when the plunger of the syringe was depressed, would also be deployed through the Core Diver and take the form of armor and weapons. Basically, a user need only insert the Data Booster into the Core Diver, clearly speak a voice authentication phrase, and depress the plunger and they would instantly be wearing a powerful yet flexible armored body suit. The project was called the “Kamen Rider program” after the masked visage of the user’s armored faceplate (“Kamen” being the Japanese word for “mask”).

The Project had its drawbacks, however. For one a user would need to already be Nanoderm compatible for the suit to work at all, meaning, practically speaking, the user would need to be an amputee, and the prospect of convincing soldiers to sacrifice a limb to use the Driver was deemed a “hard sell” and the idea of a approaching a freshly maimed soldier with the offer of further combat, well, that wouldn’t be a good look either. The second and most important drawback was the simple fact that the Kamen Rider program was far, FAR too expensive to be profitable, and the thousands of man hours it took to produce just one Core Driver meant mass producing them to sell by the battalion, as Manticore had planned, was simply out of the question.

The Kamen Rider Program was not completely abandoned, however. The first completed Core Driver, designation SVR (Special Versatility Rider model or “Sever” colloquially) is currently coded to Director Sloane of Spec-Sec, who happens to be a double transfemeral amputee. With the Director’s input, the device and the suit itself have been modified heavily over its years of use. It now features the ability for additional Data Boosters to be employed, loaded with weapons and tools in the form of appendages that attach to highly advanced versions of Bone Spike sockets on the suit at the amputation sites of the Rider’s body. The nerve signal enhancing properties of the suit allows the Rider to manipulate these complex, non-human-like appendages with a natural ease and minimal adjustment period.

A second Core Driver has just recently been put to use in the field at Spec-Sec. The first Kamen Rider designed from the ground up with Spec-Sec modifications. Designation NRV (Neo Rider Variant or “Nerve” colloquially) is encoded to the Division’s newest member, Special Officer Nat Agbayani. A right shoulder disarticulation amputee, he was promoted to the Special Security Division from the internship program in the research wing by the COO of Manticore himself… wait what? That can’t be right…

The existence of any other Core Drivers, in use or otherwise, is classified.

Thanks for reading

[artbyrobot]

Avoiding Back EMF Feedback Need for BLDC Motor Controller

I had a eureka moment recently that I wanted to share. So basically I was thinking that I may not need to read back emf from a BLDC motor in my custom motor controller. Instead, I can have it just mindlessly advance the motor at a fairly low power mode by default and a default speed of advancement of the rotating electromagnetic field. Without feedback, it may overshoot, rotating faster than the output shaft and thereby skipping some turns. That is the reason why people want to read the back emf to avoid that issue and instead only advance the electromagnetic field forward at just the right moment - the zero point crossing moment. But I was thinking about it and realized that is not really necessary. For this application, if skips start happening, it doesn't really matter. To the degree that skips are happening, the motor will stop advancing the load with its winch system and this will show up when readings are taken by the potentiometer measuring the final joint angle. If alot of skips were taking place, the advancement of the potentiometer would not match the angle it thought it would be at were no skips involved and this would tell the motor controller that it has been having skips and give it an idea of how many skips as well based on the divergence of projected joint angle by now and actual joint angle by now. So then it would turn down the speed a bit or turn up the amount of on time of its pwm and thereby put more force into the rotating magnetic field to give a bit more oomph to the motor. It would then track progress by way of the potentiometer again and see if that solved it. If it still is skipping a fair amount that could indicate the load is more than expected or there is a jam in the system or it just needs more power and it could turn up the power more and slow the speed down more on its rotating magnetic field overall speed and try again. Rinse and repeat until it finds the sweet spot or finds out it simply cannot lift the load because its too heavy or there's a jam in the pulleys or w/e. So in a way then this would give it collision detection as well as the ability to have an idea of how heavy loads are based on how much it had to slow down and add forces to get the joint to move. I then see no real need to implement ANY back emf reading NOR any need for hall effect sensors etc to monitor rotation progress. The potentiometer on the final joint the motor is actuating is enough clues to tweak the rotating magnetic field to our satisfaction. By eliminating the back emf circuitry we greatly simplify the schematic of the motor controller, suffer negligible performance hit, and eliminate a lot of processing for the microcontroller chip handling the logic of many bldc motors simultaneously which means it can handle more bldc motors by itself. It doesn't get bogged down so much by having to read in all the zero point crossings as part of its routine. This saves on processing demands and processing speed demands. Getting this all to work in real time and perfecting it will require a fair bit of trial and error but this is how I'm seeing it working out and my proposed solution for simplifying things. I think it should work great! I'm excited to have much more dumbed down circuitry like this and to get to working on this soon. Just have to finish making my pulleys and then this electronics development can get underway again. That's why I've been thinking ahead about it a fair bit since it seems I'm likely nearing the end of solving the pulleys situation soon.

[radioactive-earthshine]

No, not all options are here, I couldn't fit all of them so I selected those that I found most interesting to me.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Europa Clipper: Millions of miles down, instruments deploying

NASA's Europa Clipper, which launched Oct. 14 on a journey to Jupiter's moon Europa, is already 13 million miles (20 million kilometers) from Earth. Two science instruments have deployed hardware that will remain at attention, extending out from the spacecraft, for the next decade—through the cruise to Jupiter and the entire prime mission.

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched it away from Earth's gravity, and now the spacecraft is zooming along at 22 miles per second (35 kilometers per second) relative to the sun.

Europa Clipper is the largest spacecraft NASA has ever developed for a planetary mission. It will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) to arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and in 2031 will begin a series of 49 flybys, using a suite of instruments to gather data that will tell scientists if the icy moon and its internal ocean have the conditions needed to harbor life.

For now, the information mission teams are receiving from the spacecraft is strictly engineering data (the science will come later), telling them how the hardware is operating. Things are looking good. The team has a checklist of actions the spacecraft needs to take as it travels deeper into space.

Boom times

Shortly after launch, the spacecraft deployed its massive solar arrays, which extend the length of a basketball court. Next on the list was the magnetometer's boom, which uncoiled from a canister mounted on the spacecraft body, extending a full 28 feet (8.5 meters).

To confirm that all went well with the boom deployment, the team relied on data from the magnetometer's three sensors. Once the spacecraft is at Jupiter, these sensors will measure the magnetic field around Europa, both confirming the presence of the ocean thought to be under the moon's icy crust and telling scientists about its depth and salinity.

On the radar

After the magnetometer, the spacecraft deployed several antennas for the radar instrument. Now extending crosswise from the solar arrays, the four high-frequency antennas form what look like two long poles, each measuring 57.7 feet (17.6 meters) long. Eight rectangular very-high-frequency antennas, each 9 feet (2.76 meters) long, were also deployed—two on the two solar arrays.

"It's an exciting time on the spacecraft, getting these key deployments done," said Europa Clipper project manager Jordan Evans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Most of what the team is focusing on now is understanding the small, interesting things in the data that help them understand the behavior of the spacecraft on a deeper level. That's really good to see."

Instrument checkout

The remaining seven instruments will be powered on and off through December and January so that engineers can check their health. Several instruments, including the visible imager and the gas and dust mass spectrometers, will keep their protective covers closed for the next three or so years to guard against potential damage from the sun during Europa Clipper's time in the inner solar system.

Mars-bound

Once all the instruments and engineering subsystems have been checked out, mission teams will shift their focus to Mars. On March 1, 2025, Europa Clipper will reach Mars's orbit and begin to loop around the Red Planet, using the planet's gravity to gain speed. (This effect is similar to how a ball thrown at a moving train will bounce off the train in another direction at a higher speed.) Mission navigators have already completed one trajectory correction maneuver, as planned, to get the spacecraft on the precise course.

At Mars, scientists plan to turn on the spacecraft's thermal imager to capture multicolored images of Mars as a test operation. They also plan to collect data with the radar instrument so engineers can be sure it's operating as expected.

The spacecraft will perform another gravity assist in December 2026, swooping by Earth before making the remainder of the long journey to the Jupiter system. At that time, the magnetometer will measure Earth's magnetic field, calibrating the instrument.

IMAGE: An artist’s concept of NASA’s Europa Clipper shows the spacecraft in silhouette against Europa’s surface, with the magnetometer boom fully deployed at top and the antennas for the radar instrument extending out from the solar arrays. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[fernfrond-inks]

This is my very messy design process for Bumblebee. I wanted to incorporate Micheal Bay’s antenna and doorwings. Which tie into to his namesake. Plus they’re very expressive, and I feel that expressiveness suits Bee.

I read Bob Budiansky g1 profile on Bee to try and understand him better. It said that he was in espionage, which surprised me since he is usually depicted as a Scout that graduates to warrior. Interestingly his weakness on the profile was being physically frail. So a small, quick ambush fighter was born.

The thing that really got the creative juices flowing was that he has good sensors for on land and WATER reconnaissance. So here is an aquatically capable Bumblebee.

His altmode is his cybertron one from the g1 cartoon. It hovers by the use of magnets since cybertron is a metal planet, this is quite handy. The magnets are the blue circles.

Bee has vents to cool his internals. His vents have the added ability to provide propulsion for liquid based travel. On his alt mode these vents serve as his front grill and back grill, allowing him to shoot forward and backward. At speed.

These propulsion vents can be used in root mode as well they’re on the back of his calf’s, forearms, shoulders, and upper back.

His door wings are on the back of his vehicle mode where they function like the tail feathers of a bird.

Mictransformations! His alt mode has one where the ‘wing’ part of his alt mode segments into four independent parts. This gives him more mobility for uneven terrain. These can adjust to currents (land, sea, EM) while simultaneously gathering information on said currents.

Overall Bee is entirely a multi terrain information gatherer. Perfect for infiltration and espionage. Which accomplishes my design goals. Also I love the fact that his alt mode looks like both a string ray and a pupa. It’s awesome!

[reverieshifts]

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑪𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒑𝒕. 𝟐: 𝒅𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒈𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒔

𝒔𝒄𝒊-𝒇𝒊 𝒅𝒓

𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝒄𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒇𝒊𝒈𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏

Class: Modified mid-class freighter (original designation untraceable)

Dimensions: Compact and fast—built more for speed and evasion than cargo bulk

Original Use: Unknown. Judging by the design mix, she may have once been a light cargo hauler, but at this point, almost nothing about her is stock.

𝒉𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒓𝒎𝒐𝒓

Plating: Mismatched but reinforced. Some hull panels are standard titanium composite, others are salvaged from military vessels. I once found a piece stamped with a defense contractor logo. Soren played dumb.

Damage Markers: Scars from asteroid grazes, plasma burns, and at least one railgun strike that tore through the starboard side before being patched with a piece of what appears to be an old satellite dish.

Stealth Coating: A stolen stealth coating on one side (only one side), giving her a bizarre half-gloss appearance when flying in certain light.

𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒖𝒍𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒖𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒃𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚

Here’s where things get... illegal.

Engine Type: Tri-core fusion drive (overclocked illegally)

Thrusters: Multi-angle vectoring thrusters scavenged from a racing skiff

Hyperspace Drive: Installed after-market. Very not standard. Definitely not licensed. Burns through fuel like sin, but gets the job done.

Maneuverability: Shockingly agile for her size. She’s not built to win dogfights—she’s built to not get hit.

Speed: Capable of outpacing most patrol cruisers and nearly anything in her class. Soren once escaped a blockade by flipping her vertical, killing main thrust, and gliding between two gunships with only manual microthrusters. Clemmy didn’t love that. But she did it.

Max Velocity: Classified (by Soren) as “if she shakes apart, you pushed her too far.”

Signature Trick: Emergency micro-bursts for fast stops or rapid angular shifts—great for dodging, terrible for unsecured passengers.

𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒔

While not technically a warship, Clemmy has teeth—and Soren is not shy about using them.

Primary Weapons:

Retractable twin plasma cannons mounted under the nose (illegally modified for rapid cycling)

Hidden turret along the dorsal fin with full 360° tracking (camouflaged beneath sensor shielding)

Secondary Systems:

Ion net disruptor (used for disabling ships mid-chase)

Forward grappling harpoon (officially for salvage… unofficially for “creative boarding solutions”)

Mod Notes: All weapons have been internally rewired for faster charge times and energy efficiency. Soren insists it’s “completely safe.” The ship disagrees. The floor near the control relay is still scorched.

𝒅𝒆𝒇𝒆𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒔

Shielding: Layered energy-dispersal field adapted from outdated military specs. It’s finicky, but when tuned right, it can absorb an entire volley without so much as a flicker.

Hull Reinforcement: Polyceramic inner shell under the patchwork hull. Not factory standard. Probably military surplus. Possibly stolen.

Cloaking:

Partial stealth mode: One side only. Meant for short bursts, ambushes, or dodging sensor sweeps. Jax once described it as “trying to hide behind your own arm.”

Signature Dampeners: Basic-grade dampeners, good enough to fool low-level scans or confuse weapons locks for a few seconds.

Countermeasures:

Chaff and flare deployment for missile evasion

ECM scrambler array that definitely violates at least five galactic communication laws

Reinforcement Field: Short-range gravitic pulse projector, used to knock boarding parties off balance or repel magnetic tethers.

𝒏𝒂𝒗𝒊𝒈𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒑𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈

Primary Navigation System: Jury-rigged hybrid between an outdated freighter nav-core and a racing AI module. The interface is messy, but the calculations are blindingly fast—when they don’t crash mid-jump.

Manual Controls: Everything important is mapped to tactile controls. Soren doesn’t trust full automation. If the nav AI glitches mid-dive, he wants to feel the override.

Autopilot: Exists. Technically. Mostly used as a glorified parking brake or when Soren needs to sleep for 20 minutes in a safe orbit.

Charting Software: Half-legal, half-pirated. Capable of plotting hyperspace routes through narrow, high-risk corridors that most ships avoid.

Backup Systems: A wall-mounted hardcopy star chart in the cockpit. Just in case. Zia thinks this is hilarious. Soren calls it “responsible.”

𝒅𝒐𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒕𝒚 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔

Docking Clamps: Can attach to standard civilian ports, refueling stations, and most illicit trade hubs. May need to be “persuaded” into alignment.

Shuttle Bay: None. She’s too compact for internal hangars. Instead, she has one reinforced top-hatch cradle rigged for small detachable pods—used rarely, and only when absolutely necessary.

Airlocks:

Main Port: Standard-sized, sealed, and usually a bit stubborn when opening.

Secondary Hatch: Hidden behind a supply wall in the engine bay. Used for stealth entries and exits.

𝒓𝒆𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒎𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒏𝒆𝒆𝒅𝒔

Routine Repairs: Constant. Something is always groaning, leaking, sparking, or “just about to give out but not yet.”

Spare Parts: Stored in crates scattered across the ship—engine parts in the pantry, coolant lines under the bench seat, wiring spools in my hydroponics pod (which I do not appreciate).

Self-Diagnostics: Unreliable. The system either reports “everything is fine” (it’s not), or starts shrieking about seven simultaneous reactor leaks (there are none). Soren usually ignores it and just listens to the hum of the engine to diagnose problems.

Repairs in Flight: Doable. Often necessary. Soren has made mid-warp hull welds while dangling from a tether. Zia once had to climb into the bulkhead to manually restart a fried fuse bank after a flare surge.

Critical Weakness: The fuel converter. If anything’s going to go first, it’s that. It’s been patched, rewired, and coaxed with offerings—but one day, it’s going to die loudly.

𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒎 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏

Power Grid: Custom-wired. Inconsistent. If too many systems are running at once (say, stealth mode, shields, and weapons), things start flickering. Choosing what gets power is sometimes a strategic decision—or a desperate one.

AI Integration: No full AI. Just a scattered handful of voice-assist systems, diagnostic subroutines, and a navigation core that occasionally asks Soren if he’s “sure about that” when he plots something stupid.

Voice Recognition: Primarily responds to Soren’s voice, but Zia has jury-rigged access to certain commands—especially life support, lighting, and doors.

𝒅𝒐𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈/𝒃𝒐𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔

Hard-dock only. No fancy mag-coupling or remote landers.

Zero-G Transfer Capability: Yes, with magnetic grip points and a manually sealed transition tunnel.

Boarding Defense: Reinforcement field, sealed bulkheads, and at least three blasters stashed near the doors “just in case.”

𝒔𝒚𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒎 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒔

Most systems are custom-built, hotwired, or frankensteined together. Only Soren knows how everything works—and even he sometimes has to hit things to make them run.

Diagnostics require manual calibration. The ship’s internal sensors are either hyper-sensitive or utterly dead.

Flight path records? Wiped. Regularly. On principle.

𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒓𝒕:

Clementine might look like a rustbucket. But she’s got the firepower of a private gunship, the speed of a racer, and the evasive instincts of a hunted animal. She doesn’t win fights with brute force—she wins them by being faster, smarter, and just illegal enough to stay one step ahead of the galaxy’s worst.

𝒆𝒙𝒕𝒓𝒂

Ok, I'm gonna be honest here, my friend who's really into sci-fi had to help me write most of this, because as I've said before, I know like nothing about it. So all the fancy technical stuff in here was all him.

@aprilshiftz @lalalian

[kingme1002]

Human augmentation:

refers to the use of technology to enhance physical, cognitive, or sensory abilities beyond natural human limits. Augmentation can be temporary or permanent and can range from simple tools to advanced cybernetic implants. Here are some key ways a person can be augmented:

### **1. Physical Augmentation**

- **Prosthetics & Exoskeletons**: Advanced prosthetic limbs (bionic arms/legs) and powered exoskeletons can restore or enhance mobility and strength.

- **Muscle & Bone Enhancements**: Synthetic tendons, reinforced bones, or muscle stimulators can improve physical performance.

- **Wearable Tech**: Smart clothing, haptic feedback suits, and strength-assist devices can enhance endurance and dexterity.

### **2. Sensory Augmentation**

- **Enhanced Vision**: Bionic eyes (retinal implants), night-vision contact lenses, or AR/VR headsets can extend visual capabilities.

- **Enhanced Hearing**: Cochlear implants or ultrasonic hearing devices can improve or restore hearing.

- **Tactile & Haptic Feedback**: Sensors that provide enhanced touch or vibration feedback for better interaction with machines or virtual environments.

- **Olfactory & Taste Augmentation**: Experimental tech could enhance or modify smell/taste perception.

### **3. Cognitive Augmentation**

- **Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs)**: Neural implants (e.g., Neuralink, neuroprosthetics) can improve memory, learning speed, or direct brain-to-machine communication.

- **Nootropics & Smart Drugs**: Chemical enhancements that boost focus, memory, or mental processing.

- **AI Assistants**: Wearable or implantable AI that aids decision-making or information retrieval.

### **4. Genetic & Biological Augmentation**

- **Gene Editing (CRISPR)**: Modifying DNA to enhance physical traits, disease resistance, or longevity.

- **Synthetic Biology**: Engineered tissues, organs, or blood substitutes for improved performance.

- **Biohacking**: DIY biology experiments, such as implanting magnets in fingers for sensing electromagnetic fields.

### **5. Cybernetic & Digital Augmentation**

- **Embedded Chips (RFID, NFC)**: Subdermal implants for digital identity, keyless access, or data storage.

- **Digital Twins & Cloud Integration**: Real-time health monitoring via embedded sensors linked to cloud AI.

- **Neural Lace**: A mesh-like brain implant for seamless human-AI interaction (still experimental).

### **6. Performance-Enhancing Substances**

- **Stem Cell Therapies**: For faster healing and regeneration.

- **Synthetic Hormones**: To boost strength, endurance, or recovery.

- **Nanotechnology**: Microscopic machines for repairing cells or enhancing biological functions.

### **Ethical & Social Considerations**

- **Privacy & Security**: Risks of hacking or surveillance with embedded tech.

- **Inequality**: Augmentation could widen gaps between enhanced and non-enhanced individuals.

- **Identity & Humanity**: Philosophical debates on what it means to be "human" after augmentation.

### **Current & Future Trends**

- **Military & Defense**: DARPA and other agencies are working on super-soldier programs.

- **Medical Rehabilitation**: Restoring lost functions for disabled individuals.

- **Transhumanism**: A movement advocating for human enhancement to transcend biological limits.

Would you like details on a specific type of augmentation?

[midnight---express]

Deku Beyond

I like to imagen that whilst the new suit has the lot of OFA abilities in it each one had a different amount of time allotted to it.

Smoke, Day 1 it was easy as, done on lock down.

Float, yeah flight controls were down boosters in the boots, cape acts as stabilizer.

Those three were easy, the rest had some crazy stuff behind the scene.

Black Whip, genuine advancements in chemical engineering had to be made there to even get it to work, had to call in the MHA equivalent of ol'Peter Parker to get that job done.

Fa Jin, How the hell do you even make that, that's converting kinetic energy to more power, simple the suit adsorbs that shit like a sponge, Black Panther style, imagen punching him the impact spreads out glowing red and you get punted with double what you just hit him with.

Danger Sense, a suite of electronics to even get it that close, proximity sensors, heat identification, lidar and radar, they had to pack so much in to even equate to that quirk.

Gear Shift, How how would they even get it to be able to alter the speed of objects, no it's just a hyped up magnet system powered by the Fa Jin kinetic set up, can be used like the railgun, maybe like the force, doesn't work on none magnetic items yet.

Oh and super strength, that's basically just Izuku's, just has the Neuron Amplifiers like the Batman Beyond suit, only due to his absolutely ridiculous physical abilities he's got a cruise missile in his hands now not a 50.cal.

So when combing through the training footage it becomes rather difficult to gauge what the suits effectiveness, you have this film of him demolishing a building with a blow, and it turns out they didn't have the NA's on, Izuku one tapped that building with his pure strength, the only difference the armor was making was it acted as boxing glove.

Still think that suit is less Iron Man more Beyond Batman.

[ningbomagnet]

What You Need to Know About Arc Segmentitle Magnets, Radial Axial Circle Magnets, Isotropic and Anisotropic Magnets

Magnets serve an important part in a variety of sectors today, including electric motors, generators, sensors, and magnetic assembly. Among the several varieties available, the Arc Segmentitle Magnet, Radial Axial Circle Magnet, and the distinction between Isotropic and Anisotropic Magnets stand out for their performance, shape, and magnetic qualities. But what do these phrases signify, and where do these magnets usually appear?

What is an Arc Segment Magnet?

An Arc Segment Magnet—an arc or segment magnet—is commonly employed in circular magnetic assemblies, notably brushless DC motors and permanent magnet motors. These magnets are shaped like a circle slice and are intended to be used around a rotor or stator.

Important characteristics:

Accurate curvature for a snug radial fit

Available in a variety of materials, such as ferrite, samarium cobalt, or neodymium (NdFeB).

Perfect for spinning systems with high speeds

High concentration of magnetic flux along the arc

Common Applications:

Drones and e-bikes with electric motors

Windmills

Couplings of magnets

Industrial robotics and servo motors

What Is a Radial Axial Circle Magnet?

A magnet with a circular or ring form with a magnetic direction that is either axial or radial is called a radial-axial circle magnet. The distribution of the magnetic field is determined by these orientations. In precision equipment, a radial-axial circle magnet is frequently specially made to meet certain torque or sensing requirements. Their specialized magnetic orientation and round shape guarantee little energy loss and excellent performance.

What Makes an Isotropic Magnet Different from an Anisotropic One?

Although materials like ferrite, neodymium, or rare earth compounds may be used to create both isotropic and anisotropic magnets, there are major differences in their production procedures and performance.

Conclusion

Knowing the differences between arc segmental magnets, radial axial circle magnets, and anisotropic / Isotropic Anisotropic Magnet magnets is essential for improving both your design and performance, whether you're an engineer creating the next high-efficiency motor or a manufacturer locating dependable magnetic components. Every magnet design and kind offers a unique set of benefits. Selecting the best one requires finding the ideal balance between cost-effectiveness, application fit, and magnetic strength.

Follow our Facebook and Twitter for more information about our product.

[e-carlease]

Two key specifications will be available to the UK including:   Select - (from  £45,875) 19” alloys, 14” touchscreen, 7-speaker sound system, 12-way powered driver seat, heated front seats, massage seats, wireless charging, LED headlamps, adaptive cruise control, front and rear parking sensors and cross-traffic alert;   Premium - (from £49,975) 20” alloys, panoramic roof, 10-sepaker B&O system, memory seats, hands-free tailgate, matrix LED lights and cross traffic alert   Choose from frozen white, agate black, magnetic, artic blue, rapid red and blue my mind. Add options like the driver assistance pack (HUD, 360-degree parking camera and hands-free tailgate), heat pump, 21” alloys and the retractable tow bar   And how does the new Explorer EV perform?     RWD Standard Range – this RWD SUV will have a 52 kWh usable battery which will offer 0 – 62 times of 9.0 seconds, 99 mph top speeds and 125 kW (or 168hp). Expect a combined winter range of 155 miles with warmer weather allowing for 215 miles – a 185 mile combined. On charging, the 11 kW AC max will allow 5 hour and 45 min 0 – 100% charging times with the 115 kW DC maximum allowing 33 minute 10 – 80% times. A cargo volume of 536L is available with this car. It has a vehicle fuel equivalent of 144 mpg. You can tow with this EV – 750kg (Unbraked) and 1000kg (Braked). It also has no V2L or V2G capabilities. The Heat Pump is optional; and   RWD Extended Range – this RWD SUV will have a 77 kWh usable battery which will offer 0 – 62 times of 6.4 seconds, 112 mph top speeds and 210 kW (or 282hp). Expect a combined winter range of 225 miles with warmer weather allowing for 305 miles – a 270 mile combined. On charging, the 11 kW AC max will allow 8 hour and 15 min 0 – 100% charging times with the 135 kW DC maximum allowing 28 minute 10 – 80% times. A cargo volume of 536L is available with this car. It has a vehicle fuel equivalent of 142 mpg. You can tow with this EV – 750kg (Unbraked) and 1000kg (Braked). It also has no V2L or V2G capabilities. The Heat Pump is optional; and   AWD Extended Range – this AWD SUV will have a 79 kWh usable battery which will offer 0 – 62 times of 5.3 seconds, 112 mph top speeds and 250 kW (or 335hp). Expect a combined winter range of 225 miles with warmer weather allowing for 305 miles – a 270 mile combined. On charging, the 11 kW AC max will allow 8 hour and 15 min 0 – 100% charging times with the 185 kW DC maximum allowing 26 minute 10 – 80% times. A cargo volume of 536L is available with this car. It has a vehicle fuel equivalent of 138 mpg. You can tow with this EV – 750kg (Unbraked) and 1200kg (Braked). It also has no V2L or V2G capabilities. The Heat Pump is optional. 

[auto-technician]

Crankshaft Sensor: Importance, Issues, and Maintenance Tips

The "Crankshaft Sensor" is a vital component in modern engines, ensuring proper timing and operation. It monitors the crankshaft’s position and rotational speed, sending data to the engine control unit (ECU). This information is crucial for managing fuel injection and ignition timing, ensuring optimal performance.

How the Crankshaft Sensor Works

Located near the crankshaft, this sensor detects the rotation using a magnetic or optical system. It generates signals that the ECU uses to determine the exact position of the crankshaft and the timing of each cylinder's stroke.

Common Crankshaft Sensor Issues

A faulty crankshaft sensor can lead to serious engine problems. Common symptoms include:

Difficulty starting the engine.

Engine stalling while driving.

Poor acceleration or misfires.

Check Engine light illumination.

A failing sensor disrupts the engine's timing, which can result in reduced efficiency and potential damage.

Maintenance Tips

1. Keep it Clean

Dirt and grime can affect the sensor’s readings. Periodically inspect and clean it.

2. Check Connections

Ensure the wiring and connectors are secure and free from corrosion.

3. Replace When Necessary

If symptoms appear, test the sensor and replace it promptly.

Maintaining your crankshaft sensor guarantees smooth engine operation and prevents costly repairs.