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Never trust a system that seems to be working

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Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#211

Post by m463 »

driverdan wrote: post #132
bombcar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some military trucks are designed the opposite way on purpose - because they’d rather have no brakes and be able to move than be stuck on the battlefield.

Not in the US. US trucks are built using standard truck parts, including off-the-shelf air brakes that fail safe.

they didn't always fail safe.

I remember a house at the bottom of a steep mountain grade that got plowed into on a regular basis especially during that time.

EDIT: hmm... seems freezing might still be a way to cause failure?

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#212

Post by rkagerer »

hedora wrote: post #61
electroly wrote: post #43

This is why 4-20 mA is a common signaling standard in industrial automation. 4 mA means zero and 20 mA means one. 0 mA means broken transmitter !

It is also why white traffic lights no longer mean "go". White means "the red glass lens in front of the incandescent bulb shattered again". Related, from train signals: > The invention of the track circuit in 1872 by William Robinson permitted automatic block signals. Most simply, a low voltage battery current runs up one rail and down the other. As long as current flows from the battery through one rail to the rela…

Would they have breaks (gaps) to segment the track into distinct stretches of conductors?

How far down the line would the supply voltage run (or how far away would a train complete the circuit) before resistance losses degrade the system?

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#213

Post by ridgered4 »

dysoco wrote: post #77
elteto wrote: post #31

Wow, Factorio is approaching Full Time Job levels of detail and work required to keep everything running. Incredible game that I will never play, I feel I’m back at my job!

Usually games or hobbies that feel like a job are much more fun because there's nothing wrong happening if you fail at it, or if one day you decide not to show up.

And you don't have to fill out a bunch of paperwork whenever you do or change anything.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#214

Post by yamtaddle »

usrbinenv wrote: post #88

A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first - the rest of the world uses green. The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.

I would think you'd specifically want to avoid displaying lights of the same color as "go" for auto traffic, for purposes other than telling auto traffic to "go". So I'd be inclined to avoid green for pedestrian "go", if I were designing such a system. But maybe that's not actually a problem, IDK.

> The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.

Is a hand held up, palm-out, not a signal for "stop" in places other than the US or Canada? I wouldn't assume it's universal, but I'd expect it's got broader reach than that.

Besides, again, I'd personally assume it'd be better to have very different icons for "walk" and "don't walk". Not two different depictions of a person.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#215

Post by qwezxcrty »

stewx wrote: post #116
hedora wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also why white traffic lights no longer mean "go". White means "the red glass lens in front of the incandescent bulb shattered again". Related, from train signals: > The invention of the track circuit in 1872 by William Robinson permitted automatic block signals. Most simply, a low voltage battery current runs up one rail and down the other. As long as current flows from the battery through one rail to the rela…

We have white traffic lights now in Canada for "transit advance", when buses are allowed to proceed before the rest of traffic.

Also common in Europe (CH, D).

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#216

Post by layer8 »

yamtaddle wrote: post #214
usrbinenv wrote: post #88

A bit of an off-topic: I only ever saw white traffic lights in the US and Canada (specifically, pedestrian traffic lights) and they confused me a lot at first - the rest of the world uses green. The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing.

I would think you'd specifically want to avoid displaying lights of the same color as "go" for auto traffic, for purposes other than telling auto traffic to "go". So I'd be inclined to avoid green for pedestrian "go", if I were designing such a system. But maybe that's not actually a problem, IDK. > The icons displayed (hands) are confusing too: the rest of the world uses an icon of a man walking or standing. Is a ha…

It can also mean “Greetings, Earthling”.

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#218

Post by TaylorAlexander »

As I and others have previously pointed out [1] foone uses they/them pronouns and feels particularly frustrated when their posts get featured on HN, because users here seem unable to honor this simple preference of theirs. It looks like they deleted their tweet out of frustration with todays latest round of misgendering.

I hope people on HN will learn to respect all members of our community. Yes that involves not assuming every person online is a man!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32978438

Re: Never trust a system that seems to be working

#219

Post by joshstrange »

aaronscott wrote: post #209
joshstrange wrote: post #74

While I have not really played SE (past initial launch, it was too daunting to build the ship in space, etc) I have run into these kind of "issues" in Factorio. While they can have disastrous effects, I often really enjoy finding the core problem and finding a solution to make it "fail-safe". Sometimes I wish I could go back and wipe all my Factorio knowledge and start from scratch again, most importantly refusing to…

I want to reinforce your plan. Somehow I played factorio for a few hundred hours before finding online communities and blueprints. It was a wonderful experience of discovery and exploration. I came up with a few "novel" designs during that time that I'm still proud of. Once comparing my own work to the best online it took a lot of joy out of the game. But I found that the memory was short lived, once I cut myself off…

I've heard this story repeated many times now and I'm glad to hear people are able to get back into it after having the joy sucked out. I think next time I play I will refuse to use a "main bus" until much later in the game if at all. That was the one of the biggest joy-killers, trying to plan for a mega-base essentially from the very start. It's not fun to plan out your bus and leave lots of room for red/blue circuits or more science packs while you are still building MK1-level things. That or trying to setup production lines with room for MK2-MK3+ versions of things from the start. It's complete overkill especially since there is no advantage to having a bus next to where you start. Better to situate it further away where minerals are more dense/plentiful and later in the game when it actually makes sense. Looking back I can't believe how stupid it was for me to setup 4 lanes of iron, 2 of copper, and a handful for each circuit type from the very start of the game, it sucked all the fun out but I didn't notice the reason.

The game largely felt like I was stuck in the same cookie-cutter, always trying to never have to tear up lines or rebuild elsewhere (trying to do it perfectly from the start). That was easily half the fun of my initial runs, realizing I needed to expand or rebuild instead of trying to perfect the build order.

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