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TypoNinja said:
That's amusing and all but it overlooks one simple fact. Only the first replicator is expensive. After that nothing is ever again. The closest you get to a bottleneck is energy output.... except you can freely replicate an energy source too. At that point you split production between 'stuff' and more replicator capacity, and watch as you completely erase the global economy.
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Maybe only a minor detail, but you need to get rid of the waste heat...
 
Ace Dreamer said:
Maybe only a minor detail, but you need to get rid of the waste heat...
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Why? We have that nice atmosphere after all…

Said all the capitalists, until they realized that this is essentially making them superfluous.

then they follow the science and say that this might be a Problem some time in the future. Good news! climate change already created the same problem, and needs to be reversed anyways, what's a few more degrees under friends?
 
TypoNinja said:
What waste heat? It's not a fusion reaction, its playing legos with atoms.
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Effectively, you are doing nanotech. Moving stuff around takes energy, produces waste heat. The reason the shards/agents/passengers produce parahuman powers without cooking the human is they do cooling using extra dimensional tricks, the heat is still produced, it is moved elsewhere.
'Magic' nanotech which ignores where the energy comes from and the waste heat goes to can give you fun stories, but...
 
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So, I just re-read the main story .. again... And something popped out at me that I'm not going to read back through 200 pages of posts to find out if it has already been noted.

As I understand it, ever since the Conflict Drive has been turned off and The Simurgh is no longer pushing things, both Alexandria Costa-Brown and Carol Dallon are both MORE confrontational than before.
I a it just me, or was the conflict drive actually reigning them in?

Something for the admin shard to be confused about
 
Finbar said:
So, I just re-read the main story .. again... And something popped out at me that I'm not going to read back through 200 pages of posts to find out if it has already been noted.

As I understand it, ever since the Conflict Drive has been turned off and The Simurgh is no longer pushing things, both Alexandria Costa-Brown and Carol Dallon are both MORE confrontational than before.
I a it just me, or was the conflict drive actually reigning them in?

Something for the admin shard to be confused about
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It's more that they are both paranoid and waiting for the other shoe to drop is driving them both crazy(er). Plus Costa-Brown is a control-freak who has been told No and can't accept not getting her way
 
Ace Dreamer said:
Effectively, you are doing nanotech. Moving stuff around takes energy, produces waste heat. The reason the shards/agents/passengers produce parahuman powers without cooking the human is they do cooling using extra dimensional tricks, the heat is still produced, it is moved elsewhere.
'Magic' nanotech which ignores where the energy comes from and the waste heat goes to can give you fun stories, but...
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Waste heat? Why do we care?

Global warming isn't caused by us all running our PC's, its caused by the extra shit we put in the air changing how much heat the planet reflects.

You aren't going to overheat the planet with a replicator, in fact you'll probably end up cooling it as you take over from all the dirty manufacturing processes that are causing the planet to heat up.
 
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Ace Dreamer said:
Effectively, you are doing nanotech. Moving stuff around takes energy, produces waste heat. The reason the shards/agents/passengers produce parahuman powers without cooking the human is they do cooling using extra dimensional tricks, the heat is still produced, it is moved elsewhere.
'Magic' nanotech which ignores where the energy comes from and the waste heat goes to can give you fun stories, but...
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The heat the shards don't get rid of is likely why Thinker headaches occur.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Actually, that's a common problem with super genius in comics. They are always so busy asking "can it be done" that they almost never stop to ask "should it be done". Doesn't matter if they're hero or villain. The only real difference is the heroic ones will (usually) clean up their own mess.
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I feel like the true issue isn't "should it be done" but "how to do it safely". Comic Book super-geniuses don't need a five year old to fact-check them, they need OSHA.
 
TypoNinja said:
Waste heat? Why do we care?
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Same reason every heat-generating device needs a way to reject heat at least as fast as it is generated: because you don't want to melt your molecular nanoassemblers. Or your exhaust manifold. Or your Freon pump. Whatever it is that you're using that does work. Remember that the only things we do have which operate on a nanoscale so far are CPU cores and if they get too hot they stop working, often permanently.
 
Fun fact: The entire reason the Fantastic Four moved from the Baxter Building to Four Freedoms Plaza is because their landlord evicted them due to how often the building was getting damaged, the strange noises coming from the building, and the fact their rental agreement did not include building and moving massive machines in the building. So they had to buy land and build their own headquarters to live and work out of.
 
Mr_Rose said:
Same reason every heat-generating device needs a way to reject heat at least as fast as it is generated: because you don't want to melt your molecular nanoassemblers. Or your exhaust manifold. Or your Freon pump. Whatever it is that you're using that does work. Remember that the only things we do have which operate on a nanoscale so far are CPU cores and if they get too hot they stop working, often permanently.
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Now you're just being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

You're imagining what? Some kind of mythical device that we designed that generates heat but doesn't have a way to deal with it?

I hate to break it to you, but we kind of cracked the mystery of cooling machinery a while ago. A long while ago. Like measured in centuries.
 
TypoNinja said:
Now you're just being difficult for the sake of being difficult.

You're imagining what? Some kind of mythical device that we designed that generates heat but doesn't have a way to deal with it?

I hate to break it to you, but we kind of cracked the mystery of cooling machinery a while ago. A long while ago. Like measured in centuries.
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Have you ever heard of a thing called a "car"? It has a mythical device inside it called a "motor" and that motor DOESN'T have a way to deal with the heat it generates. That's why we bolt ANOTHER big and bulky and heavy device onto it whose whole purpose is to take away that heat.

Or here's another mythical device. No, make that two mythical devices. One is called a "hair dryer" and the other a "hand mixer". If you open up and read the instuction manuals for those two devices you find curious sections in them, that tell you to only use them for certain limited lengths of time and then leave them alone for another length of time before using them again. That is done because these devices generate heat they CANNOT deal with and the solution the designers have come up with is to just not use them for long enough to generate enough heat and then let them cool down before being used again.

Totally mythical!
 
Don't forget that completely made up device known as a computer. They require additional things like fans, heat pipes, and sometimes even water to be pumped through loops of plastic. All because the computer is incapable of dealing with it's own heat buildup.

In fact, very few things made by humans are capable of innately dealing with heat buildup without some other system being added to deal with it.
 
All of which could be bolted onto this hypothetical machine! Just like we do with every other heat generating machine we make.
It's almost like we already figured this problem out centuries ago.
 
Zebrin said:
All of which could be bolted onto this hypothetical machine! Just like we do with every other heat generating machine we make.
It's almost like we already figured this problem out centuries ago.
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Almost like - but not quite like.

We figured out the problem by either moving the heat elsewhere or storing it somehow, and both solutions tend to be larger and heavier than whatever we are cooling. It kinda defeats the goal of nanotech for the nanites to wind up 2-10 times larger and/or more massive than they have to be to do the actual job, to make room for those cooling systems.

Jacen1 said:
Well, Shepherds do guide and protect their flocks, after all. So, aside from a minor misspelling, it certainly fits...
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…you've never played Mass Effect, have you?
 
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How to deal with waste heat the correct way
  • Apocrypha
    • "Taylor, what are we going to do about the waste heat problem?"

    "Do? What do you mean?"

    "This process will generate a lot of heat. We need to get rid of that heat or something's going to melt. So how are we going to do that? I can't see any cooling functionality in this design, and it's too small to radiate the thermal energy."

    "Ah. OK, I get it. We use one of these."

    "...a bottle?"

    "A heat bottle. We put the waste heat into it, and when it's full, screw the cap on and put it to one side for later use. We have to be environmentally responsible, you know, we can't just go around dumping heat anywhere we happen to be."

    "A... heat bottle."

    "Yeah."

    "You're going to put heat into a bottle. Not even a thermally insulated container, a bottle."

    "Indeed."

    "It's transparent! I can see right through it!"

    "Of course, that's so you can easily see visually when it's full! You always want a quick manual sanity check on this sort of thing."

    "We need a sanity check, all right..."

    "It'll work, honest. Look, here's a nearly full one, see?"

    "Taylor, heat doesn't work like that!"

    "I decided it did. Now it does."

    "..."

    "And I designed this thing too, you can put the bottle of heat into it and it'll keep the house warm for months! Cool, isn't it? If you'll pardon the pun."

    "I think the Council is going to have a collective stroke if they meet you. Can I make the introduction? Please?"
     
  • Apocrypha
    • ...OK, so apparently this Taylor is evven better at bending the Universe over and giving it a good hard rogering than her lizardly counterpart. At least Saurial has the excuse of having demonic back up and literal magic in her corner.
     
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