MudMan

Neat. Not the version I played, and arguably a lot of those issues were fixed in the PC port. But then, there are a lot more options for accurate hardware-level emulation and preservation of period-appropriate Amiga than the much muddier explosion of PC specs, so it’s weirdly a cleaner way to preserve an optimal version.

I’m never sure how much to push early releases like these, though. Is the clumsy one-unit-at-a-time approach to Dune 2 worth messing with? Or do you just go play the (extremely good) remaster of Command & Conquer at that point?

Oh, yeah, it’s ALL handwavy bulls#!t. It’s a 60s sci-fi TV show. A great one, but… you know.

I’ll say that the transporters are some of the most consistent pieces of tech they came up with, though, at least as they get explored over time. They need a beam, they are disrupted by shields and interference, they turn people into a data buffer “pattern” that seems to follow the way data would behave, in that they can add and substract to it. You need to assume they don’t use them as full-on cloning machines because of regulations, rather than tech limits, but it mostly makes sense.

Unfortunately the version that makes sense is the most disturbing interpretation, so they still need to handwave the crap out of it.

Yeah, I think in canon the curvy bit at the front of the ship (or the nacelles, sometimes) is just gathering dust to then burn into energy. It gets trickier with the transporter, because in theory the dust is going into a matter/antimatter thing, but if the transporter is fueling itself from the body it’s disintegrating… well, where’s the antimatter?

I think in their minds the transporter isn’t doing that, and is instead taking energy to both turn a person into a pattern and then build the pattern back into a person. Seems like a waste, but I guess the raw matter isn’t the real concern here.

But we know that’s not how transporters work. If that was the case you wouldn’t be able to get “accidents” where you end up with two copies of the same guy. The transporter must work like the replicator, not the other way around.

Also, that doesn’t work with some of the stuff they say, like how they don’t replicate anything alive, and so food does taste noticeably different. Plus… you know, no massive farm deck anywhere on the Enterprise and no transwarp to beam that in from a planet, so… we’re going to have to accept this stuff may be just handwavy bulls#!t at some point.

I’m a bit shocked that nobody has pointed out the obvious:

The economics of Star Trek are super inconsistent and make no sense because multiple writers had a crack and they each liked and believed different things.

Sometimes it’s a post-scarcity socialist utopia where money is obsolete. Other times, Picard invites someone out on a date and she answers “you buying?”.

This is obvious enough that multiple people have tried to fix it, which as always in franchise worldbuilding only makes things less consistent and more complicated. So now some things just can’t be properly replicated. Sometimes it’s because of regulations and laws, other times it’s because of technology limitations. Sometimes the Federation doesn’t use money but they still have it for trade, other times they use money, just for random commodities.

The middle of the road for Trek seems to be some form of socialdemocracy where you’re provided with anything you need and labor is largely vocational, but out in space there is enough variation over time and different areas that there is still a bit of a pseudo-capitalist economy even in regions where Federation-level post-scarcity tech is still available. Go into any more detail and the whole thing breaks down.

This goes for other political elements of the series, too. Picard gets super mad at the notion of endorsing religious beliefs in a prewarp society because he finds it barbaric. Meanwhile, Sisko is out there becoming Bajoran Space Jesus and everybody is just cool with that.

It’s almost like Rick Berman’s, Ronald D. Moore’s and Gene Roddenberry’s political beliefs were different from each other’s, huh?

You know the irony of this interpretation? By canon, replicators are energy to matter conversion devices. Basically a 3D printer using relativity to poof atoms into existence from an energy source.

Replicators are straight-up the most expensive way to make anything. Using that technology to make you a cup of tea is the most inefficient use of any resource put on screen in media history. It’s absurd. The notion that instead of heating up water you would go ahead and make the atoms out of energy is so much worse than just filling in a space station’s worth of water and carrying it with you into space just to keep Picard’s Earl Grey habit going.

It’s not the replicator at all that drives the post-scarcity, it’s whatever nonsense antimatter generator stuff dilithium is enabling where they get infinite energy forever. Although we know dilithium is a limited resource, since they don’t seem to just replicate some when they need it, so… somebody should do the math there and figure out how expensive all those Janeway coffees actually are.

Hi.

That’s called “socialdemocracy” and it’s been around for centuries. It’s actually older than the marxist concept of socialism, if you’re gonna get pedantic about it.

I get that Americans have completely sandblasted off any remaining meaning in the word “socialism”, first by having conservatives use it as an insult and then by having weird US lefties get all purity test about it, but most of the world has a pretty clear picture of socialdemocracy, it’s not that ambiguous. Most socialdemocrat parties across the planet are called some version of “Socialist Party”, “Labour Party” or “Worker’s Party”. It’s a thing.

So no, it’s not a bad habit. It’s just… what that’s called. It does get easy to mix up with the Marxist concept of socialism, which is likely why most marxist parties advocating for a socialist society are called “Communist Party” instead. The bad habit is to not challenge the fundamentally conservative, deliberate confusion between the two that any range of neoliberals and protofascists continue to use to pretend milquetoast socialdemocratic policy is some form of revolutionary action.

Man, US politics are so weird.

I don’t do that with anybody, normally. People of all genders will sometimes give you a hug here if it’s been a while or if they’re happy to see you. Cheek kissing is mostly a women thing, though.

I was telling someone else in a different thread that I would pay good money for a Framework device in tablet form with a detachable keyboard. Just mush entires 2 and 3 on that list. I’ll pay way more than it’s worth. Like, Surface Pro money for Kindle hardware. Just give it to me.

Alright, alright, just because I got myself excited. Top three gaming laptops, rating for sheer cool factor with no regard for practicality or value for money, but in no particular order:

1- MSI GS65. It could be the Razer Blade, which is the OG, but the GS65 was legitimately the best of that first batch of thin and light gaming laptops that looked classy without looking tacky. It had a 1070 in it, it could run every contemporary game just fine and it made you look downright stylish working on a Starbucks. So cool.

2- ASUS ROG Flow Z series. Asus put a dedicated GPU. In a tablet. Like, up to a 4070, you can get in one of these. It’s fat, it’s clunky, it’s underpowered for the hardware, it’s heavy, it sounds like the speaker in your first smartphone… but guys, 4070 in a tablet, are you kidding me? How cool is that?

3- Framework Laptop 16. It’s a modular laptop with a dedicated GPU module and a bunch of random configuration options. Gaming laptop lego. Again, how cool is that?

I love both. And handhelds. And consoles.

I just like videogames and things that can run videogames. Videogame tech is cool.

I genuinely don’t get why people have such a grudge against gaming laptops. It’s like they got stuck regurgitating talking points from the mid 2000s. There have been so many super cool gaming laptops in the past couple of decades. Big, chonky powerhouses, sleek stealth workhorses, quirky nonsense builds… It’s awesome.

Yeah, on that I’m gonna say it’s unnecessary. I don’t know what “integration with the desktop” gets you that you can’t get from having a web app open or a separate window open. If you need some multimodal goodness you can just take a screenshot and paste it in.

I’d be more concerned about model performance and having a well integrated multimodal assistant that can do image generation, image analysis and text all at once. We have individual models but nothing like that that is open and free, that I know of.

Look, the naming ship has sailed and sunk somewhere in the middle of the ocean. I think it’s time to accept that “AI” just means “generative model” and what we would have called “AI” is now more narrowly “AGI”.

People call videogame enemies “AI”, too, and it’s not the end of the world, it’s just imprecise.

That is a stretch. If you try to download and host a local model, which is fairly easy to do these days, the text input and output may be semi-random, but you definitely have control over how to plug it into any other software.

I, for one, think that fuzzy, imprecise outputs have lots of valid uses. I don’t use LLMs to search for factual data, but they’re great to remind you of names of things you know but have forgotten, or provide verifiable context to things you have heard but don’t fully understand. That type of stuff.

I think the AI shills have done a great disservice by presenting this stuff as a search killer or a human replacement for tasks, which it is not, but there’s a difference between not being the next Google and being useless. So no, Apple and MS, I don’t want it monitoring everything I do at all times and becoming my primary interface… but I don’t mind a little search window where I can go “hey, what was that movie from the 50s about the two old ladies that were serial killers? Was that Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart?”.

Seems to go to the OPs point of having open software alternatives, though. I am in a fairly unusual place regarding the practical usage of some of these things, but I do agree that if the entire concept is fundamentally rejected among proponents of open software that delays the possibility of developing viable alternatives to work around those issues.

I disagree with that last characterization. I think the ethnocentrism only applies if there is an example to which that observation applies less than to the reference example.

Because that was my original question, if you go back to that: which system is the cartoon supposed to depict?

Because if the answer is “all of them”, then there is no way to define a gradient that we want to be moving towards. The movement is going to be relative to a starting point. So I don’t feel I have a onus to prove that there is a system to which the (very generic and simplistic) observation doesn’t apply. My point stands if it doesn’t apply to all systems equally or to the same degree.

“Solved”? What is “solved” in that scenario? Neurodivergent kids not having to deal with being neurodivergent?

I can point at different approaches to the issue in different places and take notice of different outcomes, but even now, having kids around me who do need support due to specific issues that I won’t share here, and having received that support in different ways in different countries… I don’t even know what the “solved” status is.

I want them to be happy and get better at the things where getting better is an option, and I want them to be accepted and supported on the things where it’s not. There’s a reason why those kids are being supported by professionals and not just going with whatever my best guess is, and I’m certainly not assuming that our local answer is either the best or the worst, or even that there is a single, blanket right answer, for that matter.

The ethnocentrism is an issue in general, not just in this issue, but I disagree that it’s only a problem if there is a marvellous utopia where the problem is fully resolved. Maybe that assumption is part of the ethnocentrism problem itself, I don’t know.

I had genuinely never struggled to convince somebody I’m not American, this is amazing.

Specifically American, too, because in your scenario being British or Irish wouldn’t have worked. I’m slightly relieved that you at least considered Australia eventually.

OK, how about this, I’ll give you a little bit. I shouldn’t because screw you, you don’t have a right to my life history, let alone to evaluate my cultural background against your arbitrary weird anglocentric preconceptions, but this is too fascinating to drop now.

So when I went to school our system was very into integration. I went to the same classroom as kids who had Down syndrome and cerebral palsy until I was maybe eleven, twelve? I genuinely don’t know what Americans call that grade or year, for us it would have been what, 4th, 5th? They’ve changed the structure and numbering now, so it’s hard to keep track. One of them had a habit of standing up in the middle of boring classes and start to randomly narrate sports matches out loud (soccer, specifically, because again, not American). We all thought that was awesome and hilarious, and thought he was cool and mostly were kinda nice to him as a result. He was a nice kid. I see him walking around town sometimes still.

That memory generally endeared me to integrating kids in classes where it makes sense, but I’ve heard enough counterpoints from professional educators about the uses of keeping kids with special needs in smaller classes to get more specific help that I don’t have a strong opinion about it. My understanding is that consensus on that one is reversed, and the kids in my life now that have specific needs are either in dedicated support groups or getting individual tutoring during the integrated classes. This is all public school I’m talking about.

Now, here’s the thing, I actually don’t know if that transition could have happened in the US because, again, I am not American and I’ve never been to school in the US. I assume all the tropes in movies aren’t fully accurate and Mean Girls and Dangerous Minds aren’t documentaries, but who knows? My point is that I don’t, and I’m not gonna be prescriptive about it or assume that everybody else’s experiences are the same as my own.

Holy crap, does that have strong “shit Americans say” Reddit energy. The friends I have who actually wanted to live in the US had to worry about getting a green card for a decade, but I apparently qualified for a passport after week two. I mean, I never wanted to move there permanently, even when offered, but it’s good to know it would have been that easy.

Aaanyway, if you wanted to reveal my place of origin you probably could, given how you’re fond of digging through my post history. Go see if you can put together the clues. Or don’t, because if I did want to share that I would have at this point, don’t you think?

Turns out that I don’t feel like passing whatever litmus test for “foreignness” you may have, my hopefully accidentally exceptionalist friend. The fact that you’re not seeing how this entire line of questioning is getting very weird is definitely making my point and should absolutely give you pause.

Hey, you may be shocked by this idea, but sometimes people live in places where they weren’t born for a while.

But also, even if they didn’t, it turns out you can’t exist in the world, let alone the Internet, without being constantly exposed to an absolute firehose of US-generated media, including all those very specific references. And, by extension, we also have to be concerned about you weirdos not messing up without having any agency on the outcomes of your bizarre political system (so don’t screw it up for us this November, thanks in advance).

That’s the entire impetus of my intervention in this thread, the ongoing frustration of seeing Americans, both on the left and the right, be constantly convinced that everything everywhere works just like it does around them and that nobody has thought about it or come up with different solutions or had different needs elsewhere.