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Cake day: December 4th, 2023

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  • I feel like the big issue is the difference in how it’s portrayed. In DS9 and even enterprise section 31 are the bad guys. They are portrayed as a shadowy organization that thinks it’s doing the right thing but when confronted gets in the way. In DS9 they even lose. Section 31 arent an example of the end justifying the means being a necessary evil, they are something from within for the idealistic federation to overcome and defeat.

    As a concept section 31 doesnt make a whole lot of sense lore wise because the federation is a paramilitary organization. Sure they are scientists, explorers, and philosophers at heart, but they are also very much a military Navy. We also see that starfleet does have a non section 31 intelligence complete with spies that go deep undercover get the trust of their enemies and sell them out. The federation knows the galaxy is a hostile place which is why they explore in heavily armed warships with a crew that follows a strict chain of command.

    I think part of the wish fulfillment and idealism of the federation lies in the implication that they are also very powerful and able and willing to defend themselves with great force. Even the cruise ship Enterprise D was able to take on multiple enemy warships at once and win.

    The major difference between section 31 and standard federation operating procedures seems to be their appetite for genocide and civilians.

    It is a thing that has made me nervous about this new project since it was announced. Section 31 appearing as a bump in the road for our idealistic federation members to deal with works and allows them to stay the badguy. Them as the protagonists of a show or movie puts us in a situation where we get told stories where the ends justifies the means. And they either do this by making the federation seem naive and incompetent(which they arent they have a prime directive where they sterilize all life on a planet) or it has them justifying some heinous crap.




  • people have been asking for imessage on android for years now and i really don’t know what the issue is.

    Apple wont until somebody makes them.

    The default text messaging app on ios is also stealthily a fully featured chat app that means that less tech savvy iOS users just think their texting is better.

    The blue bubble green bubble issue isnt because ios users hate android users and the color green as much as it’s bad, it’s because big group MMS chains are TERRIBLE. I remember having a friendgroup in the 2010s that had a big mms group chat before we switched to groupme and then eventually telegram(we would have done google messages if google hadnt abandoned it began its not infamous chat sabotage). It was bad. Low quality media, the protocol updated in batches so sending and receiving wasnt as smooth as a chat app, and also you technically could just leave. We eventually switched to a platorm agnostic solution because we had diverse devices.

    Now in the US iphone ownership is like 60 percent. I imagine the ratio is even worse for younger users. So for these users they use default messenger with most people and get feature rich multimedia chat app without even looking for an alternative provider. In some cases I imagine there are users young enough to not even realize what actual text messaging is or if they do there are chunks that think apple just texts better. It gives a perception of quality.

    Then they invite Johnny Android and suddenly the chat degrades back to 2005 flip phone quality SMS/MMS. Now this is entirely apple’s fault and the inability to chat with android users is technically their problem. Or it would be if iphones werent so popular. From their perspective they were having a good time using their default cell phone messanger and the android user broke it. Likewise unless Johnny android is particularly popular or charismatic it’s likely they wont switch to telegram/signal/whatsap/line/etc. They might just leave Johnny Android out of group chats because his presence isnt just green it makes chatting clunkier and worse.

    Johnny android might feel left out even if he isnt being outright bullied and may want to switch to an apple device. Likewise the iphone users may not want to leave the ecosystem and then not be able to easily communicate with their friends.

    SMS fallback I believe started more or less as a way to deal with inconsistent data in the early smartphone days but the unintended consequence of killing off the appeal of third party chat apps on their platform and creating a weird social bubble was a happy accident and apple is never going to give that up.

    Kids beg their parents to buy them iPhones and parents do it so their kids dont get left out or bullied. Even adults are pressured into this and it can be a factor when online dating.




  • Nvidia isnt so bad if you’re on a stable distro it supports and using x(though Ive heard wayland support is improving for it). On rolling or more cutting edge distros where the kernel is likely to change every few weeks and major DE versions might ship that proprietary driver will hurt.

    That said while amd is generally better on linux for this reason it’s worth mentioning that it has two huge flaws:

    1.Its not perfect like the fans mention. As someone who owned a 3500u and 6650u apu life under amd isnt always sunny. 3500u had a kernel regression for about half a year that prevented the cpu from idling and rembrant apus have an issue where the whole system locks up which seems to come and go(feels like it’s gone for now but Ive thought that before). Desktop gpus are better, but they still did suffer from driver bugs. I think my experience with my 5600xt was better than windows fans had for that generation, but it was not entirely stable and I did suffer from many kernel panics and system freezes. A few mesa and kernel releases fixed that, but it wasnt perfectly smooth. In addition to that no hdmi 2.1 support which is fine unless you game using your nice oled tv because no tvs come with display port. Proprietary drivers do allow for supporting some of the more obnoxious features that arent allowed.

    1. It can vary gpu/cpu to gpu/cpu for how fresh your software will need to be, but generally newer hardware needs very new kernels just for basic support and it may need a few more releases to get stable or good. So if you want to just sit back with ubutnu LTS or debian you need to make sure the release cycle lines up with support for your hardware. The other end of the spectrum is that being on a bleeding or cutting edge distro can mean stability issues and regressions. So for example a month or three ago fedora pushed a kernel update that had a regression where my 6800xt gpu wouldnt clock up when utilized so gaming framerates tanked and retroarch shaders were choking up. I could just use the old kernel but I had to make sure that the kernel updates didnt bump it away. Also an entire point release and several releases after that before the bug was fixed.

    So while there is a lot of pro amd comments in the linux world and its worth acknowledging that the open source drivers are generally good it’s not perfect and the grass isnt always greener.




  • While I understand the concern over the single appstore monopoly that we have on any device, I think it’s worth remembering what ecosystem android and IOS came into.

    The old multimedia phones that were sold in the mid 00s were effectively “smart”. Many of them ran java and you could install programs, and freely install ringtones, and browsers that actually worked like opera mini/mobile. The thing is you couldnt by default. At least not in the US. The devices were locked down and everything you did went through the carrier’s store. And US telecom services are some of the greediest and scummiest companies out there so you couldnt even use your own mp3 files as a ringtone.

    Apple combated this with their closed off ecosystem, but android did face issues with fragmentation in the early days and needed a way to prevent the telecoms branded phones from stinking up the ecosystem. They did this by leveraging the play services and play store. From the playstore they can also since mainline release various peacemeal updates which helps resolve their other issue with fragmentation and thats android device being abandoned.

    Sure enough you can still release your own version of android without it, amazon’s tablets and tv sticks do pretty well.

    That said I do think it’s a good to help people move past the default and open up the platforms more, I just wish it would apply to all smart devices,