Nedry was literally a computer scientist and systems designer / programmer from Cambridge. Arnold was a theme park engineer (designing rides and control systems; some programming involved but a whole different paradigm than developing large systems).

Source: Have read the novel 50+ times.

Arnold was an engineer, though. He was competent in using the system and not totally lost when poking around the code, but he’s no computer scientist. Basically, he was a power user / sysadmin rather than a developer.

I am not a gamer these days and am unfamiliar with Arc Raiders, but if there’s any way to incorporate the Klingon death ritual when one of your squad goes down, that would probably be pretty epic

I can’t even do “vacation” Klingon lol. All I know is Qapla’ means “success!” and you call someone a petaQ when you want to insult them.

Just an x64 box running OpenWRT.

Same boat. Declined their router and just use their ONT. Not that the router makes a difference, but my “wan6” interface has been waiting for an IP address for about the same amount of time as yours.

Modern Classic problems require modern solutions.

Yeah, I don’t know about pre-installed with Android that aren’t ad platforms masquerading as consumer hardware. I’d never use one unless it was supported by LineageOS or something. My comment was more “roll your own” in nature.

Maybe one of those HDMI “stick” PCs you can get? There’s x86 Android builds you can run or you can do like I did with my media PCs and boot into Openbox and just launch a fullscreen browser right to Jellyfin and control it from your phone. (My main setup uses Emby but should be able to do the same with JF).

I’ve actually got a portable Jellyfin server I take with me. Built on the OrangePi Zero 2W with a USB->NVMe acting as media storage (as well as the Jellyfin DB). It’s got several other services running as well as a second Wifi adapter so it can also act as a travel router.

For playback, I pretty much just use my laptop or phone but have thought about adding one of the “stick” PCs as a client for it.

I’ve always liked the “Go Away” door mat Slappy Squirrel had in Animaniacs. I’m legit surprised I don’t actually have one.

Laptop-style speakers may be just enough. It would be tight and maybe the badge would have to be enlarged slightly to accommodate it, though.

I did a deep clean of my laptop not long ago and was surprised at how tiny and flat the speakers actually were. They won’t fill a room, but they’re enough for light music or a Teams call at arm’s length. Granted, it might not be good in a noisy area, but that would be a problem for the mic as well (not to mention public speakerphone use is kind of frowned on lol).

Would love to have one of those. Guess I’ll have to settle for 3D printing one and hacking up a Bluetooth headset/speaker to make it work.

I saw that, but it’s November 19 already. So they’ve either not restocked or have sold out already.

I clicked a few of the “Where to buy” links from the bottom, but only the non-Bluetooth ones were available.

I have an old rotary phone / bluetooth “headset”! Though it’s only technically portable.

It’s a 50’s wall-mount model that the phone company would have hardwired (no RJ-11). I’ve got it hooked to a Bluetooth -> POTS adapter that will decode the pulse coding. It rings when my cell rings, you can answer/place calls from it, and you can dial 0 to engage the voice assistant. Technically speaking, I can absolutely text people from a rotary phone.

Is it practical? No. Do I use it? Rarely. It’s mostly decorative, but if I’m going to have retro tech as decorations, I like to make it work. Next “wish list” is an old payphone.

not amazing as a Bluetooth device. Microphone didn’t pick up super-well

That’s disappointing. Seemed to work well in that video, though it was quiet; I did wonder how it would fare in the real world, though.

A Bluetooth version of the TMP communicators might have better success albeit at the cost of having to hold your arm up for the whole conversation.

I’ve used smart watches for phone calls like that, and it was pretty annoying after not very long at all.

I could probably easily make a Bluetooth TOS communicator, but that would be two roughly phone-sized things to carry around, so not really practical.

OTOH:

I always assumed that ships would be outfitted with enough concentrated anti-matter to last the expected lifespan of the ship, or at very least the mission they’re on

I was thinking something like that, too. Kind of like how nuclear submarines are outfitted today.

I’m more curious how they store the antimatter

That one we do have answer for. There are antimatter pods that have built-in containment fields to prevent it from reacting with normal matter. In today’s tech, it would basically have the antimatter inside a magnetic field in a vacuum chamber.

That’s dark matter rather than antimatter, but I still lol’d. Unfortunately, joke answers aren’t allowed in Daystrom (otherwise I’d have posted to the main Star Trek community).

I believe the Demon planet was deuterium. Prodigy I did catch on the second watch through (and confirmed in Memory Alpha). I guess my question is most related to if there’s anything canonically stated as to where they get antimatter. AFAIK, PRO was the only reference to actually sourcing it. Otherwise it just seems like it’s “there”.

I’ve only glanced at the technical manual, but I must’ve missed the part about the tankers. Makes sense and isn’t far off from my assumption about generating it at starbases and refueling ships when they’re docked.

On-board antimatter generation is possible, but is extremely inefficient, consuming 10 units of deuterium to produce one unit of antimatter, and is generally a last-resort option.

That part I do recall. Which is why I was thinking that, in Voyager’s case with it being a more advanced ship, that the efficiency might have possibly improved to the point it was viable as a primary source. Or maybe “stranded 75,000 light years from home” counts as a last resort and why they seem to ration their deuterium supply.

I like this stuff a lot - I think it makes the universe seem a bit grittier and less “magical” - and it’s a shame we never really get to see it.

Agreed. Deuterium can be collected from just about anywhere in space (nebulae being the most useful), dilithium is mined, but antimatter is just “there” as far as on-screen explanations go.

glorify the rich & exploitation/objectification of women for massive profits.

I get it. I almost feel like some of that was both lampshading the practice as well as exploiting it. Every time that would come up Maya would have commentary on it.

They also mention Trump several times.

Yeah, that made a modern-day rewatch kind of difficult. I intentionally skipped those parts. Having re-watched several old shows somewhat recently, sadly, the orange T-bag comes up quite a bit. Just is what it is (or was what it was?).

Also ignore my other comment. I accidentally hit submit before I had anything typed out lol.