Who approved this?!

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.

Corrosion is definitely a red flag, but that looks like just surface corrosion. Just from the picture, it doesn’t look deep, but it would need to be removed from the breaker and inspected to be sure.

If the issue is “downstream” of the meter, then it’s 100% the property owner’s problem. Unfortunately, the only options you have are to hire an electrician yourself or keep prodding your landlord until they take responsibility.

Yep, exactly, and same.

I feel like most of my Simpsons references eventually circle back to that episode.

I think the point of 11h is to achieve that kind of range without directional antennas. Basically as a higher-bandwidth version of LoRa.

Yeah, that one took me a minute. I think “drip” or “slow drip”? I know “drip” used to be a term but was never one I associated with “screwball” or “crackpot”. Usually I’d heard “drip” to mean something closer to “dull” or “boring”.

In the 90s, before I learned Spanish, it was Macarena

…it’s a suppository.

Talk to the hand! Cause the face ain’t listening.

Pretty decent unless there’s a lot of animation / video in them. Calling, texting, looking up something on the internet, bank app, auth app, etc all work great. Some of the stock Android components don’t work super great with it, though, like the quick action buttons (though, arguably, they don’t work great on any Android phone either lol).

Feels sluggish at times but that’s just the e-ink being what it is. I mostly treat it like a dumb phone that’s also an e-reader.

I’ve always joked that coding as a hobby is just digital knitting lol.