I usually format my external drives to exFAT since it’s fully supported R/W on all major operating systems, in the slim chance I have to use macOS.

Still, no need for the OP to reformat their drive; NTFS tends to work just fine.

I wish there was a Lower Decks and VOY/DS9 version of this. However, I would cry a little having to design any PCB for that space, even if it’s as simple as registering a button or blinking an LED with a microcontroller.

Honestly, I’d be tempted to just do analog FM instead of Bluetooth and basically just make walkie-talkies. You could enable greater functionality, perhaps including Bluetooth support and being able to make voice commands, by having a “ship’s computer” that would just be a Raspberry Pi server or something with an FM receiver that could process the voice commands and route signals. You might have to hide it in a probe like a tricorder or a phaser while at cons, but if you’re just handing out Halloween candy or something like that, you shouldn’t have to worry.

Part of me wonders if you could cheat a bit and put the speaker in say, a tricorder prop.

Looking at the size of the iPhone 15’s speakers, I think it might actually be possible to fit it in. You might have to fudge the dimensions a little bit, but I think that could fit in a roughly combadge-sized space. The big question is getting the rest of the electronics to fit.

Sounds like a fun project for self-torture in KiCad.

EDIT: Another option to free up space would be to wear and conceal a throat mic. Heck, combined with the tricorder method, you could basically just make your combadge a glorified button.

I agree with other people that you should futz around with your GPU drivers and different Wayland compositors first, but also, if you ever had to reinstall, there is such thing as saving your dotfiles to significantly reduce setup time.

I don’t do that because I’m lazy, but it certainly is a thing

For reference, sharing your local IP address is a little like saying “I’m in room 223” (local IP address) and not saying what building (network) you’re in. Someone can’t walk into 223 in a different building and get to the same room you’re in.

Honestly, even if someone knew what network you were on, a local IP address wouldn’t be that useful because even if they successfully got on your network, as long as you have a properly-configured firewall and no vulnerable network-exposed services on your system, they can’t really do anything.

Honestly, while it’s still not a bright idea to tempt fate like that, even sharing your public IP isn’t that bad for the same reasons if it’s a competent home user; the worst that can happen on a properly-configured network is that someone tries and fails to exploit vulnerabilities that aren’t there and MAYBE drum up your internet bill. Also, for most ISPs, your public IP changes pretty often anyway, usually something like every few days to a week, due to changing DHCP leases.

I thought the same thing.

I mostly agree with the idea of using stable distros.

However, I will add that if you hate the default Debian installer and are willing to dig a bit through the website, they do have live USBs for each DE with a Calamares installer that I love. I really wish they would promote those more.

Honestly, they need to redo the whole Debian site.

Also, I find it funny you include 2018 in your range; I think that most things from 2018 could probably run almost any full modern distro competently, and that the better quality devices from 2015-2017 also wouldn’t struggle too much.

Debian with XFCE. It’s very stable with very little bloat compared to Ubuntu.

KDE might not run horribly, but XFCE was always snappy for me when I ran it on a similarly-aged, sinmilar performance Fujitsu Lifebook.

I’ve never even owned a Mac; I know about it because I’ve Hackintoshed a few times, so I’m familiar with OpenCore.

Really? I thought the last version for those was Monterrey and that that went EOL in 2024.

That reminds me; the other day a client walked up to the help desk I work at with a 2015 MBP still running El Capitan.

I’m confused. How did you save your parent’s Masters in Business Administration? /s

(Sorry. I can’t help but think that every time someone acronym’s Macbook Air.)

OCLP?

I enjoyed the D & D movie, so maybe they can pull off something good. Maybe they could just do something set in, say, 2467.

However, I’m extremely sad that it probably won’t be Crisis Point 3.

I will point out that the card support for ROCm has improved; AMD explicitly supports most RDNA3 or later consumer GPUs, and I think support might go back to RDNA2, maybe RDNA1.

Supposedly it’s technically possible to use Polaris, but it’s very broken at this point.

The Arch Wiki is probably the sungle most useful documentation for any Linux user; I don’t even use Arch and it’s still extremely helpful.

I could see the benefits of using Arch just so almost every function my system has is near-perfectly documented in Arch Wiki.

As for the distro itself, it has the newest packages, and often good repos with interesting packages that Debian and others may lack. It also expects you to choose and install the components you want, whereas the Debian installer will usually just install defaults; you can use Debootstrap for a minimal Debian install, but that’s not as well supported for installing Debian due to the way tools as set up on the install medium.

The reason I choose Debian over Arch is because if I don’t use a device for several months and have to install updates (like my school laptop over the summer), Debian Stable is more likely to survive that than Arch; I’ve destroyed several Arch VMs by trying to update them after not using them for months. I’m sure I could have salvaged them if I tried, but I’d rather just make a new VM.

I think the biggest issue with ENT is probably the sexualization of T’Pol, the culmination of a nasty habit in Berman Trek.

I could tune out 7’s catsuit because she was otherwise well-written and the good plotlines outnumbered the bad, but it feels like at least 75% of all T’Pol stories were of the horny Berman type, to the detriment of her character.

That’s pretty normal for most UEFI x86_64 things up to 2020 or so.

UEFI first became common on new computers in 2011-2012, so I don’t a lot of 2014 computers were BIOS.

I have a cheapo laptop from 2012 (one of last Gateways) and it’s a UEFI machine.

At this point, I think 15 years ago is a more realistic estimate for the last legacy BIOS machines - my Win7 box with a 1st gen i5 is legacy BIOS.

To be fair, the Kelvin timeline had about 25 years to diverge technologically and aesthetically, considering the USS Kelvin was destroyed in 2233. 25 years is more than enough for the Starfleet design philosophy to completely change - look at the Enterprise C vs the Enterprise D.

The USS Kelvin looks pretty prime - a little fancier because of modern VFX, but not more advanced than the SNW Enterprise. I would chalk down discrepancies to just evolution in production effects; I mean, doesn’t even the NX-01 look more advanced in many ways than the TOS Enterprise? Effects getting anachronistically better in Star Trek is not new, and I don’t think it signifies a “back propagation” of timeline alteration.

Also, I don’t think Kelvin Vulcans are that weird; I think it’s mostly consistent with canon. Spock’s childhood in the film is practically a recap of TAS: Yesteryear, while the Vulcan education system seems consistent with the testing Spock did on himself at the beginning of Star Trek IV. The government and culture feel consistent with most depictions.

Additionally, the idea of infinite multiverses has been canon in Star Trek for a while, heavily suggested with TNG:”Parallels” and outright confirmed in Prodigy and Lower Decks - Wesley even explicitly names the Kelvin timeline as its own parallel universe called “the Narada Incursion” in PRO.

I think the variance in temporal mechanics in the franchise can be chalked up to the different methods in which time travel happens - each method is its own “User Interface” where your actions can affect reality differently. Some of them are more traditional time travel narratives, some are loops, some are parallel universes you can return from, etcetera.

Ultimately, I think the Temporal Prime Directive comes down to what you said; each timeline is its own “world” and it’s just best to leave them alone.

I think the plot of PRO is a perfect example of why the Temporal Prime Directive matters even in less-than-linear mechanics; going to the future can cause the future to alter the past, which causes the past to alter the future again and thus the past in a different way, and so on. Basically, messing with time and realities in any way is a dumpster fire in the making.

They briefly mention one where Tuvix becomes Captain of Voyager A in Prodigy.