Yeah, the federation can sometimes act like shitlibs. I’m certain that colonization in the trek universe is driven by people who get annoyed with the smugness and need a fresh start.

It means you only do weed and shrooms

These advertisement-delivery systems at the pumps piss me off. They blare loudly.

Here’s a question for the techie crowd.

I used to be able to press the physical buttons on either side of these screens and get the ads to mute. It was a two-button combo I discovered using a systematic method as a way to control my irritation at the excessive volume. It was either that or stick a pencil in the speaker.

This worked at gas stations in several states for months. The mute feature was surely written in as a sanity saver for the developers and technicians. It stopped working a few weeks ago, so I guess the pushed out a patch.

Not much of a question I guess, except what gives? Does anyone have insight into these systems for realsies?

3D printing can be cost effective for small production runs too. There are large format printers both FDM and SLA with print quality, large bed size and speed more than sufficient.

Injection molding is only cheap when print runs are huge. In a rapidly developing space like drone warfare, a lot of plastic parts get changed frequently enough that injection molding becomes cost prohibitive, due to small production runs between design changes.

Take the example of a propeller vs a custom bracket to hold a new type of clip for ammo.

Propellers can be standardized according to motor, frame geometry, and power source parameters, so they can be mass produced with injection molding by the ton.

A bracket needed to test out a new configuration may only be made in runs of a few hundred before some other update changes things again.

All this is to say that drone warfare is logistically an insanely complex supply chain to manage.

3D printing will have a role in drones that see combat until the day the designs are completely perfect and never need to be changed again. Then the economy of scales can overcome the high setup costs of building an injection mold.

And the Pentagon will stockpile them by the billions to give SkyNet something to work with later. yay.

Thank Glob. Let me be an ‘individual contributor’ while those who don’t know better yet run interference with corporate.

Yeah, that’s the way I write. It’s the other way around though. LLM are trained on a lot of academic writing.

So I guess, LLM sound like me?

I agree, and perhaps some deep diving to find an older dot matrix printer? Should be supremely hackable. I only have experience with these:

Next-gen teletypes

They were extremely durable and low maintenance. Also loud and more stress inducing than a modern SMS notification.

Good times

That was a complete rabbit hole. Thanks.

The only thing possibly more epic would be converting a Linotype to a Linux terminal. It uses hot lead to create type for newspapers, etc.

I was trained to use one as there were so many in use they still have some niche applications for specialty printing.

Anyhow, I call them Satan’s Typewriters and still have small scars from hot lead all over my forearms. And I love technology.

A good film:

Linotype: The Film

You are absolutely correct that is a major theme, especially in the Foundation books. To be fair, Asimov also buried that point in ponderous prose and scattered it across centuries of book-time.

I think Goyer did the best one could do in adapting Foundation to visual media. He had to invent and re-imagine a lot in order to give continuity and cohesion to a sprawling story. If he had stayed more true to the books, it would have flopped instantly.