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In LD 1x08 Veritas, Rutherford is rotating some "EPS Capacitors" (These seem to have little mention outside this episode) to prevent them from overheating.

Before I ask my questions, I first want to establish what makes sense to me here. Although not previously mentioned, like electrical capacitors, EPS Capacitors probably help to "smooth out" plasma flow. As these are high-power systems, I am sure there is risk of overheating in these capacitors that is not as present in current electrical capacitors, which usually don't have a rotating mechanism.

Now, for the questions:

• Why do the capacitors rotate, and what does this do to prevent overheating?
• Why do they have to do this in the 24th century in a post-scarcity society?

For the first: My first theory is these are variable capacitors. Assuming the mechanics work similarly to electrical capacitors, Rutherford could be changing the capacitance of each capacitor to rotate the load. This doesn't feel completely right, though (for instance, how to keep the array within specification).

A better theory is that although its function is analogous to an electrical capacitor, the physical mechanics used behind it are different, and somehow wear in the internal materials is uneven unless rotated, somewhat like tires.

For the second: We practically mastered rotating crap with electricity in THE 20TH CENTURY and have only gotten better since. I don't understand why Starfleet couldn't just give each capacitor a servo motor running off an EPS tap that does the randomization automatically, or at the very least mount them all on a belt. Heck, if heat is the problem, why not a liquid cooling loop? The worst that can happen is an ensign has to go get a mop.

It could be possible that maybe it was kept there as a task to bully ensigns/make officers feel useful, but I feel that kind of thinking wouldn't necessarily exist at the Cali class drawing board. It could be possible that somehow the magnets in the motor interfere with the EPS containment field, but I feel like that would mean a lot more crap would have to be banned on board if the EPS conduits were that vulnerable.

Ultimately, I really can't make full sense of this second point, and would love insights on this and my first question.

I'm writing a program that wraps around dd to try and warn you if you are doing anything stupid. I have thus been giving the man page a good read. While doing this, I noticed that dd supported all the way up to Quettabytes, a unit orders of magnitude larger than all the data on the entire internet.

This has caused me to wonder what the largest storage operation you guys have done. I've taken a couple images of hard drives that were a single terabyte large, but I was wondering if the sysadmins among you have had to do something with e.g a giant RAID 10 array.

Let me know if I missed any!

Edit: Here’s the link: https://www.opentierboy.com/rank?state=N4IgLglgpgTgziAXAbVBJ5owLQIDQgB2GAyiAWEqiOoiDAKwDsAnhALYDWAHJ+SAGMMAMSgBDGAAISAGzEtYkgBIB7GSoDmMMe0kApMYSgB3eSAC+eNBgAOANgBmYB9ygBXAMz8hdVeq06+oYmZpbWdHAAHgCObgBWTAAWGlDeIjBQhAKJkgBKUHAQcGCGAlCSANJiYDAQRhYAumE0GJCw2GL8xHQAgvyUKOEgDHYAnDYwkdwyMmm9ACbsENoykoA4BAAqHOUb2gBuUKsAMmLGcAD8gLgEQUamLBZWLXSRAAyjbsbGDsZ8BD4gBlu8kkKgckgAQioYBoHkNoRAWA4xNFuEI-hgAMLaABeLEkAFk3DB5ooAGp1Ao3EL3Zq0EAARg0KkgiRYcRUcxAJDcACM4DYxGVJAARCAHaGZIWA6mNWmtLDYHldDDg-pUIacYzsaKcHlMbGUdF0ACi7BUyjUmm0umld1hTxAACZuBp2C8xDZuPcjSAAJriKSg5SHVa20JNR50to4NFETFqwYOuDGAQqQijJgaSKctbgtxgSTGcpiGQZMTzPGJMQHSRiKl3WsFxIqdhQACEl3tdL2dk4AmihAgEBsnJIEBk4oh6hU83r4bldGj2AcyrowgT1Dp8xgiTg2J5Gjc2M5+OWMChc5pkYwPLicUdSJediVPoA6hI4Ilh5fZde6G4smqKAmVqbEoHmVcQA3JoGgoCAwBkVI6DDPFSQkCBDALLZFCOIpKHMIA

Edit: Updated Linux with Resistance, Year of Hell, and Borg Janeway

Weird. It seems like the images failed to save. So here’s the who’s who.

• Fear Slayer Hologram Janeway: From the end of VOY: The Thaw as a decoy Janeway to trick the digital embodiment of fear.
• Hologram Janeway: The one from PRO.
• Admiral “Time Travel Laws?” Janeway: The one from VOY: Endgame
• Crazy Murder Vines Janeway; From PRO: Terror Firma
• Subspace Divergence Janeway: The one that blows up her Voyager to save the other Voyager from that one organ-harvesting race in VOY: Deadlock.
• Emo Hologram Janeway: The evil act Hologram Janeway puts on for the Diviner in PRO: A Moral Star
• “But We Already Have a Janeway at Home!”: Dala, the scammer that pretends to be Janeway in VOY: Live Fast and Prosper.
• Silver Blood Janeway: The duplicate Voyager from VOY: Course: Oblivion.
• Mirror Janeway: From somewhere in PRO season 2, which I haven’t watched yet.
• Warship Janeway: From VOY: Living Witness.
• Borg Janeway: Undercover Borg Janeway in VOY: Unimatrix Zero
• French Resistance Katrine: That one time the Hirogen made the whole crew think they were holodeck characters in the WW2 French Reistance. Janeway was a bartender.
• Year of Hell Janeway: From the Year of Hell Timeline. Died almost immediately.

In LD 4x06 Parth Ferengi’s Heart Place, Ransom mentions that there are no married officers on board. However, way back in LD 1x02 Envoys, when trying command in the simulation, Rutherford accidentally kills all the ship’s children via destruction of the pre-K and Kindergarten decks. I am thus wondering, are there actually any children on the Cerritos? I do have several theories (some of which could co-exist together), none of which I am certain of:

For No:

• Due to their longer-term mission, Starfleet legally requires schools on the California class in case officers with kids transfer on. These sit empty on the Cerritos.
• Perhaps during Envoys there were some kids, but they transferred off the ship before the Ferenginar visit.
• Alternatively, the training simulation (which seems to represent the Cerritos due to the bridge, LCARS colors, and addition of officers like Ensign Casey) drew upon a generic ops division Cali class configuration for the rest of the ship, thus falsely assuming there were children.

For Yes:

• Birth out of wedlock is common in some Federation cultures, including United Earth.
• It could be possible there are married officers that serve on different ships, with the kid(s) of that couple living on the Cerritos.
• There could be married couples on the Cerritos, but only ONE is an officer (a la O’Brien and Keiko); for instance, Lt. Holly has a husband who is a botanist. The Cerritos cannot allow her husband to do travel guide duty and must assign someone else.
• Similarly, maybe non-commissioned couples exist on the Cerritos, but an officer is required to do the duty.
• Maybe Ransom wasn’t totally literal. Officer couples may just be very rare aboard the Cerritos, and the only ones that are aboard include officers doing a duty so vital they can’t do travel guide duty. Ransom didn’t feel the need to fully explain this and went with the simple version when giving the job to the Beta shifters.

Update (8/23/2024): I was rewatching Lower Decks 2x10 First Contact and the mentions of Captain Freeman probably thinking the Captain Freeman Day decorations were for children implies that at least during season 2, there were children on the ship. I feel that the Archimedes incidents could be impetus for the ship being declared too uncomfortable for a family. I'll see in my rewatch if I come across any other implied children on the Cerritos in later seasons.

Another update (12/27/2024): In 1x07:”Much Ado About Boimler”, there are kids aboard the Rubidoux, which suggests at least some Cali-class vessels have children.

Risa’s Dental ”You’re on a pleasure planet, so why shouldn’t your teeth be a pleasure as well?”

Although I imagine dentists don’t exist in the 24th century like they do know; I imagine instead of braces or fillings, a general doctor just replicates chompers like they did for Ransom that one time, albeit hopefully the right size.

Another update: https://startrek.website/post/13283869 I found a fix for my issue. I'm annoyed that I had it in the first place, but I overall still like my laptop.

Important update in this post: https://startrek.website/post/14075369 I still consider this a good laptop, but this is an important fix if you're using this on Debian 12. When 13 comes out next year, the out-of-box support of this laptop should be basically perfect.

Anyhow, back to the original post: I recently got a brand new laptop, a Thinkpad 21JT001PUS, to consolidate/replace my array of various on-the-go-Linux devices, and I have to say, I'm impressed. I know Thinkpad and Linux aren't news, but for such a recent device, I am surprised how well it works. The price wasn't bad (which makes up for the fact that it's a Zen 3 chip with DDR4, in my opinion), it has good upgradability (I'll touch a bit on my experience later), and hardware support was really good.

I initially tested hardware support with Debian Testing Trixie XFCE (as that was the Live USB I happened to have on hand, since I often test devices and also keep it around as a backup for my desktop, which runs Testing). At first I couldn't get it to boot, but then I found the BIOS setting to enable non-Microsoft certificates. After that, I booted in and found everything worked out of the box (except the fingerprint sensor, of course, but that's extremely rare for any laptop anyway). However, after experience with my previous portable devices, I learned I prefer stable distributions on those, as during some parts of the year, I can go months without opening the laptop.

Thus, I retested with Bookworm. Almost everything worked still, except for the Wi-Fi (which seems to have been introduced in later kernel versions). Luckily, this thing has an ethernet port (From which it is HECK to remove cables - I've found I had to twist the end up a bit to get it out), so I was able to do an install and then add the Backports kernel to get Wi-Fi working.

One minor issue I had (a software fault rather than a hardware/kernel one) was Bluetooth headphones, but as it turned out, it was just that PulseAudio was installed instead of Pipewire, so after switching, it worked flawlessly with Blueman).

As for battery life, so far it seems okay (as I write this, it says 3:29 left at 51%), but I haven't rigorously tested it yet (though I threw on the usual tlp and stuff like that for good measure).

For performance, I once again haven't tested it too rigorously, but I did play some Civ VI, which it was keeping up with just fine.

The upgrabability of this laptop does have one caveat, though. The bottom is a bother to remove, and most Youtube crap conveniently glosses over them. For one, some of the screws would get loose but not come out all the way. I eventually found the trick was to throw some pry tool under the screw head to hold it up so I could get it the rest of the way out. After they were all out, the bottom cover STILL wouldn't budge. This too ended up being a matter of jamming a pick in one corner of the case and running another one to slowly pry up the bottom case on all sides. I lost a plastic tab or two in the process, but that doesn't show up on the outside, and I think 24 GB of RAM (and 2 TB of NVME 2280 storage + 256 GB, the Windows drive that I left in the 2242 bay) will be plenty for a long time.

Overall, I would say this is a great laptop for those who don't want to go the route of purchasing a used laptop for Linux. I'll say an 8.5 out of 10 due to the hard-to-remove bottom cover and weird ethernet port (Update: 8 out of 10 now due to the nasty Wi-Fi bug I had to fix with a few module options, see posts linked in top of page).

Here's the Linux Hardware probe: https://linux-hardware.org/?probe=1e50fb1862

I’ve thought it would be nice to have a venue to discuss Trek comics, but I’ve always felt it would be weird to reference non-canon/dubiously canon stuff from a less popular medium in a main Star Trek thread.

Thus, I was wondering if this server has sufficient interest in such a thing to create a new community just for Star Trek comics.

Based off Doctor Who 8x01 Deep Breath

A sequel to https://startrek.website/post/12349474

I do declare, it's the best of both sides of the Mississippi! Needole's as dependable as a well-bred mule with the looks of country-fried chicken, while lacking the more unsavory qualities of our otherwise trusty Talaxian companion.

During LD 3x10, as much as I enjoy the comaraderie (and Boimler voice-cracking through the ship names), I was little confused as to how the entire class could have made it to the Cerritos so fast. Wouldn't they be relatively evenly spread across the safer part of Federation space, with some in the middle of missions?

After some thought, my theory is that the class decommissioning was more immediate than I first thought; Starfleet had ordered every ship of the class to a central location for crew reassignment not too far from Douglass station, so they were already gathered nearby (having travelled from whatever corners of Federation space the class may have operated in) and been waiting a few days or so when Mariner informed them of the situation.

Edit: Fixed the color of the stripe on the dialogue box because it was tearing me up inside. Also, here's a link to the template as an Inkscape SVG in the slim chance anyone wants to reuse it (make sure to have Oswald font installed): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fm8GFs34NNQucgdSFQYzbrkaiyiuD22H/view?usp=sharing

Edit: And now, the conclusion: https://startrek.website/post/12514221

I've had a special Neofetch logo to go with Chicago95 for a while. I finally bothered to switch over to Fastfetch, so I ported the logo over. Above is a terminal window with my result. Here's the git repo. I configured all window panes to be green in order to go well with the Space Chicago95 Plus Theme.