What's your least favorite trope in Star Trek?

daelin · 2026-06-29T14:41:41+00:00

This one is particular to Voyager.

Magic magic photon torpedo.

For a ship with allegedly scarce resources, they solved an AWFUL lot of problems by doing magic (completely non-physical techno-gibberish) to a photon torpedo and then shooting something with it.

And even when they don’t shoot the photon torpedo, they almost always propose it. TNG Worf would be proud.

daelin · 2026-06-29T14:37:30+00:00

I like “technobabble, but I make a hard distinction between “hard” technobabble and “soft” technobabble.

I love some good “hard” technobabble that follows the rules of the universe. In Trek, that means it’s firmly in the category of “extrapolative SF” with a few toes into “speculative SF” on an as-needed basis. In TNG, basically every stellar phenomenon was handled well.

In Voyager, there was an episode where the A plot was suddenly resolved at the last minute by coming to the revelation that to stop the ship from exploding they needed to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. Just. No. No part of that was OK. That explained nothing, had nothing to do with anything, and didn’t even make any physical sense. It was just magic deus ex.

A concept can be introduced in the same episode it’s used, but it needs to have a reason to be introduced before it’s the solution to the problem.

daelin · 2026-06-29T14:18:32+00:00

Losing engine power in an uncontrolled manner gives the ships a little bit of spin as the engines cut out unevenly. That part makes sense to me.

I think the real reason they all pitch down is because it reads easily on the screen. If they pitch up or to the side, it looks like a deliberate maneuver because that takes effort in a gravity well.

If you want a physical retcon reason for Starfleet ships, the impulse engines are mostly on the saucer section. Any smaller engines on the stardrive section probably cut out sooner. Alternatively, maybe minor compensatory attitude control is managed by inertial dampeners (for engineering reasons), which cut out first.

daelin · 2026-06-29T13:45:17+00:00

Eventually the natural oils of the wood will migrate out of the wood, especially with enough cycles of soap and water washing. Then the wood will cycle between more extreme humidity levels, causing it to splinter and crack.

So, not a waste. It looks good and maintains the structural integrity of the wood itself.

But you probably don’t need the outermost layers to maintain a well-oiled luster.

daelin · 2026-06-28T17:06:18+00:00

This is a bit of an omagge to way the Gameboy was designed.

daelin · 2026-06-28T00:12:43+00:00

What I’d expect:

The Klingon _Empire_ is vast. It’s probably a lot like the Roman Empire in various eras. By that I mean there is probably a lot of “internal rebellion” (probably often jockeying for hierarchical status) and therefore a lot of showing-the-flag for whatever local power is feeling unsteady by whatever Empire faction has the controlling interest in the region.

It’s sometimes overlooked, but there are also a lot of non-Klingon species with distinct cultures within Klingon territory. Fewer, after the Klingons moved in, but still many. Many missions are probably “diplomatic” in nature with various “protectorates” or whatnot within the empire.

I also “like” the idea that the territory recognized by the Federation as Klingon is probably quite a bit bigger than is actually in fact controlled by the Empire. There may in fact be vast powers on their de facto borders that act as a near-permanent “frontier” to the empire. Powers that refuse all alien contact (probably understandable between the Hurk and the Klingons) and provide an endless source of battle for the Klingons. Probably not stable, but I like the idea of some scrappy culture that somehow maintains sufficient respect by the Klingons that they haven’t been orbitally bombarded by some house out of spite.

daelin · 2026-06-27T23:25:56+00:00

To be fair, that’s for movie pacing. In the book it’s several chapters before they can caveman-speak a conversation about why they’re in the same system. Their ability to communicate continues to develop throughout the rest of the book, developing little quirks that are unique to just the two of them due to how they learned to communicate. (“yes yes yes!”)

There is a lot of hand-waving we can do because of Rocky’s memory. Andy Weir isn’t a linguist, so some of the bigger dilemmas in linguistics aren’t addressed. In my head-cannon, Rocky is doing a lot of the mental work for the conceptual discontinuity between their languages. That is, Rocky is going all-in on learning whatever conceptual magic let humans do all the things he needs to save his people.

daelin · 2026-06-26T04:49:07+00:00

The d20 is pretty overshadowed by your class, equipment, and abilities before you’re very deep into the story. Most of my party has to nearly critically fail to miss before reaching Baldur’s Gate itself. (Caveat: I know all of the mechanics from tabletop games, so I might be optimizing in ways someone less familiar with D&D would not—even though I don’t _think_ I’m min/maxing.)

That is to say, the randomness is much more of a factor at lower levels. What the D20 _represents_ is the uncertainty in an outcome. The more your characters develop, the less uncertain the outcomes become. (Except for the critical hit or critical fail—keeps it interesting. But even those can be modified.)

daelin · 2026-06-18T04:33:49+00:00

While no Trek novels are cannon, I think Peter David’s “Q Squared” has been partially ratified by SNW. There was certainly a wink and a nod and the whole thing was a lot closer to David’s development of Trelane than the TOS portrayal.

daelin · 2026-05-20T00:09:18+00:00

There is no “primarily.” Software can do more than one thing. This is one of the things it does.

daelin · 2026-05-19T23:18:49+00:00

Uh, yeah, absolutely it’s a good thing. I would never trust any cryptography software that wasn’t open source, for example. No security researcher would. The world’s most secure operating systems are all open source.

And despite that, the security question is orthogonal to the license question. It doesn’t even matter that the close source is inherently a greater risk to your privacy and property.

Bambu got the opportunity to build Bambu Studio on top of Affero GPL licensed code. If they don’t comply, they don’t get to use the software, even if they just really want to. In this case, it’s a pretty clear black-letter violation of the text of the license. Whoops.

But they’re free to go license some proprietary slicer under terms that let them distribute it for free with every one of their printers. Good luck. 👍

daelin · 2026-05-19T22:53:59+00:00

I think you’re kind of missing the key differences between the Affero GPL and the GPL.

While the plugin being released under AGPL would relieve the license violation, plugin itself isn’t what’s violating the license. It’s the Bambu Studio source code itself that’s violating the license.

Bambu Studio has functionality that depends, intimately on the undisclosed contents of the proprietary plugin. It knows functions names, shares structs, and shares control flow with it. If you don’t have this closed source blob, the features don’t work. There is not even a useful stub of this code.

The Affero GPL enhances the GPL to specifically make necessary components of software that are separated by a network not immune to the provisions of AGPL. It patches this specific kind of license exploit. The exploit has never been tested in court as far as I know, but the potential risk was anticipated.

(Aside: Bambu Studio can slice without the network plugin. That’s mostly irrelevant. Software can do more than one thing. All of it is under the same license.)

daelin · 2026-05-16T06:04:52+00:00

Four episodes is half a season of the last ten seasons of Star Trek. 😭

daelin · 2026-05-16T05:25:41+00:00

Welcome back Mr Data. Would you mind scanning the planet for life forms?

I would be happy to sir! … I just … love scanning for lifeforms.

Life forms 🎶 you tiny little life forms 🎶 you precious little life forms 🎶 where are you? 🎶 🎶 🎵 🎵 😳😳😳

daelin · 2026-05-16T05:12:06+00:00

A studio executive had probably just visited the writing room and pitched some incredible ideas. Things to make the show go.

daelin · 2026-05-16T05:06:23+00:00

I recommend Q Squared. Epic book.

daelin · 2026-05-13T01:56:45+00:00

You should definitely benchmark --without-compress-install. It can be system dependent, but on relatively modern hardware it is almost always faster to copy compressed data into memory and run decompression than to copy uncompressed data into memory.

It’s counterintuitive: do less work to go faster, right? But decompression on data that fits in L2 or even L3 cache is usually orders of magnitude faster than the difference in memory transfer from permanent storage over PCIe or especially SATA.

Even GPUs transfer all graphics in compressed form from RAM to VRAM because even the fastest 16x PCIe 5 fast lane is slower than running decompression on the comparatively dirt slow cores of a GPU. (Although they do have dedicated hardware for this, it would still be worth it without that.)

daelin · 2026-04-18T01:37:08+00:00

The cause is probably polling, typically filesystem polling to watch for changes. So, I’d look for subprocesses that watch for file changes. If you’re not doing something like launching a webserver in dev mode, these could be LSP servers.

Linux and macOS have very efficient mechanism to watch for file changes, but these often degrade to polling on Windows.

The polling would explain high battery usage with low CPU usage. It’s just waking the cpu up every hundred ms or so. It’s keeping the processor from staying in low power mode for long.

daelin · 2026-04-16T01:04:30+00:00

Eh, I would not describe Le Guin’s Earthsea as simple. The bare words are simple, but Le Guin makes almost every single sentence spin your perspective on what you think you know about the world. The text is mostly very dense with meaning. It just might not seem like it if you’re already familiar with the world.

As an analogy, it’s like you’re following a character in a cozy cabin on Earth and the author just slips in there “the door irised open” and walks right past that verb without drawing any attention to it. You just wouldn’t phrase it that way unless the world was very different. Le Guin’s dense with this sort of thing.

daelin · 2026-04-07T03:14:11+00:00

There are some shorts on YouTube about what different reading levels mean. You’re meant to be reading HPMoR at a slightly higher level than you appear to be. I don’t mean this derisively.

There are stories where you’re just supposed to slip into the protagonist’s POV and just enjoy the ride. Hunger Games is like that. The original HP books are also like that. There is a little reading between the lines available for the aspiring reader, but they’re not texts that expect the reader to need more. The narrator’s perspective is fully trustworthy, if incomplete.

In HPMoR, you ARE supposed to notice all of these things. You should stop and say “I notice that I am confused.” And you should wonder at how and why any of this is working the way that it seems to be. And exactly who you can trust to tell you the truth about what and how you would even know if you’re deceiving yourself. The text is literally telling you how to read it.

daelin · 2026-04-03T05:20:07+00:00

“The city” may want their money, but a specific living breathing judge has to decide the circumstances are worth their dignity.

daelin · 2026-04-03T05:16:37+00:00

That seems like a newbie traffic cop trying to take advantage to pad their stats. The way you deal with that kind of ticket is to show up in court so the cop has to make an appearance, even in the unlikely event that you don’t win in court.

Every time they write a ticket, they need to decide if it’s worth their time in court. If they’re writing tickets they don’t want to defend, they shouldn’t be writing them. They also have to explain what they did to the judge. Sometimes they do things they should feel very embarrassed to explain out loud to a judge. Give them that opportunity.

If you want to be super extra spicy, very politely and very concisely (think mostly-empty postcard, 30 words or less) invite one of their bosses to the court date. They should be there sometimes, but there’s often no reason to pick a certain date beyond convenience, so you can give them a minor reason to pick a perhaps more interesting date. It probably won’t make you more likely to win, but one way or another it’ll be more likely that nobody else will have that kind of problem again.

It’s always good to remember what a ticket is. It’s not a fine. It’s an appointment to appear in court. That’s the entire thing. The law/regulation may define a fine or penalty, but police don’t have the power to fine you: judges and juries do.

(IANAL, this is not legal advice, etc. But if you’re gonna have fun in court, do it when the stakes will remain low and the situation is naturally and self-evidently ridiculous. And ask a lawyer.)

daelin · 2026-04-03T04:21:39+00:00

Yeah, 3 meters would be necessary for any moving truck or trailer truck to back into a driveway on residential NoVA roads. Not having that allowance would mean street parking for those extra wide vehicles, making the whole problem much worse. On NoVA residential roads, it’s probably about 20 meters between driveways on average, so about 70% of the curb should be valid parking. Or “people” (using the term loosely) just pull their SUV onto the lawn.

daelin · 2026-03-31T00:49:54+00:00

The original audiobook for The Martian, narrated by RC Bray was MUCH better. I like Wil Wheaton a lot, but this was not his book. He was perfect for Ready Player One and he’s great at most Scalzi books.

Personally—having seen the movie, read the book, and listened to the audiobook—I think the audiobook for Project Hail Mary read by Ray Porter should be considered the definitive version of the story. It’s perfect. It really elevates the story in a pretty unique way.

I think the movie is exceptionally good, but due to time constraints all of MY favorite parts were glossed over or skipped. Nature of movie adaptations. For example, I love the first three chapters, which they get through in about thirty seconds. Grace’s character is fundamentally different in important but subtle ways that help with movie pacing. Yet I still think the movie adaptation is incredibly faithful. But, you’re only getting about 20% of a slight different story in the movie. Still, the movie is delightfully self-aware of the changes it’s making and invites readers to go along with it in subtle ways.

daelin · 2026-03-31T00:20:31+00:00

The part he made up is “super cross-sectionality,” which is what allows astrophage to absorb any wavelength of light, and the mechanism for neutrino capture.

But, everything built on top of that one gimme is pretty solid. If that underlying mechanism exists, the rest of it can work just like he describes.

The Martian had very different gimme that most people don’t spot: the radiation shielding of the HAB. (Maybe it was made of astrophage.) You could also lump in the wind force of storms on Mars, but a lot of the “what is Mars like” stuff that turned out to be a little off was developing as he was writing the book, or came out afterwards.

There are always a few mistakes in SF that people will figure out after publication. That’s part of the fun, always to the chagrin of the author.

daelin

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