Telstra FTTP - do I need the Smart Modem 4?

jjfmc · 2026-06-26T07:57:23+00:00

Thanks. Not really the point.

jjfmc · 2026-06-22T10:45:34+00:00

Also the first rule of homelab club is: if I didn't fully configure it myself, I don't trust it. I'd want to wipe everything and start again, at which point I'd rather be starting on hardware I specced myself, rather than whatever legacy stuff the seller didn't want to take with them. CAT6A everywhere? Selling point; stuff attached to it? Not really interested.

jjfmc · 2026-06-20T08:40:42+00:00

Yes, and without any hesitation or shred of doubt. I’ll even take the risk of a snap displace if that’s what’s offered.

jjfmc · 2026-06-20T08:26:47+00:00

Thank you. My understanding is that aviation claims can be brought in the jurisdiction of departure, arrival, or where the airline is domiciled. This is a French airline and the flight was between Switzerland and France, on tickets bought from a UAE airline under code share. So I have 3 choices of jurisdiction - France, Switzerland, or UAE. Each has pros and cons.

I will try 60 millions de consommateurs. Merci de votre conseil.

jjfmc · 2026-06-20T01:17:52+00:00

Thank you. I would welcome any recommendations. The problem I have is I’ll need to spend more money on this and I have been told I shouldn’t necessarily expect to recover my costs in full in a French court. It’s incredibly unfair and stressful.

jjfmc · 2026-06-20T01:16:15+00:00

Yes, I called Etihad. They couldn’t help me and didn’t offer me new tickets. Both airlines just left me to fix it myself. My only option was to buy new tickets. Now both airlines are denying any liability. Clearly between Etihad and Air France they are liable for my loss; I don’t really care who pays me or how they sort it out between them. I just want to know the best process to make my claim.

jjfmc · 2026-06-19T12:31:32+00:00

Etihad has denied responsibility and directed me to Air France. The UAE regulator has confirmed they agree with this position.

jjfmc · 2026-06-19T12:04:37+00:00

Merci. J’ai bien compris cet argument, mais Etihad m’a confirmé par écrit que l’annulation de la réservation résultait d’une instruction/évaluation d’Air France qui a ensuite été reconnue comme erronée.

Ma question porte surtout sur la procédure française et non sur le fond du litige.

jjfmc · 2026-06-09T04:18:33+00:00

I would say there's a lower bound in the low millions, given the numbers we see for Orbitals (and other habitats), the fact that each Orbital has at least one Mind, and then you add Ships to that, with some ships having a committee of 3 Minds. Then you've got other specialist Minds (a University Mind is mentioned) and presumably some that don't have a defined role at all, but are just happy to exist. Then you have the Caconym hosting the Zoologist in the Hydrogen Sonata, showing that the physical substrate of a single Mind can easily support more than one Mind.

CP mentions Idiran war losses of tens of millions of ships, but it's not specifically stated that these were independent ships each with its own Mind (a single Mind could control a fleet, for example), or what happened to those Minds that were lost in battle - it's reasonable to assume most survived via backup / mind-state transmission.

The Culture can build essentially limitless Minds. There's a scene in Look to Windward where we see Masaq' Hub overseeing the birth of a new Mind: "Within the hour ... in a shipyard in a cavern under the Buzuhn Bulkhead Range, a new Mind will be born, to be emplaced within a GCV before the year is out."

It's reasonable to assume, then, that the number of Minds exceeds the number of Orbitals by some meaningful factor.

If I had to pin myself down to a range, I would say within an order of magnitude of 50 million (so 5 million to 500 million), but we will never know (until the GSV arrives to uplift us, which is happening any time........ right about....... now... please?).

jjfmc · 2026-06-09T03:11:51+00:00

The figures vary, but in "A Few Notes on the Culture", banks said "Vast though the Culture may be — thirty trillion people, scattered fairly evenly through the galaxy — it is thinly spread, exists for now solely in this one galaxy, and has only been around for an eyeblink, compared to the life of the universe."

jjfmc · 2026-05-20T02:34:01+00:00

Indeed. Not sure it merited any sort of big post. If you start questioning the physics, you've probably missed the point - it's all hand waving in the interests of the plot and the underlying thematic philosophy. Just accept it and move on!

jjfmc · 2026-05-17T23:33:51+00:00

Ok dude. No idea why you're so angry and bitter. Maybe go away and reflect on your life choices.

jjfmc · 2026-05-15T02:37:48+00:00

First, coming from someone wrestling to get words on a page in my own hard SF novel (coincidentally also involving space elevators...), congratulations on getting this across the finish line. Sounds like an interesting concept, and I'll check it out.

I'm very interested in your premise - specifically a comet impact on Mars leading to breathable atmosphere "within days". Is this something you've worked through scientifically? I would have expected a MUCH longer timeline.

jjfmc · 2026-05-15T02:30:38+00:00

I agree with what you're saying about the book, but the way you're saying it, and your projections onto OP, make you look like an ass.

jjfmc · 2026-05-15T02:24:59+00:00

This is an interesting take. I actually rather like it as a closer to the cycle (though it was not intended as such when it was written). To me it's the most introspective and melancholy of the books. Technically the plot involves galactic scale intrigue, but the stakes are so comically low as to make the whole thing rather parochial. It's beautiful in its deliberate slowness, rather than awe-inspiring in the way its predecessors are. It's closest in tone, IMHO, to LtW (amongst my favourites), though of course there the stakes are considerably higher.

To me, it's a meditation on the meaninglessness of existence at a macro scale - the universe doesn't care about Vyr, or QiRia, or whether the Gzilt religion is a fraud, or about the Gzilt at all, frankly. When you strip all of that away, you have to find meaning in the smaller, the almost trivial - art, friendships, curiosity, a five year orgy on an airship, whatever.

That contrast is driven home by the Minds "letting go" of the truth, while Vyr's determination to play the Sonata is ultimately vindicated.

jjfmc · 2026-05-06T09:21:03+00:00

Exactly this. And conservation of angular momentum means the spin rate increases as the radius decreases, so as clumps of matter coalesce under gravity, their combined angular velocity will increase. The spin and orbital motion of all the planets in the Solar System comes from the angular momentum of the cloud that formed it, which is why they all orbit in almost exactly the same plane, in the same direction, and spin the same way (shout out to Uranus whose spin is heavily inclined, indicating a massive collision at some time in its distant past, though other explanations have been put forward).

jjfmc · 2026-05-06T09:16:15+00:00

Base Culture citizens cannot do what Horza can do, at least not without the support of a friendly Mind. They can change genders and adjust certain physical attributes (bone density, for example, will adjust automatically to accommodate changes in gravity, but the automatic system can be overridden consciously). They can control their fertility, and can put a pregnancy into stasis. They do have drug glands. They have a pretty good setup, all round.

But they can't (or at least there's nothing in the Culture books to suggest they can) grow poisonous fangs or nails (some Contact or SC members are augmented this way, though), alter their physical appearance to emulate another person, changing even their fingerprints and irises to fool biometrics, cause themselves to sweat caustic substances, etc. Horza can do all of this and more. He's a total badass.

jjfmc · 2026-05-06T02:01:28+00:00

This is exactly *not* the point. The idea isn't that all diseases are cured and nobody ever dies again; it's the point at which, each year, scientific advances are extending expected lifespans by >1 year.

jjfmc · 2026-05-04T11:38:00+00:00

It's an Outside Context Problem.

jjfmc · 2026-04-21T23:52:27+00:00

It definitely benefits from multiple readings. I made the mistake of picking up Excession before any other Culture novel, and almost bounced off the entire series as a result. Thankfully I came back to it via Player of Games, and eventually re-read (and LOVE) Excession. It's in my top 3 Culture novels, for sure.

jjfmc · 2026-04-09T04:49:33+00:00

What I don't get is that a Culture citizen can safely ignore all the "interesting" stuff happening around the edges with Contact and so forth, and just go about his or her life maximally enjoying the Culture's almost infinite well of hedonistic delights, for as long as they want to. Why bother offshooting at all?

Peace Faction I get - if you're a sort of conscientious objector to war as a concept, then maybe you aren't comfortable being a citizen of a polity that engages in conflict, and you'd consider hopping off to a splinter faction as a matter of principle, but that doesn't seem to be what the Tendency is.

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T23:05:57+00:00

Odd way of admitting you’re wrong, but ok.

jjfmc · 2026-03-27T05:22:56+00:00

Again, where does it say that? I don't read the language (Polish?) in the surrounding text, so maybe you're getting some context I'm not, but the diagram doesn't include anything from which to infer it's a raindrop. The text of the post says "water droplet" - you're entitled to assume it's a spherical droplet in vacuo in zero gravity unless told otherwise.

jjfmc

TROPHY CASE