Are we counting S1 “The Elysian Kingdom”? I know it’s not technically a holodeck episode, but…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrxKX44qBJ0

I mean, I agree.

Thank you for saying this before people started crying, “Linux is getting encrapified!” without understanding what the article was actually about.

Technically Raspbian Jessie, I think- I was gifted a Pi 3 in ~2016 and fiddled around with it for a while. I also made some cursed choices, at one point running Windows 10 IoT Core on that thing… though luckily not for long.

In 2017 or so, I started toying around with Ubuntu in VMs. It wasn’t really until 2020 or so that I started trying other distros; Debian Buster was probably the first non-Ubuntu distro I’d tried (excluding RPi stuff), and I mostly stucked to Debian besides one Arch install.

At a certain point in 2022, I found myself using Unix tools so much I was starting to wonder if I should just use Linux instead of Windows. It was at this time that I tried NixOS in a VM for the first time and thought, “Wow, this is cool… I’m sticking with Debian, though.”

Around that time, I threw Debian Testing (then Bookworm) on a second 256GB drive, ostensibly as a “test run” for daily driving Linux, and by “test run”, I mean I de facto quit using Windows; a few months later, I opted to use dd and copy that “test install” over my Windows install on my bigger 1TB drive (of course with sufficient backups so I could copy my Windows files over). That install is still the one I use on my desktop today and has just transitioned into Debian Testing/Forky*

*A name I quite honestly hate, mostly due to the fact that Forky represents everything wrong with America today the Forky Asks a Question shorts beat out Steven Universe Future for an animation Emmy, though honestly, I don’t know else what I was expecting to happen.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve met more than 2 or 3 people in my life who even had a headset.

In fact, whenever I see a VR headset in a TV show or film meant to depict the present day, it makes it abundantly clear that the writers are well off older people who are going to whine about the youth and are out of touch with how the majority of Americans live their life (or they’re being forced to make these choices by geezer executives that fit my description).

It’s kind of similar to how the 1980s-2000s sitcom archetype of weird hyper best friend has been replaced by the “my whole personality is social media” archetype that is frequent in lower quality media these days.

I know. It seriously just felt like a top tier episode out of the series - the ending is such a tear jerker.

The big 2⁵!

I mostly agree with you. However, I think there are some caveats to upscaling; there are so many lazy “4K AI UPSCALE BEST QUALITY” videos online that just don’t look good and were clearly put there just to get views.

However, I’ve also found they have their uses; for instance, I wanted to laser cut a TMBG Flood logo once, but there were very few good images online that traced well in Inkscape. I ended up doing an AI upscale of the least terrible one with a white background, and that traced pretty well in Inkscape.

I was messing around with HomeAssistant the other day, which uses the same speech recognition engine, and I found it to be decent.

I think including the word “OpenAI” in the post name is somewhat a misnomer that implies an encrapification not really happening to the FFMPEG project.

Yes, it is true OpenAI originally developed the Whisper model, and I hate OpenAI; however:

• Whisper is actually open source, unlike most OpenAI crap.
• FFmpeg isn’t even directly using the OpenAI version, written in Python - they’re using a port to C++ called Whisper.cpp
• We’ve been able to use speech recognition for decades, so unlike other AI models, I don’t think a speech recognition model that does it better is problem.
• You don’t even necessarily have to compile FFmpeg with Whisper support.

I get the dislike of AI, but the idea of association with OpenAI is overblown and not really reflective of reality. Now I can get not wanting to use open source projects whose developers don’t reflect your principles; however, I think this ethical issue is more indirect than may initially appear and is not a strong reason to quit using what is still the most effective media conversion tool.

No need to panic in this case. While I hate OpenAI, there’s two things to note here:

• Whisper is an open source library for speech recognition rather than generative AI, run entirely locally. It’s just using ML to do something we could already do with computers (speech recognition), but better.
• They aren’t even directly using the OpenAI version - they’re using whisper.cpp, a port of the model.

I was hardly the target audience for Lower Decks; in fact, I was a little mad they had made an adult animated Star Trek comedy. However, after watching it, it has become a favorite. Season 1 is a bit difficult to get through, but once you get through that, overall, it’s a show that’s very sincere to what Star Trek is while still being a comedy. And it should have gotten 2 more seasons.

Same with Star Trek: Prodigy: it takes a second, and it’s still technically a kids show, but when it gets there, it’s worth it.

Honestly, I’m half hopeful for the show just because it’s a “We’re going for the {X} demographic” kind of show that sounds a little like a stupid idea that will actually turn out unexpectedly good but get cancelled before its time.

You know what would be really awesome, though? A Cali class MSD!

I think part of it is people are so annoyed with entertainment companies in general that it’s hard to know if you’re worried about something real about the show or you’re just fatigued.

Also, personally, I feel like people have actually been relatively quiet about STA, although maybe it’s just the community I’m in. Personally, with headlines about Robert Picardo’s character being “deeper”, I’m almost certain he’ll be 100% comic relief, and the show may be unexpectedly good, if Star Trek: Prodigy is anything to judge by.

Mostly, I just hope they don’t do the most basic Klingon plot they can think of - I think it would be great if the Qo’nos Klingons were relatively well off post-burn due to a philosophical shift, but they’ll probably have something like they were devastated by civil war after possibly being a Federation member.

EDIT: I mean, almost all of the better newer series have been forays into a genre - LD adult animated comedy and PRO children’s drama. If STA’s trying to aim towards a tween/teen niche, maybe it will also follow that. The only one to break the pattern is S31 somewhat, in the sense it was an action movie attempt, but still within the general sci-fi drama standard of Trek.

I mean, I think you have pretty based reasons to sail the high seas, frankly.

Engage the core!

Cerritos strong!

I’m rather sad to have never attended a convention - I was born in Vegas and lived there the first 15 years of my life.

We could have a convoluted retcon about Trip Tucker surviving somehow, but I kind of just want them to pull a Shaxs; someone brings it up and Tucker says, “We don’t talk about that.”