halm

@[email protected]

The sharpness of the tongue defeats the snarkness of the keyboard warrior.

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halm,

federates the Dominion

FTFY

halm, (edited )

Other sci-fi series? What “other sci-fi series”?

EDIT: I wasn’t asking for recommendations, and honestly nothing you can offer will measure up to the glory that is Star trek. Soz all, LLAP 🖖

halm,

Apologies to his bat-eared grace Weyoun!

halm,

Nope. It’s like a version of Voyager where everybody is as annoying as Neelix. I gave it a season’s benefit of the doubt, never again.

halm,

If you’re really only making phone calls, the built in location tracking is probably the biggest issue? AFAIK, you can only use an off the shelf iPhone with an Apple account, and a similar Android phone with a Google account, so your location will be tied to and referenced with those.

Apple have branded themselves as guardians of their users’ data, so many consider that a safe assurance. YMMV but it may be slightly better than Google’s Dodgier approach. When in doubt, go to settings and turn everything off you don’t use, location services foremost.

You may want to disable other apps that come with your phone as well. Basically anything you don’t use. I don’t know how much data can be harvested from background services of an app that doesn’t have a user signed in, but at this point I’d err on the side of caution. Plus, as you say, your position can always be approximated by your mobile carrier through the cell towers you’re connected to, but that goes for dumb phones as well.

Personally, I only use Android smartphones with custom ROMs like LineageOS without installing the Google apps or services framework because I Just Don’t Use Google. Instead I install microG to spoof the GSF to apps that require it. That’s a privacy compromise I can live with because I use my phone as an internet device as well. Needless to say I take privacy precautions on an app level as well.

halm,

2012 was 11 years ago, so out of curiosity: do you still have the same smartphone, and why are you still using one if it hasn’t improved your life?

halm,

Ah, okay. As I said, I haven’t really used off the shelf Android for years, so I’m happy to take your word for this.

halm,

Yup. And again, millions of iOS users take that as assurance of Apple’s trustworthiness. In this game, we all need to choose who we trust with our data 🤷

halm,

I’m not even going to ask when the last security update came out 🤣

Teenage Peter Capaldi was such a rabid *Who* superfan that Barry Letts' secretary "wished Daleks would exterminate him" 🤣 (leminal.space)

TL;DR — at age 14, Peter Capaldi was so miffed that another teenager had been appointed by the BBC to run Official Doctor Who Fan Club, he ran a one man letter writing campaign to take over the post and club himself....

halm,

Agreed. I have ageing hardware that I upgraded to its maximum 16GB RAM, and I manage to browse the web and do basic office work with that. The most memory intensive work I do beside browsing is in GIMP, and I simply set some sensible virtual memory for that to work.

Just use a light DE, or even scale back to only a WM. People insisting that KDE or Gnome are lightweight are exactly the same who claim that 32GB RAM is a minimum. Yeah, it is when even your desktop environment is bloated 🙄

If you’re a gamer and can afford the hardware upgrades to stay at the current bleeding edge, go ahead. I keep an old box alive and make it work instead.

halm,

I’ve used matrix and simplex for different friend groups. While I prefer the former in terms of privacy, I get your point that the encryption keys and account verification is kind of a pain in the ass. Simplex is pretty …simple in comparison, but then, I haven’t had to use it on more than one device yet.

Just for the federation of it all, I’m also eyeing Databag. Now, if I can get my contacts on board as well is another matter…

halm, (edited )

I agree. I’ve only heard about the panel through word of mouth, like apparently the reporter in the above link. This was the first direct quote I saw from it, however.

If anybody finds a more reliable source, feel free to add it! I added a YouTube video and some select transcription to the OP.

halm,

Oh, that is salient! Adding the link and some transcripts to the OP. Thanks for the heads up!

halm, (edited )

Neither side is particularly vocal about what happened, so we don’t really know and the imagined drama is of course bigger than what may actually have happened.

We know for certain that Eccleston soured on the gig during the shooting of series 1 and didn’t want to go on. Contrary to mutual agreements, the BBC announced his departure even before the second episode had aired, using a fabricated quote attributed to Eccleston.

He made the BBC retract the statement, but has since said the false statement hurt his job opportunities and that BBC blacklisted him. He has also said that he was quoted as saying that “he was tired” after one season, but this was not part of the official BBC announcement.

Now, rumours tell us a bit more about the pressure and conditions of making that series: apparently, the director of the first block of episodes (Rose, Aliens in London, and World war three) wasn’t used to making scifi shows, and so made a lot of mistakes that wore down the crew and cast. I believe he is the one Eccleston calls “atrocious” in the linked panel and transcript:

By the first week, they were three weeks behind schedule. Lots of scenes had to be reshot by other directors at later dates. One special effects scene involving an explosion went terribly wrong and a sofa flying out a window almost hit a crew member. In the end that scene couldn’t even be used.

Eccleston was 40 by this time, a seasoned professional, and a socially conscientious one too. According to the same rumours, he was furious with the conditions of the first block shoot and went to management — which would be Davies, Tranter, Collinson and Gardner, the same foursome that are running the show again now. Whatever he demanded of them, whatever their response was, we don’t know for sure — but it appears that wass the straw that broke the camel’s back for him.

As he says in the panel recording, there were genuine highlights later in the production but apparently they couldn’t outweigh the damage that was done to his working relationship with the showrunner and producers.

Add to all the above that it has since come to light how John Barrowman made it a running joke to get naked on set and come up behind others to put his penis on them. Intended as pranks, sure, but it probably riled up an actor like Eccleston, who has gone on to deny working with “that prick” again.

More seriously Noel Clarke has been accused of sexual harrasment by a score of female crew and colleagues — actions that have taken place on productions such as Doctor who. I’m pretty sure that and Barrowman’s non-consentual transgressions is what Eccleston refers to when he talks about “pre MeToo” lawlessness on the production.

All in all, it paints a rather dire picture of a production that wore out its cast and crew, occasionally had hazardous lack of safety on sets, there were not one but two male co-stars stepping over personal and professional boundaries — and when the lead addressed some or all of this to the management, it doesn’t seem that anything was done about it.

Like I said, we don’t know the full picture, so I’ve tried to separate fact from rumour as far as I’m able. I think you’ll be able to find sources for most of the above. Certainly the Barrowman/Clarke misconduct and harassment accusations are recorded in the press, and seem credible to me.

[Edited to make clear that Barrowman being naked on and around co-workers is also a transgression]

halm, (edited )

Oh, there were apparently sex pests involved with Who production since the '80s… cough Nathan-Turner cough. And Sophie Aldred was almost caught in a water tank where a glass pane was about to shatter. Channel 5 did a full hour show about the history of “scandals” on Doctor who.

halm,

Can’t disagree with you that touching others with your junk falls under sexual harassment, even if you mean it as a joke. I only meant to emphasise that it’s a whole other degree of severity when it comes to Noel Clarke levels of predation.

halm,

Absolutely this. In the panel and elsewhere he heaps praise on Big Finish and the quality of their writers’ work. His problem is with the four he calls out here and, unfortunately for everybody who wants to see him back on screen as the Doctor, those exact people are back in charge of the show and don’t seem to be going anywhere.

The ninth Doctor is probably going to be audio only for good but that ain’t hay.

halm,

Don’t think that Barrowman has done this just once. It was so common and well-known that it’s referenced it in a farewell tribute song to RTD and Julie Gardner when they left Doctor who in 2009. This was a public webcast, it was common knowledge.

Nor has he regretted it enough to stop or improve his behaviour. This 2017 tweet has a video clip of him recounting how he sent an Arrow co-star pictures of himself posing naked around her trailer while she was busy on set and couldn’t intervene.

He never stopped, and he never stopped bragging about it.

halm,

Pure conjecture. Nothing in the quote substantiates your claim about Tennant returning. On the contrary, Davies has gone on record saying it’s not happening.

They are already prepping season 2 without any notion of future ratings, so your argument is completely unmoored from reality.

halm,

Oh, my poor head! I’ve sworn off flatpak until now because it took up so much disc space, and now you’re telling me it uses extradimensional file storage like some kind of TARDIS system?

halm,

Ah, I was confused because you used a flatpak deduplication command. Okay, got it. So BTRFS with flatpak is what will do my head in 🙂

halm,

Since you’re here, Aaron (and of course a Trek writer would be on federated social media!), can you share anything about Prodigy’s future past season 2? Hopes/wishes from the creative team? Initial signaling from Netflix re possibly continuing the show?

halm,

Oh, you read as far as you needed to find an easy angle for… whatever point you’re trying to make. Good for you. This is what I wrote immediately after:

I’m not here to argue for or against

I needed to type out my feelings about Discovery, not to be dragged into poorly manufactured conflicts. Feel free to pick a fight somewhere else unless you have something to say, and LLAP.

halm,

Yeah, I agree in part with your points. Any Star trek show should be an ensemble effort, and that’s why, of the newer shows, Lower Decks is much more my bag.

FWIW, I thought the Burnham focus worked in season 1 as our POV into the war setting and previously unseen Trek periode. We got to know the crew through her as she worked her way back into Starfleet. But yeah, past that the “it’s all about Michael” approach became a detriment to the show. There was literally a whole crew to explore like they did, only somewhat, with Saru.

With Picard, I expected the new crew of La Sirena to crystallise around the main character and become a new constellation — but no. Season 2 turned into a strange Gothic exploration of Picard’s past, and one that actually contradicted what we know about the character. If Chabon hadn’t left the writer’s room, I think we would have seen a more compelling story.

I did enjoy parts of the final PIC season, but it felt like it was written by somebody who didn’t really get what TNG was about. The old crew felt two-dimensional, like clichés of themselves, showing up for a cameo and dropping a quip. But I’m already veering way off from the Disco focus of my post 🙂

halm,

Like I said, I know where I’m in the minority — the show being cancelled is certainly a sign that Paramount lost faith in it — so I can only speak for the things I enjoyed to begin with. And although we disagree about those, we can still have a respectful back and forth about it 👍

Definitely, a lot of my initial enthusiasm was driven by just having new Star trek on screen again, but while I did see great potential in season 1 — hoo-boy, did it go downhill from there.

halm,

I agree about fluctuating rates of technological progress, but surely not at the scale of almost a millennium. I did expect some more creative choices from a production standpoint; like the thoughts and development that went into the (far closer) future technology of Minority report.

Yes, Disco’s personal transporter in the 32C was a pretty big deal, but only a logical progression from what had already been established throughout the series. “Programmable matter” was really just techno babble for hand held replicators, or 3D printers really — and detachable nacelles, how does that even work?

I will rewatch the show before the final season, and I look forward to another peek at the pre-Burn ships you mention. As I recall we barely saw them before they exploded but your description definitely makes me want to revisit those scenes!

On the balance between ensemble and lead focus — I think we’re more aligned here than it seems. I wanted more scenes from crew perspectives because what we got was so good in terms of acting and chemistry, and the cast were clearly up to carrying the show to a greater degree if they got the chance.

[Edit because apparently I can’t spell “development”]

halm,

Oh those ships! Yeah, I think that episode skimped on the ship porn, I could have sat through another couple of minutes of that scene 🙂

Tbf, when you wrote “abstract art” my hopes were for a ship that looks like a 3D Jackson Pollock, but I can rationally see how, even in Star trek, that wouldn’t be feasible for space travel…

halm,

For what it’s worth, I’ll maintain that Burnham’s character was great in driving action forward (ie. throwing herself blindly into conflicts), and I think Sonequa Martin-Green has been a terrific actor and ambassador for Trek and Disco. If the show instead had put that much focus on Saru or, heck, Bryce over the course of four (soon five) seasons, that would have been a bit much, too.

halm,

I genuinely think Trek needs to get over its Kirk/Spock fetish. Beside SNW, there are still talks about another Kelvin film. If I’m honest, when that stalled over negotiations with Chris Pine, I hoped they’d just go on and make a one-off film where Sulu, McCoy and Uhura get to save the day on their own. Even then, why stick with that period?

I’m cautiously optimistic about the Starfleet academy show if it materialises. It could fall into either “The OC in space” or some kind of Top gun, West Point show bound to reenact “The first duty”. Tawny New some seems to be on board as a writer, so I’m hopeful.

halm,

That is pretty much exactly my feelings about the show, only I felt the high stakes in season 1 were warranted given we were seeing the Federation at war, which in itself is a nightmare for an essentially peacekeeping operation. Bringing in the Terran empire as a reflection on Starfleet’s warlike posture in that situation was inspired, I think.

I have to say again, this being the first new Trek on TV since Enterprise, I gave that season a lot of leeway in terms of story and stakes.

As for character development, you’re right — we did get to see small character arcs for Tilly, Saru, and Detmer. They were kind of drip-fed to us though, unlike the more ham-fisted Burnham bits like season 2’s “let’s telegraph her broken relationship with Spock by having her dead mother plant signals across the galaxy”. There were a lot of nice character bits in there, but it was mostly plot acrobatics to centre everything on Burnham, again.

I loved Tilly and her friendship with Michael, but I’m split over the journey Tilly did get. One of the first things she said was “I’m going to be captain one day,” but as it became clear that Michael was headed for that seat, Tilly got an abrupt arc of self discovery that made her decide to be a teacher instead.

Is it cool to realise that your goals are maybe fulfillments of somebody else’s dreams, and finding your own way? Yes, I love it! Did it smell a bit like the writer’s room backpedaling to make Michael even more awesome? Yes. Yes it did.

halm,

You’re right, for my part I don’t have a distinct memory of season 4 — maybe because I haven’t rewatched it yet in preparation for s5 🙂 Season 3 felt lacklustre to me, the 32nd century was decidedly underwhelming, and my esteem for s4 may have been coloured by that Discovery fatigue.

As I recall, there was a lot of build-up before actually meeting the 10-c, and that I found the Arrival-style challenges of even communicating with them more interesting than whatever that guy from The expanse had going on? His character was as unconvincing as Jake Weber’s bored pirate in s3.

I’m looking forward to rewatching all of the first four seasons again to catch up before the last one, and hopefully on this wuewing s4 has as much kick as you describe 😉

halm,

Thanks for this. I love your personal perspectives and insights on Stamets and Sisko!

You’re absolutely right that Michelle Yeoh is a treasure, and her visible joy at playing an operetta villain was all the bts reason they needed to keep her on screen that long. Within the story though, her character was so irredeemable it didn’t make a lick of sense.

Speaking as someone who has made counterintuitive, spur of the moment decisions, however, I thought Burnham’s character was quite realistic 🙂 Terrible perhaps — me too — but thoroughly human. And I respectfully disagree, she is very much a female Kirk type in my eyes. They go 1:1 on following their gut instinct over Starfleet protocol, though maybe Kirk hijacked more ships in the process.

When you do make it back to Trek, seeing how you’re into comedy shows as well, I really recommend you to watch Lower decks. It’s a loving, dedicated bear hug of a tribute to the franchise, and has characters written with heart, too.

halm,

This is exactly what got me into Discovery! The willingness to go beyond convention and subvert viewer expectation.

So often throughout season one they’d hit me with something that I’d never seen done in Star trek before, and I’d be in the edge of my seat until next week. The whole introduction of the USS Discovery — which wasn’t until the third episode — had so much of a weird science vibe, I was blown away. And then the body horror of the USS Glenn.

Spore drives! Feral tardigrades! Space whales! All that, and pitting Starfleet in a war against Klingons that were really, truly alien for the first time in decades. Oh man, that was a wild ride, until they moored it with the dutiful canon connections in season two…

halm,

When you put it that way, yeah. That would have been interesting to watch. It wasn’t really my experience of where the season’s focus lay, though.

halm,

Hold up now, no need to draw the objectively impeccable DS9 into the matter! I have genuine affection for large parts of Discovery, but no other Trek can hold a candle to Deep space nine.

halm,

Oh, never apologise for explaining such a good point at length! Ever so often watching Discovery I’ve had to remind myself that Burnham is partially raised Vulcan, and that that background at odds with her humanity is part of motivating her actions. Sometimes the writers are subtle about it, sometimes not so much.

discover (pun intended 😏)

Ah, I see what they did there…! 🤣

As for innovation seeping back into the shows, my hopes are also for a Starfleet academy show because it’s such a shift in setting and age group from what we’ve seen before. On the other hand, with Paramount dropping Prodigy and closing Disco to focus on SNW, they’re really circling the wagons around the well-known formulae and characters.

I sort of feel like Disco was our shot at reinventing Trek for the 21st century, and they dropped the ball early on.

halm, (edited )

I think we have one obvious reason why season 1 was so solid: Bryan Fuller. He came to Trek with fresh ideas and thoughts about how to use them creatively in that setting. And he envisioned Disco as an anthology show that would focus on different eras each season, so the Burnham arc was one season, on to the next.

A lot clearly changed even before the show went into production, at which point he was out and Paramount probably reneged on doing new casting and design work for each new season. We’ll probably never know what could have been, and perhaps an anthology show would have the same dip in interest as it moved on.

For what it’s worth, the jump between seasons 2 and 3 did make that kind of radical change in setting that an anthology sets out to — but preserved the characters who had just fulfilled their mission to hide the sphere data, so there’s a contradiction in terms. And more to the point, the writers didn’t seem to know what to do with the characters once they made it to the future.

The evolution of Zora was an inspired idea (and literally cripped from Michael Chabon’s Calypso) but only became a detached plot strand, and Detmer’s PTSD was a gut punch only dealt with too superficially. So you’re right, despite some character highlights season three was meandering and listless. The crew had a whole future to explore, but no mission.

Rebuilding the Federation should have filled that hole with direction (or at least directives) but there wasn’t a lot of purpose to the space UN once it was restored. Maybe that dead water feels so frustrating because we’re seeing its literal mirror image in the deterioration of diplomacy and parliaments on the news every day. When Disco gets political it doesn’t mess around, but here it couldn’t deliver a show of common purpose because it was barely coherent itself. But I digress.

[Edit: misleading preposition]

halm,

Oh no 😱

halm,

Yeah, I enjoy SNW halfheartedly but it never hits the mark for me. I think you hit the nail on its head with your points about tonal whiplash, and the fandom pandering that Marvel and others have honed to to a formula.

What I find most jarring is that the show runners introduce this lovely crew of the pre-Kirk Enterprise, ripe for character exploration, and then either saddle them with “alternate timeline Kirk romance”, or sideline them to fill in some previously non-existing blanks in Spock’s love life…

I had been fine with a SNW show that was just Pike and his crew boldly going, but I personally feel like it’s hampered by scorecard TOS nostalgia. Clearly this is just my opinion, I do love it that people are so hyped over Star Trek again! I’m just jonesing for something that points to the show’s future, not another Spock/Kirk recast…

halm,

Cool, cool. Looking forward to seeing how the writers are going to handwave their way out of the Gorn-shaped hole they dug for themselves.

halm,

No, you’re crying. Moffat played the heartstrings like a virtuoso when he really wanted to.

halm,

The original developer probably couldn’t make ends meet on donations, and he sold the entire Simple suite to a shady commercial outfit that is notorious for filling their apps with ads and trackers.

halm,

Yeah, you’re right. I donated through the Thank You app he made, but I also realise what I can afford amounts to a pittance if only a fraction of users do the same.

I do think there should be more and easier available means of funding FLOSS through grants, and the developer could have tried crowd funding before simply selling to … a less than reputable party. But if there is rent to be paid, sometimes you only have bad options.

halm,

I loathe to say that stuff like this is an example of “the tragedy of the commons”, because that whole concept is biased against the notion that people might just altruistically provide others with great tools without motive of profit. Let’s say instead that FLOSS development would really, really thrive under a system that provides universal basic income 😉

recommendations for lightweight window managers for an old netbook

Hi, I’ve got an old netbook from Samsung that has an old Intel Atom CPU (Intel Atom N455 1.66 GHz). I installed Arch on it and am now thinking of a suitable window manager. I tried Hyprland (kinda expecting it to not work really) whick didn’t start at all. Before I had Debian with Gnome, which technically worked, but...

halm,

A bit late to the party, but especially for an older machine I’ll take Openbox any day. I still have some low range 2015 laptops running just fine where something like KDE would choke them up completely.

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