The Doctor didn’t consider that in “Phage” and I only recall VOY using the transporter buffer trick once when they had to hide the telepathic crew members when they’re traveling through Devore space.

the so-called “First Lady of Star Trek” recorded an entire library of phonetic sounds, allowing her voice to be used in future products outside of Star Trek and, quite possibly, as the computer voice in Star Trek: Discovery.

Source: https://nerdist.com/article/the-late-majel-barrett-may-voice-star-trek-discoverys-computer/

Alternatively…

Lizard babies, space cheese that makes the ship sick, yeah, I could see this going down in VOY.

Refurbishers on eBay

Ah, well, that limits things a bit then.

I have refined tastes when it comes to laptops, but I’m also cheap, so lightly used high end models are right up my alley. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any [brand new ones] I would stand behind that are in that price range other than maybe a Macbook Neo, but you specifically ruled out ARM (they’re also not supported by Ashai Linux yet, either).

Sorry.

Are you married to a new one?

I pretty much exclusively buy used ~3 year old Thinkpads which meet all of your specs and then some. My last two were X1 carbons (7th gen and now a 9th gen). Each cost me about $450.

Interesting or useful?

I don’t think I have any really interesting ones, but the most useful one I have for people is “Always On”.

Basically when I see that tag, I can mentally prepare myself and roll my eyes before reading. Basically it’s for people who just do nothing but preach at you regardless of the topic being discussed. It’s…pretty useful.

Hank Hill, apparently.

I don’t use Facebook and use all the ad blockers, but apparently I’m still tracked by IP.

When my SO and I started dating, he hooked to my wifi one day and immediately started getting ads on Facebook for various lawn care products. He’d never had those come up before, lived in an apartment all his adult life, and has never searched for any kind of gardening supplies.

I, on the other hand, do have a lawn that I take care of and frequently shop for various landscaping stuff. But he gets the ads for them.

I feel like this is the kind of joke Frasier would have told Freddy when he was a kid.

Literally this.

Twice a year I fill in as DBA when our lady graybeard Oracle DBA takes vacation. This month is one of those times. Yay me.

For my org, it’s just the massive in-house developed line-of-business application that’s tightly coupled to Oracle that keeps us chained to it. It’s technical debt from top to bottom, and has been accumulating steadily since the early 2010s, but no one seems willing to start replacing it.

The new projects typically go with Postgres, MariaDB, or if all else fails, MSSQL. But the Oracle monster in the closet isn’t likely to leave any time soon.

I thought I was above enjoying all of the really campy episodes, but apparently not. I thoroughly enjoyed “Rascals” just for the Guinan / Ro Laren sass.

If they took Subspace Rhapsody to Broadway, I would happily make that my first show.

and That Puppet Episode

I was ambivalent about “Those Old Scientists” and bringing the LD cast in as live-action characters. Ended up loving it.

I was ambivalent about “Subspace Rhapsody” and a musical episode in general. Also loved it.

I was initially ambivalent about the puppet episode, but if history is anything to go by, bring it on.

Every time I play Skyrim:

“You are carrying too much to be able to run”

Inventory:

• …
• 30 “Solution of Strength” potions

Me: But I might need those later.

lol. My guess would be either really, really long and covers every possible scenario or extremely short and brutally honest.

Oh, yeah. SSH from laptop or Termux on my phone.

Not sure if there’s a CLI way to deal with captive portals or not. Maybe a text-based browser like Lynx/Links2 if the portal isn’t super fancy, but I’ve used the MAC cloning method for ages and it’s just my “go to” for dealing with that. Honestly, I don’t deal with them very often since I just use a hotspot much of the time with it.

I’ve only had to go through a captive portal once with it but MAC cloning was sufficient

Photovoltaic / Solar power installation.

“Solar system” just sounds weird when I say it.