melmi

Yeah, fair enough. To my mind I guess I don't think of array indexes as an example of actual zero based numbering, simply a quirk of how pointers work. I don't see why one starting from zero has anything to do with the other starting from zero. They're separate things in my head. Interestingly, the article you linked does mention this argument:

Referencing memory by an address and an offset is represented directly in computer hardware on virtually all computer architectures, so this design detail in C makes compilation easier, at the cost of some human factors. In this context using "zeroth" as an ordinal is not strictly correct, but a widespread habit in this profession.

That said, I suppose I still use normal one-based numbering because that's how I'm used to everything else working.

Picard is definitely the worst for this. It's woefully generic and miserable.

On the other hand, SNW feels like it has much more of the TOS-era vibrancy, LD is pretty similar to TNG in terms of setting (plus modern humor of course)... Prodigy even takes the novel approach of seeming like generic sci-fi at first only to become probably the most similar to 90s Trek out of all the new shows, albeit in kid's show format. Still, it's really fun and is all about the hope the Federation represents.

And for that matter, while early Discovery is pretty dark, I feel like Discovery gets more hopeful. Sure, the 32nd century has kind of a "fallen utopia" thing going on, but it very quickly turns into rebuilding and by the end they're looking hopefully to the future as they're expanding their borders again. It's different from the previous eras of Trek, but it's still hopeful.

Indexes start from zero because they're memory offsets, but array[0] is still the first element because it's an ordinal number, not an offset. It's literally counting each element of the array. It lines up with the cardinality—you wouldn't say ['A', 'B', 'C'] has two elements, despite array[2] being the last element.

When done correctly, the banner is actually a consent banner. It's a legal thing, not necessarily trying to discourage criminals. It's informing users that all use will be monitored and it implies their consent to the technology policies of the organization. It's more for regular users than criminals.

When it's just "unauthorized access is prohibited", though, especially on a single-user server? Not really any point. But since this article was based on compliance guidelines that aren't all relevant to the homelab, I can see how it got warped into the empty "you no hack" banner.

I agree that democratic socialism is probably the closest IRL system, I just think it's fairly vague about it and any assertions are easily glossed over or disregarded as fiction, or attributed to the advanced tech.

It comes back to the disconnection of tech, the vagueness, the allegory. You don't see queer people, you just see allegories for queer people that are either safer to accept or just aren't acknowledged as allegories. You don't see Federation imperialism being questioned that much, they're pretty much always right. The only meaningful people who question it are the Maquis, and Sisko loses himself in his vengeance and pursuit of them (but is never humbled for it—from the audience's perspective, he's right). And then there's S31, which is fascist to begin with.

And I'm just talking about canon here. Not the books or anything like that.

Technically money was abolished prior to the invention of the replicator, but we never hear any details about that. The most detail we get is a one off line in Voyager about a "New World Economy".

They don't flesh out what the economy actually looks like, or how we got here without replicators. The "without replicators" is an important bit, which might seem like a random thing for me to be focusing on but I've talked to conservative fans who will often cite replicators as something that would be required for the Federation's socialism. Even liberal fans often think that. The message of the show is about post-scarcity, not workers owning the means of production. It's not socialism in the ways that it exists on earth, and so conservatives don't hate it.

Okay, but that's capitalism. There's the classic cope of "this is simply a requirement because scarcity exists." They think it's necessary and unavoidable.

The conservative read of Star Trek is that feeding all its citizens is a sign of the Federation being so rich that it can feed all its citizens without the need for capitalism as we know it. True post-scarcity.

It doesn't challenge their belief that starving citizens are required in the modern day. If anything, to a conservative techbro like Musk, it reaffirms their beliefs because it's all about how rich the Federation is and how feeding the whole world would require massive advances in technology like replicators. It's even a common plot point how other civilizations want access to Federation replicators and other tech.

That 10Gb link is almost certainly oversubscribed, though. You don't actually have 10 Gb of dedicated constant bandwidth, you just have access to 10Gb of potential bandwidth. You're unlikely to saturate that link very often, so you won't notice, but it's shared with other people.

It's different from Google or any other company paying for bandwidth that's being actually used, not just a pre-allocated link like your home internet.

But all of this is either compatible with a conservative reading, or requires more analysis than most conservatives are putting in. I mean I doubt Musk read the Picard books.

But then you go on to mention stuff like family tradition, which is literally a key value for conservatives, especially when it involves joining the military.

Or people being well fed, or valuing self-improvement? Think about all the rightwing grifters who go on about self improvement all the time, or how they claim that communism killed 15 vigintillion people from starvation and only CAPITALISM can feed the world. Conservatives don't want people to be starving, starving citizens are the sign of a poor society. It's okay that the Federation doesn't use money because it is post-scarcity thanks to replicators, a technological solution to the issue of feeding the poor. This is perfectly compatible with the techbro mindset that tech is the solution to all our problems, and isn't challenging to those who believe that socialism is impossible without advanced post-scarcity technology.

What I'm trying to get at is that all the aesthetics are there for a conservative to read it in a way that is compatible with their ideology, in much the same way that a liberal will read it as a triumph of liberalism or a leftist can interpret it as socialist. It isn't challenging to those ideologies, because it's vague enough and alien enough to not map 1-to-1 onto any modern political system.

I mean the Bell Riots happen in 2024 in the Prime Timeline. The 21st century sucks in Star Trek. Eugenics wars, Sanctuary Districts, WWIII, fascist dictatorships using soldiers addicted to drugs...

It's only after a nuclear holocaust that humanity is reborn into their "hopeful era". I mean hell, they literally had to retcon the timeline because the 90s weren't actually as awful as the show claimed and they had to move the Eugenics Wars. The 21st century is dark in the Prime Timeline, and it's fully believable that it was just as bad as our real 21st century or worse.

So no, as easy as it is to cave to doomerism, I think the message of Star Trek is that this too shall pass. Stuff sucks, no doubt, the world is in a dark place right now, but that doesn't mean it will stay that way.

I like to rewatch DS9: "Past Tense" sometimes because it really hits home how bad things are, but also gives hope for how maybe there's a future in which we look back and wonder how things got this bad.

I can kind of see where he's coming from, but only if you're weighing it against an assumed future where we're going to die out tomorrow. That's a low bar for hopeful, and certainly not "100% positive".

I have a hard time seeing I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or even worse, All Tomorrows, as "hopeful". I'd honestly rather just die.

Plus, not all sci-fi involves humans, and not all sci-fi is in the future. There's scifi with no humans in it, there's scifi set in the past or in an alternate present, and none of those qualify as "hopeful by default" in the way he defines it any more than any other fiction does.

But how will you get a "universal" view of the fediverse? No single authoritative view exists.

You yourself acknowledge that this is complicated, but I honestly don't understand what appeal a hacked together fake centralized system would have for people if they don't care about decentralization in the first place. Any such solution is almost inevitably gonna end up being janky and hacked together just to present a façade of worse Reddit.

Lemmy's strength is its decentralization and federation. It's not a problem to be solved, it's a feature that's attractive in its own right. It doesn't need mass appeal, it's a niche project and probably always will be. I don't think papering over the fundamental design of the software will make it meaningfully more attractive to the non-technically minded.