A bunch already here that I like for different reasons but I think my favorite is what they did in the game The Sword of the Stars. Sadly a case of a game with great ideas but only so-so-execution.

My memory on the mechanics might be wrong as I haven’t played it for years but basically as a strategy game the fun twist is that every species has a fundamentally different approach to FTL.

You have a Lizard species with basically Star Trek warp drive with fixed speed above light speed from any point to point of their choosing.

Then you have humans that stumbled across naturally occurring interconnect lines between many stars and can travel faster along those routes by comparison to warp drive but have to travel below light speed off of those lines.

Then an aquatic species that doesn’t do FTL in the normal sense. They developed teleportation but is it only for short distance. However they are able to get the power requirements down very low and rapidly repeat the process and so they flicker across space and the distance of each step gets longer the farther they are from a gravity well so they travel faster around the outside of something like a galactic cluster than in the middle of it. Reversing the normal pattern of where things get colonized.

And last was an insect species that developed ship size star gates but travels sub light to anywhere new but as long as they bring a gate ship travel is basically instant after that.

And the bonus layer is that since the game has direct ship to ship combat also in the mechanics the difference drive types have trade offs as well like the insects having extremely good combat drives since they don’t have ANY FTL systems on their combat ships so it all goes to direction propulsion.

So far it is the only Sci-fi setting I can think of that has so many different ones overlapping not just something like a newer system replacing an older one.

As AAA said in a comment beside me it isn’t so much that I expect it would predate a space elevator. Simply that it is possible with current tech rather than still waiting on additional moderately likely breakthroughs like long chain carbon nanotube tether.

Also there are plenty of options to have the vast majority of the material be from space and not the surface since the core idea is a metal like copper being spun above orbital speed after being made into a full loop then used for the mag lev to keep at ground speed. There are absolutely a lot of astroids that might allow for that.

Constructing an Orbital ring and then using that to get a form of space elevator built.

Totally possible to build with our current technology but the cost if we do it pre space elevator or similar is pretty insane.

Building a ring let’s us basically have a stable space side anchor at low earth orbit instead of geo sync ish like you need for a normal space elevator to match ground speed.

Even more fun is cost for additional rings drops massively and you can build them in different orientations you can get space elevators to rings without having to be on the equator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E

Last and my favorite part is the possibility of having literally trains that go up to a ring cross an ocean and go back down. Wouldn’t be faster than planes but massively better cargo capacity and efficiency as well as comfortable for passengers.

Absolutely disagree on this. There is no fundamental reason software must have bugs. However old systems can be their own technical debt because of things like the hardware no longer being produced and therefore unable to be directly repaired if it breaks from age.

This leaves either reprogramming for a modern device or things like emulation which can create/surface bugs that weren’t present before.

The most extreme example I have heard of (sadly couldn’t quickly find a link for it) was a disorientation simulator for pilot training that had zero software issues in several decades of use and when the hardware failed they replaced it with an FPGA in a modern system that ran all the old code 1 for 1. PDP stuff originally I think.

Additional edit - I’ll add that “bug free” software is insanely rare in reality and nearly but not quite impossible to create in practice. I can’t say the software didn’t technically have bugs but if multiple decades of use didn’t have them show up in practice it is functionally bug free.

I feel this. Both in terms of driver engagement safety and in how much I loathe traditional automatic transmissions. Still stuck owning one in one of the two vehicles I have at the moment but only because it was all I could afford for the second of two vehicles large enough to fit all my kids.

I have had several manual transmission vehicles and the other current one is a PHEV and one of the rare models that is a series hybrid so it drives like a true EV.

While you are most definitely correct his parents wouldn’t do that; schools back then absolutely did enforce that and he clearly did still go through school.

Ok that is one of the most adorable things I have ever seen.

Sadly I don’t but would also like to see it if it is available.

Sounds like we would have to build satellites with shades that would be selectively turned off and on as needed and only for specific parts of the globe like the overheating cities. Might be able to have some interesting effects forcing weather patterns that way.

However as you say none of that helps the ocean acidification and that is terrifying.

Right you are I missed that. So comets at least aren’t workable.

Kinda. The exact quote for it being lowered down without heating up from reentry is “the added ice would cool the water down by only about a millionth of a degree” But yea essentially useless in the big scheme of things.

The ice would be massively better used in space habitats or terraforming other places.

In a strictly technical sense if you source ice in space from something like a comet and bring it down slowly with something like a space elevator it would help a tiny bit. However the amount of effort would be much better spent on either fixing things we are doing or going for one of the crazier but valid options like building satellites that shade something like 1-2% of sunlight etc.

Absolutely agree. Love the movie so much and in a world that loves incredible scales for sci-fi tech I haven’t ever seen anything else like the Titans function in anything else.

Very good list in my opinion and definitely matches my memory from learning about Andrew Jackson in the past.

I agree that Trump is no Hitler. While by some magic the crowds at his events like him he absolutely isn’t the orator Hitler was among a lot of other differences.

However I still say the overall party/political movement he is head of is extremely fascist and incorporating a lot of Nazi elements. The flip to that is that the Nazis got a lot of stuff from the USA and the Nazis loved our racist policies in the 30s and our history of doing things like the westward expansion and what that did to the native people.

My family (wife and multiple kids) oddly enough have access to both this and Minecraft and actually prefer Luanti most of the time.

Try Lego Masters from other regions. I’m guessing you are watching the USA version and I know my kids have enjoyed the Australian version way more. All a matter of taste of course in what works for you especially in terms of something like a show host.

Nope what fell out of the sky was the wizard holding the scrolls that give you an insanely high magic jump that kills you in impact on the other end if you don’t prepare.

The boots of blinding speed and worn by someone that is effectively blind when you meet them. Don’t remember the name. Fun thing is you can just infinitely try sneaking around them and always keep gaining skill since they always fail their roll for if they see you which gives you the exp.

I hear people say all the time that it is perfect. It definitely has imperfections.

However while I will insist on it being imperfect it has still been my number one favorite game for at least two decades.

It is easily the closest to perfect I think you could possibly ask for with the hardware limitations and the fact that teams don’t have magical infinite time or budgets. Anyone with even a slight interest in RPGs should play it.

Plus it gave us the musical career of Yasunori Mitsuda

I had a 1980 year Oldsmobile 98 that didn’t have as many crazy issues as yours but did have one amazing one.

Driving home one evening from college classes the headlights didn’t work so I took it into the shop.

Couldn’t find anything normal as a cause but I had one of those old time small town mechanics that couldn’t stand to lose to the car. So he said he wouldn’t charge us for the extra work hours if he could keep it as a project until he was done. Took over three weeks of him going through the wiring and finally found a harness/wire that had worn through and was grounding to the car frame.

So far nothing too weird for an old car. The bizarre part is that he had good current equipment and it is supposed to test if a wire is grounded out like that to the frame or even if it is broken by kicking signals along it like you can to find damage to Ethernet cables.

So with that tester in hand and knowing without question what the problem was he hooked it back up and it still reported nothing wrong. He called the manufacturer and they said as far as they know that violates the laws of electricity… Worked fine with the new wires so again definitely correct and his tool worked on everything else he ever tried it on.

Might have missed it but still shocked that there are only a couple models that go for more than one USB-C port.

I have been of the opinion that the adapters are acceptable because you gain flexibility with things like external DACs, which several people have brought up, but having to trade between charging and wired devices or a truly overkill dock style dongle just seems so silly when phones absolutely have the space to put two ports.