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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I'd say roughly 0%, but that may be tainted a bit by my complete dissatisfaction with his work on the new series of Star Trek movies... They've done such a good job of making [Ben Solo/Kylo Ren] an unlikeable little b***h, appropriate to his role as a major villain who jumped off the slippery slope feetfirst, that I really don't see a way for them to wrap up his arc short of Redemption Equals Death like they did for Vader. Trying to go any other route, like having him see the light and repent, would just feel like a karma houdini for a guy who's got multiple counts of mass murder on his CV.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    15 June 2010, in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur, AFAIK. It was included in Macross the Ride's description of the VF-19EF Caliburn the following year. I'm fairly certain that's not it. We're shown a paint scheme for the ARIEL system demonstrator, which includes a logo for the ARIEL system itself. The logo is a sylph, which is the class of air spirits that the character of Ariel in The Tempest arguably belonged to. (Ariel was, admittedly, referred to with male pronouns in The Tempest, even though the character was frequently played by women and the common image of a sylph for centuries has been that they're uniformly female. I blame von Hohenheim.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    A few side notes with respect to the ANGIRAS, ARIEL, and ARIEL II airframe integration management control systems... ANGIRAS was originally described in the Macross Journal Extra: Sky Angels VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition doujinshi by Masahiro Chiba. The first mention of ANGIRAS in official setting material was in Macross the Ride, in the official specs for Anthony Clemens' VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor. Its airframe control AI was given as the ANGIRAS-GFW204, said to be a high-end version for the VF-11. As with modern control systems, there are individual versions of ANGIRAS, ARIEL, etc. for given models, variants, blocks, etc. of variable craft that customize its performance for that vehicle or add/remove functionality. Only a few have been explicitly named, like the high-end ANGIRAS-GFW204 control AI for the VF-11 mentioned above, the ANGIRAS-AD3 control AI used by the VF-1X (and VF-4?), and the ARIEL II build codenamed "Brunhilde" that was used by the YF-25, VF-19ACTIVE, VF-25, and YF-30 with various adjustments.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, they'll totally stick with it. Archer passing away the day after the TOS Enterprise was commissioned is just too perfect for jerking the fandom's heartstrings. Sato had a pretty sizable hatedom, so they'll likely leave hers alone simply to avoid discussing her. (I'm betting they work it into the Discovery novels about the hunt for Kodos.) EDIT: Esp. in Archer's case, since they established that he was apparently alive around the time the Enterprise was launched in the Kelvin timeline.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    One of the pitfalls of academia... you end up learning a lot of superficially polite-sounding ways to say one of your colleagues is full of crap. Once you've got tenure, the foul language flows a good deal more freely. His paper certainly ticks all the usual checkboxes for a study aimed at grabbing the attention of the mainstream media's sensationalist side. It's a small independent study with a sample size that's far too small to be taken as entirely reliable and a vague conclusion that can be easily reinterpreted by omission to sound far more incendiary. "The Last Jedi haters are all trolls or Russian influencers" sounds a lot more impressive and headline-worthy than "assuming this tiny sample population is a perfect scale representation of the entirety of the Star Wars fandom, that my poorly-explained and highly subjective methodology for determining what constitutes 'trolling' is perfectly valid, and that there are some resemblances on a few accounts to Russian election year social media trolls, I conclude that the hate for The Last Jedi is a secret, evil Russian political campaign intended to undermine our democracy... no, stop trying to take away my tinfoil hat". It's marked as Preprint status, so it hasn't been accepted by any scholarly publication at this time... let alone actually put out for comment. That's the biggest hole in the paper... at no point does Dr. Bay consider that there might have been other motivations for the malicious behavior, like people just being a-holes. He leaps directly to a conclusion that it's part of a sinister social media influence campaign aimed at triggering some kind of sociopolitical upheaval. Seems a bit hyperbolic for angry fans raging about a movie full of angsty space wizard-monks with laser swords. Honestly, as poor as the quality of this study was, I suspect that may have been the point. Dr. Bay does seem to have gone into it with, if not a goal of then a vested interest in, smearing The Last Jedi's critics. Weirdly, thinking back on this, I have to admit I think I might see why the Star Wars fans on the far right seem inclined to hate Disney for brooming the old Expanded Universe to make way for this new trilogy. The old Star Wars EU seems to carry a fairly overt Aesop that democracy doesn't work and that authoritarianism is the only way to get crap done or form a functioning society. There are some shades of this in The Last Jedi vis a vis the commentary on how useless the New Republic is, but it's not nearly on par with the books showing them as an ineffectual and hopeless corrupt bunch of total bunglers who go barely last a century of chaotic democratic rule before the Empire takes over again.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    I've often wondered... high-powered searchlights like the one used for the Bat Signal can easily draw ~7kW in operation. That could get expensive pretty fast. Does Bruce Wayne covertly reimburse the Gotham P.D. for the cost of operating it? Ironic that you'd notice the term in the VF-19's Master File book... the Shinsei Industry VF-19 was the first production VF that didn't use it. ANGIRAS was the first-generation airframe control AI technology that was used on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Generation Variable Fighters. It's basically the VF's equivalent of the learning computer that the titular Mobile Suit had in the original Gundam series... an AI-based control system that functions as the intermediary between the pilot and the mecha's various systems.1 It's the computer running all the various systems in the VF's "glass cockpit": interpreting control inputs and feedback commands for the digital fiber optic fly-by-wire system2, managing sensor integration and prioritization for the cockpit displays, and overseeing all the various essential systems that would otherwise require a lot of the operator's attention so the pilot can focus on flying. 4th Generation VFs like the VF-19, VF-22, and VF-171 used the next-generation airframe control AI system that was introduced to replace ANGIRAS: ARIEL.3 5th Generation VFs are using an upgraded version of the ARIEL AI system called ARIEL II. 1. In this sense, "ANGIRAS" counts as a punny name or an obscure reference. Angiras was a Vedic sage in Hinduism who was famed in scripture as, among other things, a mediator between men and the gods. 2. The oldest versions of the technical materials mention an AMBAC system as one of the flight control systems it oversees. "Fly" might be a misleading term too, since the same control system (and physical controls) are used for maneuvers in the air and on the ground in the other modes as well. 3. This acronym has not been explained, AFAIK. I suspect it is a reference to the character of Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest, an all-seeing spirit of the air who is based on a spirit from renaissance demonology that is described as an Archon of the Winds, Spirit of the Air, and Wielder of Fire.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    On a skim of the paper during a particularly tedious and unnecessary meeting I just escaped, I have to say I find his conclusion specious. Dr. Bay's sample size is vanishingly small at just 967 tweets collected over a 219 day period, focused exclusively on ONE Twitter account (Rian Johnson's). Actual description of his methodology is short and vague, and points to a highly subjective filtering approach beyond the most basic distinction of positive vs. negative commentary. For much of his analysis section he's drawing conclusions based upon circumstantial or insufficient evidence, particularly in connecting Russia to the 33 accounts he categorized as malicious actors based on highly general conditions common to disposable "burner" accounts. While it's true that 3 or 4 of the accounts he examined were purged by Twitter in one of its periodic purges of sockpuppet accounts, he doesn't seem to have even considered that people creating new accounts specifically to behave like jackasses and post inflammatory material is not a hard and fast indicator of an account being part of a Russian influence campaign. It feels rather bizarre that the doctor, a research fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at USC's Annenberg school, would be overlooking or completely discounting the rather more obvious possibility that many of these bad actors are just ordinary trolls and butthurt misogynistic fanboys covering their asses by creating a disposable secondary account. We do live in a time where employers are terminating people over things they post on social media, after all. For the TL;DR crowd... this chap's conclusion feels a bit like McCarthyist paranoia. There's a vague possibility he's onto something, but it feels more like he's jumping at shadows.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Seems like practically everyone wants to take "Russian cyber-interference" as a get-out-of-jail-free card these days... Anyway, an abstract from an unpublished doctoral student's essay with a premise based on vague, highly subjective criteria and with an unnecessarily hyperbolic conclusion hardly seems like a news-worthy topic. I can practically hear his advisor's eyes rolling.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno if anyone saw this already... it looks like the theoretical potential for UEFI malware is no longer quite so theoretical. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/10/first-uefi-malware-discovered-in-wild-is-laptop-security-software-hijacked-by-russians/
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Once I finish the last couple of novels in the Star Trek relaunch continuity I'm going to take a whack at the Discovery novels... I've gotta get SOMETHING out of the series, even if I can't stand the crew of the titular ship.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Ah. Think I'll take a miss on that one. Season one was such an unholy mess that I honestly doubt I can be arsed to bother pirating season two, let alone actually paying for it on CBS All Access. It's a very strange feeling for a lifelong Trekkie to hear there's a new season of Star Trek about to start in the near future and feel no enthusiasm whatsoever. I just hope Star Trek's chuniibyou phase passes swiftly and we can replace Discovery with something more befitting the Star Trek legacy in the near future.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    You'd have to look at her character-specific page. The details do show up in the graphics for that episode, but the episode article doesn't give the bios in full. It's mentioned in the third-to-last paragraph in the Background section of Hoshi's memory alpha article.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Use a VPN to spoof your location?
  14. Seto Kaiba
    It's actually from the ENT two-parter episode "In a Mirror, Darkly". When Mirror!Archer and Mirror!Sato are going through the USS Defiant's main computer looking at the Federation historical database, the later details of their respective prime timeline service records are visible onscreen (and discussed in part). The biographical data for those onscreen displays were what showed when Prime!Archer and Prime!Sato died, and in Sato's case the circumstances of her untimely demise. That's really all there is, though. We might get more in one of the Discovery novels that's about the manhunt for Governor Kodos.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Or at least grounds for an inconsistencies drinking game. More about the mini-episodes they're planning, I assume?
  16. Seto Kaiba
    I don't believe the Northampton-class has ever been described as being inspired by, or based on, any Zentradi designs... but I can see where you're coming from there. Like its contemporary, the Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, the Northampton-class stealth frigate is basically an example of structural purpose shaping taken to its logical extreme as a countermeasure for radar detection. Fortunately space warships don't have to worry about aerodynamics, so they've neatly ducked the problems the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk had in doing the same (being unflyable without a computer-aided fly-by-wire system). Since active stealth technology is once again ascendant in the late 2050s and 2060s, I'm inclined to wonder if the switch back to less passively stealthy warship designs is a product of that.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    One of the more unusual touches in Macross II: Lovers Again's continuity was that the UN Forces were quite blatant in their application of Zentran and Meltran overtechnology. Their new warship classes have acquired Zentradi and Meltrandi aesthetics, they use the space warfare tactics they've learned from their Zentradi and Meltrandi defectors, and their mecha have obvious Zentran and Meltran-inspired design touches. The New UN Forces in the ongoing Macross timeline supposedly do, but you'd never know it outside of being told... except maybe on the YF-21/VF-22.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Not unless he can time travel... because his stated disinterest in revisiting the story and characters of the original Macross series goes back to shortly after Macross: Flash Back 2012 was released when he considered the Macross story to be definitively concluded, and Harmony Gold didn't start to become the legal impediment they are to Macross today until ~2001. "The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible." Macross Zero was, put simply, a prequel made during a period where prequels were trendy and the story doesn't really touch on Super Dimension Fortress Macross at all. The gist of it was "Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay's story is over. They've sailed off into the sunset, so let them go."
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Among the improvements identified were enhancements to thermonuclear reaction power systems and actuator technology derived from the capture of a factory satellite specializing in battle suits. All of the Macross II VFs are basically hybrids of the Nousjadeul-Ger and VF concept.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    I've got copies of all the pieces... as a translation it was pretty iffy and they tried to fill in gaps with a lot of wild-ass guesses. Eventually I'll get 'round to publishing a full translation of the original Japanese articles promoting the OVA. Right now I'm working on the old Sky Angels VF-1 Valkyrie tech manual. This ancient version of the lore is just WEIRD.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be nice to finally get some specs for the YF-24/VF-24. Between what we've been told about how all the other 5th Generation VFs were developed from heavily redacted versions of the YF-24 Evolution spec and how the YF-29 was made in an effort to exceed the YF-24, they do make it sound like a rather over-the-top performer.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    That's anime in general... as a translator-for-fun, I have to say the worst offender I've yet encountered is Masaki Kajishima's Tenchi Muyo! franchise. There's easily twenty or thirty times as much official setting material in his self-published setting books and the official art books than there is in the actual shows, and that's counting the liner notes as part of the shows! To be fair, there WAS a partial translation of the Macross II timeline materials that came out in English fanzines when the OVA was being promoted... but it was kind of an iffy quality translation and it was spread across three or four different publications like Mangazine, Mecha Press, etc. It was a bit odd to see them translate the term for the UN Government as "the Federation". (Someone at Mangazine clearly had Gundam on the brain.) Honestly, the way I always took it was as an affirmation that what mattered wasn't the ship itself, but the message it conveyed. I would! The 5th Generation VF program was THE biggest defense program in the Macross setting since the initial military buildup after Alien Spaceship One landed on South Ataria in '99. It took them 17 years to suss out the problems with the all-important Inertia Store Converter technology that was meant to address the problems that kneecapped the 4th Generation designs in the adoption process, and it's the basis of every single new VF from 2057 on except one. Many of the improvements to 4th Generation VFs were technology backported from its descendants or put on them for evaluation for a future 5th Gen VF.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    This is a very popular misconception, due in part to the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA's supplemental materials not making it to the west and the subject not coming up during the OVA proper. The Unification Government in the Macross II timeline was heavily invested in launching emigrant fleets. They never got as big as the ones in Macross's main/ongoing timeline with millions of people, but they were launching them fairly frequently using a mass-produced version of the Macross-class in addition to the Megaroad-class. The program seems to have been put on hiatus after a particularly brutal war with a Zentradi Army main fleet in 2054 that totalled most of the UN Spacy's fleet in the Sol system... a war that began when a newly launched emigrant fleet headed by the Macross-class ship Million Star blundered directly into a Zentradi fleet only a handful of light years outside the system. The result was, in addition to a small fortune in captured Zentradi military hardware, that the UN Forces had to batten down their proverbial hatches for a bit while their forces were rebuilt and the technological advances wrung from the spoils of war started a second Overtechnology boom that led to a sweeping modernization of their equipment. The Zentradi invasion of 2082 was their first real test of the new warship classes, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II, and much of their other new hardware. (IIRC, in the novelization they did start launching new emigrant ships after the Mardook conflict in 2092.) That had nothing to do with the ship itself... just that the ship's accumulated history happened to broadly match a Mardook myth of a savior-ship from a blue planet that would bring peace. Ingues himself demonstrated (by destroying it) that there really wasn't any special attribute in the ship itself. (Like so many prophecies, that one turned out to be so broadly written that it could mean almost anything to the right reader. Nostradamus was great at that kind of writing himself, which only really required one to let the reader draw their own conclusions and nod along when they start going on about your genius.) (That Ishtar could glean as much from contact with the ship's systems makes more sense when you know that the Mardook were strongly implied to be the descendants of one of the groups of Protoculture refugees that fled the collapse of their civilization.) Super Dimension Fortress Macross is probably not a great way to judge the Zentradi's overall belligerence, since Earth was found by a branch fleet rather than any particularly large formation and said fleet's commander was cautious and inquisitive enough to think terribly hard about why the Supervision Army ship he'd found had been rebuilt into such a nonstandard specification and wonder at the fact that the unknown classes of ship defending the planet were flinging lost technology weapons at him so casually. Basically, Earth lucked the f*ck out because the Zentradi fleet that found them was commanded by a thinking man like Vrlitwhai and not a meathead like Quamzin. Boddole Zer's own presentation to the captured UN Spacy personnel suggests that glassing a planet is basically SOP when there's a confirmed enemy presence. You have to know which ships those are, first... the only reason that approach was workable in the First Space War was that it was proposed by a high ranking Zentradi commander who had just defected in the face of a friendly-fire execution, so his forces knew EXACTLY who to shoot at to undermine the chain of command. Without that inside track on the fleet's organization to know which ships to target, the only viable way to carry it off would be to go after the mobile fortress and sink that... which is a high casualty, low survival rate operation if there ever was one.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    From the composition and font, I'm going to guess it's from one of the semi-recent Hobby Japan mooks about Macross modeling. It's definitely a customized model kit... from the look of it, a VF-25 kit (-A or -G type) with a custom delta wing. You can see it has the VF-25's wing glove.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... 's more like it'd be virtually impossible. The New UN Government knows their victory in 2010 was more by luck than good judgement, and even then over sixty percent of the Boddole Zer main fleet is still out there. There are 2,000+ more fleets just like it kicking around the galaxy. Even the ancient Protoculture took one look at a threat like that and decided to get the heck out of dodge, and they had MUCH better military technology than the New UN Forces did. Essentially, the decision to launch emigrant fleets to spread humanity across the galaxy was mainly predicated on the simple understanding that there was no realistic way to defend one planet from something like that once without colossal loss of life... and doing it repeatedly was right out. Their chances were better spreading the species out across the galaxy so the loss of any one planet was not an extinction-level threat and they could slip through the cracks while they got back on their collective feet. (This is in sharp contrast to the UN Forces in the "DYRLverse" timeline of Macross II: Lovers Again, which by 2092 had successfully fended off or otherwise defeated five more main fleets using the Minmay Attack stratagem that worked so well in the First Space War and were getting more than slightly overconfident about it when the Mardook showed up with a fresh-baked humble pie as a getting-to-know-you gift.) It'd still be brown trousers time and Earth would absolutely be calling for reinforcements from Eden and its other neighboring systems, but Earth definitely has the biggest guns at their disposal thanks to being the New UN Government's leader in technology. As far as I'm aware, there weren't any battles in the play at all... just a hostage situation.
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