mysterious gamma quadrant artifacts (d4s)

a tessellation tool; manufacture a tiny sample of some new chemical or complicated nanotube structure and immediately tile it out into a bulk quantity

some wildly over-optimized compression tool that can crunch almost any pattern into a Slightly Worse version that needs only a trickle of energy to replicate

whatever does the “make this machine but bigger” (or smaller) scaling that one guy did with the luck machine

something to do with pipes/fluid handling

cloth editing, but there’s no way it’s only one tool, it’s lots of little tools that can be chained together

various tools that can heal common errors in scanned objects, like checking the seals on ship parts

weirdly powerful pattern diff tool that among other things can help diagnose why a part is failing, do forensics on its damage history, and create food that’s edible to some venn diagram overlap of species. Doctors hijack its diffing ability to quickly ID proteins/viruses/etc in a sample.

a joke tool that claims to replicate infinite latinum but simply outputs gold in the shape of the word LATINUM in a random language, repeating until the process is killed*

ffmpeg, somehow

In a world where most websites are sustained by ads and data harvesting, users need to stay on the site as long as possible. The goal is to kind of dangle what the user wants in front of them but never quite let them get it. This is why so many things eventually evolve into A Feed, the user has less control over what they’re seeing and has to stay longer to get whatever emotional, social, or informational closure they’re looking for.

Paid subscription (and donation-based) sites are the opposite. They still want lots of people to visit so they can maintain their sub/donation base. But the more unique areas they go to within the site, the more money they cost. So your goal is for people to visit really quickly and leave without pulling down too much data. It’s in your best interest to make the site very organized, so people can find what they’re looking for and then go away to touch grass. This is also why upgrading to a subscription often includes offline features, because downloaded stuff can be enjoyed without hitting the server again.

Of course, Federation website admins don’t have to pay for servers. Possibly if they’re doing something really data-intensive (complicated MMO holodeck games or something), they might need to apply for or build the server farms to support it. But even if that isn’t a factor, it’s still more logistically challenging to maintain a high-traffic website vs. a smaller one. So while smaller sites may have more of a geocities energy, the bigger sites are likely to have the get-in-get-out mentality of subscription sites. Obviously there will be outliers; you’ll always have the webcrawlers Georgs who enjoy the challenge of wrangling many simultaneous users. But in general, the most popular websites will serve lots of users for the absolute minimum amount of time.

This is probably why Star Trek characters don’t really talk about their version of the internet. Because it leans toward fast problem solving, they don’t think about “spending time on the internet”. They think about the specific task they’re doing, and the involvement of the internet fades completely into the background.

Your padd’s screen has no microscopic flaws that will crack first. Your clothing has no weaving-in or backstitching, there’s nowhere it can begin to unravel. The foam in your shoes has perfectly spaced air bubbles, with no thinner cell walls that will wear out early. The knobs on your drawers are contiguous with the wood and won’t come loose over time. Nothing has to be detachable in order to be customizable, you can beam a section away if you want to replace it later.

For the most part, their “diplomacy” is that of a door-to-door evangelist. The goal is not to get converts. The goal is for them to be so offputting and unpleasant that the door slams in their face, reinforcing their own loyalty to the Founders.

The Jem’Hadar are loyal to the Founders, but as a backup they’re also dependent on ketracel white. The Vorta equivalent of ketracel white is that they alienate themselves from anyone who might help them leave. They’re supposed to think they’re being diplomatic, so when their “diplomacy” fails they view the rest of the universe as cruel and persecuting and cold.

See? There is no home for you outside the Dominion. Better make sure we succeed.

He knows they need the Romulans to enter the war. He’s the only person not in on the plot who knows there’s a bunch of untraceable explosives floating around. He was even there for Quark’s injury, which never got put on the official record.

There’s only one critical piece of information that he’s missing: the vice chairman of the Tal Shiar is currently on the station.