Shenzhen I/O is one of my favorite games, along with TIS-100. I think it's time to just dive in and go through the rest of the zacktronic games.

Ah, you're talking about the ROCK-E system: Rapid Overload Conversion to Kinetic Energy. It's a safety feature. When the consoles are damaged, the exposed EPS connections would naturally send out highly energetic plasma arcs, killing anyone nearby. Instead, the safety mechanism automatically converts that energy to harmless matter and ejects it from the console.

While I'm all for decentralization, I don't really see a reasonable way around this. Someone has to manage the infrastructure, and at a certain scale that's going to be large corporations. However, as long as these services continue to be interchangeable and unlinked to the fediverse, I don't see this as too serious of an issue.

I always thought Enterprise really nailed Andorians. They weren't the most extreme in terms of makeup and prosthetics, but they were convincingly alien and unique. I think the most impressive part was that the design made it believable that there were different Andorians who looked different. I suppose we quite literal saw this with the Aenar, which helps.