halcy 
a common affordance in scifi is that spaceships can just video call each other, even spaceships of different races who have never met before. this implies that there is a sufficiently mathematically obvious RTC protocol that all spacefaring races eventually discover
„but halcy, the computer simply adapts the signal“ try piping an opus bitstream into chatgpt, see how that goes
„This situation where everyone uses their own protocol is ridiculous.“, says Alien A, „We shall develop one protocol that satisfies everyones ne-“ and before they can even finish, they are handed The Document. No one remembers where it came from originally, what the letters „XKCD“ mean, or the significance of the number 927
KolaMagpie@halcy Especially since you know every single one of the aliens' protocols is so convoluted and hampered to be backwards-compatible with whatever that species' first audio-video display system was. The USS Enterprise has a VGA input on their big screen 1000%
Daburu Dar@KolaMagpie @halcy wherein VGA stands for Vulcan Graphics Adaptor?