nyan_kas

Nope, it‘s just the exterior design. Valve releases those files to make it easier to design skins, grips and other accessories for their hardware.

I think nobody would have complained if that had been the transporter accident Janeway reversed.

If your system is up-to-date, your kernel has probably already been patched. The patch was added to mainline on April 1, and I think every major distribution will have added it by now.