4 ms·

I was referring to the original Pirate Bay post describing their plan for the LOSS proposal, not this particular article. Plenty of people here seem to be treat

I was referring to the original Pirate Bay post describing their plan for the LOSS proposal, not this particular article. Plenty of people here seem to be treating it as a serious project, judging by the comments here at least....

narag 15y ago
Building underground pizza-eating rat robots (with or without smilies) sound as serious as the original proposal, that didn't include smilies either.
- cstross 15y ago
  I am shocked, SHOCKED sir, that you could possibly suspect anyone would write a humorous piece without smilies! I am sure Jonathan Swift is spinning in his grave.
  - seanp2k2 15y ago
    Perhaps we could attach his corpse to a generator and put an induction charging mat in the roof of his coffin (or shallower if it's really 6 feet down and the surrounding soil is found to have high iron content, thereby effectively blocking the inductive charging) so that the rat bots can use /that/ to charge. We'd need some type of authentication system for the rat bots so the police ferret bots don't tap the same power. I'd suggest a pressure-sensitive switch linked to an arduino-powered RFID reader. Perhaps it would also require a key revocation system in the event that one or more rat bots ate recovered and the ferret bots attempt to spoof the RFID tags. We could accomplish this with some type of coffin-to-coffin mesh network (an "Under[ground]Net[work]", if you will.) I'll start the project on Github and propose my idea for budgetary consideration at Noisebridge. We can get a Google Docs group going and I'll run the Dokuwiki off my linode vm. Cheers!
  - jokermatt999 15y ago
    Poe's Law makes satire difficult these days. With the huge amount of tech sites that post stories like this with a straight face, I actually wasn't sure it was satire, and I follow your blog pretty regularly. I thought it was out of character based on earlier posts (your analysis on space travel), but I've seen worse serious posts pop up on reddit and even here.
    - narag 15y ago
      My rule of thumb: if I LOL, it's satire. If I don't, it doesn't matter. I remember a couple of times it was embarrasing, though. One was at the movies. Pulp Fiction. Christopher Walken is telling the story of the watch. When it reaches certain level, I am the only laughing person around. The more I feel everybody throwing me vicious looks in the dark, the less I can't stop. Edit: BTW, I enjoyed the story a lot, thanks cstross!

narag 15y ago

Building underground pizza-eating rat robots (with or without smilies) sound as serious as the original proposal, that didn't include smilies either.

cstross 15y ago
I am shocked, SHOCKED sir, that you could possibly suspect anyone would write a humorous piece without smilies! I am sure Jonathan Swift is spinning in his grave.
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  Perhaps we could attach his corpse to a generator and put an induction charging mat in the roof of his coffin (or shallower if it's really 6 feet down and the surrounding soil is found to have high iron content, thereby effectively blocking the inductive charging) so that the rat bots can use /that/ to charge. We'd need some type of authentication system for the rat bots so the police ferret bots don't tap the same power. I'd suggest a pressure-sensitive switch linked to an arduino-powered RFID reader. Perhaps it would also require a key revocation system in the event that one or more rat bots ate recovered and the ferret bots attempt to spoof the RFID tags. We could accomplish this with some type of coffin-to-coffin mesh network (an "Under[ground]Net[work]", if you will.) I'll start the project on Github and propose my idea for budgetary consideration at Noisebridge. We can get a Google Docs group going and I'll run the Dokuwiki off my linode vm. Cheers!
- jokermatt999 15y ago
  Poe's Law makes satire difficult these days. With the huge amount of tech sites that post stories like this with a straight face, I actually wasn't sure it was satire, and I follow your blog pretty regularly. I thought it was out of character based on earlier posts (your analysis on space travel), but I've seen worse serious posts pop up on reddit and even here.
  - narag 15y ago
    My rule of thumb: if I LOL, it's satire. If I don't, it doesn't matter. I remember a couple of times it was embarrasing, though. One was at the movies. Pulp Fiction. Christopher Walken is telling the story of the watch. When it reaches certain level, I am the only laughing person around. The more I feel everybody throwing me vicious looks in the dark, the less I can't stop. Edit: BTW, I enjoyed the story a lot, thanks cstross!