cstross

50 ms·

481.
by cstross 10y ago
That explains why the Republic of South Vietnam is doing so well these days, and why Iraq and Afghanistan are beacons of hope and democracy in the middle east. (The USA does lose wars; it's just career suicide for a politician -- and d
482.
by cstross 10y ago
Per-word pricing is standard in trade fiction (short form -- e.g. magazine markets, which are mostly dead outside the SF/F genre field). It's also how I used to be paid as a jobbing IT reviewer/columnist/journalist in th
483.
by cstross 10y ago
> Apple hasn't shipped a successful new product line since Steve Jobs' death I disagree. The Apple Watch is only "unsuccessful" using a yardstick calibrated to the scale of existing Apple product lines -- in its first
484.
by cstross 10y ago
I'm talking about professional registration (exams, licenses to practice, supervisory body, jail sentences for impersonation, forefeiture of registration for ethics infractions), not bog-standard trade law.
485.
by cstross 10y ago
There's a subtle difference: pharmacists are regulated by statute and are legally liable if medication they dispense on prescription causes injury. (Source: I used to be a pharmacist -- in the UK, > 25 years ago, precise regulations
486.
by cstross 10y ago
I note that the damage is limited in other countries by not electing judges and prosecutors -- these are appointed civil service posts, and while that has its own drawbacks, it means that nobody below the level of Justice Minister builds
487.
by cstross 10y ago
In general, most gas stations have more than one petrol or diesel pumping point! Also, electric cars mostly have a much shorter range than gas/diesel vehicles, so need to charge more frequently. And electric cars take much longer to c
488.
by cstross 10y ago
The Canberra is a lot bigger than a U-2 (crew of 2-3 instead of 1, has a large bomb bay that got repurposed for instruments/recon payloads, etc). Also, there are probably a lot more spare parts kicking around -- over a thousand were
489.
by cstross 10y ago
In the abstract, yes, it's the most sensible course. Unfortunately, from where I'm watching (hint: not an American) it looks like the State Department has an ad-hoc de-facto promotion track whereby you can't make it to the to
490.
by cstross 10y ago
The solution here is to get rid of the A-10 and simply not do "nation building" and counter-insurgency in poor countries. Or not to get into wars in the first place; then you could give up having an Air Force at all, right? Seri
491.
by cstross 11y ago
Is there an overview of this thing that doesn't require me to watch a video? ("A photo tells a thousand words", but I can read at 300-400 words/minute while a video typically conveys roughly 100 wpm. I don't like wa
492.
by cstross 11y ago
Yup.
493.
by cstross 11y ago
Strong rec: if you've ever wondered about H. P. Lovecraft but lacked the time to read your way through his writings (and all six volumes of his letters), this is Houellebecq giving you the Cliff's Notes version. (Lovecraft is cons
494.
by cstross 11y ago
> Publisher marketing is minimal to none these days. Sometimes true, sometimes false -- depends on publisher (and often on internal politics). What they want to push gets money thrown at it, whether or not it's productive: or someti
495.
by cstross 11y ago
In WJW's case it's based on traditional aesthetics: he writes novels, he doesn't want to omit the ToC completely but he expects readers to want to start with the text itself rather than wading through pages of ToCs. (Trust
496.
by cstross 11y ago
This scam isn't victimless. First, it depletes the pot awaiting actual no-shit real hard-working authors who supply a product people want. Secondly, Amazon react by trying to engineer algorithmic anti-scam measures, which end up catc
497.
by cstross 11y ago
The Spanish flu's mortality isn't that mysterious today (samples have been extracted from victims buried in cold climates, and its genome sequenced). It turns out that in young, healthy victims it provokes a cytokine storm -- an o
498.
by cstross 11y ago
Partially true, but that's not the whole story. Speaking as a non-American, I'd attribute another chunk of it to the fact that most USAns don't travel outside their own continent (where they've got Canada and Mexico and
499.
by cstross 11y ago
This gave me so many flashbacks to the various histories of the Vietnam war that I've read. One key insight from John Ranelagh's histories of the CIA (pre-9/11): the CIA was always famously crap at HUMINT. Reason: you don&#x2
500.
by cstross 11y ago
I bought one, so I can attest that the hardware was real (bluetooth, left-handed model). Alas, it's lost somewhere in a pile of boxes left still-not-unpacked from my last move, and they went bust some years ago -- rumours of a new low-
501.
Follow the money: Apple vs. the FBI(antipope.org)
534 points by cstross 11y ago|246 comments
502.
Internet-connected rectal thermometer(kinsahealth.com)
1 points by cstross 11y ago|0 comments
503.
by cstross 11y ago
Aviation industry accident investigation practices were adopted from the railway industry. Back in the mid-to-late 19th century, train accidents killed about as many travellers per capita as road traffic accidents in the 1950s. So the indus
504.
by cstross 11y ago
I'm about as skeptical about the singularity these days as Cory is skeptical about Whuffie. (When you look at the pattern of beliefs around the singularity they structurally resemble the complex of beliefs held by pre-millenarian Chris
505.
by cstross 11y ago
> it wasn't until reading this essay I realised how much contempt he had for the concept. That's because he didn't. Cory published DaOitMK in 2003, meaning it was in the publisher's pipeline in 2002 and written probab
506.
by cstross 11y ago
how feminism annexed academia ... why Occupy failed but why BLM could grow exponentially No axes to grind here, hmm? (Hint: there's a huge difference between civil rights movements -- those demanding equal respect -- and the fulmin
507.
by cstross 11y ago
ISTR that when the last wild California Condors were taken in for captive breeding (the species was down to single-digit numbers) the conservationists, naturally intending to give their new charges the best care available, gave them an inse
508.
British Telecom broadband and POTS outage affects much of UK(theguardian.com)
2 points by cstross 11y ago|0 comments
509.
by cstross 11y ago
Those four assumptions have nothing to do with danger and everything to do with capability . I think a more interesting question is "how do we make an intelligence, artificial or human, that isn't potentially dangerous?"
510.
by cstross 11y ago
Not as easy as you seem to think. Dams = concrete, concrete = a whole lotta cement and other energy inputs; concrete production is one of our big unsung CO2 emission sources right now. Turbines and generators = refined metal, including copp

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