cstross

9 ms·

31.
by cstross 3y ago
The Cambrian explosion was, however, constrained by the partial pressure of oxygen in the hydrosphere (and, indirectly, the atmosphere). And free O2 couldn't begin to build up in seawater until after the Great Oxygen Catastrophe when t
32.
by cstross 3y ago
An angle you may not have considered is passenger safety. Imagine if this happened to an airliner in flight: there'd be criminal charges for sure, not to mention huge damages and lawsuits from the families of the dead if some of the co
33.
Made of Lies (and More Lies)(antipope.org)
5 points by cstross 3y ago|1 comments
34.
by cstross 3y ago
It's an unremarkable age gap by Victorian standards. Men above working class status typically waited until they could support a family before marrying, and women typically married young (16-21 was common among the nobility: at 22 an un
35.
by cstross 3y ago
That actually sounds about right.
36.
by cstross 3y ago
I used to go drinking with Iain regularly (we lived in the same city). Iain was a hard-left socialist -- in US terms, a communist. He's been dead for a decade now, but I'm pretty certain his opinion of Elon Musk as he is self-reve
37.
by cstross 3y ago
They've reinvented the IBM Mainframe. Big rack-sized box with lots of redundant hardware that serves guest VMs. This is basically a zSeries in drag. The key difference is the price structure -- IBM leases the hardware wherever they can
38.
by cstross 3y ago
Bear in mind that prior to desktop publishing tools (which arrived circa 1986-88) laying out a magazine/large format book like WER was a time-consuming and labour intensive job; typesetting was a photographic process using a phototypes
39.
by cstross 3y ago
It's decades since I read him, but per William Shirer, by 1939 the Third Reich was facing looming bankruptcy (by turning a firehose of cash on its problems—creating make-work jobs, running a massive rearmamanent program, building up hu
40.
by cstross 3y ago
You can't build a bomb using this technology. Period. But you can achieve plasmas of equivalent density and temperature to those you get in an H-bomb explosion, which is invaluable to weapons researchers if they're not allowed to
41.
by cstross 3y ago
The key point about NIF is buried way down in the article: But the NIF was never “about” societal energy. Its primary purpose is nuclear weapons research. This pesky thing called the nuclear test ban treaty means we can’t just go around
42.
by cstross 3y ago
>it's somewhat surprising that only one Mac officially could boot the Mac OS entirely from ROM, namely the Macintosh Classic (hold down Cmd-Option-X-O to boot from a hidden HFS volume with System 6.0.3). This is not actually true: o
43.
by cstross 3y ago
Just checked on MacTracker -- yes, the 5,5 Pro had firewire; it's immediate predecessor was the Macbook (no pro) 5,1, which didn't have FW but had the removable battery -- the 5,5 added Firewire.
44.
by cstross 3y ago
> So what will happen? The same thing that happened with all of Apple's bad products- they'll continue to offer it for sale at incredibly high margins for eternity and never attempt to make it more competitive. There's ano
45.
by cstross 3y ago
Spheres minimize surface area per unit of volume. As heat loss in a building is proportional to its exposed surface area, this means they're potentially very thermally efficient. (Less good for collecting sunlight if you're going
46.
by cstross 3y ago
If the Large Hot Pipe Organ showed up on this website I'd have to fight the terrible compulsion to try and find a budget for it ...! https://archive.org/details/iuma-large_hot_pipe_organ "The Large Hot Pipe O
47.
by cstross 3y ago
So not to be confused with 70s pomp rock band ELO, aka the Electric Light Orchestra! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Light_Orchestra
48.
Times New Bastard(szymszl.xyz)
2 points by cstross 3y ago|0 comments
49.
Drought forces draft restrictions on Panama Canal shipping(maritime-executive.com)
1 points by cstross 3y ago|0 comments
50.
by cstross 3y ago
Nope, adblocker and noscript were disabled. Update: turns out it's a known bug on their back end service (they're working on a fix). Everything now sorted out manually.
51.
by cstross 3y ago
Order won't complete (after Paypal payment confirmed) -- "you must accept terms and conditions" message shows up, but no checkbox or other way to accept T&Cs. (Is the BB order website incompatible with Firefox on macOS, o
52.
by cstross 3y ago
It may seem difficult to avoid creating subjectively negative impacts such as this when launching the largest rocket in history This outcome was entirely avoidable, right from the beginning of development at Starbase -- and entirely pr
53.
by cstross 3y ago
> What I'm getting at, is, as a professional author, if you were paid just to live and write, would you still want to be paid-per-copy of your work? Ideally I'd like to know how many people were reading my work, and whether the
54.
by cstross 3y ago
That's what I'd call living the dream!
55.
by cstross 3y ago
Publishers are very selective about sending authors on tours, because (except for the very biggest names) tours don't make money and cost quite a lot to organize -- they're loss-leaders designed to generate enthusiasm among book
56.
by cstross 3y ago
> why should consumers care of some pirated books appear on Amazon? Speaking as an author: because I write for a living, and if I can't earn a living at this I'll have to find some other job, which will cause me to stop writing
57.
by cstross 3y ago
Here's a more recent (and non-raving monarchist) biography of Ungern-Sternberg by British historian James Palmer, "The Bloody White Baron": https://www.amazon.com/Bloody-White-Baron-Extraordinary-Nobl...
58.
by cstross 3y ago
Raging anti-semite, wanted to exterminate all the Jews, rode across Asia under a red banner with a white circle containing a swastika (in 1920!) -- where have we heard this before? He used to ride into villages and round up all the men. Tho
59.
by cstross 3y ago
On a related theme, here's the Spectrum Next, Issue 2: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spectrumnext/zx-spectru... (Delayed about two years due to supply chain problems -- their FPGA was back-ordered for
60.
by cstross 4y ago
I have my own on KS! But you should definitely review it for The Register when it finally arrives!

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