cstross

73 ms·

631.
On the Great Filter, existential threats, and griefers(antipope.org)
80 points by cstross 12y ago|43 comments
632.
by cstross 12y ago
There is a large, and rapidly growing satellite industry in the UK. No thanks to any British government prior to roughly 1997, which were all uniformly hostile to space research/development, seeing it as a profitless vacuum. Thatcher
633.
by cstross 12y ago
Hmm, I never thought the close military relationship between the US and UK would be anything but beneficial for the UK It was actually extremely toxic for UK-based development of some items. For example, Robert McNamara in the mid-1960s w
634.
On Clean Reader, censorship apps, and moral rights(antipope.org)
5 points by cstross 12y ago|0 comments
635.
by cstross 12y ago
Planet Earth calling: if that's so, it's a specifically regional -- i.e. American -- thing. (I'm in Scotland, where it definitely doesn't.)
636.
by cstross 12y ago
What's wrong with "people"? As in, "you people"? (Grammatically correct, non-colloquial, non-regional, and gender neutral.)
637.
by cstross 12y ago
Sigh. Someone tell Bruce Schneier his new movie plot terror threat[1] is here: someone homebrews a GPS signal transmitter to open all the train doors at rush hour ... preferably on the wrong side. [1] https://www.schneier.com&#x2
638.
by cstross 12y ago
Use a sharpie to draw a skull and crossbones on one side; on the other, write DANGER. When they ask you to hand over all personal electronics, point to it and say "that's dangerous". If, subsequently, they want to know why yo
639.
by cstross 12y ago
You could fit one into a portable hard drive case, though. Presumably along with an electric motor to make the appropriate noises when whoever you really don't like tries to plug it into their laptop.
640.
by cstross 12y ago
If you're feeling ornery,you could fly with one in your hand luggage. If the TSA or foreign equivalent border security want to scan your devices, it's their look-out.
641.
by cstross 12y ago
Once again: article by tech sector guy who has no fscking idea how the publishing sector works, or even what it sells. Clue: if you ever wondered why publishing seems so staid and static, it's because it's not about books, it&#x27
642.
by cstross 12y ago
In this case the license was Noncommercial no-derivatives. Wiley, the article's publisher, were obeying the license. Elsevier were not; why was a third party selling (commercially) an article they had no license to sell?
643.
by cstross 12y ago
See also Singapore, arguably a democracy in name only. Or its neighbour Malaysia, ditto (and rather less successful). I could cherry-pick examples until the cows come home, but I suspect other factors are at work -- and not just the obvious
644.
by cstross 12y ago
Twitter seems pretty much designed to function as an emotional amplifier. It's not dissimilar to traditional news media in that respect -- "if it bleeds, it leads" and all that. Humans like to pay attention to other humans,
645.
LEt's talk about running a successful kickstarter campaign(antipope.org)
2 points by cstross 12y ago|0 comments
646.
by cstross 12y ago
Oh, cool. (The only time I ever met Douglas Adams, I was in London and dropped in on TDV, where a friend of mine was working as a sysadmin -- this was around summer 1997 -- and I got the tour, which included the man himself, who just happen
647.
by cstross 12y ago
Point of note: that model is now explicitly illegal in UK company law -- any directorship must be occupied by a human being: if you interpose shells in the way, they're collapsed until a human being is identified as the responsible par
648.
by cstross 12y ago
The next book ("The Rhesus Chart") came out last July; there are five books in various stages of production after that ... and none of them deal with cryptocurrency or space colonization or the singularity: this decade I'm do
649.
by cstross 12y ago
1. Neptune's Brood is more heavily based on David Graeber's work on Debt (notably Debt: The First 5000 years ). 1a. If you feel inclined to read Neptune's Brood , I've got one big regret: I wrote it circa 2010-11, be
650.
Stross on Cameron's proposed UK crypto ban(antipope.org)
42 points by cstross 12y ago|15 comments
651.
by cstross 12y ago
Why Apple uses little-endian, while everything else uses big-endian, is another mystery. The Apple-I and Apple-II family were 6502 based machines and the 6502 was little-endian, would be my guess. Any takers?
652.
by cstross 12y ago
It looks to me like someone just reinvented RFC 977 (or maybe 3977) as an app ...
653.
by cstross 12y ago
Hitherto, the UK has had a threshold for mandatory VAT registration: if your VAT-able turnover (sales within the EU) exceed the threshold, you must file a VAT-1 and register, but if your VAT-able sales are below the threshold (e.g. you do
654.
by cstross 12y ago
Why index from 1 or 0 when you can overwrite $[ in perl and index from ANYWHERE? (Dammit, as of Perl 5.16 this is not merely deprecated but outsourced to a module ... mutter, grumble)
655.
by cstross 12y ago
For added lulz, you might want to look into CLC-INTERCAL, a dialect that introduces it's own unique take on object orientation, internationalization, and quantum operations. (EDIT: I forgot to add, CLC-INTERCAL also introduced the com
656.
by cstross 12y ago
You can currently pay $5000 more per return ticket (if you shop around) to do it business class. Full lie-flat bed, decent service, leg room, seatback power. You arrive feeling reasonably fresh (modulo the jet lag) and you can work en-route
657.
by cstross 12y ago
To me, adding on the possibility that it could be some sort of Mach 5 super airliner, suggests that the practicalities of it as an SSTO platform are perhaps not nearly so compelling as once thought Ding! Yeah, that was my reaction. If Spa
658.
by cstross 12y ago
Very cool. I just wish I wasn't so certain that the developers of spamming tools will rip this off with shrieks of glee and use it to stuff our inboxes with yet more junk.
659.
by cstross 12y ago
The RAF Harriers were taken out of service in 2010 as part of a gigantic axe-swinging defense review with across-the-board cuts that sliced to the bone -- the Navy lost its carriers (the new ones won't be fully in service for a while y
660.
by cstross 12y ago
s/boy or girl scouts/puppets raised in a bubble by sociopaths/ ... with policies dictated by the folks whose sociopaths are best at hiding behind their puppets. It's going to be very, very ugly.

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