cstross

111 ms·

931.
by cstross 14y ago
I have editors on tap, if I want to go the self-pub route. My main point, though, is that as a front-list author, I don't need to do that stuff. What I get from my publishers isn't just editorial services: it's risk-taking and cash flow hel
932.
Things publishers can't do (yet)(antipope.org)
5 points by cstross 14y ago|0 comments
933.
by cstross 14y ago
What do you think should be patentable -- the practice of being extremely sarcastic about IBM filing a patent on something that someone else invented and published a few years earlier? Or multi-pipes?
934.
by cstross 14y ago
Not necessarily; @reederapp tweeted a few hours ago, "Don't worry, Reeder won't die with Google Reader." He's not very communicative but I suspect this means he's working on something :)
935.
by cstross 14y ago
Peripherals that need to be software upgradable have been getting lower-level for a while. (My camera has software upgradable lenses.) Personally, I'm waiting for software-upgradable domestic light switches and mains plugs. Then we're in
936.
A natural nuclear reactor on Mars(lpi.usra.edu)
3 points by cstross 14y ago|1 comments
937.
Stross on: Roko's Basilisk and theological errors of transhumanism(antipope.org)
4 points by cstross 14y ago|0 comments
938.
by cstross 14y ago
Deuterium is stable. Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years. Like all proposed fusion reactors, you have to feed fuel in constantly rather than firing it up with a critical mass in situ, but you could store enough Tritium to run an aircraft
939.
by cstross 14y ago
Mr Fusion isn't going to go on board airliners any time soon if Mr Fusion is running on a De/T cycle reaction -- did you notice the He + n side of the equation? Fusion neutrons are not your friend, and a good chunk of the 'magic' of a worki
940.
by cstross 14y ago
I note that submarine reactors are typically on the order of 50Mw, and surface ships (CVNs -- aircraft carriers -- typically; also some Russian Arctic ice-breakers) are up to 100Mw per reactor. Anyone smell a [Naval] market?
941.
by cstross 14y ago
What project has one person working on it part-time years after its start and ends up succeeding? The GNU Hurd. FSVO "succeeding".
942.
by cstross 14y ago
You're missing the point: the institutions that are headquartered there conduct a huge volume of Euro-denominated derivatives trading, which becomes impossible if the City loses its license to do so, and it's hard to see them retaining it i
943.
by cstross 14y ago
Well yes, I am left of centre. But I was trying to articulate an argument that doesn't rely on that.
944.
by cstross 14y ago
I am not anti-statist. I was trying to set out the difference between systems that acknowledge a Loyal Opposition, and totalitarian/one-party/monarchical systems, where the centre of power explicitly rejects the legitimacy of other groups'
945.
by cstross 14y ago
Luckily they couldn't do that -- not without quitting the EU, which would result in an entirely different clusterfuck. (And I need to blog about the second-order consequences of that at some other time. For starters: the way the City of Lon
946.
Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship(antipope.org)
47 points by cstross 14y ago|56 comments
947.
by cstross 14y ago
Some things Apple could buy, for cash: * SpaceX (market cap $10Bn, AIUI) * Dell (a mere $23Bn!) * Boeing * Ford * The entire global publishing industry (figures for the top 50 publishers' turnover are here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/
948.
by cstross 14y ago
Prior art is applicable to patent law, not trademarks (at least, not in the context of invalidating them).
949.
by cstross 14y ago
The suckiest aspect of what they're doing is the target. GW are sending their nastygrams to a novelist. And not a best-seller, but a low-budget self-published author who's been donating a chunk of the proceeds to veterans' charities: someon
950.
by cstross 14y ago
Been there, done that (I leapfrog iPhone generations, so for some months before each upgrade things are running painfully slowly). I will note that disabling Javascript on most news sites seems to disable the "why don't you download our app
951.
by cstross 14y ago
Key insight: "do I buy a separate radio to listen to different stations?" Actually, I do use two news apps on my iPhone (aside from Safari and an RSS reader). They're the BBC, and The Guardian. The BBC app is free, and ad-free, at least i
952.
The analog to digital shift in trade publishing: an author's viewpoint(antipope.org)
5 points by cstross 14y ago|0 comments
953.
Stross on: an anthropic stupidity hypothesis(antipope.org)
1 points by cstross 14y ago|0 comments
954.
by cstross 14y ago
If I was a blackhat malware developer, I would be drooling at the scale of Oracle's incorporation of third party affiliate software into a typical Java install. It massively expands the threat surface available for attackers. Rather than
955.
by cstross 14y ago
Here's a thought: out-sourcing hospital cleaning services to the lowest bidder is a really bad idea . Because the other term for "hospital cleaning services" is "infection control". Similarly, elderly patients frequently end up suffering f
956.
by cstross 14y ago
That may be so, but they had antisepsis, vaccination and the germ theory of disease in the 1920s and 1930s ... and it still didn't save them from losing as many people to fulminating bacterial infections as we lose to cancer today.
957.
by cstross 14y ago
Translation into dev-speak: "I took 2 years to write my app, and its job is to print 'hello, world!' to STDOUT." (Real writers don't write just one novel, and real novels aren't just 7000 words. Real writers write on the order of a million
958.
by cstross 14y ago
Around 1996-97 Apple sold a digital camera, the QuickCam (and then, IIRC, the QuickCam 500). Steve killed the line when he came back, and (as someone who had access to one at work) all I can say is "good riddance". The QuickCam was, IIRC, a
959.
Stross on Tapeworms vs. the Fermi Paradox(antipope.org)
3 points by cstross 14y ago|0 comments
960.
by cstross 14y ago
Note, however, that it's rail travel in North America that has been static since 1930 -- if you applied the same exercise to Western Europe you'd see dramatic improvements in surface travel times since 1960, with the spread of electrificati

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