https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
Like others, I shall buy a couple of qntm novels, which look interesting.
]]>I'm hooked.
Also, the whole antimemetics setting shows... interesting similarities with the Laundryverse (most notably "everybody knows vampires don't exist" and elven warfare, but also adult equoids, and of course the Mandate).
]]>Which, of course, makes perfect sense.
]]>regarding qntm's "Lena"... I've tried to puzzle out the story's title... I must be overthinking it... but what does "Lena" reference?
]]>(Naivety of my question should make clear - this is not my field. Thx!)
PS Welcome to Stross' blog - looking forward to reading your post.
]]>REBUTTAL: but every case statement (aka: "switch") offers potential for a breakout-slash-burn-thru due to an idiot programmer failing to cover the entire range of values... so... a clever-desprete-angry ASI will try to trigger such flawed case statements in order to loose the limitations upon its range of pre-approved actions
example code to process "N" in range 12..17 but only includes cases in set of {12, 13, 15, 16, 17} ... "14" results in unpredictable results further on in app
]]>It references the Lenna (or Lena) test image, the history of which is somewhat controversial to say the least.
]]>I mean, it's nothing like the ad that i got at a tech fair in the late sixties, where they were advertising, I think, a metal lab sink, and the flyer had a nude in the sink, and no, nothing hidden.
]]>No doubt the white men who selected the image didn't even think about that aspect, which is why the word "systemic" so often gets prefixed to "racism".
]]>It's exactly what it says on the tin: a variation of the Mastermind game where the player attempts to discover a word or other letter sequence rather than an arbitrary sequence of colors. (I remember playing this with my father and thinking myself clever for abandoning conventional English words, because I was an annoying smartass tween.) There's an example picture here.
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