Ryan

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• Commented on Social architecture and the house of tomorrow
  I live in a London new build apartment (rented because I am not a millionaire) after having moved from a converted town house estimated to be about 70 years old. The two biggest differences between them are energy efficiency and...
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  Awesome, fingers crossed! There seems to be a lot of SciFi and fantasy shows at the moment with very good production budgets. Would you know at this stage if it would be streamed or is it more likely to be...
• Commented on Lessons learned: writing really long fiction
  I typically write between 170,000 words of fiction/year... I've read in various places author output talked about in terms of words per year or per day and often wondered; for every hour of typing how many hours go into planning,...
• Commented on Service announcement: upcoming outage(s)
  NI is not supported by some older web browsers, notably Internet Explorer 6 on any operating system, or IE running on Windows XP, or Safari on XP...if you want to thumb your nose at the NSA and for some reason...
• Commented on Down tools
  Now, shove bombers like this into the universe of Merchant Princes, and add established tactical doctrine for using world-walker bombardiers or ARMBAND machines. Bomber takes off and transitions to uninhabited time line hopefully unknown to the enemy; bomber cruises to...
• Commented on Message for GISHWHES participants
  Behavior during the Hunt - You are not permitted to physically, emotionally or psychologically hurt or attack yourself, another GISHER or anyone outside The Hunt. The only exception is as follows: If GISHWHES corporate identifies a person or entity...
• Commented on Loncon 3: Charlie's worldcon schedule
  Hmm, it seems like it's not possible to get a day ticket beyond the 14th anymore. I'm not sure if it's because tickets are sold out or because it's 1am and my brain has clocked off but I can't even...
• Commented on Spoiler Thread
  Wow that ending really gutted me. It wasn't entirely unexpected but the marital breakdown hit me harder than the deaths, I think it's because you expect deaths and injury in the line of service the laundry requires, destroying personal lives...
• Commented on Competition Time!
  Employee sent a picture message of themselves posing in fear in London Aquarium to a junior computational demonologist. The resulting confusion led to an inappropriate activation of the SCORPION STARE network and the untimely demise of no fewer than 30...
• Commented on Generation Z
  The problem is that the labor market really doesn't need too many people over 40, and probably almost none over 50. Sure it does. Plenty of professions now a days take decades to become an expert it. Doctor, lawyer, senior...
• Commented on Generation Z
  Not sure if I count as generation Y or Z (seems to be some overlap in their use), probably more of the former as I was born in 89 but I'd identify myself as millennial. The current situation for my...
• Commented on Schadenfreude
  I understand perfectly well that money is, as you say, "worthless". Regardless, I still think it's a good idea to move control of money from the state, to, well, everywhere. If we have to have money (and we can't live...
• Commented on Why AIs Won't Ascend in the Blink of an Eye - Some Math
  Quite, a large part of what you perceive to see is your mind filling in the blanks of what it expects to see. Aside from the blindspot in each eye there's the phenomenon of seeing something out of the corner...
• Commented on Can We Merge Minds and Machines?
  I have a hard time seeing why they would be used in anything other than a commercial setting Oops typo. That's meant to read medical setting....
• Commented on Can We Merge Minds and Machines?
  Given the risks and limitatations of an implant versus every other form of external interface I have a hard time seeing why they would be used in anything other than a commercial setting. Even supposing a brain implant could interpret...
• Commented on The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears
  One thing that always confused me about mind uploading is how it ignores the rest of the body entirely. Assuming for the sake of argument that a brain could be simulated to a level in which an individual would be...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  Out of interest why? I wasn't arguing that the trait would die out or that it wouldn't appear which seems to be the criticism levelled against me. My first post was simply highlighting that it wouldn't be easy for the...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  Wow, you've completely misread everything I've said. I wasn't being snarky, not was I arguing what you seem to think, I wasn't even disagreeing with you except to add a small qualifier. Perhaps you only see venom because you think...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  The Clan's founder knew? Interesting. I thought that the founder was someone who discovered the trait by accident. I remember that the ability is due to some petty advanced artificial organelles but thought that the recessive trait refereed to a...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  You have a 3/4 chance of passing the recessive gene on in a cross between two heterozygous individuals as one of the potential three offspring genotypes is homozygous dominant. My biology isn't dodgy (would probably have to quit the biology...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  Hit send before I was finished with my last comment. It's relevant to your comment that as interbreeding is more common it's a non issue how the world walking genotype was recovered. Whilst I agree that given enough time it's...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that even if there was inbreeding between two carriers there is only a one in four chance that their offspring is a world walker. It's a simple monohybrid cross http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monohybrid_cross...
• Commented on Commercial announcement
  Even two carriers would only have a one in four chance (per child) of producing a world walker. The trait behaves like a recessive gene, if w is the recessive allele and W is the dominant then a carrier would...
• Commented on Trust Me (I'm a kettle)
  Universal law enforcement is very unlikely to happen, at least without serious advances in intelligent software that can distinguish what's a real crime and what isn't (otherwise you'll get an automatic warrant for assault if you and a mate have...
• Commented on Notes from the coal face
  Traffic lights, like many other phenomenon, are a class of regulations that most people would vote for even if they don't want it to apply to them. I'm not sure if there is a term for this (it's related to...
• Commented on Notes from the coal face
  Whilst I'd agree that social democracy is definitely better than the encroaching neoliberalism we have now I worry to what extent it's just cosy capitalism. I'd rather a strong effort was put towards researching the implementation of an actual socialist...
• Commented on The revolution will not be hand-stitched
  I think a second order effect of this type of development (and others) is the problem of what to do with all the empty shops we're going to have in the future. So many products are already ordered online rather...
• Commented on Making history personal
  There used to be a pub in my town that was built in 1109. I pass out in it once, does that count?...
• Commented on I have a new book cover
  That's why I think it would make sense to have a high start price and regularly drop it. I'm one of those who would probably pay £20 or more for your books when it first came out but if I...
• Commented on Why Microsoft Word must Die
  I hope this isn't too off topic but I've recently started a phd and was thinking of trying out Scrivener for writing my thesis, the fact that you can write individual bits and leave them separate seems particularly interesting for...