dpb

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• Commented on Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
  My money would be on a distributed system in a box with individual nodes running something we would recognise. No need to reinvent too many wheels at once. The Erlang people have been building fault tolerant distributed software for years....
• Commented on Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
  As a side note, how are UK doctors induced/forced to work in areas that young recently out of school docs don't want to move to? By being officially in training for the first decade or so of their careers. According...
• Commented on Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
  You are missing the point. Slight embarrassment due to accusations of hypocrisy doesn't matter anything like as much as having your negotiating partner over a barrel. Yes, it's unfair and hypocritical. Deal with it....
• Commented on Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
  I haven't received a phone call at work in 10 years. 5 years ago they took our phones away. Internal comms is all IM and voip type stuff. Vast amounts of confidential IP going past....
• Commented on Harmless Fun
  I know they are a thing. Birds are a thing. Human scale ornithopters are not a thing, which is why I mentioned scaling laws....
• Commented on Harmless Fun
  They already had antigravity. When I read the books I assumed the flapping bit just provided direction. If you don't assume that then ornithopters seem a bit silly. I see lots of handwaving from dune fans online about future unobtanium...
• Commented on Harmless Fun
  In hindsight the assumption that you could just set up an offshore data haven and the world would shrug it's shoulders and go "OK then. You win" was as ludicrously naïve as any space colonisation fantasy....
• Commented on Harmless Fun
  It's the governments unofficial motto already....
• Commented on Harmless Fun
  On the matter of the last point: "Can you refute this? (And by the way, Birds are Dinosaurs and we know Birds Aren't Real, they're robots created by the CIA, so Ayn Rand was probably a robot too ...)" Only...
• Commented on On mistaking a transient state for a permanent one
  It was visible here. Except that it wasn't, because half a mile north of my house is a football field that never, EVER turns their floodlights off. The night sky is white. I think in the last decade I've seen...
• Commented on On mistaking a transient state for a permanent one
  Oh yeah. Humanist? Very much. Humans are shown to be apparently the first species even considering sending free probes out into the universe. Will it happen, and will it have a positive outcome? Who knows? My reading of it...
• Commented on The Radiant Future! (Of 1995)
  Pinecones are vastly superior to toilet paper. If what you are doing is lighting a fire....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  Peter Watts mentioned that sort of thing as an aside in Echopraxia. Biologist type reminiscing about the days when you could discover novel gene sequences that didn't turn out to be plans for someone's municipal sewer system....
• Commented on A Wonky Experience
  This calls for a lawsuit with ChatGPT legal briefs....
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  of course a lot of the web based stuff is driven by "not invented here", but much of the useful stuff is just a shim between the browser and something ancient. Nobody would design like that if they were starting...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  Curious whether there's a similar mindset re: computation/Internet, i.e., fix stuff with whatever programming/software you've on hand vs. demolish and completely replace. From my non-techie perspective, the major stumbling block is what do you do with all the data that...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: New Book coming!
  Anecdotally, Gary Gygax was very much a "no gurlz allowed" male chauvanist wrt. his Dungeons and Dragons campaigns I am delighted to report that he would probably be horrified by the direction licensed d&d based computer games are going in....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  Nobody has said anything like that, but never let a good straw man go to waste eh? Most people would be delighted if Russians finally got their human rights....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  I honestly don't see any problem with this. Hiding all the nasty internal bits of a system and presenting something usable is what APIs are for. Expecting client code/systems to fully understand what they are interfacing to is a common...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  No, they need children. Deport and russify seems to be the policy in Ukraine....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  Hawkwinds main achievement was firing Lemmy and freeing him up to found Motörhead....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  I've been teaching a couple of people the rudiments of abseiling recently and that's been fun Abseiling by choice with known good anchors is fun. Abseiling in the mountains because you need to get down and have to take whatever...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  BTW while I can't speak for crocodile wrestlers I can report that most of those who climb without ropes try to discourage adrenaline junkies from joining our ranks. They don't last so long. It's more about maintaining focus and self...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  Magitech nanotech laundry detergent could remove the stains at source by simply rendering down the humans, then removing any organic residue from their clothes. Solve the problem once and for all in a smart manner....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  House rules for jenga are a minefield. It's essential to agree up front. Whatever rule set you use I have noticed it's a game that can be played at a remarkably high level while drunk......
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  It's a popular party game in these parts. You'll often find it in the bar areas of hostels and the like. Injuries are rare. That link was more than double the going rate for a set of blocks though....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  A microcowsm of the historical approach....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  I think it might be even simpler than that. I'm not convinced very much in the way of thinking is going on at all....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
  Crappy conspiracy theory: Having convinced lefties to buy EVs, Musk is playing the right wing shitwizard in order to convince right wingers to do the same. He knows he's trashed his brand with the lefties but that's fine because other...
• Commented on Made of lies (and more lies)
  Apparently camera companies are tackling it with digital signatures on their raw files, and many competition organisers want to see the raw. There was a thread that touched on this on a forum I frequent just last week....