Paul

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• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Charlie @ 179: you can make a trivial end run around the three laws of robotics by redefining "human". Freefall has a lot of fun with this one. See for instance the sequence starting here: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fc01581.htm...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Troutwaxer@168: What happens to all your data-collection when the wizard next door decides to turn all the local peas purple because that's her favorite color? So one of the basic precautions in any serious experiment is setting up the appropriate...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Pigeon @ 91: OK, so this demon is basically a Turing machine, or at least the head bit of one; and as we all know a Turing machine can compute anything computable... but nearly always with grotesque inefficiency and extravagance...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Troutwaxer @ 80: Magic destroys the ability to create science That's the usual cop-out: magic and science/tech are completely immiscible; either magic automatically blocks any tech (like in Shadowrun and the Potterverse) or tech destroys magic (also in Shadowrun). I'm...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Charlie Stross @ 76: I think if you're focussing on the mechanics of the magic system rather than the depth and richness of human relationships in those books then you're kind of missing the point ... Yes, the same goes...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Chrisj @ 42: While there are undoubtedly some holes in Bujold's worldbuilding, that isn't one of them. Fair enough. But the wider point still stands: if you have magitech then people are going to get inventive, and from there its...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  (This is a separate comment from my Potterverse-like magic system, since the general point isn't much affected by the details of the system. Charlie's and mine would have similar effects). If you have a moderately dependable mechanism for doing magic,...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I've been kind of wondering about this ever since I read the Harry Potter books and started wondering what Potterverse magic might look like if it was actually systematized instead of being plot-sensitive phlebotinium. "Magical theory" is an academic subject...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  On horses: Robin Hobb's "Assassin" series is good on this. The protagonist often has to travel a long distance as fast as possible. On these occasions his whole concern is how to optimise the stamina of whatever mount he has....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Greg Tingey @ 934: Is this something really significant, or just commercial puffery? Perovskite solar cells are certainly a thing. I've been seeing articles about lab prototypes for a few years now. See the link for more details, including the...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  The marriage contract put me so much in mind of the latest lawsuit against Gullane....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  So I'm guessing [Elderly Cynic]'s approaching his 26th century... Of course, that explains it. He's Enoch Root!...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Troutwaxer @ 746: Each of your, characters, talked like, Captain Kirk. https://mastodon.me.uk/system/cache/media_attachments/files/110/358/234/722/866/284/small/8b50f32e6127d293.jpeg...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Charlie Stross @ 547: Nazis are deliberately tongue-in-cheek/ironic. They use it as a way to deflect the unwary from asking if they're really as bad as their statements make them sound. I came across this quote from Jean-Paul Satre on...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Mikko Parviainen @ 445: I think [NATO] lost its justification when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were done for, but like all organizations, its main purpose is to keep itself alive, so it went and invented new purposes....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  On the decline and fall of the Russian Empire I am strongly reminded of a sequence in the Foundation trilogy by Azimov (spoilers ahead if you haven't read it). Bel Riose is a brilliant general; smart,successful, loved by his men,...
• Commented on Minor updates
  This paper Speak, Memory: An Archaeology of Books Known to ChatGPT/GPT-4 says that there is quite a bit of copyright text embedded in ChatGPT 4....
• Commented on Minor updates
  anonemouse @ 220: Has the implied "except for X use" exemption in the existence of a robots.txt file been tested, does anyone know? A quick web search didn't find any cases, although there were a couple that got close. The...
• Commented on Minor updates
  Whitroth @ 212: The training of chatbots is a huge issue for artists, writers, and others, as much is done by simply scraping the Web, ignoring copyright notices. Well, they are legally entitled to do that. Back in the early...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  SFReader @ 98: Whoever is in charge of the rules determines whether that form of government works as advertised - see SCOTUS. That raises an interesting parallel with the UK monarchy. (If this is going off topic please knock it...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I've got very mixed feelings about this. The lack of democratic legitimacy for the monarch strikes me as a feature rather than a bug. Various people have mentioned "President Thatcher" and "President Blair", and even worse, "President Johnson" and "President...
• Commented on Minor updates
  I just came across this on Amazon. Thought you might want to know about it, if you hadn't already heard. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Away-Childish-Things-Terrible-Worlds-ebook/dp/B0BMSH79CR/ It's Adrian Tchaikovsky's take on Narnia....
• Commented on Minor updates
  Charlie @ 135: Appending lines of that kind of crap to messages was hip on usenet in the late 1980s when folks were paranoid about the NSA grepping the news spool. Ahh yes, the NSA Line Eater. Of course the...
• Commented on Minor updates
  Greg Tingey @ 128: I would love to hear others opinions on this scary prospect. I assume you are referring to the latest iteration of the Online Safety Bill. This time around they aren't proposing to ban encryption, or to...
• Commented on Minor updates
  Charlie @109: Secret Cardinals That would be these guys: https://youtu.be/Cj8n4MfhjUc (Unless this is some piece of number theory developed by NSA cryptographers in their spare time...)...
• Commented on Place your bets
  timrowledge @ 2187: “The average EV weighs about 1,000 lbs more than the average ICE because of the weight of its batteries. ” Utter tosh. Complete nonsense. Bilge promulgated by oilers. Example - Tesla model 3 [...] I believe the...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Scott Sandford @ 2076: Five SF Futures Where Teleportation Is Possible (But Not Necessarily Safe) They missed the really scary part of Glasshouse. Its not the isolation (although that's bad enough), its the teleporter malware that secretly edits your brain...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Troutwaxer @ 2004: I don't know enough about the differences between U.S. and British law to have much understanding of the "right" thing to do if arrested in the U.K. AFAIK the UK police are not allowed to lie. Unlike...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Troutwaxer @ 1989: I'd predict a bunch of financial crimes having to do with money transfers to Michael Cohen, perhaps a single count for each transfer I read somewhere that in corporate fraud cases the authorities can (and will) count...
• Commented on Place your bets
  Greg Tingey @ 1988: Which "federated section" of Mastodon is that? Is it "DOT me DOT uk"? And how does one contact them, to join? I admit I'm getting my own head round all this, but... Mastodon is basically a...