Ronald

Comment Threads

• She of many names under yet another pseudonym commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  Here you go, we don't just work in English: Evergrande technically defaulted, forcing HSBC and other international banks to write off US$197 billion https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4329732 - Nov 1, 2021 Taiwan News is old skool Propoganda / Establishment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_News grep: "HSBC" in memo to Martin. ~ Now: working out what of that is true, and who is liable and who is pushing which agendas? Over Martin's Pay-grade. But. There you go, we do not lie. We're just better at it than you....
• Till W* commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  Late to the party, but ... Great ending for a great series, I really enoyed "Invisible Sun". I second/third the comments about the German parts - some of the scenary description (like the colour of police cars) can be explained by timeline differences, but the German soundbites should really be corrected, they are distraction to native speakers. The book I read after "Invisible Sun" was Tchaikovskys Doors of Eden, quite interesting to see the different approaches to paratime in both books....
• theheadofabroom commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  My guess would be that it's about the fact that most women work too in the Commonwealth, and it's not necessary that a cohabitating could would work nearby....
• JohnS commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  Ronald @ 780: Hi Mr Stross, "I just read your book, Empire Games, about a week ago." I really enjoyed the book. But there is something I want to ask. There is a chapter in the book where Rita jaunted into a Commonwealth railyard and took a lot of data via recording. Afterwards, Colonel Smith and other governments officials analyzed the data and concluded that the Commonwealth's industrial set-up was such that a highly-efficient manufacturing set-up, where the workers live in public housing blocks and are ferried over to the factories (if I remember correctly, the factory in the book...
• DuncanE commented on Empire Games (and Merchant Princes): the inevitable spoiler thread!
  Actual 15TB SSDs are a thing now in the corporate IT space. Also as an ex-technical writer I'm pretty sure you meant to say TB and not Tb, although even TB and GB are falling out of use now amongst IT specialists in favour of the more useful TiB (Tebibyte) and GiB (Gibibyte) - the difference being the use of base 2 rather than base 10 (1TB = 10^12, 1TiB = 2^40). Honestly when we dealt in KB and MB the differences were small enough it rarely mattered, but they get bigger as we move to GB/GiB, TB/TiB and PB/PiB....