cdodgson

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• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Well, with regard to the trip, the FBI is effectively claiming they screwed up due to a filing error. The story now goes Aeroflot mis-spelled Tamerlan's name on the flight manifest they gave the government, and as a result, the...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  The Central Sq. liquor store that was open (in the afternoon) was Libby's; the Dosa Factory next door was also open. BTW, to give a bit more of a sense for geography, this wasn't far at all from the Tsarnaev's...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  On further note: despite the terminology, the "lockdown" was voluntary, and not universally respected (though most people complied, witness the numerous photos of absolutely empty streets). In Central Square, Cambridge, almost all the stores were closed, including two pharmacies. (Which...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Commentary on the lockdown from Bruce Schneier here: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/the_boston_mara.html He makes the point (echoing some of his commenters) that there was one significant difference between this case and some other random armed guy: the fugitive had already tossed grenades and...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Checking in from a few miles away from the crime scene, I can give you one other reason not to obsessively follow the news reports on a situation like this: most of what gets broadcast, even from the fairly reputable...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Huzzah! It's been years since there's been an insect-based creature feature out. Well, unless you count Cloverfield --- but compared to that, you've got better science, more convincing characters, a greater variety of locations for interesting shots, and a vastly...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  On multiple covers: a couple of thoughts. If you have more than one cover, it might make sense to ship with all of them, and let the customers have a choice --- as, I think, Cory Doctorow did with his...
• Commented on Mo' holding pattern
  It would actually be better to toss the solid ahem, "residues" as that would reduce the mass of the ship when it comes to deceleration or acceleration which would mean less fuel burned. They aren't planning to burn much fuel...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  Lesswrongians envisioned an AI with a goal to make the world a best possible place for human race. I'm reminded of Jack Williamson's humanoids --- designed with exactly that purpose by a misanthrope. They generally wound up building "safe" environments...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  There is a novel in here somewhere about a kind of arms race with different factions racing to create _their_ kind of AI, assuming that the first one created will block the emergence of any others. Actually, some of OGH's...
• Commented on Roko's Basilisk wants YOU
  It's not hard to see that this kind of extropian eschatology has a lot in common with the Christian variant. What's more unusual is for a believer in both to make the connection explicit, as Frank Tipler does here. Did...
• Commented on Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship
  It's an exaggeration to say that one must be a billionaire to run for national office --- Barack Obama certainly wasn't. What you do need is sponsorship from the extremely wealthy --- meaning in practice one of what OGH has...
• Commented on This explains everything
  For diabetes, external insulin pumps are already deployed technology, though the ones I've seen don't do much to automatically adjust dosage for the user's current blood sugar (and whatever else might be relevant). Figuring out how to do that with...
• Commented on This explains everything
  Interesting, but I don't think the robots have quite caught up yet to the human crackpots. Consider FixedEarth.com, which proposes that not only was the earth created a few thousand years ago, but that it sits fixed in space as...
• Commented on Press release
  Since OGH is otherwise occupied: the follow-on to Saturn's Children (not quite a direct sequel) is Neptune's Brood, out July 2013 in US and UK, per the schedule he posted up-thread....
• Commented on Press release
  The Merchant Warlords?...
• Commented on Tapeworm Logic
  The tapeworm sees eggs leaving and also does not know how it came into being. Humans have a vague idea of the latter and there does not seem to be an equivalent on our level for the former. That's true...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  2 billion people without electricity is the solar market. An acquaintance tried out that theory: he was trying to sell electric equipment to farms in India. The problem was that farms without reliable power did reliably have abundant shade trees,...
• Commented on What are the big issues of 2013 going to be?
  Actually, Orbital Sciences does field several satellite launchers that use refurbished ICBMs as some of the stages: their Minotaur has some Minuteman stages, and the Taurus first stage is refurbed from the MX "Peacekeeper". (It's not an entirely trouble-free program;...
• Commented on Happy Christmas! Here is a flame war in a can
  In fact, the Swiss stopped issuing ammo for reserve weapons in 2007, except for a few rapid deployment units....
• Commented on Happy Christmas! Here is a flame war in a can
  Taking at face value the proposals to turn NRA members into (unpaid) school guards or other militia: First off, there is already an active, and well-armed "militia movement" in the southern US, which acts (or tries to) as a kind...
• Commented on Understanding Reader Reviews
  Constitutional interpretation is a mess. That's said, if you want to make a case that the Constitution limits a state's right to regulate arms, here's one way to do it. Start with the 14th amendment's section 1, which reads, in...
• Commented on Big Guns[1]
  Ubiquitous internet monitoring and the signal lack of success of suicidal salafist idiots in the past decade would suggest that it takes more than access to guns and explosives to engineer a revolution. It's not just that guns aren't sufficient...
• Commented on Big Guns[1]
  A shooting occurs. You carry a gun, so you decide to stop the killer. You approach the scene, and you see 1 armed people, with corpses everywhere. So you shoot. And kill the teacher who just used his amazing sharpshooter...
• Commented on Big Guns[1]
  A few words on the "more guns, more safety" thesis: We've had a couple of recent, very public empirical tests of that idea. One was the victim in the Jovan Belcher murder/suicide, in which the NRA put out a public...
• Commented on Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
  Just as a note: Charlie has already announced work (albeit not in the Laundry series) involving sparkly vampires. In fact, sparkly vampire unicorns. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/psa-new-book-deal.html...
• Commented on Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
  File off the serial numbers, tweak the endings and you could make a hero of Stalin or Hitler pretty easily, while Mao is a hero to many. For a worked example, see The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad, which presents...
• Commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  Regarding Facebook as gatekeeper: Google is also eagerly auditioning for the role, not just for phones, but for a whole lot of other data streams. (viz. "Google Now", a service on your Android device which alerts you to whatever Google...
• Commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  Regarding "knock codes": at least in the US, the existing land line infrastructure has legacy technology to mess with these: The ring tone that is played for the caller is out of phase with the actual rings heard by the...
• Commented on In case you were wondering ...
  It sometimes happens in the US, at least, for a book to have small press "premium edition" on sale simultaneously with a major publisher's mass market release. For example, Ellen Kushner's "The Privilege of the Sword" was simultaneously released in...