Paul

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• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Charles Stross @ 992: Vanity publishers still exist, but Amazon did indeed knee them in the groin and make off with their wallet. However, self-publishing isn't without pitfalls, [...] Ahh, so if I understand correctly this is the difference between...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  whitroth @ 982: I picked up a book that looked interesting at Belticon from the author [...] He really needed to spend $1k or $1500 for an actual copy editor, with copy editing software. Interesting. Many years ago I read...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Uncle Stinky @ 932: The Wikipedia picture looks more steampunk Ahh, that's Kelvin's tide predictor, which is also in the Science Museum in London, along with a lot of other really interesting and occasionally weird stuff. If I understand correctly,...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Heteromeles @ 929: Here's the text of Amendment 14.3: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military,... I believe the sticking point is over the...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Greg Tingey @ 903: Trump & the MAGAt's ... Anyone else heard of these people? - that's an awful lot of moolah crawling out of th woodwork. Not specifically, but it seems to be a trend. The GOP seems to...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  icehawk @ 891: I think you probably under-estimate how complicated tides are in the real world. That's putting it mildly. See https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/SpecialPubNo98.pdf William Thompson, aka Lord Kelvin, put the maths of harmonic analysis of tides on a practical footing. It...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Re: earlier comments on Trump, and why hasn't some judge jailed him yet? Anyone interested should follow Teri Kanefield https://law-and-politics.online/@Teri_Kanefield on Mastodon, and on her blog. She used to work as defence appeals lawyer, so there is nothing she doesn't...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Back near the start of this thread I commented that AI algorithms are being developed that are much more efficient. Case in point: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10770...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  adrian smith @ 108: isn't rising prosperity likely to lead to rising resource consumption tho, somewhat counteracting the benefits? Yes. But that is more manageable than rising population. If the population levels off then we can limit resource consumption without...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Me @ 107: When I had to cut and paste my post because something went wrong in preview, I added the references back but forgot to emphasise the quotes. Sorry about that....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Elaine @ 37: Also demonstrated that the "tragedy of the commons" was a libertarian fable (completely ahistorical and made up in the sixties as it turns out). I've seen this said a number of times, and I'm going to take...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Back on the original topic, the article Ends Don't Justify Means Among Humans on Less Wrong takes aim at the "rational long-termism" idea. TL;DR We are running on hardware that has been corrupted by evolution to ensure we survive and...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  Heteromoles @ 101: One issue is that the AI makers are aware of the energy issue I brought up, but they’re not designing it into their systems. I guarantee that isn't going to last. The usual suspects may be throwing...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  RabidChaos @ 22: I think scientific theories are a pretty thorough debunking of the idea that all humans are stochastic parrots. (I read this to mean that the creation of scientific theories which predict things is beyond "stochastic parrot" capability)....
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  David L @ 10: a belief in psi powers implicitly supports an ideology of racial supremacy, I either missed this over the years or just forgot it. Can someone point me to details on this path? See also PsiCorp in...
• Commented on We're sorry we created the Torment Nexus
  As others have said, great talk/essay. Really enjoyed reading it. Thanks. Whenever I read about fringe politics I have Umberto Eco's checklist of "Ur-fascist" attitudes in mind. (Acutally "checklist" isn't a good word; its more complicated than that. But anyway)....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Charlie @ 1424: Hint: all an airliner autopilot is, is cruise control with three degrees of freedom (yaw, pitch, roll) instead of one (yaw/directional steering). Not these days. Today most of the time an airline is piloted by the Flight...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Charlie @ 443: I thought the entire point of criming was to avoid working? Depends on who you are. If you are part of the underclass then: You probably can't get legal paid work that keeps you in food and...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  AndrewMck @ 419: Someone (Kevin McCarthy?) should nominate Matt Gaetz as Speaker. The nominating speech: “He broke it. He can fix it.” Trouble is, the extremist MAGAts don't want to fix it. Their stated position wrt federal government is to...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  I wonder what would have happened if someone had come up with a workable lithium ion battery back in 1900. Electric cars were a thing back then, but with lead acid batteries....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  EC@158: look up MH 370. MH 370 had ACARS, and a position report was received. Then someone turned all the transponders off....
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Robert Prior @ 155: More useful would be some form of satellite-linked telemetry, so not only do we know where they are but also the data is captured in real time. Commercial passenger aircraft already have that. Plus they regularly...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  Moz @ 130: Saying "we put 300 of them into trains and two years later four of them still work" would make Lord Murdoch very happy indeed. I was peripherally involved in an attempt circa 2000 to produce a high...
• Commented on I should blog more, but ...
  DocMic @ 5: but I would bet serious money that this type of smoking ban is completely, totally, utterly impossible to get past even the most well-meaning court Not in the UK. Here Parliament is sovereign, so whatever law they...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  David L @ 388: What if large scale human society REQUIRES sociopathics? Maybe evolution had to let it happen. As Charlie said @389, evolution doesn't work that way. The way to think about sociopaths is as the Hawks in the...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Or, you could pretend to be dead & be buried at sea ... He was dead and buried in space. Or was he? Cue long search on the most probable trajectories by multiple parties, each of whom has something to...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Charlie @ 224: [...] in which we get to see that Mad Science in the 21st century actually takes a Mad Science Corporation (or similar scale organization) rather than a lone crazy. The real life example of this is Aum...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  I wonder if something could be done with the noir hard-boiled private detective set in the future. Obviously you'd want to avoid a vanilla cyberpunk setting, but maybe the theocratic takeover of America has enabled an eastern hemisphere dominated by...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  DP @ 152: So how about a future history of the First Church of Donald Trump Heinlein did pretty much that in Revolt in 2100. Not to say that it can't be done again, better and longer of course....
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  Charlie @ 890: It's probably OpenReach fibre Or Toob, or CityFibre, or Hyperoptic. OfCom has recently required "Duct & Pole Access" (DPA). This means that any broadband company can legally put their own fibre or whatever down ducts and up...