Martin Terman

Recent Actions

• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  I did not know about the Lisa being a rival team, and forgot about the Newton being during his time of exile. As for the NeXT, he was lucky Apple was shopping around at the time for a new OS,...
• Commented on Decision Fatigue
  Elon Musk makes me appreciate Steve Jobs more. Admittedly, Jobs was a horrible human being, but he was a much better tech visionary than Elon is. Admittedly, Jobs had his share of failures, the Lisa, the Newton, the NeXT cube,...
• Commented on Strong and Stable!
  I favor a supernatural explanation myself. There's a couple of possibilities, not mutually exclusive. The supernatural fallout from Queen Elizabeth II's death triggered the implosion of the Tories. Quite possibly some supernatural contract that Thatcher signed had the duration set...
• Commented on I can't even
  Well, you could always satirize contemporary politics by having stand-ins for current Tory politicians suggesting these horrible ideas to the PM and their suffering gruesome fates afterwards....
• Commented on I can't even
  Recent UK politics has convinced me that the Laundry novels are in fact a utopian fantasy where the leader of the UK may be evil but they're also very intelligent as well....
• Commented on Crimes against Transhumanity
  To be honest, I don't really see the point of your essay, other than stating the obvious that our various institutions will have to evolve as technology advances. You sound like a hunter-gatherer arguing against the development of agricultural technology...
• Commented on Behind the Ukraine war
  It has been pointed out by others that Putin's got a real problem if he wants to strengthen the military. Putin used to have a competent reformer in charge of the Russian military, but they pissed off too many people...
• Commented on How to get a signed copy of The Delirium Brief
  I'm getting the ebook. How do I get that signed?...
• Commented on Reality is broken
  Trump winning is definitely CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE...
• Commented on The Nightmare Stacks: US Launch
  So the question is, with current anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise due to Brexit, is this going to be affecting how your refugees will be treated in future books?...
• Commented on Maneuvers in the Dark
  Gack. Mistyped that. Meant largest minority....
• Commented on Maneuvers in the Dark
  Actually, there's another reason to be moderately hopeful about a Boomer die off happening sooner for the GOP than later. Trump's supporters are generally not the most well off folks, nor the best educated either. That puts them on the...
• Commented on Fantasy shibboleths
  My main issue is where the author doesn't think out the implications of their magic system. One of the biggest is the fact that a huge amount of our sexual morality falls out of the fact that for thousands of...
• Commented on A message from our sponsors: now with added gaming content!
  I would not want to try it in a board game. I would work better in a computer game where the computer could keep track of the state information for every turn, and so affecting previous turns becomes a lot...
• Commented on Inverted realities
  Actually, shouldn't it be, by your own reasoning, wanting to know what will be popular two years from now? That does pose an interesting question, if you knew what will be popular two years from now, but it will be...
• Commented on A different cluetrain
  Speaking of bureaucracy, what do you think of David Graeber's newest book on that very subject? I'm really curious to know what you think on his analysis of science fiction and fantasy in terms of pro and anti bureaucratic sentiment....
• Commented on A message from our sponsors
  Out of morbid curiousity, when did you first realize the Laundry series was turning into a monster that was pretty much taking over a non-trivial part of your writing career, and may be the series for which you are most...
• Commented on Ask the Author
  Actually the downswing of religion in the US is more of a cyclical thing. America's religious community has two phases, an active phase where they are heavily involved in politics (called a Great Awakening if you're inclined to Wiki) and...
• Commented on Ask the Author
  In the pre-CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN universe of the Laundry, what happened to minors who stumbled across the truth about reality? Were they whisked off to a boarding school in a castle in Scotland where a kindly old wizard taught them...
• Commented on Ask the Author
  What is your opinion on the subject of fan fiction? In general, and in the area of your own work? Some professional authors are against the stuff, others freely admit they got started that way. I'm curious as to where...
• Commented on On the lack of cultural estrangement in SF
  I should also point out, thanks to Clarke's law, this also works for fantasy. A lot of fantasy authors think their worlds are low tech, when in fact they have all this fantastically advanced technology under the guise of magic...
• Commented on Spoiler Thread
  Before I asked what had become of Bob's ex-girlfriend, and I like to think my question was properly answered. My new question is, will we see Peter Fred-Young, Bob's intern, ever again?...
• Commented on The Rhesus Chart: Chapter One
  So the (hopefully non-spoiler) question I have is whether Andy's disaster would or wouldn't have happened if they were so close to or inside of CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN?...
• Commented on The Rhesus Chart: Chapter One
  So tell me it's just a coincidence that the latest BOFH is all about the BOFH dealing with a luser using Excel spreadsheets inappropriately......
• Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
  My last point on the post-Moore's law future is that we're going to see the cloud as an increasing way to get around Moore's law, especially for portable devices. The fact is that in the future, the amount of hardware...
• Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
  Continuing from my first post, what happens after we're through the sigma curve of rebuilding our software from scratch to minimize CPU and memory usage, and rebuilding our hardware to take advantage of specialized hardware chips that can perform certain...
• Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
  Optimizing compilers are just a small part of software bloat. Currently we design programs for easy readability, easy maintainability, and easy modification. At least in theory. In practice it is often get something out the door in a hurry that...
• Commented on YAPC::NA 2014 keynote: Programming Perl in 2034
  What is the consequence of Moore's law coming to an end? First off, there's another big sigma curve that lies on the other side of Moore's law, in terms of software and hardware: efficiency and optimization. Right now there's a...
• Commented on World Cup: engage Grinch mode now!
  If you need more reasons to hate the World Cup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I...
• Commented on Introducing ... Death Knight Love Story, evolution of Machinima
  Shilling for our guest blogger here, he's got another guest post on another blog which talks about how his experiences in making this movie have shed light on how videogame budgets go crazy: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2014/01/guest-post-how-do-mmos-reach-200m_21.html...