Hugh Fisher

Hugh Fisher

  • Commented on The Pivot
    Go fuck yourself you poisonous troll. She's finally got to me, so it's time to leave. Thanks everybody else for many interesting discussions over the years. (Virtual door slam)...
  • Commented on The Pivot
    Via Slate Star Codex and a couple of historians, I would add Christianity, a sociological advantage the Spanish had. A major reason why other locals were so enthusiastic in joining with the Spanish was the Aztec enthusiasm for industrial scale...
  • Commented on The Pivot
    Charlie, my apologies if I've broken any blog rules, but Sleepingroutine looks like "Fake News" to me. Oh FFS. New poster sounds ever so slightly foreign and you subject them to intense scrutiny to determine whether they're a Russian agent...
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    OGH wrote I'm with H: the dog-whistles are there, and shrill. (For a while I thought you were trolling and came >.< this close to banning you, but evidently no.) Since I'd prefer not to be banned, I'll stay out...
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    Swapping the order around... Heteromeles wrote: For example, blaming Brexit and Trump on progressive politics is pretty rich,...So why are you blaming the victims again? If Brexit and Trump were inevitable and there was nothing progressives could have done to...
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    Heteromeles wrote: Isn't identity politics the default, going back at least to the classical world? I mean, look at the structure of Roman society (with Romans at the top, red-headed people at the bottom)... I could argue about Roman society,...
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    Whitroth wrote: Not sure what country you're thinking of, but in the uS, the only identity politics we've seen are the neofascist and religious right (or wrong, as I prefer to say). Thanks for the polite response. I can only...
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    I'm going to stick my neck out and say that if we're willing to fail back to printed paper and mostly forget social media and the internet, we can get an enormous amount of stuff done even with barely-gate-level ICs....
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    Thane wrote: I love these threads, but occasionally find them a little frustrating. Let's talk solutions, people. Recognise that ten years of progressives playing identity politics and purifying themselves in thought, word, and deed hasn't actually stopped the oligarchs from...
  • Commented on GDPR compliance notice
    Charlie wrote: Once your head stops hurting, Unicode will seem trivial. I will add that assuming you're not planning to write your website backend code in C, Unicode is trivial. (At least for what you've described.) All the major web...
  • Commented on Cthulhu Counterfactual
    Allen Thomson wrote: I've spent decades bemoaning that there were no left libertarians. If there were, they'd be somewhat like classical liberals, I suppose, and I'd be interested. Most of the science fictional settings written by Ken MacLeod, the Fall...
  • Commented on Cthulhu Counterfactual
    Heteromeles wrote: I think subverting the standardized Mythos tropes is a fun occupation that can be enjoyed by all. And I would find it fun if you didn't seem so keen to lecture everyone at every opportunity on how racist...
  • Commented on Cthulhu Counterfactual
    In the 2 case, forget the anarchists, how about if I devoutly want to see my enemies tormented in hell? This "mind" thing running the "spaceship" Sorry I Thought You Weren't Using Your Soul can upload people into Hell (Surface...
  • Commented on Not dead but dreaming
    Assuming OGH is working on the finale for Empire Games / Dark State, he's already dropped a black hole into the Earth. Guess that leaves the six gems. Or dinosaurs. Everything's better with dinosaurs....
  • Commented on Not dead but dreaming
    What then is the lure of old spells, and the assumption that whatever we dig out of the dust is a good thing? We are members of an industrial / Promethean civilisation and assume, even if only unconsciously, that Progress...
  • Commented on On hold
    Heteromeles wrote: If we're talking about nomadic packs hunters, they might exist (cetaceans). If we require hierarchical organization and durable structures and systems, then... Orca perhaps? It's been a few years since I read about them in depth, but IIRC...
  • Commented on On hold
    Mikko Parvainen wrote: In today's news in Finland, some cities are planning to make food aid (basically, free food, given out to basically anybody who comes to stand in a line for long enough, but mostly only people who really...
  • Commented on On hold
    Heteromeles wrote: The question is whether global distribution systems are best left to some sort of command and control redistribution system (currently various militaries in humanitarian operations), the free market, or political systems (government aid). Thoughts? Do all of them...
  • Commented on On hold
    Hackers in Finland are being blamed for the attack. The real culprits are deep-sea intelligent squid manipulating the packet flow in translantic fibre. (Been re-reading some Peter Watts)...
  • Commented on Test Case
    What's probably needed is a single button to press which activates a program... In my opinion the whole idea of a human monitoring the AI and intervening when there's an emergency is fundamentally flawed. Doesn't matter whether they're employed by...
  • Commented on Test Case
    For any lurking historians: at what point in Western society did it become normal/acceptable to dismiss teenage behavior as just a phase which therefore absolved them, their parents and society of any responsibility? (I'm guessing sometime post WW2 - mostly...
  • Commented on Test Case
    A manufacturer/supplier will be negligent only if the vehicle causes an accident under circumstances where a human driver or operator would be prosecuted. Careless driving, breaking a technical rule, failure to meet type-approval requirements etc. I think there is a...
  • Commented on Test Case
    Interesting that the acceptable answer is to build a barricade rather than address the psycho-social issues that might have led to such behavior. Good grief. Teenagers are raging sacks of hormones. Teenage males are absolutely the worst and can be...
  • Commented on Test Case
    Perhaps the thinking around military drones will be applicable? AFAIK there aren't any actual laws or military policies written for more or less autonomous drones yet, but ethicists and lawyers have at least been thinking and discussing the issues for...
  • Commented on Solarpunk rising, or how to turn boring bureaucratic meetings into creative fodder
    What do you think of this alternative motivation / ethos / tactic for promoting solar energy, loosely inspired by David Brin? Primarily, don't mention climate change. At all. The millisecond those words are uttered, everyone falls into long-established tribal patterns...
  • Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
    The back door(s) in the F-35 software aren't there for the USAF. Enterprising programmers at Lockheed-Martin have been installing crypto-currency mining software. A senior exec found out and is currently deciding whether to A. hide it in exchange for a...
  • Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
    For those who can't get enough weirdness, this article preview has been floating on hackernoon.com for a few days now: What is a Brain-Chain Interface? "A brain-chain interface is a direct communication pathway between an enhanced human brain and a...
  • Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
    SFreader wrote: What happens to the processing power needs for such currencies when these currencies for whatever reason decide to increase their rate/frequency of exchanges between themselves vs. with 'real' currencies? Nothing much. BitCoin was designed to make it difficult...
  • Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
    Heteromeles wrote: So do we start ducking and covering on this news, sell more bomb shelters to the rich elites, or just assume that, like Satoshi Nakamoto, this is yet another Russian PsyOps project? My suggestion is that we treat...
  • Commented on The Nakamoto Variations
    Bitcoin started as an exploration of computations that affect the quantum fabric of reality. Each "bitcoin" is in fact a successful nanofusion reaction - that's why the computers get so hot. Big Oil, desperate to maintain their monopoly, sent a...
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