Charlie Stross

Scottish resident SF/F author (he/him/they/them). Three times Hugo Award winner, 30+ novels in print. Does not play well with Nazis. Abolish the monarchy!

Born in a world with 320ppm atmospheric CO2, 3.3 billion people.

@cstross.bsky.social on Bluesky

blog at: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/

FOLLOW REQUESTS: don't expect a reciprocal follow. And I will reject requests from folks with no profile and/or no tooting history.

Public Key

npub1yacj26q9parem5fqf2s3ym9xkxghkk0w2jc63aglsnl2fmyhshnszgla7e

NIP-05 Address

cstross@wandering-shop.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqszwuf9dqzs73ua6ysy4ggjdjntrytmt8h9fvdg750cfl4yajtctecpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsv07r5m

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1yacj26q9parem5fqf2s3ym9xkxghkk0w2jc63aglsnl2fmyhshnszgla7e

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Last Notes

2026-05-16 10:06:35 UTC

#WordWeavers 16 May
Would your WIP still work if you changed the gender of your MC?
Yes, insofar as there are two MCs, in a very long-term relationship (across multiple reincarnations). No in specific details (for a chunk of the narrative they're travelling in a patriarchal empire with rigid gender roles: these impose constraints).

2026-05-06 11:26:41 UTC

Welp, it's taken me a few days to get round to it, but I have just now deleted Chrome (and it's associated LLM malware downloads) from ALL my Macs. Fucker was taking up 6.5Gb of space on my Macbook Neo. Utterly unacceptable bullshit on a machine that starts with 256Gb of storage, even if I *wanted* the AI features (I don't).
Took a while because I had to transfer all my extensions and continuously open tabs across into Safari (I mainly use Firefox, but some sites render badly in FF.)

2026-03-24 20:58:46 UTC

HYPOTHESIS: while Moore's Law dominated performance in laptops, the rule was "cheap, fast, low power—pick any two".
Moore's Law is coming to an end. The Macbook Neo says "why choose?"
Nobody needs a laptop with a 40 hour battery life. Nor does anybody needs 200 cpu threads and an AI coprocessor and 256Gb of RAM and 8Tb of SSD. So we're finally seeing the sweet spot in the phase diagram drift inexorably towards the corner labelled "cheap".

2026-03-24 14:53:59 UTC

Fucking ChatGPT book marketing spammers.
"… the Laundry Files represents the kind of established intellectual property that can deliver sustained value when marketing infrastructure is aligned to capture both existing and new readers."
What does that gibberish even *mean*, translated from the LinkedIn?

2026-03-22 12:43:00 UTC

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Implication: if you want a Macbook Neo this year, maybe wait until September—unless you expect the coming supply chain shock to hit Apple, too. Which is not impossible if TSMC can't meet their chip delivery dates.
If that happens, prices will shoot up and scarcity economics will take over, so buy now and be prepared to run it for the next decade.
/2

2026-03-22 12:40:28 UTC

Meanwhile, a thought about the Macbook Neo:
The Neo uses an A18 Pro SOC, the 2024 iPhone Pro cpu—the iPhone 17 Pro runs on the A19 Pro. (The Neo soaks up their stockpile of high-end phone rejects.)
Apple's about to ramp up for the 2026 iPhones, which will release in September on the A20Pro.
Phones outsell laptops by a huge margin so I think the current Neo will be quietly replaced by an A19 Pro model in September, to use up the reject stockpile once as iPhone 17 sales tapers off.
/1

2026-03-22 12:15:09 UTC

Oh good grief, this summary is both farcical and tragic: also, Trump has fucked air travel for at least the next two years, never mind automobiles and logistics. The supply chain shock will get as bad as 2022 within a couple of months—then keep getting worse.
#nevent1q…jgl9

2026-03-19 11:06:57 UTC

OMG!
(Radio-controlled planes are one thing, but here's a radio-controlled plane dropping a radio-controlled GI Joe paratroop with steerable chute!)
#nevent1q…9a6h

2026-03-10 09:51:26 UTC

The Society of Authors (UK) is helping launch this: an identifier for human-authored (i.e. non-AI) books: https://humanauthored.co.uk/

2026-03-09 16:10:13 UTC

Guess who's going to the vet? (Annual checkup, no biggie)
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/116/200/086/534/918/612/original/3ccac12653931c52.jpeg

2026-03-03 11:58:32 UTC

#WritersCoffeeClub March 3: On what are you unwilling to compromise?
I write in en_US because my main market is US publishers—but when writing dialog between British people I refuse to compromise on British slang and usage in dialog, even though the books are copy-edited in American spelling and grammar.
Let 'em deal with someone else's culture for a change.

2026-03-02 21:18:45 UTC

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@nprofile…a4ar It's a skill that shouldn't be learned: we're better off without these garbage spicy autocomplete bots.

2026-03-02 21:02:52 UTC

“My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors”: Gemini generates false records and fake screenshots of TNA website (UK National Archives, used by researchers)
https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/gemini-artificial-intelligence-the-national-archives-fake-records

2026-02-27 20:37:00 UTC

From bluesky:
Posit that to be judged for a sin implies that information about the sin is available to god/jesus.
Information implies entropy implies energy implies mass.
...so you can run an attack on heaven by sinmaxxing so hard Christ converts into a black hole from sheer acquired mass-energy and oneshots God by trapping him in something not even His light can escape from

2026-02-27 10:36:08 UTC

Woke up to the good news that the Gorton & Denton by-election was won by the Greens, who stomped all over Reform UK and left Labour in third place—in a constituency where Labour hasn't lost an election since 1931.
Reform UK candidate showed his true colours, ranting about a "Woke and Muslim conspiracy", of course. (This is the guy who wants to change the law to force women to get married and have more babies, deport non-whites, and criminalize LGBT+ people, starting with the trans.)

2026-02-25 10:15:29 UTC

Absolutely true.
(For those who haven't dealt with banking IT: banks are in the business of managing financial risk, and it doesn't get any riskier than allowing an enthusiastic intern who occasionally lies to you and hallucinates on the job to refactor a 60 year old code base that nobody really understands, without oversight, that handles all your customers' money. The phrase "sued into a smoking crater of banking wreckage the instant anything goes wrong" springs to mind!)
#nevent1q…v090

2026-02-23 19:47:31 UTC

More Epstein fallout:
Peter Mandelson arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office
Video footage shows former peer being driven away shortly after being escorted from his London home by officers
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/23/peter-mandelson-arrested-on-suspicion-of-misconduct-in-public-office

2026-02-21 10:14:03 UTC

Mad fantasy-fic idea: what if even death is no escape from the law, and contracts signed in life remain binding after shuffling off this mortal coil?
In this setting, all contract lawyers are necromancers. A zombie is what you get when an undischarged bankrupt dies. And so on.

2026-02-19 10:32:28 UTC

Holy shit:
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c70kjr9wjw0t

2026-02-06 20:43:46 UTC

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
The singularity has been cancelled.
What we're getting is wall to wall spam generators, optimized for passing the (modified) Turing test and convincing gullible humans that they are "intelligent".
Instead of the singularity, we are getting the spamularity.

2026-02-05 23:05:29 UTC

Notes for Americans:
1. Until 1992 you had to wire your own plugs onto new electrical appliances (they were sold without pre-molded plugs).
2. Mains voltage is 230VAC, not 110VAC. It'll kill ya.
3. If you follow ChatGPT's advice *YOU WILL DIE*.
#nevent1q…3ryc

2026-02-01 11:41:37 UTC

Because a LOT of people are missing the point:
No, Elon Musk is NOT serious about putting a million data centres into orbit. It can't work: laws of physics say "nope".
But SpaceX is expected to go public this year.
Elon is talking up his company's future prospects in front of gullible investors because he needs a growth narrative beyond Starlink, which is already priced in. Something to justify the Starship proram beyond NASA's lunar ambitions.
So it's salesman's bullshit, lies for fools.

2026-01-28 14:15:15 UTC

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@nprofile…aw68 @nprofile…ugpy Mind you I want the abbreviation e13n to catch on, if only to make it easier to keep to character limits on social media accounts

2026-01-08 19:11:30 UTC

Meanwhile, the media in the UK—and the USA—are TOTALLY IGNORING the ongoing revolutionary turmoil in Iran, with running street battles, a general strike, dozens of cities in open rebellion against the IRG and government forces, NOTAMS warning aircraft away from areas where there's ongoing gunfire, Kurdish militias crossing the border to tackle the Revolutionary Guard …

2025-12-17 10:10:53 UTC

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@nprofile…59g0 @nprofile…3etw I don't/can't do video or podcasts (eyeballs and ADHD issues). Lemme know if you have an essay form.

2025-12-17 10:06:26 UTC

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@nprofile…59g0 @nprofile…3etw It's not the harvesting that's the problem, it's the massive infringement of Moral Rights (see the Berne Convention) and plagiarism that the LLMs subsequently engage in. An LLM is not the same as a web search index.

2025-12-17 09:51:28 UTC

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@nprofile…59g0 @nprofile…3etw Uh-huh. Downloading huge volumes of pirated content hosted illegally by websites then using them to generate slop in direct competition with the authors of the original works—that's the crime in progress. (The fact that the LLM crawlers are also pounding legit websites like mine into the dirt and disregarding robots.txt is just the icing on the turd cake.)

2025-12-16 09:37:50 UTC

Boost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan
Liz Kendall faces pressure from campaigners as she tells parliament there is no clear consensus on issue
Kendall is lying: 88% of the public in consultation exercise wanted *stronger* copyright law, and 95% want AI companies to pay for training data.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/16/boost-for-artists-in-ai-copyright-battle-as-only-3-per-cent-back-uk-active-opt-out-plan

2025-12-15 19:03:49 UTC

So, the Police Scotland helicopter out of Glasgow flew over Edinburgh today, following this rather peculiar route, then hot-footed it back to base …
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/115/725/135/093/322/380/original/45da15307b1eef81.jpeg

2025-12-08 11:31:58 UTC

I'm getting a LOT of new followers this weekend and today from mastodon.social that claim to be news aggregators. all created in the past 72 hours. Someone's spinning up a MONSTROUS propaganda/fake news campaign out there right now! I'm guessing it's a state level actor. Be cautious and double-check anything that sounds too good to be true or too outrageous to ignore!

2025-11-29 15:04:30 UTC

A ray tracer written in pure CMake (by perverting CMake to do fixed-point arithmetic). For non-programmers, this is a bit like building a wide-bodied airliner ENTIRELY OUT OF LIVE EARTHWORMS (nobody tell Boeing):
https://64.github.io/cmake-raytracer/

2025-11-22 10:01:44 UTC

Found elsenet. And now, with my memories of home taping off the radio using a cassette recorder and a microphone, I feel *ancient*:
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/115/592/770/346/484/699/original/af8330e9af614643.png

2025-11-14 17:46:21 UTC

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@nprofile…lxup But please for the love of Cthulhu don't number platforms like Edinburgh! (The station building is in the middle of the station, and the platform numbering is counted *clockwise* but you have to know where platforms 1 and 20 are to figure the rest out and a bunch are inaccessible without elevators/escallators to a skybridge ...)

2025-11-12 11:20:37 UTC

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@nprofile…36um
The tools of the Master build the Master's House.
The tools of the Master are owned by the Master.
The Master will not permit His tools to be used to dismantle His works.
(We need masterless tools.)

2025-11-11 11:08:13 UTC

WHOOPS: Softbank is cashing out of Nvidia! AI casino's closing, take your winnings *right now* ... or don't. Sucker. https://apnews.com/article/japan-softbank-son-nvidia-ai-chips-d8a10172850628c317a214280a4d94c9

2025-11-06 13:08:11 UTC

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@nprofile…w47d @nprofile…hzyj You're going to have a problem with imposters pitching in as "concerned citizens" unless you couple it with identity verification, which is an entirely different can of worms.

2025-11-06 12:32:49 UTC

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@nprofile…w47d @mutineer @nprofile…hzyj @jna Once you make the legislative process a wiki you then have to defend it against poisoning attacks—either by internal lobbyists, or by external state-level actors. It's a good idea, but it massively expands the attack surface exposed to your enemies. (And there are *always* enemies, at this level: eg. if you legislate on family planning, you *will* attract the attention of foreign anti-abortion groups even though it doesn't affect them directly.)

2025-11-05 10:33:37 UTC

Congratulations to NYC on electing a moderate centrist mayor (and now all the billionaire-owned media are freaking out, projectile vomiting as their heads spin around while they shriek about the communist muslim coming to take all their property away)

2025-11-02 12:19:21 UTC

This resonates with me SO STRONGLY. They took our revolution and turned it into Surveillance Stalinism, farming our emotional outrage to harvest advertising dollars and burn the planet as a side-effect.
https://hachyderm.io/@datarama/115479982892174664

2025-10-29 20:44:02 UTC

Would be even better if it turned out that (a) yes, and (b) meanwhile, AWS are hosting their BGP tables on MS Azure ...!
https://mastodon.social/@otolithe/115459389479814793

2025-10-22 13:54:53 UTC

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@nprofile…ely9 @nprofile…2me2 Yes, but the totenkopf's earlier meaning was inextricably tainted by the 1933-45 associations (same as the hakenkreuz).

2025-10-21 10:36:45 UTC

WHAT–
https://agora.echelon.pl/objects/7c56f89c-a704-4774-bc83-ab0cbdf0bcea

2025-10-20 17:24:59 UTC

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@nprofile…zjv9 Too easy to lose on the carpet if your vision is poor!

2025-10-10 06:19:17 UTC

Bank of England warns AI stock bubble rivals 2000 dotcom peak
Central bank says market concentration hasn't been this extreme in 50 years.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/bank-of-england-warns-ai-stock-bubble-rivals-2000-dotcom-peak/

2025-09-07 15:27:31 UTC

At the pub with friends, brainstorming the world's most repellant green smoothie, with ingredients calculated to be hated by as many as possible:
* aspartame
* coriander (aka cillantro)
* cinnamon
* kale
* brussels sprouts
* cauliflower
* raw eggs
What else should it have? (Ideally vegan, this one is merely vegetarian)

2025-08-21 14:35:35 UTC

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@nprofile…q5wq TBF the last of that trinity died nearly 20 years ago! (I, ahem, my first editor at Ace was one of Heinlein's last surviving editors, weirdly enough.)
But yeah. SF/F authors *really* need to read outside their own genre. Otherwise they're at risk of succumbing to second-artist effect: the first artist draws the elephant, the second artist draws what they saw in the first artist's drawing, and very rapidly you're getting into mediaeval European depictions of elephants:
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/115/067/252/315/887/549/original/6d5af31f8b96e433.jpeg

2025-08-21 11:44:23 UTC

#WritersCoffeeClub 21Aug—What's something essential to your writing process you think other writers should try?
Read outside your genre comfort zone: you might learn unexpected things you can use to improve your process.
(This ought to be obvious but I suspect a lot of writers don't do it.)

2025-08-12 20:13:34 UTC

This is, to put it mildly, utter bullshit.
You can store a decade of email for a million people—call it 10-20Gb each—in a 10-20Tb NAS box that costs about £2000 and sucks less electricity than a laptop.
The environment agency are gaslighting us. One wonders who put them up to it?
https://social.lol/@robb/115016579150112511

2025-08-06 14:38:11 UTC

"The way I see it, during any given period the market is driven by a narrative, positive or negative. The current narrative is strongly driven by optimism about AI. And it takes a major shock to change a market narrative.'
And Krugman goes on to note that investment in AI data centres accounts for about half of all US economic growth in 2025.
AI winter is coming. And then there will be a depression. (NB: that's me, not Krugman.)
https://mastodon.social/@rbanffy/114981848940676725

2025-08-04 18:39:32 UTC

This. Just, this.
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/971/952/338/476/674/original/1beb082852c95742.jpeg

2025-08-03 08:27:09 UTC

#WritersCoffeeClub 3. How heroic are your protagonists?
Heroism is situational: it consists of doing whatever is necessary even when everyone else is freezing or panicking.
Repeat "heroes" often turn out to be psychopaths. Who aren't good subject matter for heroic fiction …
So I generally write relatable protagonists who, when faced with a crisis, manage to survive (because otherwise there wouldn't be a satisfying story to tell).

2025-08-02 09:00:41 UTC

Why is Project Gutenberg endorsing anti-semitic propaganda by hosting it?
https://mastodon.social/@gutenberg_new/114955361822480156

2025-07-30 08:13:33 UTC

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@nprofile…fpcl @nprofile…pqrf I have bad news for you: that pic was 100% human-created!

2025-07-29 10:16:23 UTC

It's a sign of how utterly fucked my retinas are (they're basically NOT FLAT) that I had to look really hard at this image (h/t to @nprofile…pqrf) for a long time before I could glimpse even some of the true horror:
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/935/999/956/518/348/original/d91037c69ab8b641.jpeg

2025-07-27 16:58:15 UTC

Tom Lehrer, RIP: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html

2025-07-26 15:40:17 UTC

Oh dear. How sad. Never mind …
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/920/286/682/463/821/original/29a68b7725806e5c.jpeg

2025-07-12 21:49:56 UTC

This is really neat product design—the antithesis of most post-2010 "no user-serviceable parts inside" design.
https://urbanists.social/@markstos/114841399983457180

2025-06-25 12:08:35 UTC

It seems to me that we're living in a world dominated by AI—only it stands for Angry Idiots.
Welcome to the Shitularity!

2025-06-25 08:17:16 UTC

For those who don't know, wikipedia is a publicly curated encyclopaedia of just about all human knowledge that has driven Britannica to the brink.
Glowforge.com is a retailer of consumer-end laser engraving machines who host public discussion fora for their users.
These two sources are not equally authoritative … https://mastodon.scot/@petealexharris/114739349596357193

2025-06-22 12:00:28 UTC

#WritersCoffeeClub June 22. What's the best piece of writing advice you ever received?
"There's more than one way to do it." By Larry Wall. Who, okay, was talking about software: but he's also a linguist and wrote a couple of (non-fiction) books and invented an incredibly flexible programming language that obeyed that dictum and he was absolutely right.
(Beyond that? Heinlein: "finish every story you start, send it out, then don't wait for it to sell before you start a new one.")

2025-06-08 19:23:41 UTC

I'm just about okay with emoji in filenames but I draw the line at animated gifs and ringtones!
https://23.social/@leyrer/114648865072884127

2025-06-02 12:34:06 UTC

This unicode fuckery isn't just for domain names: I've had assholes list my books for sale on Amazon and Apple Books under an account that uses a unicode glyph to replace one of the letters in my name—the title shows up in search, but any payments for sales go into the grifter's account.
https://chaos.social/@Emathion/114613267697396447

2025-05-30 19:01:34 UTC

A map of Northern Ireland, as horked up by ChatGPT. (See alt text for the true horror.)
Do not trust ChatGPT to do your geography homework!
That is all.
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/598/326/448/382/747/original/cca220b56da5fc78.jpeg

2025-05-26 21:27:36 UTC

You know, such sentiments mean exactly nothing to people who don't believe in an afterlife. (Like Netanyahu, who is either an Orthodox Jew or an undercover atheist, but definitely not a believer in the Christian concept of hell.)
https://todon.nl/@prolrage/113254124076446152

2025-05-24 10:18:26 UTC

If your corporation's business model relies on lawbreaking, your corporation has no legal legitimacy.
We don't let narcotic cartels and trafficking rings list themselves on the stock exchange: why should OpenAI or Facebook be any different?
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/562/295/389/813/631/original/a0b7452925dbcf88.png

2025-05-23 10:51:34 UTC

Putting generative AI in software products is absolutely the informational equivalent of adding radium to foodstuffs in the 1920s!
https://infosec.exchange/@varx/114543772651563806

2025-05-21 09:09:37 UTC

Someone on Reddit asked, "You get one 30‑second phone call to any moment in history — who do you call and what do you say?"
I phone Richard M. Nixon in the Oval Office at 11:40pm on July 21, 1969.
And I say, "I'm sorry, sir, Neil and Buzz can't come to the phone right now, they're arguing over who pays the parking ticket we just got."
Then I hang up.

2025-05-20 08:22:08 UTC

The NIF is in no way a viable civil fusion project; it's basically an H-bomb research test stand that works around the NPT by not using any fission processes in achieving a fusion plasma.
https://mastodon.social/@br00t4c/114536585262101406

2025-05-18 13:07:02 UTC

Welp, I just won an eBay auction for a bid of £13.02 (reserve price was £10.01; only one other bidder), now to test a hypothesis about fools who maybe shouldn't post upside-down photos of their misidentified auction items with an obviously ChatGPT generated description that shows they don't know what they're selling?
Worst case, I'm out £15 including shipping: best case, I just landed an HP320LX that the seller in question ignorantly mistook for a Psion.

2025-05-18 10:04:27 UTC

REMINDER TO AMERICANS: Amtrak sucks (and so does your domestic airline service).
https://cupoftea.social/@moof/114528204740010932

2025-05-16 10:04:48 UTC

It's not an ethical dilemma. If a HUMAN driver got into a situation where they had to choose between hitting and killing a granny or baby, we'd rightly jail them for many years for reckless/dangerous driving.
A self-driving vehicle should be incapable of operating in a manner equivalent to a reckless human driver.
If a self-driving vehicle is capable of getting into such a situation, the car manufacturer is responsible for a crime of homicide and should be punished.
https://front-end.social/@heydon/114516790497714657

2025-05-12 10:41:16 UTC

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@nprofile…jkcn It takes up to a month for a container to get from Shenzhen to the USA. The Pacific's *big*. And as @nprofile…c2ll noted, the USA is a violently unpredictable market right now: whether any Chinese manufacturer would take orders without government guarantees of payment (given US customers have been refusing to take deliveries due to tariffs) is an open question.

2025-05-12 10:02:28 UTC

This is too little, too late: there's no cargo heading for the USA from China at the moment and it'll take over a month for anything at all to arrive (even if it left tomorrow, which it won't, because the factories have either closed or are now committed to other markets). By the end of a 90 day pause goods *might* begin arriving again … if anyone in China trusts the USA not to hike tariffs again (which they obviously don't). So there are going to be shortages by and by.
https://mastodon.social/@realTuckFrumper/114494259477030857

2025-05-08 11:36:56 UTC

VLC using an LLM to generate subtitles in realtime is actually a sensible use of LLMs … but I'd be very interested in seeing how the LLM-generated subtitles match up to actual subtitles produced by humans, and an opinion by someone fluent in the medium's language as to how accurate they are.

2025-05-07 07:43:57 UTC

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@nprofile…l2nm @nprofile…jkcn Speaking as a regular worldcon attending author and program participant: the programming committee used ChatGPT—which is trained on illegally downloaded copies of our work, it's basically an automated plagiarism machine—and that was one reason for offense: another is that ChatGPT delivers answer-shaped text strings which are full of factual errors, so it's not fit for the purpose they tried to use it for. Absolute idiocy with a side-order of insult.

2025-05-05 09:47:26 UTC

We need to go further and regulate to ban touchscreens in cars (except for non-driver entertainment consoles). Screens for status and navigation displays can stay for now (but more research on distraction potential is needed). But you should be able to control your vehicle by tactile feedback, without taking your eyes off the road.
https://mastodon.social/@br00t4c/114454550823262407

2025-05-05 09:16:56 UTC

Coming soon to a space opera universe near me: SCAPHISM WITH SCREWFLY!
(Stake out the condemned across a bunch of young fast-growing bamboo shoots, then release the fertile screwfly females in their vicinity. Makes cruifixion look fast and painless!)
https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody/114454350752206681

2025-04-30 14:44:10 UTC

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@nprofile…q5wq What, *more* KMFDM? Like we don't already have a global KMFDM surplus? (And what about MDFMK?) Is it time to break out the Revolting Cocks, or maybe the Lard reserve?

2025-04-27 07:38:47 UTC

This is your regular scheduled reminder that the purpose of a dating app is not to find you true love, a one night stand, or even a date: it's to generate revenue from repeat customer visits. If you find your one true love via a dating app, they've FAILED.
You're the product, the product is you.

2025-04-21 08:09:31 UTC

Okay, what joker had DEAD POPE on their bingo card for Easter Monday?!?

2025-04-11 21:55:51 UTC

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@nprofile…q5wq That's a surprisingly good album (Ministry are hit'n'miss: there's been nothing in the league of "The Land of Rape and Honey" for *decades*, but I keep hoping … )
On the other hand, Röyksopp just released "True Electric", so I've got that on repeat ATM.

2025-04-08 18:39:27 UTC

I can foresee ABSOLUTELY NO WAY in which this can possibly go horribly wrong:
The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/08/uk-creating-prediction-tool-to-identify-people-most-likely-to-kill

2025-04-08 10:17:54 UTC

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While the USAF is trying to bomb Grand Fenwick (in Transnistria), Russian tanks are commencing a special military operation in Moldova … of which Transnistria is a breakaway autonomous region.
Russia is unaware that Grand Fenwick has the Q-bomb (because they haven't told the UN yet). Meanwhile, the USAF bombers blundering overhead have stealth coatings bought from a President Goldfarts crony that even antiquated Russian radar can spot.
And it's up to one trepidatious officer to stop them ...

2025-04-08 10:15:11 UTC

My Muse is SCREAMING at me to sit down and write my script for an updated re-make of Doctor Strangelove. And it's up to one trepidaciousntia, decides to evade the 25th amendment by barricading himself in the Oval Office and launching stealth bombers at Latveria. Etc.)
The USAF has a problem finding Latveria on a map (because Doctor Doom infiltrated the Defense Mapping Agency) so they end up targeting the Duchy of Grand Fenwick by mistake, which is in Transnistria …
/1

2025-04-03 09:32:51 UTC

A reminder: last time an idiot POTUS imposed global tariffs (1930) it led to a 67% drop in US exports and crashed the US economy during the Great Depression (which had already begun, but which the tariff war intensified enormously). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act

2025-03-28 20:11:08 UTC

USA: the CBP are snatching students off the streets for writing op-eds in a university magazine.
UK: The Met side-eye CBP and says "hold my beer …"
(C'mon, raiding a Quaker Meeting House and arresting a meeting there is just totally on-the-nose for 1675 politics, never mind 2025 …)
https://todon.nl/@yetiinabox/114241676551559228

2025-03-28 17:02:17 UTC

Toot a photo of a computer that first arrived in the year of your birth!
(Here's mine: the IBM System/360)
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/241/131/867/473/544/original/0ba9e94b2498aaee.jpeg

2025-03-28 12:31:07 UTC

Saying the quiet part out loud: billionaires don't want the little people around, they want us to quietly go away and stop existing on their dime (because obviously all the dimes belong to the deserving poor, er, billionaires).
This is eliminationist rhetoric, aimed at you (and me).
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-report/bill-gates-within-10-years-ai-will-replace-many-doctors-and-teachers-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things/3706507/

2025-03-26 11:16:56 UTC

Hi! We read your book, "Do Not Create the Torment Nexus", and loved it!
And like you, we love the Torment Nexus too and wanted to share it so much we're adding a personal Torment Nexus to your office suite, your operating system, your text editor, your in-car entertainment system, the cat feeder—
TORMENT NEXII EVERYWHERE! TORMENT NEXUS NOW IN YOUR GOVERNMENT!! NO ESCAPE ONLY TORMENT NEXUS!!!

2025-03-25 10:29:28 UTC

#WritersCoffeeClub March 25: Describe your workflow if it had to be 100% analog.
Can't be done.
I mean, the mechanics of using a typewriter … it's how I started writing? But my publishers insist on electronic workflow—Word tracked changes for copy edits, PDF for page proof checks—and my agent and primary publisher are in the USA anyway. Postal turnaround given today's crappy services would add months to each book's production time. Plus, Scrivener makes me vastly more effective as an author.

2025-03-21 10:28:43 UTC

Pretty much EVERY book I've ever published got stolen by Meta and is listed in this database. That's over 30 books, a 25 year career output. (Need to find a UK class action lawsuit to join, or a US one that's open to non-US residents whose work was published in the USA).
https://retro.pizza/@digitalraven/114199906574357235

2025-03-20 19:53:23 UTC

Some days I wish the fediverse supported a Bluesky-style nuclear block.
Remember: do not tickle the feet of the Linux Taliban, for they are quick to flame and lack all context (because reading up-thread is for the feeble-minded)

2025-03-20 11:47:11 UTC

OH DEAR GOD (and by god I mean cthulhu) … https://mastodon.ie/@fuzzix/114191128172499797

2025-03-20 09:42:48 UTC

Absolutely not THIS is the peak of user interface design!
https://mastodon.online/@nikitonsky/114188711971432612
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/194/105/110/871/231/original/a0cc6f3b1e6dbc6d.png

2025-03-19 20:52:54 UTC

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@nprofile…zc3x As an FYI, I cancelled all my plans to visit the USA for the foreseeable future back on November 7th of last year. It's going to get a lot worse, and creatives are going to be in their gunsights too before long (if not already).

2025-03-19 16:01:08 UTC

The only parts of that sentence that would have made sense before 1992 are "sell nudes" and "Down Syndrome" and even then they'd have been borderline-incomprehensible. We've become so inured to weird shit that we barely notice when horrendous noncon fetishes are turning up in the mainstream.
https://infosec.exchange/@SwiftOnSecurity/114189595231849786

2025-03-17 10:31:42 UTC

Combining this (Trump declares Biden admin pardons void) with Trump's admin ignoring judicial orders and I conclude the USA is now in an uncontrolled skid towards dictatorship.
The rule of law is void where it offends Trump.
(Checks calendar: just under 60 days in, events still tracking Hitler's post-election seizure of power in 1933.)
Reminder that the Nazis re-occupied the Rhineland 3 years in. That's probably about the right time scale for the invasion of Canada.
https://flipboard.com/@abc/news-54f0unfaz/-/a-0pOfk4gfS96Q01Qyzl91Dg%3Aa%3A3195386-%2F0

2025-03-16 21:19:05 UTC

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@nprofile…2mzm The older TB vaccines weren't very effective (IIRC about 50% effectiveness). There are TB-specific antibiotics, but multidrug-resistant TB is a huge problem (M.t has a very thick cell wall and replicates very slowly so it takes ages to absorb a lethal dose of the antibiotics: "finish the course" can mean 2-6 months, and a lot of patients give up partway through when they feel better—which selects for antibiotic resistant strains).

2025-03-16 20:55:28 UTC

@nprofile…nx0h Nitpick here (I speak as an ex-pharmacist and STRONG proponent of vaccination): TB went into decline decades before the first vaccine for TB was developed, as a result of the decline of urban horse-drawn transport and cattle being driven to the slaughter in cities. Bovine/equine TB were the infection reservoirs and once people weren't living in close proximity to cattle transmission dropped a lot. Central heating also helped.
The TB vaccine *then* came along and did the rest.

2025-03-15 21:44:33 UTC

Welp, looks like Türkiye is looking at acquiring Eurofighter Typhoons instead of F-35s. At this rate, Trump's reputational damage-self-inflicted by attacking his allies and cutting Ukraine off at the knees—is going to take down the US military export industry. Nobody wants to build their armed services around weapons bought from a supplier who couid decide to disable them on a whim.
https://mastodon.social/@glynmoody/114168327427858401