@cstross wrt the French government, it had been foreseen for a while. The government is basically composed of the two smallest groups of the national assembly, and the two largest minorities are on the far right and on the left (which this center-right/right government likes to call far left).

@cstross
Syrian war flares up again.
Ukraine scrambles to avoid total defeat when Trump takes office.
Massive anti-government protests in Georgia.

@cstross Current state of the world feels like the Titanic situation, with the people in charge/power living in denial or causing the problem, and then suddenly it’s too later and we’re all going down with the ship.

@cstross Farage isn't that far behind in the UK. 😟

@cstross you’re totally right. Just a small reminder that Poland was invaded by Germany AND Russia in 1939.

@cstross Yeah, there's a very good reason we had "never again" drilled into us in Hebrew school. Sadly way too many people forgot and joined the cult. :(

@cstross They have sensors because the builders know how we'll act. So I saw one of these once and instinctively petted her head and she meowed back ...

@cstross

ex-fur-minate! ex-fur-minate!

@cstross new favorite name for these robots 😂😍

@cstross

@cstross
What to expect when a post begins with "what the news don't tell you" :
Either a truism or a conspiracy theory. Or a mixture of both.

@cstross this is a great summary of the current political situation!
However, it's situated against a situation with 80 years of bitter history. He couldn't do these things if it wasn't for that history.

@cstross it's what i see, and not in a humorus way.

@cstross "Propping up democracy in the US has long been a vital priority for safeguarding global peace, given its linchpin status in the Caucasian bloc." *snerk*

@cstross

> After the debate, the data show they are in fact deadlocked in a race to the bottom.

@cstross side comment: as Trent has pointed out, drones are particularly effective against Russia, although drones do mean quite a big shift in cheap / high volume firepower.

Also: the US mil/ind complex struggles with drones because they disrupt BAU “big iron” spending - hence the //extreme reticence to support UKR// and thereby evidence a changed requirement for defence spending.

@cstross

I foresee the resurgence of shotguns as military weapons, you're going to get specialised anti-drone specialists in every infantry squad.

Also, I think this thread severely overestimates fuel-air explosives, you don't need Space Marine armour to protect soldiers against FAE barotrauma, you need to protect a soldier's respiratory system, the rest is pretty resilient.

@cstross
Yeah it's the Charge of the Light Brigade vs automatic firearms all over again. You just can't move large troop bodies or heavy materiel under a drone umbrella.
That era is over.
It also means no war can ever be won again - hey, Israel? You getting all this?

@cstross I live this so much!! 💗💗💗

@cstross
Perhaps time for some alterations to tax and churches next.

@cstross …which is why I don’t use it for that purpose.

Of course, I’ve asked ChatGPT for nonessential programming, like making a Quine in 6502 assembly, and it succeeded in doing that. But for normal work, I don’t dare touch it because if it makes a mistake, then I will have no idea how to fix it.

@cstross i'm surprised it is only 52% and not much higher.

@cstross Hope healthcare, transportation aren't using AI for it because that's a whole lot of risk. They'd better lawyer up for the bugs that cause accidents and death.

@cstross Great article. I'm just confused why all of the subsections start with Linkin Park lyrics.

@cstross The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the MBAs.

@cstross @sepdroid That really was worth reading. I don’t pay much attention to the game or entertainment industry in general, but the theme certainly resonated with me.

@cstross Check with a Geiger counter before touching those babies!

@cstross We should encourage Zuckerberg to adopt these creatures and return him to the soil as is Nature's way.

@cstross but have you considered ROBOT murder chicken?
(from Australia's murder chicken capital, Kuranda)

@cstross that’s a good read, and the whole blog has some great content.

@cstross "They hired some incredibly talented people to make this happen, and then like five times as many idiots." A distillation of how the world works.

@cstross "My team has spun this as a huge cost saving, when really we just applied a fire extinguisher to the pile of money that we had set alight."

@cstross @lisamelton Ok, let me try: Electric cars are a dead end, the future is bikes, walking and public transportation😁That’s what they want, right?

@cstross
Electric cars are a dead end...

...because cars and car centric infrastructure is a dead end. The future belongs to walkable infrastructure supported by train supremacy.

@cstross I have seen a lot of posts like that on TikTok and on Apple's news aggregator but not here, mercifully.

@cstross last week I was floating ways to monkey wrench 3DP specifically ones printing guns

@cstross CASE NIGHTMARE NURDLE

@cstross Not looking forward to "Missile Gap" coming true, I've got to tell you.

@cstross Who were her friends in the government, and is anyone looking into them? Because...I kinda think someone should at least have a cursory glance at any gov't employees she hung out with.

@cstross Maybe she and Snowden can share flat in Moscow.

@cstross we’re already seeing fallout from the writers’ strike.

@cstross

“That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.”

-Kim Stanley Robinson

Update from comments: I'm SURE it's just a coincidence that training neural networks and mining cryptocurrencies are both applications that benefit from very large arrays of GPUs.

If *I* was a VC I'd be hiring complexity theory nerds to figure out what areas of research are promising once you have Yottaflops of numerical processing power available, then place bets on AMD, Nvidia, and (maybe) Intel going there and start seeding the field and hiring PR firms.

@cstross This is the content Mastodon has been missing, yaaassss

@cstross I'm having flashbacks to some page-and-a-half overly detailed boobs-boobily description of donning a MCP suit from some "classic" SF.

@cstross In space no one can hear you scream ... your safe word.