cstross.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy - Profile | ThreadSky

'Russian bombers are burning en masse' — Ukraine's SBU drones hit 'more than 40' aircraft in mass attack, source claims FPV drones smuggled inside Russia simultaneously attack at least four air bases, destroy 2/3 of Russian air force's heavy bombers. (NB: I won't see any replies, because […]

submitted 3 hours ago • 1 comment

People seem to think that LLMs are like a magic wish-granting genie with unlimited wishes. They tend to ignore the "but what if the genie is hallucinating and can't tell truth from falsehood?" side of the bargain. https://thepit.social/@peter/114601765045842916

submitted 4 hours ago • 4 comments

Inferential evidence for panspermia is tempting the same way as inferential evidence from cosmology for the big bang having emerged from (but erased the evidence of) another pre-existing cosmos. It appeals to our cognitive bias in favour of steady states, but it may be an observational error … […]

submitted 4 hours ago • 1 comment

Current mood music: War on Error (Declaration) by Rotersand. (A grim commentary on the direction the tides of politics are flowing in these days.)

submitted 7 hours ago • 1 comment

#WritersCoffeeClub June 1 - Are there ethical principles fiction must adhere to? What are they? No. (There are ethical principles my fiction adheres to, but "fiction" itself has only one function: to communicate counterfactual propositions to other human beings. As such, it can be created by […]

submitted 8 hours ago • 1 comment

@jwz a revised law of software envelopment for 2025: all commercial applications will become increasingly enshittified until they incorporate an LLM to replace the user.

submitted 8 hours ago • 2 comments

Abort!

submitted 1 day ago • 9 comments

The Onion is on point as usual. https://theonion.com/tariff-strained-apple-announces-7083-piece-iphone-kit/

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

"A government does not announce that they have become fascist, they announce that anti-fascists are enemies of the state."

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#WritersCoffeeClub 31 May What fact of your life would give a reader a new appreciation for your work? One particular work: I wrote the stories that turned into "Accelerando" as therapy to avoid my impending nervous breakdown while working as 50% of the software devs in a dot com that […]

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

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.

submitted 1 day ago • 15 comments

Stopped writing this evening because I finished one scene which is kind of low-key and the next scene needs to be ABSOLUTELY DERANGED.

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#WritersCoffeeClub 30. Who do you write for? I write to explore worlds that interest me and that nobody else is writing about—so I write for myself. Luckily other people find the contents of my headmeat fascinating enough to pay money so they can read over my shoulder! (Note that more stuff […]

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Ronald Knox's ten rules for writing] detective fiction: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Knox#Knox's_Ten_Rules_for_Detective_Fiction (Rule 5 was very specific to 1920s/1930s whodunnits and should probably be updated to "no ethnic stereotypes allowed (especially as the villain)".)

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

Memo to self: ABSOLUTE MORATORIUM NOW on buying new e-reader devices until after I've had eye surgery. Gosh, my eyeballs are crap right now (due to cataracts)! (Also: saving throw vs Shiny! won by a mile.)

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Russian nuclear deterrent launch sites doxxed, including floor plans and infrastructure details of nuclear missile silos: https://cybernews.com/security/russian-missile-program-exposed-in-procurement-database/

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

#WritersCoffeeClub 29, Tell us about an epiphany that changed your writing. I don't remember any. Caveat: I've been writing fiction for more than 50 years and doing so as my day job for 25 years: I'm still learning, but it's mostly in tiny increments at this point—and for the past 2-3 decades.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Every time I read a mozilla product blogpost I get more convinced that whoever is writing them has left earth long ago and is writing them from an increasingly distant part of the universe that bends all communication into the register of a maniacal product manager, and the only way they have of […]

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

REMINDER now that Dilbert Stark has left the Oval Office: It was never DOGE's task to slash costs; it was their task to slash government's ability to deliver services and run programs. In the wake of which, those that were necessary can be farmed out to private sector cronies, and those that […]

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

Prosecutors in the UK have confirmed for the first time they have authorised 21 charges against Andrew and Tristan Tate, including rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg41g1140po

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

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The existence of top surgery and bottom surgery implies the existence of up surgery, down surgery, strange surgery and charm surgery

submitted 5 days ago • 6 comments

#WritersCoffeeClub 28th May 2025. Have you ever done a writing mentorship? What was your takeaway? Nope, never done it—from either end (mentor or mentee). I suspect I'd be a terrible teacher.

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

It's worth remembering that Palm's Graffiti started as an app to make the Newton actually useable (I had an MP100; it's hadwriting recognition was utter dogshit). Palm then built the market for pocketable touchscreen devices (the Newton was extremely bulky) before multitouch replaced the stylus […]

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

Just a reminder that in the US, Rocky Horror Picture Show was distributed by 20th Century Fox (now owned by Walt Disney Studios), which makes Dr. Frank-N-Furter a Disney princess.

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

Content-Type: text/shitpost

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

I'm writing a trigger warning for "Starter Pack" (my current novel in progress): Things that are not considered bad by the culture our protagonists belong to include forced marriage, memory erasure, beating children, big game hunting, slavery, mass executions, genocide, imperialism, sexism […]

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

Dammit guts, not now! (Wanted to go out this evening to the Edinburgh Literary Salon, so OF COURSE my colon has decided to stage a sit-down protest.)

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

Welp … https://www.youtube.com/shorts/i4l8TrrdpTg

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#writersCoffeeClub 5/27: What is a load-bearing part of your non-writerly life that makes it possible for you to write? I'm not sure I have a non-writerly life!

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

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

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

OMG. #Microsoft #Copilot bypasses #Sharepoint #security so you don’t have to! “CoPilot gets privileged access to SharePoint so it can index documents, but unlike the regular search feature, it doesn’t know about or respect any of the access controls you […] [Original post on infosec.exchange]

submitted 17 days ago • 9 comments

Just had to share this, a friend of mine found a working flat screen tv at the dump and is using it for #DnD battle maps. And I just had to share because 1) that's so clever and 2) headlines are always complaining about immigrants/single mums/people on […] [Original post on social.coop]

submitted 6 days ago • 6 comments

#PennedPossibilities "681 - Current WIP. Do you have an antagonist or evil villain?" Weirdly this crosses over for me with "#WritersCoffeeClub 26 In your work, how much of an active character is your setting?" — Because in my current WIP, the setting is the villain! (It's an interstellar […]

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Europe Freezes US Travel as Lufthansa, British , Air France, KLM and More Slash Routes to Major Cities Including New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago to Tap Soaring Demand Across Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Caribbean - Travel And Tour World […]

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Current mood music: They Drew Their Plans Against Us — DJ Hell

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

#WritersCoffeeClub 26 In your work, how much of an active character is your setting? In SF, the setting is always an active character, if only because the characters and actions of the protagonists probably don't make sense without the context it provides. (If something claims to be SF but […]

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Welp, definitely past the halfway point in this new space opera, and I'm writing the scene in which the couple eloping on a gig drawn by a unicorn are being chased by a spy riding a velociraptor and—hey, why are you looking at me like that?

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

And on that note: my friends feed is sparser, but my blood pressure no longer spikes every time I look at it. Now I need to log out of reddit and close that browser tab. (My Bluesky account is safe for now, because 90% of the folks I follow there are writers or SF fans, not political […]

submitted 7 days ago • 3 comments