mattp1086.bsky.social
51 posts
42 followers
63 following
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Well, the next one is called "The Wild" so that seems an appropriate strategy 😁
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Well, I just finished Neverness. I read a lot slower than you do! I liked it a lot, definitely ornate but also philosophical and mathematical! Maybe one that needs to be read slower!
Certainly good enough I will be reading the sequel anyway!
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Well keep writing them! I love this sort of stuff, where our basic assumptions get challenged and we see the ground we stand on more clearly. You may have to write more than one book though!
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Yep, Piranesi is brilliant. Her other book, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is also great, and there was a TV adaptation a while ago that's good to watch too.
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Oh, and coming back to the Bitcoin angle, there's a huge financial incentive to build a viable QC - taking over Bitcoins where the keys have been lost. Because they can't migrate to a post quantum wallet.
blog.dshr.org/2025/05/the-...
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I do think it's an extremely hard problem though, and until recently I was not convinced we could solve it. Now I still don't know, but as I say, I would not bet against it.
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Maybe also check out PsiQuantum for a company who thinks they can scale up a QC in a few years:
www.psiquantum.com
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However, there have been some significant advances recently.
Error correction that works:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Perfectly true that there are no useful commercial QCs now. D-wave don't count - they aren't even trying to make a general purpose QC
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Wouldn't call quantum computing a tech scam. Huge improvements in just the last year in error correction, number of qubits required, and scalability techniques. Of course, maybe there are limits we won't be able to get past, but I would not bet against it at this point.
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I haven't read this in a looong time, but found the copy sitting on a top shelf. Will give it another go!
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It's good to visit Bletchley Park to see where he helped crack Enigma and invent computing.
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A 10Mb hard drive! Luxury!
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I used to do IT support at some legal firms and I absolutely confirm the legal secretaries used and loved WordPerfect. Including, and maybe even because of, being able to see the formatting codes and edit them if you wanted to.
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I love the whole Xeelee Sequence. Huge ideas, cosmological time. Characters maybe not so great, but the ideas!
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Also some smart reply settings related to the keyboard buried deep in More Security and Privacy / Android System Intelligence / Keyboard
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Possibly also Notifications / Enhanced Notifications.
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I don't think it is Gemini - I don't have that turned on and I still got those reply suggestions until I found the magic setting they removed them - just can't remember exactly which one it is.
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This was also driving me mad, and I'm sorry I can't remember which Android setting eventually made them go away. It is possible though.
Could try turning off Suggestions / Smart Reply
There's a load of settings that seem like they *might* affect it. Persevere if that one doesn't work!
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Fair enough! More surprises by neutrality though, I find PKD is like marmite. Plenty of his books I just can't read at all, but I did really like that one.
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Three Stigmata is one of my all time favourites! It is very weird, I can see why some would dislike it though.
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Almost impossible to recommend a sci fi book to you, as you've read a vast amount. Nobody can buy me them as a present for the same reason.
But I'll go with Way Station by Clifford D Simak. Short and sweet.
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Also oops, 11. There are 5 2x2 squares. 5 1x1 squares and 1 3x3 square.
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10. 4 2x2 squares. 5 1x1 squares, and 1 3x3 square.
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Obviously, the right answer is both.
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To be fair, he is imagining a physics 20k years in the future. So it's all gonna be a bit hand-wavy anyway. Mumble mumble quantum graph dimension mumble 🙂
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Haha, yes. I just re-read Schild's Ladder. I know enough physics and maths to vaguely *waves hands* follow the science, and enough Egan to just get on and read the story anyway.
I actually enjoyed this one more than most of his, although not as good as Permutation City.
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Looking forward to Inverted Frontier #5 whenever you can do it. Grandkids and garden also important!
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I will leave a carriage these days to avoid exposure. Once waited for next train! Although I do have a slightly higher risk than most, it's more that I really just don't want to catch it anyway.
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A lot is just familiarity. I switched to Linux from Windows 20 years ago and I now find Windows to be an unholy confusing mess where everything is a lot more work!
I like the state of flow and relaxation too I get in Linux!
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I edited that scene out of my copy of home alone 2!
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It definitely tails off towards the end of the series, but I enjoyed most of the books. The last one not so much.
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This series remains one of my favourites although I haven't read it for ages. Very original and quite weird.
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I often feel like blasting a bit of Mozart out at top volume when they do this, but it would only annoy everyone else even more.
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Light just follows a "straight" path through the curved spacetime caused by the mass.
As John Archibald Wheeler famously said: "Space tells matter how to move. Matter tells space how to curve."
He could have included light in the first sentence.
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IMHO, this is really quite good, and the sequels.
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Most already mentioned here, but I will add Tau Zero by Poul Anderson.
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One of my all time favourites.
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Nice poster! Tom Baker was always my favourite Doctor.
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Love the Latin Tears for Fears at the end! Rest of article also good :)
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I still miss the earlier days of the internet, where everything was an open protocol and anyone could implement any client they liked for it. Email, Usenet, FTP, etc.
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He also said "That’s what everybody else in the world wants: American citizenship.”
Let me see... guns everywhere, school shootings, religious zealots, MAGA, abortion rights, health care.
So no, we really don't. Nice place to visit maybe, wouldn't want to live there.
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Great list! I would add "The Bohr Maker" by Linda Nagata, first in the Nanotech Succession series.
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Hardly. Source control systems weren't that hard to use even in the 90s, and neither were they expensive.
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There is a big difference between wealth taxes and income taxes.
Say you are wealthy and own a big house worth 2 million. What does it mean to tax wealth "at the same rate as PAYE at 47%"?
Does it mean the house owner has to pay nearly 1 million a year because they own the house?
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Saw it, not a great photo though...
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It's short, but Manna by Marshall Brain touches on these aspects.
marshallbrain.com/manna1
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I've been using Linux as my main system for over 20 years now and I'm fully used to it, and find Windows extremely annoying when I have to use it.
The main thing is to embrace the difference, some things are a lot better as long as you don't expect it to be Windows. Takes some time.