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So, I got a Raspberry Pi 500+ and a 4Tb SSD to play with. And I have just been playing with it.

And I have to say that I'm unimpressed in the extreme with the modern Linux UX, onboarding, and documentation.

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 4: What's a sure sign an author is a master of their craft?

Whenever you read a new book/story by this author, it still manages to surprise you.

(Consider Terry Pratchett as an example. He managed to write 40-something Discworld books without becoming repetitive or formulaic. It's easy to write a series that follows a set template: it's much harder to avoid pandering to the reader's preconceptions.)

I mean, if I get paid per the agreed settlement for JUST ONE BOOK it will make up for the lost day or two of work, but it's not exactly an instant dopamine hit and I *HATE* spreadsheets ...

So the Anthropic AI lawsuit settlement claims process has opened, and I AM NOT LOOKING FORWARD to slaving over a hot spreadsheet and trying to figure out which of 30+ books of mine are eligible for payouts. Especially as some were published (and pirated from) both the USA and UK, but only the US-library-of-congress-registered editions will pay out.

@foone That's the thing that always put me off learning python, more than the idiotic whitespace/indentation shit: that regexps aren't built-in operators. The whole idea of designing a scripting/very high level language tha way makes my skin crawl.

This is OBVIOUSLY a job for awk or perl or maybe even raku.

@gumnos @mwl Suggestion? Jabberwocky has been translated into numerous languages—notably Russian, Croatian, Arabic, and classical Greek. Specify using *those* versions?

@technicaladept @raaahbin @Illuminatus ESPECIALLY do not EVER look up "penile degloving injury". It's a close second to "Fournier's Gangrene".

@SteveBellovin I read a $50K signing bonus and loan forgiveness as signs that they can't recruit as many staff as they think they need. Which means everyone else is winning.

You know you're officially old when this is the sound track to your early 30s.
https://hackaday.social/@hackaday/115297261015988548

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 1: Have you written in an epistolary format?

Nope—at least not at anything longer than short-short story length. Not really interested in it.

So, here's the content warning for the WIP I just finished and packed off to my agent, "Starter Pack". Readers of a sensitive disposition may require smelling salts just for the CW (full text in alt-text of image):

I am torn between THIS IS SO COOL and I WOULD THROW MY MACBOOK OUT THE WINDOW WITHIN HALF AN HOUR over this
https://hachyderm.io/@samhenrigold/115159295473019599

I just got invited onto a podcast about AI being run by some folks at a16z (Andreesen-Horowitz) because they seem to have read "Accelerando". Do I:

#PennedPossibilities 796 — Have you had to cut anything significant from your WIP?

Plenty of times! But as I do this for a living, wasted words are wasted work, so I try to get everything right first time round.

(One of my two current WIPs is a problem child, and is now on the third re-write. If I can't stick the landing this time round, it's getting dumped: obviously I was over-ambitious, and the sunk cost fallacy applies.)

@AlisonW There were two authenticating steps then, though. (I did that too.) Firstly, you attended the PO *in person*. And secondly, your passport photo was signed on the back by someone with a public reputation—GP, lawyer, bank manager, someone. So arguably an informal distributed "web of trust" approach existed.

This model broke down at the same time the "job for life" went away.

Holy shit—per the JSON data this petition only went up about an hour ago, and it's already over 750,000 subscribers!

Betcha it vanishes within 24 hours amidst fuzzy non-specific allegations about hacking and foreign state agencies rigging it. Because what else are they going to do about it—let it go to a parliamentary debate?

BRITS: This parliamentary petition is rapidly closing in on a million supporters. Please consider signing it:

"Do not introduce Digital ID cards

We demand that the UK Government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID cards."

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730194

@pettter This is clearly a sigmoid insofar as the Earth has a limited surface area to cover in PV panels; even if we go the whole hog and turn the mass of most of the planets into PV cells in a Dyson swarm, there's a limit to how many we need to collect the sun's entire energy output.

(See also "why permanent growth in economics is a religious creed, not science".)

Exponentials come at you faster than you expect, even when you expect them to come at you fast
https://social.treehouse.systems/@dubiousblur/115267210052005606

@jwz @NanoRaptor Entirely true, but also: have you noticed when someone tells you they remember their previous incarnation they always mean someone like Julius Caesar or Cleopatra—not some poor nameless grunt worked to death in a latifunda, or harvesting rice in bronze-age China?

We remember the highlights. But the pervasive homophobia of the 1980s, the ghastly death toll from AIDS extending into the 1990s, PTSD from fear of nuclear war—these all get filtered out by the rosy glow of nostalgia.