@cstross also Google your main characters names, just to make sure you haven't accidentally written a novel whose main character's name is the same as the Croatian word for vagina... Or similar... Unless of course that was the aim... On which case go for it...
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Quixoticgeek
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st
Posts
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#WritersCoffeeClub 3/Jan: How do you come up with the titles for your works? -
Cool. What's the purchase protection gonna be on this fancy new payment system?Cool. What's the purchase protection gonna be on this fancy new payment system? If you're modelling it on iDeal, then it's zero, and you've failed to understand the fucking point of online payment systems. Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, yes they are all fucking evil. Yes they are all American. But the thing they offer is, the end user, is protection in the purchases. So when the playstation 5 you order never turns up. You get your money back. Not just a shrug from the bank.
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So anyway, about that digital ID system the current Tory government wants us to have...So anyway, about that digital ID system the current Tory government wants us to have...
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Awesome.Awesome. I wonder how they are going to solve the problem of SNCF...
https://nltimes.nl/2025/11/06/eu-push-high-speed-train-travel-mean-10-hour-train-amsterdam-madrid
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May have massively nerd sniped a friend yesterday.May have massively nerd sniped a friend yesterday.
I suggested that when the timetable change happens and the new ICE-L goes into operation they should see if they could use every operational type of ICE (1,2,3,3T,3Neo,4,L), in a single day.
I woke to a message telling me they've already spent 4 hours trying to plot a route that achieves this.
I'm not sure if I should feel bad or not.
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MS is having DNS issues.MS is having DNS issues. So the Dutch railways are having issues. Critical national infrastructure should not be on cloud systems owned by foreign companies. This is resiliency 101.
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Private schools (public schools in UK English) prove this very wrong.Private schools (public schools in UK English) prove this very wrong.
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There's a signal failure somewhere between Amsterdam centraal and Utrecht.As anyone who heard my public transport rant at crumpet camp at WHY2025 will know, as will long term followers. The purpose of public transport is to transport the public. Nothing more. If it makes a profit, great. But the primary aim. Above all others. Is to transport the public. And to do that safely, and effectively, the system needs resilience. Resilience comes from spare capacity.
If the trains are more than half full. You need to run more trains.
Yes this is a dig at SNCF, and Renfe.
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There's a signal failure somewhere between Amsterdam centraal and Utrecht.Anyone who's been following me for a while will know I talk about how a train in normal service should never be more than half full. This is why. By not filling the trains. You have resilience. The boss of NS has complained that a lot of the time they are moving warm air around. Yes. That's the resilience of the system. That's now it can cope with problems. It's a feature, not a bug.
The idea that trains should always be full is just fucked up bean counter thinking.
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There's a signal failure somewhere between Amsterdam centraal and Utrecht.There's a signal failure somewhere between Amsterdam centraal and Utrecht. Usually there's at least 4 trains an hour between the two. There's also 4 trains an hour between Amsterdam Zuid and Utrecht Centraal. The trains from zuid are running still (signal failure must be somewhere around Amstel then). But everyone who wanted to travel from Centraal has taken the metro to Zuid. Those 4 trains an hour are now carrying 8 trains worth of people.
It's a bit packed on this train.
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Nvidia and openAI are talking about building a 10GW data centre.Nvidia and openAI are talking about building a 10GW data centre.
So. We gots a big number. Let's look at it.
How much is 10GW? Well the UK has a typical day time electricity consumption of ~40GW. Meaning that this one single data centre is looking to use the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a single installation. A quarter of the electricity of the 6th largest economy in the world. A single data centre.
Or put another way. It needs power from 3x sizewell C nuclear plant.