Notices by Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)

America just did a Brexit, didn't it.

A reminder: last time an idiot POTUS imposed global tariffs (1930) it led to a 67% drop in US exports and crashed the US economy during the Great Depression (which had already begun, but which the tariff war intensified enormously). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act

WHAT—

... "They point to how security researchers hated Visual Basic 6 binaries due to the complexity of reverse engineering the software, the presence of a Lua obfuscation layer in the 2012 Flame malware, and the Grip virus, which contained a Brainfuck interpreter coded in Assembly to generate its keycodes, as examples."

It can only be a matter of time until malware authors stumble across CLC-INTERCAL. And then we'll ALL be sorry!

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/29/malware_obscure_languages/?td=rt-3a

Bear in mind that while the Nazis built concentration camps everywhere they could (including the bits of the UK they'd occupied—the Channel Islands), the death camps were very specifically located *outside* Germany.

This pattern will be repeated. The worst atrocities will be conducted out of sight and out of cellphone coverage.
https://toot.wales/@Greenseer/114250281388903757

Stand too close to the Tangerine Shitgibbon, get sprayed with shit.

An important thought that seems to elude the AI galaxy brains like billg who want to replace professionals with LLMs is: how are new phenomena identified and dealt with, given that LLMs are trained only on PRE-EXISTING data?

For example: how would a hypothetical LLM physician have identified a case of COVID19 back in February 2020? (Hint: it'd have diagnosed it as something else—wrongly—every time! Because not in the training data.)

Toot a photo of a computer that first arrived in the year of your birth!

(Here's mine: the IBM System/360)

Saying the quiet part out loud: billionaires don't want the little people around, they want us to quietly go away and stop existing on their dime (because obviously all the dimes belong to the deserving poor, er, billionaires).

This is eliminationist rhetoric, aimed at you (and me).

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-report/bill-gates-within-10-years-ai-will-replace-many-doctors-and-teachers-humans-wont-be-needed-for-most-things/3706507/

BRB, got to throw out my (silent, efficient, but slow) Miele and buy one of these. I can't wait to wash my dishes in my blockchain-integrated AI dishwasher! At least, the surviving ones.
https://mastodon.online/@davidaugust/114236433226999789

@bruces Very impresive Roman imperial wrist watch, I see!

Hi! We read your book, "Do Not Create the Torment Nexus", and loved it!

And like you, we love the Torment Nexus too and wanted to share it so much we're adding a personal Torment Nexus to your office suite, your operating system, your text editor, your in-car entertainment system, the cat feeder—

TORMENT NEXII EVERYWHERE! TORMENT NEXUS NOW IN YOUR GOVERNMENT!! NO ESCAPE ONLY TORMENT NEXUS!!!

Having read William Shirer's epic "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" decades ago, this comes as no surprise to me.

Shirer used his access to the Nazi party archives recovered after the second world war to write his history.

The newer Nazis read it and are at pains not to leave self-incriminating traces.
https://mstdn.social/@spaf/114225066673719026

#WritersCoffeeClub Incidentally, I couldn't go back to the pre-computer era for writing. I don't absolutely need internet or web browser (though I pause to look stuff up online CONTINUOUSLY while writing), but I *do* need at minimum a text editor and the ability to see two windows/documents simultaneously. So, circa-1985 Protext on CP/M or equivalent. A circa-1990 286 PC with a hard drive and 1Mb of RAM running Coherent OS (a UNIX v7 clone) would be ideal.

#WritersCoffeeClub March 25: Describe your workflow if it had to be 100% analog.

Can't be done.

I mean, the mechanics of using a typewriter … it's how I started writing? But my publishers insist on electronic workflow—Word tracked changes for copy edits, PDF for page proof checks—and my agent and primary publisher are in the USA anyway. Postal turnaround given today's crappy services would add months to each book's production time. Plus, Scrivener makes me vastly more effective as an author.

#WritersCoffeeClub Mar 23 —What's the most memorable encounter you've had with a reader?

At the 2009 worldcon, I got invited to participate in a two hour "fireside chat" on stage with one of the guests of honour … because he's a fan of mine and asked for it.

The fan in question was Paul Krugman.

(Let me say, it is somewhat nerve-wracking to be on stage in front of a live audience, trying to keep up with a Nobel Laureate!)

The speed with which the January 20th, 2025 administration has changed the direction of US governance demonstrates once and for all the fatal weakness of a political executive with quasi-monarchical, as opposed to distributed and accountable, powers. There are no brakes on Trump, what brakes there were (eg. the Supreme Court) burned out during his first term.

One HUGE but inadequately appreciated reason for the difference between the Trump 1 and Trump 2 administrations:

Back in 2016-2020 Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine and effectively declared an open war on the west. (They were still in the deniable stages of the
offensive.)

Trump is a Russian asset: and the Russian agenda is much more openly "destroy NATO and the west" rather than "corrupt their intel capabilities and leadership".

Pretty much EVERY book I've ever published got stolen by Meta and is listed in this database. That's over 30 books, a 25 year career output. (Need to find a UK class action lawsuit to join, or a US one that's open to non-US residents whose work was published in the USA).
https://retro.pizza/@digitalraven/114199906574357235

@Remittancegirl Germany has also issued a travel warning.

Britain Issues Travel Warning for US: https://www.newsweek.com/britain-issues-travel-warning-us-deportations-2047878