Alistair Young @cerebrate@schelling.pt
- Fiction
- https://eldraeverse.com/
- Tech Blog
- https://randombytes.substack.com/
- Random Stuff Blog
- https://noiseinmysignal.substack.com/
- avatar@arkane-systems.net
Science fiction writer. Speaker to minerals. Consensualist. Illeist. Pony and kanmusu stan. Can call spirits from the vasty deep!
Joined Jun 2023
Alistair Young
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OFFICER: The victims were dismembered and sacrificed on an altar made of antlers
DETECTIVE: Dear god
OFFICER: Most likely yes
Alistair Young
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If you're designing an I²C device that has the slightest chance of being used across an isolator and you have an extra pin to spare, please be so kind and split SDA into input and output.
That way one can use cheap unidirectional isolators instead of a ludicrously expensive I²C isolator. If one doesn't care about isolation, just short the two pins.
As seen on the MAX5980A PSE controller. I haven't encountered any other chips doing this.
#WritingWonders July 8: What's your least favorite stage of writing a story? Why?
Not that it comes up a lot in the nanofic work that is my bread and butter, but filling in the intermediate details.
My muse is great at filling in the overall arc of the story and a whole bunch of great vignettes set here and there throughout it. Filling in all the gaps between them, though - that's where the "dragging ideas out of my brain with rusty razor wire" bit comes in.
On the gripping hand, I've got compliments on how solid the world feels even from people who hate my writing, so... 😂
#WritingWonders July 10: What are you good at when it comes to writing?
Worldbuilding.
On the one hand, I was doing that for fun for, like, fifteen years before I actually took to *writing*, so that's sort of to be expected. On the other hand, it's much more in my comfort zone and where my talents lie than writing, which sometimes feels like dragging thoughts out of my head with rusty razor wire, so.
So, I've been neglecting everything (sorry, #WritingWonders folks) for the last few days, because I finally got access back to everything and have been restoring backups and recreating networks from scratch after the raid. So please pardon my distraction.
Now to catch back up!
(If you said anything to me over the last couple of days I might have missed, please poke me to be sure.)
Among other things I resent regarding seized computers is that I spend friggin' decades carving this network/domain into a tiny polished jewel where Everything Just Worked, and now I have to recreate the whole damned thing from memory.
And shit, I don't have a perfect memory of last week.
I SHOULD LIKE TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT I AM IN NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS, EITHER.
Alistair Young
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#WritingWonders July 5: Has your MC ever been involved in a physical altercation? If so, why?
Well, yes. It comes with the job, and so she's been specially trained in Constabulary martial arts, designed to hold and restrain without doing harm.
Most of the time, it's been to prevent people from hurting themselves, which pleases her. Otherwise - well, it's always a failure to have to use force as a poor substitute for authority.
But sometimes, despite everything, they run.
Alistair Young
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Runes etched into the stone door glowed blue. The wizard studied them intently.
"Ooh! I know this one!" said the thief. "Speak friend - in Elvish - and enter!"
"This is not the entrance to the mines of Moria," stated the warrior.
"Talk to the door calmly," the cleric suggested. "Because communication is key!"
"Guys," said the wizard, "I'm struggling to remember my password, and You. Are. Not. Helping!"
Alistair Young
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@andy_twosticks @amro @APoD Metallic asteroids taste like rust (iron oxide). Silicate asteroids taste like not much of anything. Carbonaceous asteroids would taste like tar, with notes of arsenic and mercury.
Do not try to eat the rocks.
Alistair Young
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Related. I fucking HATE open source projects which use the "Discord as Documentation" anti-pattern.
Just write down some instructions rather than getting grumpy that newbies are asking the same predictable questions again and again and again.
Alistair Young
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All the debates with politicians about encryption backdoors follow the same pattern: one side is making a detailed argument on why backdoors are bad and the other side just screams "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" periodically.
Alistair Young
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Also shortly before the development of ‘gaydar’, men could dress flamboyantly and still be assumed to be straight. This was known as dazzle camouflage. #lgbtq #queerhistory
Alistair Young
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Reminder: even now, you are committing the moral atrocities your great-grandchildren will tweet about.
Alistair Young
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Alistair Young
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Police violence
Still processing the fact that (a) apparently nobody in the FBI's cybercrimes division has heard of Starcraft, and (b) they thought somebody who'd been publicly using the same nick for 20 years, associated with his RL everything, would then use the same nick to run a ransomware business.
Like, back when they were trying to catch the Unabomber, did they just look through the phone book for people named "Unabomber"?
I mean, I already knew at one level that this is how policing in the USA is, that this kind of shit happens all the time when there are no consequences for getting it wrong. But it hits differently when it's a friend whose life got trashed, who might have been killed if things had gone just a little differently.
- Fiction
- https://eldraeverse.com/
- Tech Blog
- https://randombytes.substack.com/
- Random Stuff Blog
- https://noiseinmysignal.substack.com/
- avatar@arkane-systems.net
Science fiction writer. Speaker to minerals. Consensualist. Illeist. Pony and kanmusu stan. Can call spirits from the vasty deep!
Joined Jun 2023
