Me, an idiot: “So, kids, by setting the thermostat a little lower and eating less meat, we’re doing our part to make the world more sustainable”

VCs, very smart: “We just raised $100 billion dollars from the sovereign wealth funds of three petrostates to build the world’s largest AI supercomputer. It uses as much power and water as Guatemala and the primary use case is for management consultants to autogenerate powerpoints for justifying mass layoffs.”

Iain M. Banks (1954–2013) was born #OTD, 16 Feb—a 🎂 🧵
1/8

“Iain Banks… is a novelist who has his own ‘double’, an author for whom the idea of a split writing persona is emphatically not out of place”

—“Reading Double, Writing Double: The Fiction of Iain (M) Banks” – a 2010 article on Banks’s genre-busting career:

https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2010/11/reading-double-writing-double-the-fiction-of-iain-m-banks/

@bookstodon

#Scottish #fiction #sciencefiction #IainBanks #IainMBanks #TheCulture

If you think big fines work on #BigTech, think again.

Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft generated enough revenue in the past 7 days to pay off their fines for 2023.

Taking advantage of your privacy is so lucrative, that these fines are nothing more than the cost of doing business.

🧵1 / 3

PSA: a lot of wrapping paper isn’t recyclable :(

“Metallic or plastic holiday wrapping paper. Instead, look for types that feel like regular paper, without shiny or plastic coatings. If you can crumple it and it stays crumpled, or it rips easily, it’s likely recyclable, according to the Resourceful app via the Ecology Center in Berkeley”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/recycling-trash-SF-17673317.php

Cool, now everyone else in the automotive industry do the same

https://www.engadget.com/volkswagen-drivers-want-more-physical-buttons-instead-of-touch-controls-044931087.html

Dear Microsoft. Here is a list of things I want the Start Menu to do:

* Show my installed programs
* Search my local files
* Provide access to system settings

Here is a list of things I do *not* want the Start Menu to do:

* Show the weather for a randomly-selected town near my network's public IP infrastructure
* Show tabloid headlines
* Show programs I *don't* have installed
* Search the web via Bing
* Show adverts(!)
* Attempt to engage me in conversation with a hallucinating LLM

Thanks.

This just went live: The John Scalzi Humble Bundle! Get a whole bunch of my books really cheap - and support the literacy charity First Book, which provides books and literary resources to kids in need. A perfect way to stock up on my eBooks. Please feel free to share around!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/john-scalzis-interdependency-old-mans-war-and-more-tor-books