Conversation

Notices

Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 03:14:45 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

My main problem with the idea of magic where you draw transmutation circles and such is that I am certain that if they worked, I'd be able to build a PCB to cast the same spell.
And now you've got a setting where your toaster works by casting tiny fireballs. Do you want that?

In conversation about 8 months ago from digipres.club permalink
- Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 03:51:41 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️
  in reply to
  
  Which is silly because PCBs are not, in fact, sacred geometry where their very shapes effect how they work.
  You're thinking of IC dies: silicon does actually work like that.
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 04:05:47 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️
  in reply to
  
  Well, outside of RF. RF and capacitance matching for PCBs is, in fact, magic.
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 04:10:32 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️
  in reply to
  - Charlie Stross
  - GodEater
  @godeater @cstross I thought those were more "magic is a sunset of math" and not "magic is done with special sigils, like those drawn into PCBs"
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- GodEater (godeater@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 04:10:33 JST GodEater
  in reply to
  - Charlie Stross
  @foone I'm sure this is the premise of most of @cstross Laundry series of books. 😁
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 04:16:04 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️
  in reply to
  - Charlie Stross
  @cstross that's the worst thing about being a reverse engineer in this cyberpunk magical (magipunk?) future. I usually take apart a toaster and find out they use insecure firmware update mechanisms and some stolen open source code, but now I might also find yog-sothoth.
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 04:16:05 JST Charlie Stross
  in reply to
  
  @foone Your toaster works by casting tiny fireballs but to do that it needs roughly one ARM M3 microcontroller per square mm of exposed heating element surface and some utter arsewipe will upload a cryptominer to root it via zigbee and then later a different griefer will rootkit the mining software and there'll be a bug that turns it into a soul stealer and by the way your cat is now possessed by an eldritch horror from the universe next door
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 06:21:43 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️
  in reply to
  - Variaxocellus mastodonte
  @Variaxocellus I do!
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- Variaxocellus mastodonte (variaxocellus@mastorol.es)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 06:21:44 JST Variaxocellus mastodonte
  in reply to
  
  @foone I think you might enjoy The Atrocity Archives https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Laundry_Files#The_Atrocity_Archives
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
  Attachments
  1. The Laundry Files
    
    The Laundry Files is a series of novels by British writer Charles Stross. They mix the genres of Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour. Their main character for the first five novels is "Bob Howard" (a pseudonym taken for security purposes), a one-time I.T. consultant turned occult field agent. Howard is recruited to work for the Q-Division of SOE, otherwise known as "the Laundry", the British government agency which deals with occult threats. "Magic" is described as being a branch of applied computation (mathematics), therefore computers and equations are just as useful, and perhaps more potent, than classic spellbooks, pentagrams, and sigils for the purpose of influencing ancient powers and opening gates to other dimensions. These occult struggles happen largely out of view of the public, as the Laundry seeks to keep the methods for contacting such powers under wraps. There are also elements of dry humour and satirisation of bureaucracy. While the stories are partially inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos universe created by H. P. Lovecraft and others, they are not set in Lovecraft's universe. In Stross...
- Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 07:25:26 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️
  in reply to
  - v3s7-1g3
  @vestige I think you need to buy a new toaster
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink
- v3s7-1g3 (vestige@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Thursday, 21-Mar-2024 07:25:27 JST v3s7-1g3
  in reply to
  
  @foone ... But a toaster does work by casting tiny fireballs
  
  In conversation about 8 months ago permalink

Public

Conversation

Notices

Feeds