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Charlie Stross Profile picture
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6 Jan, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Dozens of protesters and police dead amid Kazakhstan unrest
— Cryptocurrency miners displaced from China (after a ban) spiked energy consumption triggering prices rises, leading to revolutionary violence: theverge.com/2021/11/27/228… theguardian.com/world/2022/jan…
Crypto mining consumed 8% of Khazak power in 2021, and spiked in November, resulting in an uprising that caused hundreds of deaths and injuries and destabilized a government.

This is why I hate cryptocurrency grifters. There's blood on their hands.

finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-n…
Khazahkstan gets REALLY COLD in winter. The Soviet-vintage electricity grid has up to 70% transmission losses. Head of state is a corrupt dictator. It is now midwinter and the price of gas spiked and the crypto bros displaced by China are literally freezing people to death.

/1
So: uprising, and Putin donated the Spetsnaz head-breakers to help Tokayev cling on to power.

The only "silver lining" is they're no longer available for the invasion of Ukraine until they've finished murdering Khazakhs.

/2
You know about blood diamonds?

Say hello to Blood Bitcoins.

/3 (ends)

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More from @cstross

Charlie Stross Profile picture
19 Dec 21
The worst case for COVID is that we get semiannual mutant escape pandemics which kill about 1% of victims, until we get better vaccines with universal worldwide rollout faster than the infection/mutation loop, OR a wide-spectrum vaxx/antiviral. Could be decades …

/1
If you have a 1%/year chance of dying, BUT the pandemic keeps burning indefinitely, then after 35 years you're at about a 50% cumulative chance of being dead. That's a European Black Death level plague in slow motion. We can't afford that.

So …

/2
This is not like the Spanish flu—a single lethal strain of a normally-less-lethal virus: this is a normally MORE lethal vuris that learns to evade the immune response and comes roaring back every 6-9 months in a new strain.

/3
Read 7 tweets
Charlie Stross Profile picture
11 Nov 21
I sense the USAF is grappling valiantly with a shortage suitably militaristic code names for weapons programs ...
Mind you, in my experience kittens can best be described as "fluffy self-propelled barbed wire with anti-gravity", so maybe not that inappropriate a name for a USAF weapons program after all.
Given the success of the JSDF's moé style anime characters as mascots on helicopter gunships, it was obviously only a matter of time before the backlash against excessively macho Punisher-style imagery reached the Pentagon PR department. What's next: upskirt shots of USMC LCACs?
Read 4 tweets
Charlie Stross Profile picture
21 Oct 21
From about 2001-2010 I used to get startups emailing me excitedly about their plan to “disrupt publishing” and asking me to hype their new platform.

Then I had to explain that publishing is really all about supply chain contract management for paper products …

/1
The ascent of the ebook distro channel has mixed things up a bit, but essentially you’re dealing with a supply chain, b2b contracts all the way from author to bookstore, and if you ignore paper produce you’re ignoring 50% of the revenue stream.

Worse …

/2
The startups inevitably focussed exclusively on SF/F (about 3-9% of the fiction market) and via ebooks (10-50% of sales). Paper books were irritatingly physical, and they had no idea that Romance accounted for 35-50% of all fiction sales (and was the first to go >50% ebook).

/3
Read 5 tweets
Charlie Stross Profile picture
18 Oct 21
Just remembered there's an Apple Unleashed event right now.

Airpods 3: don't need (got Airpods Pro).

M1Pro and M1Max: definitely going to be one in my next laptop. But not buying next laptop until I'm traveling again, so not this year.
This stuff looks crazy fast. If I wanted a Linux laptop I'd get better performance by buying one of the new Macbook Pros and running Linux in a VM on top of macOS rather than on bare metal Intel.
So: I lost my saving throw vs. Shiny! for the M1Pro/M1Max CPU, but I don't need a new laptop yet, nor a Pro. These are lovely, but too heavy/bulky/expensive for me.

There's supposedly a Macbook Air refresh next year: an M1Pro Macbook Air would do nicely.
Read 4 tweets
Charlie Stross Profile picture
11 Oct 21
OK, that is IT. I am OFFICIALLY fed up with British Telecom and Openreach, the corporate broadband equivalent of Laurel and Hardy.

You know how sometimes authors write people they hate into their novels? BT/Openreach are on my shit list for the final Laundry Files book.

/1
Note that the last Laundry Files novel will not happen before (a) New Management books 2 and 3, and (b) a Laundry Files short story collection. So, 2024 at the earliest.

… But revenge is a dish best eaten cold.

/2
… So I have a couple of years to plot my fiction-is-not-defamation-so-legal campaign against them.

Hmm, ideas.

How about: Bob is trying to get his broadband upgraded (forced to use BT because civil service hangover from the GPO), discovers their call centre is on Yuggoth?

/3
Read 4 tweets
Charlie Stross Profile picture
13 Sep 21
Just been reading the transcript of Nicola Sturgeon’s speech at the SNP conference today and … welp, there it is: deal with COVID19, then full speed ahead for an independence referendum with rejoining the EU as an implicit outcome.

(Scotland polls at 70-75% anti-Brexit.)
I suspect the outcome of the Alba split has convinced SNP strategists that they don’t need the party’s right wing/pro-Brexit wing any more. And hitching independence to EU membership will gain them more votes than it loses.
It’s been obvious to me that Brexit would lead to the breakup of the UK since 2016; it took a crisis the size of COVID19 to delay the process, but the Scottish gov’s handling of the pandemic looks good compared to Westminster—giving the SNP a rep for competence in government.
Read 4 tweets

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