felice

10 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Silo season 2 wrapped filming last month, and Rebecca Ferguson says should they get the green light, she thinks season 3 and 4 should be filmed back to back to wrap up the series.

They'd bloody well better get the green light! (I just finished the first season recently)

11 hours ago, mormont said:

And is there any argument against the fact that notwithstanding what the Chinese magazines may or may not have done, McCarty's response was in every respect wrong, high handed, and a disgrace?

I don't think anyone disagrees with that!

10 minutes ago, mormont said:

Nope. The publishers broke no rules.

It might not have been against any specific rules, but it was still inappropriate.

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Normally, no, but when it's said several publications all put forward the same bulleted item, they appear to be colluding together to clearly influence the voters about what to vote for as a finalist, not just a nominee.

That makes sense. But it's not a problem the way full slates are; voters still get to compare that work against the other nominees, and make their own decision. Unless they fear negative consequences for voting the "wrong" way, but that seems implausible over something this trivial.

1 hour ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

this is true,  but it should be in the rules.  things should only be excluded as per the rules and at the moment there is no rule saying "in English" so they should not have been removed for that reason.

Oh yeah, absolutely. The current rules explicitly allow for non-English works.

10 hours ago, Ran said:

I think the argument I've seen is not that it was just a slate, but that two or more big publications/publishing house in China colluded together to form a fairly unified slate, including some categories featuring only one recommended work, which goes well beyond your typical slate.

Recommending a single work isn't a problem; slates are bad when they allow a single group to take most or all of the slots in a category and shut out all other voices.

10 hours ago, Ran said:

Above and beyond, we are told that the Chinese Hugo Administrators reviewed the nominated Chinese works because the Western administrators did not read Chinese and could not vet them

And most of the Western voters don't read Chinese and couldn't evaluate them for voting. It really doesn't make sense for "in English" not to be part of the nomination criteria.

On 2/5/2024 at 11:57 PM, ljkeane said:

So I ended up reading Red Scholars Wake.

  Hide contents

I was actually thinking there might be a dark twist with humans being used to make the organic cores of the mindships or something to explain it but apparently not.

I'm pretty sure they were? Either way they're certainly organic beings with cybernetic extensions to their bodies, not AIs. And the way humans are linked into their own bots and VR overlays blurs the distinction further.

Yeah, that looks pretty dodgy. The number of nominations for the finalists are bizarrely high - in previous years, the most popular novel might get over 300 nominations, and this year seven get over 700? If the numbers are accurate, it looks like some kind of large scale slate nominating, rather than works being disappeared.

It does take a bit to get your head around!

1 minute ago, Corvinus85 said:

The engines don't push the ship forward during deceleration. The ship still moves in the same direction but at continuous reduced speed. And besides the negative velocity vector, there is also the negative force vector which is what determines in which direction humans attempting to hang onto the ship get to fly off.

The humans start off heading towards Mars at the same speed as the ship. If the ship slows down but the humans don't, they'll be heading in the direction in the direction of Mars faster. Ie, the direction the engines are firing is down. If the burn continued for so long that the ship reached a standstill and then started moving away from Mars, nothing would feel different for people on the ship.

Is there any difference between acceleration and deceleration? Either way, the engines will be pushing the ship forward relative to anything that was previously moving at the same velocity. Doesn't matter if the changing velocity is less negative or more positive.

Happy New Year! I played computer games and posted on the internet.

On 12/4/2023 at 8:02 AM, Buckwheat said:

The gentlemanperson and I are currently discussing moving in together/looking for an actually affordable place to live in

Ooh, that is exciting!

4 hours ago, williamjm said:

although it does also has some set-up for the stories in the two sequel duologies so not everything is wrapped up.

It felt like half the final episode was spent setting things up for the next season that we're not going to get.

13 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I dont understand Margots situation- is she being forced to stay in exile by the USSR and serve them? What leverage do they have at this point over her? That they will reveal that she was a spy for them all those years and the US will imprison her for that ? 

The US were already investigating her for spying thanks to Aleida, and would have arrested her if the USSR hadn't faked her death. It looks like the USSR no longer sees much value in her, but she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

9 hours ago, Fez said:

If I've confirmed that the motherboard port is still good, the SATA cable is still good, and the power supply connector is still good (I was able to test all them with a third drive), is there any other issue I could be facing besides it being that the SSD has died? 

It could be the connection between cable and SSD? I had trouble getting my last SSD detected - tried multiple SATA and power cables that worked fine with other devices, but replacing the SSD with a different brand didn't help. What did solve it was pushing the cable in with an unreasonable amount of force. It wasn't going in noticeably further, but the BIOS has been reliably detecting it since then

Not surprising - colourising the whole thing would probably have cost close to twice as much. It will be interesting to see!

3 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

I went to the quiz and joined a group of teachers from the other school, turns out I sorta kinda knew one of them. It was nice after all, but the questions were ... absolutely not what I expected, and we ended almost the last.

Glad you had a good time! The genre is way too big these days... even for dedicated fans, it's impossible to be knowledgeable about all the popular stuff.

5 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

I am thinking of doing that, although it doesn't sound too appealing to be mixed with some other group like a third wheel.

It seems likely that everyone in such a group would be in the same position as you, and either way, you could potentially meet some cool people!

7 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

Also, there is a quiz in the local bookshop on Friday and the topic is fantasy/sci-fi literature and films. I really want to go, but sadly I don't have a team to go with.

You could ask the bookshop if there are other people looking for team members...

It is weird to see Novelette go to a work that wasn't even available in English translation. And Cyberpunk didn't do much for me; maybe I'd appreciate it more if I'd played the game. Otherwise, the results seemed reasonable enough to me.

7 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

It seems to me that the motivations should be reversed. Ahsoka should be the one who wants to rescue Ezra no matter what - because she is the one that owes Ezra her full existence.

Lots of people have saved Ahsoka's life at various times over the years. She'd obviously appreciate what Ezra did for her, but he's only an acquaintance for her, while Sabine lived with him for years. It makes perfect sense that she'd be the one most keen to rescue him.

1 hour ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

Odd can be used as peculiar    or informally when estimating a number  eg      20 something odd   (meaning at least 20 but less than 30.  The bigger the initial number the bigger the number range with something odd)

Huh. I'd assumed it just meant "approximately" rather than "at least". Though either way, being responsible for that many teenagers is a scary prospect!

2 hours ago, The BlackBear said:

Cool. What's happening in your world?

That information is classified But in general, I've managed to be something less of a hermit recently and actually interact with other people more than I've done for years. This is probably good for me.

2 hours ago, The BlackBear said:

This here bear has been dealing with a bad back, because I'm an old man 

That's no good My back's been playing up a bit too. Weren't we supposed to have a cure for aging by now?

Hey there! I'm doing good