Charlie Stross

@cstross

SFF author, triple Hugo award winner (and three times Locus award too), over a million books sold. Mostly on Mastodon: @cstross@wandering.shop Blog:

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Charlie Stross@cstross· 5d

Apparently the Cone Count in Glasgow hit 7 this afternoon:

Statue of the Duke of Wellington on a horse, atop a plinth, in front of some classical pillars in the middle of Glasgow.

There are four traffic cones in a stack on the Duke's head … and three on the horse's.

Charlie Stross@cstross· 6d

My answer is LOL ROFL (dickbrain) The terminally AI-pilled can't even *imagine* some people have *never* asked stochastic parrots to cheat at their job for them.

Screencap of a social media post by: kavishj611

All the people who are anti-Al or want to
slow Al progress, I have one question:
If Al disappeared tomorrow, could you
still get through an entire workday
without ChatGPT, Claude, or any other
Al tool?

Imagine Al was suddenly banned.
Would you actually be willing to give it
up?

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jul 11

You just *know* this is going to end in tears!

The old town of Nuremberg, inside the city walls, is all narrow, steep cobblestone streets and half-timbered buildings. Someone is driving a long white stretch limousine uphill and around a tight curve (gradient steeper than 1:10) between stone walls and a very old well …

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jul 11

It's 28 ℃ and THE DAYSTAR IT BURNS here in Nuremberg, so there's really only one thing to do:

Photo of a wooden table with a red and white checkered tablecloth in a room with stone walls, wooden panelling, and windows open on an alleyway. On the table is a stein full of cutlery and two glasses of beer from Hausbrauerei Altstadthof.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jul 9

Here is a 14 year old kitten, plotting mayhem:

A white-bellied tortoiseshell cat lying on her back atop a red chair, staring impishly at the photographer, flashing a single fang

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jun 16

In case you missed it, the England fans at the world cup are enthusiastically chanting: "He's fat, with piles He's in the Epstein files Trump the Cuunt Trump the Cuuuuuntt!!!" I want to know how the pearl-clutching republican senators are going to handle it if they win.

"He's fat.. with piles..he's in the Epstein files...
Trump the cuuunt...Trump the cuuuunnt!!"

HEADLINE: England fans face being
kicked out of stadium for
chants during World Cup

Photo of a stadium full of fans waving the Cross of St George flag (not the Union Jack, which is the UK flag)

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jun 5

Welp, it's been nice having these computers but it's time to get back in the sea now. (See alt text for deeply alarming abstract of paper about AI-assisted self-modifying network worms …) https://arxiv.org/html/2606.03811v1

09:23 Fri 5 Jun

arxiv.org

Abstract

A computer worm is malware that spreads on a network by replicating itself from one ma-
chine to another. Traditional worms, like WannaCry, exploited predetermined vulnerabilities,
and their spread can be halted by patching those vulnerabilities. Here we show that artificial
intelligence (Al) agents enable a fundamentally new threat: a worm that generates tailored
attack strategies to each target it encounters. The worm parasitically uses compromised ma-
chines to run open-weight large language models (LLMs) to sustain its reasoning, or extend its
reach for further attacks. Deployed on a network of machines spanning Linux, Windows, and
loT (Internet of Things) devices, the worm propagated by exploiting common, real-world cor-
porate network vulnerabilities. Since the worm is powered by stolen compute, the attacker's
marginal cost per new infection is zero. This creates a destabilizing economic asymmetry be-
tween attackers and defenders. Moreover, because the worm requires no commercial Al plat-
form, centralized safety controls, such as service refusals or rate limiting, are structurally irrel-
evant. Our results demonstrate that self-sustaining Al-driven cyber-threats are no longer the-
oretical. We must prepare for autonomous generative adversaries: malware systems that
propagate without human operators and are defined not by fixed exploit code, but by the ca-
pacity to reason about targets, adapt to observations, and synthesize attack logic in real time.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jun 4

Good night and sweet dreams, my pretties!

Mister Blobby, a bulbous pink humanoid with yellow spots and nightmare eyes and mouth is cradling a swaddled baby with the head of Nigel Farage.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Apr 26

What, like this?

Scottish Daily Record/Sunday Mail tabloid headline board outside a newsagent, circa 2010.

Featured headline reads:

EXCLUSIVE

GANG BOSS
VOWS BLOODY
REVENGE
FOR GERBIL

(Kevin "The Gerbil" Carroll was a notorious Glaswegian gangster who was murdered by a rival drugs gang in a drive-by shooting in 2010.)

Charlie Stross@cstross· Apr 20

Here's my FAVOURITE blender of all time, the Polytron:

An advert from New Scientist in the 1970s for the Polytron, a wand blender on a stand with an external power supply/controller.

Caption reads "Only the Polytron reduces an entire mouse to a soup-like homogenate in 30 seconds"

Charlie Stross@cstross· Apr 7

Okay, so there's this mess, most of which is the result of 25 years of me writing. (Only a third of the bottom right shelf is me, the RPG game books are third party merch, and there are multiple editions and some translations: but it's my career in one photo.)

The top five shelves of two full-width floor to ceiling bookcases (from an entire wall of them), loaded with single copies of everything of mine that's been published that I could lay my hands on. Chaotic and not in any particular order, with mass market and trade editions mingled. And some stuff is missing—I have no Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, or Romanian copies, for example.)

Charlie Stross@cstross· Apr 5

Damn but this sequel to the Apollo Mission Reports is deeply disappointing:

Text of a NASA over the air message from Artemis 2, accompanying an image of the Earth rising over the lunar surface:

"No joy seeing the device
in the list of available devices
when I attempt to re-pair it
after doing the Bluetooth forget."

Charlie Stross@cstross· Apr 4

Welp, here's @aliettedebodard.com being eaten by K1's octopus (while knitting):

Aliette de Bodard seated, crocheting, in a hotel conference suite. Her upper torso is almost entirely engulfed by a plush lilac-coloured octopus that appears to be eating her head.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Apr 1

Taps sign: HERE is my only use for LLMs in my fiction. (Text in alt text. This is part of the novel, that's the joke.)

This account has been translated into your language from the original source material using a non-sapient large language model. We would like to thank the Order of the Yellow Map for supporting this project with a generous grant, and for the use of their translation LLM.

Certain terms have been approximated, where possible, by using culturally appropriate cognates. Names of individuals have been replaced by equivalents. Similarly, institutions, ranks, religions, proverbs, idioms, quotations, and other culturally-determined signifiers have been translated into terms that will be familiar to the reader.

Units of duration and distance have also been converted.

The Order of the Yellow Map places guardrails on their LLMs that conform to their religious modesty code. As a result, the translation output may become non-specific, allusive, or flatly nonsensical when the inputs include blasphemous or sexually explicit content.

We apologize in advance for any hallucinations our LLM may have inadvertently introduced while generating this rough translation.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Mar 28

Via Mastodon:

Screencap from other social media: @normal_island_news

BREAKING: Iran confirms it has no interest in a
reciprocal assassination against Trump because no
weapon it could possibly build, not even nukes,
could do more harm to the US than the current
president. Iran actually sees Trump as a major
asset.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Mar 22

I feel that Tom Tomorrow absolutely nailed it last Friday: i0.wp.com/www.austinch... (Source: www.austinchronicle.com/comics/this-...)

Charlie Stross@cstross· Mar 14

If you see this post a vampire who is not Dracula.

A photo of Beelzebub, wearing an ill-fitting white tech bro's skin as a suit—slicked back hair, goatee and mustache, puffy post plastic surgery eyes and cheeks because he's about a zillion years old—wearing a black turtleneck and dark suit jacket, gesticulating at the camera while leering, against a fiery background.

It's Larry Ellison.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Mar 14

Today's eldritch coffee is The Great Race of Yith (from Lovecraft's "The Shadow out of Time"):

A cup of mocha topped by an eldritch conical alien with a couple of tentacles coming out of it's pointy head

Charlie Stross@cstross· Mar 6

Sigh. The muse is hard at work. Here's the opening of the new chew toy (space opera sequel to the one I just delivered: only writing the opening for now):

Screencap from an editor window. Text reads:

As the Lady Lydia fell towards the night side of the planet, all Jum could do was gape in dismay.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Asked Tabitha.

"Pretty sure," he said, hesitating slightly. "I mean, I think we left Jaeger at Sabine Dark? And this is Sabine Dark. Unless there's more than one Sabine Dark?"

Tabitha checked her mindscape: there wasn't, she saw, another Sabine Dark. Sabine Dark was a distressingly unique name for a planet. Not like Dirt, Earth, or Mudball, which were all as common as muck.

"There appear to have been some changes," she observed.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Mar 2

So how's that "The A-Team" re-make going, y'all?

Charlie Stross@cstross· Feb 28

Having a writers coffee sesh and our coffee artist is knocking it out of the ball park (this was a request for Cthulhu):

Cthulhu in foamed milk floating on a coffee cup

Charlie Stross@cstross· Feb 26

"Friends" is a beloved American sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004, following six young adults—Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe—living in New York City. The show explores their friendships, romances, careers, and personal growth over ten seasons.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Feb 22

Ahem: you called for monkey's paws? Because we have the next generation:

Two open hands, held up. Each fingertip is wearing a tiny model open hand (a plastic molded fingertip glove), and some of these in turn have baby hands …

Charlie Stross@cstross· Feb 13

Laundry Files TRRPG Specials for the Kickstarter backers who've been waiting are now signed (and awaiting despatch from Limerick) — adding alt text makes this bsky client crash reliably, so the pic is a photo of an office boardroom table stacked five layers deep in slipcased RPG rule books.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Feb 9

Here is how I visualize the typical AI-assisted author:

A cyberman from Doctor Who—a humanoid robotic being with metallic surfaces and an expressionless mask for a face—advances towards the camera in darkness, backlit by blue light, right arm raised menacingly and death ray emitter extended.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Feb 8

I have ONE use for AI in my current novels-in-progress. This "Translator's Note" (text in alt-text) is itself part of the work of fiction:

TRANSLATORS NOTE

The events described in this account have been translated into your language from the original source material using a non-sapient large language model.

Certain terms have been approximated, where possible, by using culturally appropriate cognates. Names of individuals have been replaced by equivalents. Similarly, institutions, ranks, religions, and other culturally-determined signifiers have been translated into terms that will be more familiar to the reader. Units of duration and distance have also been converted.

We apologize in advance for any hallucinations our LLM may have inadvertently introduced in the process of generating this rough translation.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jan 30

I don't think the reviewer liked the movie …

Headline from the INDEPENDENT:

Melania review - First Lady is a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda

[one star]

Hitting cinemas as the streets of America remain filled
with the angry and grieving, the vulgar, gilded lifestyle of the Trumps makes them look like Marie Antoinette skulking in her cake-filled chateau

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jan 27

Memo to self: do not get into a slapfight with Menhit, she will get excited and the claws will come out:

A white-bellied tortoiseshell cat rearing up from a black Eames recliner to slap at an extended human hand that is still some distance away

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jan 26

ONE DAY until "The Regicide Report" drops! How did Bob's new ringtone get him sent to deal with a Dalek invasion in a Birmingham comic shop? Which civil service department is trying to murder the Queen? … And is Mo going to play one final encore on the Bone Violin? Coming out January 27th!

UK book cover of "The Regicide Report" by Charles Stross.

Charlie Stross@cstross· Jan 22

Sigh. Because you asked, here's a piece of my WIP, which is a space opera featuring dragons (briefly):