Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality

Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
start with these...

https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
--
My reviews can be found at http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
My tor pieces at https://www.tor.com/author/james-davis-nicoll/
My Dreamwidth at https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

On 2/26/2024 9:08 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>
> Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
> start with these...
>
> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/

Zero for five again.

I was sure that I was going to see "Beggars in Spain" in that list.
https://www.amazon.com/Beggars-Spain-Nancy-Kress/dp/0060733489/

Lynn

James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>
>Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>start with these...
>
>https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/

What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
were the world a better place than it is.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article <urjev8$4t4$1@panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>
>>Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>start with these...
>>
>>https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>
>What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
>There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
>were the world a better place than it is.
>--scott
>--

I have had a CD-ROM drive explode.
--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>
>>Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>start with these...
>>
>>https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>
>What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>with bad data.

It's happened. Well, close anyway. We had a bios bug once that burned
up a CPU in a rack-mounted 1U server.

On 2/26/24 10:06 PM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
> In article <urjev8$4t4$1@panix2.panix.com>,
> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>> Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>>
>>> Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>> start with these...
>>>
>>> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>>
>> What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>> with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
>> There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
>> were the world a better place than it is.
>> --scott
>> --
>
> I have had a CD-ROM drive explode.

Heh - I suspect in James' world, he calls that "Tuesday".

On 27 Feb 2024 01:47:20 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>
>>Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>start with these...
>>
>>https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>
>What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
>There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
>were the world a better place than it is.

There was a guy I worked with 20 years ago who had worked with
computers with core memory and if you sent the right/wrong combination
of instructions you could get them to overheat and start burning

On 2/27/2024 5:24 PM, Mad Hamish wrote:
> On 27 Feb 2024 01:47:20 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>
>> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>> Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>>
>>> Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>> start with these...
>>>
>>> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>>
>> What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>> with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
>> There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
>> were the world a better place than it is.
>
> There was a guy I worked with 20 years ago who had worked with
> computers with core memory and if you sent the right/wrong combination
> of instructions you could get them to overheat and start burning

A yes, the notorious HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction!

pt

On Tue, 27 Feb 2024 17:29:44 -0500, Cryptoengineer
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 2/27/2024 5:24 PM, Mad Hamish wrote:
>> On 27 Feb 2024 01:47:20 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:
>>
>>> James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>>> Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>>>
>>>> Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>>> start with these...
>>>>
>>>> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>>>
>>> What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>>> with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
>>> There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
>>> were the world a better place than it is.
>>
>> There was a guy I worked with 20 years ago who had worked with
>> computers with core memory and if you sent the right/wrong combination
>> of instructions you could get them to overheat and start burning
>
>A yes, the notorious HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction!

Well ... for mainframes.

At least one of the (early) Intel processor chips came with an
undocumented opcode which those discovering it named "HCF".

It was used to verify that the chip could actually produce all 64K (I
/said/ it was an early processor chip!) possible RAM addresses by
having it cycle through them endlessly while the output was
monitored/verified.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On 2024-02-26, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/

| Joymakers combine “telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar,
| reference library, and full-time secretary,” as well as other
| functions, in an affordable, compact package. [...]
| Readers may notice that joymakers sound a lot like smartphones,
| pocket bars aside.

I gotta ask: What's a "pocket bar"?

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>On 2024-02-26, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>
>| Joymakers combine “telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar,
>| reference library, and full-time secretary,” as well as other
>| functions, in an affordable, compact package. [...]
>| Readers may notice that joymakers sound a lot like smartphones,
>| pocket bars aside.
>
>I gotta ask: What's a "pocket bar"?

Let's say you're just out of some terrible meeting at work and you really,
really want a martini, but you don't want to leave the area. Voila, pocket
bar comes to the rescue!

You'll never have to stay sober again! Thank God for self-driving cars to
get you home safely.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On 2024-02-28, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:

>>I gotta ask: What's a "pocket bar"?
>
> Let's say you're just out of some terrible meeting at work and you really,
> really want a martini, but you don't want to leave the area. Voila, pocket
> bar comes to the rescue!

So, a hip flask?

Ah, no, I think I see where I was misled. I guess the term is meant
literally; it refers to a fictional device that works as a minibar
that fits into a pocket. When reading the list in James's article,
I thought "pocket bar" was an established term for some existing
thingy, the same way "telephone, credit card, alarm clock" are.

A future hi-tech hip flask then!

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On 29/02/2024 00:15, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2024-02-28, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>> I gotta ask: What's a "pocket bar"?
>>
>> Let's say you're just out of some terrible meeting at work and you really,
>> really want a martini, but you don't want to leave the area. Voila, pocket
>> bar comes to the rescue!
>
> So, a hip flask?
>
> Ah, no, I think I see where I was misled. I guess the term is meant
> literally; it refers to a fictional device that works as a minibar
> that fits into a pocket. When reading the list in James's article,
> I thought "pocket bar" was an established term for some existing
> thingy, the same way "telephone, credit card, alarm clock" are.
>
> A future hi-tech hip flask then!

Apparently it can provide various drinks.

Not related:

A type of cellphone which is or was a thick
rectangular slab of electronics was called
informally a "candy bar phone".

A type of portable electronics which hasn't
caught on yet is electric power generated by
feeding a chemical into a "fuel cell".
So theoretically, you could, uh, charge
your phone with ethanol. And maybe then
charge your glass.

On 2024-02-29, Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:

> Not related:

Yes related!

> A type of cellphone which is or was a thick
> rectangular slab of electronics was called
> informally a "candy bar phone".

Which is another reason I didn't know what to make of the term
"pocket bar" in the context of a SFnal smartphone equivalent.

> A type of portable electronics which hasn't
> caught on yet is electric power generated by
> feeding a chemical into a "fuel cell".

That idea generated numerous articles in the tech news a number of
years ago but seems to have sunk like a stone in water.

> So theoretically, you could, uh, charge
> your phone with ethanol. And maybe then
> charge your glass.

That fuel cell will need a purified feed if you don't want to gum
it up. I guess you could use the fuel to spike your drink, but you
don't want to feed whiskey etc. into the fuel cell. Now that I
think about it, denatured alcohol will presumably not make a good
feed, which raises interesting questions regarding taxation, sale
to minors, etc.

One problem that was mooted a lot when fuel-cell portable electronics
made the rounds on tech news were on-board safety regulations on
passenger airplanes.

(The Soviet Union used rectified spirit as a coolant in a number
of military planes which led exactly to the kind of abuse you might
think they would, e.g. the Tu-22 booze bomber.)

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
>On 2024-02-29, Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:
>> A type of portable electronics which hasn't
>> caught on yet is electric power generated by
>> feeding a chemical into a "fuel cell".
>
>That idea generated numerous articles in the tech news a number of
>years ago but seems to have sunk like a stone in water.
>
>> So theoretically, you could, uh, charge
>> your phone with ethanol. And maybe then
>> charge your glass.
>
>That fuel cell will need a purified feed if you don't want to gum
>it up. I guess you could use the fuel to spike your drink, but you
>don't want to feed whiskey etc. into the fuel cell. Now that I
>think about it, denatured alcohol will presumably not make a good
>feed, which raises interesting questions regarding taxation, sale
>to minors, etc.

This is the basic reason why it hasn't caught on... it requires pretty
clean hydrogen as a fuel if it's expected to last very long. Anything
with carbons in it will gunk it up, and that includes alcohols and paraffins.

It's a practical idea, and it worked very well in the Gemini spacecraft,
but nobody has yet figured out how to keep carbon from poisoning it.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

James Nicoll wrote:

> Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in
> Reality
>
> Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science
> fiction, start with these...

The only one I read was At The Mountains of Madness, which was pretty
sufficient Lovecraft for me.

Speaking of the Silurian Hypothesis, one of the examples using that was
The Homecoming by Barry B. Longyear. I read that in Asimov's.

It features dinosaurs that developed technology, including spaceflight.
I don't remember much of the details of where they were coming home
from. Time-dilated interstellar travel perhaps?

I seem to recall that they were rather disconcerted by Mars being a lot
drier than when they last saw it. Of course, that would be small
potatoes compared to what happened to Earth!

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?59265

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/7/76/ASFOCT79.jpg

Brian

On Tue, 27 Feb 2024 14:37:06 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
wrote:

>kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>>Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>>
>>>Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>>start with these...
>>>
>>>https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>>
>>What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>>with bad data.
>
>It's happened. Well, close anyway. We had a bios bug once that burned
>up a CPU in a rack-mounted 1U server.

I've never had that but back in 2010 (when 1.5 gb drives were big) had
a power supply that while dying was putting out power spikes that
fried one of my drives then a week later the other one before after
that frying the motherboard itself.

Given that I had back up my genealogy files from one drive to the
other but not elsewhere that put me out of the family history business
as I lost a LOT of research material I had spent 10+ years collecting
and scanning.

My aunt had done a printed (I think it was printed off her computer
but she's gone now so can't ask her) but this pace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craver_Farmstead#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20Craver%20Farmstead%20is,architecture%20in%20upstate%20New%20York.
was built by the brother of my 7x great grandfather whose grandparents
brought them to America from the Rhineland roughly 300 years ago.

I intend to go there if and when I'm ever visiting the in-laws in
Ontario.

On Wed, 28 Feb 2024 09:24:26 +1100, Mad Hamish
<newsunspammelaws@iinet.unspamme.net.au> wrote:

>>What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>>with bad data. You see it all the time in SF, but sadly never in real life.
>>There are a lot of spammers out there whose computers would be exploding
>>were the world a better place than it is.
>
>There was a guy I worked with 20 years ago who had worked with
>computers with core memory and if you sent the right/wrong combination
>of instructions you could get them to overheat and start burning

I never encountered that but DO remember the time at my place of work
when the computer operators (this was in the days when a data center
was in a highly air conditioned room with raised floors) had during a
mid summer heat wave stashed a couple of cases of beer under the
raised flooring in the computer room (which nobody had access to but
them) and during a power failure their main priority was to get the
beer to their car's trunks in the parking lot before the brass found
out where the beer had been just a few minutes previously since if the
brass found out it could have meant their jobs...

On Mon, 04 Mar 2024 10:55:19 -0800, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
wrote:

>On Tue, 27 Feb 2024 14:37:06 GMT, scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal)
>wrote:
>
>>kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
>>>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>>>Never Mind the Torment Nexus, Here's Five SF Ideas I'd Like to See in Reality
>>>>
>>>>Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
>>>>start with these...
>>>>
>>>>https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/
>>>
>>>What I want to see are computers that explode into flames when presented
>>>with bad data.
>>
>>It's happened. Well, close anyway. We had a bios bug once that burned
>>up a CPU in a rack-mounted 1U server.
>
>I've never had that but back in 2010 (when 1.5 gb drives were big) had
>a power supply that while dying was putting out power spikes that
>fried one of my drives then a week later the other one before after
>that frying the motherboard itself.
>
>Given that I had back up my genealogy files from one drive to the
>other but not elsewhere that put me out of the family history business
>as I lost a LOT of research material I had spent 10+ years collecting
>and scanning.

Massive data loss -- that's the sort of thing that makes some people
fanatical believers in backing stuff up to somewhere /other/ than the
computer.

>My aunt had done a printed (I think it was printed off her computer
>but she's gone now so can't ask her) but this pace
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craver_Farmstead#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20Craver%20Farmstead%20is,architecture%20in%20upstate%20New%20York.
>was built by the brother of my 7x great grandfather whose grandparents
>brought them to America from the Rhineland roughly 300 years ago.
>
>I intend to go there if and when I'm ever visiting the in-laws in
>Ontario.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"

On Mon, 26 Feb 2024 15:08:52 -0000 (UTC), jdnicoll@panix.com (James
Nicoll) wrote:

> Hey, tech billionaires--if you want to steal ideas from science fiction,
> start with these...
>
> https://reactormag.com/never-mind-the-torment-nexus-heres-five-sf-ideas-id-like-to-see-in-reality/

I want the "I'm taking a nap" button from "The Machine Stops".

--
joy beeson at centurylink dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGESEW/