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autopope

Charlie Stross is talking about The Jennifer Morgue, his new SF spy comedy novel in his LiveJournal. It makes me want to read it immediately:
A second Bob-mobile has occured to me: a Hummer H2. (Not in scene yet -- I may not be able to use this one.) It needs to be a Hummer (or a supersized pickup truck) because the cargo deck is full of rack-mounted Apple XServe servers, about 60 of them, running a horribly complex neural network simulation fed by four webcams (on the front and rear windscreens). They suck so much juice that Bob has to run the aircon flat out to avoid melting in a perspiring heap, and the Hummer can only make fifty miles per hour and get four miles to the gallon. But while they're running, the servers act as quantum intermediating observers, controlling the collapse of the wave function in the car's environment. The neural network sim is designed to recognize and disbelieve in any of the various assassins trying to wipe Bob out with guided missiles/helicopter gunships/other Bond-shaped threats.
Teh. Awsum.

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