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What If: Lightning https://what-if.xkcd.com/16

You meant this one, I think...

I'm rather surprised to see no one had posted this already: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/t... [xkcd.com]

I will not be surprised to learn someone actually already has posted it, and that my searches on /. are no more efficient than those I make on wikipedia.

Which shows the problem with most conservative thinking... turning a complex nuanced problem into a 5 second soundbite only shows that you don't understand what the fuck is going on.... and dipshits who marked you as "insightful" are as stupid as your comment.

While a business can refuse to serve anyone, they are not allowed to discriminate against certain groups. These bakers who refuse to make wedding cakes are not simply refusing to serve someone, they intentionally go out of their way to make sure the people (and everyone else) know that they're intentionally discriminating against a class of people that it's illegal to.

That is not the same as Youtube censoring some video's for content, and it takes an incredibly stupid person to think that it ... and when someone makes such a stupid statement, it only reinforced that absurd notion in people who are too stupid to understand what's actually going on. That is the same as these dipshits who post conspiracy theory bullshit.

https://xkcd.com/1357/

Censorship is still the wrong approach, because stupid people will still be stupid, and will continue to fuck up things because of their stupidity.

This kind of sums up the whole conversation...

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/r...

Have you ever edited Wikipedia? There are no "Wikipedia submitters," and what you call "requires ... to cite openly verifiable sources" amounts to someone coming along after the edit is already visible, putting up a "[citation needed]" link.

I don't think you know how Wikipedia actually works.

This is what they are doing. Except they are trying to automate it.

https://xkcd.com/386/

Cool, there's an authority who has the same problem with AI I have:
https://xkcd.com/1968/
So I win. Not sure at what but that's secondary.

snopes eh?

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

That write-up is pretty much a perfect case study of the classic xkcd comic "There are 14 competing standards".

However, given the sheer power of Google and ubiquity of GMaps, it will prevail. It also has a bunch of benefits over all the other options, most of which don't necessarily tie it to Maps.

I for one welcome our new Plus-sized overlords.

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

That write-up is pretty much a perfect case study of the classic xkcd comic "There are 14 competing standards".

Only if you don't understand the comic, or don't understand the write-up, or both.

The point of the comic is that there are a whole bunch of standards and the idea is to invent a single new standard to replace them all. Which doesn't work, and just adds to the pile of standards.

The point of the plus codes writeup is to evaluate the existing standards to see if any of them meets the requirements of one particular set of use cases. Since it's determined that no existing standard does the job, a new one is created, not to replace the others but to address the requirements at hand.

Tell me about that natural change in the climate https://xkcd.com/1732/

At least try for a creative description

Yes, and a few other location coding systems are similar as well. However, Google have their reasons for creating a new system. You can find their evaluation of the various systems explained here:

https://github.com/google/open...

That write-up is pretty much a perfect case study of the classic xkcd comic "There are 14 competing standards".

...very like What3Words then, which is already used by the postal services of seven countries ...

Oblig. XKCD reference

https://m.xkcd.com/1523/

As to prices going down when demand increases, that is contrary to econ 101.

Yep, it is.

That's incorrect. I suggest not doubling down on that error.

Challenge accepted!

So the concept of supply and demand suggests that, with greater supply, prices go down; and with greater demand, prices go up. People interpret this in a vacuum, until they realize supply and demand are relative to each other: supply outstrips demand, or demand outstrips supply.

This is still inexact, and so people eventually refine the argument to discuss the demand curve, which is the demand (dependent) for a product at a particular price (independent).

So what does the demand curve describe, and how does it describe it?

On the face, the demand curve suggests that the demand for a product at a high price is low; yet if the demand for that product remains the size of, roughly, the whole market of people capable of buying that product across a span of lower prices, then you can raise the price up to that point. That is: if the demand is the same at $1,000,000 as it is at $3,000,000, you can raise the price to $3,000,000.

That's still inexact: what about the demand below $1,000,000?

Well, it turns out you can't make the product for less than an actual cost of $1,000,000: no business can stay in business selling below that price, so the price will not be below $1,000,000.

What about other sellers, then?

With a sufficiently-small market, the risk of entering the market grows. Put another way: the sheer cost of a product is a barrier to entry. With a product being expensive and thus having a small market, success--capturing enough market to break even and thus survive as a business--relies on capturing a large proportion of the market. So, for example, if you need a volume of 30,000 per year to break even and your market is 100,000 consumers, you need to capture 30% of the market to survive. Most won't invest capital into this--which means VCs and banks aren't backing you.

As the cost to produce a product falls, the market expands. Where before you couldn't get into the market very easily--brand loyalty and a price war with the other 2 producers would not end well for you--the market now includes 200,000,000 consumers. Entering this market is costly, and you need a volume of at least 1,000,000 per year to survive; however, that's only 0.5% of the market--not 30%! Before, you'd have needed to be 60 times as successful to break even.

So what happens?

The two or three players in the market, trying to sell for over $1,000,000, now face someone showing up to sell a product for $2,000! Brand loyalty is one thing; but this guy is selling exactly the same thing, he's selling it to 199,900,000 other customers, and he's putting price pressure on your market. Your 1,000 super-super-rich customers like the prestige, while the rest--millionaires who spend 8 years making payments--decide they're so damned elite they'll buy a hundred of those commodity supercars and appear in pictures with their freshly-waxed, blindingly-shiny toys behind them.

Besides that, the new entrants to the market now have all this cash flow behind them, having successful businesses. It's not just that one guy, either; dozens get into the market, since it's so easy to succeed. The big ones start making better supercars in limited production runs. You catch up, but now you have to jockey with all these offerings--which means those $1,000,000 cars can only sell for $1,250,000 unless you can gimmick up your brand to get loyalty nobody else can replicate. You're, again, relegated to your most-elite, super-rich clients for that.

So what happened?

The demand curve extended down. Demand went up massively, because people who can't or won't pay high prices are able to buy. As a result, competition increased; and an increase in

"While writers and publishers deserve fair compensation, " But not their great grand-children.

Exactly.

Pray tell, what to do about the impending impending human/computer convergence - The Singularity, when you don't die, you're still around and you kinda ARE your own great grandchild?

Plant your brain in a new body? Clone yourself with DNA? How old fashioned, move on up to The Cloud and use CloneZilla, snapshots, or just start yourself up (!!) another Docker Personality Instance. Gives a who new meaning to schizophrenia or to Dissociative identity disorder.

At that point money will stop being the in-game comparison metric, it'll change to how big you are. (In bytes.) Hell, corporations will end up being People while People won't be.

https://xkcd.com/1883/

https://xkcd.com/1782/

So it has come to this (obligatory xkcd)

https://xkcd.com/1958/

Yep, XKCD covered this

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425/

https://www.xkcd.com/1958/

Just slightly more complex, a malicious actor with a single vehicle can block a "dumb" intersection by driving doughnuts in the middle of the intersection.

They prefer verified, but they're more than happy to casually bridge causality. Even to establish "verified". Courts may admit than IP != identity (usually...) but the bigdata team (who need to have some material to present at the quarterly review or whateverthefuck) doesn't care.

Geolocation = Fact! https://xkcd.com/713/

I think the real preference is moving up the skill curve. Cookies are pretty user-controlled, browsers/mods/etc are happily handing over tools. Other fingerprints are beyond the reach of surface dwellers and casuals. Even the user agent is considered gospel compared to fragile, paper-in-a-bottle cookies.

...nothing of value was lost.

Relevant XKCD.

Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/566/

There is a famous XKCD cartoon that describes very well the need for new standards.

https://xkcd.com/927

Let's add emoji to label instead of fixing all the dumb errors that happen 99% of the time. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/g...

Obligatory XKCD. I think Steve Gibson called this "Internet background radiation," which always seemed like a fairly good way to describe the constant noise of scanners and probes that anyone can see attacking *every* system on the net, non-stop.

Annnnd, what happens when I'm trying to back away from danger into some tall grass; is it going to let me, or is it going to overrule the human? I'm sick to death of engineers, etc., thinking they've thought of everything, to the detriment of the unsuspecting users, decades later.

This was you, wasn't it?

This mechanism of hiding passwords in plain sight is, IME, 100% foolproof.

If you only use a thousand word, then you have a pretty fucking poor vocabulary. "Thousand" isn't even in the top thousand most used words.

It is actually pretty rare that I go "wow, that word it suggested is obscure", in fact I never do that. I want it to know the "obscure" words I use without me having to teach it like I'd have to teach a 5 year old.

And see this comic for an example of something written using only the thousand most used words. It should give you an idea of how restrictive it only knowing 1000 words would be.

people who pee on the floor

If they have stockers would they not have janitors for inevitable breakage??? Gee, I wonder what ELSE they could clean???

people who open packages and use the product right there in the store

Go right ahead, as soon as you do you just bought it. Why is this any different a problem from today, except this system can actually recognize and charge these people on the spot????

kids grabbing things off the shelves

Wow it is like SO VERY HARD to tell if someone entered the store with someone they should all be charged to the same account. If they have nearly infallible identity tracking already for all people in store, why on earth would you even mention this as a problem when it knows who has entered the store together??????

Most of the "issues" you and others reference are in fact covered by this illuminating XKCD comic.

a stupid ass-troll?

Obligatory XKCD

I haven't even heard about Salon until this came up.

Congratulations! You are one of todays lucky 10,0000.

Obligatory XKCD Reference: https://xkcd.com/810/

Umm, First Amendment? Pretty sure you'd be running afoul of the First Amendment if you did that....

That's a popular misconception. The First Amendment means you can say whatever you want, but nobody is legally required to help you say it. Obligatory xkcd link.

I liked that the article talked about the term "ultra-processed" and the pros and cons of using it. On the one hand, it's fairly well established that many forms of processing are harmful, and having degrees of processing as a broad category might be useful. By using an umbrella term like that, you can avoid many of the problems with bullshit statistical studies: "Green M&M's are 95% likely to cause cancer."

On the other hand...this is basically a "common knowledge" study which serves no purpose and tells me nothing at all. Gee, "Hungry Man Salisbury Steak" dinners are bad for me? Shocking. I'm fucking stunned by your scientific revelation. Which parts of the processing are most harmful? Should I skip that damned brownie that never cooks properly? Are ensure or soylent "ultra processed?" Oh, you don't know? Thanks for nothing.

https://xkcd.com/882/

Wow! Someone was able to read the voter rolls! Of course, since the voter rolls are for sale in every state for a few hundred dollars, this means nothing.

On the other hand, lying Leftist screechers do love to try to spin this up into something meaningful. "Russia hacked the election!", "Russia hacked the voting computers!" - when anyone with anyone with half a brain understand what actually happened: nothing.

https://xkcd.com/927/

We also need a trusty XKCD universal connector box.

https://xkcd.com/1406/

First of all, it isn't really "science" as much as "science class at home." He's just dorking around on video. Nerds should love it, but that doesn't make it science.

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/397/
That one is about Mythbusters but it applies to Cody's Lab too.
tl;dr: It is science

Oh I forgot:

Blah, blah, blah 1250% efficiency. Blah, blah, blah 1250% efficiency. Blah, blah, blah 1250% efficiency...

So, now you are creating energy from thin air, brilliant!

The limit on efficiency is 100% dumb ass and even a heat pump isn't 100% efficient.
https://xkcd.com/670/

Would you still be saying the same thing if you worked with me and saw the several million lines of VB6 code I maintain?

Yes. "Starting over" is almost certainly a mistake. That codebase handles much complexity and covers many corner cases that you likely fail to appreciate. It isn't complex because it is "bad code" but because it is solving a complex problem. By starting over, you will need to build and budget for a new team. One team to maintain the existing codebase, while another team works on the new code. Soon you will have this problem, as every change and new feature has to duplicated in both codebases. People will grow frustrated, and quit or transfer to other projects, taking their expertise with them. As the "vision" people leave, and the remaining coders are under pressure to get stuff fixed, the new code base will start to fill up with hacks and workarounds. Then a new manager will take over and ask what should be done. The programmers will unanimously reply: "Throw it all away and start over".

Instead of "starting over" here is what you should do:
1. Set up a VPS, with the best OS and all the development tools. Snapshot it onto a thumb drive. Now you can always rollback to a working system.
2. Set up a Git repository, and use it. Now you can track changes and rollback with much better granularity.
3. Set up a bug database.
4. Build a test suite.
5. As you fix bugs and add features, start commenting and refactoring the code. Refactor where the bugs are.
6. After every bug fix, add a regression test to the test suite. TDD & FBF.
7. Once the code is mostly refactored and cleaned up, then, and only then, should you start shifting to a new platform. Make sure you can do it incrementally, the way Johnny Cash built his Cadillac: one piece at a time. This means being able to make function calls from VBA into your new platform (maybe C#?) and vice versa. Run your automated suite after every significant change.
8. Use "continuous deployment". Don't roll out lots of big changes all at once, and alienate your users, but instead make lot of small changes regularly. Very importantly make sure the early changes are things the users WANT, like bug fixes and GUI improvements. This will give you stakeholder buy-in and build up karma that you can cash-in when problems arise.

Good luck.

I'm better than a rocket scientist, I've played Kerbal Space Program.

Obligatory XKCD

https://xkcd.com/1739/

Heard that one before!

You know, I just remembered I'm busy...

TornadoGuard!

Lots of revisionist history going on here.

Microsoft was just getting used to separating user space functions, which had turned XP prior to SP2 into an eggshell, so easily exploited that even bad script kiddies could pop a bubble and p0wn a machine.

Virus makers were a red herring. So were driver makers. It because impossible to regression test Windows because the software communities had build so many dependencies into the system, which were changed just as quickly by Microsoft.

Vista was simply a turd. There's no better way to describe it, and it's only after screaming hostilities did Microsoft pour sufficient resources to fix it so as to negate Vista into the more stable Windows 7-- which killed a lot of legacy problems, but also software compatibilities, libraries, functions, and functionality/behaviors.

Microsoft needed the money-- back during the phase where they made money on CALs and discrete licensing fees. In the middle of it, chaos ensued. It was a disaster.

Huh? That's interesting. I always figured Vista was Microsoft's second attempt at hitting the Ballmer Peak.