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Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/

That rabbit hole goes even deeper though. Is the information on your computer worth your life? Your daughters life? Your familys life?

And yes, even government officials can, have, and will resort to the above tactics if they deem it important enough.

Also https://xkcd.com/605/

https://xkcd.com/1102/

Obligatory: Earth Temperature Timeline, courtesy of XKCD.

https://xkcd.com/1129/

Obligatory xkcd

Should these trends hold then next decade electric cars will pretty much take over.

Obligatory XKCD

My specific objection is that there's not enough battery production for these trends to hold.

https://xkcd.com/1189/

creative types who benefit greatly from constant collaboration and bouncing ideas off of those around them.

Yeah, right. More like the 'Compiling' excuse isn't working anymore.

Fun way of looking at things.

Voyager 2 will have some catching up to do to leave the solar system as many times as Voyager 1. :) https://xkcd.com/1189/

Yea, if you had asked her out, all you would be now is divorced raped, penny less, homeless and she isn't even that great looking..

If you want smoking hot... http://wiki.xkcd.com/wgh/image...

I've been with her for 10 years now... http://wiki.xkcd.com/wgh/image... and I am just a Joe Shmo. We even have a 8 year old son together.

I'm much better off for not being married and putting myself in a position of being divorced raped at anyone given time.

Yea, if you had asked her out, all you would be now is divorced raped, penny less, homeless and she isn't even that great looking..

If you want smoking hot... http://wiki.xkcd.com/wgh/image...

I've been with her for 10 years now... http://wiki.xkcd.com/wgh/image... and I am just a Joe Shmo. We even have a 8 year old son together.

I'm much better off for not being married and putting myself in a position of being divorced raped at anyone given time.

https://xkcd.com/1252/

Disagree. Every physical process that doesn't involve gravitation can, in principle, be accurately modeled by a quantum theory based model to any desired degree of precision.

Relevant.

Hit me up with that "quantum theory based model" of .NET development. Should be a fun read.

Global Thermonuclear War

...or CalvinBall as Randall Munroe puts it in this XKCD:
Game AIs

THE APP!! is gonna be a web wrapper anyway. Just with more telemetry.

I die a little when I hear people, especially in the meatspace, crowing about how the privacy of phone OS. Amazon doesn't give a fuck what phone you did your search on. See how well THE APP!! works when it can't phone home (hint: not at all) with everything it learned. Even for 100% local functionality like the step counting fad.

It's https://xkcd.com/934/ all over again, but for s/browser/app.

They will simply respond with this.
 

Neat xkcd, but usually it doesn't work that way. Hit me with that wrench all day, I could still not provide they keys to my https sessions. I'd hand over the computer to make the torture stop - but I haven't the faintest idea about how some TLS library sets up the keys. And when the browser is closed, the keys are likely gone forever.

They will simply respond with this.

In the end, technological measures cannot protect you; only the rule of law can. This bill compromises the rule of law, reduces accountability and transparency, and will cause long term civil and economic damage to Australia as a result.

here.

But what about the ToDo app to make the list of apps to test? You'll need to write one of those, too!

https://xkcd.com/1906/

I know! I'll write a productivity app to evaluate productivity apps to determine their level of productivity. https://xkcd.com/927/

https://xkcd.com/2030/

The distinction is "going to space" vs. "going to orbit". His listed "competitors" - Blue Origin and SpaceX - aren't targeting "space", they're targeting orbit. It's an entirely different thing, and involves your craft gaining more than an order of magnitude more energy than simply crossing the Karman line. 100000m * 9,81 m/s = 0,981 MJ/kg. 1/2 * (7800m/s)^2 + 350000 * 9,81 = 33,8535 MJ/kg - that is to say, over 34 times more energy**.

Reaching orbit is a little bit of "up" and a LOT of "across". Or, as XKCD put it: how the public thinks going to orbit works vs. how it actually works.

** In practice, the consumed energy distinction isn't as stark, as both vehicles have to deal with air resistance and gravity losses for the first part of the flight - but on the other hand, it's a far-more-than-linear increase in difficulty to add more delta-V, since you have to lift the fuel to lift your fuel, and lift the fuel to lift that fuel, and lift the fuel to lift that fuel...

The distinction is "going to space" vs. "going to orbit". His listed "competitors" - Blue Origin and SpaceX - aren't targeting "space", they're targeting orbit. It's an entirely different thing, and involves your craft gaining more than an order of magnitude more energy than simply crossing the Karman line. 100000m * 9,81 m/s = 0,981 MJ/kg. 1/2 * (7800m/s)^2 + 350000 * 9,81 = 33,8535 MJ/kg - that is to say, over 34 times more energy**.

Reaching orbit is a little bit of "up" and a LOT of "across". Or, as XKCD put it: how the public thinks going to orbit works vs. how it actually works.

** In practice, the consumed energy distinction isn't as stark, as both vehicles have to deal with air resistance and gravity losses for the first part of the flight - but on the other hand, it's a far-more-than-linear increase in difficulty to add more delta-V, since you have to lift the fuel to lift your fuel, and lift the fuel to lift that fuel, and lift the fuel to lift that fuel...

https://xkcd.com/2078/

That's hardly a new development

Compared to five years ago, Tesla sales are, like, way up. You do not have to be a genius to extrapolate this growth forward and see that Tesla is poised to dominate the market in the very near to mid term future.

TFTFY.

xkcd: Free

AVM, the maker of the most popular router "Fritz!Box" (and for good reasons), will have this on their boxes. Big and fat. They're the type or manufacturer who offers free updates to entirely new versions of their FritzOS, with all new features that the hardware can manage, even years later. Security patches often even are in the local tech news.
Which means, everyone who doesn't have this certification, has even less of a chance of competing against them.

There are people here, who pick their ISP based on who gives them the best FritzBox. Not even having a (maybe branded) FritzBox included, is often grounds for exclusion.

Trust me, this will have an effect on the majority of people in Germany.
(Provided AVM doesn’t already do all that’s demanded.)

We have a hard deadline of 2023 before quantum computers can break pre-quantum algorithms with vary slightly modified versions of Shor's algorithm based on a decade-old linear trend in qubit count.

Remember what happens when you extrapolate trends linearly? You fail. It's getting steeply harder to add more qubits, which is why we're not hearing about it happening every month or two.

Obligatory XKCD

This is much like the smoking/cancer research (except a more difficult problem to prove in many ways). If you do not accept the link between bowel cancer and meat (especially "well done" meats, and preserved / processed meats), then there are significant environmental and land use impacts.

The argument that modern browsers execute arbitrary code isn't very compelling. Most applications accept arbitrary data of some kind. We used to have fun crashing mail clients and IRC clients and even FTP servers with some dodgy data. It's rather fundamental to networked computers.

Then you should know that the more complex the code the easier it is to make a mistake. You should also know that it's harder to determine malicious intent programmatically if the app is expected to have such functionality normally.

The problem with providing an API isn't providing the API itself, but rather the problem lies in providing the mechanisms necessary to effectively control and audit the use of said API and the resources it provides access to.

Also most browsers don't allow downloads to be triggered by redirects or Javascript, only direct user interaction. That's why sites started trying to trick users into clicking stuff rather than auto-downloading. And even that doesn't work very well because once you tricked the user they still have to click through multiple warnings and their AV software has to fail before your code gets to run.

And this API allows direct access to files without needing to do or deal with any of that. So all of those security layers were just rendered irrelevant by this new API. Now rather than downloading something to manipulate the data, the site can just manipulate the data directly by itself. So your codepath just changed from:

Server->Client interpreter->User action->Download->AV Check->User action->OS Security Check->data manipulation

to:

Server->Client interpreter->User action?->OS Security Check->data manipulation

Hopefully user interaction is still a requirement, but I can imagine several scenarios (DRM, evercookies, etc.) where that requirement may be relaxed.

Further, you've also failed to consider the security context of this as originally it was:

Browser sandbox->User context->new file

Now it's:

Browser sandbox->User context->all user files

I'll just leave this here. Feel free to replace facebook, gmail, paypal, dropbox, and bank with any other service or any other personal data that may be stored under the user's account. As that's typically the most valuable thing on the given device nowadays, and they already have access to the machine's hardware resources via ASM.js and friends.

This clearly surpasses the XKCD 2000 phone, if nothing else then in number of cameras.
https://www.xkcd.com/2000/

Well obviously. The entire cloud runs from her basement server.

https://www.xkcd.com/908/

The problem is that there is a minimum speed for any object falling on the Moon or any planet) without being slowed down by an engine or by friction with the atmosphere. If I am not mistaken, that speed is equal to the Escape Velocity. For Earth that is 11.1km/s and for the Moon that is 2.38km/s. This is easy to understand if you consider that any massive object sits at the bottom of a gravity well. The same amount of potential energy is required to enter or exit the well. https://xkcd.com/681/

The kinetic energy that's gained by dropping a comet into the moon's gravity well is a plus - we can use that to add some spin to the moon, instead of keeping it tidally locked to earth.

That does nothing to protect against a supeona. Or this: https://xkcd.com/538/

The problem is that there is a minimum speed for any object falling on the Moon or any planet) without being slowed down by an engine or by friction with the atmosphere. If I am not mistaken, that speed is equal to the Escape Velocity. For Earth that is 11.1km/s and for the Moon that is 2.38km/s. This is easy to understand if you consider that any massive object sits at the bottom of a gravity well. The same amount of potential energy is required to enter or exit the well. https://xkcd.com/681/
This is also why dropping ice comets cannot be a viable solution for global warming even if the ice is initially at -273C. The kinetic energy given to that ice (so 11km/s) would be enough to boil it several time. Slowing down the comet with rockets or parachutes would not work either because the same amount of energy would be released in the atmosphere.

These guys did it in 36 seconds. Granted, network hacks and elegant solutions need to be addressed. But what's the point if you cant keep a couple of guys with a pickup truck and a chain from driving off with it. It always reminds me of this xkcd.

but close enough... https://xkcd.com/669/

https://xkcd.com/2073/

Thank you for the informative reply and presenting sources, Sarten-X. It's nice to continue seeing the banana-related measurements.

They pop up in tech circles often, and I like propagating knowledge of the handy XKCD chart at https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Kinda handy actually; didn't have to bother hitting pause

Thanks for the confirmation and the additional anecdote. In hindsight, a better term than "urban legend" would have been more adequate for my GP comment. I haven't experienced it myself, but can think of "known issue"... unfortunately I've been lurking lots on Hackernews and sub-consciously avoided what there would have been a sure-fire citation-needed reply :)

I laughed at the happy note on your workflow. It reminds me of what happens when software fixes this kind of thing in an un-skippable update. Couldn't find the exact XKCD I had in mind but this one is funny too https://xkcd.com/1172/

this.

Do Slashdot topics follow xkcd themes, or rather Randall Munroe reads Slashdot ?

What if there were a way to select the networks you want and have it spit out your best option to achieve your dream list? Just make sure you make the selection with only one nerd present

Duty calls

xkcd says your function is too complex.

right here

Can we just have vote by mail in all 50 states already? It's 2018. I shouldn't have to go to the polls. If somebody's trying to force you to the polls it's because they don't want you to vote.

How exactly does the existence of polls equate to someone not wanting you to vote? I hope you're not trying to make excuses for your own laziness here. Also, let's not forget what often happens to the mail-in ballot and the voter who can't manage to fill it out right. Thousands of mail-in ballots are rejected every year because people can't read instructions, and given how tight the elections were this year, rejected votes can make a difference.

I say stick with the grade-school fill-in-the-bubble format. In person. Perhaps we can avoid counting dead voters that way.

https://xkcd.com/2030/

The XKCD "10,000" effect works for both good things and bad: https://xkcd.com/1053/

right here

Can we just have vote by mail in all 50 states already? It's 2018. I shouldn't have to go to the polls. If somebody's trying to force you to the polls it's because they don't want you to vote.