Slashdot Mirror

https://xkcd.com/327/

https://xkcd.com/285/

Real programmers use butterflies: https://xkcd.com/378/

Wrong!

How do you feel about the government banning Ponzi schemes? They aren't making a medical decision, they are protecting consumers from being scalped. If homeopathy could offer just a single shred of evidence that it actually worked... a truly independent, scientifically verified result... the medical world would hop on it like a hobo on a ham sandwich.

Randal Munro put it best (Obligatory XKCD): https://xkcd.com/808/

Not always, it's a bit like "the customer is always right" and if you've worked in IT you'll know that sometimes the customer is horribly, horribly wrong and even if you did try to please them it would end up an unusable mess they wouldn't be happy with and they'd still blame you. That said, I'd generally try to have replacement functionality up and running before I pull the plug on the old solution, I know how saying you'll get those features back later works when other things keep taking priority.

The more services tied to your google+ account, the greater the risk of it being suspended.

While this is technically true, it is only really true for douchebags.

https://xkcd.com/810/

I guess we've met this guy. Apart from that, personally I'd like to ban the lone "=" operator so it's "==" for comparison, ":=" for assignment with all the other two char operators like != and += intact. So many languages try to be "smart" instead of just making the difference more explicit.

This sounds ideal, until "that guy" moves in. ... The one that has loud sex.

Obligatory xkcd.

The communal paradise envisioned here seems perfect... until you add people.

To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to live that way are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is able of getting such a room should on no account be allowed to do so. To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem.

Fight for your bitcoins!

Oblig. xkcd what-if

https://xkcd.com/697/

Terrorists etc. who wanted to have been able to use one-time pads or personal couriers who memorized their messages since well before modern cryptography.

Sure, it was a bit more cumbersome and not always practical, and when implemented naively, it was vulnerable to rubber-hose cryptanalysis but then again, so is an encrypted smart-phone when you have access to someone who knows the password.

So, tell me again, if bad guys will continue to have these options, why is it a good idea to weaken all other forms of cryptography to the point where they are about as useful as SHA1 with a small key (if that)?

https://xkcd.com/538/

I won a ton of money - I was (and probably still am) well ahead. However, I learned to read the booklet that they have, where you can see who's done what and what their history is for the year. My winning ratio sunk. Prior to that I always bet on the "chariot" racing (sulkies/harness) and always bet on the guy named Banks or Banks Jr or I simply bet on #3 to win/place/show. I once won so much that I had to pay taxes on it. However, as soon as some old guy showed me what that little book was for? I was sunk. I stopped going over and better after a little while - the magic was gone.

To which I can only reply, https://xkcd.com/552/

Wifi needed a "STFU" addition to the protocol long ago. It's way too late now.

That'll be in the 802.11/q protocol.

Oblig XKCD : http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/st...

Since no one has covered it yet here is your obligatory XKCD refernce http://xkcd.com/378/

So like this?

https://xkcd.com/538/

Careful - Just like with the Balmer Peak, too much doesn't always mean "better".

You probably want to shoot for the high 20s or low 30s... Antisocial enough not to waste time chatting about stupid shit, but still able to effectively collaborate with others (when absolutely necessary).

Good Lord, is that the first useful addition to the core browser in the last 5 years? Looks like I'll be less well-informed about the world from now on, though: https://xkcd.com/1280/

the weakest link in any security system is the flesh and blood one...

Don't worry. At the rate they're going, they'll be up to 1.0 by 2030.

Or maybe 2059? Obligatory XKCD.

http://xkcd.com/538/

I've never been hit by one of these, but I realize it can cost people a lot of money due to some shitheads. I'm really glad a lot of these keys have been found and made public. I'm sure this won't be the end of ransomware...people will just use new keys, but hopefully this will help some of those who have clicked on a not-a-flash upgrade or bad e-mail attachment.

I hope they recovered the keys from the shitheads using this technique.

https://xkcd.com/538/

The idea that we're facing a future of massive overpopulation, and that we have to take drastic measures to avert it, is pure bunk. Overpopulation is only a problem in grossly underdeveloped countries. In every moderately advanced country, the opposite problem is true - birth rates have fallen below replacement levels. Even countries that used to be considered underdeveloped show signs of this. What's causing it? Basically, it's a combination of not needing tons of kids to help with subsistence farming, having basic healthcare so you don't wind up with half your children dying before reaching adulthood, as well as having the ability to engage in family planning/using contraception/etc.

Don't believe me? Look at the birth rates in places like the US, Europe, East Asia, even South America. Consider places like Mexico or Brazil. In 1970, Mexico had a birth rate of 6.72 children per woman, and Brazil was at 5.02, compared to 2.48 in the U.S. In 2012, that has fallen to 2.22 for Mexico and 1.81 for Brazil, while the USA is 1.88. For comparison, the "replacement level" at which the number of births balances out the deaths from age/etc is around 2.1. China is at 1.66 as of 2012, which while not as bad as Japan (1.41) or South Korea (1.3), is still pretty bad. Even India has started slowing, down to 2.5 as of 2012.

Overpopulation is not going to be a problem, unless you're falling prey to an extrapolation fallacy (see https://xkcd.com/605/ ). Even if it is a problem in the shorter term, the answer is easy - improve living standards, access to health care, and provide access to voluntary family planning/contraception. You don't need to force it on people, they'll use it - and far more than most governments want them to. Lots of governments are starting to realize that their problem is how to convince their citizens to have kids, not stop having them.

Something like that...

  Reasonable WTF XKCD

Opacity of jargon has various advantages, depending on the field.

Depending on the field, the jargon does allow more concise explanations in a limited space and the intended audience will probably be familiar with it and have no problems with the jargon. As long as the study design and statistical analysis are easy to understand, I don't think it's a problem.

But there are other disciplines where it seems like it's a competition to find the best purple prose and to say as little as possible with as many words as possible or obfuscate one's meaning so much that it's impossible to infer the author's real meaning. There's a reason that something like the postmodernism generator exists.

Take a look at the Sokal hoax for a good example of this. Some journal (and one that just has authors pay for publications) accepted an article that was utter nonsense by intent.

Obligatory xkcd comic.

I love telling people we have the Nazis to thank for our space program.

This board will not win me chicks. It will not help me find an almanac from the future. It will not make me Marty McFly.

No sale.

https://xkcd.com/327/

Relevant xkcd.

- our detection technologies, while highly advanced from where they were, are still astonishingly rudimentary, largely only by deduction (not direct observation

Direct exoplanet imaging is a thing.

Speaking of arrogance: so many bad assumptions, so many wrong numbers. Where to start...

- our universe is about 13.8 billion years old, with stellar formation around 1 billion years ...call it 2 billion, just to be conservative.

Age is good, but that stellar formation number is a clear PIDOMA. (Asspull is apparently a different thing.)

WMAP estimated the age of the universe to be 13.772 billion with an uncertainty of 59 millions years. Other projects (Plank) put it at closer to 14 billion. Stellar formation started very soon - blue supergiants starlight is the best match for what caused re-ionization only 150 million to 1 billion years after the big bang.

Early stars also fit the model for relative atom abundance in the pre-galaxy age. Since the stars already had to exist to start re-ionizing it and blue giants live very short lives it is reasonable to use the early start verses later start. And their lives are really short: only 10s of millions of years to die. And their supernovas produce lots of nice heavy nuclei (dust in Astronomer terms.) These are stars are basically the diesel engines of space, popping up and off to fart polluting dust into the local gas. And early in the Universe blue super giants continue to appear in distant galaxy images. They are heavily over-represented after galaxies started to form.

- If stars were forming at 2 bn yrs, and our system is about 6bn yrs, that means there could have been planetary formation and systems like ours developing for 5 BILLION years before today.

So we know stars were forming at up to 150m years. The first deaths to provide dust to make planets as soon 10m years later with current stellar evolutionary models. So planets could start forming as little as 160m years. Regardless of the frequency of Solar-type Systems the upper bound is more like 13 billion years. Not good for being off by 500%.

- Since our system is an entirely average sun, in an entirely average stellar neighborhood, it's probable that our experience is entirely typical.

Planetary systems like our look weird now but we think that is because of selection bias as mentioned.

If you mean with life then it's going to be very hard to model that due to our current lack of data. But one fact is certain: having lots of giant blue stars in a star burst galaxy or early in the Universe is not kind to complex organic molecules making up life like ours (the only kind we know.) Just being within two light years of a supernova will kill you from the neutrino radiation let alone the wave of photons that hit later. It's also not healthy for the dust cloud around a proto-star. It is likely that frequently dying stars will dampen planetary formation in the early Universe.

To deduce then that only 8% of potential planets have formed is nonsense.

15 billion compared to 100 billion to 1,000 billion years? Unless you think 15 is a large fraction 100, we are still in the early Universe. I cannot say how robust 8% is in the calculation without running it myself. But I suspect it is a high estimate just from increased galaxy collisions spawning waves of stars and disturbing galactic gas clouds.

The Greening Galaxy Theory uses the same logic as the article from a different direction and comes to the same conclusion

Seriously, it is still better than most of the crap out there: https://xkcd.com/397/

xkcd just covered this a few days ago: https://xkcd.com/1591/

Bell's Theorem.

Explain to me like I'm 5

If you insist.

https://xkcd.com/209/

I have a time traveling truck...

It will reduce the transparency. But Mars also undergoes wind scouring events - which is why Opportunity is still roving on Mars to this day.

Good transparency isn't a key aspect of the design. The basic issue is, you need radiation shielding from something, ideally something local. What's easier to work with that's local on Mars than water? Yeah, what's on Mars is really more like a salty, silty frozen muck than the pure fresh water ice that most people picture. But turning that to consistent-quality building material is assuredly easier than doing the same with bedrock, regolith, or whatnot. And much easier to spray/cast/etc while minimizing the amount of material you have to bring from Earth to do so.

Anything is possible. The impossible just takes longer to figure out.

Besides, obligatory XKCD reference

So he got about two chest CT scans?
https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Yep that's a definitive bullet proof 100% confirmed link to the nuclear incident.

The compensation policy looks like it's aimed at stopping lawsuits since naturally you can't prove it wasn't linked to his work.
Seems reasonable in that context.

https://xkcd.com/1013/

you really don't want to wake up the sheeple

https://xkcd.com/610/

yes, sheeple

https://xkcd.com/1036/

or

https://xkcd.com/937/

https://xkcd.com/1036/

or

https://xkcd.com/937/

If you expect such ratings to 100% match your own opinion, you have an over inflated sense of self importance. ;-)

Is this your first day on the Internets? Turns out access to a constant stream of information and interaction actually makes us dumber, less perceptive people.

Or in XKCD terms: Someone is wrong on the Internet.

Star Ratings Meaning according to XKCD

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1098/

When asked to form a sentence, the system can now output a single word and continues the prediction process to find related words

https://xkcd.com/1427/

Come to think of it, I need a browser plugin that randomly cuts off the end of sentences and replaces them with autocompleted words.
Extra credit if the algorithm was trained on religious texts, trashy romance novels and operettas.

Well KGill does have a pubkey on Slashdot. That said....even on Slashdot PGP/GnuPG usage isn't all that high. I myself rarely encrypt, though I do sign my e-mail. I have one of the Comodo freecerts as well.

My message in response to Kgill mentioning the privacy tools stated: "Yes, but how many people actually use them." One wouldn't send a PGP-encoded message (meaning encrypted) to someone without already having their pubkey. Signed messages are different of course, and you're right that probably 95% percent of people don't have the necessary tools installed to check if the signature is valid.

Then again there's the famoux XKCD joke:
https://xkcd.com/1181/

Which would only apply to PGP/INLINE since with PGP/MIME a recipient wouldn't see the "BEGIN PGP MESSAGE" in the first place.

The percentage of peole having the PGP/GnuPG tools being higher amongst Linux users, of course, since gnupg is usually installed by default.

I'm wondering on what's taking so long for Google/Yahoo to finish up their end-to-end OpenPGP based extension. Not that I actually use Gmail's web interface mind you, IMAP all the way for me.

At least Slashdot lets us share our precious pubkeys. Facebook does as well and will even encrypt notification messages to you. Which is one of the very very few good privacy-related things that Facebook actually does.