Slashdot Mirror

Look, it is two thousand freaking fifteen. This is an article from some site called "Techie News" being re-reported at Slashdot. Can we please get a little ridicule of this supposed binary concept of "statistical significance" ? It would take us one or two sentences to tell us the actual numbers involved--the expected value, expected deviation, margin of error, confidence level, etc.

And then when all's said and done, if indeed the level of significance was too low (e.g. p too high), maybe we could get a Bayesian or two in here to criticize the traditional 5% value is being arbitrary and tell us all a little about the Frequentist vs. Bayesian rivalry in statistics that persists to this day? (Obligatory XKCDs: https://xkcd.com/1132/ , https://xkcd.com/882/)

This is very apropos (assuming that's the right URL; I can't test this at work).

1995 called and their rootkits back.

Did you warn them?

That post lacked obligatory xkcd, so I have fixed that for you.

https://xkcd.com/1473/

Obligatory XKCD: http://what-if.xkcd.com/131/

"When instructions say let stand for 1-2 minutes, it's not just to protect your mouth from hot food—it's giving the hot and cold spots time to equalize, so the whole thing will be sufficiently heated throughout. And if some part of the food doesn't conduct heat well (e.g. rice) or contains a lot of chunks of ice (e.g. frozen fruit or meat) they also might tell you to stir midway through cooking. This helps to transfer the heat more evenly into the food, move food away from cold spots, and also break up chunks of ice and mix them with warmer pockets of water to help melt them... It turns out that "turning the microwave off every so often to let the food cool" is exactly what the "power level" setting does! Choosing a lower power level doesn't actually change the strength of the microwaves; it just means that the microwave generator won't be running the whole time... In effect, the microwave is just automating the tedious task of zapping something a bunch of times on "high" for 10 seconds each and letting it sit for a while in between."

After I read this XKCD, I started putting my Schwan's breakfast bagels in at 50% power for twice the recommended time, and the icy center vanished. All those years of raging against the magnetron for our burned mouths and surprise icy centers, and the solution was there the entire time. Is this a cautionary tale to engineers who would mock and shun the liberal arts majors who document their ingenious technical solutions? Or were these features documented all along, in instruction manuals easily tossed aside by generations upon generations of nerds who blithely assumed that they knew all there was to know about the simple and unassuming microwave, only to burn their mouths and vent their wrath upon hapless users by screaming "RTFM!"

When you stare into the hot pocket, the hot pocket stares into you.

The cost of LEDs is dropping rapidly, and the lifetime costs are already lower than Incandescent. At this point saying they cost "10x more" is no longer factual.

Livestock production, including the animals themselves, ARE a significant portion of human gas emissions and environmental impact, both methane and CO2. Livestock responsible for roughly 10-14% of our CO2 emissions, 35% of our methane, and 65% of the nitrous oxide. In addition they require tremendous amounts of land area and resources. In areas such as the plains, that land is already well adapted to grazers like cows. But of course, that isn't the only place we raise them. We force land into being productive, by siphoning water, by cutting down forests, and other geoengineering methods. Each pound of beef you eat took 500 gallons of water produce. The amount of food provided to cattle alone in this country could feed 800 million people. It takes more than 4 lbs of feed to make a pound of beat. Not to mention changes in water quality and riverbeds from changes in erosion patterns, and the ripple effect that has every critter along the way. And this isnt even touching pigs (even higher methane production) or chickens. (Oblig XKCD)

It's not about seeking power over you. We don't care about you. It has a little more to do with caring about the survival of the species as a whole. Humans aren't very tolerant of higher CO2 concentrations, or higher temperatures. We are still very dependent on the natural world, even if we have rudimentary methods of harnessing it to feed ourselves. And if nature collapses, so do we. But reducing our impact on the planet doesn't require reverting to the stoneage. Civilization can survive just fine. Nor does it require forcing behavior. A tremendous amount of change has already occurred and will continue to occur through simple market forces, as not everyone is as obstinate or blind as you. "OH I have to give up burning dead dinos to drive from my mcmansion to work".... cry me a river. All the free energy humanity could ever want lands on the planet's surface every hour. Transitioning from burning oil to harnessing just a fraction of the sun's power is only a burden if your paycheck depends on the oil industry.

This was an obvious evolutionary next step

Uh-huh. Just keep telling yourself that, Mr. Stallman.

Don't worry, a GNU day will dawn... Eventually...

https://xkcd.com/1504/

Now go post it here: http://science.slashdot.org/st...

https://xkcd.com/1504/

https://xkcd.com/1504/

He was a lot nicer to Spirit, which had a similarly impressive run:
https://xkcd.com/695/

https://xkcd.com/1504/

He was a lot nicer to Spirit, which had a similarly impressive run:
https://xkcd.com/695/

"Digital Native" means this.

https://xkcd.com/1338/

I'm sitting right next to a dinosaur now and scratching its head.

There wasn't an extinction of the dinosaurs. There was an extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.

obligatory xkcd

.. the year of the HURD desktop?

Nah. More like 2060.

In case you haven't seen it yet...

I've always thought it had something to do with this. Yes, another xkcd post:
https://xkcd.com/435/

I can see how messy proving things are in sociology and psychology, and how absolute mathematical proofs are. It's always disturbed me how uncertain we can be with the sciences as we move to the left, though I really don't know at what point we can call something 'pure.'

Only because all their greenhouses fled here.

I think it could have something to do with this XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/882/

Obligatory xkcd

The title of the person in charge of sterilisation is the Planetary Protection Officer

It was supposed to be a funny, guys. Jurassic Park. Dinosaurs.

Randall would have figured it out.

It's very difficult to explain to the average person the difference between a computer problem that is simple and one that is virtually impossible. Obligatory xkcd... https://xkcd.com/1425/

Are you sure she wasn't just using Twitter when you weren't looking?

• She wasn't a stupid dog
• Repeating jokes don't make you as witty as the original any more than quoting wisdom makes you wise. Did I mention she wasn't a stupid dog?

Don't take that the wrong way.

https://xkcd.com/792/

What's the point in having sub-orbital rocket capability? I'm missing something.

Nope, you aren't missing anything. There are a few niche applications for sub-orbital launches, but not enough to sustain a business, which is why they are looking for spare change on Kickstarter. Getting to space is easy. Staying in space is hard. Randall Monroe explains it in this "What If".

Sort of like this? Is there, somewhere, an unpublished music industry press release decrying the release of all works into the public domain and the abolishment of copyright?

Real programmers use:

                  https://xkcd.com/378/

Isn't this a free-speech issue? Or, even more fundamentally, freedom of opinion?

There are people in the Southern US who refer to the American Civil War "the War of Northern Aggression". From their point of view, that's what it was - slavery was just the excuse. It's not a widely held opinion, but it's theirs to hold.

Russian history books present a very different view of WWII and the aftermath, as compared to Western history books.

If the Turkish government and people believe that what happened does not qualify as a genocide, that is entirely their right. I do not understand the pressure to acknowledge the events of 100 years ago. It's like the XKCD cartoon: someone in the world is wrong! It's history, it's past, and a formal acknowledgement by today's government isn't going to change what happened.

Ok, so someone educate me: what am I missing here?

Surprised nobody posted this yet.

The government already has access via hand-held battering rams and 14 tonne, wheeled wrecking-balls (AKA assault vehicles). Big money and brute force doesn't work on encryption, unless they turn it into rubber-hose decryption (Oblig. XKCD). But the three-letter agencies can't do that 200 times a day, so they want a cheap, simple solution that labels the common people as criminals without rights.

There are law about that though - a warrant is required for the police to enter my home. DHS is not going to get a warrant to snoop on me.

... have access to everyone's cars?

Police and government have promoted remote-controlled kill switches on cars for the last 20 years. Although it exists via General Motors OnStar, it's not practical. That will change with vehicle-assisted driving and driver-less cars.

... give the government access to our homes?

The government already has access via hand-held battering rams and 14 tonne, wheeled wrecking-balls (AKA assault vehicles). Big money and brute force doesn't work on encryption, unless they turn it into rubber-hose decryption (Oblig. XKCD). But the three-letter agencies can't do that 200 times a day, so they want a cheap, simple solution that labels the common people as criminals without rights.

Are you sure she wasn't just using Twitter when you weren't looking?

That's funny, I was thinking of https://xkcd.com/937/

BTW Have you ever noticed that XKCD has turned into the personification of the joke about the monks sitting around and telling jokes by just saying the number out loud? Truth is truly stranger than fiction!

also, this -- https://xkcd.com/1244/

Once again, life imitates art.

https://xkcd.com/723/

Obligatory : https://xkcd.com/1356/

I took a look at buying Stevia in the store awhile back. I am also a reader of contents labels, so I put it back on the shelf really fast. The first ingredient listed: dextrose

Boy you're a really clever one aren't you, catching onto secret calories in stevia that nobody else did?

First off, stevia is available in many different forms. Stevia is many times more potent than sugar in terms of sweetness, it's extremely hard to use pure (I have pure stevia - to use it pure you have to make very large batches and very tiny measurements!). To dilute it down you obviously have to mix it with something. There are all sorts of mixes, but there are two main categories: those that try for parity with sugar in terms of how much you use (which generally mix with maltodextrin), and those who try for a product that is much sweeter than sugar but not as extreme as pure stevia (these can come in a variety of forms, but a common blend is with dextrose). So yes, the dextrose has calories - but it's far outmatched in terms of sweetness by the stevia therein, so you only need to use a very small amount (depending on the ratio of the blend). The 1:1 parity versions as mentioned use maltodextrin, which is also caloric - but it's so light and fluffy that there's very little mass (and thus calories) per unit volume; basically, what the stevia is blended with is mostly air.

More fun facts about stevia here [100daysofrealfood.com].

Hahaha, Food Babe? Are you joking? The woman who says she hates air travel because they compress your bodies with high pressure air and it restricts your digestive organs? And how "the air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either, it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%. To pump a greater amount of oxygen in costs money in terms of fuel and the airlines know this!" Or her microwave rant, where she talks about how microwave ovens are evil because once water has been microwaved it no longer crystalizes into pure forms when frozen, but rather into forms similar to water that has heard words like "hitler" and "satan"? This is your information source?

Yeah, I think I'll stay over here in the real world and not get my information from a living joke, thanks.

I like this one better...

http://xkcd.com/641/

Obligatory XKCD(s):
        Installing (and App)

Obligatory XKCD(s):
        Installing (and App)

If you are Target and I just want to see what you have available in your store, then no, you don't need an app.

If you farm out to lazy app developers that simply ask for every permission on the phone, then no, you don't need an app.

And if you make a phone-specific version of your site, it will almost always end up crippled.

If you are Target and I just want to see what you have available in your store, then no, you don't need an app.

If you farm out to lazy app developers that simply ask for every permission on the phone, then no, you don't need an app.

And if you make a phone-specific version of your site, it will almost always end up crippled.

If you are Target and I just want to see what you have available in your store, then no, you don't need an app.

If you farm out to lazy app developers that simply ask for every permission on the phone, then no, you don't need an app.

And if you make a phone-specific version of your site, it will almost always end up crippled.

The article you referenced mentions:

It’s another example of how the microbiome — the population of microbes living in and on our bodies — can have huge effects on health.

Better the microbiome be out of whack than the macrobiome.
(see the Alt-Text for the less pleasant gut fauna transfer method)

The speed of the growth of the internet is a separate question from general public awareness of it. I am correct in what I wrote that by 1986 the internet was spreading quickly,

https://xkcd.com/1102/

xkcd.com/538

Obligatory XKCD for over-referencing humor: https://xkcd.com/16/