Slashdot Mirror

I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.

Obligatory XKCD translating what that means

For a second I thought they meant these deep links.

As much as I like to take issue when a summary truly is unenlightening and makes unreasonable expectations of readers, I don't think this is such a case. Slashdot isn't a general news site, and does have a specific target readership, the vast majority of which are going to know what a certificate is and what SMTP is.

And anyway, whose mother? Some mothers would need the meaning of "ISP" spelled out for them over several sentences. Some mothers don't have even a vague grasp of what the internet is. Where do you draw the line?

At least it wouldn't be over the head of this mom.

* How does this [-] a normal user?
* What can they [-] or not do now?
* What do they have [-] watch out for?

Blimey, if you want to talk about clarity...

This seems so prophetic now:

Obligatory XKCD Link

Guys! Guys! You've forgotten that there's always a relevant one!

https://xkcd.com/1364/

Jurassic park would have maybe not been as scary had their "raptors" looked like this. ;)

Regardless, velociraptors still hate goto statements ...

Probably in this manner.

Yep, XKCD has a comic-form response for everything - even itself. ;)

What are you talking about? Every self-respecting nerd should know that they're still here.

People need to stop picturing all dinosaurs as looking like some kind of leathery reptiles. I mean, we not only know now that velociraptor was feathered, but even how many secondary wing feathers it had (14). Jurassic park would have maybe not been as scary had their "raptors" looked like this. ;)

Meanwhile, some of their descendants today look like this and attack like this.

How do you figure? Even assuming humans and our animals accounted for 100% of the planet's biomass, after a single halving that would be reduced to... wait for it... 50%.

No. Percentages do not work that way - it would be reduced to 100% in your example. Let's use some absolute numbers: assume there are 99 humans to every 1 non-domesticated animal. Humanity is then 99% of the population. Halve the human population, and say it's now 49 humans to 1 non-domesticated animal. Now humans are 98% of the population.

Real numbers are surprising on the actual proportions. I offer you this visual representation.

after 4-5 years with almost no significant snow/ice, getting an actual snow storm with substantial snow (a whopping 5 inches!!) this year was considered a freak event (and of course, a reason to disprove global warming)...

and of course prior to 4/5 years ago, this sort snow storm was much common, being an almost yearly event.

Oklahoma: living proof of https://xkcd.com/1321/

Mandatory Xkcd reference The problem with average ratings.

Atoms.

People will gladly give good reviews to things they haven't even tried out yet.

Tornado App has good reviews.

Olig XKCD.

So, if the cosmic rays are non-deterministic then it is not possible to build true a finite Turing Machine. (By "finite" I mean a machine with only limited tape length - a true Turing machine requires limitless memory.)

Of course they are deterministic. I use cosmic rays to program all the time with my handy butterfly. I personally eschew it, but there is a emacs command to do that.

Before the Internet, we said the same things about people who relied on books for knowledge.

Also, xkcd.

If you accept this universe is simply mathematical function, weirdness goes away. Function, that is itself probably intersection of multiple functions...

http://xkcd.com/224/

In regards to moral crusading, there is no other motivation for you to behave in the way you are behaving.

https://xkcd.com/386/

you made a factually incorrect statement. Duty calls, as always.

That is what we're dealing with... the endless gender articles that have cropped up in the last year or so are not a coincidence.

I think they are. I mean, they happen over here in the UK as well, and there's not the same cause. Not that a presidential candidate wouldn't stir up divisiveness for their own benefit.

As for the pay gap: I had a search around. There's an awful lot of hot air from pundits and journalistic sources and precious little in the way of actual hard evidence either way.

As to no one making blind hires, your study had people making blind hires.

I meant blind as in knowing nothing but the person's gender: no qualifications/skills/experience. Gender only.

that would imply that this is equally a problem in any female dominated profession?

Pretty much. I gather sexism is rampant in nursing, and, frankly male primary school teachers seem to be regarded with suspicion. And it's got worse as the gender gap has widened. I think both of those are in a much worse state than tech. However since I'm not in either of those industries, and I don't have any real interest in them and slashdot is a tech focussed site, you won't hear much from me apart from a general agreement that "wouldn't be nice if it was fixed".

From purely practical reasons more male nurses are needed as sometimes you need someone strong to deal with mobility impared heavy people, and physical strength is certainly generally a male trait. That of course ignores other things.

And for primary education, I think a lack of male role models, or more specifically a lack of *balance* is not good.

Oblig: https://xkcd.com/566/

I enjoy the other two movies. There I fucking said it.

It fact they were pretty fucking good when I figured them out, I'm going to watch them again. Like most of the people here whinging about we're fools today, they make it lame, because the second two matrix movies require someone to *think* instead of having the answer painted in ten metre high letters so they can have their 'ohhhhh' moment, when it dawns on them. Of course if you try to explain it, it makes it lame and them lame and you lame. Case in point Neon Genesis Evangelon, fucking awesome, unless you need it explained to you.

That's why people who say the second two movies suck are actually saying 'I have no attention span and I'm too lazy to figure out the second two movies' a consequence of their inanity and downright mental laziness. Now they have the idea in their head that it sucks, they prejudice the films for people who might enjoy them. Complain complain complain about star wars and star trek until they fucking take it off the air and then there is nothing. Fringe is a great example of how lame people didn't get it. Enders Game - didn't let you down if you enjoyed the book. Fuck them for spoiling my fun.

The producers took a risk to make something that *SCI FI* fans could enjoy and would challenge them and their reward was idiocracy through lamity so no more risky movies. Now movies are made to appeal to the mass moron and instead of making everyone a little bit smarter, it makes the smart people a little more jaded.

It is because of whining morons that we don't have risky movies approved by boring accountants. If you don't like movies like the second two matrix movies and movies like that because you can't pay attention for that long, I suggest the following:

• Don't watch the movie and continue with your inane mundane existence stuffing fast food in you mouth
• Shut the fuck up and let the people who enjoy watching and making these movies do their thing

This is not about you VanessaE however, it's been a long time and you reminded me it needed to be said when it was the topic. Simple to remember - STFU if you don't like the movie.

Oblig: https://xkcd.com/566/

Link

The point of that xkcd comic is that cancer drugs need to be safe as well as effective. A patient whose cancer cells are all dead is not better off if he is dead also.

I read the recipe for the salve and it does not appear to be something that would kill a patient. In fact, you could eat the medicine and it wouldn't hurt you; it's onions or leeks, garlic, wine, bile salts, and some small amount of copper. According to TFA the lab where they tested this smelled like garlic and people thought they were cooking food in the lab.

I'd be willing to have this stuff put on my skin.

P.S. I'm excited by the new technology being called "nanobots". (I think "nanobots" might be overselling what it is, but they didn't ask me.) A nanoscale cylinder is made that can hinge open; some drug is placed inside; and two latches hold it shut. The latches are designed to open only in the presence of a specific protein, such as a specific cancer cell type. Thus we have a nanoscale "robot" that can do exactly two things: it can open when it bumps into a specific cell type, and it can close again when it's away from the specific cell type.

This is exciting because it decouples the two problems of treating cancer: you need to kill the cancer cells and not hurt the patient. With this, you could use a very effective anti-cancer medicine that is as dangerous as a handgun bullet, but make sure that only a nanodose is delivered, and only to the cancer cells (I guess with high but not perfect accuracy).

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/ido-bachelet-dna-nanobots-summary-with.html

I tried to find out more about the human trial, but couldn't find anything beyond the video linked in the above article. If these nanobots really do get tested on a human and he really has his life saved by them, I expect significant news coverage. The claim is that the guy would be dead by summer with conventional treatment, so if it's real we won't have to wait more than a few months to read more about it.

Link

https://xkcd.com/1243/

Given the rogue unregulated nature of this airspace they want to exploit, I will claim the airspace over my property as my own and setup a few, ummm, butterfly nets...

Relevant XKCD

Except of course that it IS mathematics.

And the obligatory: xkcd

https://xkcd.com/1357/

http://xkcd.com/1332/

Bert

You are SO SURE it's going to be a massive flop that you post AC so the prediction cannot be traced to you...

We all know what that means

Flamethrowers aren't very good for removing snow, even though they're better than microwave ovens.

Good Code

'Nuff said.

Yanno, it's been years since I've coded (beyond looking thru code to tweak a definition here or there anyway). Decades, even.

But I was taught on the job that range checking of inputs and boundary conditions was essential to reliable code.

Obligatory XKCD reference.

xkcd to the rescue again. Try this:

makepassphrase()
{
return 4; // Chosen by fair dice roll. Guaranteed to be random
}

I think this xkcd is even more relevant:
https://xkcd.com/936/

You really should at least read XKCD before you make yourself look stupid. A password like that is trivially easy for a computer to guess, especially with modern hardware. You are patting yourself on the back for making it easier for software to crack any one of your passwords.

And it doesn't matter if you use different passwords on different sites or not. You are not that important. The hackers and their scripts just look for shitty passwords (like yours) on any given site and then see what they can do with it. They don't care who you actually are.

https://xkcd.com/538/

If they can't afford enough computer to crack your passphrase, they can still afford a $5 wrench

If they can't afford someone to reply to the correct article, they can still afford a $5 wench.

https://xkcd.com/538/

If they can't afford enough computer to crack your passphrase, they can still afford a $5 wrench

How's that any different from http://xkcd.com/936/?

And if you want to make it exceptionally strong, you combine those techniques. "correct horse battery staple" is strong, "correcT horXe batt6ery st&ple" is heat death of universe-strong and actually not much harder to learn.

Well, the obvious difference is you can't use "correct horse battery staple", because the NSA knows about that one. Their CIA colleagues probably managed to extract it using the $5 wrench decryption algorithm.

Better rules:
- It is not made up of real words in the dictionary

So something like correcthorsebatterystaple is a bad password now?

I said "like", actually using correcthorsebatterystaple is obviously a bad idea.

that we're doing it exactly backwards. https://xkcd.com/936/

Are we ever going to make strong passwords? Ever?

For God's sake, password strength meters were either invented by an incompetent or by the NSA to weaken the web.

Or if that is not possible then there has to be a mechanism for the pilot outside the cockpit to enter irrespective of what the other pilot does.

Agreed. The problem is how do you prevent someone unauthorized from getting hold of this "foolproof" entry method into the cockpit by any number of means, including the low tech solution...

Does it have the butterfly macro for real programmers?

            https://xkcd.com/378/

Where do you think all those random bugs came from? You can't fix what ain't broke.

What's really important is that they've used the Nano Butterfly Macro to patch Nano.

Does it have the butterfly macro for real programmers?

            https://xkcd.com/378/

Like most recent technical advances, this is merely a corollary of pre-existing xkcd research.

Phone theft may sound rare, but it isn't uncommon, and thieves know that they can just grab the phone, stuff it in a tinfoil envelope, let it sit for a week or two until the battery dies, disassemble it, then sell the screen, case, and other parts for a good amount of cash.

If they're going to sell the phone for parts, why wait for the battery to die? Beyond this, why not simply just remove the SIM card instead. Like a lot of ./ers you're over-thinking things to the point where you've completely ignored the obvious solution, relevent XKCD

Getting the phone wiped isn't a problem for a phone thief, they dont care about your personal data. They want to sell the hardware to make a buck. So they simply take it to a pawn shop run by someone who will get the phone wiped. They want a blank phone to sell.

Even IMEI blocking is useless as you can just sell it over the border and anyone unscrupulous enough to steal a phone wont think twice at selling a phone that doesn't work (and no, there will never be a shortage of suckers).

I think he meant Randall Munroe, apparntly he's some kind of blagger who draws stick figures in his spare time...

Fads fade. Tablet sales continue to accelerate year after year, and show no signs of slowing. People have now had many years to decide "meh, those aren't useful", but instead they continue to snap them up at ever increasing rates.

The sales numbers don't lie. Just because YOU don't like them doesn't mean the average person doesn't. Slashdot readers virtually always predict the opposite of what succeeds in the marketplace.

Tablets are here to stay. Deal.

I've had a delightful time explaining to my trainees that *EVERY SERVER SHOULD ONLY BE RUN IN A LANG=C ENVIRONEMNT". Unicode is *bad*, *bad*, *bad* for systems work of any sort.

And in a related XKCD post:

https://xkcd.com/327/

That works, until your servers have to process any kind of foreign characters whatsoever. This is a fault that only affects OS X, only when using Google Chrome. It's not (to my knowledge) a weakness of Unicode.

I've had a delightful time explaining to my trainees that *EVERY SERVER SHOULD ONLY BE RUN IN A LANG=C ENVIRONEMNT". Unicode is *bad*, *bad*, *bad* for systems work of any sort.

And in a related XKCD post:

                      https://xkcd.com/327/

Yes, it's exceedingly well-known, but congratulations; you're one of today's Lucky 10,000!