Slashdot Mirror

obligatory xkcd

Keep in mind you always have the option of NOT using this feature if you're that paranoid, or are legitimately in danger of some goon cutting off your finger and using it to unlock your phone or computer. Also, if you're worried about your spouse secretly unlocking your phone while you're asleep and snooping on you, then you both have some bigger issues to work out.

In the case of AppleID, all you have to do is reset the device or leave it unlocked for 48 hours, and you'll be required to use a password instead of the fingerprint.

If you're going to be dumb enough to sign up for such a silly service, chances are you're dumb enough to use it on your main bank account, and then dumb enough to lose your phone (without a passcode enabled) or to leave your facebook logged in and unattended.

The whole thing is a minefield. Although it'll probably take off, as xkcd predicts.

By Your Command.

http://xkcd.com/927/

Create a function to generate a random key.

Competing standards is almost spot-on concerning a study about too many studies. But there is also Meta-Analysis.

Competing standards is almost spot-on concerning a study about too many studies. But there is also Meta-Analysis.

Oblig XKCD

Obligatory XKCD

Good one! I think this one is also apropos:

http://xkcd.com/1102/

The elimination of racist police tactics is already paying dividends. Shootings and murder are already up over 20%!

http://xkcd.com/552/

Obligatory XKCD.

Hopefully, only 40% of it.

These rates might not hold. There was a time I was going at some 8784 wives/year rate. The very next day it dropped to a mere 366 wives/year. Now it has dwindled to 0.038461538 wives/year. What I am driving at is, these rates might not hold. http://xkcd.com/605/

How can anyone think this will work?

Obligatory

http://xkcd.com/765/

The mouseover text is pretty good, too.

I have to assume that yesterday's XKCD was aimed squarely at the iWatch.

You know, for a site called "Thingiverse", they don't seem to have very many 3D files for printing plastic dongs.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/63/

It's common knowledge that Google has already been using consumer-grade drives for all of their servers. Because if a drive fails, "so what, we have another one over there holding the data..."

This is pretty much similar to what happened with GMail. They came out and said, "here, have a gigabyte for free!" and everyone was like, "yeah, right..."

Google has storage leaking out of its ears, and generates massive amounts of new data every day... sticking other people's data into the pile wouldn't even be a straw that breaks the camel's back... The camel is already hauling a hojillion ton rock, a straw isn't going to do shit.

DISCLAIMER: I worked for Google, this does not in any way reflect Google's official word on this news.

The problem is that it requires insane amounts of money for possibly very little reward.

Okay, I'll bite. How many more quadrillions of dollars worth of useful minerals outside most of earth's gravity well does the moon need for the reward to be more than 'possibly very little'?

At the same time, there are much more useful projects that we could work on. Finding (and implementing) a good replacement for fossil fuels is a good one.

This fallacious argument, again...

Having roughly seven billion people on the planet means we can do both of these things and still have money and manpower left over to do the other several million things people would like to do.

I feel like Randall was trolling /. with this one, but it's right on the money here:
http://xkcd.com/1497/

Oblig. xkcd. 1% of anything but Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc. is still a remarkably small number. Progress? Yes. Newsworthy or worth being associated with "year of _______"? No.

http://xkcd.com/1252/

http://xkcd.com/927/

http://xkcd.com/619/

Fixed that for you
(Somehow it seems wrong that actually "fixing that for you" borders on the ironic.)

And why does the phone company do this? Because the spammers pay them decent money, and most people don't realize that the phone company's involved, so they get mad at the spammers and not AT&T or Verizon.

So, the solution is to send a burly man with a wrench to the CEO's office and ask him politely to stop letting companies specify different caller ID numbers, if he would like his kneecaps to remain intact.

Nope, not an executive order at all. Please cite the source (other than the crazy blogs). Yes I'm a gun owner.

Oh good lord. How pedantic are you trying to be?

Obama promised to implement as much gun control as he could without involving Congress, later, ATF issues new decision reclassifying commonly used sporting ammunition in order to ban it. Would you be happy if the technically incorrect term "executive order" were replaced by "Presidentially-directed regulatory policy alteration"?

I'll remind you that executive orders aren't in the Constitution, but are derived from an implicit constructive reading of the law. So, be careful how far you push the pedantry.

"been shown to cause genetic damage in mice"
Well there go my plans for scotch guarding my mice.
But seriously Citation Needed, "been shown to cause genetic damage in mice" is the "Kills Cancer Cells in a Petri Dish" of hazardous chemicals.

I hope nobody already posted this
http://xkcd.com/638/

Good People doing nothing allows evil to prosper. Be it Somalia or Nazi Germany.

There were plenty of "Good People" (tm) in Nazi Germany. Many of them did a lot more than nothing; resistance ranged from non-violent underground protests (White Rose) to violent attempts at assassination. "Good People" (tm) are no guarantee against tyranny and this entire topic is irrelevant in a discussion about the proper bounds of Government.

Since time immortal Governments have claimed the right to coin and regulate the currency. This is not a new concept that started with the Federal Reserve Act. If you're going to upend a few thousand years of precedent why don't you explain to us why your desired cryptocurrency solution is better than the system you're railing against? Particularly since the Government (or anyone with enough guns really) can still compel you to participate in the system if push comes to shove.

Necessary link http://xkcd.com/927/

How does that apply here? The yet-to-be-released Mantle is AMD-specific (or at least to get the most out of it you need GCN architecture which is AMD-only), Metal is Apple-specific, DirectX 12 is Microsoft-only (and thus far seems to be exclusive to Windows 10) so the only actual one that is a platform and vendor -agnostic specification here is Vulkan.

Necessary link http://xkcd.com/927/

Yet, Apple hasn't backed down on their disk encryption.

My guess isn't that the NSA is demanding it, it's that vendors are more likely to be fucking it up.

Oblig XKCD. NSA has other ways to figure this out.

There is one upside to the Michael-Bay-Trek movies though: they demonstrate conclusively that Jjabrams is very capable of making a Star Wars film.

Lucas made not one but THREE brand new Star Wars films. Had the droids and light sabres and everything.
ANYONE can make a Star Wars movie. Internet is full of fan-made movies. Some of them pretty good.
Trick is to make a GOOD Star Wars movie while maintaining the spirit of the original trilogy.
And that second part is the HARD part.

Think Matrix sequels.
Hero's journey ended long ago, but they kept making more content, making a mess of it.
And those are just the difficulties that any director would face when trying to continue the story from almost 40 years ago.

Jar Jar and his cohorts live by his bullshit philosophy of "mystery box".
They even sell that shit as a product - a lame collection of overpriced card decks for card tricks. In a box. With a question mark on it.
Translated to storytelling - their idea of a story is that the "mystery" and "cool" is what drives the story, so the more unexplained and shiny shit you pile up, the more mystery and cool there will be.
And that WORKS. It really does.

Until they have to finish the story.
Then it turns out that the whole "magical" journey was about something utterly unremarkable, that almost all those unexplained elements were simply meaningless (cause they can't ALL be vitally important), that a lot of "cool" was forced, and that there is this huge pile of shit standing there in the living room - and they have to find a meaning to it all.

Which usually ends up with a lot of really smart people on all sides of the story suddenly starting to act like complete idiots - or accidents start to happen. Or both.
Improbable things suddenly become the norm, logic goes out the window, and it turns out that all the buildup and mysticism was leading to something very empty or simply stupid.

The GOOD news is that the whole thing is a Disney movie. Yeah, I know.

They will NOT let it be anything less than a super-money-making machine for decades more.
MANY Bothans may die, but the movies WILL work. There are facilities. In the desert.
And many new flavors and colors of Soylent apart from the green.
Movies! WILL! WORK!

But it will be no better than your average Disney animated feature - minus the songs.
Someone else will come up with the musical version. It is unavoidable.

If this ever happens, expect Fact Engine Optimization to become a new industry, and do exactly what SEO did to the reliability and utility of search engines.

Finally! It is the tautology club's moment to shine

http://xkcd.com/927/

Obligatory XKCD.

Relevant XKCD http://xkcd.com/359/

In http://xkcd.com/1492/
Columbus sailed the ocean gold

There is big difference between the Tom Cornsweet illusion which is also addressed in the XKCD http://xkcd.com/1492 Also this explanation https://www.youtube.com/watch?... While both are well done, they miss an important point. The Cornsweet paradox works for everybody. Universally. The dress paradox not. For most people (75 percent in one poll), the paradox does not work. (I myself find it hard to believe that some see initially a blue dress). But it seems that different brains work differently. This is why the phenomenon must be interesting for psychologists.

http://xkcd.com/1492/

It is blue and black, but if you up the lighting, and/or display it against a white background the black lace part looks golden.

Some programmes on TV over here (including the excellent Last Leg - see it on C4 player) had it on the show, it really is blue and black.

I forget the actual %'s and quote, and couldn't find it, but I remember one of the creators of the guitar game genre explaining that he and his musician friends wanted everyone to experience the fun of being a musician, but knew that becoming one takes a TON of effort.

So, the goal was to give a lot of the fun of being a real musician, but with a fraction of the effort.

Most people that like Rock Band or Guitar Hero don't want to learn how to be a real musician. They just want to have fun, and they do!

My point is, quit trying to point out that they should make it more realistic (real guitars, etc), because that defeats the whole point. If you already know how to play, go play! It will usually be much more fun than Rock Band.
But, if you don't know how to play and don't want to spend years honing your art, just go have fun.

Also, this: http://www.xkcd.com/359/

Pretty much this. And with Rock Band, there is a "Pro" setting where you can hook up a real guitar peripheral and actually learn to play if you so desire (The keyboard will function as an actual MIDI device and can be used in Pro mode, and if you have a digital drum set and a MIDI controller, you can use a real drum set for Pro mode as well).

I had been planning on buying a MIDI drum set so I could learn to play while playing Rock Band, but shortly before I could afford one, they announced they weren't going to be releasing any more DLC, and the new consoles were about to come out, so I decided against spending that much money on something I may not be able to use in a year or two if/when my console dies.

I forget the actual %'s and quote, and couldn't find it, but I remember one of the creators of the guitar game genre explaining that he and his musician friends wanted everyone to experience the fun of being a musician, but knew that becoming one takes a TON of effort.

So, the goal was to give a lot of the fun of being a real musician, but with a fraction of the effort.

Most people that like Rock Band or Guitar Hero don't want to learn how to be a real musician. They just want to have fun, and they do!

My point is, quit trying to point out that they should make it more realistic (real guitars, etc), because that defeats the whole point. If you already know how to play, go play! It will usually be much more fun than Rock Band.
But, if you don't know how to play and don't want to spend years honing your art, just go have fun.

Also, this: http://www.xkcd.com/359/

So, let's boot up a Muslim AI.

Now, it's got to pray 5x a day. Does it get beheaded because its NTP server is out of sync? (And that looses it's terror slightly when you can simply attach it back again -- that is if it even has one.)
Is it apostasy if you swap out a ROM?
Does it get one shrink-wrapped virgin with 72 interchangeable parts, or 72 "no user serviceable parts inside"?
Is it a sin if you don't agree to their EULA?
What is this guy going to think about all of this?

And as long as I'm !PC here: "AIs running around with a reason to discriminate, hate, and kill folks that believe differently than they do." Sounds like ISIL absorbed some Apple/Microsoft/Google fanboys. Just think -- ACTUAL Flamewars! And just wait for the rabid liberal/conservative bots: we need to get this running first: XKCD virus aquarium vs an real-life one.


Yes, I know, it's nothing at all to joke about. But I'm an atheist living in the bible belt -- I've been scared for decades and these local people don't want to kill me, just convert me ... if they don't ignore me to start with. ISIL wants to kill us both -- tEofEimF. And if I don't make jokes about it, I'd be a blithering idiot (... hmph, maybe it's not helping much after all.)

You forgot to use sudo command!

http://xkcd.com/791/

With my father my biggest regret is not asking him to write these when we knew his cancer was terminal.

I had great plans to teach him how to use his webcam to record videos for me and my kids and the cancer just took over. XKCD is of course relevant. Twice

Write letters. Hard drives fail, websites go out of business. A letter photocopied and put a few places should survive most things.

With my father my biggest regret is not asking him to write these when we knew his cancer was terminal.

I had great plans to teach him how to use his webcam to record videos for me and my kids and the cancer just took over. XKCD is of course relevant. Twice

Write letters. Hard drives fail, websites go out of business. A letter photocopied and put a few places should survive most things.

But only if you have root.

http://xkcd.com/1343/