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https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/s...

https://xkcd.com/1162/

Used that one as desktop for a while....nice conversation starter and great trigger of fundies...

That's Spirit.
You want: https://xkcd.com/1504/ for opportunity

https://xkcd.com/927/

https://xkcd.com/927/

Obligatory XKCD on Kerbal Space Program: https://xkcd.com/1356/

Again, I agree with what you are saying overall -- but I feel you are missing my main point about social momentum and proof-of-concept.

There is a *huge* difference socially between having essentially nothing but an idea (what we have now, e.g. James P. Hogan's Two Faces of Tomorrow novel, Gerry O'Neill's non-fiction writings, or some paper idea studies like NASA's 1980 Advanced Automation for Space Missions http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/... ) versus having a detailed collaboratively-developed simulation model based on the best science you have which brings together thousands of knowledgeable engineers and scientists (like Linux brought together thousands of knowledgeable programmers). We're going to need a lot of design thinking for something extremely complex like self-replicating space habitat that can duplicate itself from sunlight and asteroidal/lunar/martian ore which includes all the chemical pathways and mechanical designs.

Think of it this way -- if you were a multi-billionaire, who would you give some funding to for people to go further for a space habitat (like by building prototype hardware)? Some group with a hand-wavy idea? Or some group with detailed (but maybe inaccurate for the reasons you outlined) simulation models that have been worked on for knowledgeable engineers for a decade in their spare time as a labor of love to get as close as they can without having the money for hardware tests which they know are important?

Or if you hired your own people to build space habitats, who would you be more likely to hire (at least for part of the design team)? Engineers who had no knowledge of such simulations or the core engineers who had developed such systems or used aspects of them to design and build other smaller projects?

Also, don't get too hung up on the mechanical/physical limits of current simulations. There is also a lot of design work to do related to operations research, logistics, and chemical pathways related to knowing what materials and tools you need to make other materials and tools.

Consider the issue of how to make an airlock seal. There can be a lot of work done today on logistics like all the prerequisites of how for materials to make a flexible deal for an airlock door -- even if some of the mechanical design is still questionable (like whether that specific seal actually works as well as you hoped for a specific work pod's door). NASA already has made airlocks that work OK -- so presumably there is a way to find out what materials they used and then work backwards from there -- perhaps documenting a range of possible seals and then figuring out what each needs as prerequisites (and so on, recursively).

Sure, "Space Engineers" may not be realistic -- especially as it tries to be a game and not a CAD/CAM program. But something like it could be a lot more realistic. And that is a step forward -- even if it is not the final product.

We also can look forward twenty years to what might be possible for testing any detailed designs we make by then. 3D printing is bringing down the cost of testing mechanical prototypes -- and in twenty years is likely to be even better. Also, simulations continue to get better as hardware becomes cheaper and more available. How good might general simulations be in twenty year for testing designs? For example, maybe someday we will actually be able to simulate water molecules and solutions much better than we can now and so atomic-level chemistry simulations for completely new chemical processes may be much more useful. But until then, there are handbooks for chemical engineering with many cookbook recipes if you are willing to work withing the limits of what we know well (even if space may pose extra challenges for earth-derived recipes)

Another aspect is that commercial designs (like you mention developing) tend to be optimized and push the envelope of what

I'll admit to being a relatively old fart. Can someone please ELI5 the industri-wide obsession with emojis? To me, it rates a divison or two lower on "picks my interest"-scale than a new font. And I generally find fonts quite uninteresting. obl xkcd link

No, honestly: I would like to know. I see no innovation in adding more emojis, no basic need covered and it is not as if a world of new possibilities suddenly opens itself because 157 new emojis were added. I am not against the very idea of emojis. I just don't understand the general hype and attention to emojis.

I actually feel a slight bit of secondhand embarassment for this hangup. Is it just me?

I would prefer different access levels (like user vs root) that unlock with different passwords. For example, one password opens the phone with all the regular apps and another opens with regular and sensitive apps like banking. This gives plausible deniability which a two user setup does not. I am much more concerned about some evil citizen stealing than the government. If a thief can't technically crack it, they can always use the wrench" method https://xkcd.com/538/. Plausible deniability would help against that.

I had an LG with something almost like it. The guest mode was accessed by entering a different password. But, it was a guest mode and didn't look and feel like the regular login. LineageOS has protected apps but it is not really "deniable" that some stuff is locked. It would be great if they could implement something like dual passwords.

Replacing a failed HDD is going to be a real bitch?

At our scale, messing with individual HDD's isn't economical... we'll just replace the entire datacenter when necessary.

or... The admin will enter a command to blow electronic fuses on the failed HDD's data and power lines to ensure it fully disconnects from the backplane, then copy and paste a new License Key received from the storage manufacturer to activate one of the pre-stocked replacement bays. Either that, or the storage will be All Solid-State with an automatic failover system and artificially reduced capacity to provide increased redundancy. Ship it with 4X the modules required for the unit to work over its service life within the expected failure rates, and there will be no need to replace anything.

https://xkcd.com/162/

So now we have *THREE* "standards"?

Well, once again, this is relevant.

The whole point of standards is obviated when everyone decides they can do it better and start all over.

Nobody wants standards (at least, big companies don't), they want vendor lock in.

Who remembers being told we are heading into a new ice age?

Sigh. In the 1970s, some people in the media claimed that there would be an ice age; scientists were in fact already talking about global warming https://skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm.

Why do we pay attention to this crap. It's just like a new fad diet.

Because this "crap" happens to be pretty accurate and pretty concerning. See e.g. https://xkcd.com/1732/, and look at changing sea ice levels http://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/images/cryosphere/sotc/arctic-antarctic-anomaly-trend-1978-2017.png http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html.

obligatory https://xkcd.com/1357/

https://xkcd.com/327/

Oh, Is it time for the meme redux?

Puny iPhone ...

The xKCD Phone 2000 has 5 cameras!

So he will judge based on his biases. If he agrees with the position, positive karma. Otherwise, negative. Just like pretty much every other news outlet.

Yeah, just like this, but replace "standards" with "news." https://xkcd.com/927/

https://xkcd.com/898/

Good enough for me!

Earth's Land Mammals by Weight: https://xkcd.com/1338/

Explained: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wi...

It references a 2002 book: "The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change".

So, while this topic is very important, I'm not sure what in the study is actually "news"? Maybe the low percentage of ocean biomass (which I feel is hard to believe)?

If you found out what the scan database table name is you could model your plates on this idea...
https://xkcd.com/327/

Yeah, as always there's an XKCD for this...

https://xkcd.com/1200/

Hi,

We've got some updates for your PC

This might take several minutes.

The PC may reboot several times.

I love the vagueness of the messages ;-)

It's not like Microsoft knows.

The college that conducted the study is in the Philippines. The experiments were run against the college's student email accounts... which does raise a few easily-dismissed ethical concerns, but I digress...

There's really no reason to assume the USA would be involved at all, other than the reference to NIST, which isn't too surprising. Many places refer to NIST standards, just to avoid a certain standardization problem.

There are a few of them, here and there in the what-if section, and two also in the main section, and also there, if you hover with the mouse. I wouldn't be surpised if others appear, however: it is such a deep argument, after all.

There are a few of them, here and there in the what-if section, and two also in the main section, and also there, if you hover with the mouse. I wouldn't be surpised if others appear, however: it is such a deep argument, after all.

There are a few of them, here and there in the what-if section, and two also in the main section, and also there, if you hover with the mouse. I wouldn't be surpised if others appear, however: it is such a deep argument, after all.

There are a few of them, here and there in the what-if section, and two also in the main section, and also there, if you hover with the mouse. I wouldn't be surpised if others appear, however: it is such a deep argument, after all.

...xkcd quote

Bycyklen described the hack as "rather primitive," ...

Obligatory: xkcd

I was thinking more about this one: https://xkcd.com/1046/

https://xkcd.com/1626/

Good old little Bobby Tables. . .

I find people getting scared about a robot uprising silly at this point. The mind is incredibly complex. The closest that can be done to reproducing it is limited in a lot of ways. I'm a lot more worried about a bug popping up in something like an airplane causing a crash then AI overlords. https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ illustrates how silly the idea is. It's a lot more unlikely because a lot of the devices shown aren't connected to the internet. In the end my biggest worry would be society having problems because of how reliant we are on computers. Even then it would be fairly challenging completely compromise the whole internet just because of how much of a patchwork the internet is set up. Different hardware setups with different software versions. The simplest way of course is through tricking people but that wouldn't do it for everyone. Basically it would be possible but fairly challenging because of everything involved.

so what? they play audio through my mailbox slot and tell it to play a podcast?

Relevant.

It works even better when the homeowner isn't aware the order was placed, like in this story.

If you have a listening device in your house that is not hooked up to some form of electronic payment, you are doing better than those with a credit card on file, but still far worse than those without a listening device in their house.

Feels like we're increasingly closer to the day where we need this: https://xkcd.com/632/ Then again, machines can already solve a lot of captcha codes so the point may be moot.

I rather see them invent a system that makes it easy and inexpensive for any business to receive and confirm appointments online.

There are many of those that already exist. All of them are incompatible with each other, and everyone is pushing their own "standard".

Place-phone-call is about the closest thing we have to a standard.

If your response is "Then Google should push it's own standard", 1) they already do, and 2) https://xkcd.com/927/

And during that ice age, Earth had to support a human population of 10 million, living in hunter-gatherer cultures.

But now, since an ice age is such fun, we'll try the same thing, only in the other direction, before the end of the century. Obligatory

IMHO, it is better to use a tab.

I know this is hard to believe, but people aren't born knowing everything.
For everything you think everyone knows, roughly 10,000 new people learn it every day.

Nailed you.

And, not that you will read it, but Yes, people want meaningful work.

You are arrogant, egocentric, and probably too young to have experienced the soul-crushing sense of worthlessness that comes after the first few months of cold-turkey retirement.

You will eat your words if you ever directly experience the stark reality of pointless work for any length of time.

I miss a real email about once a year from SPAM filters in Gmail, and it's usually a shady email. I literally never check my Gmail SPAM just because.

Seriously?

Let's take Linus, he somehow still uses Gmail. I'm too small a fry to send him pull requests, but I did make an April first one. (The mail archive web display mangles UTF-8 but it's correct in the actual mail, pretty vital for this actual patch set.). See Linus' complaint. Here we have correspondence from someone who had just participated in a two-way thread with Linus (something about modversions), the mail is GPG signed by a key one indirect node away, the mail being a well-formed pull request of the kind he gets tons of every day.

How do you get a MORE valid mail for this particular recipient? (Aside of runes support in the tty layer not being an entirely reasonable feature.)

I hear him complain about having to fish a pull request out of Gmail's "spam" roughly monthly, and that's only cases when he bothers to mention this and I happen to read that particular response (reading the entirety of LKML is not humanly possible).

Thus, Gmail is so bad in the false positive department that I don't think it's usable. Even worse, when it discards a mail this way, it doesn't notify the sender the way any sane server is supposed to!

I love how every day we're getting closer and closer to having XKCD become reality! https://xkcd.com/1425/

Is IRC still a thing? https://xkcd.com/1782/

Obvious sarcasm post. WHOOSH. https://xkcd.com/1627/

WOOSH https://xkcd.com/1627/

Dear Editors,

Please save us some trouble and just start including this in every Alexa/Siri story posted here.

Thanks and regards,

--Z.

Obligatory xkcd

Relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/792/

Aaaah, the naive days, back when we had a hard time believing that Google could ever do evil.

there: https://xkcd.com/1338/