palordrolap

Let’s assume that they should have colours and that the three colours picture here are the correct ones, then, IMO, Ro should be red and carrying a rock, Sham should be yellow and carrying the scissors, and Bo should be blue and carrying the paper.

It’s not clear who is who here, but they don’t fit with my colour-item pairings.

Reasoning: Sham is vaguely like French “jaune” which is yellow. B and P are related sounds. There’s a bit more to it but the rest is mostly obvious.

Long was it known fact: Windows versions and OG Star Trek films. Every other one was terrible.

… but I note there are a few important releases missing there. 3.0, Win2K and 8.1 especially, and we might argue for 3.1 and 98SE and maybe even the unreleased Longhorn too.

Using AI to find errors that can then be independently verified sounds reasonable.

The danger would be in assuming that it will find all errors, or that an AI once-over would be “good enough”. This is what most rich AI proponents are most interested in, after all; a full AI process with as few costly humans as possible.

The lesser dangers would be 1) the potential for the human using the tool to lose or weaken their own ability to find bugs without external help and 2) the AI finding something that isn’t a bug, and the human “fixing” it without a full understanding that it wasn’t wrong in the first place.

It’s a fairly common trope in science fiction, and might even be science fact. The idea is that realities split from every decision point, some we’re aware of and some - due to quantum fluctuations - we’re not. Indeed, it might only be the quantum weirdness that’s valid and human decisions are merely emergent phenomena.

If you take a look at any quantum experiment, you get things like particles interfering with themselves and apparently appearing in many places at once. Tissue thin neighbouring universes along some probability axis interfering with each other, one for each possible position of a particle, would explain what’s known as the “many worlds interpretation”. The MWI doesn’t talk about a probability axis though. That’s the fictional part until proven otherwise.

It would still be a dimension even if things were more discrete though. Like, separately identifiable parallel universes where no intermediates exist. Hopping from one to the other could still be interpreted as moving within some extra dimension, and there’s nothing really stopping us from calling that probability.

Is this the first human trial, or just the first officially sanctioned one?

IIRC there was that one guy who experimented on himself and cured his lactose intolerance.

… found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY

Nearly 8 years ago.

So. True story. I did this a few years ago. As an adult. Spun around while looking at the carpet and watched it turn into a circular blur. “This was fun as a kid, why don’t I do this any more?”

Then I stopped and regretted absolutely everything for about 15 minutes afterwards. Was very nearly sick everywhere.

Do not recommend. Strictly for dogs. And kids.

All five dimensions (three space, one time, one probability) exist as a solid unchanging block, an enormous, incomprehensible overarching solution to some equally enormous, incomprehensible mathematical equation.

And if you look at it from one particular direction it almost certainly looks like forty-two.

Openwraps, Hail Marys and cheesebreads.

Why Hail Mary? Burrito means “little donkey”.

Whenever the character came back from the future, his future incarnation had a mouth. And he was drawn with one occasionally before it, uh, stopped being cool to read the strip.

Hate to say it, but I think Adams would have been OK with this. Not with being hated and dead, obviously, but you know.

TBH I haven’t seen (or sought) White Ninja in years, beyond that one “c’mon, do something” poking with a stick meme that escaped into the wild.

Doesn’t work like that for me. If I see someone in pain, I feel their pain. If they cry out, it hurts to my core. That’s empathy.

The hard part for me is not being able to do anything about it. It is often not my place, I don’t know the correct course of action or I don’t have the means. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t play on my conscience.

And it’s harder still is seeing those with the means apparently be able to completely ignore any empathy or conscience they might have. Maybe they don’t have any. Maybe they can’t tell the difference between that and annoyance at the noises the person in pain is making, so they ignore it or try to shut the injured up in other ways.

Well shoot. I was holding out for a change of heart from him because I really resonated with his comics back in the day.

Unfortunately, it seems he only ever had sympathy for those whose misfortunes he shared and never came around on that.

That first tale is clearly a case of when tech aura goes bad.

I mean, we like to let the non-techs believe that our mere presence can cause technology to behave, and we might even like to believe that ourselves, but that comes back to bite us if the hardware breaks instead.

… I’m not saying the tech should have grabbed something heavy and made a show of threatening the device, but I don’t think it would have hurt!

No. You’re right. I’ll never completely understand until my bank account goes negative. Or I have no bank account. And I have to go a day or more without eating.

But I do have anxiety. And a very limited income. My grocery shop spend for two weeks now is about the same price as I paid for one week, fifteen years ago. I have to budget every little thing.

So while I can’t fully understand, I have more understanding than you think I do, and it’s not just me that needs to be careful about ignorance.

This was a long time ago. I think the replacement card I got was the first I got that had a chip in it.

Or I’m misremembering and it was the chip on the card that was acting strangely. Either way, the card was basically worn out.

Not strictly true.

If you have a card long enough (several years between issue and expiry, say) and you use it often enough, the magnetic strip can start to fade and transactions can fail. More and more often. Edit: It might have been a chip problem rather than a magnetic strip problem. I can’t remember now, but it makes no real difference to the story.

And sometimes there might be weeks with no trouble and then you’ll get that one card reader that’s particularly finicky and there’s a cold sweat moment as you realise you don’t have enough cash. “Try it again. It’s done this before.” Please work. Pleeease.

This usually happened to me in the supermarket, so that scene from InnerSpace was playing on loop in my head.

After the third or fourth time, I called the bank and they sent me a new one ASAP.

Surprisingly wholesome for Cyanide & Happiness, tbh.

Where are their communications? Who visits a government website without needing to?

To me it makes sense that they should cover as much ground as possible and have accounts on all major platforms as well as making announcements on TV and radio.

And in order to do so they should have their own accounts on there in order that their message gets across directly without having to go through a third party that has an account on there.

Now, when that site starts espousing “free speech” of the sort that only they like, then it might be a good idea to not use that particular platform any more, because that brings in the third party interference that wasn’t there in the first place, even if the site was technically third party.

But hey whatever, now let’s make, say, the BBC the mouthpiece of the government - it’s not like the Tories didn’t try really hard to do that when they were in power - and have everyone report on that. Far better.

6 bit, 6 bit, 7 bit? Huh. Only 5, 6, and 6, is needed for 24-hr binary-coded-sexagesimal… ohh. It’s binary-coded-decimal-coded-sexagesimal.

15:43:25 in the last panel. Or about a quarter to four in the afternoon.

I suppose the 5,6,6 BCS option would need a lot more mental effort.