xkcd

Digital preservation is a fascinating and criminally undervalued field. There's detailed standards out there for ways for digital information to survive (and remain readable) many years after the deaths of both the individuals and the institutions that maintained them--just for one example, by peri...

Just embed the data in porn images. It will be around, somewhere, forever.

Am I missing something? the graph in the comic doesn't change scale. I assume the point is that the hockey stick we see at the end is just the sort of variation that we are not able to identify in the historical records (as Randall points out). It would be a more convincing argument if climate scie...

I was going to take issue with "Capable of intentionally releasing poop mid-flight" being no for planes, but the wikipedia article for blue ice says planes can't do so deliberately, and I'm not going to go searching for a more authoritative source at work. Also, TIL that you can poop a 72...

Moore's Law? What about Kryder's Law? Kryder's law isn't really a thing. All it's predictions fail, and it's not based on scient or manufacturing, but marketing. It was a weak attempt for Kryder to get his own "Moore's Law" It's fallen well short of the 40% rate. On a side note, When was ...

Helicopter are not flying cars. Please stop saying that. It uses wings for crying out loud.

When people say flying cars, they are talking about the 1940/50's flying cars on the cover of magazines. For an example see 5th Element. THOSE are flying cars.

Self-flying planes do exist, in that passenger airliners are on autopilot for almost the complete route. On the other hand, self driving cars are going to take a very long time, because it turns out it is hard to make a self driving car that human driven cars can coexist with, so self driving cars ...

Self-driving cars coming soon: no. Read David A. Mindell's recent "Our Robots, Ourselves". Mindell has worked on semiautonomous ocean exploration robots since the beginning, and is also a private pilot with considerable "electronic cockpit" experience. In spite of the ignorant p...

Today's comic made me happy. Thank you, I needed that.

So many posts factually wrong, and ignorant. From people who clearly don't understand the IPCC report, to people who thing the models aren't right even though they have made major prediction of events we didn't know about, to people posting media hypes about 'global cooling' form the 70s. Those peop...

Another case of a physicists thinking something is trick becasue it's outside their experience. Why are physicists the worst at that?
It's simply the way the eyes perceive that mix of those frequency.

To be clear, everyone does it, but physicists are so arrogant about it.

There have been times and places -- the big majority of times, as I understand it -- when there were no big organized police forces. Not really. There has always been people in authority. We are just having a time where the police have to answer to the people, and they are expected to work withing ...

Yes, we will censor you here. We are not the government, and this is not a public space. I'm sure you would make people leave your house if they were being dicks to you or to your other guests, right? If so, well that's basically what we do. If not, well then you're a pretty shitty host and I doubt...

" Any two people who meet are unlikely to have a language in common" AS an American, I would have slightly worse then 1 in 7 chance of finding someone who spoke English. Someone who Speaks Mandarin Chinese would have a slightly greater the 1 in 7 chance of finding someone who they can spea...

"But with world electricity consumption pushing 2 terawatts,"
You should clarify 2TWh.

When looking at electrical consumption, most global data reports it on TWh per yr (over 20,000 TWh/yr if anyone is interested).


Luke also lifted the x-wing, just not very far.

Why is it bad? measure the impact someone has on social media seems like it would be interesting.

You can see the influence someone vs. there knowledge in the area they are influencing.

Sure, some people could use it as an ego score, but so what?

no, I had never heard of them before today.

tommy turtle wrote:
The statement you quote was to set the stage for the discussion of Coriolis effect, and why there can't be *any* at or near the Equator.

*cough Typhoon Vameicough*

FYI:A typhoon is what a hurricane that forms n the pacific is called.

Out of hurricane names?
Why not Zoidberg?

And now the voice in your head sounds like a Jewish lobster, maybe.

A) Both of them have a long history of being anti-nuclear, make money from FUD about Nuclear - red Flag B) The data is too short of a time period. Red Flag C) Infant mortality has decreased in the last decade, this COULD be returning to the mean. D) She doesn't seem to understand the Inverse sqr law...

in the UK you can get homeopathy on the National Health. For patients with intractable conditions it can be a very cost effective solution The treatment is effective because of the Placebo effect False. The treatment is not effective by any objective measure. In some cases people claim to feel bett...

Thank you. Thanks you thank you. I have made the argument many times. It like when people think big pharma is hiding a cure. That is basically saying that the upper managments is so nice, they pass up on getting HUGE bonuses, and hurting their competitors so the people that eventually replace them c...

I had to look up that brown blue orange = 16K resistance, I feel shamed :( I didn't, and it's due to a pungent mnemonic taught to me and the rest of my Basic Electronics class when I was a high school freshman. 0 - Bad (black) 1 - Boys (brown) 2 - Rape (red) 3 - Our (orange) 4 - Young (yellow) 5 - ...

pretty sure that Randall posted this, sat back with a chronometer, and counted the time to see the first post trying to resolve this...maybe there's a poll... some betting.... yeah... and the "one mile=one kilometer" joke is for THOSE COUNTRIES that still uses miles... Don't tell me you a...

"Not much, What's up?"

That is funny as hell. Well done.

It's H1N1, not swine flu! :x No, it is swine flu. The term "H1N1" refers to a broad family of flus, so it is not specific enough. If you're really keen to avoid a connection to pigs or Mexico, you'll have to say something like "the strain of H1N1 that started in 2009 that is most not...

A couple of things: 1) there was n issue in 2000 with many financial systems. for those of you old enough to recall, losts of money and hard work went on for about 5 years. well, even before then, but mostly the last 5 years. I watched several financial tests systems collpase. In fact, I was flown t...

I would love this script.

Another alt tag:
"Who the hell mails Bobcat Goldthwiat."

How is that dishonest? Do you really think most people don't realize that a million is 1/1000 of a billion? "They're the american voters." Yes, and as a whole they understand that a billion is a thousand millions. "These are the people who don't care what the policy is as long as the...

People realize that 165 Million is a lot of money to be giving out from a failed company.
And it is, they are also outraged at the principle of the thing. People know there is a large difference.

And the tests is creepy. Was it meant to sound incestuous?

tKircher - You could also see the legal system as a way for rehabilitation. In the case given as an example, maybe the judge could force him to have the tumor removed at his expense. Punishing him financially, and rehabilitating him. Probably ahve him on parole for a few years. To me, this is best f...

Bloody Mary was popular when I was going to grade school in California. That was in the 70's. So it's been in the states for a while. It probably started in England, like all creepy thing do! You read it's history, and you will get a strong feeling that it's history is pretty much a guess. I could h...