Is there a particular statistical controversy that prompted today's comic about mishandled artifacts?
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Is there a particular statistical controversy that prompted today's comic about mishandled artifacts?
Ooh,
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shane
Interesting, I'm aestheistic to all human religions, and agnostic as to the existence of a cause of the Big Bang, but we're still not allowed to mention any of that.Quote:
Never mind. I'm 100% agnostic at any rate, and feel nothing but historical attachment to religion.
Probably not. There are a whole bunch that loosely fit it, so I presume those're the aiming point.
We all know about this one, right?
So, catching up, the idea of a mountain being compared to a fireworks, with a reference to volcanoes...
Lets just ignore the winter holy days and move on, mkay?
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EDIT:I think that would be worse than my cat :-).Quote:
And then in a twinkling, a sound gave me pause / From the roof came the scratching of eight tarsal claws.
Today's comic is me with a web browser. I'm not going to install an "app" that is actually just a website but takes up space on my hard drive and has more ads than the website it is supposed to imitate.
About today's comic...
Is this an actual photoshop tool? Because I use photoshop and didn't know this was a thing.
Depends on the app and website in question, obviously. But in general, I have more fine-grain control over ad-blocking in a browser than I do in an app.
Yep, I use a fake useragent string to see "desktop" sites everywhere. (Except Giantitp.com, where there is actually a setting to always go to the full site if you are logged in:smallsmile:).
One particularly bad offender is Yelp. The "mobile" site often won't let me see an entire review if it is beyond a certain length, or even see all the reviews for a particular store. Trying to click to see the whole review redirects to a full-screen ad for their app. Meanwhile, the Yelp app, last time I tried using it, was impossible to use without logging in to a Yelp account (in contrast with the website, which doesn't require a log-in). And was missing functionality of the website anyways. It's possible that the Yelp app has gotten better since then, but I stopped caring because I don't need it: the "desktop" version of yelp.com is perfectly usable on my iPhone.
No iphone, but I have an option in the quick settings menu, for lack of a better term (same place I can find the "find on page" button) an option to switch to desktop view.
An interesting part of this is how it reacts with Facebook. Mobile view is more convenient on that site, since things like the Messages button are tiny once desktop-ized, and inconvenient. Mobile site is *also* inconvenient for messages, since it demands that you download the Facebook Messenger app, which I ain't doin'. However, if I go into the comments of a status, then hit View Desktop Mode, it still gives me the mobile view, but suddenly I can see and write messages without any issues. Which means to me that they never took that functionality out of the mobile site, they just blocked it with "DOWNLOAD OUR APP" bullcrap. Which I can now get around. Suck it, Zuckerberg!
New comic is up. So Black Hat Guy is hoarding all the entrances to Narnia?
Agreed. He's probably lying about half his furniture having a portal (how could there be a portal to Narnia in a sofa). Hat guy is just saving time and money by installing a chute in the wardrobe.
Then again, this could be like beret guy and his groceries in http://xkcd.com/1772/
"okay google send a text"
New comic!
I understand the problem, but why would you want calls forwarded to your google voice number when you have a cell phone?
I'm more likely to be close to my laptop than my phone when not at work. Skype is usually a more reliable way of getting hold of me than any of my mobile phones, in fact, since Skype works in all the places, while I have different phones in different countries.
GW
Because Google finally updated Voice yesterday, so ATM it's the newest, flashiest thing? :smallconfused: (That doesn't apply to me--I just happened to spot an email mentioning the update--but it might apply to some people.) There will be times when people would have access to the internet, but not their cellphone coverage, so I could see people using Google Voice to consolidate things, though.
In any case, I suspect the current comic was motivated by the idea that people would react to the recent update to Google Voice and start forwarding stuff to it.
It's also useful for other shenanigans. To contact my father in England, I call a US number...which forwards to a UK number...which forwards to his Skype. All to avoid paying long distance. Bizarre arrangement that I don't really understand how it works, but it seems to do the trick.
Why not just use Skype yourself?
What time of day does XKCD update?
Used to be midnight, but for the last few months, it has been late. Possibly due to the feelings expressed in #1790.
GW
There were feelings in that?
She was writing code that did nothing (that's what "no side effects" means, more or less (it's complicated, but that's about 90% right), I don't know whether you know that).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_e...puter_science)
Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.
Yes, it's obvious that she was writing code that did nothing. That's a symptom of her sadness. Programmers can write useful functions using functional programming that doesn't introduce any side effects. She was just too depressed to do it and was apparently wildly exaggerating (in her mind) what could go wrong, but mostly it was an excuse to not do anything. You seem to have misunderstood the wiki article.
That would be evil, and should be punished. :smallwink:
That may have been implied, but I don't think it was explicity stated. She was writing code, it was just code that didn't do anything, if she hadn't been writing code she wouldn't have been doing anything, as it was she was doing something, it was just that what she did didn't do anything. I suspect it's a programming joke, not a depiction of depression.Quote:
Yes, it's obvious that she was writing code that did nothing. That's a symptom of her sadness. Programmers can write useful functions using functional programming that doesn't introduce any side effects. She was just too depressed to do it and was apparently wildly exaggerating (in her mind) what could go wrong, but mostly it was an excuse to not do anything.
Yeah, I definitely don't get oo or functional programming, the former more than the latter, but it's certainly not clear enough that I can explain it succinctly.Quote:
You seem to have misunderstood the wiki article.
It seems very likely to me that the specific comic was inspired by feeling of sadness and unhappiness, either on the part of Randall or those around him. Probably both. Given recent RW events that can't be discussed under forum rules, I would have expected him to be at least somewhat dismayed even if I hadn't seen the comic. Tending to confirm this, there have been other comics in the last few months that have also seemed to hint at Randall being unhappy. This one is another example.
Just in case you missed it, the comic's title is "Sad." I think it's intended to be taken in a "what it says on the tin" sort of way.