chrisau

Ignoring the century in the year, I love the coincidence that this question was first asked in the year '54 and in "Hitchhiker's", it's said that 6x9 and 42 are the same. In fact they are if 6x9 is base 10 (6x9=54), and 42 is base 13 (4x13+2 = 54).

So, we get three coincidences: This question was asked in '54 ; "Hitchhiker's" said the answer to the meaning of life is 54 (6x9, 42 base 13); and best of all, 42 was the last number solved. And if you want to add one more coincidence, this was solved in the year '19 (connecting 19 and 54).

All irrelevant coincidences applied with hindsight, but fun.

(Douglas Adams claimed that 42 was a randomly chosen number, but I'd argue his subconscious had been processing the idea for a while and gave him a number with a meaning. We just don't know which is the correct meaning.)

> I am interested to learn more about how they solved it if not brute force.

"Professors Booker and Sutherland's solution for 42 would be found by using Charity Engine; a 'worldwide computer' that harnesses idle, unused computing power from over 500,000 home PCs to create a crowd-sourced, super-green platform made entirely from otherwise wasted capacity."

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-sum-cubes-solvedusing-real-lif...

What a wretched year! Bowie, Rickman, Prince and now Shakespeare too?! Say it ain't so. Taken too soon. RIP.

Assholes.

Getting sick of big companies buying great small products, and shutting them down after "trying" to make them work out.

Still hadn't had time to get over MS killing Sunrise, and now this.

Why since 2005, are things the wrong way around? Increases in temperature match with increases in ice levels??!!

e.g. 2005 to 2007 saw a 0.09 decrease in temperature above norm, and a 1.16million km2 decrease in ice?

Then as the temperature increased, the ice did too, up to 2010, then temp and ice decline to 2012.

Since 2012 temp has been rising again and so has the ice.

And you wonder why there's skeptics out there?!

You can clearly see the overall trends of heat rising and ice decreasing, but graphs like this shouldn't be thrown out to the masses without reasonable explanation of the anomalies of the last 10 years.

Love this line:

"Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so."

Obviously it wasn't then, but we've certainly grafter ourselves to our smartphone keyboards now. So, it turned out the "microcomputer" industry was right. Just took 20 years longer.

Incredible that this research from 60 years ago explains much of our current weather events. The Article ice shrinks, northern North America gets more snow.

It also explains why both global warming and impending ice age are linked.

This doesn't deny, of course, that mankind hasn't done his bit to accelerate the natural ebbs and flows of the global climate and the pace at which they are occurring.

Death finally catches Rincewind.

R.I.P. Greatly missed

One thing confuses me.

Why are parents of vaccinated kids so terrified of unvaccinated kids??

Does vaccination work or not?

If my kids are vaccinated, doesn't that mean they won't catch the disease if they encounter it? Or, at the worst, get a mild dose.

If vaccination works, why do we care that a small minority aren't vaccinated?