Quote of the week!

[Hajimoto]

"I'm not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change."

This won the funniest joke award at the Edinburgh Fringe? Crikey, the rest must've been terrible!

Looool

[Cody]

The signal was generated when two black holes about 1.8 billion light years away, with masses 31 times and 25 times the mass of our Sun, spiraled into one another and created a single, larger black hole 53 times the mass of the Sun. Energy equivalent to three solar masses was converted into gravitational waves.

[Disembodied]

Fetlang is a statically typed, procedural, esoteric programming language and reference implementation. It is designed such that source code looks like poorly written fetish erotica.

Fetlang is not recommended for production use at this moment, especially in medical or military applications.

No, really: https://github.com/Property404/fetlang

[Cody]

I hesitate to ask how you came across that? Have Harry spank Gina, indeed!

[Disembodied]

I hesitate to ask how you came across that?

Charles Stross's twitter feed. It's things like this that make me wonder if I'm getting old …

[Disembodied]

Hubble just spotted something massive coming out of Uranus

[Cody]

The football shown on UK street signs (for football grounds) is made entirely of hexagons. But it is mathematically impossible to construct a ball using only hexagons. Changing this to the correct pattern of hexagons and pentagons would help raise public awareness and appreciation of geometry.

Petition here! <chortles>

[Cody]

Dido Harding, the woman at the helm during TalkTalk's 2015 mega breach, was yesterday grilled about her move to chair NHS Improvement, the body responsible for overseeing the UK's health service.

<sobs> If only that'd been a real grilling! Incompetence doesn't matter if one is well-connected. <sighs>

[Disembodied]

After creating the antiprotons in 2015, the team were able to store them for more than a year inside a special chamber about the size and shape of a can of Pringles.

Am I alone in suspecting that they kept antiprotons inside a can of Pringles?

It's in an article about the fact that the Universe shouldn't exist.

[Cody]

Is that why Pringles are so moreish - once you start annihilating antiprotons (munching them), you have to keep going 'til they're all gone?

... the Universe shouldn't exist.

I feel an urge to quote DA:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

[Disembodied]

Is that why Pringles are so moreish - once you start annihilating antiprotons (munching them), you have to keep going 'til they're all gone?

This is known as the Big Pop theory.

[Cody]

Canberra is often the subject of discussion among Australians - a debate reignited on Wednesday when it was named the third-best city in the world to visit, according to travel publisher Lonely Planet.

I think we need an antipodean opinion! Apparently, the first two are Sevilla and Detroit. Sevilla is a lovely city to visit, but Detroit?

[Diziet Sma]

Canberra is often the subject of discussion among Australians - a debate reignited on Wednesday when it was named the third-best city in the world to visit, according to travel publisher Lonely Planet.

I think we need an antipodean opinion!

Most Aussies would probably agree actually.

This is usually expressed as "Nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there!"

[Cody]

A place you have to visit in order to experience the sheer joy of leaving? I've known a few towns like that.

[Diziet Sma]

A place you have to visit in order to experience the sheer joy of leaving? I've known a few towns like that.

Well, it truly is a nice place.. but being located up in the mountains, it's probably the coldest city in the country, the street layout is proof that architects should never be allowed to do town planning*, and worst of all, most of the population consists of politicians and bureaucrats.

*


Walter Burley Griffin also designed part of a suburb here in Melbourne, and it's even more confusing than Canberra, when it comes to finding your way around.