Podcast - This Is Only a Test

Episode 440 – Hundred Percent Fatal – 3/15/18

We pay tribute to the life and work of Stephen Hawking, get envious of the Westworld experience at South by Southwest, discuss the first Ready Player One reviews, and scratch our heads at a silicon valley startup that has to kill its clients.

Comments (10)

10 thoughts on “Episode 440 – Hundred Percent Fatal – 3/15/18

  1. I went to a lecture by Hawking in Cambridge a number of years ago. He gave the presentation and then took questions from the audience afterwards. The presentation itself was obviously pre-written, but he seemed to be “talking” in real-time as there were pauses for laughter (it was an amusing lecture!) At the end of the presentation he took 3 or 4 questions from the audience and then took about ten minutes to prepare his answers. Meanwhile, his assistant, a young gentleman at the time, talked a little about his role and how Hawking went about his day-to-day life. He was pretty interactive, answering Q’s from the audience on how Hawking’s speech synthesizer worked and such. Hawking cut his assistant off mid-sentence and started right into his first answer. It was clear who was the boss!

    I’m glad I got the opportunity to see him in person. He will be remembered and missed for a long time to come.

  2. Professor Hawking was an inspiration for all, inspiring countless people to pursue science, and in general be curious.

    Additionally, I lost my grandfather to ALS in 2012, and am all-to-aware the increased risk of familial ALS I am subject to. Stephen Hawking was an excellent, high visibility example of how you are still the same person even if your physical body fails you. I actually believe the biggest impact he made was to reduce the stigma of physical disability. Thank you.

  3. Kishore, doesn’t Dumbledore apperate in one of the books (and Movies) to take Him and Harry after a Horicrux. And at the time says something about being the one who put in place the Charm that stops others from apperating into Hogwarts.

  4. Yeah, the Headmaster can lift the protection against apparition, and Dumbledore does it when he takes Harry to find the locket at the end of Half-Blood Prince.

  5. But the “house elf” ?Dauby?? could bampf or whatever, so was it a spell put on the tech like a cellphone blocker or was it put on the students themselves like sun screen?

  6. youtube should be using Britannica not Wikipedia. but Kishore convinced me its a cop out. The idea that its censorship is akin to the question or censorship in libraries… which is an idea from people who have never worked in a library. the library collection is picked by human beings, and promoted items are picked by human beings. Also the weeding of the collection is done by human beings. Youtubes A.I. is.. created by human beings. The idea they are not responsible for the behavior of their robot is silly. Like if a Mall built an a.i. robot that wound up running around the mall spreading nazi propaganda… somehow the mall wouldnt be responsible? Of course its responsible. Or if Barnes and Noble built a clerk robot that kept pushing Moon Hoax books when you vame in looking for Nasa History. B and N would be responsible for it. Its not censorship to insist that your Robotic employees are not mentally deranged lunatics.

  7. House Elf magic has different rules to human magic, and yes, Dumbledore was able to disapparate within the grounds of Hogwarts while no-one else could, saying that being the head of Hogwarts has its privileges. It would be appropriate if that was measure put in place as a response to Grindelwald.

    I was glad that Harry and Ginny married, because that makes such a great story line through the series for Ginny – she isn’t a mere plot device just for book 2. If Harry and Hermione had married it would have felt lame as a story arc – that nothing unexpected happened. Anyway, Harry and Hermione never had any chemistry the way Ron and Hermione did, so it would have been a strange turn if they had ‘discovered’ each other at the end.

  8. @donbright I think that much of what you say is true. When it comes down to it, people do not have a right to free speech on any platform that is owned by somebody else. Youtube and Twitter both regularly ban or demonitize videos of people for their political views, and yet an avid anti-semite like Farrakhan isn’t. Not sure how the algorithm seems to skip him.

    The evidence suggests that if you own the medium, you can allow whatever you want and remove whatever you don’t agree with. Neither Youtube nor Twitter is obligated to post your point of view. Niether is Tested.

    On a separate note, are you guys testing anything? Weeks go by with nothing. Norm has been using the Pixelbook at least since Feb 12 or so, and I don’t remember hearing his thoughts on it other than that the Android apps can be funky. In the Feb 15 podcast you said a video would be coming out. Is that still happening?

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