Obscurity makes me feel safer.

Knowledge is power, so privacy is power. In a utopia you shouldn't need it. We need it now because we have thoughts and actions society wouldn't approve of. Privacy is a weapon in the fight against society.

Why can't there be Utopia without privacy?

English has proper names for the first twelve numbers. After that the names are generated. "Thirteen" is derived from "three-ten", "fourteen" from "four-ten" etc. So we're not far of a base-12 system either, and 13 is often considered unlucky.

Laughter is associated with a mock attack. That's what tickling is: a mock attack, albeit one that can incapacitate you, and the laughter can be involuntary and almost painful. Telling jokes is a way of tickling at a distance. That is why so much humour is cruel. I think the "Aha" moment Jimmy Carr refers to is partly…

I've been using the name "Brangdon" online since before 1988. I don't really understand this "extra work" you speak of. If there's work, it's having to establish my reputation anew with each new online forum. For example, it took me a while to get a star here. Recently I joined StackOverflow and I am having to get…

I think it's going to fragment the community. By that I mean we'll become more insular. Lots of little communities instead of one big community. There will be a conversation in one thread, and then a similar conversation in the next thread over, and they won't interact because they are in different threads. I agree…

You hate a movie you haven't seen?

"Let a machine watch it" really misses the point. Humans are better at pattern recognition. And some representations make the relevant patterns more apparent than others. This isn't about "command line good, GUI bad". Experts can benefit from graphical visualisation tools too. And for complex data, two dimensions…

When I was a child, I did some dangerous stuff. "Don't disassemble that cathode ray tube; the voltages in there are far higher than the mains you are used to." I did it, but I was careful and I'm fine. Carl was fine with the zombie, too. These are slow zombies, that you can run away from, and this one was stuck in…

Mmmm, yes. Preserve planets by coating them with sugar. I can't wait, either.

I am one of those who lives alone without feeling lonely. I know from experience that if I'm totally alone, I'll start to miss people after about 3 months. Currently I have a job so I see people during the day, and don't need to at night.

The world ends, but the dog survives so it's alright.

Quite so. I had to google it. The word I was thinking of was "catamite".

I think expanded nodes and nested maps will be easier to work with in a 3D view. Humans evolved to work with 3D; we have intuitive sense of position and space that this UI exploits. (They should replace the mouse with touch screens.)

Yep. Hence the name "bombe", which is not an English word.

It was in Vicker's part of the ship, which she had equipped as a survival capsule. So she presumably had a ton of food stashed away in there somewhere. Perhaps the stash was accessible from the sick bay.

It's supposedly related to hybrid vigour and avoiding in-breeding. It (supposedly again) leads to soldiers raping in foreign lands, and holiday romance.

The first one is intense, but curiously bloodless. I find it very watchable. I think a lot of the people who don't like it wanted it to be more like the game. I've not played the game.

The early Discworld books are indeed like that. I don't like them. He doesn't really get the hang of plot until around Mort, and he continues to mature for many books more. (And towards the end he can feel repetitive.) For me Small Gods is a good earlyish book, and The Truth a good later one. If you don't get on with…