4 ms·

I once had my car towed by a person with the last name "Pullum". If the Universe really is some kind of Simulation, I suspect the QA's are getting lazy with the

I once had my car towed by a person with the last name "Pullum". If the Universe really is some kind of Simulation, I suspect the QA's are getting lazy with the NPC names. Because that's EXACTLY how I name fake persons in unit tests. A police officer named Buddy Kopp, a traffic engineer named John Lane, a bbq pitmaster named Tray Burnham, etc.

jimmaswell 5y ago
This is almost every secondary character in Ace Attorney
jetrink 5y ago
My hometown had a few good ones, all doctors: * A veterinarian named Dr. Bone * A chiropractor named Dr. Bender * An orthodontist named Dr. Owings (Orthodontists are quite expensive.)
emmelaich 5y ago
My personal favourite was Sidney Lake -- the head of the Sydney Water Board Workers Union.
nefitty 5y ago
It's almost certainly a simulation. If you live in apartments, how often have you seen your neighbors do laundry or bring home groceries? There's also this (short clip, start at 2:00). Note the reference to "The Big Lie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6UcgiDwg0&t=120 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6UcgiDwg0&t=120 A 1953 German book's leader of Mars is called the "Elon": https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/1344155061425823744 https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/13441550614258237... I think Roko's Basilisk will turn out to be true within the next few decades.
- quacked 5y ago
  The groceries thing is funny, but it's really just "what's the likelihood that in X years of living in the same place, your random 5 minutes out of the week are the same as your neighbor's random 5 minutes of the week".
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    It is actually not random. Most people do groceries on a relatively consistent schedule, for example, on Tuesday at 4:20, because it is the day you leave work early and it is a convenient time to go to the grocery store on your way back home. It means that you can see your neighbors do groceries almost every week if your schedules match, or never if they don't. I noticed that with people I met in the elevator. Some people I met almost every other day, others, never. Since the beginning of the pandemic, things changed, with remote work and constantly changing policies and restrictions, things became much more random, and I meet more people, but less often.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    When I learned about this it was funny to me too. My living room has a huge window looking out on the square of my apartment complex. Everyone has to walk by my house to exit or enter the complex. I've sat and watched the window for hours. Literally hours. The closest thing to groceries I've seen is a box of Hello Fresh being delivered.
- wruza 5y ago
  If you live in apartments, how often have you seen your neighbors do laundry or bring home groceries? Reminds me a real story where a guy found a USB stick nearby a city building. It contained a shivering warning about your neighbors. The stick owner lived in that building and some day asked himself this question and tried to watch what his neighbors do routinely. He followed some of them and found out that they simply get on some buses, ride in circles and get back. It looked very confusing to him. Then one Sunday evening he looked out of his window and noticed that in most windows people are staring at something. He felt to decide to go out and see what they are looking at. When he did it, he realized, they all were looking at him! Feeling very uneasy he returned to his room. Maybe they knew he spied on some of them, but how, why? Few weeks later all that was almost forgotten like a bad dream. The guy was returning from his job and when he went upstairs, he heard a conversation seemingly mentioning him from one of the rooms adjacent to where he lived in. He decided to go closer to that room and heard an usual conversation from a family with kids, they were laughing and speaking as usual families do. But the door wasn't completely shut — they must have forgotten to close it. He decided to peek into the gap, and God that was a big mistake. What he had seen instead of a family apartment was a completely empty room and four people sitting in it back-to-back, chatting and laughing with absolutely calm faces. He was stunned for a moment, but the hair stirred on a guy's head, when one of them noticed him watching. He rushed into his apartment and shut his door. When he finally braced himself to look into peephole, everyone was there. All his neighbors stood there with calm faces, looking right into the peephole, waiting for him to get out. The last message on a stick said they cut all the wires and the cellphone has no battery. The only message poor guy could send from.his laptop to the world was this text file on a USB stick.
  - forgotmyoldacc 5y ago
    Is this original creepypasta? Google search doesn't return anything.
    - wruza 5y ago
      Yes, adapted by me from memory for HN readers, probably missing/changing lots of details. https://mrakopedia.net/wiki/Окна_домов https://mrakopedia.net/wiki/Окна_домов Translate link: https://mrakopedia-net.translate.goog/wiki/Окна_домов?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://mrakopedia-net.translate.goog/wiki/Окна_домов?_x_tr_...
vba616 5y ago
"The possibility of gravitational waves was discussed in 1893 by Oliver Heaviside" I was trying to find a motel once and was directed onto "Sample Rd". The street was real, but when I got to the supposed location of the motel, I didn't see anything.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Oliver Heaviside and The Heaviside Layer https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2017.0459 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201...
- mkl 5y ago
  He also has a function named after him that looks like it has one heavy side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_step_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_step_function
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - vba616 5y ago
    If I'm reading that right, then when considering the general function, 0 is grouped with negative numbers, but when considering integers only ("Discrete form" a ways down) then 0 is grouped with positive numbers (that is, the output is 1). How odd.
- _moof 5y ago
  One of the early papers on the Big Bang was by Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow.
1_player 5y ago
Can't forget the president of Nintendo of America, Doug Bowser. Bowser is the main antagonist of Nintendo's Mario franchise.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  John Kirby however had the character named after him. He was the lawyer who successfully defended Nintendo against Universal Studios over the copyright for Donkey Kong.
T-A 5y ago
During the Euro crisis a decade ago, the central bank of Cyprus (which had to be bailed out along with Greece) was headed by a gentleman whose first name was Panicos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicos_O._Demetriades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicos_O._Demetriades
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  That's pronounced pa-NEE-kos though. The stress is on the wrong syllable. But, good catch :)

jimmaswell 5y ago

This is almost every secondary character in Ace Attorney

jetrink 5y ago

My hometown had a few good ones, all doctors: * A veterinarian named Dr. Bone * A chiropractor named Dr. Bender * An orthodontist named Dr. Owings (Orthodontists are quite expensive.)

emmelaich 5y ago

My personal favourite was Sidney Lake -- the head of the Sydney Water Board Workers Union.

nefitty 5y ago

It's almost certainly a simulation. If you live in apartments, how often have you seen your neighbors do laundry or bring home groceries? There's also this (short clip, start at 2:00). Note the reference to "The Big Lie": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6UcgiDwg0&t=120 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6UcgiDwg0&t=120 A 1953 German book's leader of Mars is called the "Elon": https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/1344155061425823744 https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/13441550614258237... I think Roko's Basilisk will turn out to be true within the next few decades.

quacked 5y ago
The groceries thing is funny, but it's really just "what's the likelihood that in X years of living in the same place, your random 5 minutes out of the week are the same as your neighbor's random 5 minutes of the week".
- GuB-42 5y ago
  It is actually not random. Most people do groceries on a relatively consistent schedule, for example, on Tuesday at 4:20, because it is the day you leave work early and it is a convenient time to go to the grocery store on your way back home. It means that you can see your neighbors do groceries almost every week if your schedules match, or never if they don't. I noticed that with people I met in the elevator. Some people I met almost every other day, others, never. Since the beginning of the pandemic, things changed, with remote work and constantly changing policies and restrictions, things became much more random, and I meet more people, but less often.
- nefitty 5y ago
  When I learned about this it was funny to me too. My living room has a huge window looking out on the square of my apartment complex. Everyone has to walk by my house to exit or enter the complex. I've sat and watched the window for hours. Literally hours. The closest thing to groceries I've seen is a box of Hello Fresh being delivered.
wruza 5y ago
If you live in apartments, how often have you seen your neighbors do laundry or bring home groceries? Reminds me a real story where a guy found a USB stick nearby a city building. It contained a shivering warning about your neighbors. The stick owner lived in that building and some day asked himself this question and tried to watch what his neighbors do routinely. He followed some of them and found out that they simply get on some buses, ride in circles and get back. It looked very confusing to him. Then one Sunday evening he looked out of his window and noticed that in most windows people are staring at something. He felt to decide to go out and see what they are looking at. When he did it, he realized, they all were looking at him! Feeling very uneasy he returned to his room. Maybe they knew he spied on some of them, but how, why? Few weeks later all that was almost forgotten like a bad dream. The guy was returning from his job and when he went upstairs, he heard a conversation seemingly mentioning him from one of the rooms adjacent to where he lived in. He decided to go closer to that room and heard an usual conversation from a family with kids, they were laughing and speaking as usual families do. But the door wasn't completely shut — they must have forgotten to close it. He decided to peek into the gap, and God that was a big mistake. What he had seen instead of a family apartment was a completely empty room and four people sitting in it back-to-back, chatting and laughing with absolutely calm faces. He was stunned for a moment, but the hair stirred on a guy's head, when one of them noticed him watching. He rushed into his apartment and shut his door. When he finally braced himself to look into peephole, everyone was there. All his neighbors stood there with calm faces, looking right into the peephole, waiting for him to get out. The last message on a stick said they cut all the wires and the cellphone has no battery. The only message poor guy could send from.his laptop to the world was this text file on a USB stick.
- forgotmyoldacc 5y ago
  Is this original creepypasta? Google search doesn't return anything.
  - wruza 5y ago
    Yes, adapted by me from memory for HN readers, probably missing/changing lots of details. https://mrakopedia.net/wiki/Окна_домов https://mrakopedia.net/wiki/Окна_домов Translate link: https://mrakopedia-net.translate.goog/wiki/Окна_домов?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://mrakopedia-net.translate.goog/wiki/Окна_домов?_x_tr_...

vba616 5y ago

"The possibility of gravitational waves was discussed in 1893 by Oliver Heaviside" I was trying to find a motel once and was directed onto "Sample Rd". The street was real, but when I got to the supposed location of the motel, I didn't see anything.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
Oliver Heaviside and The Heaviside Layer https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2017.0459 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201...
mkl 5y ago
He also has a function named after him that looks like it has one heavy side: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_step_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_step_function
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vba616 5y ago
  If I'm reading that right, then when considering the general function, 0 is grouped with negative numbers, but when considering integers only ("Discrete form" a ways down) then 0 is grouped with positive numbers (that is, the output is 1). How odd.
_moof 5y ago
One of the early papers on the Big Bang was by Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow.

1_player 5y ago

Can't forget the president of Nintendo of America, Doug Bowser. Bowser is the main antagonist of Nintendo's Mario franchise.

GuB-42 5y ago
John Kirby however had the character named after him. He was the lawyer who successfully defended Nintendo against Universal Studios over the copyright for Donkey Kong.

T-A 5y ago

During the Euro crisis a decade ago, the central bank of Cyprus (which had to be bailed out along with Greece) was headed by a gentleman whose first name was Panicos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicos_O._Demetriades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicos_O._Demetriades

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
That's pronounced pa-NEE-kos though. The stress is on the wrong syllable. But, good catch :)