The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Apple lets you do this, too, but it's really not better than Swype's method. The Gboard/Apple method resembles the description in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about radios that could be tuned by pointing - "[it] meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme." Take your finger off the screen too roughly and you get a last little bit of motion. That's not necessarily an everyone problem, but for all the people who complain about how big phones are and how they would like a smaller one, I have big hands and find an iPhone Pro Max to be a…
To follow up and mix in a few other sentiments noted elsewhere with my own experience, I'll partially agree. For me, it's a bit like Monty Python's Holy Grail. I saw it alone as a young teenager and I just didn't really get what the fuss was about. But there were a few things that struck me as brilliant, like the glimpse of the guards just about to throw a cocunut attached to a pigeon just to settle once and for all the movie immersion-breaking issue of how that coconut got there (we don't see if it works). On further watchings the Holy Grail seems more brilliant than I expected, and I've…
I've been a huge fan of Douglas Adams since I read the Hitchhiker's series in High School. My personal recommendation is to grab the audiobook version that's read by the Douglas himself. As an American, there's a little bit lost between British/American English and some of the humor is missed (sometimes changes are even made -- in the American version of the book that I have "Biscuit" is replaced with "Cookie"). I'm an audiobook junkie (speed reading has killed reading fiction for me) and I usually stay away from books narrated by the author because the quality of the narration suffers.…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_(character) "Marvin, the Paranoid Robot, is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. Originally built as one of many failed prototypes of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's GPP (Genuine People Personalities) technology, Marvin is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a "brain the size of a planet"[1] which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use. Indeed, the true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he…
> Schröedinger [sic] Schrödinger or Schroedinger: it is just you on HN https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Schr%C3%B6edinger%22+site%3Anew...> who has used "öe", multiple times. Boltzmann brains have nothing to do with Schrödinger: statistical mechanics works fully classically, and nobody treats Boltzmann brains in a quantum mechanical way because a Boltzmann brain is an unembodied ephemeral human brain. Natural human brains have a history of being warm and electrically noisy (any quantum features decohere faster than thought), while fluctuated-out-of-equilibrium human brains aren't around long…
> People whose first book was Hitchhiker followed the trajectory of reading the same book hundreds of times I have never met anyone meeting that description. Back in my day, nerdy pursuits were not very tribal. A franchise did not form someone's identity mostly because there wasn't enough content about it to devote oneself to. You watched a movie, read a book or whatever and liked it. A superfan would be someone who sought out a game or a graphic novel but it gives you only a few extra hours in the world at most. A fan club would be a yearly magazine or something. You had to find other…
It's comedy. Most sci-fi and fantasy novels are serious, so having a comedic bent is unusual, which is interesting. Beyond that, though, comedy itself can be interesting because it looks at life from a different perspective. Much of comedy is based around the idea of looking at the mundane aspects of life, and getting a fresh perspective. Why do we drive on 'parkways' but park on 'driveways'? etc. We have governments, and bureaucracy in our daily lives. What would that look like if you extended that concept to an intergalatic civilization? You'd have a race of bureaucrats that end up…
Really, from my understanding, you're right: it should not make sense. It's pretty much an absurdist book, it was adapted from a radio show and was more or less just comedy sketches centered in a ragtag, nonsense setting. None of them really have much to do with each other, nor do they really build off of each other, but I find Douglas Adams writing and ability to come up with what he does to be endlessly engaging and uplifting. You mentioned judging the scenes by themselves; this is how I view Hitchhiker's Guide, as a compilation of great scenes that each occasionally do have some great…
> PS. Enter AI "personality packs". "GPP feature?" said Arthur. "What's that?" "Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities." "Oh," said Arthur, "sounds ghastly." A voice behind them said, "It is." The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway. "What?" they said. "Ghastly," continued Marvin, "it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door," he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the…
Also the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporters (elevators). Sydney's obstinance reminded me of them. "I go up," said the elevator, "or down." "Good," said Zaphod, "We're going up." "Or down," the elevator reminded him. "Yeah, OK, up please." There was a moment of silence. "Down's very nice," suggested the elevator hopefully. "Oh yeah?" "Super." "Good," said Zaphod, "Now will you take us up?" "May I ask you," inquired the elevator in its sweetest, most reasonable voice, "if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?" "Like what…