Comment by adzm
1 day ago
And here is the author himself confirming that in the Wikipedia talk page for TIFF! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TIFF/Archive_1#h-Source_f...
1 day ago
And here is the author himself confirming that in the Wikipedia talk page for TIFF! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TIFF/Archive_1#h-Source_f...
Great find! And oh no, it’s complete with the customary blissfully unaware user replying to say he’s wrong!
Hindsight is 20/20 and I loved TFA and I don't want to ruin it but... that comment was there from 2007 and the Wikipedia user bio was pretty clear since the beginning (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Scarlsen&old...)
Yes but it's not easy to find random Wikipedia user pages, or even find the specific talk page comment in the archives without knowing what to look for. Go ahead, find a friend, give them no clues, and see if they find it.
Yes but the author was specifically investing over this, had a clue on a similar name and even edited the same page himself.
2 replies →
And interestingly, the person he replies to is taviso [0][1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taviso
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavis_Ormandy
(Also: 42 is the answer to everything because it's the ascii code for *).
Was that a happy coincidence or intentional?
Perfectly pure happiness:
"The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do' I typed it out. End of story." from the man himself[1]
...but let us not ruin a good story with the truth. Remember why earth was built. The "real" answer might then be flowing in the ether.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27...
I think it was intentional but I don't have a source.
Edit: from the other comment, it appears it was in fact random...
> the ASCII code for h
Umm. The ASCII code for h is 102 ;)
I don't know why or how you're seeing an h? I'm talking about the asterisk.
2 replies →
Are talk pages accepted as a source for the same article?
Talk pages aren’t valid sources in general. In this case the author is dead and an established expert having published in the field, so I guess it’s fine, but I wouldn’t bet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-p...