h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think I'm going to have to start my own version of BG's Synchronicity thread because things keep... happening. Like this morning for instance.

I've never knowingly heard anyone use the term 'baked in' to describe something fixed or permanent, until today, when I've already come across it three times and it's not yet 11am. The first two were on the radio, and I can only remember one of them - someone was describing a nasty piece of spy/adware that Lenovo have been installing on their PCs http://www.npr.org/2015/02/25/388901986/lenovo-sued-over-superfish-adware Now though, they're not doing it any more and are trying to get it off the PCs that already have it. I heard one commentator in the story describing it as being 'baked into the operating system'.

A while later, in another story, I heard someone else use the term 'baked in'.

And just now I read this: "That's something I have baked into my DNA and it's very hard not to have that kind of reaction." http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31616523

I don't much care for it to be honest. It sounds like it might be a new buzzphrase that everyone wants to use. But as a side order of spookiness, the BBC story is about telesales calls, and that bloke's tale is about how he got more of them once he signed up for the no-call database. Well, the same thing has happened to me in the past few months. I've had this number for several years now. It's a cellphone, it's my only phone, and it's only this year that I've started getting any sales call on it. After the first one, early in Jaunary, I added my number to the federal no-call list. Yesterday I got two calls within 15 minutes from a company, both from different numbers, with a robomessage, asking if I wanted to place an advertising sign outside my house, and this morning I've found the same message on my voicemail

And last Wednesday I watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a film directed by John Madden (something I wasn't aware of) which just happened to come up in my Netflix queue. Not only did I hear his name mentioned a couple of times last week, but this week it seems that The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is about to be released.

Well would you Adam and Eve it

Ad tool is 'worse than Superfish'
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31586610
"It follows the discovery of a similar problem with Superfish, software pre-installed on some Lenovo computers."

Nope... don't like it. I prefer "hard coded".


But what you're saying reminds me of something.

This weekend on NPR's Says You panel/gameshow, they have a segment where three members of one team will give definitions to an arcane word, one actual definition and two made up. This week, they featured the word .

The "actual" definition they gave was almost correct. They defined it as something overly incongruous and out of place, jarringly so. But anyone that can see the knows that they're placed there by the Illuminati to control the populace.





My clever use of angle brackets will have an interesting effect when viewed in Pliny.

Oh, and that Lenovo story is just the secondmost frightening security story of the week. The Equation Group story is much worse as this gives folks like the NSA the power to control any computer via firmware, to even hide stolen files in hidden, unencrypted partitions on a your hard drive.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/kapersky-discovers-equation-group/

I've just been learning about this kind of thing on my philosophy course - it's a kind of confirmation bias. until you consciously noticed the thing, there were probably instances of it that you just didn't register. Once you're looking out for it, they are suddenly in abundance.

Did they mention Baader-Meinhof in your philosophy class?

http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-that-the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon-59670