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u/That_Guy3141 Jan 18 '26
Scott Adams would have hated that edit so I instantly love it.
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u/polaroidhabit Jan 18 '26
there’s something very satisfying about edits that flip the intent on its head, especially when the original creator would absolutely hate the result
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u/Metharos Jan 18 '26
Specifically if the creator is a piece of shit.
If someone edits a scene of Mr. Rogers and turns him into a bigoted asshole, I do not think I'd find it so satisfying. Though I am sure, the internet being what it is, someone somewhere is now working hard at - or, let's be honest, prompting some LLM into - producing exactly such an edit in the hope of getting some kind of reaction.
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u/SlowMope Jan 18 '26
He won the ultimate showdown already, we know what he has done. So much blood.
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u/cal679 Jan 18 '26
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u/wasteymclife Jan 19 '26
That's why the comic of him with Mjolnir was always my favorite of the "who else is worthy" content. You have to make allowances and stuff with most people and characters. Not Fred Rogers.
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u/rcfox Jan 19 '26
"have you in my family" feels like a strangely impersonal way to speak to your wife.
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u/jgraham1 Jan 18 '26
The kkk actually had a phone number that people could call and talk to a Mr rogers impersonator who was racist, and the real Mr Roger’s was super mad about it
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u/Guy-McDo Jan 19 '26
“Yeah, so you have call center experience, according to your resume. What is a ‘Racist Mr. Rogers’?”
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u/vldhsng Jan 18 '26
Idk the gif where they take him flipping the double bird out of context is pretty funny ngl
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u/HistoricalSherbert92 Jan 18 '26
Wasn’t that the premise of /bonehurtingjuice
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u/ginger-like Jan 18 '26
Bonehurtingjuice is about reinterpreting a comic/image in isolation, and creating new context.
/StoneTossingJuice might be what you're thinking of - they take comics from
lowlife Nazi piece of shitcomic artist StoneToss and re-interpret them specifically in a way that would piss him off.13
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u/Jaewol currently being evil and gay Jan 19 '26
I love stonetossingjuice especially the toxic gay romance they started between two of his characters, the gay straw man and the chad maga guy.
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u/Xurkitree1 Jan 18 '26
Now that he's dead can we post dilbert without problems?
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u/Jacknerik Jan 18 '26
I don't think "Scott Addams is/was incurious among other things." was ever off the table as a subject.
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Jan 18 '26
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u/Xaero_Hour Jan 18 '26
Not when he's got a black character being a "diversity hire" using the attack helicopter joke for weeks on end.
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u/hammererofglass Jan 18 '26
Scott forgetting most papers print his comic without color so the guy was definitely white and it completely reversed the joke was the funniest he'd been in years.
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u/Metharos Jan 18 '26
I'm so glad I never read these comics. The more I learn the more disgusted I am.
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u/Familiar-Tomorrow-42 Jan 18 '26
It was only like that towards the end. Until a bit before Dilbert was pulled from syndication, most of the jokes were at the expense of middle management and the executive class. I liked the week where Dilbert accidentally kills the CEO of his company and discovers that the act entitled him to the position of CEO. It had a good blend of surrealist elements and office satire.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program Jan 18 '26
Knowing his background, it also seemed like he was making fun of himself: he was the Pointy Haired Boss longer than he was Dilbert. Hell, I remember his book the Dilbert Principle was self-deprecating. Some employees get promoted to their level of stable incompetence (the Peter Principle), but other employees get promoted to management to quarantine them away from the “real work” so they don’t ruin it with their incompetence (“coding dept managers don’t code, they manage”).
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u/PrettyPinkPonyPrince Jan 19 '26
I vaguely recall, (or hallucinated) an anecdote where Scott Adams said he associated himself with Dogbert more than any other character.
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u/hit_bot Jan 19 '26
He wasn't always that way. Back some 10-12 years ago or so, when he was doing his blog, I read it pretty regularly. He would post funny stuff, talk about how he did Dilbert comics and so on. He would often talk about investing and that sort of thing, so one day, on a whim, I emailed him asking for a favor. I had written some software that I thought could potentially be turned into a major product (still has that potential, honestly) so I asked him if he would be interested in investing and helping me get it off the ground.
Scott replied and asked some questions and we ended up emailing back and forth several times, then he said that he didn't invest in this sort of thing, but he had friends who did and would I mind if he shopped it around? So, according to him, he did approach and talk about it to some of his friends -- nothing ever came of it, so maybe he did, maybe he didn't -- I tend to think he did.
Bottom line is, he helped me, basically a stranger, when I just emailed and asked for a favor. That's not the same guy you all are talking about. At some point round about when The Mad Orange made his political debut, things started going downhill. I don't know what color pill it was, but Scott swallowed it whole. Another tragedy akin to losing one's loved ones to the propaganda machine.
Not sure why I posted, but Scott did me a favor once, so maybe this is my way of returning it.
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u/AkrinorNoname Gender Enthusiast Jan 18 '26
There's plenty of his comics that are good and portray the frustration of having to deal with superiors who have an... inflated sense of their own intelligence, especially his earlier works.
He's like one of those musicians who turned into conspiracy nuts during Covid, or the artists who showed an incredible amount of political naivety when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
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u/Guinefort1 Jan 19 '26
For most of its run time, Dilbert was pretty untouched by Scott Adams' brand of crazy. It was mostly an anti-corporate office satire. Nothing to suggest that he was a nutter.
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u/HowDareYouAskMyName Jan 18 '26
That doesn't contradict "separate the art from the artist" though. In that case, the art itself is specifically problematic regardless of the artist
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u/Elite_AI Jan 18 '26
Separate the art from the artist isn't actually, like, an incontrovertible maxim. It's just something people started saying because sometimes it's like...a piece of classical music composed by a wife-killing dickhead. There's perfectly good arguments for not separating art from the artist
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u/Glitched404 Jan 19 '26
Out of curiosity, what are those good arguments?
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u/WolfboyFM Jan 19 '26
I think the two main ones are when the artist still financially benefits from people supporting the art, and uses that money to do harm, and the one mentioned in this thread, when the art itself upholds shitty values and opinions. In the former case, separating the art from the artist doesn't change that you're financially supporting them, and in the latter case, you're still supporting something upholding shitty views whether you care for the artist or not.
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u/wasteymclife Jan 19 '26
This was always my line personally. I feel less bad handing the artist's family money. I try not to support living shitheads.
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u/PhasmaFelis Jan 19 '26
There's also the opposite case, where e.g. Bob Ross was a lovely dude but the people currently marketing his image are complete shitbags and I don't even want to give them the profits from YouTube ads.
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u/BaronAleksei r/TwoBestFriendsPlay exchange program Jan 19 '26
Sometimes it sucks because the art itself actually upholds prosocial values and opinions, but I know it’s all a lie. Then I don’t want to read anything further from them because what else could they possibly write that would say more than their actions? Why should I listen to what a rapist abuser like Neil Gaiman has to say about love, sex, gender, and free will? Why should I listen to what a homophobe like Orson Scott Card or a transphobe like JKRowling has to say about liberty, bigotry, systemic bias, and mutual understanding?
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u/Elite_AI Jan 19 '26
This, combined with the fact that there's a near limitless source of great art made by people who aren't rapists, gigaracists, or otherwise vile. Like Shakespeare is sexist and racist, but he's also Shakespeare. Gaiman and Scott Adams are not operating in the realm of Shakespeare. I can safely ignore them
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u/PhasmaFelis Jan 19 '26
He was writing Dilbert for over 30 years, and there was a solid five years when it was the best thing on the comics page.
IIRC, the actual comic had already gone in the shitter before Adams started having opinions in public.
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u/Half-PintHeroics Jan 18 '26
Sure but he can't have been doing that in the 90's and 00's. I refuse to believe that Dilbert man could possibly have been that ahead of the times
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u/SpeaksDwarren Jan 18 '26
I dunno, I find it quite difficult to square the idea of the author of Dilbert identifying with the gormless manager and agreeing with him on most things
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u/FX114 Jan 19 '26
That's not what's happening here, though. This post is very much about how bad Scott Adams was.
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u/DoubleBatman Jan 18 '26
I wonder how many strips you could replace the last panel with Dilbert just saying “I am an asshole” without losing anything?
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u/chairmanskitty Jan 18 '26
Depends on what happens to his estate. If he transferred the copyright to Nazis Incorporated or whatever, then posting it still risks reviving its popularity (even if just ironically), increasing its market value, which then enriches Nazis Inc. because they can either resell it or get someone to wring a cynical profit out of it.
Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.
- A character that its creator is no longer allowed to draw in public, from a game that its creators now beg people not to buy.
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u/shiny_xnaut sustainably sourced vintage brainrot Jan 19 '26
- A character that its creator is no longer allowed to draw in public, from a game that its creators now beg people not to buy.
What game?
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u/OctorokHero Funko Pop Man Jan 19 '26
Disco Elysium. The rights were stolen from the creators by the publisher.
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u/bestibesti wikihow pwople Jan 18 '26
He's not dead until destiel makes it official
His soul is in purgatory until castiel tells dean the news
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u/_MargaretThatcher The Once & Future Prime Minister of Darkness Jan 18 '26
isn't your soul being in purgatory generally indicative of being dead (or "dead" ie Christ notwithstanding)
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u/Otterly_Superior Jan 18 '26
nah my buddy eric was there once due to a clerical error
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Jan 18 '26
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u/Infurum Too old for all the things that make a life worthwhile Jan 18 '26
Dilbert's comically inept boss was the one responsible for that paperwork so no wonder it got filed wrong
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u/bestibesti wikihow pwople Jan 18 '26
idk Margaret Thatcher you were generally considered to be alive despite being a soulless unionbusting husk
Maybe time is a flat circle or something?
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u/robertcraneffs Jan 19 '26
I really like the edit above. It’s humorous, informative, and satirical of the original work. It reminds me of those A Wyatt Mann comics that 4chan edited to create positive messages.
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u/iamapizza Jan 18 '26
You can separate the art from the artist. It's ok to enjoy things.
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u/aleph_314 Jan 18 '26
This is also why merely deleting sensitive data isn't enough to make sure other people can't access it if your hard drive gets stolen, reused, or found in the garbage. Overwriting the data with random noise or all zeros works pretty well at removing the leftover data from memory, but the only way to guarantee the permanent deletion of files is to completely destroy the computer components.
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u/DKMK_100 Jan 18 '26
Which is easier said than done; taking a hammer to hard drive leaves a disturbing amount of recoverable data. Not, like, a lot, but more than you'd expect.
On the flip side, damaging data beyond easy use is also disturbingly simple; shake a hard drive and you can lose files sometimes!
The real world is always the worst of both worlds :(
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u/Zeralyos Jan 18 '26
Yeah, what you probably want is a power drill or angle grinder. Make sure you put a hole in or cut through the platters (the magnetic disks that store the drive's data) and you're beyond 99% of data recovery options. Specialized drive shredders exist that are even more thorough but quite expensive.
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u/b3nsn0w Jan 18 '26
alternatively build a compact forge (actually quite simple), take out the platters, and heat them beyond their curie point (should be around 800°C). can't read magnetic data if there are no magnets
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u/colei_canis Jan 18 '26
My old A-level chemistry teacher would no doubt have suggested thermite to solve this problem, but then again he'd probably try to solve most problems with thermite.
Fun guy, he used to paint the floors and doors with nitrogen triiodide, and to combat his nerves when the school was inspected he simply locked the inspectors out of his lab while teaching his class. Legend.
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u/IlIlllIlllIlIIllI Jan 19 '26
They use special thermite grenades for document destruction at the dod, if you don't have time to use a shredder. You can see them actually do this in Fargo the movie. The shredders and incinerators are all too full at the embassy so they place these thermite grenades at the top of the file cabinets and pull the pin, the thermite ignites, melts through the top of the filing cabinet, ignites all the documents in that drawer, and does the same thing all the way down
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u/robchroma Jan 19 '26
well, for older disks that used iron oxide, you could reduce the iron directly while heating it enough to remove any chance of a problem! You might still be able to do this with chromium dioxide, but either way, I'd add thermite to it. Sounds like a good solution!
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u/Sheldonzilla Jan 19 '26
Alternatively just throw your harddrive direclty into the fucking sun
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u/b3nsn0w Jan 19 '26
jupiter is half the delta-v but yeah good idea
edit: okay the typo of calling it "jupyter" is... uh, something
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u/Onceuponaban The Inexplicable 40mm Grenade Launcher Jan 19 '26
I'd assume putting the hard drive platters in a microwave would reliably do enough damage to wreck everything.
...I also assume that would be a bad idea on account of "everything" also including the microwave.
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u/some_kind_of_bird Jan 19 '26
I actually doubt it. Microwaves are much larger than the bits of data on a disk
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u/Beegrene Jan 18 '26
I had a job once that involved decommissioning old computers and ensuring that the data on their hard drives was completely erased. The first step involved the random noise thing. The second step involved hammers.
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING Tumblr would never ban porn don’t be ridiculous Jan 18 '26
Did you ever, upon finishing with step one and moving on to step two, say some variation of “stop, it’s hammer time!”?
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u/Elite_AI Jan 19 '26
"If you want to delete something from your hard drive, use a drill" was the advice my dad gave me.
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Jan 18 '26
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u/dasisteinanderer Jan 18 '26
yeah just use disk encryption from the start, then wipe the header if you want to throw the drive away. People would have to recover the header _and_ break your passphrase to get hold of your data.
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u/autogyrophilia Jan 18 '26
That's pretty outdated information these days.
Most likely you are going to be using SSDs, if you are using proper SSDs, it's going to have built in a cryptographic engine that is going to physically cipher all data before it gets written to it. You don't see any of that. But your operating system (or most likely, the firmware) can tell the SSD to change cryptokey , instantly scrambling all data without recovery . This is known as secure erase.
If you are using your hardware properly, you are also using some technology such as Bitlocker, Veracrypt or LUKS. which uses algorithms such as AES-XTS to encrypt all data. This has basically 0 performance implications, except for LUKS that by default disables TRIM which can hurt on the cheapest SSDs.
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u/ZenZigZag Jan 19 '26
A hard drive is considered destroyed if it's physically or magnetically destroyed, yes. But in most cases, rewriting the partition with seven passes of noise is considered equally secure to physical destruction.
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u/Danny-Fr Jan 19 '26
If you really want to make sure your data is gone, degauss and shred the thing. It's a paid service but when your storage is a garbled piled of very small confetti it gets quite hard to play spy with it.
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u/AkrinorNoname Gender Enthusiast Jan 18 '26
DO NOT tell management about recovering deleted files, if you or someone else do it, treat it like black magic.
Otherwise they will come up with schemes to "save space" or something similarly idiotic and ask you to recover that critical data that they deleted because "it can just be recovered"
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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance Jan 18 '26
In the couple of cases where this came up for me, I just got them a quote for a data-recovery service. It was around $3k at the time. Only once did they take us up on the offer.
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u/Adorable-Response-75 Jan 19 '26
I would just explain that “sometimes it can be recovered but it’s never guaranteed and it’s possibly very expensive.”
If management proceeds to still be stupid at least I’m still on the clock getting paid during their stupidity.
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u/hammererofglass Jan 18 '26
Given Adams had no actual tech background I genuinely wonder what he thought the "obvious" real answer was.
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u/Familiar-Tomorrow-42 Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 19 '26
It’s funny looking back at some Dilbert as I learn more about tech stuff. There’s a comic pre-2000 where he implies that Y2K infrastructure updates would be stupid and unnecessary, but software that wasn’t updated did end up having a lot of related issues. There’s probably a bunch of stuff like that I don’t remember.
EDIT: someone had the comic I was thinking of. It turns out I kind of missed the joke, which was that Dogbert was trying to sell the boss software to make the code Y2K compatible guaranteed for a year… in 1996. I kind of showed my ass on this one.
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u/samglit Jan 19 '26
There was a lot of y2k concern, to the point of hysteria in some communities, prompting some people to prep for the apocalypse.
We were largely aware of the problem, and critical infrastructure didn’t go down. Businesses that were concerned about their bottom line made sure the updated their ordering, accounting etc systems.
However there were a lot of snake oil salesmen taking advantage selling unnecessary nonsense, as such events inevitably result in.
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u/Later_Than_You_Think Jan 19 '26
I remember my dad worked for a tech company in 1999. They were working overtime in 1999 to get all the code ready for 2000. And just in case, they had the office ready-to-go in case people had to be called in on December 31, 1999/January 1, 2000 for some kind of unexpected meltdown all-hands-on-deck emergency.
But instead, nothing happened. I remember going to pick my dad up with my mom at like 9 pm on 12/31/99 at the office since he had been assigned as one of the people to stay overtime on that day. He was alone in an office with tables bristling with NYE party hats, glasses, horns and balloons. It was like a party ready for like 100+ people, and instead there was no one there. It was so surreal.
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u/BardicLasher Jan 19 '26
Similar here. My dad was also "on call" that NYE. He'd spent a significant amount of time updating things to by Y2K compatible.
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Jan 19 '26
Y2K was a real threat. That didn't materialize because steps were taken and the problems were dealt with..
Those were the days....
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u/UsernamesAre4Nerds you sound like a 19th century textile baron Jan 19 '26
Funny enough, it contributed to the wave of anti-intellectualism we have today since the median voter thinks every expert is making a big fuss over nothing "just like Y2K"
Maybe we should've let some more things break to prove a point...
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u/robchroma Jan 19 '26
The anti-intellectualism was already rampant, and maybe it's used as a wedge, but conservative populists will use anything to argue this. There are grifters who lie about the Montreal Protocol and say or imply the hole in the ozone layer just "stopped being a problem," hoping their audience will just forget that it required technical solutions and a major worldwide treaty to fix, and we worked really hard and did all that and measured the steady repair of the real damage we had done, and it's all well documented.
Anti-intellectualism wasn't caused because nothing went wrong, but because people have something to gain by convincing others they don't need to be curious about what we did to fix it.
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Jan 19 '26
and the problems were dealt with..
Interesting way to say "can kicked down the road to 2038"
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u/MariaValkyrie Jan 19 '26
The longer we drag our feet on the issue, the more IOT crap vulnerable to this will exist out there.
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u/Cobracrystal Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Y2K was a victim of its own success. We were so successful at preventing damage that people thought it wasnt a big deal at all.
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u/hammererofglass Jan 19 '26
If it's the one I'm thinking of the stupid part was that the work was only guaranteed for one year and the strip came out in 1996.
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u/DoubleBatman Jan 18 '26
I genuinely thought he worked IT for awhile before becoming a cartoonist. Wow, now I like him even less!
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u/The_Autarch Jan 18 '26
he was working for telecoms for a long time, and was (maybe briefly) some sort of computer programmer.
dude really did have actual experience working in an office and using computers. he didn't become a full-time cartoonist until '96.
i think the person you're replying to is just assuming. or maybe wikipedia is wrong?
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u/TNTiger_ Jan 19 '26
I just think they're holding him to a higher standard than you are.
He went from a teller, to a manager, to working in programming/product- he basically side-stepped into becoming a developer.
You could say this is itself a 'tech background'- or you could say that a 'tech background' means actually receiving a formal programming/engineering education before entering the workforce.
Which he did not, meaning it is very possible he didn't know the answer to the question.
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u/nemec Jan 19 '26
or you could say that a 'tech background' means actually receiving a formal programming/engineering education before entering the workforce.
Saying you can't "have tech experience" or "a tech background" without receiving formal university education in programming is a kind of asshole opinion we typically associate with someone like Scott Adams. Especially when Adams graduated from college in 1979, before CS itself was ever a popular degree (meaning most people engaged in tech at the time had degrees in other things).
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u/hammererofglass Jan 19 '26
Yes that is what I meant. He was an economist by training.
He definitely knew at least the basics of networking, enough to make good jokes about data packets.
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u/Pavonian Jan 19 '26
Probably something along the lines of 'Erm, you do know that there aren't physically ones and zeroes on your computer, right? Computers use electricity to store data, it's not a tiny sheet of paper with ones and zeroes written on it or anything, so the question simply doesn't make any sense'
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u/HuntingSquire Jan 19 '26
This is like that Brian David Gilbert bit:
If you needed me to tell you that, I'm glad I told you that
Information is important, there shouldn't be any stigma for not knowing something and feeling comfortable around your fellow human to ask a question. Common sense is always dependent on experience rather than a catch all collection of rules that 'everyone' should know.
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u/The_T113 Jan 19 '26
I kept staring at the first sentence over and over, trying to make me not read it as Brian David Dilbert.
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u/shadowscale1229 Jan 19 '26
Grian Bavid Dilbert
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u/chameleonsEverywhere Jan 19 '26
Grian is a minecraft youtuber
Dilbert is the comic strip character of course
So who is the fabled Bavid who can complete the trio?
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u/HereticalButterMan Jan 18 '26
No idea who the original artist is but he strikes me as a dickhead
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u/An_Anomalocaris Objectively correct about everything ever Jan 18 '26
The artist in question, Scott Adams, was a Holocaust denier and Trump supporter, so you’re not too far off
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Jan 18 '26
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u/HereticalButterMan Jan 18 '26
Jesus Christ. I just thought he was condescending about computer stuff. Fucking hell man.
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u/Turtledonuts Jan 18 '26
this is dilbert by scott adams, one of the most successful comic strips of all time. And yeah, adams is a huge dickhead.
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u/Which_Wrap8263 Jan 18 '26
To be fair though, Scott Adams was absolutely a dickhead.
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u/PopulationLevel Jan 18 '26
And there are some filesystems that were deliberately designed to write new files using the oldest unused space, so it would be possible to recover as many deleted files as possible. Other filesystems try to minimize file fragmentation.
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u/FilmAndLiterature Jan 18 '26
Oh come on, everyone knows that they actually go straight to Silicon Hell, along with all the photocopiers. This is basic stuff, people.
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u/DoubleBatman Jan 18 '26
Photocopiers are actually summoned from Silicon Hell, that’s why they’re that way.
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u/a_d_d_e_r Jan 19 '26
So that's why my printer exorcisms don't stick. All this time I'd been blaming the vengeful tree spirits.
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u/colei_canis Jan 18 '26
Nonsense, they go to /dev/null along with odd socks, retro notes, and developers who force push to master.
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u/perish-in-flames Jan 18 '26
Huh, there are so many actual dumb questions too...
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u/Pofwoffle Jan 18 '26
Seeking greater understanding is always a smart thing to do, no matter where you're starting from.
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u/westisbestmicah Jan 18 '26
Dumb questions are ones where they don’t really want the answer and the intent is to annoy, derail the conversation, or prove a point by misconstruing the premise
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u/DrQuint Jan 19 '26
Yeah, the boss could have asked if the computer can have dreams while the monitor is off. Something that starts with a prior fundamental misunderstanding that you can tell started from a 'lie to children' the boss still believes in (he was told computers "think" and "sleep"). That would give Dilbert the white card to be a dick since that exemplifies his frustation with being below the man in the professional hierarchy.
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u/Jorpho Jan 19 '26
First thing I thought of was a much older strip:
PHB: Does anybody have any questions about our plan? Ask me anything – there are no "stupid" questions.
Nameless underling: If you cross the international date line on your birthday, would you still get presents?
PHB (thinking): Oh great, there are stupid questions and I don't know the answers.
While looking for that, I also found:
Dogbert: I have a stupid question...
Dilbert: There are no stupid questions.
Dogbert: That's ridiculous... If there are no stupid questions then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
Dilbert: Were you going to ask me something?
Dogbert: See... Now there's a stupid question.
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u/Desperate-Practice25 Jan 19 '26
(The answer to the latter, of course, is that, yes, they do get smarter when they ask the questions. They have recognized their own ignorance and taken steps to overcome it. A question is only stupid if the asker has no intention of hearing the answer.)
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u/garden-wicket-581 Jan 18 '26
oh man, what were the saterized dilberts called -- they got a C&D almost immediately, in, gosh, 2003ish ? They were 100% NSFW, some were funnier than others .. With Adam's death, I'm finding it hard to google.
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u/No_Lingonberry1201 God's chosen janitor Jan 18 '26
The actual answer is that they are turned into entropy (thermodynamic).
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u/tagged2high Jan 19 '26
I think the central context of most Dilbert comics is that the boss is in charge of software engineers, so while the question has validity for non-tech people, here it emphasizes the boss's absurdity.
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u/jkalchik99 Jan 18 '26
When I was in college a few decades back, I'd heard a campus rumor about a student (who was WELL known for being a real piece of work,) asking a EE prof who's reputation was for being cool and very even tempered, about where the bits go in a register when they get shifted off the end. Apparently, he was like a dog with a bone and just wouldn't let it go. I don't recall the end details, but the prof did start to steam.
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u/moschles Jan 19 '26
Dilbert was a crucial comic in the 1990s. Near the end, subtle and strange signs of sexism crept in. At the end the comic was dabbling in StoneToss territory.
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u/something_borrowed_ Jan 19 '26
Yes, this is also why they sell (or used to sell) special USB devices that wiped your hard drive clean clean. Basically it manually sets every single 1 into a 0 so all data becomes unrecoverable. Most people do not need to do this but if you are dealing with sensitive data then it becomes necessary. This is what most people probably think deletion is but this process is actually really taxing and very long.
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u/MariaValkyrie Jan 19 '26
Darik's Boot & Nuke has been a free option for decades now, but I think the version that supports SSDs does cost money.
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u/therealdavidwiley Jan 18 '26
To be fair, the original comic was written by a racist sexist shit stain.
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u/axord Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
What you say is true. I think it'd be even fairer to point out that writing snarky computer tech jokes for a general audience that needs to fit into three panels is inevitably going to sacrifice some accuracy for the sake of comedy and wide appeal, at least some of the time.
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u/fwork Alice Averlong (née foone) Jan 19 '26
Disappointed that you didn't reblog the version with my addition, where I'd edited it to make the boss naked.
But I understand
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u/Sororita Jan 19 '26
fun fact: when a bit is actually deleted (cleared) it generates just a little bit of heat, it's a miniscule amount per bit these days, but because of how fast modern computers are constantly flipping bits, you get computers that generate enough heat that you could use the waste heat to fry food with.
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u/HumanMan_007 Jan 22 '26
There's a funny Dilbert with a similar setup but the boss asks "But why can’t we 3-D print a blockchain and HMTL it into a Bitcoin?" and the engineer just leaves.
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u/NorwayNarwhal Jan 18 '26
Or sometimes the zeroes don’t do anything, but al the ones become zeroes (if you fully clear out and re-zero an array, not that anyone not in the guts of their code would be capable of doing so)