It's a joke making fun of people saying he's "killing these companies" by giving a bad review for a product and publishing it to YouTube, which is what this joke product is based on
Indeed. That's one dick roughly every 2 seconds. Even with five options for dick-handling, that's 10.5 seconds per dick. That's clearly optimizing for volume instead of satisfaction.
Pray tell Mr Babbage, what if you were to only put into the machine the right questions, would the wrong answers come out?
-Some aristocratic idiot 1869, april 20.
EDIT : I should really provide the source just for fun.
On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864), ch. 5 "Difference Engine No. 1"
It gives me such a Terry Pratchett Discworld vibe. Where death is talking to the wizards at the unseen University about Hex, their computer analogous contraption.
To be unfair, "If I ask you directions to the church, but I actually wanted to get directions to the library, would you give me the right directions" doesn't need a computer, and the guy is just as stupid.
Yeah honestly Babbage sounds like kind of a dick in this one response. It's 160 years later but it is actually possible now, in some specific circumstances, to ask a computer the wrong question and still get the right answer. "AI" is probably what popped into your head but search engine spell correction absolutely counts, and many examples predate that one by a large margin. Around the time compilers were first outputting error messages, compiler writers were also saying "ok the author typed This but obviously they meant That, what if we just compile the program they meant and output a warning?"
These people just weren't sure what the technology was capable of, and were examining the possible parameters.
EDIT: Went from +6-0 to +6-5, so I'm being brigaded by a niche faction I didn't even know existed: Babbage stans. These mfs LOVE difference engines
Lol, a useful political tool that would be. Put in garbage numbers and get the right answer. IOW he could try to sell people on bad numbers and say “See?! The miraculous computer says it works out!”
I think an Android app would be way better. Since you know your phone is probably way more capable than these new devices and it costs a lot less (in the sense you only have to buy 1 device and not 2)
When you need all your tech to look and work like what the Junkmetalman had in Superhero Team Vs. Purple Genocidal Guy 3 - Juggernaut, but you don't understand that it would be impractical in real life...