# Forum > Comics > Webcomics >  xkcd

## Tetrimino

I noticed there was no thread for xkcd, and it's the only other webcomic I read.

Anyone want to talk about it?

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## Leewei

It's a fun, witty, and often confusing comic.  Unlike the other webcomics here, there isn't anything like a plot to fuel a discussion.

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## AvatarVecna

> It's a fun, witty, and often confusing comic.  Unlike the other webcomics here, there isn't anything like a plot to fuel a discussion.


I dunno, this thread did okay while it ran. Posting there would be thread necromancy, though, so making a new thread was maybe the right move?

There was a comic I wanted to say something about recently, but the thread was locked.  What was it...oh right, this one! So...you think Luke gave Yoda this much crap about grammar?  :Small Tongue: 

EDIT: Plus, giving a dude crap for using archaic rules of grammar when he's legitimately ancient would be like complaining about Shakespeare speaking like a character from one of his plays.

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## GAAD

IT ME I ALLOWED IT is far funnier than it has any right to be.

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## 137beth

> EDIT: Plus, giving a dude crap for using archaic rules of grammar when he's legitimately ancient would be like complaining about Shakespeare speaking like a character from one of his plays.


I was about to say "Palpatine isn't that much older than Luke and Anakin, is he?  He's not ancient the way Yoda is."  
And then I remembered that it's Star Wars, so everything is ancient.

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## AvatarVecna

> I was about to say "Palpatine isn't that much older than Luke and Anakin, is he?  He's not ancient the way Yoda is."  
> And then I remembered that it's Star Wars, so everything is ancient.


My recollection was that Sideous had gained some kind of immortality secret from the Sith that trained him, and he had at least a couple centuries under his belt - if only because he was able to hold his own against the 877+ year old Jedi Master Yoda, who's likely so powerful due to having been doing this Force crap for so long. A quick perusal of the wiki shows that he was 86 at the time of his death, with Vader and Luke being 45/23 respectively.  That means that the Palpatine we see in Episode III, who killed three Jedi Masters before they could react, who only "failed" to beat Windu because he was sandbagging to stall long enough for Anakin to arrive and cement himself firmly in the dark side, and who later dueled Yoda to a draw/win, was only about 63. I mean, that's old for a human, but not anything like what I was expecting.  I guess the Dark Side really is better, if it lets a dude power-level anywhere between 4 and 10 times as quickly as the Light Side practitioners.  :Small Tongue:

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## Yuki Akuma

Well, do remember that Yoda had been relegated to training younglings for the past Force-knows-how-long, and the galaxy was experiencing an unprecedented era of peace. He had no real reason to keep pushing himself to improve.

I'd also imagine the Sith are trained to fight other Force users way more comprehensively than Jedi are, given that's their whole deal.

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## Xihirli

In the novelization, it's stated that Jedi learn a fighting style based on reflecting blaster fire, and Dooku used an old-fashioned fencing technique from when the Sith were more numerous than two and Jedi were trained to fight saber-on-saber. 
Of course, Yoda should remember that fighting style.

This is LIKE a discussion on xkcd.

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## eschmenk

> I noticed there was no thread for xkcd, and it's the only other webcomic I read.
> 
> Anyone want to talk about it?


That won't actually work. Whenever there is a thread about XKCD, the conversation turns to something related to a recent XKCD comic, like grammar or Star Wars, rather than the comic itself. Not that I'm complaining, but it seems inevitable.  :Small Amused: 

I guess it's that the topics that Randall chooses are often topics that people find frustrating or just like to talk about.

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## Tetrimino

> Well, do remember that Yoda had been relegated to training younglings for the past Force-knows-how-long, and the galaxy was experiencing an unprecedented era of peace. He had no real reason to keep pushing himself to improve.
> 
> I'd also imagine the Sith are trained to fight other Force users way more comprehensively than Jedi are, given that's their whole deal.


Really? I'd think that someone who says "do or do not, there is no try" would be the type to always try to improve.

That being said, one of the books has a whole thing about how Jedi who use the force too much always turn to the Dark Side, so he could have stopped becoming more powerful on purpose.

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## Ibrinar

Actually it means when he can't do something he just immediately stops trying. Joda was telling Luck that he was a failure and should just give up.

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## Kato

I'm too lazy to look but I feel this is like the tenth xkcd thread... And like all others it's doomed to die. Most strips are just not fit for discussion.. Sure, this time we could come up with a bunch more adjective foods but else?

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## Olinser

> In the novelization, it's stated that Jedi learn a fighting style based on reflecting blaster fire, and Dooku used an old-fashioned fencing technique from when the Sith were more numerous than two and Jedi were trained to fight saber-on-saber. 
> Of course, Yoda should remember that fighting style.
> 
> This is LIKE a discussion on xkcd.


Canonically there were 7 main lightsaber styles in use by the Jedi, each with different strengths and weaknesses, and various small variations and sub-forms.

And yes, Dooku used both a fighting style and lightsaber style that were based around saber to saber dueling, which gave him a huge advantage.

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## Tetrimino

Going to move back to the topic of the actual comic...

The title text says

" Guess who has two thumbs and spent the night in an ER after trying to rescue a kitten that ran under his car at a stoplight and climbed up into the engine compartment? And, thanks to antibiotics, will continue having two thumbs? THIS GUY. (P.S. kitten is safe!)"

Did this actually happen? Explain xkcd says it did, but I'm not sure where they would have gotten it from.

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## Leewei

> Going to move back to the topic of the actual comic...
> 
> The title text says
> 
> " Guess who has two thumbs and spent the night in an ER after trying to rescue a kitten that ran under his car at a stoplight and climbed up into the engine compartment? And, thanks to antibiotics, will continue having two thumbs? THIS GUY. (P.S. kitten is safe!)"
> 
> Did this actually happen? Explain xkcd says it did, but I'm not sure where they would have gotten it from.


The comic itself has an entry,



> "That cat bites are really serious and if bitten you need to wash the bite and call a doctor immediately"


It looks like Randall Munroe got one of his thumbs preyed upon by a kitty.

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## Fri

not just bite, claws as well actually. Though obviously not all cats have it, there's a really bacteria that mainly grow on cat claws and can give you serious infection. I read stories once in a while about a guy who got clawed by stray cat and went into sepsis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat-scratch_disease

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## 137beth

So is BHG basing his assertion on actual early folklore I'm not familiar with, or is he just changing it to creep people out?

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## The Glyphstone

It's a reference to Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse that pulled Odin's chariot in Norse myth. The link to Santa delivering gifts is probably BHG's 'improvement'.

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## Yuki Akuma

The modern image of Santa _is_ basically Odin with both eyes wearing a different hat.

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## Tetrimino

I'm not sure if that counts as more authentic...

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## Kato

> The modern image of Santa _is_ basically Odin with both eyes wearing a different hat.


Really? I'm not aware of all Norse myths but I can't recall any considering Odin a gift bringer... like, why would he? Just because both are old, omniscient bearded guys..?

That said... it would be cool if Rudolph was originally one eighth of Sleipnir.

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## Tetrimino

> Really? I'm not aware of all Norse myths but I can't recall any considering Odin a gift bringer... like, why would he? Just because both are old, omniscient bearded guys..?
> 
> That said... it would be cool if Rudolph was originally one eighth of Sleipnir.


It's not really a myth we hear a lot about, but the Norse believed that Odin rode across the land every Yule (their winter holiday). Children would leave one of their boots outside filled with hay, and when Odin passed he would leave presents in the boots, and his horse would eat the hay. That's where we get the idea of Santa leaving gifts in our stockings.

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## Eldan

The only related thing I know is that Odin would wander the land every winter in disguise and if people were hospitable to him, by offering him food and shelter from the cold, he would reward them with gifts.

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## Iruka

Odin is in some myths also the leader of the Wild Hunt, most active in the 12 nights of Yule.

The german wikipedia claims that according to one legend, the leader of the Wild Hunt warned people with a "Hohoho!" of the approaching host, but does not cite a source.

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## Slayn82

So, summing up: back then, before there was a Christmas, Odin had a nice thing going for him: he would go around seeing if people where hospitable,  exchanged gifts with those who were nice enough to give food to him and his mounts, and in case people weren't, he had a Wild Hunt? Kind of a second, exclusive Halloween?

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## Peelee

> It's not really a myth we hear a lot about, but the Norse believed that Odin rode across the land every Yule (their winter holiday). Children would leave one of their boots outside filled with hay, and when Odin passed he would leave presents in the boots, and his horse would eat the hay. That's where we get the idea of Santa leaving gifts in our stockings.


There's also an Austrian tradition of leaving shoes outside on St. Nick's Day (Dec 16), for him to fill with candy overnight. Don't think it's Norse derived, but I'm unsure.

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## Tetrimino

> There's also an Austrian tradition of leaving shoes outside on St. Nick's Day (Dec 16), for him to fill with candy overnight. Don't think it's Norse derived, but I'm unsure.


It could be from there too, it's hard to tell. There's so many different cultures with similar traditions that no one really knows where it started.

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## Kato

> There's also an Austrian tradition of leaving shoes outside on St. Nick's Day (Dec 16), for him to fill with candy overnight. Don't think it's Norse derived, but I'm unsure.


16th? We do it on the 6th. Weird, never knew we were a week early on that,too.
Also, if Odin used to be Santa.. I think naughty kids got more than a lump of coal.

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## Kantaki

> 16th? We do it on the 6th. Weird, never knew we were a week early on that,too.
> Also, if Odin used to be Santa.. I think naughty kids got more than a lump of coal.


Well duh. Used to be that naughty kids got beat up. Or worse depending where you are from.
Even when I was a kid the threat was still there.

I'm not kidding. One year I actually got a warning shot in my boot.
_That_ is some motivation to be a nice kid.

What kind of punishment is a piece of coal anyway? Wouldn't that only give the kids ideas?

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## Eldan

They still theoretically get beat up over here. Santa is accompanied by a couple of burly woodsmen carrying sticks and big empty sacks, who are responsible for grabbing naughty kids.

Just one more reason Santa scares the **** out of kids when he comes knocking at your house.

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## Kantaki

By the way, to make this clear, by warning shot I meant a huge stick in my shoe with a message along the lines of Clean up your act or next time I'll use it attached to it and by when I was a kid I mean maybe 16 years ago.

So yeah, Santa/the Nikolaus/however we call the old man is _scary_.
Especially when christmas time comes closer.
He _knows everything_ you have done. He has _seen you do it_. And he _will punish_ you.

At least I usually didn't have to meet him. Mostly left the gifts under the tree while the family went for a walk*.
Well, there was one year when we visited another part of the family where he delivered the gifts personally. And you had to sing/recite something to get them. Scariest Christmas ever. :Small Eek:  The fact that I was old enough to know it was just someone in a costume didn't help at all.

*Respectively in the shoes depending wether we talk about 24.12 or 06.12.

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## Eldan

See, in Switzerland, HE COMES TO YOUR HOUSE. At night. And then stands in your living room and reads you a list of everything you did wrong that year.

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## Peelee

> 16th? We do it on the 6th. Weird, never knew we were a week early on that,too.
> Also, if Odin used to be Santa.. I think naughty kids got more than a lump of coal.


Huh... Wikipedia says you're right, and there's no mention of an Austria-specific 16th for the day, but that's what I remember it as. Maybe it was just the 6th, and I'm remembering it wrong? I dunno. Coulda sworn it was the 16th, but now I feel like I should call my mom sometime and verify.

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## Tetrimino

> See, in Switzerland, HE COMES TO YOUR HOUSE. At night. And then stands in your living room and reads you a list of everything you did wrong that year.


Yikes... Switzerland must be a scary place...

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## Fri

Why do you think it got the highest number of gun per capita and everyone are trained to use it?

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## Anteros

> Why do you think it got the highest number of gun per capita and everyone are trained to use it?


It doesn't though?  Although it is fairly high up the list.

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## Fri

Well, they know what to ask santa then.

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## Rodin

> Well, they know what to ask santa then.


Asking scary Swiss Santa for a gun seems like a fast track to a Darwin award.

"You want a gun?  Oh, I'll give you a gun!  HO. HO. HOOOOO!"

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## Anteros

You've gone full Futurama now.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing.

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## Kantaki

> You've gone full Futurama now.  That isn't necessarily a bad thing.


Futurama Santa is _harmless_. Almost cuddly. :Small Big Grin:

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## Eldan

> Why do you think it got the highest number of gun per capita and everyone are trained to use it?


"Everyone" is vastly overstating it. Something like 50% of all men get themselves declared unfit for duty. THe higher educated, the higher that number, too. WHen I was being drafted, 19/20 college students in my group got out on technicalities or mental problems.

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## Kato

> I'm not kidding. One year I actually got a warning shot in my boot.
> _That_ is some motivation to be a nice kid.


How do you get a warning shot in your boot? Except the literal one...?

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## Kantaki

> How do you get a warning shot in your boot? Except the literal one...?


I wasn't wearing it.

The message was still _very_ clear.

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## Tetrimino

> I wasn't wearing it.
> 
> The message was still _very_ clear.


I assumed you were speaking metaphorically.

That story just got WAY scarier.

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## Kantaki

> I assumed you were speaking metaphorically.
> 
> That story just got WAY scarier.


 :Small Big Grin: That was unintended.
But funny. :Small Big Grin: 
And no, it wasn't a literal _shot_.
This is what happened:




> By the way, to make this clear, by warning shot I meant a huge stick in my shoe with a message along the lines of Clean up your act or next time I'll use it attached to it and by when I was a kid I mean maybe 16 years ago.

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## The Glyphstone

I was going to say, that's one badass Santa.

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## Kato

> That was unintended.
> But funny.
> And no, it wasn't a literal _shot_.
> This is what happened:


Ah, I missed that. My bad, now it's much less scary  :Small Red Face: 


Today's comic reminds me off when I tried to fix my phone...  :Small Sigh:  Yes, I can be an idiot. Also, a clumsy idiot.

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## Kaptin Keen

The funny thing about Odin is that he - along with the rest of norse mythology - changes a lot once christianity starts making it's entry into northern Europe. So personally I find it doubtful he was 'Santa' before the coming of christ. He was, after all, the god of death and the afterlife, originally. 

Also exceptionally deceitful, selfish, greedy, fickle ... and so on. 

The whole Allfather affair is definitely a later adaption.

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## 137beth

Regarding today's comic...I can't say I haven't done something similar myself :Small Red Face:

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## Tetrimino

> That was unintended.
> But funny.
> And no, it wasn't a literal _shot_.
> This is what happened:


I must have missed that part, the story makes more sense now.

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## Tetrimino

> The funny thing about Odin is that he - along with the rest of norse mythology - changes a lot once christianity starts making it's entry into northern Europe. So personally I find it doubtful he was 'Santa' before the coming of christ. He was, after all, the god of death and the afterlife, originally. 
> 
> Also exceptionally deceitful, selfish, greedy, fickle ... and so on. 
> 
> The whole Allfather affair is definitely a later adaption.


God of the afterlife? Isn't Hel supposed to be deity of the afterlife?

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## Kantaki

> God of the afterlife? Isn't Hel supposed to be deity of the afterlife?


Odin (and Freya) got the souls of those who died honorable, in battle.
Everyone else ended up with Hel.

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## Kaptin Keen

> God of the afterlife? Isn't Hel supposed to be deity of the afterlife?


Thing is - my noble ancestors didn't have written records. Everything known about ancient norse religion is written down in the 1200's or later, when the bloody christians introduced us to writing. 

By then, norse mythology was trying to reinvent itself to compete with all the happy nonsense of christendom: A pleasant afterlife, the message of love, and so on. Hence, it's highly unclear what the original religion was like.

For one thing - I didn't see anyone mention this yet - there are some who believe Loke and Odin were originally the same guy. Same for Frig and Freya.

So ... point is, it's all rather opague. But, Odin appears quite simply to be older than Hel. And he's not _just_ the god of the dead. He's a shaman, a shapeshifter, he has several animal companions, he's a trickster, he is connected to horses and spears and whatnot. Also, he's the Allfather, the highest of the asa, yet he wasn't worshipped much - this follows from the fact that not many places are named for him. 

And then of course there's quite a bit of discussion on whether or not he was, at some point, a historical figure. And whether the norse gods are asa, because they came from asia. 

=)

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## Anteros

I'm pretty sure talking about "the happy nonsense" of other religions is against board rules.

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## Tetrimino

> Odin (and Freya) got the souls of those who died honorable, in battle.
> Everyone else ended up with Hel.


Ah, right. I forgot how complicated the Norse afterlife is.

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## Kaptin Keen

> I'm pretty sure talking about "the happy nonsense" of other religions is against board rules.


I think taking things out of context also is? I do go on to explain that 'happy nonsense' = 'love, paradise, salvation'. 

These are simple facts: Christendom (new testament) is primarily about pleasant things, love, understanding, forgiveness, and so on.

By contrast, asa faith is all about strength, power, deceit, sex ... and so on.

When it became obvious that christendom was pulling ahead despite it's unmanly lack of focus on lopping off heads and limbs, asa faith adapted, adding in a less unpleasant afterlife. 

If you must insist on deliberately misunderstanding - go ahead, I don't really mind. But don't make me out as a bigot or whatever by randomly picking half a sentence to throw back in my face. Thanks =)

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## AvatarVecna

> I think taking things out of context also is? I do go on to explain that 'happy nonsense' = 'love, paradise, salvation'. 
> 
> These are simple facts: Christendom (new testament) is primarily about pleasant things, love, understanding, forgiveness, and so on.
> 
> By contrast, asa faith is all about strength, power, deceit, sex ... and so on.
> 
> When it became obvious that christendom was pulling ahead despite it's unmanly lack of focus on lopping off heads and limbs, asa faith adapted, adding in a less unpleasant afterlife. 
> 
> If you must insist on deliberately misunderstanding - go ahead, I don't really mind. But don't make me out as a bigot or whatever by randomly picking half a sentence to throw back in my face. Thanks =)


You're misunderstanding: being a bigot is not against board rules (just several of the side-effects of being a bigot  :Small Wink: ). Discussing real-world religion _is_ against Forum Rules.

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## Anteros

> I think taking things out of context also is? I do go on to explain that 'happy nonsense' = 'love, paradise, salvation'. 
> 
> These are simple facts: Christendom (new testament) is primarily about pleasant things, love, understanding, forgiveness, and so on.
> 
> By contrast, asa faith is all about strength, power, deceit, sex ... and so on.
> 
> When it became obvious that christendom was pulling ahead despite it's unmanly lack of focus on lopping off heads and limbs, asa faith adapted, adding in a less unpleasant afterlife. 
> 
> If you must insist on deliberately misunderstanding - go ahead, I don't really mind. But don't make me out as a bigot or whatever by randomly picking half a sentence to throw back in my face. Thanks =)


I don't think it makes you a bigot for not believing in something, but this whole conversation is against board rules (for precisely this reason) and we'll all likely get nuked as soon as a mod notices it.

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## Douglas

*The Mod Radiant:* A) Discussion of real world religion is indeed not allowed on these forums, whether or not you're stating facts and clinical analysis without opinion or advocacy.
B) Please leave the pointing out of such things to the actual moderators. If you need to get a moderator's attention in order to make it happen, use the report button.

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## Kaptin Keen

There has been zero _discussion_ of any religion. Not that I'm aware of. Detailing aspects of religion is _not_ discussion.

That also isn't what the rules state. Never mind. I'm 100% agnostic at any rate, and feel nothing but historical attachment to religion. I did want to respond to what is to be nothing but a baseless personal attack.

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## Lethologica

Is there a particular statistical controversy that prompted today's comic about mishandled artifacts?

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## halfeye

> There has been zero _discussion_ of any religion. Not that I'm aware of. Detailing aspects of religion is _not_ discussion.
> 
> That also isn't what the rules state.


Ooh,




> Prove it.






> Never mind. I'm 100% agnostic at any rate, and feel nothing but historical attachment to religion.


Interesting, I'm aestheistic to all human religions, and agnostic as to the existence of a cause of the Big Bang, but we're still not allowed to mention any of that.




> Is there a particular statistical controversy that prompted today's comic about mishandled artifacts?


Probably not. There are a whole bunch that loosely fit it, so I presume those're the aiming point.

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## Tetrimino

> Is there a particular statistical controversy that prompted today's comic about mishandled artifacts?


Not that I know of.

I think it's more just a joke about people not handling their data correctly.

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## Kaptin Keen

We all know about this one, right?

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## keybounce

So, catching up, the idea of a mountain being compared to a fireworks, with a reference to volcanoes...

Lets just ignore the winter holy days and move on, mkay?

---

EDIT: 


> And then in a twinkling, a sound gave me pause / From the roof came the scratching of eight tarsal claws.


I think that would be worse than my cat :-).

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## 137beth

Today's comic is me with a web browser.  I'm not going to install an "app" that is actually just a website but takes up space on my hard drive and has more ads than the website it is supposed to imitate.

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## Tetrimino

> Today's comic is me with a web browser.  I'm not going to install an "app" that is actually just a website but takes up space on my hard drive and has more ads than the website it is supposed to imitate.


Really? I've had pretty much the opposite experience. Granted, I don't have many website-apps, but the ones I do use have less or the same amount of ads than the site normally does.

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## Peelee

> Really? I've had pretty much the opposite experience. Granted, I don't have many website-apps, but the ones I do use have less or the same amount of ads than the site normally does.


The problem with apps that are basically websites is that you lose functionality with the app. Same with mobile sites. Hate 'em all.

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## Tetrimino

About today's comic...
 Is this an actual photoshop tool? Because I use photoshop and didn't know this was a thing.

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## 137beth

> Really? I've had pretty much the opposite experience. Granted, I don't have many website-apps, but the ones I do use have less or the same amount of ads than the site normally does.


Depends on the app and website in question, obviously.  But in general, I have more fine-grain control over ad-blocking in a browser than I do in an app.



> The problem with apps that are basically websites is that you lose functionality with the app. Same with mobile sites. Hate 'em all.


Yep, I use a fake useragent string to see "desktop" sites everywhere.  (Except Giantitp.com, where there is actually a setting to always go to the full site if you are logged in :Small Smile: ).

One particularly bad offender is Yelp.  The "mobile" site often won't let me see an entire review if it is beyond a certain length, or even see all the reviews for a particular store.  Trying to click to see the whole review redirects to a full-screen ad for their app.  Meanwhile, the Yelp app, last time I tried using it, was impossible to use without logging in to a Yelp account (in contrast with the website, which doesn't require a log-in).  And was missing functionality of the website anyways.  It's possible that the Yelp app has gotten better since then, but I stopped caring because I don't need it: the "desktop" version of yelp.com is perfectly usable on my iPhone.

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## Peelee

> Yep, I use a fake useragent string to see "desktop" sites everywhere.  (Except Giantitp.com, where there is actually a setting to always go to the full site if you are logged in).


No iphone, but I have an option in the quick settings menu, for lack of a better term (same place I can find the "find on page" button) an option to switch to desktop view.

An interesting part of this is how it reacts with Facebook. Mobile view is more convenient on that site, since things like the Messages button are tiny once desktop-ized, and inconvenient. Mobile site is *also* inconvenient for messages, since it demands that you download the Facebook Messenger app, which I ain't doin'. However, if I go into the comments of a status, then hit View Desktop Mode, it still gives me the mobile view, but suddenly I can see and write messages without any issues. Which means to me that they never took that functionality out of the mobile site, they just blocked it with "DOWNLOAD OUR APP" bullcrap. Which I can now get around. Suck it, Zuckerberg!

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## Tetrimino

> Depends on the app and website in question, obviously.  But in general, I have more fine-grain control over ad-blocking in a browser than I do in an app.
> 
> Yep, I use a fake useragent string to see "desktop" sites everywhere.  (Except Giantitp.com, where there is actually a setting to always go to the full site if you are logged in).
> 
> One particularly bad offender is Yelp.  The "mobile" site often won't let me see an entire review if it is beyond a certain length, or even see all the reviews for a particular store.  Trying to click to see the whole review redirects to a full-screen ad for their app.  Meanwhile, the Yelp app, last time I tried using it, was impossible to use without logging in to a Yelp account (in contrast with the website, which doesn't require a log-in).  And was missing functionality of the website anyways.  It's possible that the Yelp app has gotten better since then, but I stopped caring because I don't need it: the "desktop" version of yelp.com is perfectly usable on my iPhone.


On a semi-related note, I've recently noticed that the yahoo fantasy sports app is in in most ways better than the website. Which is odd, since you'd think that's the kind of thing most people do on a PC.

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## 137beth

New comic is up.  So Black Hat Guy is hoarding all the entrances to Narnia?

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## halfeye

> New comic is up.  So Black Hat Guy is hoarding all the entrances to Narnia?


Black hat guy is a baddie, in xkcd. He's dumping his refuse/garbage in Narnia. I think he implied his furniture and presumably everyone else's comes like that by default, but he's a baddie so he could be lying about it being a default if nobody else is doing it.

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## Tetrimino

> Black hat guy is a baddie, in xkcd. He's dumping his refuse/garbage in Narnia. I think he implied his furniture and presumably everyone else's comes like that by default, but he's a baddie so he could be lying about it being a default if nobody else is doing it.


Agreed. He's probably lying about half his furniture having a portal (how could there be a portal to Narnia in a sofa). Hat guy is just saving time and money by installing a chute in the wardrobe.

Then again, this could be like beret guy and his groceries in http://xkcd.com/1772/

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## Keltest

> Agreed. He's probably lying about half his furniture having a portal (how could there be a portal to Narnia in a sofa). Hat guy is just saving time and money by installing a chute in the wardrobe.
> 
> Then again, this could be like beret guy and his groceries in http://xkcd.com/1772/


I dunno, a portal to Narnia in my sofa would explain where all the stuff I lose in it goes.

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## John Campbell

"okay google send a text"

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## Tetrimino

New comic!

I understand the problem, but why would you want calls forwarded to your google voice number when you have a cell phone?

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## Grey_Wolf_c

> New comic!
> 
> I understand the problem, but why would you want calls forwarded to your google voice number when you have a cell phone?


I'm more likely to be close to my laptop than my phone when not at work. Skype is usually a more reliable way of getting hold of me than any of my mobile phones, in fact, since Skype works in all the places, while I have different phones in different countries.

GW

----------


## eschmenk

> New comic!
> 
> I understand the problem, but why would you want calls forwarded to your google voice number when you have a cell phone?


Because Google finally updated Voice yesterday, so ATM it's the newest, flashiest thing?  :Small Confused:  (That doesn't apply to me--I just happened to spot an email mentioning the update--but it might apply to some people.) There will be times when people would have access to the internet, but not their cellphone coverage, so I could see people using Google Voice to consolidate things, though.

In any case, I suspect the current comic was motivated by the idea that people would react to the recent update to Google Voice and start forwarding stuff to it.

----------


## Peelee

> New comic!
> 
> I understand the problem, but why would you want calls forwarded to your google voice number when you have a cell phone?


Friend of mine works in an office that effectively blocks out all cell signal (a byproduct of other protective necessities around his office). It's helpful.

----------


## Rodin

> Friend of mine works in an office that effectively blocks out all cell signal (a byproduct of other protective necessities around his office). It's helpful.


It's also useful for other shenanigans.  To contact my father in England, I call a US number...which forwards to a UK number...which forwards to his Skype.  All to avoid paying long distance.  Bizarre arrangement that I don't really understand how it works, but it seems to do the trick.

----------


## Eldan

Why not just use Skype yourself?

----------


## Rodin

> Why not just use Skype yourself?


When I'm sat at my desktop, sure, we do video chats.  For calls, I already have a plan for my cell-phone, so it would cost more for me to add Skype to it.  This lets me call domestic from my cell (which is free under my plan) and reach him internationally.

----------


## gomipile

What time of day does XKCD update?

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> What time of day does XKCD update?


Used to be midnight, but for the last few months, it has been late. Possibly due to the feelings expressed in #1790.

GW

----------


## halfeye

> Possibly due to the feelings expressed in #1790.
> 
> GW


There were feelings in that?

She was writing code that did nothing (that's what "no side effects" means, more or less (it's complicated, but that's about 90% right), I don't know whether you know that).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_e...puter_science)

----------


## eschmenk

> There were feelings in that?


Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.




> She was writing code that did nothing (that's what "no side effects" means, more or less (it's complicated, but that's about 90% right), I don't know whether you know that).
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_e...puter_science)


Yes, it's obvious that she was writing code that did nothing. That's a symptom of her sadness. Programmers can write useful functions using functional programming that doesn't introduce any side effects. She was just too depressed to do it and was apparently wildly exaggerating (in her mind) what could go wrong, but mostly it was an excuse to not do anything. You seem to have misunderstood the wiki article.

----------


## halfeye

> Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.


That would be evil, and should be punished.  :Small Wink: 




> Yes, it's obvious that she was writing code that did nothing. That's a symptom of her sadness. Programmers can write useful functions using functional programming that doesn't introduce any side effects. She was just too depressed to do it and was apparently wildly exaggerating (in her mind) what could go wrong, but mostly it was an excuse to not do anything.


That may have been implied, but I don't think it was explicity stated. She was writing code, it was just code that didn't do anything, if she hadn't been writing code she wouldn't have been doing anything, as it was she was doing something, it was just that what she did didn't do anything. I suspect it's a programming joke, not a depiction of depression.




> You seem to have misunderstood the wiki article.


Yeah, I definitely don't get oo or functional programming, the former more than the latter, but it's certainly not clear enough that I can explain it succinctly.

----------


## eschmenk

It seems very likely to me that the specific comic was inspired by feeling of sadness and unhappiness, either on the part of Randall or those around him. Probably both. Given recent RW events that can't be discussed under forum rules, I would have expected him to be at least somewhat dismayed even if I hadn't seen the comic. Tending to confirm this, there have been other comics in the last few months that have also seemed to hint at Randall being unhappy. This one is another example.

Just in case you missed it, the comic's title is "Sad." I think it's intended to be taken in a "what it says on the tin" sort of way.

----------


## AMX

> That would be evil, and should be punished.


What.  :Small Mad: 




> That may have been implied, but I don't think it was explicity stated. She was writing code, it was just code that didn't do anything, if she hadn't been writing code she wouldn't have been doing anything, as it was she was doing something, it was just that what she did didn't do anything. I suspect it's a programming joke, not a depiction of depression.


It's quite obvious that it's both.

----------


## halfeye

> What.


It was a joke, you may have heard of them.




> It's quite obvious that it's both.


Not obvious to me.




> It seems very likely to me that the specific comic was inspired by feeling of sadness and unhappiness, either on the part of Randall or those around him. Probably both. Given recent RW events that can't be discussed under forum rules, I would have expected him to be at least somewhat dismayed even if I hadn't seen the comic. There have been other comics in the last few months that have also seemed to hint at Randall being unhappy, too. This one is an example.


Politics is small beer, compared to, say, cancer.




> Just in case you missed it, the comic's title is "Sad." I think it's intended to be taken in a "what it says on the tin" sort of way.


Yes, I missed that, it may be significant.

----------


## AMX

> It was a joke, you may have heard of them.


I'm quite aware of that, thank you very much.
And I also know that "It was only a joke" _is no excuse._

----------


## Peelee

> I'm quite aware of that, thank you very much.
> And I also know that "It was only a joke" _is no excuse._


No excuse for what?

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> No excuse for what?


For suggesting that sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative people (or possibly women) is evil and should be punished.

As jokes go, I agree it was in bad taste, smiley or not.

Context FTR:



> Originally Posted by eschmenk
> 
> 
> Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.
> 
> 
> That would be evil, and should be punished.


GW

----------


## keybounce

> Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.


We will just have to continue the testing until morale improves.

----------


## halfeye

> We will just have to continue the testing until morale improves.




From:

https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Floggin.../dp/B00A9VLX1K

There are dozens of others. I think I may have first come across it in Milligan's military memoirs, but there seem to be suggestions on the web today that it's a lot older than that.

The whole point is that it's completely absurd and nonsensical.

----------


## Lethologica

> Not obvious to me.


-Title is "Sad"
-Responds to "How are you doing" with "Hah."
-Using video games to hide from the real world.
-Is ranting in programming comments.
-Inability to "deal with this" expressed through her code.
-(Speculative) Lack of effects related to lack of affect.

I'm not sure what you need to be convinced.  200-foot-tall flaming letters or something? 




> Politics is small beer, compared to, say, cancer.


If nothing else, then, one should respect the impact politics can have on people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.  We don't avoid discussing the topic 'round here because of its _insignificance_.

----------


## eschmenk

> For suggesting that sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative people (or possibly women) is evil and should be punished.
> 
> As jokes go, I agree it was in bad taste, smiley or not.
> 
> Context FTR:
> 
> 
> GW


I'm inclined to give halfeye some leeway here. After all, I had just told him rather tactlessly that he misunderstood both the comic and the wikipedia article that he linked to. On top of that, he might prefer a lighthearted humorous comic rather than one with sadness injected into it. I can also read what he said as objecting (in a humorously exaggerated way) to the injection of sadness into the comic, rather than attacking the character per se. The subject of his sentence was "That" not "She." Furthermore, he doesn't read the comic the same way as everyone else, so he wouldn't empathize with her as a depressed person.

I would not belittle the importance of politics as halfeye did, though. Political leaders can make very important decisions, including life or death ones. For some people it can be more frustrating than something like cancer: after all, you can't blame a cancer for acting cancerous, but you can blame a politician or a voter for doing whatever they did. The reason I said that is to lead into this suggestion: It may be that people may be empathizing with the depressed character to varying degrees based in part on politics. I suggest caution, therefore.

Lethologica ninja'd my second paragraph. It takes me too long to write such things! I hadn't even seen the couple above his.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Politics is small beer, compared to, say, cancer.


1) There is no rule that says you can only be upset about one thing at a time

2) They may not be separate concerns anymore

GW

----------


## halfeye

> -Title is "Sad"
> -Responds to "How are you doing" with "Hah."


Missed sad, not convinced "Hah." can be taken as proof of clinical depression.




> -Using video games to hide from the real world.


I refuse to see this as significantly a problem, so long as it's on her own time. I get that some psychologists who've never played games would rather people watch TV, but personally I prefer games.




> -Is ranting in programming comments.
> -Inability to "deal with this" expressed through her code.


See programming joke.




> -(Speculative) Lack of effects related to lack of affect.


Lack of extreme feelings is proof of having a feeling of extreme sadness? I find that contradictory, I'm sure all the extraverts out there want everybody to be an extravert, but that doesn't make introverts ill.




> I'm not sure what you need to be convinced.  200-foot-tall flaming letters or something?


Something might be nice. <joke>




> If nothing else, then, one should respect the impact politics can have on people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses.  We don't avoid discussing the topic 'round here because of its _insignificance_.


The author dealt with their nearest and dearest having a close encounter with cancer a few years ago, hopefully they will stay clear, I doubt that politics gets close to that for emotional impact.




> 1) There is no rule that says you can only be upset about one thing at a time
> 
> GW


That's true, I wasn't saying it wasn't, I was merely saying the one you are or were personally directly involved with was probably more intense.

----------


## Lethologica

> Missed sad, not convinced "Hah." can be taken as proof of clinical depression.


This is a misuse of point-by-point argument.  The points on my list are not meant to individually prove that we're talking about depression, such that pointing out that each individual point does not prove depression is a refutation of the list.  The points _add up to_ depression.  (On the other hand, your objections are individual and distinct replies to my points, not interdependent elements of an argument, so I will go ahead and address them point by point.)




> I refuse to see this as significantly a problem, so long as it's on her own time. I get that some psychologists who've never played games would rather people watch TV, but personally I prefer games.


The problem isn't the "video games" part, it's the "hiding from the real world" part, which Ponytail confirms with "Fact check: mostly false."




> See programming joke.


Saying it's a programming joke is not an argument that it's not also portraying depression.  The comic is an inquiry into Ponytail's emotional state (as evidenced by Cueball inquiring about Ponytail's emotional state).  Since Ponytail is a programmer, programming jokes are involved, but that doesn't erase the emotional inquiry aspect of the comic.




> Lack of extreme feelings is proof of having a feeling of extreme sadness? I find that contradictory, I'm sure all the extraverts out there want everybody to be an extravert, but that doesn't make introverts ill.


It has nothing to do with extroversion or introversion.  Please do some reading on flat affect and anhedonia.




> The author dealt with their nearest and dearest having a close encounter with cancer a few years ago, hopefully they will stay clear, I doubt that politics gets close to that for emotional impact.


It's not a competition.  For example, let's say you've dealt with a loved one having cancer before and now you're facing a political situation impacting access to care for people with cancer.  Rather than saying "This political situation isn't as bad as when my loved one had cancer so I'm not all that impacted by this," you're likely to have strong emotions about the political situation in part _because of_ your previous experience with a loved one having cancer.

----------


## eschmenk

The new comic has been up for a few hours now. It seems very minimal to me.

----------


## Benthesquid

Some context.

----------


## Douglas

> Some context.


Your link just takes me to the comic.

----------


## Benthesquid

> Your link just takes me to the comic.


Er... yes!  Just as I planned, an elaborate meta commentary on...

Er...

I'll just leave this here.

----------


## eschmenk

> Er... yes!  Just as I planned, an elaborate meta commentary on...
> 
> Er...
> 
> I'll just leave this here.


Huh. It didn't occur to me that the terminology might not be universal.

----------


## Benthesquid

> Huh. It didn't occur to me that the terminology might not be universal.


Personally, I'm primarily familiar with it from the metaphorical usage (IE, Four Alarm chili), which is odd, given that my dad was a volunteer fire chief.

----------


## gomipile

Today's XKCD hits a bit close to home: 

https://xkcd.com/1796/

----------


## Tetrimino

> Er... yes!  Just as I planned, an elaborate meta commentary on...
> 
> Er...
> 
> I'll just leave this here.


That's interesting, I pretty much took the comic at face value, didn't realize there was a commonly used scale of alarm numbers.

----------


## eschmenk

> That's interesting, I pretty much took the comic at face value, didn't realize there was a commonly used scale of alarm numbers.


Huh, again. Reporters almost seem incapable of talking about a large urban fire without specifying the number of alarms. Saying the number of alarms doesn't really communicate much information to anyone outside the fire department, but "3-alarm fire" sounds more interesting than "fire," I guess.  :Small Confused:  I think rural fire departments often don't classify fires that way, though. I think for them its a question of "Can we handle this ourselves?" and if not, how much more help do they need? In any case, IIRC the newspaper where I grew up would list which fire departments responded, not the number of alarms, for rural fires. Even so, major urban fires will sometimes get national coverage so the number of alarms winds up on national news sometimes. I guess in addition to whether someone is in a rural or urban area, the fact that people are paying less attention to traditional news media nowadays probably affects the dissemination of the terminology.

----------


## 5a Violista

I get the feeling that you are still misinterpereting what three-alarm fire means. It does not mean three fire alarms went off, but rather that dispatches were sent for three times (because the first two were unable to contain the fire, so they called in for more).

If you already understood that, then I apologize for misinterpreting what you wrote.

----------


## Sermil

I think https://www.xkcd.com/1797/ is the first time I've seen XKCD do an explicit video-game related comic, something that would be at home in Awkward Zombie or such. Does anyone remember a previous one?

----------


## Peelee

> I think https://www.xkcd.com/1797/ is the first time I've seen XKCD do an explicit video-game related comic, something that would be at home in Awkward Zombie or such. Does anyone remember a previous one?


On occasion.

----------


## Kato

> On occasion.


Kerbal seems to be really popular, not only for Randal... but I'm sure there have been other occasions, too. Though, I'm not sure what to look for and I don't have time to do a proper search right now.


Today's comic hits kind of close to home. Sadly this mostly occurs when playing games and then I know there are people who suffer from it way worse than me.

----------


## eschmenk

> On occasion.


Yeah, they go back quite a ways and even earlier. And going meta, there is even at least one about comics about video games.

----------


## Lethologica

There's also the one about playing video games on a five year time lag, where the punch line is Portal memes in 2013. Honestly, that seems downright tame now.

----------


## Eldan

I kind of hate this comic. It's about how you can sing everything with the right syllable pattern to the melody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every so often, I'll get hung up on a sentence or phrase that works with it. So since yesterday, I've been singing "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" under my breath after reading a sci Fi novel.

----------


## Kaptin Keen

By virtue of living in a media vacuum of my own creation, I don't know the theme song from TMNT.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

> I kind of hate this comic. It's about how you can sing everything with the right syllable pattern to the melody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every so often, I'll get hung up on a sentence or phrase that works with it. So since yesterday, I've been singing "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" under my breath after reading a sci Fi novel.


Out of curiosity, what book?

----------


## Eldan

_The Fractal Prince_, which is a sequel to _The Quantum Thief_. 

A sci fi novel featuring heavy, heavy transhumanism. The first one is a heist novel, where a legendary thief is broken out of a virtual prison by a warrior from the oort cloud and her space ship so they can steal back his memories from a cryptography-obsessed culture on Mars. 
The second one is... a stylistically thousand-and-one-night-ish murder mystery featuring several characters who are actually planet sized quantum computer brains in close orbit around the sun. It's really quite good. Poetic, at times. Quite action packed, in a specialized way. (Imagine a fight between characters who can switch bodies, have said bodies filled with nanomachines and quantum computers and speed up their mental processing power enough to watch nano-missiles crawl through the air at them.)

And occasionally funny. Two of the larger societies around are the Sobornost, said planet sized computer brains around the sun and the Zoku, an upload collective from Saturn. There's a scene where a character visits the Zoku while they are reliving the Sacred Rituals of their ancestors, which involve creating meat bodies for themselves, dressing them up as batman or their favourite manga characters and playing old arcade games while drinking beer. He's also introduced to his Zoku girlfriend's Epic Mount.

"Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" are people like us. You now, those weird meat people who barely move or think.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

> _The Fractal Prince_, which is a sequel to _The Quantum Thief_. 
> 
> A sci fi novel featuring heavy, heavy transhumanism. The first one is a heist novel, where a legendary thief is broken out of a virtual prison by a warrior from the oort cloud and her space ship so they can steal back his memories from a cryptography-obsessed culture on Mars. 
> The second one is... a stylistically thousand-and-one-night-ish murder mystery featuring several characters who are actually planet sized quantum computer brains in close orbit around the sun. It's really quite good. Poetic, at times. Quite action packed, in a specialized way. (Imagine a fight between characters who can switch bodies, have said bodies filled with nanomachines and quantum computers and speed up their mental processing power enough to watch nano-missiles crawl through the air at them.)
> 
> And occasionally funny. Two of the larger societies around are the Sobornost, said planet sized computer brains around the sun and the Zoku, an upload collective from Saturn. There's a scene where a character visits the Zoku while they are reliving the Sacred Rituals of their ancestors, which involve creating meat bodies for themselves, dressing them up as batman or their favourite manga characters and playing old arcade games while drinking beer. He's also introduced to his Zoku girlfriend's Epic Mount.
> 
> "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" are people like us. You now, those weird meat people who barely move or think.


I've read those books! Should've recognized the phrase. Have you read _The Causal Angel_ yet? It's got a lot more zoku wackiness.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Eldan

> I've read those books! Should've recognized the phrase. Have you read _The Causal Angel_ yet? It's got a lot more zoku wackiness.


Next on my to read pile. I'm on a re-read of Fractal Prince and Quantum Thief since I just got Causal Angel.

----------


## Tetrimino

> _The Fractal Prince_, which is a sequel to _The Quantum Thief_. 
> 
> A sci fi novel featuring heavy, heavy transhumanism. The first one is a heist novel, where a legendary thief is broken out of a virtual prison by a warrior from the oort cloud and her space ship so they can steal back his memories from a cryptography-obsessed culture on Mars. 
> The second one is... a stylistically thousand-and-one-night-ish murder mystery featuring several characters who are actually planet sized quantum computer brains in close orbit around the sun. It's really quite good. Poetic, at times. Quite action packed, in a specialized way. (Imagine a fight between characters who can switch bodies, have said bodies filled with nanomachines and quantum computers and speed up their mental processing power enough to watch nano-missiles crawl through the air at them.)
> 
> And occasionally funny. Two of the larger societies around are the Sobornost, said planet sized computer brains around the sun and the Zoku, an upload collective from Saturn. There's a scene where a character visits the Zoku while they are reliving the Sacred Rituals of their ancestors, which involve creating meat bodies for themselves, dressing them up as batman or their favourite manga characters and playing old arcade games while drinking beer. He's also introduced to his Zoku girlfriend's Epic Mount.
> 
> "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" are people like us. You now, those weird meat people who barely move or think.


Interesting, I would have guessed you were talking about _Into the Storm_, or one of the other _Destroyermen_ books.

----------


## runeghost

> I kind of hate this comic. It's about how you can sing everything with the right syllable pattern to the melody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every so often, I'll get hung up on a sentence or phrase that works with it. So since yesterday, I've been singing "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" under my breath after reading a sci Fi novel.


Something similar is true of the Gilligan's Island theme song (for those old enough to have it burned into our brains whether we want to or not) and I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General.

----------


## keybounce

I'm so sorry, how you feel
But so many thing can 'haive that way
I'm so sorry, how you feel
See that songs can match so many words
In many different ways

----------


## Eldan

> I've read those books! Should've recognized the phrase. Have you read _The Causal Angel_ yet? It's got a lot more zoku wackiness.


You're right. The Zoku are great fun. ("Buy life-sized replicas of famous 20th century fictional starships made from Notch cubes now!"). They are also _so creepy._ I mean, seriously. I'm only halfway into the book and I'm not sure who's worse between them and Sobornost.

It's like their founding charter looked like this:

1. Batman is cool
2. Let's build a super club from all our clubs and clans.
3. Space is cool too. Let's go live on jupiter.
4. Where we are going, we don't need free will, right?
5. Manga are awesome!

----------


## IthilanorStPete

> You're right. The Zoku are great fun. ("Buy life-sized replicas of famous 20th century fictional starships made from Notch cubes now!"). They are also _so creepy._ I mean, seriously. I'm only halfway into the book and I'm not sure who's worse between them and Sobornost.
> 
> It's like their founding charter looked like this:
> 
> 1. Batman is cool
> 2. Let's build a super club from all our clubs and clans.
> 3. Space is cool too. Let's go live on jupiter.
> 4. Where we are going, we don't need free will, right?
> 5. Manga are awesome!


On one hand, yeah, the zoku are not nice people. On the other hand, it's not like Sobornost gogols are models of freedom, and the Sobornost have the whole Great Common Task driving them to take over the solar system. If I had to choose, I'd be on the zoku's side. (Mars is where it's really at, though.)

----------


## Eldan

> On one hand, yeah, the zoku are not nice people. On the other hand, it's not like Sobornost gogols are models of freedom, and the Sobornost have the whole Great Common Task driving them to take over the solar system. If I had to choose, I'd be on the zoku's side. (Mars is where it's really at, though.)


I really can't say who of them is worse. Probably, yeah, Sobornost, because they have the GCT and want to absorb _everything._ On the other hand, they are very obvious about their fanaticism. The Zoku are like 1984's party masquerading as a comic book convention. Join the games. They are fun. Be one of us. You will not want to leave.

Honestly, the Quantum Thief universe becomes more frightening the longer you think about it. It's a series of horrifying dystopias following one another after each unsuccessful revolution. You have pre-collapse society, with black-box uploads and quantum algorithms determining people's right to runtime, which is to say conscious life. You have the first Fedorovist revolution, and angry gogol swarms tearing cities apart. Then you have the Collapse. Then you have Wildcode. Then Sobornost. And Zokus. And the Protocol War. And the All-Defector.

But yeah. Mars is, indeed, where it's at.

----------


## Tetrimino

New Comic!

On the subject of the title text,
That would be good keymapping to set up on your friend's computer, they'd be so confused...

----------


## KillingAScarab

> New Comic!
> 
> On the subject of the title text,
> That would be good keymapping to set up on your friend's computer, they'd be so confused...


I find I don't need to make input nearly so difficult to discourage people.  I just have to make the Web browser uncomfortable.

Listening is inspirational.  We must, all of us, endeavor to teach people to sanitize their inputs (or, you know, not set up spyware in their homes).

----------


## John Campbell

All of my computers are Slackware Linux boxen running (if they have a display at all) a heavily customized fvwm2 config that's been in a coevolutionary symbiosis with my usage patterns for about twenty years.

I've found that, in the simple case where I've handed someone a laptop with a web browser in focus on-screen already open to the page that they want to look at, it typically takes less than five seconds before they go, "Ah! I lost it! Where did it go?! What is this stuff? How do I get back to the browser?"

----------


## Tetrimino

New Comic

I plugged in my PC but the battery on the flag isn't charging!

----------


## rooster707

So... is today's comic supposed to be freaking gigantic, or is Randall having technical difficulties?

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> So... is today's comic supposed to be freaking gigantic, or is Randall having technical difficulties?


I opened the image in a new tab (which makes it fit the width of the screen), and the joke has nothing to do with the image being huge, so I'm guessing it's technical difficulties.

GW

----------


## Quild

> I opened the image in a new tab (which makes it fit the width of the screen), and the joke has nothing to do with the image being huge, so I'm guessing it's technical difficulties.
> 
> GW


According to "explain xkcd", it's actually intended: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1826




> This is intended to replicate Cueball's frustration with birdwatching, as the experience of scrolling through a large image on a small screen mirrors that of looking through the large sky using binoculars that, due to their amplification, cover only a small area of the sky.

----------


## eschmenk

The comic is regular sized now.

----------


## Keltest

Evidently the frustration was sufficient that it killed the joke.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Evidently the frustration was sufficient that it killed the joke.


I still think he uploaded the high-res archive image by mistake, and that it was never meant to be part of the joke.

GW

----------


## Rodin

> I still think he uploaded the high-res archive image by mistake, and that it was never meant to be part of the joke.
> 
> GW


While looking to see if there was any mention of this on the page, I noticed this gem of small text at the bottom that I've never seen before:





> xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.

----------


## John Campbell

> This is intended to replicate Cueball's frustration with birdwatching, as the experience of scrolling through a large image on a small screen mirrors that of looking through the large sky using binoculars that, due to their amplification, cover only a small area of the sky.


So the experience of birdwatching involves my Web browser grinding to a halt and then crashing?

----------


## eschmenk

> So the experience of birdwatching involves my Web browser grinding to a halt and then crashing?


FWIW, that quote isn't on the Explain XKCD wiki anymore. Furthermore, IIRC, it was merely someone's comment down in the discussion section when it was there. Based on what I saw, saying, "According to 'Explain XKCD'..." amounted to overstating things, but maybe it was different earlier.

Given how stable my old phone is, taking it birdwatching to look up the birds I saw probably would involve the browser locking up and crashing a fair amount, actually.

----------


## Quild

> FWIW, that quote isn't on the Explain XKCD wiki anymore. Furthermore, IIRC, it was merely someone's comment down in the discussion section when it was there. Based on what I saw, saying, "According to 'Explain XKCD'..." amounted to overstating things, but maybe it was different earlier.
> 
> Given how stable my old phone is, taking it birdwatching to look up the birds I saw probably would involve the browser locking up and crashing a fair amount, actually.


It was in the "explanation" part when I went on "explain xkcd". I never bother reading wikidiscussions.

The trivia part still makes a note about this. But indeed points out to the discussion thread.



> This comic was originally published with a very large picture, much larger than the standard screen.
> 
>     The original image was named birdwatching_huge.png
>     The image at that location has also been downsized to normal dimensions.
>     It was later updated to use an image without the "_huge" in its name, at the usual size. 
> 
> The unexpected size was at first interpreted as being part of the joke, see the discussion page.
> 
>     The idea was that the reader was only seeing an inconvenient subset of the magnified image on the screen, just like Cueball was experiencing an inconvenient subset of the magnified sky through the zoom of his camera lens.
> ...

----------


## keybounce

So catching up on some recent XKCD's, and reading the descriptions (ok, I read at explainXKCD, fine), I came across https://what-if.xkcd.com/141/

And I'm thinking: as much as that is silly, as presented, isn't this exactly what pulsars do, splitting the entire energy beam out in two beams on opposite sides?

----------


## eschmenk

> And I'm thinking: as much as that is silly, as presented, isn't this exactly what pulsars do, splitting the entire energy beam out in two beams on opposite sides?


Well, the beams aren't as tightly focused as that (they are more cone-shaped) and the energy is created in a very different way, but there is some similarity.

----------


## Tetrimino

> So catching up on some recent XKCD's, and reading the descriptions (ok, I read at explainXKCD, fine), I came across https://what-if.xkcd.com/141/
> 
> And I'm thinking: as much as that is silly, as presented, isn't this exactly what pulsars do, splitting the entire energy beam out in two beams on opposite sides?


When reading this, keep in mind that I am not a physicist, astronomer, or anything in between.

The answer to you question is: kind of, but not really. The beams that come out of a pulsar are much less tightly focused, so they wouldn't come anywhere near the 1m described here.

Also, since the stars energy is coming out of two points instead of one, there is a lower fraction of the total energy of the star being funneled in any one direction.

For purposes of the original question from the website, a planet caught in this beam might not be severely affected, because the pulsar's beams are moving at a very fast speed.

Of course, this explanation does not account for the differences between pulsars and our Sun, so I may be entirely wrong. Maybe I'll submit this as a new _What If?_ question.

----------


## grayson

I haven't been on xkcd for months and I came across this thread. Billion thanks.  :Small Big Grin: 
And this is my favourite:

----------


## keybounce

https://www.xkcd.com/1839/

I think that there's a big problem. "Dissolved bread" doesn't have enough of the needed proteins/amino acids and vitamins

We pretty much need meat to get enough of that. Or, to get it in one source, we need vegi-vita-meata-min.

----------


## Rockphed

> https://www.xkcd.com/1839/
> 
> I think that there's a big problem. "Dissolved bread" doesn't have enough of the needed proteins/amino acids and vitamins
> 
> We pretty much need meat to get enough of that. Or, to get it in one source, we need vegi-vita-meata-min.


Whole-wheat bread and peanut-butter has enough proteins.  So does rice and beans.  So do lots of non-meat foods.  Vitamins and minerals are amazingly easy to get enough of.  You can live your whole life as a vegetarian.  Meat is energy dense and tasty.  It isn't some magical food that contains everything we need to eat.  That said, I remember a reference to someone who ate nothing but twinkies for like 20 years and was mostly fine.  Can't find it, so I cannot find the details.  Now that is going to bother me.

The whole joke is that the doctor is spouting off all the things that bodies do without problem

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> You can live your whole life as a vegetarian.


...After the age of about 2. Although I'd go for minimum of 4, just to be safe.

Babies are really terrible at indicating which basic building blocks they need from their food, and they start off with very low reserves, so a non-insignificant percentage of attempts of feeding babies vegetarian diets have been less than successful, not because of neglect (although the most publicised cases were due to sheer ignorance, but lets discount those), but because there is relatively small margins of error.

Grey Wolf

----------


## keybounce

There's a genetic factor involved here, that relates to insulin response from carbs in food.

It comes in your classic one-gene flavor: Low, medium, medium, high. Apparently, it's about 25% for each category in our society (close enough for margin of error, but I've only heard of one study).

For the "low" people, this does not apply. Their insulin levels never go high, or out of control. They generally stay thin no matter what, the "I can eat anything" people. Lots of people will point to these people, and say "Exercise, and you can be like these".

The problem is carb to protein levels in your diet. The human body does not have required carbs, and can live with no carbs -- but it's a "stay in a hospital under doctors observation in case something goes wrong" because it's very easy for something to go wrong. Your body wants more carbs than protein (talking about grams of protein per day here).

There's also "too much protein". Your body can make use of XXX grams of protein per day, for muscle repair/building, and amino acids to repair/build body structure. Your muscles primary job is to be an amino acid reserve; moving the skeleton is job 2. (Then there's the second set of muscles that do things like make your abdominal wall, or the linings of organs that need to contract, etc. -- they are NOT amino acid reserves.)

So if you have a limit of protein intake before your body has to do "hard work" to deal with the excess amino acids that cannot be used or stored as amino acids, then you need the rest of your diet as carbs or fat.

And, if there is an "ideal" intake level here -- 133% carbs to protein (multiple studies here, there is some variation per person, but it doesn't vary much, and probably within the range of 100-150%, if not narrower than that) -- then having very high levels of carbs gives you problems.

This is the issue with a vegetarian diet. To get the protein levels you need, your carb intake is so high that it is excessive for 75% of the population, and causes problems from constant high insulin levels.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> <snip>


This is genuinely interesting. Thanks for taking the time to post it. I'm going to have to read it a few more times, mind you, because I got a bit lost somewhere in the middle. Are there any trustworthy sources you could point me to for further reading? (Entry level, or thereabouts, if possible)

Thanks,

Grey Wolf

----------


## Peelee

> https://www.xkcd.com/1839/
> 
> I think that there's a big problem. "Dissolved bread" doesn't have enough of the needed proteins/amino acids and vitamins
> 
> We pretty much need meat to get enough of that. Or, to get it in one source, we need vegi-vita-meata-min.


Yoush mean [hic] vitameatavegamin?

----------


## keybounce

> This is genuinely interesting. Thanks for taking the time to post it. I'm going to have to read it a few more times, mind you, because I got a bit lost somewhere in the middle. Are there any trustworthy sources you could point me to for further reading? (Entry level, or thereabouts, if possible)
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Grey Wolf


I'll try to find them. I've been reading on these things for a while, and never really saved any sort of bibliology.

----------


## Jastiv

I don't really like bread.  I eat it to make other people feel happy that they can make me meals. 
Anyway, its a commentary on how the human body can regenerate cells in a way that machines cannot.

----------


## Kaptin Keen

> Cut for brevity


As Grey Wolf said: This is _actually_ interesting.

----------


## Tetrimino

Drones!
But really though, I can't remember the last time I saw someone fly a drone without crashing it.

----------


## keybounce

I've only seen drones flown properly, but then, I've only seen professionals fly them.

Dated, but I like this one:
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1849

What name do you use to refer to the current decade? We used to talk about the 80's, the 90's, etc -- but the last 17 years?

----------


## Rodin

> I've only seen drones flown properly, but then, I've only seen professionals fly them.
> 
> Dated, but I like this one:
> http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1849
> 
> What name do you use to refer to the current decade? We used to talk about the 80's, the 90's, etc -- but the last 17 years?


The Noughties followed by the 10's.

There doesn't seem to be the same distinction in decades though.  The 70's, 80's, and 90's were all wildly different in aesthetic and outlook on life.  Aside from the 10's being a bit more focused on political correctness (in a good way), there really hasn't been the same sort of huge cultural shifts that defined previous decades.

----------


## Eldan

I call them the twothousands, which Im' aware is not ideal.

----------


## Tetrimino

> I call them the twothousands, which Im' aware is not ideal.


Same here, I usually use the two-thousands and the twenty-tens on the rare occasion I refer to either as a decade. I've been told the two-thousands are supposed to be the "aughts" or something, but most people wouldn't know what that means, so it's not very useful in conversation.

----------


## Lord Torath

> Same here, I usually use the two-thousands and the twenty-tens on the rare occasion I refer to either as a decade. I've been told the two-thousands are supposed to be the "aughts" or something, but most people wouldn't know what that means, so it's not very useful in conversation.


I've heard "the Naughties" used to refer to them on NPR.  That's my favorite so far.

----------


## Vinyadan

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geologic_faults.png

It lacks "your fault."

----------


## John Campbell

> https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/geologic_faults.png
> 
> It lacks "your fault."


It's not _my_ fault! That enormous crack in the Earth's crust has _nothing_ to do with any kinetic weapon I may or may not have employed!

----------


## keybounce

https://xkcd.com/1883/

Now, the super villain's plan is told! Pure evil.

----------


## Lethologica

This supervillain plot is reminiscent of the conclusion of that ancient meme, "The End of the World".

----------


## Lord Torath

Anyone go see the Total Eclipse last week?  I feel this xkcd is completely acurate:

https://xkcd.com/1880/

It was my first total eclipse, and WOW!

----------


## keybounce

The only things worse than time zone problems? Getting an 8-bit character output path that works right.

... After all, 127 plus 1 is a positive character, right? :-)

----------


## Tetrimino

> Anyone go see the Total Eclipse last week?  I feel this xkcd is completely acurate:
> 
> https://xkcd.com/1880/
> 
> It was my first total eclipse, and WOW!


I wish I had seen the total eclipse. The partial eclipse was cool and all, but it just made the outside slightly dimmer.

----------


## Lord Torath

> I wish I had seen the total eclipse. The partial eclipse was cool and all, but it just made the outside slightly dimmer.


It was (IMO) well worth the 4-hour drive to see it, and the 6 hour drive to get back home.  My family is already planning how to get in the path of the 2024 eclipse.

----------


## John Campbell

> Anyone go see the Total Eclipse last week?  I feel this xkcd is completely acurate:
> 
> https://xkcd.com/1880/
> 
> It was my first total eclipse, and WOW!


I didn't bother, because I live right in the path of totality for 2024. I'm going to be really annoyed if it's overcast that day.

I did make a pinhole projector and tried to take pictures of the partial (about 60% at peak here) eclipse, but it didn't work very well, because my camera refused to autofocus on the projection.

----------


## Vinyadan

Does the lid thing really work for extinguishing an oil fire?

Asking for a friend.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> Does the lid thing really work for extinguishing an oil fire?
> 
> Asking for a friend.


Removing a source of fresh oxygen from a fire extinguishes it. It's not exclusive to oil fires, if you had a wood fire inside a pan you could extinguish it with a lid. Even a moist towel can sometimes work well enough, but a lid is a generally safe and easy to apply option.

----------


## Hamste

Yep, to extinguish a fire you either need to remove the fuel, the heat or the oxygen (or the chain reaction if you are going tetraheadron). Water absorbs heat and can help keep the fire from getting oxygen by acting as a steam cover. The problem with liquid fires is it is really easy for water being poured in quickly to cause the burning oil to get everywhere (if you ever want an example dump a lot of water from a bucket into a pan that has some non-ignited oil in it.). Similarly, a fire exstinguiser may work but is not recommended due to it being under pressure (if you have to use one do not be right next to the fire). 

A lid is generally the easiest way as it can easily suffocate a fire that is stuck in a pan. Just remember to turn off the heat source and move the pan off it or it may reignite when you take the lid off. In the case of a boiling oil spill you can grab another pot or a damp wash cloth and cover the fire with that.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Does the lid thing really work for extinguishing an oil fire?
> 
> Asking for a friend.




GW

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Clearly the gun is the most versatile of those tools.  

 :Small Cool:

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Clearly the gun is the most versatile of those tools.


It even cures cancer!

Now, if it selectively kills cancer cells in a petri dish, you can be sure it's at least a great breakthrough for everyone suffering from petri dish cancer.
GW

----------


## Hamste

Well it did solve 2 problems compared to the 1 the other things solved.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

A good mixer can solve a dozen different problems, they're just problems I never have, never create nor wish to solve.

----------


## Hamste

> A good mixer can solve a dozen different problems, they're just problems I never have, never create nor wish to solve.


I hear a mixer can win in a knife fight and quench an oil fire at the same time.

----------


## 137beth

How many of these problems can be solved by the XKCD Phone 6, VIII, 10, X, 26, or 1876?

----------


## Spojaz

The best thing for putting out an oil fire is more oil. Only the vaporized oil burns, and adding cool oil will bring the average temperature back under boiling. I saw this demonstrated spectacularly at a cookout once, where the deep fryer caught fire, and started spewing a 12 foot column of flame. As everyone else was freaking out, the owner of the fryer just wandered over and threw a splash of cooking oil in. no more fire. The stuff he was frying turned out delicious too.  

*do not try this with gasoline, alcohol or liquid oxygen.

----------


## halfeye

In response to the gun to a knife fight, has anyone else ever seen the 1967 film El Dorado?

----------


## Eldan

What I'm getting out of this is that by game theory, it's the optimal strategy to use a gun for everything.

----------


## Lord Torath

I don't know.  I think a lid is not such a terrible thing to bring to a knife fight.  I mean, you're not likely to kill the other guy, but you should be able to defend yourself pretty well.   :Small Amused:

----------


## Lethologica

If I have a large metal shield, I can use it to win the knife fight, to cook something over the wood fire, and as a lid.  Three out of four ain't bad.

----------


## Benthesquid

I think the key here is that he's not using it as a metal shield- he's using it as a lid.  Lids go on top of things, just likes knives stab and cut things, guns shoot things, and water splooshes things.

----------


## Kato

I think my favorite part is the little "ow"s as he tries to stab the fires...


As for today... Well, I guess there might be justification for using DOS once in a while but... seriously? I mean, I have seen some places still working with ancient computers but even then, aren't there better options by now? I don't feel like encouraging using old methods "because they work".

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> I mean, I have seen some places still working with ancient computers but even then, aren't there better options by now?


Not necessarily _better_. And it can be quite expensive to move to a new system. At some point, maintenance of the old one can become prohibitive, but if the system runs solidly, and there are still people that know what it does and how to tweak it, then there is no reason to upgrade to something shiny and new.

GW

----------


## Hamste

Then encourage old methods because they can be cost effective and less risky. If an old computer works and you have a lot of them then it can be really expensive to replace them all. It just is not worth the time saved and it may even be dangerous to replace them if you have to use new software.

For example, the US air traffic control used to be run by a 40 year old system. When they started replacing it, it took forever and was extremely expensive due to several bugs. The bugs included one where a jet flying too high overloaded the system and one where it randomly switched planes flight paths around. Similarly France used to use Windows 3.1 for its air traffic control (the system broke down once leading to massive problems as they couldn't find any one who could fix such an old computer). The article I read about it said they would have it updated by this year though after that issue occurred.

----------


## The Glyphstone

The computers at Orly Airport in Paris apparently still run on Windows 3.1 (including the then-cutting-edge game of Minesweeper). They were scheduled to be replaced this year, but I can't find any evidence as to whether or not the project happened on time.


Ninja'ed.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

Modern computers and modern OS also come with a large number of unwanted features, some of which can and already have introduced massive security holes into systems. Computers that predate the Internet can be a lot harder to hack, as it turns out, because they do not make it easy or automatic to get on the Internet through them.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Keltest

> Modern computers and modern OS also come with a large number of unwanted features, some of which can and already have introduced massive security holes into systems. Computers that predate the Internet can be a lot harder to hack, as it turns out, because they do not make it easy or automatic to get on the Internet through them.
> 
> Grey Wolf


And we also made lightbulbs that last for hundreds of years, at the expense of having them barely function as lightbulbs.

Its not like modern computers need all of these new unwanted features all the time. Its just a matter of getting our collective heads out of our butts enough to actually, you know, make newer computers without them.

----------


## keybounce

The real reason that we don't use neutrino beams to transmit data through stuff is that the same ability to go through walls, planets, etc, also lets it go through receivers.

"I just sent the message. Did you get it?"
"No, send it again"
(10 million sends later)
"Got it."

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Technology is never obsolete so long as it does what the user needs it to do at costs (time, money, financial, maintenance, training, etc) that make sense for the user.

----------


## John Campbell

I'm actually right now emulating DOS under Linux. So that I can play all the early-'90s games I have kicking around.

On a 2.8GHz dual-core 64-bit CPU, many DOS games run in emulation better than they did natively on contemporary hardware.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> I'm actually right now emulating DOS under Linux. So that I can play all the early-'90s games I have kicking around.
> 
> On a 2.8GHz dual-core 64-bit CPU, many DOS games run in emulation better than they did natively on contemporary hardware.


Unfortunately, some of those games run _too_ well. I.e. they were counting on only being able to run X instructions per second, and never thought to put in code to slow down the program if the CPU would allow 100X per second.

GW

----------


## Douglas

> Unfortunately, some of those games run _too_ well. I.e. they were counting on only being able to run X instructions per second, and never thought to put in code to slow down the program if the CPU would allow 100X per second.
> 
> GW


Which is why DOS emulators, some of them at least, have options to emulate having a much slower CPU.

----------


## John Campbell

> Unfortunately, some of those games run _too_ well. I.e. they were counting on only being able to run X instructions per second, and never thought to put in code to slow down the program if the CPU would allow 100X per second.


That was a problem on the original hardware, where a lot of early games were timed for the IBM PC (XT), and were unplayably fast on ATs, or were just designed to run as fast as possible without any notion that that would ever become a problem, but it isn't in emulation. dosbox can throttle the emulated CPU speed. 

Ultima II was easier in dosbox than on the 286 I originally played it on, because there's a bit in the critical path to victory (landing the spaceship on Planet X) that was basically instant-death roulette on my 286, but is much more manageable with dosbox throttled down to XT speeds.

----------


## Tetrimino

> I'm actually right now emulating DOS under Linux. So that I can play all the early-'90s games I have kicking around.
> 
> On a 2.8GHz dual-core 64-bit CPU, many DOS games run in emulation better than they did natively on contemporary hardware.


I've found that games designed in the 90's, or any others designed to be usable with a 16 bit operating system, are difficult to use on a 64 bit OS. I read somewhere that this is because you generally can't run programs more than one "bit level" behind your OS. So 16 bit programs won't work on a 64 bit OS, 8 bit programs won't work an a 32 bit OS, etc.

----------


## keybounce

Actually, I am *not* running those old games. They're too addicting, and I'd never get anything done :-)

----------


## BannedInSchool

> Actually, I am *not* running those old games. They're too addicting, and I'd never get anything done :-)


Mine that iron, gold, and coal.  Tote those bags.  Train those knights.  Attack!

----------


## The Glyphstone

There's other issues that can arise besides CPU speed. I've been soothing my nostalgia lately with Ascendancy, an old 4X strategy game, but I've discovered that owning more than 256 planets causes the game to crash if you open your planet list.

----------


## Spojaz

> There's other issues that can arise besides CPU speed. I've been soothing my nostalgia lately with Ascendancy, an old 4X strategy game, but I've discovered that owning more than 256 planets causes the game to crash if you open your planet list.


A kill screen counts as victory. You Win! 
That game is great, especially with the mod that upgrades the AI.

----------


## The Glyphstone

> A kill screen counts as victory. You Win! 
> That game is great, especially with the mod that upgrades the AI.


Even with the AI mod (which really just gives them a resource spike and makes them all irrationally hate you), it's hardly anything approaching difficult. Still immense fun though, if you have the patience to try and max out your score by achieving every victory condition simultaneously.

----------


## keybounce

> Mine that iron, gold, and coal.  Tote those bags.  Train those knights.  Attack!


I was thinking of the original XCom, and Magic the Gathering / Shandalar, back in the day of the 5th set, before M:tG went all crazy.

I'm not sure why, but the whole "resource management / turn-based tactics / cycle back over again" thing really got to me, and kept me coming back.

EDIT: In fact, it goes back more than that. On the Amiga, there was a Mech combat game modeled after FASA's stuff, but converted to a real-time model. It was still implemented as turn-based, but you took your turn based on the time of the clock. In the FASA system, if you generated 16 points of heat, and had 10 sinks, you only had 6 points of heat and were still green. Here, you would be up to 1600 temp, and have to shed 1000 degrees before you were back to cool, and that took time.

Turns out that NONE of the FASA designs was a good design in this system. Add in the issue of ammo explosions, and suddenly a ton of machine gun ammo was more dangerous to you to carry than to the enemy you were trying to shoot.

So, add in at least the start of a campaign system into this model, and now you've got the issue of building up a team, dealing with money/resources, going into a fight, healing/recovering/prepping for the next.

It was a *LOT* of fun. Sadly, the developer stopped work, and never released their code.

----------


## Lethologica

Hm.  Unexpected reference.  I always saw F'lar as the Thread zealot.

----------


## Rockphed

> Hm.  Unexpected reference.  I always saw F'lar as the Thread zealot.


Which one tried to visit the red star and came back mostly dead as a result?

----------


## halfeye

> Which one tried to visit the red star and came back mostly dead as a result?


That was F'lar

Mind you, zealot is a pretty strong word for someone opposed to a mindless mankiller.

----------


## Lord Torath

> That was F'lar


No, that was F'nor and Canth.  It's what snapped Brekke out of her fugue after her "accident"

----------


## Lethologica

> Which one tried to visit the red star and came back mostly dead as a result?


F'lar was the one who always knew Thread was coming back and made a series of seemingly crazy moves on the basis of that faith.  That's the first half of _Dragonriders of Pern_.  F'lar's conviction that Thread was the greatest threat to the world, in the face of a society that had grown complacent about Thread, fits the xkcd comic to a tee.

By contrast, F'nor was always driven by personal loyalties--to F'lar, and later to Brekke.  F'nor's trip to the Red Star in _Dragonquest_ occurs under significantly different circumstances: everyone knows Thread is a threat, and indeed the Lord Holders are pressuring the dragonriders to go fight Thread on the Red Star out of frustration and fear due to Thread deviating from its established patterns.  F'nor, already at a personal low after what happened to Brekke, knowing that Lessa fears F'lar plans to go to the Red Star, anticipating an eventual ultimatum from the Lord Holders (especially after the meeting with Lord Meron), decides in the heat of a momentary discovery to go to the Red Star himself--a reckless act by a man too little concerned with his own survival, but not one born of Thread zealotry.

I agree that of the pair, F'nor has the single flashiest action related to Thread, which is why he might be _considered_ the bigger Thread zealot, but that doesn't mean he _was_.

----------


## halfeye

> No, that was F'nor and Canth.  It's what snapped Brekke out of her fugue after her "accident"


I am terrible with names, it was certainly brown Canth and his rider, I'm confused about which rider is his, I suspect you're right, but I can't be certain.

----------


## eschmenk

> I am terrible with names, it was certainly brown Canth and his rider, I'm confused about which rider is his, I suspect you're right, but I can't be certain.


Wikipedia says it was F'nor.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

This might be helpful on some strips:  http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I end up checking it every two or three weeks to make sure I understand one of the strips.

----------


## eschmenk

> This might be helpful on some strips:  http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> 
> I end up checking it every two or three weeks to make sure I understand one of the strips.


Yes. That's were I found the link I just posted. I wasn't familiar with the Dragonriders of Pern books, so I used the Explain XKCD site to figure things out.

----------


## Lethologica

FWIW, and I guess this was already known, but my position was that F'lar was the more appropriate reference even though F'nor went to the Red Star in _Dragonquest_.

----------


## Rockphed

> FWIW, and I guess this was already known, but my position was that F'lar was the more appropriate reference even though F'nor went to the Red Star in _Dragonquest_.


It has been 12 - 15 years since I read any of those novels.  I think _Dragonquest_ was almost the last one I got around to reading, but I'm not really sure.  I suppose I should have remembered that since F'lessan is a person in the later books that F'lar is the one who takes an active role in saving the world from the thread.

----------


## Kato

> A kill screen counts as victory. You Win! 
> That game is great, especially with the mod that upgrades the AI.


Man, I love(d) that game. It's a shame nobody picked it up or made a flash game or anything. But then, I honestly can't see me micro manage more than 256 planets so I don't quite see the problem with the bug.

----------


## The Glyphstone

> Man, I love(d) that game. It's a shame nobody picked it up or made a flash game or anything. But then, I honestly can't see me micro manage more than 256 planets so I don't quite see the problem with the bug.


It got a re-release for iPhone a few years back, but that's it. Personally, I don't try to manage 250+ planets either, I pick like five good ones and let the AI auto-manage the rest for me. It loves anti-invasion turrets way too much, but isn't awful otherwise.

----------


## 2D8HP

> This might be helpful on some strips:  http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> .



Thanks for the link! 

I haven't been able to read any strips at xkcd.com on my phone for a month now (it just goes "Webpage not available").

Having something that reprints them is great!

----------


## TaRix

> Thanks for the link! 
> 
> I haven't been able to read any strips at xkcd.com on my phone for a month now (it just goes "Webpage not available").
> 
> Having something that reprints them is great!


I don't understand why, but it does the same thing on my ten-years-old iMac but not on my PC or others' PCs.

----------


## John Campbell

> I've found that games designed in the 90's, or any others designed to be usable with a 16 bit operating system, are difficult to use on a 64 bit OS. I read somewhere that this is because you generally can't run programs more than one "bit level" behind your OS. So 16 bit programs won't work on a 64 bit OS, 8 bit programs won't work an a 32 bit OS, etc.


That's not what I'm doing. I'm running games designed to work with a 16-bit OS with 32-bit extensions on an 16-bit OS with 32-bit extensions that's running on a 32-bit CPU that happens to exist only in a 64-bit machine's imagination.

----------


## keybounce

Hey, compare that to a 64-bit extension to a 32-bit graphical extension to a 16 bit OS running on an 8 bit microprocessor that was itself an extension to a 4 bit processor, all done by a 2 bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.

Sigh.

Remember: Ibm went with the 8086 because it was cheap, because it only had 4 registers when a major proof had just recently shown that your compiler cannot use more than 3 registers without doing data flow analysis(*), which at the time was only done by high-end, expensive compilers (never mind that the Gnu compiler was doing data-flow for free next year). So Ibm figured that 3 general purpose registers, and one math register, was all you could do for cheap while supporting compiled languages.

Oh yea -- they thought it was compatible with CP/M. They didn't understand that you had to re-assemble your CP/M programs with a new assembler on this new system. Which in turn required that the source code still exist, the company still exist, etc.

(*): But, even that was mis-understood. Yes, you *could* get by with only 3 registers. Just like you can program the x86 with only one instruction (**). That does not mean that you might not be able to get a better program with more, even without a data-flow analysis. It's like HP saying that a 4 element RPN stack is more than sufficient for any math problem -- they're right, technically 3 is sufficient. But the way most people approach problems, you need at least 4, and a 5th would be nice.

(**): The "mov" instruction. https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/movfuscator

----------


## Tetrimino

1906
This is pretty much me every day.

----------


## Kantaki

If you phrase it like this it _does_ sound kinda cool.
Like some freaky superpower. :Small Cool:

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> 1906
> This is pretty much me every day.


Also: Jay-Z.








You can't make your own spreadsheet I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems but Excel ain't one.

----------


## Tetrimino

#1917

I like how the title text says "I want to be friends *at* you"

----------


## JBPuffin

Arise, my pet, and behold!

https://xkcd.com/1922/

Beret Guy, you beautiful creature. Never stop not stopping.

----------


## Eldan

I always imagined beret person is a woman.

----------


## John Campbell

So, following xkcd's advice, I'm going to put solar panels on my underground supervillain lair.

----------


## Rockphed

> So, following xkcd's advice, I'm going to put solar panels on my underground supervillain lair.


Wait, your underground supervillain lair is sunlit?

----------


## Cazero

> Wait, your underground supervillain lair is sunlit?


Sunlit? That's not in the flowchart, so surely it can't be important?

----------


## Keltest

> Sunlit? That's not in the flowchart, so surely it can't be important?


I think that violated the "empty space nearby where its easier to put them" rule actually. How does one even put something on the outside of an underground structure?

----------


## The Glyphstone

Isnt the outside of an underground structure synonymous with 'the surface'?

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Isnt the outside of an underground structure synonymous with 'the surface'?


Or, in this context "the sunnyside of the volcano"

----------


## Rockphed

> Sunlit? That's not in the flowchart, so surely it can't be important?


You're right.  It is in the alt-text.

----------


## Kato

Damn, Randall, you tear jerking bastard...

----------


## Mith

I will freely admit to tearing up just a little.  Good for them.

----------


## Keltest

Darn it Randall, leave my heartstrings alone!

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Still the most tear-jerking XKCD in my opinion:

https://xkcd.com/104/

----------


## The Glyphstone

> Still the most tear-jerking XKCD in my opinion:
> 
> https://xkcd.com/104/


Also potentially the most horrifying, if you transplant the text into the context of, say, a necromancer villain.

----------


## Mith

> Also potentially the most horrifying, if you transplant the text into the context of, say, a necromancer villain.


Stealing for a potential campaign idea.

----------


## Kantaki

> Also potentially the most horrifying, if you transplant the text into the context of, say, a necromancer villain.


Wasn't there that Sidequest in Skyrim?

*Spoiler*
Show

The murders in Windhelm.
That guy wanted to bring back a loved one too... :Small Eek: 


Horrifying indeed.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Wasn't there that Sidequest in Skyrim?
> 
> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> The murders in Windhelm.
> That guy wanted to bring back a loved one too...
> 
> 
> Horrifying indeed.


Also in: 

*Spoiler*
Show


Dragon Age 2.

----------


## keybounce

> Still the most tear-jerking XKCD in my opinion:
> 
> https://xkcd.com/104/


So who is 104 referring to, if this one makes it clear that we have a 7-year cancer survivor?

Also: "Seven Years", in Ring-Voice, would be ...

----------


## halfeye

> So who is 104 referring to, if this one makes it clear that we have a 7-year cancer survivor?
> 
> Also: "Seven Years", in Ring-Voice, would be ...


That's seven years clear of cancer, however long the disease took to arrive and clear up is additional to that.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> That's seven years clear of cancer, however long the disease took to arrive and clear up is additional to that.


Cancer survival rates are measured from date of diagnosis, not from date of "cancer not showing up in the test". The "clear up" time is included in the seven years.

But to be precise, you can't "clear up" cancer. First, because every one of us has cancer cells somewhere in our bodies. Our immune system takes care of them eventually, but a perfectly precise test would always find some. Second, because when a cancer cell isn't killed soon enough and becomes a malignant cancer, there is always the chance that one of the little ****ers managed to escape treatment, and lodged itself somewhere else, and it is now slowly and inexorably growing again somewhere where your immune system can't stop it fast enough. Like with AIDS, the best modern medicine can do is try to ensure you'll die of something else, but at current time, you can never be cured of cancer.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Tetrimino

I'm surprised he didn't use LAX in today's comic to make a joke about lacrosse.

----------


## Lord Torath

Hah!  Today's strip fits quite nicely in the category described by the mouse-over text.   :Small Amused:

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Hah!  Today's strip fits quite nicely in the category described by the mouse-over text.


I specially like that the decline in quality predates the "ms paint era", which I can see someone argue the must have been some other, unidentified issue caused the decay, which only thanks to ms paint and powerpoint was it eventually counteracted.

(You know what they say about lies, damned lies and statistics? Same applies to graphs)

GW

----------


## keybounce

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1948

Yes, this does represent a real-world inbox. Go ahead, ask me how I know.

----------


## keybounce

https://xkcd.com/1959/

A reminder from The Simpsons of how much time has passed.

And we find out the real reason why none of the characters age:  at 11, Bart gets his Hogwarts letter.

----------


## Kato

> https://xkcd.com/1959/
> 
> A reminder from The Simpsons of how much time has passed.
> 
> And we find out the real reason why none of the characters age:  at 11, Bart gets his Hogwarts letter.


Am I right in assuming you read xkcd in chunks or why do you reference a two week old comic? :small confused: no offense, just wondering. 

Btw, has anyone any idea if what if is down for good? I can't find anything about it.

----------


## halfeye

> Btw, has anyone any idea if what if is down for good? I can't find anything about it.


xkcd is not down for me at the moment.

----------


## Kato

> xkcd is not down for me at the moment.


Sorry, I meant to ask whether or not there will be further updates to the "what if" part of xkcd or not. My bad for the poor phrasing.

----------


## 137beth

It could be done.  On the other hand, webcomics have come back from long breaks before.  Monster's Garden, another comic I follow, abruptly stopped updating in October 2016, with no announcement of a hiatus or the end of the comic.  There was no word about it for a year and a half, until it unexpectedly returned in February 2018, with a new page and a redesigned website.  

The What Ifs have been halted for almost exactly a year now, It's quite possible that it will come back, but I also wouldn't be surprised if it was done for good.  Or maybe it will be like Shortpacked, where there is one new page per year (Shortpacked officially "ended" in January 2015, but there has been a new April Fools Day page every year since then).

----------


## factotum

I dunno, I get the impression with the What Ifs that Randall is either bored with the whole idea, or he's discovered that collecting them in book form makes mucho loot and doesn't want to give them out free anymore!  :Small Smile:  I guess time will tell which it is.

----------


## keybounce

> Am I right in assuming you read xkcd in chunks or why do you reference a two week old comic? :small confused: no offense, just wondering.


Why yes, XKCD is one of (several) comics that I read in chunks.

----------


## PopeLinus1

New comic will be coming soon, and the wait is making me tap the table a lot. Or maybe thats the Cafine. Sometimes I cant really tell.

----------


## keybounce

Can you imagine the trouble Randall went through trying to arrange those tiles?

----------


## The Glyphstone

> Can you imagine the trouble Randall went through trying to arrange those tiles?


The effort he puts into work that perhaps 10% of his audience will understand, or possibly even read, is always amazing to me.

----------


## Kato

Taking the risk of looking dumb.. Is there a deeper meaning to Wednesday's comic I'm missing?

Also.. I guess I really should learn more about this tax thing.. Though thinks are slightly easier in Germany. As long as you don't care about saving money.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Taking the risk of looking dumb.. Is there a deeper meaning to Wednesday's comic I'm missing?


If the basic level is "taxes are different from the other two", then the deeper level is "actually, no they are not". In the end, personal data, the economy and taxes are three poorly understood nebulous concepts that we nevertheless all participate in, whether we want to or not, and ignoring any of the three can have grave consequences. Yes, taxes has a more direct consequence for neglecting it, but not necessarily a worse one than having your identity stolen or (in the US, where they don't get a proper retirement safety net like you do in Germany) risk having no savings or income after your working days are over.

(frogs, jokes, you know the drill)

Grey Wolf

----------


## Kato

> If the basic level is "taxes are different from the other two", then the deeper level is "actually, no they are not". In the end, personal data, the economy and taxes are three poorly understood nebulous concepts that we nevertheless all participate in, whether we want to or not, and ignoring any of the three can have grave consequences. Yes, taxes has a more direct consequence for neglecting it, but not necessarily a worse one than having your identity stolen or (in the US, where they don't get a proper retirement safety net like you do in Germany) risk having no savings or income after your working days are over.
> 
> (frogs, jokes, you know the drill)
> 
> Grey Wolf


Are taxes really that nebulous? I mean, the finer idea of how much you need to pay and what you can save maybe but... why they are there...? Economy seems most nebulous because it can kind of include everything, if you want..

Also, I was asking about Wednesday, the Domino one..  :Small Wink:

----------


## 137beth

Wow, theres a lot hidden in todays comic.

----------


## keybounce

https://www.xkcd.com/1975/

This is absolutely hilarious for such a simple single panel image.

----------


## Vinyadan

RSS didn't work well with that...

----------


## 137beth

I spent way longer than I should have trying to "win" Games/Adventure.EXE.  Although I was dissapointed that it still shows up as "exe" even if you got there via /home/usr/games/adventure.  What is a Windows executable doing on a Linux system?  Especially a text-based adventure game that you probably got by installing it from your default package repository.  The answers for 20 Questions were pretty funny though.

----------


## Kato

I don't nearly have enough endurance to go through the whole comic, which I admit is a shame but it's funny nonetheless  :Small Big Grin: 

Sidenote : has anybody an idea why there was no comic for Prof Hawking? I mean, he appeared before and Randall has done multiple comics in memory of recent deaths, so.. I was just wondering. Of course it could have no reason.

----------


## Tetrimino

> https://www.xkcd.com/1975/
> 
> This is absolutely hilarious for such a simple single panel image.


Definitely my favorite comic in a while, although I wonder how much of a pain it was to add "Who's on first"

----------


## 137beth

1980: Turkish Delight.

I'm American, and I've only had Turkish Delight once.  It was in high school, and we were rehearsing for a play based on _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe._  I had pretty much the same reaction as Randall.  

I always assumed that the Turkish Delight in the books had magic that made it taste better in addition to mind control.

----------


## halfeye

I have not very often had turkish delight, it can be pretty variable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_delight

This on the other hand, smothered in chocolate (British chocolate, not USAian salt chocolate) is almost certainly not authentic, but it used to be quite nice once upon a time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry%27s_Turkish_Delight

----------


## PopeLinus1

> Definitely my favorite comic in a while, although I wonder how much of a pain it was to add "Who's on first"


Yeah the interactive comics are the best.

https://xkcd.com new comics up

----------


## JeenLeen

So for May 4, 2018, I really would like to see some linguistics arguments about the wrongness or okayness 
*Spoiler: I guess we spoiler XKCD spoilers*
Show

of acronym meaning changing over time.

I've been persuaded that words can change meaning (though I don't like the idea), but the idea of acronyms changing meaning irks me extra.



*Spoiler: minor spoiler for mouseover text*
Show


Tantalizing Meat Info was very funny.

----------


## Fyraltari

This is why I never use acronyms in conversations.
And people who actually say those out loud are the worst.

----------


## Rockphed

> This is why I never use acronyms in conversations.
> And people who actually say those out loud are the worst.


Oh, I use acronyms in conversation all the time.  But my use of them is as technical jargon where the involved people all have pretty good ideas about what things mean.

----------


## keybounce

> I've been persuaded that words can change meaning (though I don't like the idea), but the idea of acronyms changing meaning irks me extra.


yeah, ATM means ATM,  FYI. I mean, OK is clearly brainless ( no memory), and so on.

----------


## John Campbell

I actually tend to pronounce "SQL" as "squirrel". Just because it's funnier that way.

And, yes, the "H" is for "Humble", and "Honest" is _wrong_. I mean, really, what is "IMNSHO" supposed to mean? "In My Not So Honest Opinion"? I've been in Internet arguments where it was pretty clear that the other party was a troll trying to make the position that they claimed to hold look bad, but trolls don't generally advertise the fact.

I usually write "IMAO", myself. I do not feign humility about my obviously-correct opinions.

Oh, and I had to google "SMDH", which I had never previously encountered.

----------


## Vinyadan

It's a process known as reetymoligization. There are a few examples, like the name of the hawk in Latin -- accipiter. Originally, it was something like "acupter" made up of aku (=fast) and pter (=wing), but it was reetymologized and made similar to the verb "accipio", to grab, and ended up meaning "the grabber" (accipiter).

Here something similar is happening, with the components of the acronym being changed because they look like something else that also makes sense and is more familiar to the writer/speaker.

The English example I can think of is "outrage". Some think that it's made up of "out+rage", which is, the rage pouring out, while it actually is a French loanword "outrage" coming from Latin "ultraticum", an adjective from "ultra" = beyond, meaning "something beyond your right".

----------


## Keltest

> This is why I never use acronyms in conversations.
> And people who actually say those out loud are the worst.


Are you telling me you've never talked about SCUBA diving?

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Are you telling me you've never talked about SCUBA diving?


Or LASERs, wether on sharks, swords or otherwise.
Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
GW

----------


## 5a Violista

And that's before you get into all the technology and stuff, like CDs, CPU, RAM, DOS, DVD, HDMI, HD, HTTP, www, PC, JPEG, LAN, MIDI, MP3, PNG, ROM, TIFF, GIF, URL, VPN, ....

Wow, ever since computers were invented, we really ran off with all that acronym use.

----------


## John Campbell

Oh, and the answer to, "How many spaces after a period?" is, "Who cares? HTML collapses whitespace."

----------


## PopeLinus1

I say? Linebreak.

----------


## Fyraltari

> Oh, I use acronyms in conversation all the time.  But my use of them is as technical jargon where the involved people all have pretty good ideas about what things mean.





> Are you telling me you've never talked about SCUBA diving?





> Or LASERs, wether on sharks, swords or otherwise.
> Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
> GW


Oh, acronyms for nouns (such as GPS, LASER, IBM or what have you) are fine, it's acronyms for part (or Heaven forbids the whole) of the sentence I have beef with.

Keltest, I am afraid I have only ever talked about "plongée sous-marine". ^^

----------


## Rockphed

> Oh, acronyms for nouns (such as GPS, LASER, IBM or what have you) are fine, it's acronyms for part (or Heaven forbids the whole) of the sentence I have beef with.
> 
> Keltest, I am afraid I have only ever talked about "plongée sous-marine". ^^


I saw the casual dropping of le Francaise, checked your location, and broke out laughing.  I think you just won the internet.

----------


## Fyraltari

> I saw the casual dropping of le Francaise, checked your location, and broke out laughing.  I think you just won the internet.


Yay, my first internet!

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Oh, and the answer to, "How many spaces after a period?" is, "Who cares? HTML collapses whitespace."


I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped. 

TWO spaces after a period to end a sentence.  TWO.     And I will write that way until the end of time, regardless of how common the mistaken single space becomes. 

Also, as a general comment to the world, STOP using apostrophes to pluralize, that's not how it works.

----------


## Rockphed

> I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped. 
> 
> TWO spaces after a period to end a sentence.  TWO.     And I will write that way until the end of time, regardless of how common the mistaken single space becomes. 
> 
> Also, as a general comment to the world, STOP using apostrophes to pluralize, that's not how it works.


Have you, perchance, read the fantastic book "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves"?  It will at once horrify you with some of its anecdotes and justify your feelings of outrage at the misuse of apostrophes!

----------


## Lethologica

> I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped. 
> 
> TWO spaces after a period to end a sentence.  TWO.     And I will write that way until the end of time, regardless of how common the mistaken single space becomes. 
> 
> Also, as a general comment to the world, STOP using apostrophes to pluralize, that's not how it works.


something something "two spaces is an artifact of the dinosaur typewriter era" something something "4 out of 5 typesetters agree" something something

(I double-space out of habit, but since most stuff I write is online, it's impossible for anyone else to ever notice.  It helps when I'm editing my own writing, though.)

----------


## Rockphed

> something something "two spaces is an artifact of the dinosaur typewriter era" something something "4 out of 5 typesetters agree" something something


In my opinion, a little more space after a sentence ending period (as opposed to an abbreviation ending period) helps to cement the finality of the sentence.  This works in a similar manner to the difference between a new line and a tab, a double new line, and a double new line and a tab when separating paragraphs; some documents need very good separation while others can get away with very little.

----------


## 137beth

When I'm typing I use two spaces after each sentence out of habit.  When I am hand-writing, my spacing is not consistent enough to be able to tell the difference between one and two spaces.

----------


## factotum

> I so, and whoever put that in HTML deserves to be slapped.


HTML was never designed as a typesetting language, so it's entirely sensible it does stuff like that. If you want WYSIWYG then don't use HTML!

----------


## BannedInSchool

Wait, wait, wait.  It's not "To Be Horny"?

----------


## Kato

I feel like there are so many acronyms around it's impossible to keep track with all of them. For example, does smh really mean "so many hamsters" or was it originally "see my hat" or something ridiculous. I'm sure there are some more obscure ones out there and then possibly contradictory ones, especially in different languages. But then, I'm so much out of the loop I hardly know any in German but I'm sure they exist.

----------


## keybounce

> HTML was never designed as a typesetting language, so it's entirely sensible it does stuff like that. If you want WYSIWYG then don't use HTML!


The big problem is that when HTML is used as input, it totally destroys what the user types. The complete destruction of all formatting, paragraphing, etc. makes it useless. But since it's in the standard, it's what everyone uses -- and it wrecks everything.

Remember, the original reason that typesetters put two space blocks at the end of the sentence was that the space blocks were small, and they wanted to make sure that the end of the sentence was recognized. Not that putting two spaces is the right thing, but that they wanted to be slightly bigger than the space between words.

Move to monospaced typewriters -- spaces are no longer small,  but the "hit space twice at the end of a sentence" came along, probably because someone influential said, "this is what typesetters do, so this is what typewriters ought to do", and the same "this makes sense to me, so it must be true" viewpoint of Aristotle came back into being as the T-truth.

----------


## John Campbell

If you really want to get technical, typesetters use between sentences a space that's wider than that between words, but not twice as wide, so using one or two full-width spaces are both equally wrong.

The text editor I've used for decades has, in recent versions, switched the default for re-justifying text blocks to two spaces between sentences. The problem is that it can't tell the difference between an end-of-sentence period and one used within a sentence (e.g., in an abbreviation such as "Dr."), nor does it always recognize unusual sentence-ending punctuation, so its heuristics fail and it reformats it wrong (even if you're of the two-spaces-between-sentences persuasion) probably half the time. It's really annoying, but not quite as annoying as digging the setting out of the poorly-documented config files to switch it back, so mostly I just grumble about it. 

HTML/CSS can be set to not collapse whitespace, but note that doing so by default has implications for text portability between displays.

----------


## factotum

> The big problem is that when HTML is used as input, it totally destroys what the user types. The complete destruction of all formatting, paragraphing, etc. makes it useless.


As I said, HTML was not designed as a typesetting language. It was designed to produce readable text where the person creating the web page cannot know what size the window the user will view it on will be or what font they'll be using. As such, removing any user-input formatting is necessary, because otherwise parts of the text might disappear or otherwise have issues on a display that isn't the same size as the formatting was intended for.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> HTML was never designed as a typesetting language, so it's entirely sensible it does stuff like that. If you want WYSIWYG then don't use HTML!


Could you point me to where that's an option on this forum? 

(Oddly, not all forums gut "extra" spaces after punctuation, plenty of them don't.)

----------


## rooster707

As someone whos currently learning how to drive, I find todays comic _extremely_ relatable.

----------


## 137beth

Yea, driving sounds like fun until you realize you could die by sneezing at the wrong time.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> As someone whos currently learning how to drive, I find todays comic _extremely_ relatable.


This comic says more about the shockingly poor standards for drivers in the US than driving itself, though.

20 minutes? Really? I wasn't even allowed in a training car until I passed a theory exam (for which I took weeks of class), and didn't take the driving test until after months of 3-times-per-week driving lessons with a professional driving teacher. And I'm not even talking Germany-level exams here.

GW

----------


## 137beth

I had to do a lot more than just take a 20 minute test, but I don't know if the standards used to be lower (or if they are lower in Massachusetts than in Virginia, where I grew up).  Maybe the 20-minute test he is referring to is the one you have to take before getting a learner's permit (i.e., before you are allowed to even start learning to drive)?

----------


## rooster707

> This comic says more about the shockingly poor standards for drivers in the US than driving itself, though.
> 
> 20 minutes? Really? I wasn't even allowed in a training car until I passed a theory exam (for which I took weeks of class), and didn't take the driving test until after months of 3-times-per-week driving lessons with a professional driving teacher. And I'm not even talking Germany-level exams here.
> 
> GW


I dont think I can speak for the entire US, but thats fairly similar to what Ive been doing.

----------


## Lethologica

> I had to do a lot more than just take a 20 minute test, but I don't know if the standards used to be lower (or if they are lower in Massachusetts than in Virginia, where I grew up).  Maybe the 20-minute test he is referring to is the one you have to take before getting a learner's permit (i.e., before you are allowed to even start learning to drive)?


Relevant source material

----------


## Max_Killjoy

I had to take hours of classes, IIRC something like 10 hours, and then pass a written exam, and then take a strict road test with an instructor (who was such a belligerent arse that I ended up failing because he was making it impossible to pay attention and in general seemed to regard anyone who wasn't a jock or cheerleader as a waste of flesh).   I had to take it again after a few months of practice driving and with a different instructor (whose attitude wasn't "scream at anything that moves").   

Trying to find a good citation, but I recall reading that a disproportionate number of accidents are caused by an oddly small slice of the driving public (that is, repeated accidents involving the same drivers take up a disproportionate number of overall accidents).

----------


## Rockphed

> This comic says more about the shockingly poor standards for drivers in the US than driving itself, though.
> 
> 20 minutes? Really? I wasn't even allowed in a training car until I passed a theory exam (for which I took weeks of class), and didn't take the driving test until after months of 3-times-per-week driving lessons with a professional driving teacher. And I'm not even talking Germany-level exams here.
> 
> GW





> I dont think I can speak for the entire US, but thats fairly similar to what Ive been doing.


I think it was about 12 hours of classroom instruction (2 hours a week for 6 weeks), followed by 3 or 4 hours of on-the-road instruction with a professional driver (who had a brake on his side so he could stop the car), followed by a theory test, followed by a good year of having to have a "responsible" adult in the front seat to keep me from crashing, followed by an on-the-road test.  The hardest part of that was parallel parking.

----------


## factotum

Dunno about other places, but in the UK you can get a provisional licence to drive a car so long as you're of sufficient age (at least 15 years and 9 months) and are basically not blind. However, a provisional licence limits you to only driving when someone with a full licence is in the car with you, you have to have red L plates displayed prominently on the car, and you aren't allowed onto motorways.

To actually get a full licence is harder now than it was when I passed my test nearly 30 years ago--there's a theory test now which didn't exist in my day, for a start. Even in my day the actual driving test was a good hour of general driving and testing specific things (e.g. three point turn), though, not 20 minutes.

----------


## John Campbell

When I got my license, 20-odd years ago, it involved four written tests, two road tests, and a half-semester class with both classroom and behind-the-wheel training. Also some eye tests.

Part of that was that I was, at the time, bouncing back and forth between two states, and the license transfer agreement Vermont and North Carolina had wasn't applicable because I was a minor.

I ended up taking the written test in North Carolina to get my learner's permit, so I could take Driver's Ed in school, which involved classroom work, and then road practice in a Driver's Ed car with an instructor with a brake pedal in the passenger seat. Then I came to Vermont for the summer, and because my NC learner's permit wasn't valid in Vermont, I had to take the written test again to get a Vermont learner's permit so I could practice over the summer. Then when I got back to NC, I had to take the written test again, and then a road test, in order to get an actual driver's license. 

Then I came back to Vermont for college. If I'd been two months older, I would have been able to just hand them my NC license and get a Vermont license to replace it, but I was a couple months shy of 18, so I couldn't do that. I couldn't wait for my birthday, because I started college before then and was going to need my car for that, so I ended up having to take the written test and road test _again_ to get a Vermont license. 

Though I didn't have to parallel park for the Vermont road test, because the test proctor was aware of my situation and also thought it was ridiculous, so when we couldn't find any open parallel-parking spaces on the first pass around the block, she just asked me if I knew how to do it, and checked the box off when I said I did.

I passed all the tests every time, though there was one question that I think I got wrong on all four written tests... because North Carolina and Vermont have _different_ correct answers for it, and included the other's correct answer as a wrong answer, and I kept mixing up which one went with which state.

The rules are actually stricter now. If the current rules had been in effect when I was a new driver, I would have been screwed, because the current gradated license rules would have meant that, in practice, as a minor living hundreds of miles from my family, I wouldn't actually have been able to drive at all, and my campus was in the middle of nowhere, so I wouldn't have even been able to get groceries, and then I would have starved to death because holy crap was the college food service awful.

----------


## Rockphed

> The rules are actually stricter now. If the current rules had been in effect when I was a new driver, I would have been screwed, because the current gradated license rules would have meant that, in practice, as a minor living hundreds of miles from my family, I wouldn't actually have been able to drive at all, and my campus was in the middle of nowhere, so I wouldn't have even been able to get groceries, and then I would have starved to death because holy crap was the college food service awful.


I'm pretty sure that the rules currently mean that students don't have to get a new license when they move to a new state for school.  I maintained my Michigan license almost all the way through college in Utah and only got a utah one because I didn't have time to go back to Michigan to renew and wasn't allowed to renew by mail that time.

----------


## John Campbell

> I'm pretty sure that the rules currently mean that students don't have to get a new license when they move to a new state for school.  I maintained my Michigan license almost all the way through college in Utah and only got a utah one because I didn't have time to go back to Michigan to renew and wasn't allowed to renew by mail that time.


It's not the switching states that would have been the problem. It's that, in many states, licenses for minors are no longer, "You have a license, you can drive," but have restrictions on when you can drive, where you can drive, who you can have in the car with you, and so on.

----------


## Rockphed

> It's not the switching states that would have been the problem. It's that, in many states, licenses for minors are no longer, "You have a license, you can drive," but have restrictions on when you can drive, where you can drive, who you can have in the car with you, and so on.


It has been 10 years since I had any sort of restrictions on my license, so I don't know what things are like now, but I'm pretty sure that the only difference between the license I got when I was 16 and the license I had when I turned 21 was that the former was sideways and said "under 18 until [18th birthday]" and "under 21 until [21st birthday]", presumably to make it easier for people checking IDs to see whether I was under age or not.

----------


## Kato

Ah, I guess Randall used a bit of hyperbole there. I expected US laws to be more relaxed than German ones but the 20 minutes bit surprised. I guess I'm happy it's not quite so bad on your streets.

That said.. In my own experience driving really is one of the few things that get harder the more you think about it. People who drive relaxed (the appropriate amount) are far better than the ones who are always stressed out what could happen.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

The level of license restriction on new drivers has gone far past "they need time to learn", and firmly into the land of "it makes for good political theater because we're 'making people safer'".

----------


## 137beth

The 20-minutes part of the comic may be an exaggeration.  However, the "in high school" thing isn't: I got my driver's license in high school.  Sense then, I have not had to retake any driving tests to verify that I am still capable of driving safely.  It is just assumed that because I could do something in high school then I can still do it now.  Considering that people brag about forgetting things that they learned in high school, maybe that isn't a particularly safe assumption.

----------


## factotum

> Considering that people brag about forgetting things that they learned in high school, maybe that isn't a particularly safe assumption.


The difference being, you probably drive every day, or at least every week. You don't use algebra every week unless you're in a very specific career.

----------


## Kato

.... Today's comic is way too relatable. Minus the YouTube videos. But otherwise spot on.

----------


## Eurus

I did, in fact, take a twenty or so minute class and then a test and got my license, about seven years ago. Terrified the heck out of me. I also wasn't a minor when I got my first license, I was already eighteen, so that might account for the difference.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

FYI, there is a new What If. It's been a while, and I haven't been checking regularly, so it might have been there a while.

GW

----------


## Rockphed

> FYI, there is a new What If. It's been a while, and I haven't been checking regularly, so it might have been there a while.
> 
> GW


I think I checked some time last week and didn't see it, but I had also mostly given up on checking for them.

----------


## factotum

Pretty sure I looked a week or two ago and there wasn't a new one then, so this one is pretty new. Thanks for pointing it out!

----------


## 137beth

Comic Rocket says the new What If was posted on May 21, although it would be May 22 in some time zones.  The previous one was posted March 8 2017, more than a year earlier.

----------


## Kato

Ah, so it's entirely dead. Good to see it back, but apart from the "that's not how it works" part he could have given some answer to the question.. Maybe if it was phrased differently, like "how long would it take to drop to earth from R1, er, L1.

Still, I'm devastated my dream of an interstellar fire pole will never come true

----------


## Mith

> Ah, so it's entirely dead. Good to see it back, but apart from the "that's not how it works" part he could have given some answer to the question.. Maybe if it was phrased differently, like "how long would it take to drop to earth from R1, er, L1.
> 
> Still, I'm devastated my dream of an interstellar fire pole will never come true


He said, that's "not how it works, but here is sort of how it would work if we could pull it off".

----------


## Keltest

> He said, that's "not how it works, but here is sort of how it would work if we could pull it off".


Honestly, im more than a little disappointed that he didn't just erase the moon from the equation and have a giant pole sticking out from the earth to approximately where the surface of the moon would have been.

----------


## The Glyphstone

But half the fun of What Ifs is how they take an impossible situation and take it dead seriously in terms of math/physics. Just removing one of the two largest variables in the equation would be very out of character.

----------


## Lethologica

He does answer the question: it would take a few years plus a few weeks, plus possibly a few years of waiting for the best time for atmospheric reentry.

----------


## Kato

> He does answer the question: it would take a few years plus a few weeks, plus possibly a few years of waiting for the best time for atmospheric reentry.


Well but that's a horribly inaccurate answer, also followed by a Statement that makes the assumption any of this is not deadly.

Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyedthe article, I'm just missing the bit where he says "well, if you start from L1 and just slide down (assuming (no?)/ so much friction) you'll hit the surface after x days. But then he seems more focused on the rpboem of sticking a landing that is likely deadly anyway  :Small Tongue:

----------


## factotum

> "well, if you start from L1 and just slide down (assuming (no?)/ so much friction) you'll your vapourised remnants will hit the surface after x days


Fixed that for you.  :Small Smile:

----------


## Kato

> Fixed that for you.


Thanks, no idea what I was thinking there  :Small Big Grin: 

Btw, the part about the disintegrating hands made me wonder how fast a thing can be moving for you to safely try to grab it.. But I guess this depends too much on what material you want to grab.

----------


## Peelee

> Thanks, no idea what I was thinking there 
> 
> Btw, the part about the disintegrating hands made me wonder how fast a thing can be moving for you to safely try to grab it.. But I guess this depends too much on what material you want to grab.


Well, I'd guess it would depend on how fast you were moving as well!  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Lethologica

> Well, I'd guess it would depend on how fast you were moving as well!


Meh.  Relativity.

----------


## keybounce

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/inde...Attention_Span

I don't know, I think I spent 6 hours between the ring theory and the "jar jar is a force user" theory pages about Star Wars.

I agree with both of them.

----------


## Kato

Please tell me Randall is aware of the importance of the poorly received practice of publishing null results.. I mean, I know he's making fun of everything but sometimes I'm not sure.
Because nothig is more fun than meeting the five other people who did the same experiment as you, got no result, and therefore told nobody about it.

----------


## Rockphed

> Please tell me Randall is aware of the importance of the poorly received practice of publishing null results.. I mean, I know he's making fun of everything but sometimes I'm not sure.
> Because nothig is more fun than meeting the five other people who did the same experiment as you, got no result, and therefore told nobody about it.


My program had a class about writing papers for journals.  The professor suggested that, unless you are hard contradicting a previous paper published in _Science_ or _Nature_, no result papers should be published in more targetted papers related to the field of study.

----------


## Kato

> My program had a class about writing papers for journals.  The professor suggested that, unless you are hard contradicting a previous paper published in _Science_ or _Nature_, no result papers should be published in more targetted papers related to the field of study.


Oh, I'm not saying you should / have to put them in Nature or Science but while the comic specifically mentions one it seems to me like a general complaint about more papers describing negative results.

----------


## keybounce

https://xkcd.com/2027/

*Massive* LOL.

----------


## factotum

> https://xkcd.com/2027/
> 
> *Massive* LOL.


The word "massive" doesn't appear in the linked strip?  :Small Confused:

----------


## John Campbell

> The word "massive" doesn't appear in the linked strip?


I believe "massive" was an adjective describing the "LOL", not a quote.

----------


## factotum

> I believe "massive" was an adjective describing the "LOL", not a quote.


OK, blame my eyesight for that--I thought the asterisks were quotation marks!

----------


## keybounce

I was laughing really, really hard after reading that one.

----------


## jwhouk

I just noticed that the famed xkcd.com/now strip is an hour off.

----------


## Rockphed

> I just noticed that the famed xkcd.com/now strip is an hour off.


You're in Arizona, did you forget that it is currently daylight savings time?

Edit: looking at it, it does not seem to account for daylight savings time.  I am in the same time-zone as denver, and it is currently 10 pm, but now shows it as 9 pm.

----------


## keybounce

> I just noticed that the famed xkcd.com/now strip is an hour off.


Thank you for telling me about this, I had not known.

----------


## jwhouk

I noticed it. AST should be equal to the time in LA and PDT right now.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> it does not seem to account for daylight savings time.


That is not surprising:




Grey Wolf

----------


## Darkseal

> I noticed there was no thread for xkcd, and it's the only other webcomic I read.
> 
> Anyone want to talk about it?


My favourite web comic since forever. The author is also a true genius, check out his Wiki page!

----------


## Rockphed

> That is not surprising:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Grey Wolf


I kept waiting for him to get to the time-skips from Julian to Gregorian calendars.  As a note, I used to have a genealogical program that included a "what day of the week was such-and-such date" that included a warning not to use it before about 1750.

Also, different countries made the switch at different times.  Russia made the switch about in the early 1900s and skipped even more time than the British did.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> I kept waiting for him to get to the time-skips from Julian to Gregorian calendars.  As a note, I used to have a genealogical program that included a "what day of the week was such-and-such date" that included a warning not to use it before about 1750.
> 
> Also, different countries made the switch at different times.  Russia made the switch about in the early 1900s and skipped even more time than the British did.


Errr... yes? He did get to the time-skips from Julian to Gregorian calendars (with that exact example, too).

Grey Wolf

----------


## John Campbell

> I kept waiting for him to get to the time-skips from Julian to Gregorian calendars.  As a note, I used to have a genealogical program that included a "what day of the week was such-and-such date" that included a warning not to use it before about 1750.




```
[email protected]:~$ cal 9 1752
   September 1752   
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
       1  2 14 15 16 
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 
24 25 26 27 28 29 30 
                     
                     
                     
[email protected]:~$
```

----------


## Rockphed

> ```
> [email protected]:~$ cal 9 1752
>    September 1752   
> Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
>        1  2 14 15 16 
> 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 
> 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 
>                      
>                      
> ...


See, we know when these things happened.  But just because we know that doesn't mean that people who lived through them kept good records.  George Washington's birthday go moved because of that day skip, but if you have a record that some blacksmith in 1762 got married and it says he was 20 years old, born on the 15th of January, you have no idea if he applied the time skip to his birthday or not.

----------


## keybounce

I love the non-Euclidean pie chart.

Now, more than "how to shade it", I want to know, how can I write curved text on the curved surface?

----------


## enderlord99

Does anyone here know the international warning symbol for "will not go to space today?"

----------


## rooster707

> This comic says more about the shockingly poor standards for drivers in the US than driving itself, though.
> 
> 20 minutes? Really? I wasn't even allowed in a training car until I passed a theory exam (for which I took weeks of class), and didn't take the driving test until after months of 3-times-per-week driving lessons with a professional driving teacher. And I'm not even talking Germany-level exams here.
> 
> GW


Bit of an update on this... I have an actual license now.

The test took _less than ten minutes._ I feel like something might be wrong here.

----------


## Keltest

> Bit of an update on this... I have an actual license now.
> 
> The test took _less than ten minutes._ I feel like something might be wrong here.


Yeah, that sounds... dubiously legitimate. What sort of things did they have you do? Just ride around a track? Did you even go on an open road?

----------


## factotum

> The test took _less than ten minutes._


That is kind of scary, glad I don't have to drive on US roads!

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Bit of an update on this... I have an actual license now.
> 
> The test took _less than ten minutes._ I feel like something might be wrong here.


It sounds like you can now _really_ relate to the comic.


(link)

Still, congratulations?

Grey Wolf

----------


## Rodin

For reference, my driving test in Texas consisted of a 10-question quiz, which was multiple choice and included such choice questions as:

There are pedestrians crossing at a crosswalk.  What do you do?

A) Wait patiently for all pedestrians to finish crossing, then drive on carefully.
B) Drive through, you have right of way.
C) Honk at the pedestrians to get them to clear the road.
D) Drive through carefully, weaving between the pedestrians.

--

Then about 5 minutes of inspecting the car to make sure it's roadworthy for the test, then about a 10 minute drive which was basically driving to the nearest neighborhood and going round it for a few minutes, then heading back to the DMV.

Unsurprisingly, when I moved to the UK this year I had to take a _real_ driving test.  I wound up taking lessons despite nearly 20 years driving experience, because I didn't know how to do maneuvers like parallel parking and reversing into a parking spot - both maneuvers I never had to do where I lived, so I never practiced them.  Heck, I don't think we even practiced those when I had my US lessons.

----------


## 5a Violista

> Unsurprisingly, when I moved to the UK this year I had to take a _real_ driving test.  I wound up taking lessons despite nearly 20 years driving experience, because I didn't know how to do maneuvers like parallel parking and reversing into a parking spot - both maneuvers I never had to do where I lived, so I never practiced them.  Heck, I don't think we even practiced those when I had my US lessons.


On the other hand, I had to learn those maneuvers, regularly use the parallel-parking one, and I'd have failed my driving test in the US if I didn't know how to do those maneuvers.

It seems like driving test requirements vary greatly depending on location in the US.

----------


## Lapak

> On the other hand, I had to learn those maneuvers, regularly use the parallel-parking one, and I'd have failed my driving test in the US if I didn't know how to do those maneuvers.
> 
> It seems like driving test requirements vary greatly depending on location in the US.


Yeah, I had to parallel park, forward and reverse into parking, 3-point turn, drive around through some blocks to go through stoplights/signs/etc., and execute a hill-stop. Probably varies pretty drastically from place to place. And possibly from instructor to instructor; the guy who was administering my test was a state trooper and I don't know if that's standard everywhere or a peculiarity of my experience.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

The worst part about parallel parking is that inevitably, another driver behind you will run up right to your back bumper and then sit there infuriated at you while you try to back up to get into the spot and not hit their car at the same time.

----------


## Keltest

> The worst part about parallel parking is that inevitably, another driver behind you will run up right to your back bumper and then sit there infuriated at you while you try to back up to get into the spot and not hit their car at the same time.


I don't understand why anybody thought parallel parking should be a thing we try to accommodate. Yeah, it can be a useful skill, but don't actually design parking spots with trying to make people do that in mind.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I don't understand why anybody thought parallel parking should be a thing we try to accommodate. Yeah, it can be a useful skill, but don't actually design parking spots with trying to make people do that in mind.


Sadly, a lot of developed areas end up either by age (built up before lots of cars) or poor design (parking lots don't make money, more space to rent out does) don't have room for any other kind of parking.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> On the other hand, I had to learn those maneuvers, regularly use the parallel-parking one, and I'd have failed my driving test in the US if I didn't know how to do those maneuvers.
> 
> It seems like driving test requirements vary greatly depending on location in the US.


There is a rumour/urban legend that some small towns of the empty bits of the US don't even _have_ driving tests. That you show up to the local Sheriff's office, ask for it, pay the fee, get a lecture on being careful (and how he knows your parents) and that's it.

Whether this is true, or even if it ever was, I cannot say.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Keltest

> There is a rumour/urban legend that some small towns of the empty bits of the US don't even _have_ driving tests. That you show up to the local Sheriff's office, ask for it, pay the fee, get a lecture on being careful (and how he knows your parents) and that's it.
> 
> Whether this is true, or even if it ever was, I cannot say.
> 
> Grey Wolf


Ive been to small towns in the Middle of Nowhere. I find it plausible. Nobody has the time to drive two hours to the nearest city just so you can spend even more time showing off to some official that you've been competently driving a pickup since you were 14.

----------


## jwhouk

That sounds a bit out there. Most states are required to follow licensing procedures, thanks to Federal DHS and DOT requirements.

----------


## factotum

> Nobody has the time to drive two hours to the nearest city just so you can spend even more time showing off to some official that you've been competently driving a pickup since you were 14.


Why is it impossible for a small town to have its own driving test centre? Is there some rule saying they can only be in cities?

----------


## Rockphed

> Why is it impossible for a small town to have its own driving test centre? Is there some rule saying they can only be in cities?


I don't have time to do research on it, but I am fairly certain that most US states have a minimum of 1 DMV office per county, probably more for geographically large counties.  As such, if it is 2 hours to the nearest city, you probably can accomplish most of the DMV-ish stuff in a closer town.  Possibly the most remote place in the US is Pie Town, New Mexico, which is almost 2 hours from the nearest DMV (though the time changes by about half an hour depending on which of the 3 closest offices you go to).  At the same time, I am fairly certain that the closest grocery store is also about 2 hours away (and is in the same town as one of the DMVs).  I don't know what New Mexico does for testing, so there might be somebody who can give the test much closer to Pie Town.

----------


## NEO|Phyte

> Why is it impossible for a small town to have its own driving test centre? Is there some rule saying they can only be in cities?


Money, generally. A small town isn't going to have enough people to make it worth the cost of having its own dedicated driving test centre.

----------


## factotum

> Money, generally. A small town isn't going to have enough people to make it worth the cost of having its own dedicated driving test centre.


But if it's 2 hours to the nearest city, all the towns within 1 hour's drive (or thereabouts) of the small town will go there too, so it's not just the population of the town itself to think about.

----------


## Rockphed

> But if it's 2 hours to the nearest city, all the towns within 1 hour's drive (or thereabouts) of the small town will go there too, so it's not just the population of the town itself to think about.


Considering that small towns are likely to have lots of businesses that have multiple vehicles, I expect that having a DMV in a smaller town is probably worth the expenses.  Even if you only have it open 1 day a week, it would probably get enough use to justify paying someone to drive 2 hours from the nearest city, open the office for 4 hours, and drive 2 hours back.  Just because there aren't very many votes in out of the way places doesn't mean that encouraging them to break the law is a good idea.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Do DMVs do driver's training in some states?  

Here, the equivalent state agency just administers the tests, and they do include a driving portion for first-time applicants.  The most rural parts of the state might have branches an hour or so apart, but the populations just don't justify a branch office in every little village of 100+ people.  If anything, they could use more branches or more staff in some of the more populated areas, the lines are chronically ridiculous.  

(And I say that as someone who normally frowns on metro-centric policies.)

----------


## factotum

> The most rural parts of the state might have branches an hour or so apart, but the populations just don't justify a branch office in every little village of 100+ people.  If anything, they could use more branches or more staff in some of the more populated areas, the lines are chronically ridiculous.  
> 
> (And I say that as someone who normally frowns on metro-centric policies.)


There is a vast, vast gulf between having enough additional branches that you don't need to drive 2 hours to reach one, and having a separate branch in every little village of 100+ people.

----------


## Rockphed

> There is a vast, vast gulf between having enough additional branches that you don't need to drive 2 hours to reach one, and having a separate branch in every little village of 100+ people.


In my example of Pie Town, New Mexico, it is on US 60, and has 3 choices for Motor Vehicle Division offices.  There is one about an hour and a half south in Reserve, one an hour and a half north, in Grant, and one an hour and a half east, in Socorro.  Of the three, Socorro is the farthest drive, but the quickest (if google is to be believed, my experience is that you need to tack on an extra 10-20 minutes to go through one of the small towns between them).

----------


## Claudius Maximus

I first got a license in New Jersey, where it was a pretty easy written test and then a short drive. I actually failed that driving test three times (all for new and exciting ways my car was unsuitable - thanks for teaching me my parking brake did nothing, test administrator!), but it didn't prepare me for the road at all to be honest.

Meanwhile, in Japan, I had to memorize a 53-step process on a course using a stock car, and it was ridiculously strict with things like how far you could crane your neck or the order you did checks before starting the car. Much more stringent, although that, too, had little to do with the reality of driving in Japan, which is mostly a matter of keeping your 1.5m wide car from rolling off the 2m wide, 2-way road and into a rice paddy.

In both cases I had to go a good distance - about a 40 minute drive in NJ, and about 2 hours in Japan.

----------


## PhantomFox

In MD we have a written test and a closed course test, but there's a prerequisite of taking an instructional course which involves x hours driving with the instructor, and that's to get the learners permit.  Then I have to log about 40 hours driving with my parents before I could get the real license.

----------


## Claudius Maximus

Ah, I'll note that what I went through is for people who already drive (I had been driving in Japan for a year already by that point). Apparently if you want to start from scratch you have to do a far more difficult set of exams and practical tests, and, if I was hearing correctly, pay something like 400000 yen (which is about $3600 right now).

----------


## Kato

Yeah, getting a license in a country that takes it serious is ridiculously expensive... I think all things considered German license might be around the same. And as much as I'm for proper driving training this is a serious issue. Getting a license shouldn't be a luxury.

Also, regarding the new comic... So, is there a way to name these people? Not that I care much, but I'm still curious.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Ah, I'll note that what I went through is for people who already drive (I had been driving in Japan for a year already by that point). Apparently if you want to start from scratch you have to do a far more difficult set of exams and practical tests, and, if I was hearing correctly, pay something like 400000 yen (which is about $3600 right now).





> Yeah, getting a license in a country that takes it serious is ridiculously expensive... I think all things considered German license might be around the same. And as much as I'm for proper driving training this is a serious issue. Getting a license shouldn't be a luxury.
> 
> Also, regarding the new comic... So, is there a way to name these people? Not that I care much, but I'm still curious.


In most countries where it's very hard and very expensive to get a driver's license, it's just lingering elitism, covered with a fig leaf of "public safety".   

And where it's not, it's just plain old technocratic garbage... "No, no, you don't need to drive, that's not how the society we're expertly constructing works.  Leave everything to experts that we've certified expertly."

----------


## Kato

> In most countries where it's very hard and very expensive to get a driver's license, it's just lingering elitism, covered with a fig leaf of "public safety".   
> 
> And where it's not, it's just plain old technocratic garbage... "No, no, you don't need to drive, that's not how the society we're expertly constructing works.  Leave everything to experts that we've certified expertly."


Now, that's not entirely fair. There's a noticeable difference in traffic accidents and deaths per capita and per vehicle in countries with stricter rules (and that despite our stupid 'no speed limit on Autobahnen' rules). No offense, but if we gave out licenses as freely regulated as other countries, I think our motorways would be death traps.

----------


## Rockphed

> Now, that's not entirely fair. There's a noticeable difference in traffic accidents and deaths per capita and per vehicle in countries with stricter rules (and that despite our stupid 'no speed limit on Autobahnen' rules). No offense, but if we gave out licenses as freely regulated as other countries, I think our motorways would be death traps.


There is also a noticeable difference in traffic accidents when daylight-savings-time hits and (if memory serves) when nations switch from continental traffic patterns to british traffic patterns (i.e. they swap which side of the road they drive on).

----------


## factotum

> Now, that's not entirely fair. There's a noticeable difference in traffic accidents and deaths per capita and per vehicle in countries with stricter rules (and that despite our stupid 'no speed limit on Autobahnen' rules).


It's interesting to note that the road death rate per capita in Mexico (where there is no driving test) is 12.13 per 100,000 per annum, whereas in the USA (where they *do* have a test) it's 10.04...surprising how little difference that makes! Of course, those are leagues higher than Germany (3.54) and the UK (2.58), both of which have quite strict test regimes, so I'm not sure what to make of the raw stats.

----------


## Kato

> It's interesting to note that the road death rate per capita in Mexico (where there is no driving test) is 12.13 per 100,000 per annum, whereas in the USA (where they *do* have a test) it's 10.04...surprising how little difference that makes! Of course, those are leagues higher than Germany (3.54) and the UK (2.58), both of which have quite strict test regimes, so I'm not sure what to make of the raw stats.


Hm... I find varying information but no comprehensive summary.. States have very different laws but nothing stricter than the simpler US tests, it seems. (i.e. the worst is written test plus simple driving) I'll agree, this is poor evidence for the importance of a stricter test. (also, China apparently has a rather strict test but comparatively high accident rate, though I feel there might be unlicensed driving in the more rural areas)

----------


## Keltest

Personally, I suspect that population density and road maintenance would affect accident rates more than the strictness of getting a license. In the US, states have to fund and maintain their roadways on their own for the most part, so if youre in a state that cant or wont put out a lot of money towards that goal like Pennsylvania, you end up with potholes in every roadway. And New York has something like an eighth of the population of Germany crammed into one city (which itself existed before cars were a thing), so im not surprised the US has more traffic accidents.

I'd be curious to see a breakdown of accidents by region.

----------


## factotum

> Personally, I suspect that population density and road maintenance would affect accident rates more than the strictness of getting a license. In the US, states have to fund and maintain their roadways on their own for the most part, so if youre in a state that cant or wont put out a lot of money towards that goal like Pennsylvania, you end up with potholes in every roadway. And New York has something like an eighth of the population of Germany crammed into one city (which itself existed before cars were a thing), so im not surprised the US has more traffic accidents.


Cities exist outside the US, you know? Even some quite big ones. (London has fractionally larger population than New York, for example, and it also existed before cars). And the *overall* population density of Germany and the UK are higher than most US states, so if population density was the prime factor, you'd expect our roads to be quite dangerous--which they're not.

----------


## Keltest

> Cities exist outside the US, you know? Even some quite big ones. (London has fractionally larger population than New York, for example, and it also existed before cars). And the *overall* population density of Germany and the UK are higher than most US states, so if population density was the prime factor, you'd expect our roads to be quite dangerous--which they're not.


London also covers about twice as much area as New York City.

----------


## Rodin

> Cities exist outside the US, you know? Even some quite big ones. (London has fractionally larger population than New York, for example, and it also existed before cars). And the *overall* population density of Germany and the UK are higher than most US states, so if population density was the prime factor, you'd expect our roads to be quite dangerous--which they're not.


Of course, there can be other factors at work also.  Houston has an almost total lack of mass transit, especially in the suburbs.  That dramatically increases the number of cars on the road, as well as the people who feel they _have_ to drive even if they aren't good at it.  And with the total lack of pedestrian culture, the number of drivers goes even higher.

I'd be curious to see direct comparisons of accidents between the actual cities (i.e. London vs New York) rather than a nationwide figure, because that would eliminate a good few variables.

Anecdotally, the tests don't seem to help all that much.  From my experience of US vs UK driving, the difference in actual skill is pretty minimal.  You're less likely to be run down by someone looking at their phone in the UK, but vastly more likely to have someone decide to charge into oncoming traffic to get around a parked car.  US drivers are careless, UK drivers are _nuts_.

----------


## factotum

> You're less likely to be run down by someone looking at their phone in the UK, but vastly more likely to have someone decide to charge into oncoming traffic to get around a parked car.  US drivers are careless, UK drivers are _nuts_.


I think that depends where in the country you are. Northampton, where I was born, seems to have a far greater proportion of wheel-toting lunatics than Manchester, where I live. Also, driving into oncoming traffic to get round a parked car isn't necessarily a lunatic move--if there's a sufficient gap before any oncoming traffic arrives, or if the person at the head of said oncoming traffic is explicitly letting you pass, it's not so bad.

----------


## keybounce

On the size of the city:

Out here, there is a city with about 8000 people, and a developed area outside the city limits with another 8000 people. (It's technically county).

Then, about 25 or 30 minutes away, are two major subburbs, each of which has 4000 people.

The nearest DMV is easily 30 minutes from the main city, and 55/60 from the two subburbs.

So, even fairly large population areas (about 25K people total) have no local DMV.

Meanwhile, that nearby DMV? "small", low-density population area that can be best described as ... a community college town?. More than 8K people, but a whole less than our area.

----------


## jwhouk

Wisconsin has classroom/simulator training, then written test for temps; then behind-the-wheel driving leading to a comprehensive driver's test, usually of no more than a half-hour (if memory serves - it's been a few decades). 

Not sure about Arizona, though.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

The "rate of traffic deaths per 100000 people" doesn't really account for how many out of that 100000 drive at all, how often they drive, how many miles they drive, what sort of conditions they drive in, etc.

----------


## Rockphed

> The "rate of traffic deaths per 100000 people" doesn't really account for how many out of that 100000 drive at all, how often they drive, how many miles they drive, what sort of conditions they drive in, etc.


Wikipedia to save the day!  Sorting by fatalities per billion km driven, the UK has 3.6, germany has 4.9, and the US has 7.1.  Only 20-ish countries have values for that statistic, and I don't know the state of their driving tests, so I cannot comment on general trends.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Wikipedia to save the day!  Sorting by fatalities per billion km driven, the UK has 3.6, germany has 4.9, and the US has 7.1.  Only 20-ish countries have values for that statistic, and I don't know the state of their driving tests, so I cannot comment on general trends.


Which makes me think of something else... two somethings, actually. 

1)  What are the fatality rates per _hour_ driven? 

2)  What are the fatality rates per mile flown and per hour flown for airline travel?

----------


## Lethologica

> Which makes me think of something else... two somethings, actually. 
> 
> 1)  What are the fatality rates per _hour_ driven? 
> 
> 2)  What are the fatality rates per mile flown and per hour flown for airline travel?


I regard this as an increasingly fatuous exercise, considering how many times information has been met with some hitherto-unconsidered complicating factor or alternative measurement.  Also, there's no way the gaps in average speed are large enough that (1) is going to differ massively from fatalities per passenger mile.  That said, the answer to (2) is "utterly negligible compared to driving".

----------


## factotum

> Wikipedia to save the day!  Sorting by fatalities per billion km driven, the UK has 3.6, germany has 4.9, and the US has 7.1.  Only 20-ish countries have values for that statistic, and I don't know the state of their driving tests, so I cannot comment on general trends.


Japan has one of the strictest driving tests in the world, AFAIK, but it scores 8 on that scale. So, as we could probably have figured out a page or two ago, the difficulty of the driving test on its own isn't sufficient to tell you how safe a country's roads are going to be--there are many other factors which affect that.

----------


## Claudius Maximus

To be fair, Japan has a lot of old drivers. Also, they need to get those isekai protagonists from _somewhere_...

----------


## Kato

I feel like we should drop the debate but on the other hand...
Clearly somebody who has driven for ten years is pretty independent of their actual driving test, the more relevant question is how young / new drivers perform. Sadly I can't find lots of data on that (also, of course there are many factors that also influence the matter. Still, the idea that someone with hardly any training can be as good as someone with thorough training seems unlikely to me, singular cases excluded)

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I regard this as an increasingly fatuous exercise, considering how many times information has been met with some hitherto-unconsidered complicating factor or alternative measurement.  Also, there's no way the gaps in average speed are large enough that (1) is going to differ massively from fatalities per passenger mile.  That said, the answer to (2) is "utterly negligible compared to driving".


The point of #1 was to try to see if there was anything interesting to be found regarding driving risks depending on the urbanization of an area being looked at.   

The point of #2 was to see where things shake out when taking into account the hours spent driving per year, vs the hours spent flying.  Hours driving per year for the average American is something like 295; hour flying for same is proving harder to find, but evidently the average is something less than 2 flights per year, which often gets rounded up to 2 because the journalists presenting the information don't like decimals and don't understand averaging less than a flight and a return.

----------


## Tetrimino

I've read the "Museum of Dad-Trolling" comic more times than I can count, and I just now realized you can click on the exhibit blocks to make more panels of the comic appear.

https://xkcd.com/826/

----------


## John Campbell

I feel the need to point out that Andrew and Lyndon Johnson shared a whole last name, and weren't any more closely related than any two random people of European descent.

----------


## Rockphed

> I feel the need to point out that Andrew and Lyndon Johnson shared a whole last name, and weren't any more closely related than any two random people of European descent.


According to a brief internet search, they were 13th cousins twice removed, which is impressive partly because they live a whole century apart.  Oddly, despite both having done extensive genealogy, my parents haven't yet figured out how they are related to each other.  I think my father doesn't have any royalty yet, so the easy way to be related is out.

----------


## halfeye

> According to a brief internet search, they were 13th cousins twice removed, which is impressive partly because they live a whole century apart.  Oddly, despite both having done extensive genealogy, my parents haven't yet figured out how they are related to each other.  I think my father doesn't have any royalty yet, so the easy way to be related is out.


When I was on holiday as a kid, I met another kid who was uncle to a third kid, they were similar ages, I'm not sure but it's possible the nephew was the elder of the two.

----------


## Rockphed

> When I was on holiday as a kid, I met another kid who was uncle to a third kid, they were similar ages, I'm not sure but it's possible the nephew was the elder of the two.


I have a cousin who is younger than his oldest nephew.  My mom has a 5th cousin twice removed who is the same age as her.  Maybe I should have stated that my surprise was that they were only 2 generations apart.  I guess the later one's cotemporaneous ancestor could have been 2 generations up and then 100 years is about 4 generations  (really it is between 2 and 6 depending on when people reproduce).

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I feel the need to point out that Andrew and Lyndon Johnson shared a whole last name, and weren't any more closely related than any two random people of European descent.





> According to a brief internet search, they were 13th cousins twice removed, which is impressive partly because they live a whole century apart.  Oddly, despite both having done extensive genealogy, my parents haven't yet figured out how they are related to each other.  I think my father doesn't have any royalty yet, so the easy way to be related is out.


And they were both bad presidents, too.  Clearly, no more presidents from that line.   :Small Tongue:

----------


## keybounce

We are all something like 4000 or so generations related :-).

----------


## Kato

> We are all something like 4000 or so generations related :-).


Yeah... it's strange how people draw arbitrary lines between what is incest and what isn't  :Small Tongue:  Long term, you can't mate with any living being because we're all related.

----------


## halfeye

> Yeah... it's strange how people draw arbitrary lines between what is incest and what isn't  Long term, you can't mate with any living being because we're all related.


It's not about that so much as inbreeding being bad for the local genepool, if there's a lot, in the long term that's very bad. With a large population as we have now, it's not usually much of a problem, but in small isolated communities it matters a lot more, there first and second cousin marriages may have to be banned.

----------


## keybounce

Hmm, then the only real solution is to import all our spouses.

Immigration: Good for the gene pool.

... Naah, that will never sell in a nation that doesn't believe in evolution, and thinks ... guuuurrrk [scrubbed by author to avoid getting a second strike. Please excuse the gurgles as his throat chokes to prevent his continued discussion in this manner. Now, I shall put him down, as I have learned I get twice the effort for half the choke, on my path back to the light side.]

----------


## Kato

> It's not about that so much as inbreeding being bad for the local genepool, if there's a lot, in the long term that's very bad. With a large population as we have now, it's not usually much of a problem, but in small isolated communities it matters a lot more, there first and second cousin marriages may have to be banned.


Sorry, I forgot to make my Tongue-in-cheek-Ness more obvious. I think I'm pretty clear on the biological reasons behind avoiding incest. 

Also, thank you Mr Munroe for another weird thing to worry about after today... But since I usually don't ex a bottle of liquid I think it's more little gulps.

----------


## Lord Torath

> When I was on holiday as a kid, I met another kid who was uncle to a third kid, they were similar ages, I'm not sure but it's possible the nephew was the elder of the two.





> I have a cousin who is younger than his oldest nephew.  My mom has a 5th cousin twice removed who is the same age as her.  Maybe I should have stated that my surprise was that they were only 2 generations apart.  I guess the later one's cotemporaneous ancestor could have been 2 generations up and then 100 years is about 4 generations  (really it is between 2 and 6 depending on when people reproduce).


A girl I dated in highschool was the youngest in her family.  Her oldest sister had a baby before the girl I dated was born, so she was an aunt who was younger than her niece.  

Did anyone watch the You've Got Mail remake with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks?  Tom Hank's character has an aunt and a (half) brother who are both about 4 years old, while he's in, I'd guess, mid-to-late thirties.

----------


## Rockphed

> Did anyone watch the You've Got Mail remake with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks?  Tom Hank's character has an aunt and a (half) brother who are both about 4 years old, while he's in, I'd guess, mid-to-late thirties.


_You've got Mail_ is a remake of a bunch of different films.  Rather it is the latest in a long line of remakes.  I think the original is something like _The Shop on the Corner_, but I can't be sure.  One of the other remakes was _In the Good Old Summertime_.

----------


## Kato

Okay, I want to ask if this is actually a thing people do but it's the internet, so of course they do. But are there enough of them to warrant a comic? I know a lot of my faults Mr Munroe has pointed out over the years (oh you infamous 386) but this is something I cannot even see myself do..

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Okay, I want to ask if this is actually a thing people do but it's the internet, so of course they do. But are there enough of them to warrant a comic? I know a lot of my faults Mr Munroe has pointed out over the years (oh you infamous 386) but this is something I cannot even see myself do..


Stay off twitter is the best I can recommend.

But yes, I have seen plenty of people post "I suspect this thought is one someone, somewhere, holds, and this it is why it's wrong".

Grey Wolf

----------


## Rockphed

> Stay off twitter is the best I can recommend.
> 
> But yes, I have seen plenty of people post "I suspect this thought is one someone, somewhere, holds, and this it is why it's wrong".
> 
> Grey Wolf


It is like the ultimate strawman argument!  It has the added bonus that since nobody actually holds the thought, nobody can attack back that you are representing it wrong.

----------


## enderlord99

> Okay, I want to ask if this is actually a thing people do but it's the internet, so of course they do. But are there enough of them to warrant a comic? I know a lot of my faults Mr Munroe has pointed out over the years (oh you infamous 386) but this is something I cannot even see myself do..


You know how the comic references itself sometimes?

This feels like one of those times.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> You know how the comic references itself sometimes?
> 
> This feels like one of those times.


Well, for one thing, it is a clear follow-up to 386. In ten years or so we may get the next installment of this guy's relationship with the internet.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Fyraltari

The logical next step is him finding, and getting mad at, an old post he himself wrote long ago.

----------


## 137beth

> The logical next step is him finding, and getting mad at, an old post he himself wrote long ago.


Are you saying you get mad at every post you write?  Why would you even do that?  How could you even make so many posts knowing you will be mad at every single post you've written?  You have a terrible opinion about getting mad at posts written by yourself, and now I'm mad at you for your terrible opinion that you totally have :Cool:

----------


## keybounce

ExplainXKCD: 
However, on the 2007 anniversary, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a blog post for LessWrong suggesting that "Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, take a minute to not destroy the world.". 

Remember, all you scientific wizards, do not transmute a strangelet pair.

----------


## Eldan

> Okay, I want to ask if this is actually a thing people do but it's the internet, so of course they do. But are there enough of them to warrant a comic? I know a lot of my faults Mr Munroe has pointed out over the years (oh you infamous 386) but this is something I cannot even see myself do..


Absolutely. I've done it. I read some scientific fact and go "Oh, haha, someone could so badly misunderstand that in this way" and then I go google that misunderstanding and get annoyed at the people who actually believe it.

----------


## keybounce

You're curious if people will have an idea, and then google to see if anyone actually expresses that idea?

Let me google and see ...

----------


## Kato

I kind of agree with Mr Munroe yet again. I've never been one to enjoy horror movies, or at least only very few. Then again, I do see the appeal for other people.

Also, it's interesting how much often is included under the umbrella of horror, when there are so many different types. (in movies, books and in video games)

----------


## Fyraltari

Seconded as well.

----------


## factotum

I kind of have the opposite problem in that I just don't find most horror movies scary. I can think of a couple that genuinely gave me chills--the original Poltergeist, for instance--but that's a rarity. Something like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, not scared in the slightest.

----------


## Lethologica

Eh.  Terrible things happening to people is par for the course in cinema.  And it's far from surprising that many people enjoy fear-catharsis in a safe environment.

----------


## Kato

> I kind of have the opposite problem in that I just don't find most horror movies scary. I can think of a couple that genuinely gave me chills--the original Poltergeist, for instance--but that's a rarity. Something like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th, not scared in the slightest.


Hm.. I'm very susceptible to jump scares, even if I see them coming. And jump scares are just cheap and have no positive effect apart from releasing stress hormones (yay?) 
On the other hand the whole torture **** and gore genre might be slightly gross but gross is not entertaining. If I wanted to be faced with body fluids and injuries, I'd be a nurse. 
What can get me are instances of psychological horror, though it's hard to pin down what exactly. i.e. the game P. T. makes me very uncomfortable, even just watching it.

----------


## factotum

> Hm.. I'm very susceptible to jump scares, even if I see them coming. And jump scares are just cheap and have no positive effect apart from releasing stress hormones (yay?)


Jump scares can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned--if your movie (or video game, for that matter) is having to resort to them to get a reaction from the audience, you know you've failed badly. I don't recall Poltergeist having a single jump scare in it--it just builds the tension until everything goes to heck at the end, which is why it's one of the few movies I find genuinely scary.

----------


## John Campbell

If I want to watch terrible things happen to people and feel afraid, I just check the news.

----------


## Kato

> If I want to watch terrible things happen to people and feel afraid, I just check the news.


Too real, man, too real..  :Small Frown: 

On a more cheerful topic, I guess "not everybody got hacked" because there still is something like security software and effort VS reward... Also, I don't think most people want to see society fall apart. 
I have to admit I rarely have these kind of thoughts, at least not to the degree that it troubles me.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> On a more cheerful topic, I guess "not everybody got hacked" because there still is something like security software and effort VS reward... Also, I don't think most people want to see society fall apart. 
> I have to admit I rarely have these kind of thoughts, at least not to the degree that it troubles me.


_Google_ got hacked. Mind you it was merely google+, so all of three people might have got their accounts breached, but if we can't even trust Google, who has always been at the forefront of security, the "everyone got hacked, we just don't know it yet" scenario is looking a lot more plausible this week.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> _Google_ got hacked. Mind you it was merely google+, so all of three people might have got their accounts breached, but if we can't even trust Google, who has always been at the forefront of security, the "everyone got hacked, we just don't know it yet" scenario is looking a lot more plausible this week.
> 
> Grey Wolf



I've been getting Russian phishing emails that make it clear LiveJournal was hacked, or just sold all the data, after it was bought by a Russian company. 

Spent all day Sunday changing all my passwords for everything I could remember ever having a a login for, because a password I haven't used in a decade is showing up as my "username" in these emails.  (Got an LJ account ages ago, never did anything with it.)

----------


## factotum

I got a very similar e-mail with an old password in it, and so did my mother, and neither of us have ever used LiveJournal? Assuming this is the same e-mail (is it the one saying they've got video of you performing self-abuse and will send it to all your friends and colleagues if they don't receive $800 in bitcoins within 48 hours)?

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I got a very similar e-mail with an old password in it, and so did my mother, and neither of us have ever used LiveJournal? Assuming this is the same e-mail (is it the one saying they've got video of you performing self-abuse and will send it to all your friends and colleagues if they don't receive $800 in bitcoins within 48 hours)?


That's the one.  

Something out there got seriously hacked if lots of old passwords are being thrown around.

----------


## The Glyphstone

You know, I'm glad this came up, because I got curious and went poking in my spam folder, found an email exactly like the ones you are describing, including the 48 hours threat. It's been sitting there for 10 days, so I'm not terribly concerned, but I am going to do a total password reset anyways.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> You know, I'm glad this came up, because I got curious and went poking in my spam folder, found an email exactly like the ones you are describing, including the 48 hours threat. It's been sitting there for 10 days, so I'm not terribly concerned, but I am going to do a total password reset anyways.


I sat down with a notepad and started writing out all the places I have a login and needed to change the password... it's terrifying once you start counting them up.

----------


## The Glyphstone

> I sat down with a notepad and started writing out all the places I have a login and needed to change the password... it's terrifying once you start counting them up.


I've got a lot of places with passwords, but most of them are low-impact. For example, I don't care if someone hacks my Kongregate.com account, so I'm not going to bother changing that password. My email and bank accounts, though, definitely are getting changed.

----------


## keybounce

I will check my spam folders as well.

But:

1. Low-security password. Not intended to be secure, known to be in hacker database/text files. Some PHP systems don't use https for the password anyways. I don't care if these are stolen/hacked.

2. Mid-security passwords. Variations on the low security one. Typically because "you must have one special character", or "you must have a digit", or "you must have a capital", or "you must not use special characters", or "Too short", or "too weak". I rely on my browser knowing these, so it's as secure as access to my computer or browser state.

3. File-access password. Used to log in, to access the online backup of my files, etc. A combination of a foreign word and a foreign name, from two different languages.

NB: My external drive that has time machine backups is not secured. If someone can get into my house, they could image my external and get all my passwords that-a-way.

4. Money password. A mis-spelling of a foreign name. A bad, deliberately bad mis-spelling. Expected chance of guessing: 0.
Used any time access could give bank or other financial access.

----------


## The Glyphstone

Now that I look at it again, they also used an outdated password in their 'threat', which is probably why it got dumped into Spam; it clearly wasn't actually sent from my account, just spoofed to look that way. Still doing a password shuffle.

I generally have two tiers - stuff I don't care about gets one password, and often the exact same password. These are game sites, forums/chat rooms, and similar social environments. My second-tier is email, banking, and other things with sensitive data, who get individualized passwords in the XKCD fashion of 'horsebatterystaple', customized so I can remember them easier.

----------


## factotum

I went through a major password change process a couple of years ago when a website I use got hacked (I forget which one), and at that point I started putting all my passwords in a Keepass database on my desktop, so I can easily use a different password on every site, no matter how important. Banking doesn't actually have a password because they give me a PinSentry device that requires me to insert my card and enter my PIN number to log in.

----------


## Lord Torath

> You know, I'm glad this came up, because I got curious and went poking in my spam folder, found an email exactly like the ones you are describing, including the 48 hours threat. It's been sitting there for 10 days, so I'm not terribly concerned, but I am going to do a total password reset anyways.


I just went through my Spam folder looking for something similar, but didn't find anything.  But apparently, Jeff Sessions wants to give me $25 million!  See ya, suckers!  I'm gonna be RICH!.   :Small Sigh:   Supposedly the funds are coming from The Reserve Bank of Australia.  Nothing else is visible in the preview, though, and I find I have no inclination to actually open the email.  Why, exactly, Jeff Sessions would have _anything_ to do with the Reserve Bank of Australia will have to remain a mystery.   :Small Amused:

----------


## Rockphed

> I just went through my Spam folder looking for something similar, but didn't find anything.  But apparently, Jeff Sessions wants to give me $25 million!  See ya, suckers!  I'm gonna be RICH!.    Supposedly the funds are coming from The Reserve Bank of Australia.  Nothing else is visible in the preview, though, and I find I have no inclination to actually open the email.  Why, exactly, Jeff Sessions would have _anything_ to do with the Reserve Bank of Australia will have to remain a mystery.


Probably a hilarious coincidence has the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Attorney General of the United States sharing a name.

Or spammers are just stupid.  I think that is a viable theory.

----------


## keybounce

I'm used to using emulators to slow a system down. This would be the first time I would want an emulator so that I can pretend that there were more clock ticks than normal, which would actually make this a reasonable game.

----------


## Lord Torath

> I'm used to using emulators to slow a system down. This would be the first time I would want an emulator so that I can pretend that there were more clock ticks than normal, which would actually make this a reasonable game.


Ever try Sim Earth?

----------


## keybounce

1. Never tried Sim Earth.
2. Did not know that Archive.org was archiving video games.
3. Knew of a browser-based 2600 emulator and apple 2, but a browser-based C64? First generation Macintosh (68000)? 

Do they have a Trs-80 emulator for playing those basic/assembly mix games with actual good moving graphics? (Z-80, should be easy in comparison, but the keyboard ...)

Do they have an Amiga emulator, and do they have either a working Killing Game Show (all the cracked versions had a timing error, 50 fps vs 60 fps, and the original disk is long since lost for me) or the Battle-tech work-alike fan game that moved the timing from turn-based to time-based, and exposed that all of the FASA mech designs were absolutely horrid as soon as you had to treat heat realistically?

----------


## Kato

Something seems off about that graph... I know! What barbarian labels their axis on the inside?!  :Small Furious:

----------


## Rockphed

> Something seems off about that graph... I know! What barbarian labels their axis on the inside?!


I am trying to figure out how it relates to Wagner.  Currently all I am getting is that Galadriel is from _The Lord of the Rings_, and Wagner wrote the _Ring Cycle_.

----------


## Iruka

> I am trying to figure out how it relates to Wagner.  Currently all I am getting is that Galadriel is from _The Lord of the Rings_, and Wagner wrote the _Ring Cycle_.


I think that's pretty much it. The joke relies on putting those authors literary cycles (which both feature rings prominently and end with a decline/fall of mythical powers) together with the Carnot cycle.

The whole comic is a big mixup of similar words and concepts, right down to the circular agument in the first step.

----------


## Kato

Oh wow, I don't think I've seen Mr Munroe as political as he's been this last week.
But politics are over* and we can get back to more important issues: Whi is missing in the new Smash Bros?! 
Of course we need to include ALL THE POKEMON!!! Like, literally, at best a male and female version for everyone.
Why are there a dozen characters from Fire Emblem but not a single one from Dragon Quest Characters? And only one Final Fantasy character? Impossible!
Also, still no Toad? No Rabbid's even after their recent success?
Only Simon but no Dracula? 
How is Ridley and Dark Samus in the game but not Mother Brain? I want to fight as a giant disembodied head, dammit!
And where are Snake's enemies? I want Psycho Mantis and Ocelot in my Smash Bros!
Speaking of enemies, Robotnik? Or Tails? Knuckles? Poor Sonic is all alone.

(note: These are at best 10% serious and I haven't actually played Smash Bros in years. I'm still somewhat curious on their choice of characters)

----------


## Rockphed

> Oh wow, I don't think I've seen Mr Munroe as political as he's been this last week.
> But politics are over* and we can get back to more important issues: Whi is missing in the new Smash Bros?! 
> Of course we need to include ALL THE POKEMON!!! Like, literally, at best a male and female version for everyone.
> Why are there a dozen characters from Fire Emblem but not a single one from Dragon Quest Characters? And only one Final Fantasy character? Impossible!
> Also, still no Toad? No Rabbid's even after their recent success?
> Only Simon but no Dracula? 
> How is Ridley and Dark Samus in the game but not Mother Brain? I want to fight as a giant disembodied head, dammit!
> And where are Snake's enemies? I want Psycho Mantis and Ocelot in my Smash Bros!
> Speaking of enemies, Robotnik? Or Tails? Knuckles? Poor Sonic is all alone.
> ...


See, I would probably be less annoyed at his forays into politics if he did more things like his _Secretary_ series where he was just making fun of politicians in general.

Let's see, what would I want in SSB?  Presumably from titles that Nintendo already has the rights to.  Hmmmmm ...  I have no idea.  I haven't been keeping up with the latest news, so I don't know who is in.  I mean if they could get the rights to it, putting Wreck-it Ralph in would be amusing, even if he was just a re-skinned Donkey Kong (which he pretty much is).  

Various sonic characters would be nice, though I can only really think of Sonic, Tails, Shadow, and Robotnik.

The tanks from advance wars.  I don't know how to do that, but it surely can be done.

There are currently Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf.  I want more Legend of Zelda monsters.  Even if they pop out of pokeballs.

Depending on how far afield we can go, get me Tanya from Red Alert.

Get me Conan the Barbarian, lack of shirt and all.

Get me the Paladins of Voltron.  They all have the same moves, but depending on color they make different sounds and are different sizes.

While we are at it, give me Shrek and Puss.

This is supposed to be a gladiator combat, I want proper gladiators.

Bring me the broomstick of Little Caesar.  And the shoes of Ronald McDonald.  And the crown of the Burger King!

----------


## 5a Violista

> There are currently Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf.  I want more Legend of Zelda monsters.  Even if they pop out of pokeballs.


I wanted a Breath of the Wild Lynel to show up as an assist trophy _so_ much.

I guess there's still the possibility that a Lynel shows up as a boss in the new Adventure mode, or that it'll show up as a Spirit.

----------


## rooster707

> Oh wow, I don't think I've seen Mr Munroe as political as he's been this last week.


...Really?  :Small Confused:

----------


## Rockphed

I had a big paragraph on my thoughts vis-a-vis Munroe's political comics, but instead, I will discuss the physics of Dragons:  Draconic bones are obviously made out of some anti-gravity mineral.  it accumulates on their home plane, and drifts off into space when their bodies decompose.  This is why dragons kill and eat their parents.

Okay, what dragons are available in the new super smash brothers?

----------


## DavidSh

_Ridley_, from the _Metroid_ games, is reported as to appear in _Super Smash Brothers Ultimate_.  I don't know any of these games myself, but pictures of Ridley look sort of draconic.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Have we reached the point where telling people about their voting rights is "getting political" or "taking sides"?

----------


## 5a Violista

Rathalos is also an Assist Trophy.

And Charizard is a character, too. At least, Lance the Dragon Trainer considers Charizard enough of a dragon to have one.

Plus, Alolan Exeggutor is in it. That's a dragon, too, but it can't fly.

----------


## rooster707

> Have we reached the point where telling people about their voting rights is "getting political" or "taking sides"?


I hope not. I was just saying, that's slightly more "political" than "elections are stressful" or "here is a map representing some interesting statistics."

----------


## Rockphed

> I hope not. I was just saying, that's slightly more "political" than "elections are stressful" or "here is a map representing some interesting statistics"


I think the map would have been more interesting if he had coded position importance and candidate chance to win separately.  As is, it boiled down to essentially "here are the challengers you have probably heard about from the sources I listen to".

----------


## Kato

> ...Really?


I'm being old and forgetful, sue me. Also, I still think he made more comics this time (?) 




> Rathalos is also an Assist Trophy.
> 
> And Charizard is a character, too. At least, Lance the Dragon Trainer considers Charizard enough of a dragon to have one.
> 
> Plus, Alolan Exeggutor is in it. That's a dragon, too, but it can't fly.


I'll never accept Exeggutor as a dragon  :Small Annoyed:   :Small Tongue:  
I lost much of my interest in Pokémon a while ago but I'm still baffled by their ideas once in a while. 

Also, what are the odds of us getting a Pong character?

----------


## Eldan

Does bowser count as a dragon, at least in his upgraded form?

----------


## Kato

Didn't we have a similar joke a month ago?  :Small Confused:  or at least something along the lines of "complaining about things nobody has ever said"?

----------


## Max_Killjoy

This is a bit different -- this isn't imagining a horrible opinion and then looking for it or reacting preemptively to it... this is realizing from someone else's reaction that there's a horrible opinion out there you didn't know about.

----------


## 5a Violista

> This is a bit different -- this isn't imagining a horrible opinion and then looking for it or reacting preemptively to it... this is realizing from someone else's reaction that there's a horrible opinion out there you didn't know about.


Alternatively, the _friend_ is the one imagining the horrible opinion and then reacting preemptively, and in this comic he's looking at it from the outside perspective of "somebody else says that people are reacting to this opinion"

----------


## Rodin

I love the gag in the alt-text about throwing shade on the wall.  I had to think about it for several seconds before I started laughing.

----------


## Lord Torath

2018-11-16: Blackhat, you are a _terrible_ person!  Not that we didn't already know that....

What if we redefined the pound to be exactly one kilogram, and redefined the foot to be exactly 33.3333333 cm?

----------


## Fyraltari

> I love the gag in the alt-text about throwing shade on the wall.  I had to think about it for several seconds before I started laughing.


I suspect he thought of that joke first and wrote the comic to justify it.



> What if we redefined the pound to be exactly one kilogram, and redefined the foot to be exactly 33.3333333 cm?


Just get on with the times and use metric already.

----------


## Lord Torath

> Just get on with the times and use metric already.


Believe me, I would like nothing better! Yes, that's an exaggeration, but only a small one.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

I have a deal for the rest of the world. 

We'll switch fully to metric, if you switch to a sensible decimal notation... 100,000,000.00 instead of 100.000.000,00  

And while we're at it, let's all agree to a sensible date notation, YYYY-MM-DD.

----------


## Fyraltari

> I have a deal for the rest of the world. 
> 
> We'll switch fully to metric, if you switch to a sensible decimal notation... 100,000,000.00 instead of 100.000.000,00


People use 10.000.000.000,1?
Over here, we use 10 000 000 000,1.




> And while we're at it, let's all agree to a sensible date notation, YYYY-MM-DD.


What's wrong with DD/MM/YY(YY)?

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> People use 10.000.000.000,1?
> Over here, we use 10 000 000 000,1.


Yes.  Causes some confusion on docs coming out of South America, which is where I see it a lot.  




> What's wrong with DD/MM/YY(YY)?


YYYY-MM-DD is unambiguous compared to the DD-MM vs MM-DD confusion.  

YYYY-MM-DD sorts naturally, without the need for a special sort function, in spreadsheets etc.

----------


## Lethologica

The nice thing about yyyy-mm-dd is that sorting alphabetically is the same as sorting by date.  I have no preferences apart from that.

----------


## The Glyphstone

So it just popped up on my newsfeed, but They actually are redefining the kilogram.

----------


## keybounce

So the plank constant is no longer defined in terms of the limits of measurability before you make a black hole? It's now defined in terms of the limits of measurability before you need a better meter measuring device?

----------


## factotum

> So the plank constant is no longer defined in terms of the limits of measurability before you make a black hole? It's now defined in terms of the limits of measurability before you need a better meter measuring device?


I think you've confused the Planck constant, which is used to relate the energy carried by a photon to its frequency, with the Planck *length*--although even then, the Planck length is not the minimum measurable distance and never has been, that's an error many people make.

----------


## keybounce

I thought the idea was that to measure smaller and smaller distances requires more and more energy, and that at the plank length, to get more accurate distances would require so much energy that you'd make a miniature black hole, hence it was the smallest possible distance that could be distinguished.

----------


## Claudius Maximus

> I have a deal for the rest of the world. 
> 
> We'll switch fully to metric, if you switch to a sensible decimal notation... 100,000,000.00 instead of 100.000.000,00  
> 
> And while we're at it, let's all agree to a sensible date notation, YYYY-MM-DD.


Please make sure you get Japan in on this deal. There's a unit of 10000 (万) to confuse people, and a second date system based on the emperor. Right now, due to his abdication, we literally don't know what next year is going to be called. It's a headache for computer systems and calendar makers.

----------


## PhantomFox

I think the US did try and convert to metric back in the 80s?  It didn't stick.

----------


## Rockphed

> I think the US did try and convert to metric back in the 80s?  It didn't stick.


Metric has been an official measurement system in the US since 1866.  The problem is that US customary units are also an official system of units.

----------


## Kato

> I thought the idea was that to measure smaller and smaller distances requires more and more energy, and that at the plank length, to get more accurate distances would require so much energy that you'd make a miniature black hole, hence it was the smallest possible distance that could be distinguished.


Wait, what? What?! I've never heard anything like that. To the best of my memory Planck length (and Planck time) is just what you get when you take the universal constants and stick them in a bag and shake them really hard calculate the smallest sensible unit of length from them. Or am I confusing it with some other measurement?




> Please make sure you get Japan in on this deal. There's a unit of 10000 (万) to confuse people, and a second date system based on the emperor. Right now, due to his abdication, we literally don't know what next year is going to be called. It's a headache for computer systems and calendar makers.


I thought Japan was really big on the sensible yyyy/mm/dd format since adopting the western calendar? At least that's how I see it in most Anime (which I guess might not be perfect representation of Japanese culture)

----------


## enderlord99

> Wait, what? What?! I've never heard anything like that. To the best of my memory Planck length (and Planck time) is just what you get when you take the universal constants and stick them in a bag and shake them really hard calculate the smallest sensible unit of length from them. Or am I confusing it with some other measurement?


That's what I thought too.

----------


## Peelee

> Just get on with the times and use metric already.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> 


Sure, but you can relabel the red key with "countries that have crashed a spaceship on Mars because of a unit disagreement".

And really, I'm not terribly clear that putting a man on the moon was that great an accomplishment, since it was never built upon for anything other than the photo-op. Yes, I'm sure the soil samples were excellent, but IIRC China will be getting its own samples by sending a robot, which will probably work just as well.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Peelee

> Sure, but you can relabel the red key with "countries that have crashed a spaceship on Mars because of a unit disagreement".
> 
> And really, I'm not terribly clear that putting a man on the moon was that great an accomplishment, since it was never built upon for anything other than the photo-op. Yes, I'm sure the soil samples were excellent, but IIRC China will be getting its own samples by sending a robot, which will probably work just as well.
> 
> Grey Wolf


Eh, you can relabel the red key with a lot of things.

Also, our robotics weren't quite up to snuff at the time, to the best of my knowledge.

ETA: Also, we did five more photo ops. In between the photo ops they fooled around with silly things a bunch of nerds down here wanted them to do for some reason.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Also, our robotics weren't quite up to snuff at the time, to the best of my knowledge.


Oh, it definitely wasn't. The issue here is not that reaching the moon wasn't an incredible feat - it was, don't get me wrong - but that having done that, nothing else came out of it*. It's been almost 50 years now, and as it recedes into the dustbin of history, the boast becomes more and more hollow. A hare, sitting on the side of the road, telling everyone they've won a race they've yet to complete.

Grey Wolf

* Plenty of thing have come out of the space race in general, but nothing much from the Moon landing itself.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

A lot of what we know about the moon, _and thus about the origin of Earth and the solar system and so on_, comes from work done during the moon landings. 

Regarding even today's robotic landers, "What our best rovers on the planet can do in a week, a human can do in about 5 minutes" (Bill Nye, commenting on Mars exploration).  Roll that back to what could be done remotely/robotically in the 1970s.

----------


## DeTess

> Regarding even today's robotic landers, "What our best rovers on the planet can do in a week, a human can do in about 5 minutes" (Bill Nye, commenting on Mars exploration).  Roll that back to what could be done remotely/robotically in the 1970s.


That has a lot to do with just how long it takes for data tot ravel back and forth between earth and mars. This would be far smaller problem when doing robotic exploration of the moon. I don't mean to diss the Apollo mission, of course, as that was a series of awesome pieces of engineering and human badassery.

----------


## Peelee

> * Plenty of thing have come out of the space race in general, but nothing much from the Moon landing itself.


Given that NASA went back five times and planned to go more, with all missions laden with experiments for the astronauts to perform, it seems that they would disagree with you.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> planned to go more


But they didn't. That's the problem. I'm not saying it is NASA's fault, but at this point, bragging about it comes across like the great-uncle that keeps telling me about how he used to be a star athlete when he was in his 20s. One gets a feeling that they've grown a bit too accustomed to resting on those laurels, and it is not doing much for the laurels either.

Or, as xkcd put it:



Grey Wolf

----------


## Kato

> Given that NASA went back five times and planned to go more, with all missions laden with experiments for the astronauts to perform, it seems that they would disagree with you.


Not to discredit NASA or any brave astronaut but even top scientists are not above doing things because they can answer also because they'd be out of a job if they didn't... 
I know this sounds much more critical than I mean it but in the end 'because they did it again' doesn't necessarily mean it was necessary. Or fruitful.

----------


## Fyraltari

> But they didn't. That's the problem. I'm not saying it is NASA's fault, but at this point, bragging about it comes across like the great-uncle that keeps telling me about how he used to be a star athlete when he was in his 20s. One gets a feeling that they've grown a bit too accustomed to resting on those laurels, and it is not doing much for the laurels either.
> 
> Or, as xkcd put it:
> 
> 
> 
> Grey Wolf


I vote we establish a moon base and harvest helium-3 for our fusion reactors!
What do you mean we are not voting on that?

In all seriousness, though, call me a romantic all you want but I consider space exploration to be the greatest endaveour mankind has ever undertake, so I feel that the U.S. is entitled to some bragging about getting to the Moon.
But that's no excuse to refusing to switch to a scientific and more easily wieldable unit system.

----------


## Peelee

> But they didn't. That's the problem.
> Grey Wolf


I would argue that public disinterest and funding cuts are the problem.



> Not to discredit NASA or any brave astronaut but even top scientists are not above doing things because they can answer also because they'd be out of a job if they didn't...


See above.

----------


## halfeye

Today's seems relevant to the above dispute:



Yeah, the Moon is a good place to go IMO, as are a bunch of high orbits.

I really really dislike the process of trashing your old toys to get new ones, Skylab may have been semi-accidental, but Cassini was just rude, and de-orbiting the ISS would be really very bad.

----------


## Rockphed

> Today's seems relevant to the above dispute:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, the Moon is a good place to go IMO, as are a bunch of high orbits.
> 
> I really really dislike the process of trashing your old toys to get new ones, Skylab may have been semi-accidental, but Cassini was just rude, and de-orbiting the ISS would be really very bad.


My understanding is that Skylab was trashed because it smelled really, really bad.  We still haven't figured out how to get a closed loop life support system to not develop a funk.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I really really dislike the process of trashing your old toys to get new ones, Skylab may have been semi-accidental, but Cassini was just rude, and de-orbiting the ISS would be really very bad.


Wasn't Cassini getting to the point where the risk of failure and thus potential contamination of a moon was considered too high?  

Or was that just the "pitch" for the "ditch"?

----------


## halfeye

> My understanding is that Skylab was trashed because it smelled really, really bad.  We still haven't figured out how to get a closed loop life support system to not develop a funk.


Nobody had been in it for years. The shuttle wasn't ready in time to refuel it. The internal capacity was huge. It was a Saturn 5 third stage with life support inside. I didn't know it was smelly, but that's probably right, even so it should have been shoved into a high orbit and left there until we worked out destinking it. It was just huge, deorbited for bad reasons, and a waste.




> Wasn't Cassini getting to the point where the risk of failure and thus potential contamination of a moon was considered too high?  
> 
> Or was that just the "pitch" for the "ditch"?


It could have been put into an orbit where it could have been collected in a couple of hundred years time. I don't know what the options actually were, but "ditch it to get a new one" really really pisses me off, and NASA have been doing that a lot lately. I think they'd prefer to deorbit Hubble if it was easy.

----------


## Keltest

I vote that we stop being mean to what was obviously intended to be a joke and let it lie undissected. Jokes are worse than frogs when it comes to making a mess.

----------


## factotum

> even so it should have been shoved into a high orbit and left there until we worked out destinking it.


How would you propose to do that, exactly? Skylab didn't have any propulsion of its own, and to get it into an orbit high enough that atmospheric drag would no longer be a factor would require significant amounts of delta-V--plus it would make it much harder to actually reach it with the necessary repair crews. There's a reason the ISS orbits as low as it does--having to boost its orbit every now and again is an acceptable trade-off for the massively decreased fuel costs to actually get there.

Basically, allowing space stations to de-orbit when they're no longer of use is by far the best thing you can do with them--it means they're no longer cluttering up increasingly crowded orbits and it doesn't cost anything.

----------


## halfeye

> How would you propose to do that, exactly? Skylab didn't have any propulsion of its own, and to get it into an orbit high enough that atmospheric drag would no longer be a factor would require significant amounts of delta-V--plus it would make it much harder to actually reach it with the necessary repair crews. There's a reason the ISS orbits as low as it does--having to boost its orbit every now and again is an acceptable trade-off for the massively decreased fuel costs to actually get there.
> 
> Basically, allowing space stations to de-orbit when they're no longer of use is by far the best thing you can do with them--it means they're no longer cluttering up increasingly crowded orbits and it doesn't cost anything.


It was frickin' huge. De orbiting it was a waste. Allegedly if the shuttle had flown in time, it wouldn't have been dropped, but they got the start of the ISS out of dropping it, and that started the trend of trashing old stuff to get new. There was so much worked metal in that as well as the fact that the internal volume was still airtight.

I don't remember how it was moved, but it was moved before. It presumably still had the original Apollo motors. It needed fuel to move, and maybe another rocket to push it.

Most of the stuff in LEO is small, and once it stops working not that valuable, that can go as far as I'm concerned if it makes sense, dropping Skylab didn't make sense.

----------


## DeTess

> Most of the stuff in LEO is small, and once it stops working not that valuable, that can go as far as I'm concerned if it makes sense, dropping Skylab didn't make sense.


Getting fuel up there to move it to the degree you propose (and you can't just move it a bit higher, unless you want to fry it with radiation) Would take about 300.000 kg of fuel (assuming a 4 km/s total dV for the move, and an exhaust velocity of 2.98 km/s, which was typical for rocket tech at that time). That's more fuel than a single Apollo 5 rocket could bring up there.

I know what you're trying to say about it being a waste, but you're grossly underestimating just how much energy is required for spaceflight. Moving it would have been by far the greater waste. The same thing goes for the cassini mission. It didn't have the fuel to have the Saturnian system again, and valuable information was gathered during the destructive phase. The 'retrieval' your propose will simply be impossible until we reach the energy singularity.

----------


## Rockphed

New strip.  I have one better: I get calls for my siblings on my cell phone.  I mean I lived at my childhood home with this phone for a couple months, but it is weird when places call me and ask for my siblings.

----------


## Rodin

> New strip.  I have one better: I get calls for my siblings on my cell phone.  I mean I lived at my childhood home with this phone for a couple months, but it is weird when places call me and ask for my siblings.


There's something similar with my sister - mail for her will periodically show up at my parent's house.  The problem is that she has never lived there, and in fact my parents have moved at least _twice_ since she left home.  The mail also shows up with her married name, which she never had while she was living with my parents.

The other fun one I've had is creating an account with Chase after not banking with them for over a decade - when I logged into the online banking after moving I went to update my contact details, and found that they had my e-mail address from my *previous* account listed as a valid contact e-mail address.  So having not been a customer with them for 10+ years, they just held that data and then automatically applied it to an entirely different account when I returned without consulting me in any way.  

Then again, this is the same company that gave me full access to my father's account via online banking because they couldn't handle the fact that our first name is the same.  And then took several weeks to fix it, despite repeated attempts to change it.

----------


## Rockphed

> The other fun one I've had is creating an account with Chase after not banking with them for over a decade - when I logged into the online banking after moving I went to update my contact details, and found that they had my e-mail address from my *previous* account listed as a valid contact e-mail address.  So having not been a customer with them for 10+ years, they just held that data and then automatically applied it to an entirely different account when I returned without consulting me in any way.  
> 
> Then again, this is the same company that gave me full access to my father's account via online banking because they couldn't handle the fact that our first name is the same.  And then took several weeks to fix it, despite repeated attempts to change it.


That is more than a little creepy.  I vote we destroy the internet and start over from scratch.  Maybe then companies will learn how to handle data properly.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> There's something similar with my sister - mail for her will periodically show up at my parent's house.  The problem is that she has never lived there, and in fact my parents have moved at least _twice_ since she left home.  The mail also shows up with her married name, which she never had while she was living with my parents.
> 
> The other fun one I've had is creating an account with Chase after not banking with them for over a decade - when I logged into the online banking after moving I went to update my contact details, and found that they had my e-mail address from my *previous* account listed as a valid contact e-mail address.  So having not been a customer with them for 10+ years, they just held that data and then automatically applied it to an entirely different account when I returned without consulting me in any way.  
> 
> Then again, this is the same company that gave me full access to my father's account via online banking because they couldn't handle the fact that our first name is the same.  And then took several weeks to fix it, despite repeated attempts to change it.


The US really needs far stronger privacy and "data ownership" laws. 

Start with applying HIPAA-like rules to ALL information about a person.  ALL of it.   

Then go further -- by law, each person should own all information/data about themselves outside of a few specific strict contexts.  Any company, organization, or agency gathering, holding, buying, selling, trading, or sharing data about a person without their consent would in effect be engaged in felony theft.

----------


## halfeye

> The US really needs far stronger privacy and "data ownership" laws. 
> 
> Start with applying HIPAA-like rules to ALL information about a person.  ALL of it.   
> 
> Then go further -- by law, each person should own all information/data about themselves outside of a few specific strict contexts.  Any company, organization, or agency gathering, holding, buying, selling, trading, or sharing data about a person without their consent would in effect be engaged in felony theft.


It's not the USA, it's the whole world. The EU is doing some good things, but it's not going half far enough. If the data about a person was copyright of that person, that might do it.

----------


## Fyraltari

Hear, hear.

----------


## Douglas

*The Mod Radiant:* I'm going to head this off right away. What laws should or should not exist and do is a real world political topic and thus prohibited by the forum rules.

----------


## John Campbell

So, if someone asked me to unlock any of the server rooms I've ever been responsible for, and I had not been specifically told about this beforehand by someone higher up my chain of command, I would immediately be on the phone with said higher-ups to find out if it was legit, and, far from being unreasonable, I think that's a minimum standard of competence for anyone working in IT.

----------


## Rockphed

> So, if someone asked me to unlock any of the server rooms I've ever been responsible for, and I had not been specifically told about this beforehand by someone higher up my chain of command, I would immediately be on the phone with said higher-ups to find out if it was legit, and, far from being unreasonable, I think that's a minimum standard of competence for anyone working in IT.


Yeah, I can see that.  Even when I was working for a small company and thus knew everyone in the building, the IT department only grudgingly let me sit in their office while they were fixing my laptop.  If it was going to be a while, I dropped my laptop off and went to do something that didn't take a computer (normally checking drawings for errors: there were always errors).

----------


## Kato

Arxiv is in fact one of the weirdest and most awesome things in the world... I wish I could spend more time just looking at interesting papers, like the one about the success chance of zombie apocalypses instead of digging through professional papers that have unhelpful titles and less helpful content..

----------


## Kato

Ah, I've always wondered what happened to these boosters after they're dropped. Thanks for educating me again, Mr Munroe  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Caerulea

So, how cute would a cat the size of the planet be?

----------


## Cazero

> So, how cute would a cat the size of the planet be?


Considering this relevant analysis on the subject of furry planetoids, not very much.

----------


## The Glyphstone

Not the size of a planet, but still very large:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/a-beautiful-mind

----------


## Kato

> So, how cute would a cat the size of the planet be?


Well, it's inversely proportional, so not very? I mean, arguably tigers / lions aren't that cute... 

I wonder what size the Schwartzschild limit is though... Because I've seen some really small cats.

----------


## halfeye

It seems to me that the current strip is wrong:

https://xkcd.com/2092/

The international date line is 12 hours from UCT, so at UTC midnight, half the world is already in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line




> Thus, all of Russia is to the west of the IDL, and all of the United States is to the east except for the insular areas of Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Wake Island.


India and China as well.

----------


## factotum

> It seems to me that the current strip is wrong:
> 
> https://xkcd.com/2092/
> 
> The international date line is 12 hours from UCT, so at UTC midnight, half the world is already in 2019.


Two things there:
1) The International Date Line is not straight--it kinks one side and the other in order to ensure that you don't get a situation where a single country is operating in two dates simultaneously. Due to a change a few years ago, this means that parts of the Kiribati archipelago are on the UTC+14 time zone and thus it's the first country in the world to go into the New Year.

2) Even if the IDL *were* exactly 12 hours opposite to Greenwich, it doesn't mean that the world's population is nice and evenly spread either side of it. China and India are both East of Greenwich, for example, and those two countries alone have more than a third of the entire world's population between them. Since the graph is saying what portion of the world's *population* is in 2019, not what portion of the world's *surface* is, it will tend to bias it.

----------


## halfeye

> Two things there:
> 1) The International Date Line is not straight--it kinks one side and the other in order to ensure that you don't get a situation where a single country is operating in two dates simultaneously. Due to a change a few years ago, this means that parts of the Kiribati archipelago are on the UTC+14 time zone and thus it's the first country in the world to go into the New Year.
> 
> 2) Even if the IDL *were* exactly 12 hours opposite to Greenwich, it doesn't mean that the world's population is nice and evenly spread either side of it. China and India are both East of Greenwich, for example, and those two countries alone have more than a third of the entire world's population between them. Since the graph is saying what portion of the world's *population* is in 2019, not what portion of the world's *surface* is, it will tend to bias it.


Yeah, but China, India and Russia are all on the "early" side of the dateline. The time now in China and India is early morning 2019, Moscow is fast approaching Midnight.

Mr. Munroe has got this one wrong, somehow.

----------


## Douglas

> Yeah, but China, India and Russia are all on the "early" side of the dateline. The time now in China and India is early morning 2019, Moscow is fast approaching Midnight.
> 
> Mr. Munroe has got this one wrong, somehow.


If I understand what you mean by "early side" correctly, you've got it backwards. The west side of the dateline is one day ahead of the east side. When the dateline hits midnight, it enters a new day, the timezone west of it follows into that new day, and each hour one more timezone further to the west joins the new day.

Edit: Wait, I think the issue might be that you missed what time zone the chart is using. The times on the chart are in EST, which is UTC-5. Midnight UTC is 7pm EST, which is one of the labeled lines on the chart, and shows 85% of world population in the new year.

----------


## halfeye

> If I understand what you mean by "early side" correctly, you've got it backwards. The west side of the dateline is one day ahead of the east side. When the dateline hits midnight, it enters a new day, the timezone west of it follows into that new day, and each hour one more timezone further to the west joins the new day.
> 
> Edit: Wait, I think the issue might be that you missed what time zone the chart is using. The times on the chart are in EST, which is UTC-5. Midnight UTC is 7pm EST, which is one of the labeled lines on the chart, and shows 85% of world population in the new year.


I am pretty sure I'm not wrong about this.

The chart is saying that at 6.30pm UTC half the world's population will be in 2019. At that time, slightly over 3/4 of the world's surface will be in 2019, including China, India, Russia, Europe and Australia.

----------


## Douglas

> I am pretty sure I'm not wrong about this.
> 
> The chart is saying that at 6.30pm UTC half the world's population will be in 2019. At that time, slightly over 3/4 of the world's surface will be in 2019, including China, India, Russia, Europe and Australia.


At that time, slightly over *1*/4 of the world's surface was in 2019, including China, India (just barely), a large portion but not all of Russia, and Australia. Europe, Africa, and of course both Americas, were all still 100% in 2018, along with the portion of the Asian continent west of India.

----------


## halfeye

Depends which day we're talking about. If we're talking about 6.30 UTC on 2018.12.31, then it may be right, I thought it was talking about 6.30 UTC on 2019.1.1 when it would be very wrong.

Much editing to clarify who said what when. Sorry for any confusion caused by earlier edits.

----------


## Douglas

> Depends which day we're talking about. If we're talking about 6.30 UTC on 2018.12.31, then it may be right, I thought it was talking about 6.30 UTC on 2019.1.1 when it would be very wrong.
> 
> Much editing to clarify who said what when. Sorry for any confusion caused by earlier edits.


The chart covers the timespan where a portion (and only a portion) of the world is in 2019. 6:30pm UTC 2019.1.1 is outside that timespan, as the world reaches 100% 2019 at noon UTC, six and a half hours earlier.

Also, the date is clearly marked at the left end of the time axis, and again near the right end. It starts in Dec. 31, and the 6:30pm UTC mark is well before the midnight line.

----------


## Kato

Watching grown adults argue over this makes me more empathetic to my students unable to read a graph....

But appy new year, whenever it occurs to you.

(Also: Is there some joke I'm missing?)

----------


## factotum

> (Also: Is there some joke I'm missing?)


Not every XKCD has to have a joke? Sometimes they're just plain informative, like the one that showed relative radiation doses for various things.

----------


## Tetrimino

2106

This one really struck a chord with me. When I first started using Instagram, my account was public, which is something I've come to regret. Not that I posted anything embarrassing, I just don't like knowing that some company probably has my photos.

----------


## Lord Torath

Huh. I only just noticed this.  Anyone know how long the "How to" ad has been there?

----------


## Fyraltari

> Huh. I only just noticed this.  Anyone know how long the "How to" ad has been there?


It wasn't there last time I checked which was wednesday.

----------


## Keltest

Its only been there a couple days. He made a Blag post about it even.

----------


## Kato

Still better than nine out of ten physics students   :Small Tongue: 

I'm curious about the new book. Mr Munroe always puts out good literature, as far as I know.

----------


## Cazero

> Still better than nine out of ten physics students


Are you kidding? He forgot to label the axes !

----------


## georgie_leech

> Are you kidding? He forgot to label the axes !


Right, so better than 90% of physics students  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Peelee

Rest in peace, you beautiful machine. You done good.

----------


## Fyraltari

> Rest in peace, you beautiful machine. You done good.


They all do.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

I hope, someday, that we'll be able to build a museum on Mars, and  bring all these rovers and probes in and give them a place of honor, there on Mars.  

 Yes, I am sentimental, including about machines that do big, real things for us.

----------


## Peelee

> I hope, someday, that we'll be able to build a museum on Mars, and  bring all these rovers and probes in and give them a place of honor, there on Mars.  
> 
>  Yes, I am sentimental, including about machines that do big, real things for us.


They could have a whole wing dedicated to whalers on the Moon!

----------


## Lord Torath

> Rest in peace, you beautiful machine. You done good.





> They all do.


And today's strip: Opportunity Rover.  And an alternate version of 695: Spirit.  (Not certain who did that update, but it still looks like Randall's work)

----------


## Mith

> And today's strip: Opportunity Rover.  And an alternate version of 695: Spirit.  (Not certain who did that update, but it still looks like Randall's work)


And now I am sad.  I knew what the comic was going to be, but it still makes me sad to read it.  I guess it's still a good tribute to the mission.  I do much prefer Opportunity's comic.

----------


## Tetrimino

> Huh. I only just noticed this.  Anyone know how long the "How to" ad has been there?


*Doesn't look at the forum for a month but still wants to join the conversation*

I'm honestly way too exited about this book. _What If_ and _Thing Explainer_ were excellent and I've been waiting for a sequel ever since.

----------


## Lord Torath

Thing Explainer was kinda fun, but what if? was the best!  I loved the Periodic Wall of Elements and the Neutron Star Bullet.  The Weird and Worrying Questions were pretty great too!

----------


## enderlord99

I don't know why it's called "big hole" when it could be called "big dig"

----------


## Rockphed

> I don't know why it's called "big hole" when it could be called "big dig"


Ah, but isn't "Big Dig" the name of a public transit project in Boston?  I think that being in the pocket of "big mine" or "big mineral" are both equally applicable to mining and sound significantly less silly than "big hole".  Then again, he is trying to get us to laugh, not to educate us on all the things our politicians are in the pocket of.  After all, I'm fairly certain that "Big Funny" is slowly accruing power, and will soon be the most influential special interest in the history of the world!

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Sadly, I think "Big Stupid" is running the show right now.

----------


## georgie_leech

> Sadly, I think "Big Stupid" is running the show right now.


"Running" is a strong word. Maybe "flailing at."  :Small Tongue: 

I'd like to see this extended into two dimensions like the scariness of the name vs scariness of the thing. In this case, sinister/silly rating on the X axis and actual sinster/silly on the Y. I nominate Big Corn as having a silly name for a sinister influence on a broad spectrum of life.

----------


## enderlord99

I think we all know who the *real* mastermind is!  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Rockphed

> "Running" is a strong word. Maybe "flailing at." 
> 
> I'd like to see this extended into two dimensions like the scariness of the name vs scariness of the thing. In this case, sinister/silly rating on the X axis and actual sinster/silly on the Y. I nominate Big Corn as having a silly name for a sinister influence on a broad spectrum of life.


While I agree that a 2-dimensional representation would probably be better, I think that delving too far would quickly result in political discussions.

----------


## Lord Torath

So, what's the best emoji? Vote Now in the March 32nd Emoji March Madness Duel to the Death!!!

----------


## Tetrimino

This was probably intentional on Randall's part, but the top google image search result for "wheel" is in fact a bicycle wheel today. I'm curious whether the bike wheel was the first result before today, of if it rose to the top after all the xkcd readers searched "wheel" and clicked on the first bike wheel they saw. It would be interesting to see Beret Guy attach a wheel of cheese to his cars, or a ferris wheel or wheel of fortune for that matter.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Fyraltari

Google search results are personalized to the user. Two different persons will get two different top results.

----------


## 137beth

The first page of DuckDuckGo image searches (which are _not_ personalized) does include bicycle wheels, though they aren't first.

----------


## Tetrimino

> Google search results are personalized to the user. Two different persons will get two different top results.


That's what I thought after I first did the search, but then I immediately tried again in an incognito window, which should have prevented personalized results, and I still got the same bicycle wheel.

----------


## DataNinja

> That's what I thought after I first did the search, but then I immediately tried again in an incognito window, which should have prevented personalized results, and I still got the same bicycle wheel.


From what I understand, incognito just stops the results you gain and the cookies and whatnot during that session from being recorded. It still reads the cookies and stuff that already exists on your computer.

----------


## Tetrimino

> From what I understand, incognito just stops the results you gain and the cookies and whatnot during that session from being recorded. It still reads the cookies and stuff that already exists on your computer.


Are you sure? I was under the impression that incognito windows didn't read cookies or anything.

----------


## DataNinja

> Are you sure? I was under the impression that incognito windows didn't read cookies or anything.


Well, I've gotten results that seem _excessively_ personalized based on my past stuff before  - and different than other people experimenting with the same thing - when we did some testing in that regard.

----------


## Kornaki

> Are you sure? I was under the impression that incognito windows didn't read cookies or anything.


Incognito mode only prevents people on your computer from seeing your browsing activity, it does not prevent websites from seeing cookies already stored in your computer.

----------


## Fyraltari

> That's what I thought after I first did the search, but then I immediately tried again in an incognito window, which should have prevented personalized results, and I still got the same bicycle wheel.


Incognito stops your search history from being recorded in your computer (well if you know your stuff I think you can still access it). It has no effect on Googles servers.

----------


## Douglas

Incognito mode prevents a web site from accessing any record of anything on your computer that happened outside the Incognito window, and prevents other windows on your computer from accessing anything that's recorded in the Incognito window. This means Google cannot access your browser history or cookies.

Incognito mode does not, as far as I know, prevent access to things like that you're using Chrome, what version you're using, what your screen resolution is, and many other bits and pieces of information like that, which can be used to create a "device fingerprint" that is mostly stable (so it will be the same in an Incognito window as in your normal browsing or a previous Incognito session) and is very likely unique when considered as a whole. Incognito mode certainly does not prevent a web site from recording things on its own servers, and Google could (I don't know if they actually do) save your device fingerprint on their servers and use it to look up your search history in their records even in Incognito mode.

Incognito mode also does not hide your IP address, which might rarely change and could be used to track you with a bit less certainty.

----------


## Tetrimino

It says a lot about the world today that I read this and assumed this was an actual thing people believed. That being said, there's probably actually someone out there who really thinks this.

----------


## georgie_leech

> It says a lot about the world today that I read this and assumed this was an actual thing people believed. That being said, there's probably actually someone out there who really thinks this.


The alt-text is... regrettably not as fictional as it should be.

----------


## Lord Torath

> The alt-text is... regrettably not as fictional as it should be.


You mean St. Andrews actually has a lightsaber team?   :Small Confused: 

Or did I get the wrong comic?

----------


## Kato

> You mean St. Andrews actually has a lightsaber team?  
> 
> Or did I get the wrong comic?


Yeah, I also think they talk about Wednesday's comic.. Or at least it makes more sense.
I sure wish today's comic was true, though!

----------


## georgie_leech

> You mean St. Andrews actually has a lightsaber team?  
> 
> Or did I get the wrong comic?


Alas, I don't have access to comics unreleased at the time of posting  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Lord Torath

> Alas, I don't have access to comics unreleased at the time of posting


I suppose I could have checked the Wiki to see if the Diploma Legal Notes was posted today.  Most of the time "today's" comic isn't up when I get to work, and shows up sometime later in the day.  Thus, I assumed the Diploma Legal Notes was Wednesday's comic.   :Small Red Face: 

That, and your comment was much funnier when applied to today's Alt-Text!   :Small Wink:

----------


## AvatarVecna

"Google results are personalized, two different people searching for the same thing get different things."
"Oh yeah well what if instead I test that theory by having one person search in two different ways? Does it help if one of the ways, Google pinky-swore it probably wouldn't spy on me?"
"...one person doing it twice and getting the same result doesn't disprove two people doing it once and getting different results. Have you tried asking a friend?"
"Who needs friends when you have Incognito Mode?"

----------


## Radar

> "Google results are personalized, two different people searching for the same thing get different things."
> "Oh yeah well what if instead I test that theory by having one person search in two different ways? Does it help if one of the ways, Google pinky-swore it probably wouldn't spy on me?"
> "...one person doing it twice and getting the same result doesn't disprove two people doing it once and getting different results. Have you tried asking a friend?"
> "Who needs friends when you have Incognito Mode?"


The question remains, if it does more then this.

----------


## halfeye

> The question remains, if it does more _then_ this.


Does it really sound like that over there?

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Whoever linked to webring, Malwarebytes is reporting that it blocked a Trojan from that address.

----------


## Radar

> Does it really sound like that over there?


I could try to pretend I was chanelling officer Crabtree, but it is just a mistake on my part.

----------


## Morquard

Could you guys instead of saying "Today's comic" actually just link to the comic? Figuring out "today's comic" when reading through the thread is extremely painful.

----------


## Rockphed

> Could you guys instead of saying "Today's comic" actually just link to the comic? Figuring out "today's comic" when reading through the thread is extremely painful.


Yeah, the comics always even have the permanent link helpfully under them.  The only excuse is if you are using a touch-screen device, and then you really should have thought of that before you decided to inconvenience the rest of us you selfish so-and-so.

On the other hand, I feel the need to throw over ripe fruit at Randal because he doesn't list the date of first posting on his comics.  Let's just hand out the blame all around.

----------


## georgie_leech

> Yeah, the comics always even have the permanent link helpfully under them.  The only excuse is if you are using a touch-screen device, and then you really should have thought of that before you decided to inconvenience the rest of us you selfish so-and-so.
> 
> On the other hand, I feel the need to throw over ripe fruit at Randal because he doesn't list the date of first posting on his comics.  Let's just hand out the blame all around.


No, us mobile folk can still find the permalink by hitting the previous- and next-comic buttons in succession. I just felt safe knowing there couldn't be anything regrettable about a light saber fencing team not being fictional.

----------


## Rockphed

> No, us mobile folk can still find the permalink by hitting the previous- and next-comic buttons in succession.


My limited experience with mobile devices is that copy and paste are only one step above auto-open-heart-surgery.

----------


## Kornaki

It's actually very easy to copy and paste a URL on my phone. Chrome even has a dedicated button for copying urls now.

----------


## Rodin

The current comic is one of my pet peeves.  Going by one definition, I'm a millenial.  Going by another definition, people 20 years younger than me are.  And the definition seems to keep moving year-by-year.

Maybe we need a new definition, like the Naughty Generation or something.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> The current comic is one of my pet peeves.  Going by one definition, I'm a millenial.  Going by another definition, people 20 years younger than me are.  And the definition seems to keep moving year-by-year.


Given that a generation is supposed to be about 25 years wide, that seems to be working as intended?

My main complaint about this "generation"business is how America-centric it is. It has no correlation whatsoever with my own peers, nor, from what I've experienced, anyone outside of the US (maybe Canada?), and yet it's bandied about in "news" as if it were some universal distinction.

So, standard complaint about American navel-gazing, really, this is hardly the only place where it happens.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Given that a generation is supposed to be about 25 years wide, that seems to be working as intended?
> 
> My main complaint about this "generation"business is how America-centric it is. It has no correlation whatsoever with my own peers, nor, from what I've experienced, anyone outside of the US (maybe Canada?), and yet it's bandied about in "news" as if it were some universal distinction.
> 
> So, standard complaint about American navel-gazing, really, this is hardly the only place where it happens.


It's not even all that relevant outside the media and pop-demography in the US.  I have very little in common with my supposed "generation", because I grew up in a rural area outside a small town, far from the big coastal cities that get fixated on, and my parents were 30 when I was born and also grew up mainly in rural areas outside small towns.

----------


## halfeye

> Given that a generation is supposed to be about 25 years wide, that seems to be working as intended?
> 
> My main complaint about this "generation"business is how America-centric it is. It has no correlation whatsoever with my own peers, nor, from what I've experienced, anyone outside of the US (maybe Canada?), and yet it's bandied about in "news" as if it were some universal distinction.
> 
> So, standard complaint about American navel-gazing, really, this is hardly the only place where it happens.
> 
> Grey Wolf


Most of it probably is USAian, but the baby boom was a more or less world wide phenomenon that seemed to be started by the end of WW2.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> Most of it probably is USAian, but the baby boom was a more or less world wide phenomenon that seemed to be started by the end of WW2.


Sure, but that doesn't make the boomer-equivalent generation of my own country in any way equivalent in outlook, morality, politics or anything else similar to the American boomers. And yet, to hear the news tell it, "millennials" are the same the world over, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Grey Wolf

----------


## halfeye

> Sure, but that doesn't make the boomer-equivalent generation of my own country in any way equivalent in outlook, morality, politics or anything else similar to the American boomers. And yet, to hear the news tell it, "millennials" are the same the world over, despite all evidence to the contrary.
> 
> Grey Wolf


Yeah, the whole thing's silly when they make generalisations about a generation. People are all different.

There was a baby boom though, and it probably related to WW2.

----------


## Keltest

As far as im aware, the "Millennials are doing X" shtick tends to be done by two groups: clickbait media and Millennials who are engaging in what amounts to a private joke at this point.

Theres also the related, but not identical "kids these days" people, which I think encompasses just about everybody over the age of about 17 to varying degrees.

----------


## Kato

From my very far away position of not-being American I feel like Millennial is a decent term, but not for a generation but for a subset of people from a generation. Which is true for most others as well. Maybe Babyboomers are especially homogeneous but generation x or whatever else exists as terms for others are also not identical across all people. But people who consider themselves millenials share a lot of commonalities and don't argue that. It's of course problematic / confusing when blanket statements are made about every person born between year x and y.

----------


## Rodin

> From my very far away position of not-being American I feel like Millennial is a decent term, but not for a generation but for a subset of people from a generation. Which is true for most others as well. Maybe Babyboomers are especially homogeneous but generation x or whatever else exists as terms for others are also not identical across all people. But people who consider themselves millenials share a lot of commonalities and don't argue that. It's of course problematic / confusing when blanket statements are made about every person born between year x and y.


It's especially a thing with how quickly technology is changing society.  I know, I know, hang an onion on my belt and all that, but the advent of the Internet has been a massive game-changer culturally.  So it gets rather weird when people talk about millenials and their obsession with all things Internet and I grew up without it really being a thing.  Those on the border of a big technological shift like that are in kind of a weird place.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> It's especially a thing with how quickly technology is changing society.  I know, I know, hang an onion on my belt and all that, but the advent of the Internet has been a massive game-changer culturally.  So it gets rather weird when people talk about millenials and their obsession with all things Internet and I grew up without it really being a thing.  Those on the border of a big technological shift like that are in kind of a weird place.


I'm old enough that I saw vinyl records go from commonplace to "garbage" and back to "hipster fauxstalgia haut couture".   

I'm old enough to remember 8-tracks, rotary phones and party lines, AM radio being more than a niche... 

I'm older than cellphones, those big laser video disks, CDs (let alone the streaming rental music garbage), commonplace home computers, microwaves as a ubiquitous appliance, and "the web".   


I have no use for streaming subscriptions, the internet of stupid useless crap things, most social media, or being spied on by advertisers "to enrich my experience".  


I scoff at the notion of the singularity, and refer to it as the "rapture for nerds"... mainly because I'm already living in a world of relentless change I can't slow down, and yet the more things change, the more they stay the same.

----------


## Radar

> ... I'm already living in a world of relentless change I can't slow down, and yet the more things change, the more they stay the same.


Reminds me of this xkcd strip. It does put things in perspective.

----------


## remetagross

So...I have to confess I have not understood this "shadow biosphere" joke. Would someone be so kind as to enlighten me?

----------


## Fyraltari

> So...I have to confess I have not understood this "shadow biosphere" joke. Would someone be so kind as to enlighten me?


I wouldnt, but these people would.

----------


## remetagross

Thanks, will remember the link :)

----------


## Lethologica

The problem with the latest comic: if you tell them a neural network did it, they'll expect it to keep working without any additional labor on your part as they add new photos.

On the other hand, the same problem applies if you actually train a neural network to do this...

----------


## Lord Torath

What's your first news memory?

Mine is probably the 1980 election.  I _do_ remember reading bits of the newspaper as my dad taught me to read (a year or two earlier), but none of the stories stuck until that one.

I vaguely remember the 1979 partial eclipse (well, partial for my area of the country, anyway), but I don't remember news stories about it.

I _do_ remember the Challenger disaster, but I was one of the kids who went out to recess (I'd seen shuttle launches before) and came back inside to hear about it from the kids who stayed in to watch.

Does seeing your picture from the local paper count?  There's a photo of me asleep in my dad's backpack baby carrier at a local parade when I was about 2-3.  I remember my mom showing me that photo cut from the newspaper when I was about 4.  Which would predate the 1980 election by a year or so.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Let's see... Iran hostage crisis, and Carter v Reagan election.

----------


## JeenLeen

I got distracted by today's comic by trying to keep it consistent who was standing by who, while it appears to be changing.

---

As far as first memory: none of mine are really news-related.  I guess the first big news thing I can remember with any detail is 9-11, but I was in high school during that so it's definitely not close to a first memory.  I know of earlier historical events, but don't really have memories associated with them beyond small audio or video clips from the news or comedian commentary.  Then again, never really watched or cared about news as a kid.

Is it thought that most folk have a 'first memory' associated with a major news thing?

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I got distracted by today's comic by trying to keep it consistent who was standing by who, while it appears to be changing.
> 
> ---
> 
> As far as first memory: none of mine are really news-related.  I guess the first big news thing I can remember with any detail is 9-11, but I was in high school during that so it's definitely not close to a first memory.  I know of earlier historical events, but don't really have memories associated with them beyond small audio or video clips from the news or comedian commentary.  Then again, never really watched or cared about news as a kid.
> 
> Is it thought that most folk have a 'first memory' associated with a major news thing?


No, it's thought that most folk have an earliest news event that they remember specifically -- not your first memory, but the oldest/first news event you remember.

----------


## georgie_leech

> No, it's thought that most folk have an earliest news event that they remember specifically -- not your first memory, but the oldest/first news event you remember.


That is, some event or report on the news that you learned about via the news, rather than living it yourself. And on that subject, watching the 9/11 attacks in the school library.

----------


## halfeye

Mine would definitely be the JFK assassination. All the adults went bananas.

----------


## Kato

I feel like my first memory should be related to the Berlin Wall coming down but I really don't. I guess 4 year old me didn't care? 
I have a very vague memory of some report on some conflict concerning Russia which must be from the early 90s.. If I had to guess Chechnya? I remember it because it lead to me talking to my father about him and him apparently being shocked elementary school me didn't know anything about the world wars.
If I have to put a date to a concrete memory, I guess it's 9/11, just because I don't remember dates.

----------


## TaRix

Depending on whether I had to see it on a news medium, it's either the Challenger loss or Tianemen Square interrupting my Saturday morning cartoons.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

It's one of the disconcerting effects of age... seeing people talk about things I remember vividly as their "first news memory"... or as actual history.  

My high school years coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the USSR and end of "world communism" as a threat, the first Gulf War...

----------


## John Campbell

My earliest news memory is actually _me_, in October 1978, when we got our first computer, which was the first personal computer in town. (It was an Exidy Sorcerer. You've probably never heard of the company or the computer.) The Burlington Free Press ran an article about it, complete with a full-color photograph of me, at age just-barely-four, playing Hangman on the Sorcerer while my father and older brother watched over my shoulders. I remember the photographer being there for the shoot, and his disbelief that I could operate the computer.

In international news, it would be either the Iran hostage crisis or the Lake Placid Olympics. The Olympics happened while the hostage crisis was ongoing, and I'm not sure if I became aware of the hostage crisis before or after the Olympics. (Or possibly even "during".) I was born during the Ford administration, but I have no memories of Ford as President (or really any sort of public figure). I do remember Carter as President.

My very earliest memory is a vague recollection of seeing my little sister for the first time. (July 1976. I wasn't quite two yet.) I have nothing else I can specifically place in time for a couple years after that.

----------


## TaRix

> My earliest news memory is actually _me_, in October 1978, when we got our first computer, which was the first personal computer in town. (It was an Exidy Sorcerer. You've probably never heard of the company or the computer.) The Burlington Free Press ran an article about it, complete with a full-color photograph of me, at age just-barely-four, playing Hangman on the Sorcerer while my father and older brother watched over my shoulders. I remember the photographer being there for the shoot, and his disbelief that I could operate the computer.


I thought Exidy was a software bunch that made early swivel-mount-light-gun arcade games--Crossbow, Cheyenne, and War (can't really remember that title exactly, but it had a Godzilla bonus round.)

----------


## Yuki Akuma

My first news memory is probably... Hong Kong being given back to China, which was in... 1997?

I didn't really care about the news before then.

----------


## Peelee

> My first news memory is probably... Hong Kong being given back to China, which was in... 1997?
> 
> I didn't really care about the news before then.


It being a major plot point in _Rush Hour_ probably helped. :Small Wink:

----------


## Rockphed

I think I remember the 1996 US election.  Or at least staying up late watching results come in.  I definitely remember Columbine, though that is fuzzy and was probably second hand.  The 2000 US election I can remember being abreast of the news (and hearing about hanging and pregnant chads out of Florida).  The first one I remember following on the news on my own was the 2nd world trade center attack (where it fell apart and killed ~3000 people), but that was also probably the first event in my life where schools turning the news to it was reasonable.

Edit: Okay, and I do remember hearing about Hong Kong going back to China.  Didn't the US finish handing over the canal zone to Panama about that time too?

----------


## Rodin

Earliest I can remember was the 1988 election, because my kindergarten class held a mock election to get us interested in democracy.  I voted for Bush because I thought his name was funny.  I was still so politically oblivious in high school that I almost voted for his son because I voted for Bush in kindergarten (seriously, that was the only reason).  Fortunately, I was about two weeks too young.

----------


## Radar

Aside from random parliament speaches, the first major event I remember seeing news of was the Budapest Memorandum I guess - denuclearization of Ukraine was a pretty big event, if you lived nearby.

----------


## Rodin

I tend to have a pretty high score on today's game.  My score is currently relatively low, but that's only because I moved a couple years back.  In my last place, I eventually learned that pancake syrup _does_ eventually go off if left in the pantry for long enough.  Not harmful, but it tasted weird enough that I checked the date and was shocked to find it had expired 5 years prior.

Undisputed winner in our family is my grandmother, who had just the situation in the comic.  When we cleared out her pantry after she passed in the mid 2000s we found cans of beans from the 1980s in there.  I'm amazed the cans didn't launch themselves out and go hopping down the road.

----------


## 137beth

I tend to throw out items pretty quickly once they reach their expiration date: usually less than a month after they expire.  So, my score is probably zero.

----------


## Radar

Food items that get forgotten the most are self made (pickles, jams and so one), since usually you make a lot of them in one go year after year, so some really old ones can be sitting there in a far corner of the pantry unnoticed. It is hard to judge the score on those, since they do not have a set expiration date.

From bought things, I would look more into medicine rather then food, since a typical cabinet or box for drugs is often full of unfinished stuff, which is rarely ever needed, but it should be kept just in case anyway. Due to the sheer number and diversity of packings (aerosoles, tubes, bottles of various shapes and sizes, blisters...) it is impossible to keep it well organised, so it is very easy to overlook some items, which outlived their usefulness quite significantly.

Kind of a fimilial record would be a bottle of vodka way over 30 years old - it is still sitting there at my parent's home, since at that point it is a bit of a memento of Ye Olden Days. It is hard to count that though, since everyone always knew it was there.

And to the whole discussion, I dedicate this song (some spoilers for Cowboy Bebop, if anyone did not see the series; if you did not, do consider watching it - it is amazig).

----------


## Rockphed

Our best was two years over and we were thirty at the time so, about 7?

----------


## John Campbell

> I think I remember the 1996 US election.


{scrubbed}

----------


## Peelee

*The Mod on the Silver Mountain:* I think it's time for a topic change; the "earliest news you remember" is getting dangerously close to political discussion.

----------


## Rockphed

I'm pretty sure this isn't how it works, but then I don't know that many meteorologists.  I wonder if this is better or worse than having an alert for "the weather service took the day off, you're on your own".

----------


## Lethologica

> I'm pretty sure this isn't how it works, but then I don't know that many meteorologists.  I wonder if this is better or worse than having an alert for "the weather service took the day off, you're on your own".


Substantially worse, but it's not exactly being put to the test anyway.

----------


## Quild

I don't find the "Unpopular Positive Opinion Challenge" that hard.

Resident Evil (2002) totally works for me.
I've introduced my mate to "How to lose friends and Alienate People (2008)" this week and we had a really good time.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I don't find the "Unpopular Positive Opinion Challenge" that hard.
> 
> Resident Evil (2002) totally works for me.
> I've introduced my mate to "How to lose friends and Alienate People (2008)" this week and we had a really good time.


Suicide Squad?  It gets a lot more flack for being a horrible movie than I think it deserves.

----------


## Lethologica

Unpopular Positive Opinion Challenge isn't that hard, but 'not that hard' is still way harder than Unpopular Negative Opinion Challenge.

----------


## georgie_leech

Anyone know how to search Rotten Tomatoes by date? Because I have no idea which movies I like that are usually hated  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Radar

The only difficulty I had with this challenge was that I mostly know older movies and relied on whatever was on TV. That being said, I was quite surprised that movies like "Hudson Hawk" were considered this bad by the reviewers. Sure it is silly and the plot is contrived, but it was ment to be like this. You can not expect seriousness, if the main villian explains his goal by standing on a table and shouting "World domination!" with outstreached arms.

----------


## Mechalich

> Unpopular Positive Opinion Challenge isn't that hard, but 'not that hard' is still way harder than Unpopular Negative Opinion Challenge.


I think it would be a lot harder if you cranked the tomatometer rating down just a little bit further. There are a lot of respectably solid movies with strong appeal to genre fans in the 40-50% range for science fiction and fantasy. I mean Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom qualifies (48%) and that movie made 1.3 billion dollars. A lot of people liked it.

Personally, I pick Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (48%), which I think is a fine film even if it's not knocking anyone's socks off. I'd also back Night at the Museum (the first one, 42%), cheesy though it may be at times, I think it's a solid family-friendly comedy.




> Anyone know how to search Rotten Tomatoes by date? Because I have no idea which movies I like that are usually hated


If you go to 'browse all' you can adjust the tomatometer to a distinct range (30-50% for instance) and pick you genres. You'll have to scroll backward in time, but it goes pretty fast. For instance, apparently there are only 217 fantasy and sci-fi films recorded with a 40-50% rating.

----------


## Rockphed

So without an exhaustive search, the movie most likely to work for me is "John Carter of Mars", but it got a 52%.  I just don't watch that many movies.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> The only difficulty I had with this challenge was that I mostly know older movies and relied on whatever was on TV. That being said, I was quite surprised that movies like "Hudson Hawk" were considered this bad by the reviewers. Sure it is silly and the plot is contrived, but it was ment to be like this. You can not expect seriousness, if the main villian explains his goal by standing on a table and shouting "World domination!" with outstreached arms.


Hudson Hawk is hilarious... but I think people saw that Bruce Willis was in a movie about international thieves and world-domination conspiracies, and expected something else.

----------


## georgie_leech

> If you go to 'browse all' you can adjust the tomatometer to a distinct range (30-50% for instance) and pick you genres. You'll have to scroll backward in time, but it goes pretty fast. For instance, apparently there are only 217 fantasy and sci-fi films recorded with a 40-50% rating.


If only I had a consistent genre preference to help narrow it down  :Small Tongue: 

Going chronologically, apparently the most recent film I unironically enjoyed that got <50% both by critics and the wider audience is Silent Hill: Revelation. I'm certainly not going to pretend it was a good movie, or one of my favourites, but the bizarro plot somewhat worked for me, and a few of the scenes were definitely spine-tingling. That manikin room found its way into my nightmares for a while.

----------


## Vinyadan

I like how he had to almost explicitly exclude The Room.

Red Faction Origins, anyway. Although it only has the audience score (24%), and no tomatometer.

----------


## 137beth

> I like how he had to almost explicitly exclude The Room.
> 
> Red Faction Origins, anyway. Although it only has the audience score (24%), and no tomatometer.


Why is The Room excluded?   :Small Confused:

----------


## Keltest

> Why is The Room excluded?


I assume he's referring to the "not its-so-bad-its-good" bit.

----------


## Vinyadan

> I assume he's referring to the "not its-so-bad-its-good" bit.


Indeed I am.

----------


## georgie_leech

Oh XKCD, never change your strange, experimental ways.

----------


## Lord Torath

Disappearing Sunday Update is still available.  See it before it disappears with the Monday Update!

Or, you know, not.  It's just an ad for Randall's new book How To.  Not sure if Explain XKCD will archive it for future viewing.

----------


## Fyraltari

> Disappearing Sunday Update is still available.  See it before it disappears with the Monday Update!
> 
> Or, you know, not.  It's just an ad for Randall's new book How To.  Not sure if Explain XKCD will archive it for future viewing.


They should archive it and then have that archive disappear after a day.

----------


## RowenMorland

> They should archive it and then have that archive disappear after a day.


Eventually every archive disappears after 'a day'.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Squirrel! 

...

----------


## Lord Torath

Everyone hear about the Tardigrades on the moon from the crashed Israeli lunar lander ?  Makes me think of the Planetary Protection Officer.

----------


## Rodin

> Everyone hear about the Tardigrades on the moon from the crashed Israeli lunar lander ?  Makes me think of the Planetary Protection Officer.


Maybe we're all descendants of the microbes from a probe sent out by the denizens of Omicron Persei VIII.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Peelee

> Maybe we're all descendants of the microbes from a probe sent out by the denizens of Omicron Persei VIII.


That's a poor job from the Hrrr, Planetary Protection Officer of the planet Omicron Persei VIII. I can only hope their replacement, Drrr, Temp of the planet Omicron Persei VIII, was able to pick up the slack.

----------


## DataNinja

> That's a poor job from the Hrrr, Planetary Protection Officer of the planet Omicron Persei VIII. I can only hope their replacement, Drrr, Temp of the planet Omicron Persei VIII, was able to pick up the slack.


I feel like you're missing out on a couple exclamation marks!!!! and/or *bolding*  and/or CAPITALS in your statement there.  :Small Tongue:

----------


## Peelee

> I feel like you're missing out on a couple exclamation marks!!!! and/or *bolding*  and/or CAPITALS in your statement there.


Thank you, Dtnj, ANDROID OF THE PLANET OMICRON PERSEI VIII! I also appreciate how you Earthicized your name for us.

----------


## Tetrimino

Flashback to a comic from last week because I've been too busy to look at the forum (or have any free time at all for that matter)...

https://xkcd.com/2201/

I actually just saw a Foucault Pendulum in person for the first time a few weeks ago, it was really interesting and I think I spent a solid 15 minutes waiting for it to knock down one of the "dominoes"  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Rodin

> Flashback to a comic from last week because I've been too busy to look at the forum (or have any free time at all for that matter)...
> 
> https://xkcd.com/2201/
> 
> I actually just saw a Foucault Pendulum in person for the first time a few weeks ago, it was really interesting and I think I spent a solid 15 minutes waiting for it to knock down one of the "dominoes"


I got to see one at Griffith Observatory in LA a few years back, and was suitably impressed.  It's the sort of idea I'm amazed someone even came up with.

Today's comic reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where someone used math to prove that life doesn't exist.  The logic went as follows:

There is a finite population in the universe.

The universe is infinite.

To find the average population of the universe, you divide Population/Area.  Over a large enough area, this number approaches 0 - ergo, all those people you think you see can safely be dismissed as a rounding error.  Including yourself.

----------


## Maryring

If the universe is infinite, how can it expand?

----------


## Lord Raziere

> If the universe is infinite, how can it expand?


If its infinite, how can it _not_ be expanding? after all, it keeps expanding to make sure you never find its edge.

----------


## Radar

> If the universe is infinite, how can it expand?


Take a fully booked hotel with infinite rooms. Ask each guest to move to a room with double its number. They will all have a place for themselves and there will be infinitely many rooms free now.

----------


## Douglas

> There is a finite population in the universe.


[citation needed] :Small Tongue: 

Doesn't matter how good the logic is if it starts from faulty assumptions.

----------


## Fyraltari

> [citation needed]
> 
> Doesn't matter how good the logic is if it starts from faulty assumptions.


Id say the faulty assumption is the universe being infinite.

----------


## Rodin

> Id say the faulty assumption is the universe being infinite.


Well, you have to remember that back in 70s it _was_.  :Small Amused:

----------


## Peelee

> [citation needed]
> 
> Doesn't matter how good the logic is if it starts from faulty assumptions.


Well, I can prove I exist, but I can't prove anyone else exists. So by my math, the known population of the universe is 1.

----------


## Radar

> Well, I can prove I exist, but I can't prove anyone else exists. So by my math, the known population of the universe is 1.


From this perspective, you cannot really prove that the universe exists to be honest.

----------


## Rollin

> From this perspective, you cannot really prove that the universe exists to be honest.


By now, I'm pretty sure that's _not_ what it exists for...

----------


## Fyraltari

> Well, I can prove I exist, but I can't prove anyone else exists. So by my math, the known population of the universe is 1.


I can't prove solipsism exists so I just assume my brain is making that up.

----------


## Willie the Duck

> If its infinite, how can it _not_ be expanding? after all, it keeps expanding to make sure you never find its edge.


That is a really hard thing to explain to a kid or person first hearing this stuff. I've been asked multiple times exactly what it is expanding _into_ then. 




> Take a fully booked hotel with infinite rooms. Ask each guest to move to a room with double its number. They will all have a place for themselves and there will be infinitely many rooms free now.


Well that's certainly the answer that explains it, and I have no idea how old I was when I learned it. Only way I was able to explain Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis to my wife. 




> From this perspective, you cannot really prove that the universe exists to be honest.


Well, one can prove that _something_ exists within which oneself can think about the fact that they can think (and thus exist).




> I can't prove solipsism exists so I just assume my brain is making that up.


I always assumed that I was a figment of my imagination.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Is the chair real?

If not, my butt would be on the floor.  

That's all the discussion of "but what's real?" I need bother with, personally.

----------


## Rodin

All this about the true state of the universe is interesting and all, but we all know the REAL meaning for the existence of the universe is for the eventual evolution of the Unseen University's Professor of Anthropics.

----------


## Peelee

> From this perspective, you cannot really prove that the universe exists to be honest.


Sure I can; the universe is everything that exists, so by my previous axiom, the universe is made up of at least me.  :Small Wink:

----------


## Radar

> All this about the true state of the universe is interesting and all, but we all know the REAL meaning for the existence of the universe is for the eventual evolution of the Unseen University's Professor of Anthropics.


Fortunately, he allows us to tag along.  :Small Smile: 




> Sure I can; the universe is everything that exists, so by my previous axiom, the universe is made up of at least me.


A really good answer. I would surely tip my hat, if I had one.

----------


## JeenLeen

Are the "Capitol Numbers" a math reference I don't get, or just a "funny absurd" comic?

If mathy, please explain.

----------


## georgie_leech

> Are the "Capitol Numbers" a math reference I don't get, or just a "funny absurd" comic?
> 
> If mathy, please explain.


Capit_a_l numbers, as oppose to capital letters. Certain parts of the Internet,  including IT, typography geeks, and general lulz types, occasionally make references to them.

----------


## Willie the Duck

> Are the "Capitol Numbers" a math reference I don't get, or just a "funny absurd" comic?
> 
> If mathy, please explain.


It is not mathy, it is half absurd, half typography joke. The numbers you use all the time are effectively 'capital' (if the word has any meaning) with lower case numbers not fitting to the rule (as in 'ruled paper'). The comic, however, is treating them as an video game Easter egg -- if you 'beat' the typing game, you get to use these special numbers that only the real experts know. Obviously it ignores the whole social construct aspect of language -- that if others don't know about it, you don't look like someone who has unlocked a special accomplishment, you're just failing to communicate as well as you otherwise would.  I'm sure I've made a similar joke surrounding an 'Oxford semicolon'  or the like -- some special 'secret' type of language you get if you're one of the real cool people.

----------


## Rodin

It's also taking a crack at the "secret symbols" that you can type on the keyboard by knowing the ASCII code for them.  For example, you can trademark words by typing Alt + 0153 on the Numpad.  My favorite for freaking out my friends at school was always the ¿

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

Also, it's not uncommon, when working tech support and talking about passwords and such, to hear less-technically-literate people refer to symbols on the QWERTY keyboard as capital numbers if they don't know or can't think of the appropriate name for one of them, like # being a "capital 3" (though now you'll often hear "hashtag" instead  :Small Sigh: ) or ^ being a "capital 6."

----------


## DataNinja

> like # being a "capital 3" (though now you'll often hear "hashtag" instead )


#Octothorpe  :Small Wink: 
That hurts to type, since I really don't like the "hashtag" thing creeping into everyday language, but that one's funny enough to me that I tend to use it if the subject warrants it.

----------


## enderlord99

> It's also taking a crack at the "secret symbols" that you can type on the keyboard by knowing the ASCII code for them.  For example, you can trademark words by typing Alt + 0153 on the Numpad.  My favorite for freaking out my friends at school was always the ¿


I tried that with what Wikipedia said was the interrobang, and I got an equals instead.  :Small Frown:

----------


## Peelee

> I tried that with what Wikipedia said was the interrobang, and I got an equals instead.


⸘Que‽

The trick is to type the interrobang in Spanish.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

Come on, who doesn't know that the name of "shift 6" is the caret?

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> Come on, who doesn't know that the name of "shift 6" is the caret?


Far too many people, apparently.

Heck, one time when I was helping someone reset a password I set the new one to the stereotypical "password1!" and read it out to them, and their response was "Exclamation mark?  That's the capital 1, right?"  :Small Sigh:

----------


## Rockphed

> ⸘Que‽
> 
> The trick is to type the interrobang in Spanish.


Yeah, the inverted interrobang doesn't render on my machine.

----------


## Rodin

This math comic is giving me flashbacks to when my sister was trying to help me get motivated in math when my grades were slipping in that class.  She was a senior in high school at the time and sat there for like 30 minutes gushing over the really cool things you could do with Advanced Calculus.  I stared at her like she was speaking in tongues.

I consider people who see the beauty in math to be the same breed as biologists who coo over the beauty of a 2-foot long venomous jumping spider that likes to build nests in your underwear.  It's an important subject to study, but better you than me buddy.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> I consider people who see the beauty in math to be the same breed as biologists who coo over the beauty of a 2-foot long venomous jumping spider that likes to build nests in your underwear.  It's an important subject to study, but better you than me buddy.


So the alleged beauty of math is like basically the coolest thing ever?

Strange comparison, but if you feel that way...

----------


## Rodin

> So the alleged beauty of math is like basically the coolest thing ever?
> 
> Strange comparison, but if you feel that way...


Look, if you want to get up close and say "I admire its purity" two seconds before it crawls into your underpants, you do you.

I'll be a few miles away.  With a flamethrower.

----------


## gooddragon1

Cell Phone Functions
Mouse over text: ... tazer ... fire extinguisher ... bird feeder ... toilet paper ...

... toilet paper? He's doesn't know how to use the three seashells?

----------


## diremage

> Cell Phone Functions
> Mouse over text: ... tazer ... fire extinguisher ... bird feeder ... toilet paper ...
> 
> ... toilet paper? He's doesn't know how to use the three seashells?


It's planned obsolescence in action. Headed towards really, really disposable phones.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

https://xkcd.com/2228/

To prove you're human, click on any individuals named Sarah Connor.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> https://xkcd.com/2228/
> 
> To prove you're human, click on any individuals named Sarah Connor.


The Alt-text is far less _funny_.

----------


## Christian

Versus Bracket

I filled in my bracket, prediction is Scott Pilgrim over Godzilla in the finals.

----------


## Rockphed

> Versus Bracket
> 
> I filled in my bracket, prediction is Scott Pilgrim over Godzilla in the finals.


I am fairly certain that Batman is gong to beat scott pilgrim and mega shark, but fall to Asterix who will be beaten by Ferrari.

----------


## InvisibleBison

I'd put my money on the world for champion, given that all other contenders are subsets of the world.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> Versus Bracket
> 
> I filled in my bracket, prediction is Scott Pilgrim over Godzilla in the finals.


Nah, vampire-alien-Godzilla all the way. It can take that volcano, and it can take the win.

The world gets punched out by Superman, who's beaten by Marvel.

----------


## Fyraltari

Do Batman and Superman each other before or after fighting the Teen Titans?

I am torn between being glad a non-european referenced Astérix and being sad it was _Astérix contre César_ that got referenced.



> I am fairly certain that Batman is gong to beat scott pilgrim and mega shark, but fall to Asterix who will be beaten by Ferrari.


I like that you don't think Batman beating Superman isn't even worth a mention.

----------


## Cazero

> I am torn between being glad a non-european referenced Astérix and being sad it was _Astérix contre César_ that got referenced.


To be fair, there are only two versus that would work for Astérix in that context : César, or a crossover fight against Tintin or Spirou.

----------


## Christian

> I am fairly certain that Batman is gong to beat scott pilgrim and mega shark, but fall to Asterix who will be beaten by Ferrari.


Ah. I had Superman beating Batman, then falling to Pilgrim, since Cera beat up Brandon Routh in the movie. Seemed logical.

(That was also the logic for him getting by Marvel in the semi-finals; I assumed Marvel would be represented by Captain America, and Cera also whipped Chris Evans. QED)

----------


## Peelee

I don't see Scott Pilgrim beating _anyone_ except the world. And even the world is a tall order; he just beat a few people, really.

----------


## DataNinja

> I don't see Scott Pilgrim beating _anyone_ except the world. And even the world is a tall order; he just beat a few people, really.


It's what happens when you have a good PR agent.

----------


## Scarlet Knight

Hi guys! I just got around to reading the NY Times from Sunday, and saw that Randall Munoe was the feature interview for By The Book.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/b...interview.html

----------


## expectocat

I love xkcd and when I saw this I was like great then I realized only a few comics connect to each other like the ones about the man in a hat and his girlfriend and the white beret dudes business. but it is still quite funny when you can understand the jokes

----------


## DataNinja

> I love xkcd and when I saw this I was like great then I realized only a few comics connect to each other like the ones about the man in a hat and his girlfriend and the white beret dudes business. but it is still quite funny when you can understand the jokes


Yeah, it's mostly just gag-a-day. But there are sometimes references - heck, in today's comic, Correct Horse Battery Staple makes a triumphant return! In the mouseover text.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I love xkcd and when I saw this I was like great then I realized only a few comics connect to each other like the ones about the man in a hat and his girlfriend and the white beret dudes business. but it is still quite funny when you can understand the jokes


There's a site called "XKCD explained" that, well, explains the jokes.

----------


## 137beth

Today's page has a nice take on the reboot of _The Solar System_ media franchise.

----------


## Radar

> Today's page has a nice take on the reboot of _The Solar System_ media franchise.


At least they did not go for the trite darker and edgier spin as they did with The Universe.

----------


## Rockphed

> At least they did not go for the trite darker and edgier spin as they did with The Universe.


On the other hand, they have decided to merge my two favorite characters into a gender confused amalgam.  It just reeks of poor planning and budget cuts.

----------


## enderlord99

> On the other hand, they have decided to merge my two favorite characters into a gender confused amalgam.  It just reeks of poor planning and budget cuts.


I sent you an email about this.  I'd have PM'ed it but... well, you know.

EDIT:  I *tried* to send an email, at least.

I'll just ask here, but in a way that's hopefully allowed: how is Jaturn "gender-confused?"  You can reply via email if it gets into Forbidden Topics, but I hope it doesn't.

----------


## Xenken

I'd also be curious to hear this, honestly.

----------


## 137beth

In any event, during the forum downtime this excellent comic dropped.

----------


## Rockphed

> I sent you an email about this.  I'd have PM'ed it but... well, you know.
> 
> EDIT:  I *tried* to send an email, at least.
> 
> I'll just ask here, but in a way that's hopefully allowed: how is Jaturn "gender-confused?"  You can reply via email if it gets into Forbidden Topics, but I hope it doesn't.


I was adding (what I thought was) witty banter about how the revamped Solar System was worse.  I practically just pulled "how to change a character" ideas out of a hat.  I think I chose "gender confused" because taking the lines from two minor characters and just giving them all to an amalgam character is a sure-fire way to get personality confusion and "gender confused" was the only snappy way I could think of to express personality confusion. 

I guess if we want to take it even further, the original solar system show involved Jupiter and Saturn being somewhat minor characters who had a ship teased a little before the original version was canceled unexpectedly in the middle of the third season.  Like the last episode was filmed but never edited into an episode level of canceled.  Anyway, when the new Solar System came out there were plenty of hints that both Jupiter and Saturn would be returning, so people brought the old ship back out.

So, no, not (as far as I am aware) forbidden topics, just me being silly.  Would you like me to continue taking this joke way, way too far?

----------


## Lord Torath

> In any event, during the forum downtime this excellent comic dropped.


As a follow-up, we get this one, where Randall himself gets to make the claim.

----------


## Tetrimino

> As a follow-up, we get this one, where Randall himself gets to make the claim.


I wish I had the courage to end some of my own academic writing like that  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## 137beth

The most recent one is kind of funny, but it is essentially rehashing a point that has been made in previous XKCDs: humans do not have an intuitive grasp of how big big numbers are.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> The most recent one is kind of funny, but it is essentially rehashing a point that has been made in previous XKCDs: humans do not have an intuitive grasp of how big big numbers are.


I feel like I have a semi-decent grasp of stuff up to 10^20, or at least I can compare it to other stuff. Above 10^20 I just give up. (I call it the scientific Sesame Street limit, 20 being the highest number I've ever seen Sesame Street count to, making 20 the normal people Sesame Street limit.)

----------


## Lord Torath

> I feel like I have a semi-decent grasp of stuff up to 10^20, or at least I can compare it to other stuff. Above 10^20 I just give up. (I call it the scientific Sesame Street limit, 20 being the highest number I've ever seen Sesame Street count to, making 20 the normal people Sesame Street limit.)


Right on the verge of Avogadro's number: 6.03x1023.  Where "verge" in this case means "about 1000 times smaller".

I think part of the problem is we don't intuitively grasp exponents.  10120 sounds pretty close to 10125.  They're only 5 numbers apart, right?  I always need to remind myself that "no, that second number is *100,000* times larger than the first one."

----------


## Peelee

> The most recent one is kind of funny, but it is essentially rehashing a point that has been made in previous XKCDs: humans do not have an intuitive grasp of how big big numbers are.


Even those comics (and especially the second one) doesn't really do the sheer scale of it justice, especially if you think of it in terms of actual units. For example, if you have a dollar and I have a thousand dollars, then I have roughly a thousand dollars more than you. And it seems that way to the average person right off the bat. Conversely, if you have a million dollars and I have a billion dollars, then I have roughly a billion dollars more than you. And it does _not_ seem that way to the average person right off the bat.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> Right on the verge of Avogadro's number: 6.03x1023.  Where "verge" in this case means "about 1000 times smaller".


That's a pretty good example really. I have some tools to get to that scale. I know a molecule is about a thousand times as small as a bacteria, which is about a thousand times as small as really large cells or really small micro animals, which are about a thousand times as small as a flee or an ant, which is about a thousand times as small as me, or a large house. You know, roughly in the same area. I can kinda grasp the number of molecules needed to make a small vesicle or the amount of bases in our genetic code, I can find reason in the number of bacteria I will have after letting the flask incubate for 24 hours. But actually imagining individual molecules in a mole of something? I've been taught I shouldn't even try that. You can't determine the properties of a macroscale material from its molecular properties without considering the mesoscale structure, where the material is already not acting like a collection of atoms, ions or molecules.

So yeah, around there.

----------


## Tetrimino

I briefly thought the title of today's OOTS (Move Slow and Preserve Things) was a reference to xkcd's Move Fast and Break Things and thought it was pretty cool. Turns out "move fast and break things" is just a common saying I was somehow totally unaware of until today.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I briefly thought the title of today's OOTS (Move Slow and Preserve Things) was a reference to xkcd's Move Fast and Break Things and thought it was pretty cool. Turns out "move fast and break things" is just a common saying I was somehow totally unaware of until today.


It's Zuckerberg's motto, and reflects his utter lack of personal accountability or responsibility -- it reflects the worst of the "disruption" attitude towards innovation... charge full speed ahead and break things so you can charge people to fix them, destroy as much of what came before as possible to make room for your minimally-viable products and services.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> It's Zuckerberg's motto, and reflects his utter lack of personal accountability or responsibility -- it reflects the worst of the "disruption" attitude towards innovation... charge full speed ahead and break things so you can charge people to fix them, destroy as much of what came before as possible to make room for your minimally-viable products and services.


That's not really what the motto means.  It comes from an era when a lot of startups were struggling and dying because they tried to come out with a perfect polished product to compete with the bigger companies, and in so doing either never actually released anything because their product was never "good enough" to meet their benchmark (and then died), or released something but were then afraid to change it and were out-innovated by said bigger companies (and then died).

"Move fast" in this case means "get _something_ to market as fast as possible so you have something to show investors and get the public interested," and "break things" means "don't be afraid to make radical changes to improve or expand the product, even if it results in non-working code for a while."  It's something a lot of startups could benefit from taking to heart.

The problem with Facebook is not that philosophy, which is basically what let them overtake MySpace and become the behemoth they are today (which isn't necessarily a good thing for society, obviously, but it was a good thing for Facebook).  The problem is that once they grew past the "plucky startup" phase they _continued_ to act as if they were a startup instead of pivoting to a more sustainable model, and that's what led to the stuff you mentioned.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> That's not really what the motto means.  It comes from an era when a lot of startups were struggling and dying because they tried to come out with a perfect polished product to compete with the bigger companies, and in so doing either never actually released anything because their product was never "good enough" to meet their benchmark (and then died), or released something but were then afraid to change it and were out-innovated by said bigger companies (and then died).
> 
> "Move fast" in this case means "get _something_ to market as fast as possible so you have something to show investors and get the public interested," and "break things" means "don't be afraid to make radical changes to improve or expand the product, even if it results in non-working code for a while."  It's something a lot of startups could benefit from taking to heart.
> 
> The problem with Facebook is not that philosophy, which is basically what let them overtake MySpace and become the behemoth they are today (which isn't necessarily a good thing for society, obviously, but it was a good thing for Facebook).  The problem is that once they grew past the "plucky startup" phase they _continued_ to act as if they were a startup instead of pivoting to a more sustainable model, and that's what led to the stuff you mentioned.


That might be true of Zuckerberg's original intent -- but the way I described it is also how many other startups and entrepreneurs and VCs have acted since, and they reference that quote as influencing their attitude.  

Good news is, there's growing backlash in the consumer market, in politics, etc, against the attitude.

----------


## Fyraltari

> The problem with Facebook is not that philosophy, which is basically what let them overtake MySpace and become the behemoth they are today (which isn't necessarily a good thing for society, obviously, but it was a good thing for Facebook).  The problem is that once they grew past the "plucky startup" phase they _continued_ to act as if they were a startup instead of pivoting to a more sustainable model, and that's what led to the stuff you mentioned.


That's your problem with Facebook? I would rate their reckless data mining and selling higher, myself.

----------


## PairO'Dice Lost

> That might be true of Zuckerberg's original intent -- but the way I described it is also how many other startups and entrepreneurs and VCs have acted since, and they reference that quote as influencing their attitude.  
> 
> Good news is, there's growing backlash in the consumer market, in politics, etc, against the attitude.


Well, yeah, people taking a quote that they don't actually understand as inspiration are going to do dumb things.  Much like people loved Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto and where aghast when it stopped being Google's motto, without knowing what it meant in the first place or why it stopped being relevant.  My point was that one shouldn't conflate "Facebook has been a crappy company that's set a bad example in the market" (true) with "Facebook's motto is crappy advice that leads to bad results" (false).




> That's your problem with Facebook? I would rate their reckless data mining and selling higher, myself.


No, I said the change in size and resources without a corresponding change in philosophy is what specifically led to the flaky infrastructure, poor code quality, and other things that Max mentioned.  Their total disregard for privacy was there from the beginning and hasn't changed at all, just become more obvious to the public.

----------


## Lord Torath

This year's "April Fools" comic: Collector's Edition.

----------


## keybounce

How do you use the backpack on that one?

----------


## Rockphed

> How do you use the backpack on that one?


I think you needed to collect stuff back on the first.

----------


## hajo

> How do you use the backpack on that one?


You know xkcd-explained ?

----------


## Kornaki

That's a very cool setup.  I didn't really understand what was going on, I'm glad you posted that.

----------


## georgie_leech

> That's a very cool setup.  I didn't really understand what was going on, I'm glad you posted that.


I came into it late and saw it crammed full of unrelated things; I assumed it was making a joke about what XKCD With Ads would look like.

----------


## 137beth

Well, this method/ of general-audience news sources reporting on scientific research is still more accurate than the one from a previous XKCD.

----------


## jayem

Slightly disappointed that todays XKCD "wrong multiplation" is commutative.  Obviously if that's how Randell thinks that what he thinks, but I'd expect some more 7*X=56 and 8*x=56, and perhaps some other odd effects based on the order you hear things.

----------


## Rockphed

> Slightly disappointed that todays XKCD "wrong multiplation" is commutative.  Obviously if that's how Randell thinks that what he thinks, but I'd expect some more 7*X=56 and 8*x=56, and perhaps some other odd effects based on the order you hear things.


There are a few places where the same answer shows up multiple times in a row or column, but I was also sad that, for example, 1*2 is 1/2 and 2*1 is 1/2 (instead of 21).  I haven't checked that it is reflected across the diagonal everywhere, but I think that would have stood out.

Also, that one is from Friday.  Maybe he will post a new one later today.

----------


## keybounce

The "Low background metal" reminds me of DMFA (web comic), where the current plot revolves around trying to find metal that is pure from traces of magic -- low levels of background magic in the metal.

----------


## Eldan

Apparently, low-background metal is a real thing. It's used in various ultra-sensitive detectors.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Apparently, low-background metal is a real thing. It's used in various ultra-sensitive detectors.


It is, and it's very valuable, to the point that looters will try to salvage pre-1945 shipwrecks that are considered war graves, historical sites, etc for the metal.

----------


## TaRix

> It is, and it's very valuable, to the point that looters will try to salvage pre-1945 shipwrecks that are considered war graves, historical sites, etc for the metal.


What's wrong with freshly-mined metal from a deep deep vein?  Too close to the mantle?

----------


## georgie_leech

> What's wrong with freshly-mined metal from a deep deep vein?  Too close to the mantle?


The deep deep part. Most mining is done at/near the surface.

----------


## DeTess

> What's wrong with freshly-mined metal from a deep deep vein?  Too close to the mantle?


When I looked it up, the problem isn't with the lack of uncontaminated ore, but that all current processing systems would then contaminate it in the process of turning it into actual metal. The smelting process contaminates it from sources in the air: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

----------


## Keltest

> The deep deep part. Most mining is done at/near the surface.


Elaborating on this, it gets very hot once you start getting deeper underground, and getting air to people/equipment down that deep becomes extremely difficult. You start running into problems like "how do we get the material out without dying?" where the answer tends to be "we dont. anything we send down there cant be alive in the first place." At which point youre investing so much keeping your digging robots working that it just isnt worth it anymore, assuming they work long enough to get anything out in the first place.

----------


## 137beth

New comic about a non-occurrence of the Golden Ratio.

----------


## Fyraltari

> New comic about a non-occurrence of the Golden Ratio.


As somebody who's studied a lot of maths and a little of the basics of graphic design, I want to say:

I hate this. I hate everything about this.

----------


## keybounce

> You start running into problems like "how do we get the material out without dying?" where the answer tends to be "we dont. anything we send down there cant be alive in the first place."


So, we're mining too deep?

I'm not sure if I should be thinking of Doctor Who or Lord of the Rings.

----------


## keybounce

Are the various paper sizes REALLY on that ratio?

----------


## Rockphed

> Are the various paper sizes REALLY on that ratio?


The A series of paper sizes has a longer side about square root of 2 times the shorter side.  The golden ratio is about 1.6.  American paper sizes (e.g. 8.5 x 11") are closer to 1.3.  Near as I can figure, most paper sizes are related by a simple doubling/halving (i.e. A1 is an A0 cut in half).

----------


## georgie_leech

> The A series of paper sizes has a longer side about square root of 2 times the shorter side.  The golden ratio is about 1.6.  American paper sizes (e.g. 8.5 x 11") are closer to 1.3.  Near as I can figure, most paper sizes are related by a simple doubling/halving (i.e. A1 is an A0 cut in half).


You also show the golden ratio with Squares rather than... I guess paper sizes? Which is why it manages to annoy both types of people claimed in the comic.

And also random internet enthusiasts....

----------


## Fyraltari

Yes, if you substract a square off a golden rectangle (one side is the phi times as long as the other) you get another golden rectangle. Which is often illustrated with a spiral.
*Spoiler: Like so*
Show

----------


## Rockphed

> Yes, if you substract a square off a golden rectangle (one side is the phi times as long as the other) you get another golden rectangle. Which is often illustrated with a spiral.
> *Spoiler: Like so*
> Show


I had missed that.  The interesting thing is that the golden ratio looks like a serviceable paper size, but you wouldn't end up with your main series corresponding to the rectangle remainders in that image.

----------


## Fyraltari

> I had missed that.  The interesting thing is that the golden ratio looks like a serviceable paper size, but you wouldn't end up with your main series corresponding to the rectangle remainders in that image.


Golden rectangles are somehow very pleasing to the eye and often used in cards or for some doorframe.

Its absolutely everywhere in the Parthenon, which is why the symbol of the golden ratio is the Greek letter phi, the first letter of the name of the architect, Phidias.

Interestingly the sequence formed by dividing each Fibonacci number by the previous one tends toward the golden ratio. Given the prevalence of Fibonacci numbers in nature (such as the average petal number of many flower species) it is sometimes called the divine proportion.

----------


## Lord Torath

The "Golden Ratio" shows up in unit conversions, too!  1.6 km / mile!  See, it's everywhere!   :Small Tongue: 

Just kidding.  I mean, yes, a mile is about 1.6 km (1.609,344 to be a bit more precise), but the Golden Ratio is approximately 1.618,034.  To my knowledge, there is no other connection between them.

----------


## keybounce

It would require the earth to be just a little smaller

And, it's a great definitive proof that the earth is not created perfect by god, or else it would be an exact match :-)

(dons flame armor)

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> I had missed that.  The interesting thing is that the golden ratio looks like a serviceable paper size, but you wouldn't end up with your main series corresponding to the rectangle remainders in that image.


It looks too square, so you'd end up with a relatively small paper size if you don't want to stretch out the width, where increasing the width too much makes it harder to go from line to line. If the main series did correspond to the remainder triangles the gaps would be too big, but even without that there's no size relation at which you can make a small booklet by folding the medium paper (or create a large image by printing out multiple mediums). I'll stick to the A series thanks.




> It would require the earth to be just a little smaller


Or the mile to be a little longer. But sure, let's go with your solution.

----------


## 137beth

More weird powers by this guy.

----------


## keybounce

Oh my. ExplainXkcd can document most of those 5 word stews, and can even explain the meaning of the one that isn't google matched.

----------


## keybounce

Naturally, the universal rating scale goes up to 11 :-).

----------


## Lord Torath

> Naturally, the universal rating scale goes up to 11 :-).


For $2500 I can get you one that goes up to 12.  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Tetrimino

https://xkcd.com/2332/

I find this one personally amusing because I went to IKEA to buy a desk chair yesterday, and came home to find that this comic was posted while I was there. Clearly I can see the future.

----------


## 137beth

> For $2500 I can get you one that goes up to 12.


$2500?  What a ripoff!  Some other person was offering me one that goes to 12 for only $2000.

----------


## Kantaki

> https://xkcd.com/2332/
> 
> I find this one personally amusing because I went to IKEA to buy a desk chair yesterday, and came home to find that this comic was posted while I was there. Clearly I can see the future.


The question is was the IKEA there the day before?
And is it still there now? :Small Tongue:

----------


## Rodin

> The question is was the IKEA there the day before?
> And is it still there now?


All IKEAs warp time and space, and the comic gets it wrong - it's the IKEA furniture that is cursed.  All of it.

Those instructions aren't in Swedish.  They're *eldritch runes*.

----------


## Kantaki

> All IKEAs warp time and space, and the comic gets it wrong - it's the IKEA furniture that is cursed.  All of it.
> 
> Those instructions aren't in Swedish.  They're *eldritch runes*.


Which is why there's always a piece missing.
The curse only works if the furniture is complete. :Small Tongue:

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> Which is why there's always a piece missing.
> The curse only works if the furniture is complete.


I thought the curse was that no piece of IKEA furniture can ever be complete.

----------


## 137beth

This COVID Risk Chart is totally unrealistic!  There are plenty of non-COVID-19 risks you can encounter while staying at home.  Like the serial killer hiding under you couch!  Come to think of it they could also give you COVID-19.

----------


## Rockphed

Sometimes Randall is funny. Lately, not so much. He has been coming to the "death plague 2020 will kill us all to death" well far too much.  I'm sure someone could tell me how many comics about it he has done, but it feels like he has used it as the basis of the joke for the last 2 months straight.

----------


## Kantaki

> Sometimes Randall is funny. Lately, not so much. He has been coming to the "death plague 2020 will kill us all to death" well far too much.  I'm sure someone could tell me how many comics about it he has done, but it feels like he has used it as the basis of the joke for the last 2 months straight.


Going by explain xkcd about thirty.

----------


## DataNinja

I have no doubt that it's very much occupying his mind, and this is probably one of his outlets. Can be hard to be funny about other things if something's casting a shadow.

----------


## keybounce

> This COVID Risk Chart is totally unrealistic!  There are plenty of non-COVID-19 risks you can encounter while staying at home.  Like the serial killer hiding under you couch!  Come to think of it they could also give you COVID-19.


The cereal killer I'm worried about is the one with the spoon.

----------


## georgie_leech

I do remember the CPS 2000. I had one of the things; 5-year-old me couldn't fire it at full pressure without risking falling over from the recoil. The thing was the 50 cal of water guns.

----------


## keybounce

So that 26 second noise signal in seismometers is real.

And it's not just a 26 second signal:




> We have some very bizarre observations that were still trying to figure out, says Euler, of his initial data. One is the signal is at longer periods than wed expected. It has multiple peaks in frequency  it hums at 28 seconds, as well as 26 seconds. Its really, really strong during some particular times that correlate with storms at sea.
> 
> Another observation is that the signal shifts its location with frequency. The source of the 28-second period band is about 300 kilometers from the 26-second source, which is essentially at Mount Cameroon.


https://phys.org/news/2011-01-seismo...ic-storms.html

So ... yea, learn something new from XKCD on a regular basis.




> Euler wandered into the field of seismic noise in 2007 when he found consistent spikes in noise from one of 32 different seismic stations in Cameroon. The spikes turned out to correspond with joyous, celebratory foot-stomping of Cameroons avid soccer fans at various cities after goals were scored or key plays made during the African Cup of Nations games in 2006.


Footquakes are a real thing. So if everyone in the world gathered at one point, and jumped, you need to take into account the massive shockwaves that will travel around the world and cause a volcano to explode on the other side. No, no one thinks past the massive casualty rate as people try to leave that mass gathering.

----------


## hajo

> Footquakes .. no one thinks past the massive casualty rate 
> as people try to leave that mass gathering.


That has already been done.  :Small Eek:

----------


## Rockphed

> That has already been done.


... which was obviously what Keybounce was referencing with the whole "massive casualty rate".

----------


## keybounce

Exactly. We know from the dinosaur-impact meteor that a large impact causes a "bell ringing" effect at  the other end of the planet which can trigger volcanoes.

So, you kill 90+% of the population from evacuation, and the rest suffer a massive volcano explosion.

----------


## georgie_leech

...You missed the part where the math suggests the resulting "bell-ringing" from people jumping wouldn't actually be strong enough to cause volcanoes, then?

----------


## DeTess

> Exactly. We know from the dinosaur-impact meteor that a large impact causes a "bell ringing" effect at  the other end of the planet which can trigger volcanoes.
> 
> So, you kill 90+% of the population from evacuation, and the rest suffer a massive volcano explosion.


Thing is, the meteor that killed the dino's is estimated to be a couple of order of magnitudes heavier than all of humanity (7 billion times 70 kg gets you in the order of 10^11 kg), and hits a far smaller surface area then all of humanity jumping would. So all of humanity jumping likely wouldn't do all that much.

edit: and far more importantly, that impactor also hit the earth far harder than a jumping human would. A jumping human could maybe hit at 2 m/s or something like that? That meteor hit at about 20 *k*m/s.

----------


## keybounce

"My cabbages!"

----------


## Lord Torath

> "My cabbages!"


Man, I missed that reference.  Thanks for pointing it out!

----------


## theangelJean

What reference is that?

----------


## Rockphed

> What reference is that?


This guy is the one you want:

----------


## 137beth

Today's page feels like a reprise of a previous comic about hurricanes.

----------


## keybounce

Star Types (https://xkcd.com/2360/) is completely missing things like the silent star, the radio star, the magnetic star, and the tempermental ones that explode regularly.

As well as objects in the sky that have nothing special, or give off massive radio waves, or magnetospheres, or the type-1a (do I have that right?) nova pairs.

What? I'm thinking Hollywood, radio, Broadway, old Vaudeville, etc.

----------


## Radar

> Star Types (https://xkcd.com/2360/) is completely missing things like the silent star, the radio star, the magnetic star, and the tempermental ones that explode regularly.
> 
> As well as objects in the sky that have nothing special, or give off massive radio waves, or magnetospheres, or the type-1a (do I have that right?) nova pairs.
> 
> What? I'm thinking Hollywood, radio, Broadway, old Vaudeville, etc.


Some of those indeed should have made the list, but radio star? Video killed that quite a while ago.

----------


## keybounce

https://xkcd.com/2363/

I'm not the only one to commit thread necromancy resurrection.

----------


## Rockphed

> https://xkcd.com/2363/
> 
> I'm not the only one to commit thread necromancy resurrection.


I am honestly impressed that the 13-year-old figured out how to do that.  I am more surprised that a niche board on mopeds is still running after 20 years.

----------


## keybounce

The combination scan - shred function, if the scan is actually guaranteed to be good, is very useful.

Sadly, I can't think of a single scanner I've ever used that I trust that much.

Serious question: We have cameras that take multiple exposures, and combine them for a high resolution / high detail / high dynamic range. Why do we not have multipass scanners for better capture?

I mean, a scanner bed isn't moving, so it's more accurate than an HDR camera capture.

----------


## Rodin

I wish I had this recording every time turn-based tactics games are discussed. So many people think an 80% chance is a guaranteed hit and two 80% misses in a row means the computer is cheating.

----------


## Kantaki

> I wish I had this recording every time turn-based tactics games are discussed. So many people think an 80% chance is a guaranteed hit and two 80% misses in a row means the computer is cheating.


Two or three misses in a row?
Nah, it happens.
Even with a few more I'm gonna be annoyed and grumble a bit, but I'd call it a streak of bad luck.

If it keeps happening and/or the computer keeps nailing those 20% chances?
I might get suspicious. :Small Amused:  :Small Tongue: 

But yeah, how did the joke go?
The teacher tells his class: 40% of you don't understand percentages.
A student replies: But sir, there aren't that many students in this class.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

Screen time report.

Reading articles and watching videos that just confirm the opponent of my candidate is a duck: 216d19h03m. Yes, "duck" is used to avoid the profanity filter.

----------


## keybounce

Thinking back to Masks https://xkcd.com/2367/

The mouseover text (... hmm, how do you display those on mobile phones?) syas (... ok, how do you copy/paste it?) something aboutevil masks that bind to your skin and turn you evil.

Isn't that the black spiderman mask? Well, the mouseover claims 80%, and it's already listed higher than cloth and less than n95.

----------


## georgie_leech

> Thinking back to Masks https://xkcd.com/2367/
> 
> The mouseover text (... hmm, how do you display those on mobile phones?) syas (... ok, how do you copy/paste it?) something aboutevil masks that bind to your skin and turn you evil.
> 
> Isn't that the black spiderman mask? Well, the mouseover claims 80%, and it's already listed higher than cloth and less than n95.


*Spoiler: The R.L. Stine bit gives a hint*
Show

----------


## Rodin

The dialect quiz threw me a bit because the answers to the first question were almost legitimate.  "Hey You" does work for a group of people that are together, although I would typically add a "guys" on there.  I still use "Y'all" for a group of people although that isn't correct terminology either.  The _correct_ usage is "Y'all" for a single person and "All Y'all" for a group.

----------


## Fyraltari

> The dialect quiz threw me a bit because the answers to the first question were almost legitimate.


That's pretty on-brand.

----------


## Rockphed

To the last question I say "Gezundheit" the first time, "Salud" the second, "Dinar" the third, "Amor" the fourth, "gato" the fifth, "mas gato" the sixth, and "seniora vieha con gatos" the seventh.  Actually, I am liable to say "gesundheit" and then explain the rest if someone sneezes once in my presence.

----------


## 137beth

> Screen time report.
> 
> Reading articles and watching videos that just confirm the opponent of my candidate is a duck: 216d19h03m. Yes, "duck" is used to avoid the profanity filter.


But The Duck is Lord!

----------


## keybounce

That map (1688) is really interesting. Especially if you go two lines down from the start, to where there's a "what?" response, and then say "no" to the next one.

The rest of this really looks like a lot of research went into the construction.

----------


## georgie_leech

Oh lordy why did I google worst ladder? Those are just... auuuuuugggggghhhhhhhh why

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

I'm missing something in the new comic. If the probability of a randomly drawn scrabble tile beating a d6 roll is 14%, how are the odds of a random scrabble tile beating a random dice roll 71%? Randall has a whole bunch of d2's, so he has an 80% chance of rolling one of those? Does the wording random rather than randomly drawn mean that the odds of getting a Y are now the same as tgose of getting an E?

----------


## DavidSh

I haven't run those numbers, but explainxkcd.com says this is an error, and that the 71% is the probability that the die roll will beat the tile, with the remaining probability of 100% - (14% + 71%) being the probability of the die roll equaling the point value of the tile.

----------


## Personification

Has anyone else ever seen Seth Meyers's "The kind of story we need right now" bit, because this: 
https://xkcd.com/2386
It is so sweet, and I am so happy for them.
I will now go off to smilecry.

----------


## theangelJean

Came here to see if anyone else had posted about this, but also to laugh at the alt-text.

----------


## Vinyadan

Yep, I'm also happy for them. There had been a page on this when it started long ago. It's good that it's going well.

----------


## keybounce

Forgive my ignorance, but is this the state of his actual wife?

----------


## Personification

> Forgive my ignorance, but is this the state of his actual wife?


Yes. She was diagnosed in 2010, after which there was a string of somewhat morbid but heartfelt and well researched comics on cancer survival rates and the importance of trusting science (as well as a detailed blog post explaining why the comic had relatively suddenly turned to focus on cancer), which eventually turned into intermittent, very hopeful and happy comics about his wife's continued survival and success against the disease.

EDIT: Also, on a completely unrelated note but because I can't stop thinking about it because I am so excited, DeTess, I notice your avatar. Are you as excited about _Rhythm of War_ as I am?

----------


## Tetrimino

So the alt text of https://xkcd.com/903/ says "Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy""

To be honest my first thought was "there's no way that works" but I got it in 19 clicks on the first try.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> So the alt text of https://xkcd.com/903/ says "Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy""
> 
> To be honest my first thought was "there's no way that works" but I got it in 19 clicks on the first try.


It doesn't always work (the alternatives are broken links, or ending up in loops between two pages referencing each other), but there is a wikipedia metaarticle about it.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Rockphed

> So the alt text of https://xkcd.com/903/ says "Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy""
> 
> To be honest my first thought was "there's no way that works" but I got it in 19 clicks on the first try.


Articles that follow the wiki mos pretty much always do it. I think the united states of America page is one of the exceptions.

----------


## Personification

> So the alt text of https://xkcd.com/903/ says "Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy""
> 
> To be honest my first thought was "there's no way that works" but I got it in 19 clicks on the first try.


The real answer is that there are many loops (so it doesn't always work), but one of the most common is the one that contains philosophy.

----------


## Kornaki

> It doesn't always work (the alternatives are broken links, or ending up in loops between two pages referencing each other), but there is a wikipedia metaarticle about it.
> 
> Grey Wolf


Ironically (?) That article does not lead to philosophy. It went through mathematics and ancient greek so I thought it was a slam dunk until it wasn't.

----------


## Yuki Akuma

> Ironically (?) That article does not lead to philosophy. It went through mathematics and ancient greek so I thought it was a slam dunk until it wasn't.


Huh?

Getting to Philosophy 
Point and click
User (computing)
Computer
Sequence
Mathematics
Quantity
Counting
Number
Mathematical object
Concept
Abstraction
Rule of inference
Logical form
Philosophy.

Did you click on "Greek" in the Mathematics article? You're not supposed to click on things in parantheses.

----------


## Ajustusdaniel

> Articles that follow the wiki mos pretty much always do it. I think the united states of America page is one of the exceptions.


That seems intuitive- we're not on the metric system either, why should our wiki page follow the general rule?- but at the moment, unless I've missed something.:

United States of America redirects to United States
Country
State (polity)
Polity
Collective Identity
Belonginess
Emotion
Biology
Natural Science
Branches of Science
Sciences
Scientific Method
Empirical Evidence
Information
Uncertainty
Epistemology
Philosophy

----------


## Rockphed

> That seems intuitive- we're not on the metric system either, why should our wiki page follow the general rule?- but at the moment, unless I've missed something.:
> 
> United States of America redirects to United States
> Country
> State (polity)
> Polity
> Collective Identity
> Belonginess
> Emotion
> ...


It was some page that was close to the USA page.  It was a 3 page loop, though I think there was at least 1 redirect.  And somebody might have fixed things since.

----------


## Lord Torath

On today's strip, the mouse-over text had me laughing out loud.  Trolling the phishers.

----------


## Kornaki

> Did you click on "Greek" in the Mathematics article? You're not supposed to click on things in parantheses.


That is exactly what I did. Thanks!

----------


## Rockphed

So getting public records of mortgages and such is probably feasible, but (at least in the US) there are laws that prevent people from getting them collated into a nice pile without good reason.  So somebody could feasibly get a pile of voting records from my home town to figure out what street I grew up on and they might be able to get marriage records from where my parents got married to get my mother's maiden name, but getting my street combined with my mother's maiden name is pretty much impossible without me giving them to someone (or searching my mother's facebook for who her parents/siblings are, but that is just crazy talk).

----------


## Keltest

> So getting public records of mortgages and such is probably feasible, but (at least in the US) there are laws that prevent people from getting them collated into a nice pile without good reason.  So somebody could feasibly get a pile of voting records from my home town to figure out what street I grew up on and they might be able to get marriage records from where my parents got married to get my mother's maiden name, but getting my street combined with my mother's maiden name is pretty much impossible without me giving them to someone (or searching my mother's facebook for who her parents/siblings are, but that is just crazy talk).


One would assume that people interested in committing identity theft are not terribly concerned with the legality of their actions.

----------


## Rockphed

> One would assume that people interested in committing identity theft are not terribly concerned with the legality of their actions.


The laws are supposed to stop the people who have the records from giving them out to people without a legitimate reason to have them, not just stop people without good reason to have them from getting them.  As such they include severe punishments for credit reporting agencies who do not properly safeguard records.

----------


## PhantomFox

I know when I bought my house I started getting piles of adds for mortgage insurance that tried to look as urgent as possible, but were probably rip-offs or scams. So that info is actively being used by SOMEONE.

----------


## Radar

> I know when I bought my house I started getting piles of adds for mortgage insurance that tried to look as urgent as possible, but were probably rip-offs or scams. So that info is actively being used by SOMEONE.


I you got them in the snail mail then it is probable, but people doing the legwork and throwing those adds in the mailboxes simply might see that someone new moved in to a house that was for sale, so they naturally assumed that mortgage was involved.

If you get those adds on the internet, there is an even simpler answer: profiling. Any search on Google, any website you look at, is providing data on your activity. It does not have to have your name on it or be viewable by anyone personally. There are algorithms right now that can easily infer a lot about you and profile the ads you see based on the your history. You might have searched for various mortgage options, house offers, transport services or furniture. All those little pieces of data tell that you are very likely to have or are about to take a mortgage, so algorithms target you with on-topic ads.

There are pretty crazy stories about this. One that I remember was about Target, as thanks to all the data analysis they do on the customers they are able to tell for example, who is pregnant and pretty accurately predict, when the baby is due.

----------


## Cazero

> The laws are supposed to stop the people who have the records from giving them out to people without a legitimate reason to have them, not just stop people without good reason to have them from getting them.  As such they include severe punishments for credit reporting agencies who do not properly safeguard records.


But they're public records. That means they're free to access and anyone can just copy them. How are you supposed to safeguard for that?

----------


## Rockphed

> But they're public records. That means they're free to access and anyone can just copy them. How are you supposed to safeguard for that?


Some of them are public (I think who owns land falls in to this category).  Some of them are only released many years after they are made (like the census).  Some of them can be accessed by anyone with a valid use (so lenders can send people pre-approved offers by looking at people's profiles as happened to PhantomFox).  Enforcing that last one is the purview of the FTC in the US.  Other nations have different laws and agencies to do that.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> I you got them in the snail mail then it is probable, but people doing the legwork and throwing those adds in the mailboxes simply might see that someone new moved in to a house that was for sale, so they naturally assumed that mortgage was involved.
> 
> If you get those adds on the internet, there is an even simpler answer: profiling. Any search on Google, any website you look at, is providing data on your activity. It does not have to have your name on it or be viewable by anyone personally. There are algorithms right now that can easily infer a lot about you and profile the ads you see based on the your history. You might have searched for various mortgage options, house offers, transport services or furniture. All those little pieces of data tell that you are very likely to have or are about to take a mortgage, so algorithms target you with on-topic ads.
> 
> There are pretty crazy stories about this. One that I remember was about Target, as thanks to all the data analysis they do on the customers they are able to tell for example, who is pregnant and pretty accurately predict, when the baby is due.


Because I put my purchases at a certain grocery chain on my friend's rewards card so she gets the rewards, there have been multiple times when they've somehow concluded that we're married and soon to have a child.

Those algorithms aren't as smart as they're made out to be. 

Especially the online stuff, if you block all the ways that they associate your activity cross-site.

----------


## Kornaki

> Because I put my purchases at a certain grocery chain on my friend's rewards card so she gets the rewards, there have been multiple times when they've somehow concluded that we're married and soon to have a child.
> 
> Those algorithms aren't as smart as they're made out to be. 
> 
> Especially the online stuff, if you block all the ways that they associate your activity cross-site.


That seems a bit unfair to the algorithms. They can only work with the data they get.

----------


## Rodin

I've never understood why mother's maiden name is considered a good security question.  My mother does genealogy and can trace the family back into the 1600s.  Why they think a scammer can't trace back one generation is beyond me.  

Almost anything you could ask would be more difficult, yet mother's maiden name is the most common.

----------


## Keltest

> I've never understood why mother's maiden name is considered a good security question.  My mother does genealogy and can trace the family back into the 1600s.  Why they think a scammer can't trace back one generation is beyond me.  
> 
> Almost anything you could ask would be more difficult, yet mother's maiden name is the most common.


"Childhood best friend", "Street i grew up on" and "Name of first pet" are also terrible ones. Basically anything that can be found on facebook really.

----------


## Grey_Wolf_c

> I've never understood why mother's maiden name is considered a good security question.


For the same reason passwords were considered a good security question. "When used right" a random password not used anywhere else is probably a decent enough security system, for small scale applications and protecting data most people aren't going to spend too much effort getting at. Equally, requiring two pieces of personal trivia they are unlikely to forget as a secondary check for password recovery works equally well (i.e. not much). It just does not scale at all - expecting human beings to come up with several dozen random passwords and rotate them is unrealistic, and expecting every service to have sufficient random trivia questions that apply broadly is equally unrealistic, as it turns out.

Grey Wolf

----------


## Rodin

> "Childhood best friend", "Street i grew up on" and "Name of first pet" are also terrible ones. Basically anything that can be found on facebook really.


"Name of first pet" works well for me because my first pet died before the Internet existed.  Or at least, it died before the Internet was widely available to the public.  So you have to guess what type of pet I had and _then_ guess its name with zero information.

I wonder how many times that security question gets broken based on regional pet names, or pet names based on breed.  If you start guessing Border Collie names in Yorkshire, the odds of hitting the jackpot with "Shep" are about 1 in 1.

The best solution I've seen is to not answer the question.  You have a second easier to remember password that you use to answer security questions.  You don't base this off any of the common questions, but something that is unique to you which would be impossible for a scammer to find out.

----------


## Radar

> For the same reason passwords were considered a good security question. "When used right" a random password not used anywhere else is probably a decent enough security system, for small scale applications and protecting data most people aren't going to spend too much effort getting at. Equally, requiring two pieces of personal trivia they are unlikely to forget as a secondary check for password recovery works equally well (i.e. not much). It just does not scale at all - expecting human beings to come up with several dozen random passwords and rotate them is unrealistic, and expecting every service to have sufficient random trivia questions that apply broadly is equally unrealistic, as it turns out.
> 
> Grey Wolf


So most of the internet security is equivalent to a cheap bike lock, where the general idea is that stealing the bike is not worth the effort of using a wire cutter. That makes sense actually and explains why people do use those cheap locks. Also relevant is this comics.

----------


## Keltest

> So most of the internet security is equivalent to a cheap bike lock, where the general idea is that stealing the bike is not worth the effort of using a wire cutter. That makes sense actually and explains why people do use those cheap locks. Also relevant is this comics.


Theres a reason that, unlike in hollywood, the vast majority of actual illicit access to things comes from social engineering. No door ever designed will be as hard to break through as a solid wall, because by its very nature as a door it is designed to grant access under specific conditions. Thus, hacking mostly ends up being tricking or convincing somebody to tell you those conditions and then matching them. The human element will always be the weakest element in any security system.

----------


## keybounce

> I've never understood why mother's maiden name is considered a good security question.  My mother does genealogy and can trace the family back into the 1600s.  Why they think a scammer can't trace back one generation is beyond me.  
> 
> Almost anything you could ask would be more difficult, yet mother's maiden name is the most common.


I think the idea was that, back in the early days, when simple security questions were being designed, something that would stop 99% of all trouble at little to no cost was considered "sufficient".

As for passwords, and password hint/recovery questions, the biggest problem is the lack of any education on what makes a good password. For years, dumb computer systems had 8 character passwords, just because. So people kinda learned by practice to use 6-8 letter "words". There has never been any sort of education on what to use instead.

Worse, there is no common "this makes a password" in industry. Every site seems to roll their own password code, even though that's the worst security mistake you can make. Programs that require you to not use special characters, because they can be fooled by the equivalent of


```
" || "" == "
```

in whatever language you are using (note what that does if you insert it into


```
"$dbpass" == "$userpass"
```

in any scripting language that does string substitution). Programs that don't sanitize their input, in other words. Programs that can be fooled by unicode because they don't use a transparent encoding like utf-8, but have a 16- or 32- bit encoding that lets a user character contain a relevant character (such as a closing quote followed by more commands). Etc.

Since we don't have any sort of standard for "what constitutes a password", and no education for "what makes a good password", or any sort of "How to manage hundreds and hundreds of passwords" (hint: a password manager is *not* the answer, unless you want to be tied to one browser, and what happens when that browser wipes storage and forces you to start over -- ahem, Chrome), each user has to try to reinvent the hexagon when they don't even have a really round wheel.

As for security / recovery questions? There's a simple one:

Let the user specify both the question and the answer.

I can come up with something that gives me a hint to an answer, that will be indecipherable to anyone else. I can come up with dozens, if not hundreds, of such. I'm sure most people can do at least 10 such. Yet all of these sites want to ask something that even I don't know the answer to because my background is so different than typical people.

Rotating a password? That's not necessarily bad. Give users a warning that they will have to change it soon. Nope -- As soon as you log in, before you can even get to the information you wanted to get you, ** NOW, RIGHT NOW, THIS INSTANT, QUICKLY CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD BEFORE WE LET YOU SEE WHAT YOU NEED.

IN A HURRY? QUICK, STUFF ANYTHING IN, AND IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE SECURE BECAUSE WE ASSUME ALL PEOPLE ALWAYS KNOW A SECURE NEXT PASSWORD TO JUST USE AT ANY TIME, AND OF COURSE YOU HAVE TIME TO DO SOMETHING SECURE BEFORE GETTING THE INFORMATION THAT YOU REALLY NEED *NOW*.

Seriously: If I go onto my bank to check something about my account, that's only supposed to be a minute or so. I don't have 10 minutes to make up something new, different, memorizable, and unique enough. So it either gets written down, or I rotate among a few common "high security" passwords that I reuse at high security sites.

And that's been my solution. A few low-security passwords, a few mediums, a few highs. 

I mean, we all know that password loss is because of user problems, right? End systems will always be secure, always keep that password in a proper salted hash, never in plain text, and never expose the password file, right? Never take the password data over plain http even if the webpage is https. Etc. Any leak must be the user's fault, so if someone logs in with your password, it must be your own doing and the company is not responsible, right?

Yea.

===

Side note: After observing my mother, I'm convinced that the problem starts with all these sites that say "Enter your account and password". At first, she wanted to know why all these sites wanted her chromebook information.

None of them say something like "Enter your account for oursite.com". Just "Enter your account". Like somehow, users are supposed to know WHICH account, or even IF there is an account.

It is *rare* for a site to start with "Enter your account name", then give you back something to prove that the site is who it claims to be -- such as a picture I sent to that site -- before asking for password. It isn't even usually possible (anymore) to enter a dummy bit of information on the first page, and  real information on the next page.

Heck, real security would mean ** you never give the true answer on the first time, unless you do, and probably not on the second time. Maybe on the third time**.

Real security means ** assume that this is NOT really the site you want to talk to **. If you give the real information, and it's a fake site, you're in trouble. So give it junk, and if it seems to work, you know it's wrong. (Yes, MitM hacking has gotten better, so this is less likely to work -- if they can hijack your connection, they can probably talk to the real site at the same time).

What's that? "SSL will ensure this cannot happen"? Dear sweet beginner, SSL only ensures that the communication is not being spied on in the middle -- it does not guarantee that the person on the far end really is who you think it is. That can be foiled by any trusted root, anywhere in the world, that issues a bad certificate. But that will never, ever happen, right? Certainly not by any russia or china government root, right? And I haven't even looked at what DNS spoofing can do, or if you have a government mandated root DNS server that has different data.

----------


## DavidSh

In particular, I think "mother's maiden name" was carried over from its use as a disambiguator.  When you are still assuming honesty, you can distinguish the "John Smith" whose mother was a Jones from the "John Smith" whose mother was a McGillicuddy.  These days, birth date seems to be a more popular disambiguator.

----------


## Eldan

> "Name of first pet" works well for me because my first pet died before the Internet existed.  Or at least, it died before the Internet was widely available to the public.  So you have to guess what type of pet I had and _then_ guess its name with zero information.
> 
> I wonder how many times that security question gets broken based on regional pet names, or pet names based on breed.  If you start guessing Border Collie names in Yorkshire, the odds of hitting the jackpot with "Shep" are about 1 in 1.
> 
> The best solution I've seen is to not answer the question.  You have a second easier to remember password that you use to answer security questions.  You don't base this off any of the common questions, but something that is unique to you which would be impossible for a scammer to find out.


Pet doesn't work for me. I was a spectacularly unimaginative four year old and had a guinea pig that had the same name as me.

----------


## DavidSh

> Pet doesn't work for me. I was a spectacularly unimaginative four year old and had a guinea pig that had the same name as me.


Ah, like in the old Monty Python sketch.  "Eric the Guinea Pig", only using your name instead of Eric's.

----------


## Ibrinar

> Since we don't have any sort of standard for "what constitutes a password", and no education for "what makes a good password", or any sort of "How to manage hundreds and hundreds of passwords" (hint: a password manager is *not* the answer, unless you want to be tied to one browser, and what happens when that browser wipes storage and forces you to start over -- ahem, Chrome), each user has to try to reinvent the hexagon when they don't even have a really round wheel.


? KeePass and others are separate from your browser and just keep multiple copies of the file to be safe.

----------


## keybounce

> ? KeePass and others are separate from your browser and just keep multiple copies of the file to be safe.


That's good to know.

Now, lets say I've got both a main computer, and I use firefox and chrome. And then, I've got an iphone, that only knows safari. And I need to use a chromebook at times.

How do I manage to synchronzie all of these, so that my unrememberable, non-written down, computer trusted passwords are usable on these other machines?

The real solution is some sort of physical key ring, a USB-thingie that, just like physical house keys, unlocks accounts. Now figure out how to make that safe when used on someone else's untrusted computer.

----------


## Radar

> That's good to know.
> 
> Now, lets say I've got both a main computer, and I use firefox and chrome. And then, I've got an iphone, that only knows safari. And I need to use a chromebook at times.
> 
> How do I manage to synchronzie all of these, so that my unrememberable, non-written down, computer trusted passwords are usable on these other machines?
> 
> The real solution is some sort of physical key ring, a USB-thingie that, just like physical house keys, unlocks accounts. Now figure out how to make that safe when used on someone else's untrusted computer.


In that case your password library would have to be on a remote server in order not to pass the data through an unsecure computer. As for how to safely log into your password manager, you would need some one-use codes which require you to have some physical object generating those for you. For example in banking a smartphone is often used for authentication exactly in this fashion with the only change in that the password is generated remotely and sent to your phone.

----------


## Lord Torath

Missing States.

Alaska and Hawaii are obvious.  Anyone else able to spot the other 7 missing states without singing "Fifty Nifty United States"?  I confess I almost got through the whole list of states before figuring out the last missing state.

*Spoiler*
Show

The Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas were the first ones I noticed were missing.  Delaware, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania were the ones I needed to song for.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

> Missing States.
> 
> Alaska and Hawaii are obvious.  Anyone else able to spot the other 7 missing states without singing "Fifty Nifty United States"?  I confess I almost got through the whole list of states before figuring out the last missing state.
> 
> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> The Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas were the first ones I noticed were missing.  Delaware, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania were the ones I needed to song for.


I had to check ExplainXkcd to get the joke at all; I didn't notice any of the missing states at first.

----------


## Rockphed

*Spoiler: from memory*
Show


Pennsylvania
Delaware
Both Dakotas
New Mexico
Kansas
Nebraska



I found them by comparing the map to what the map should look like.  I actually spent a good 5 minutes trying to make sure I had found them all. :Small Red Face:

----------


## The Glyphstone

*Spoiler*
Show

I noticed Delaware, New Mexico, and the Dakota. I had to pull up a real map for comparison before I remembered Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Kansas.

----------


## Rockphed

> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> I noticed Delaware, New Mexico, and the Dakota. I had to pull up a real map for comparison before I remembered Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Kansas.


Cheater!  I didn't even think to pull out a real map.

----------


## Tetrimino

https://xkcd.com/2407/
Speaking from experience, I can say that the bread-first search is by far the easiest and most pleasant of the three.

EDIT: Fixed the link

----------


## keybounce

> The #2 cause of astronomer hand injuries is trying to do vector math when the second axis points off to the right.


I want to give that joke a thumbs-down.

----------


## Rockphed

> I want to give that joke a thumbs-down.


I do my math in left handed systems: I give it a thumbs up.

----------


## keybounce

Except that the direction of vector products is defined by the right hand rule.

----------


## 137beth

It's a completely arbitrary convention, just like the convention to measure angles counterclockwise from the positive X-axis.  Rockphed uses a left-handed system, meaning they follow the opposite convention for cross products from what most people do.

----------


## Rockphed

> Except that the direction of vector products is defined by the right hand rule.


In right handed coordinate systems, which are more common because many physical systems follow them.  Apocryphally, there was a dispute between the Americans and the British because they had defined circular polarization handedness oppositely.

----------


## Lvl 2 Expert

> 16th? We do it on the 6th. Weird, never knew we were a week early on that,too.


You're not. Although many Dutch people would argue you're about half a day late.

----------


## Tetrimino

https://xkcd.com/2425/

There is a 100% chance that I will use this to explain how vaccines work to my friends. (Sound effects included)

----------


## keybounce

This is a good one. Real-life virus explanation based on silly fanfic style Starwars.

----------


## Quild

I'm super dubious about the resistance's construction crew B being able to build a Death Star. 
Especially without having to report about need of funds, material or people at some point.

----------


## georgie_leech

> I'm super dubious about the resistance's construction crew B being able to build a Death Star. 
> Especially without having to report about need of funds, material or people at some point.


Keep in mind, the plans were more about building an empty Death Star-y empty shell than a fully operational battlestation.

----------


## theangelJean

> Keep in mind, the plans were more about building an empty Death Star-y empty shell than a fully operational battlestation.


A Death-Star-like empty shell wouldn't stand up nearly as well to bombardment, though, would it?

I guess this is where the analogy breaks down - the surface proteins are the virus's way in to host cells, and immunity is about preventing and mitigating that rather than just blowing things up.

----------


## theangelJean

New April 1st comic is up :)

*Spoiler: Hint:*
Show

 Button at the bottom right...

----------


## Maat Mons

Well, call me stumped.  The only answers I've gotten out of it are "HUH," "WHAT," an "EIEIO."  I think one of us is failing the Turing test, but I'm not sure which.

----------


## Kantaki

I'd give it a try, but my knowledge of Morse code...
Let's just say there's a more than even chance I mess up _SOS_ even after looking it up.
Three long, three short, three long? Other way around?
No idea, and I only looked it up a few hours ago.

----------


## DavidSh

> Well, call me stumped.  The only answers I've gotten out of it are "HUH," "WHAT," an "EIEIO."  I think one of us is failing the Turing test, but I'm not sure which.


Are you fluent in Morse Code?

----------


## theangelJean

Okay, I confess to looking up explainxkcd to see what was on offer, but after that I did get by okay using headphones and these two:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Intcode.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_...code_tree3.png

Also, using the keyboard helped - my mouse has an annoying tendency to double-click when I least want it to.

If you don't want any spoilers, start with "HI" and assume you're talking to some"one".

----------


## Maat Mons

Oh no.  I don't know Morse code at all.  But I had a table in front of me because I'd tried to cheat.  I went into the page source looking for a JavaScript file that might shed light on things.  But all I found was this, which just seems to be converting between Morse code and plain text.

----------


## ByzantiumBhuka

Try opening up the Javascript console while on the page (Ctrl-Shift-J); it makes things a lot easier.

----------


## Kantaki

I openly admit I had to look for a explanation for this one.

And even with the explanation I can't really tell what that is. I mean, I've probably seen one of those toys before- at least I knew what it is after looking it up- but just from the image? Not a clue.
(My first thought was "How is making popcorn supposed to launch that capsule?" :Small Big Grin: )

----------


## Willie the Duck

Yeah, it's pretty much an XKCD equivalent of one of those articles on image aggregator sites titled 'only ____ <specific decade> kids will understand.'

----------


## Maat Mons

It took me a while, but I got it without having to look it up.  My first though was "That doesn't look _anything_ like the thingy in the Pop-O-Matic die roller."  But once I got myself off that... Troublesome train of thought, I landed on the _correct_ poppy toy.  

As an aside, recently, while trying to place some 404 LEDs on a board for a school project, it went flying out of the tweezers.  I said something about tiny components being "like Tiddlywinks," and then had to explain what Tiddlywinks is.  I wonder what decade you're supposed to have been born in to know _that_ game.

----------


## DavidSh

> ... Tiddlywinks .... I wonder what decade you're supposed to have been born in to know _that_ game.


That game dates back to 1888, so there is a fairly broad range of decades.  I remember a reference to Tiddlywinks in a movie from 1934.  (No, I didn't see it in the first run.)

----------


## Rockphed

> That game dates back to 1888, so there is a fairly broad range of decades.  I remember a reference to Tiddlywinks in a movie from 1934.  (No, I didn't see it in the first run.)


The quiet man starring John Wayne and Maureen o'hara is where I know it from.

----------


## Willie the Duck

This reminds me of a time when I was trying to explain a caltrop or Czech Hedgehog and explaining that they looked like a jack to someone born in the 80s and getting complete non-understanding.

----------


## Lord Torath

> This reminds me of a time when I was trying to explain a caltrop or Czech Hedgehog and explaining that they looked like a jack to someone born in the 80s and getting complete non-understanding.


Heh!  I still remember the Sesame Street episode where the girl recovered a dropped jack with a magnet on a string.  (also, I was born in the 70's so I don't count)

----------


## Rockphed

Speaking of czech hedgehogs...

----------


## Eldan

> I openly admit I had to look for a explanation for this one.
> 
> And even with the explanation I can't really tell what that is. I mean, I've probably seen one of those toys before- at least I knew what it is after looking it up- but just from the image? Not a clue.
> (My first thought was "How is making popcorn supposed to launch that capsule?")


I looked at it and thought "they put the parachute for landing _below_ the capsule instead of above it? Is the joke that 90s kids get things backwards?"

----------


## EmmyNecromancer

You know that Alignment Chart Alignment Chart Comic (Comic 2251)?
I think my alignment is "Chaotic Homozygous a- Green Recessive."

----------


## Rockphed

To be fair, the problem with the fruit press was not that it was poorly built, but rather that it was inefficient and over engineered for all the wrong things.

----------


## Cazero

This is just beautiful.

----------


## Rakaydos

*Spoiler: It's solvable, even not knowing the blank mineless squares or the number of mines.*
Show

2_1_
__3_
3___
_1_1

Only one of the two squares in the bottom left is a mine, so we know where 2 mines are, and two squares that are not mines:

2_1_
**3_
3?x_
?1x1

There has to be a mine next to the bottom 1, and no other mines next to the top one, which leaves only one place left a mine could go next to  the 3:

2x1x
**3x
3*x*
x1x1

----------


## The Glyphstone

> *Spoiler: It's solvable, even not knowing the blank mineless squares or the number of mines.*
> Show
> 
> 2_1_
> __3_
> 3___
> _1_1
> 
> Only one of the two squares in the bottom left is a mine, so we know where 2 mines are, and two squares that are not mines:
> ...


Yeah, it took me a minute to recover my long-dormant Minesweeper logic skills and solve it that way.

----------


## factotum

Nothing happens when I click on the picture in either Firefox or Edge?

----------


## georgie_leech

> Nothing happens when I click on the picture in either Firefox or Edge?


It isn't clickable, just a drawing alas.

I didn't work it out mentally anyway what are you talking about...

----------


## Rockphed

> It isn't clickable, just a drawing alas.
> 
> I didn't work it out mentally anyway what are you talking about...


I totally did not work it out either.  That is a silly thing to do!

*Spoiler*
Show

4 mines.  The two squares below the 2 and the square above each lower 1


Having said that, I feel like this is a bad captcha.  Teaching a computer to solve minesweeper seems like a fairly simple thing and computers are generally better at logic puzzles that can be written as math than people, at least once they are written as math.

----------


## DataNinja

> Having said that, I feel like this is a bad captcha.  Teaching a computer to solve minesweeper seems like a fairly simple thing and computers are generally better at logic puzzles that can be written as math than people, at least once they are written as math.


From what I remember of a person who came in to present to one of my university classes at some point years ago, Minesweeper is actually a bit of a complex puzzle to solve if you want it done _quickly_. A human's far better at being able to take shortcuts and see rules intuitively, while a computer has to scale up and recurse through _all_ of the table and keep cross-referencing.

----------


## halfeye

> I totally did not work it out either.  That is a silly thing to do!
> 
> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> 4 mines.  The two squares below the 2 and the square above each lower 1
> 
> 
> Having said that, I feel like this is a bad captcha.  Teaching a computer to solve minesweeper seems like a fairly simple thing and computers are generally better at logic puzzles that can be written as math than people, at least once they are written as math.


There are situations that can come up in minesweeper that are not soluble by logic.

I do like the not actually logic gates.

----------


## 137beth

The real challenge for computers is infinite minesweeper.

----------


## PattThe

I felt that, drone. I felt that.   :Small Frown:

----------


## Vinyadan

https://xkcd.com/2540/

Sure, sure... but what about an organ transplant done on an airship surrounded by butterflies, using a gyroscope to stabilise the operating table, and a medical sewing machine to suture the wound?

(I wish I had a link to some time this really happened).

----------


## DavidSh

This convention is going to get into a dispute with the convention on Things That Seem Like They Should Work But Don't,  over who has rights to the initialism TTSLTSWBD.

----------


## Willie the Duck

> Sure, sure... but what about an organ transplant done on an airship surrounded by butterflies, using a gyroscope to stabilise the operating table, and a medical sewing machine to suture the wound?
> 
> (I wish I had a link to some time this really happened).


Pretty sure it would be in _Girl Genius_ instead.
edit: or _Narbonic_ or _Skin Horse_ or...

----------


## Rockphed

> Pretty sure it would be in _Girl Genius_ instead.
> edit: or _Narbonic_ or _Skin Horse_ or...


Or "A Miracle of Science!"

Sorry, I occasionally go back and read that comic and it was on my mind.  I will go give myself 20 lashes for the wasted time I just caused.

----------


## Radar

> Or "A Miracle of Science!"
> 
> Sorry, I occasionally go back and read that comic and it was on my mind.  I will go give myself 20 lashes for the wasted time I just caused.


And you are right to punish yourself as I cannot resist a good archive binge like that. That being said, I agree with your tastes.  :Small Smile:

----------


## Lord Torath

I really like Immunity.

 :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Maat Mons

There are niche scenarios where deliberately infecting yourself makes sense. But these days, we have much better methods of giving ourselves immunity.

----------


## Rockphed

I don't like that one. It feels like a strawman argument. It isn't wrong, but it feels like refuting an argument that nobody is making.

----------


## Maat Mons

You've never heard of pox parties?  I guess they have really declined since the mid nineties, thankfully.

----------


## Rockphed

> You've never heard of pox parties?  I guess they have really declined since the mid nineties, thankfully.


No, I have heard of them. They depend on a disease being more dangerous for older people and babies than for children while also having no vaccine. Chicken pox is so much worse for adults we don't even call it the same thing. They pretty much died off when the chicken pox vaccine became available.

Vaccines originated in a similar idea: give people a mild disease and they won't get the nasty variant.

Which is a subtlety that Randal is leaving out, hence why I think the recent docs about infection feels like a strawman.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

A, um, more recent disease... has seen people deliberately gathering... to give each other that disease... because "then you're immune"... even though that really doesn't appear to be the case.

----------


## Rockphed

> A, um, more recent disease... has seen people deliberately gathering... to give each other that disease... because "then you're immune"... even though that really doesn't appear to be the case.


The most recent thing I saw about the disease you are probably talking about is that people who have had the disease are an order of magnitude less likely to contract it than people who received any of the available vaccines.  And, if it is what I think you are talking about, most of those people were a) at a low risk of complications, and b) able and willing to hide out for a month or so after contracting it.

Which all goes back to there being reasons other than simply never getting it again to purposefully contract a disease*.  As I said, Randal isn't wrong.  It just feels like he is setting up a strawman argument to show everyone how clever he is.  To be fair a lot of xkcd is him trying to show people how clever he is so this isn't anything new, but normally he manages without being snide.

*As with Granny Weatherwax in _Witches Abroad_, timing is important.

----------


## Max_Killjoy

> The most recent thing I saw about the disease you are probably talking about is that people who have had the disease are an order of magnitude less likely to contract it than people who received any of the available vaccines.


Um... not really. 

Having had it before falls well behind the major vaccines, especially after a few months. 

*Spoiler*
Show

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/...cid=mm7044e1_w

----------


## theangelJean

In other news, the James Webb Space Telescope made it to Space...

And today's xkcd is nicely complemented (and debunked) by explainxkcd.

----------


## Quill

Haha, my headcanon for today's comic is definitely that Cueball is far more disturbed by the thought of yet another launch delay than the potential threat to Santa Claus. I love how xkcd always has special comics for exciting space news.

----------


## theangelJean

> Haha, my headcanon for today's comic is definitely that Cueball is far more disturbed by the thought of yet another launch delay than the potential threat to Santa Claus. I love how xkcd always has special comics for exciting space news.


Well, the Range Safety Officer agreed with you!

----------


## Fyraltari

> As I said, Randal isn't wrong.  It just feels like he is setting up a strawman argument to show everyone how clever he is.


Being wrong for Cueball to correct is kind of White Hat's entire purpose in life.

----------


## Lord Torath

There's a countdown timer on the top right of the website:  https://xkcd.com/

Anyone know what's being counted down to?  It looks like it's about the end of January.

----------


## Keltest

Groundhog's day maybe?

----------


## Lord Torath

No, he's a day off for that. If my math is right, it hits "zero" at 0:00 hours on Feb 1st at Greenwich Mean Time.  No, my math is wrong.  It will hit at about 15:00 hours on Feb 1st at GMT.  Which means it will probably be Feb 2nd in Australia at that point, but Groundhog Day (as I understand it) tends to be a US-only thing.

Nope, still wrong.  See Rodin's post below.  Sometimes I can do math in my head.  Other times...  :Small Sigh:

----------


## Rodin

> No, he's a day off for that. If my math is right, it hits "zero" at 0:00 hours on Feb 1st at Greenwich Mean Time.  No, my math is wrong.  It will hit at about 15:00 hours on Feb 1st at GMT.  Which means it will probably be Feb 2nd in Australia at that point, but Groundhog Day (as I understand it) tends to be a US-only thing.


My math gets me January 31st?  I live on GMT, and today is January 12th.  18 days gets us to January 30th, with less than 24 hours left over that puts the time at 15:00 on January 31st.

----------


## theangelJean

There's been speculation on explainxkcd that it's a book launch. So ... Is it different times in different time zones? Or different dates, even?

----------


## 137beth

Today's is about language development, but it fails to mention programming languages.

----------


## Sermil

> There's a countdown timer on the top right of the website:  https://xkcd.com/
> 
> Anyone know what's being counted down to?  It looks like it's about the end of January.


It's got a line in the image now, which has been slowly move up-and-right. My guess is that it's zooming out and will eventually become a word or stick figure drawing.

----------


## Eldan

Webb Space Telescope? It was launched after Christmas and should take about a month to get in final position.

----------


## halfeye

> Webb Space Telescope? It was launched after Christmas and should take about a month to get in final position.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_...pace_Telescope




> It will take several weeks to cool to its operational temperature, and will then undergo final testing and calibration procedures for around 5 months, potentially including its first images,[40][41] before commencing its planned research program.


My guess is it's not that.

----------


## DavidSh

> Webb Space Telescope? It was launched after Christmas and should take about a month to get in final position.


Final orbital insertion for Webb is 29 days after launch, so that will be about a week before the xkcd countdown completes.  (Launch was about a week before New Year's Day.)

----------


## Lord Torath

The image appears to be shifting to the right, and there's another... line? curve? point?... portion coming in to view at the bottom left of the frame.  Current time:  16 D 18 hr 42 min

----------


## theangelJean

16d 4h 25min now, roughly 14 hours after that post, so unless Lord Torath and I are in the same time zone (AEDST) it's the same everywhere. And yes, there is a second diagonal line come in from the left now.

----------


## halfeye

15.22.5

now, and it looks sort of like a swept aircraft wingtip or tailplane.

----------


## Lord Torath

Definitely looking like an airplane, now (10 D 23 H 28 M)

----------


## Maat Mons

Maybe it's just a countdown to him leaving on a vacation.

----------


## Vinyadan

Maybe he's on a diet, and those are the days until he can eat pie.

----------


## halfeye

> Maybe it's just a countdown to him leaving on a vacation.





> I'm leaving, on a jet plane


Looks likely to me.

----------


## Squire Doodad

Despite the shifts, I am holding on to the possibility it is, in fact, a very unusual looking cat

----------


## mucat

> Despite the shifts, I am holding on to the possibility it is, in fact, a very unusual looking cat


Whereas I've always suspected that my cat is, in fact, a really weird airplane.

----------


## Maat Mons

Any ideas what's up with that random tentacle/cape/whatever sticking into frame in the upper right?

----------


## InvisibleBison

> Any ideas what's up with that random tentacle/cape/whatever sticking into frame in the upper right?


My first thought was that it might be a plume of smoke, but it seems too solid for that.

----------


## Radar

> Any ideas what's up with that random tentacle/cape/whatever sticking into frame in the upper right?


To be honest, it looks like an elephant's trunk, but that might be just a coincidence - especially since those animals are not pitch black.

----------


## georgie_leech

I'm thinking it's a size comparison thingy and that particular tendril is from some sort of eldritch monstrosity.

----------


## The Glyphstone

Looks like the end of a flag/banner to me.

----------


## Radar

More importantly, it is actually moving - this is not just the zoom as the bent of that black thing changes over time.

----------


## Mechalich

With the legs in frame, it looks like the back end of a T-Rex to me.

----------


## The Glyphstone

Yeah, definitely a T-Rex riding on an airplane so far.

----------


## halfeye

> Yeah, definitely a T-Rex riding on an airplane so far.


Now it's sawing off the branch it's sitting on.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

Looks like the details got revealed ahead of time.

*Spoiler*
Show

Amazon has an entry for a What If? 2 book.

----------


## halfeye

> Looks like the details got revealed ahead of time.
> 
> *Spoiler*
> Show
> 
> Amazon has an entry for a What If? 2 book.


Well today xkcd also has an advert for a What if 2 book, released 13.9.2022.

----------


## mjp1050

Looks like there's a new _What If?_ on the horizon.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

I really enjoyed the first book, and it looks like this will have a good bit of content that hasn't been published online, so I went ahead and preordered. Looking forward to it!  :Small Big Grin:

----------


## Dire_Flumph

Just found out about this.  Glad more What if is coming, but we couldn't have gotten a sampler?  Really miss when the blog was updated semi-regularly.

----------


## halfeye

I like this one, there are far too many plug/PSU combos that want to stop you using to socket next to them.

----------


## Rockphed

> I like this one, there are far too many plug/PSU combos that want to stop you using to socket next to them.


Typically having one on a powerstrip isn't too bad. However, I agree that it is too hard to use some.  I like that lots of things in the US use the 3 prong male to 3 (slightly different) prong female cords like computers.  I was really annoyed at work when a monitor used DC power and we couldn't find the supply.

----------


## Maat Mons

Here's a real-life Cursed Connector.  If you don't understand why it's cursed, when you have something plugged into the socket, and one of the plugs in a wall outlet, but the other one dangling, the bare metal of the dangling plug is live at 120V AC.

----------


## Keltest

> Here's a real-life Cursed Connector.  If you don't understand why it's cursed, when you have something plugged into the socket, and one of the plugs in a wall outlet, but the other one dangling, the bare metal of the dangling plug is live at 120V AC.


Thats only cursed in the same way that a surge protector is cursed if you chew open the rubber casing and start eating the wires while its plugged in. Its intended that both plugs be in sockets for its normal function.

----------


## Maat Mons

Normal function isn't just when it's sitting plugged in.  The process of plugging and unplugging is a part also part of normal function.  This thing becomes unsafe for a period during plugging or unplugging, unless a specific order is followed.  And people aren't going to do that.  

Also, it won't work if you plug it into an outlet protected by GFI or GFCI.  Current electrical code in the US requires that on all outdoor outlets.  And this thing is marketed for use with RVs, which you would typically expect to plug into an outdoor outlet.  That means you're limited to old outlets, or you have to run extension chords out a window.  

I'm actually of the opinion that our electrical outlets here in the US aren't well designed, because there's a point between full plugged in and fully unplugged where it's possible to touch bare metal carrying 120V.  This thing takes that issue and turns it up to 11.  

I'm also of the opinion that GFCI should be required on all breakers.  Based on how the code keeps getting updated to require it more places, I think my wish will come true one of these days.

----------


## halfeye

https://xkcd.com/2596/

There _are_ way too many galaxies.

----------


## hajo

New april-special xkcd 'Instructions'
*Spoiler: about turtles and coding in LOGO*
Show

 as a very long audio-recording.  :Small Amused: 
The instructions also paint a nice picture  :Small Big Grin: 

See also explainxkcd and github .

----------


## Rockphed

Normally I either get or don't the joke on my own. This is one of the few times where once I saw what was going on I just gave up and looked for an explanation.

----------


## Maat Mons

Today's strip makes me wonder if anyone's set up a webpage where you can create weird, non-standard maps by rotating the world relative to the projection.  It'd be pretty easy to do, with the possible exception of an interrupted Goode homolosine projection.  Though if they can get that working, I'd like to try creating one with the interruptions going through the continents to better preserve the shapes of the oceans.

----------


## Radar

> Today's strip makes me wonder if anyone's set up a webpage where you can create weird, non-standard maps by rotating the world relative to the projection.  It'd be pretty easy to do, with the possible exception of an interrupted Goode homolosine projection.  Though if they can get that working, I'd like to try creating one with the interruptions going through the continents to better preserve the shapes of the oceans.


Now I kind of want to see and animation made from various map projections, where the center of perspective is rotated over time. Could be equally trippy as a lava lamp.  :Small Smile: 

edit: I found this little website. Does not have all that many projections available and only the sane ones, but it is still quite fun to play around with.

----------


## theangelJean

> Today's strip makes me wonder if anyone's set up a webpage where you can create weird, non-standard maps by rotating the world relative to the projection.  It'd be pretty easy to do, with the possible exception of an interrupted Goode homolosine projection.  Though if they can get that working, I'd like to try creating one with the interruptions going through the continents to better preserve the shapes of the oceans.


You did see the click-through to the comic, right? It only does Mercator, and I'm guessing you can't "rotate" by dragging the mouse, but it's a start.

----------


## Maat Mons

I hadn't noticed the comic was clickable.  That's pretty cool, and you can simulate rotation with a combination of vertical and horizontal shifts.

----------


## halfeye

> Today's strip makes me wonder


Today's? that was up on Saturday at the latest.

I do agree it's fun.

----------


## Dire_Flumph

Only found out because I clicked on the wrong bookmark, but he's posted the first What If? in almost exactly four years.

----------


## theangelJean

> only found out because i clicked on the wrong bookmark, but he's posted the first what if? in almost exactly four years.


SLIPPERY WHEN DRY

Edit: aww, my original all-caps post got auto converted to lower case by the forum.

----------


## Fyraltari

> SLIPPERY WHEN DRY
> 
> Edit: aww, my original all-caps post got auto converted to lower case by the forum.


OUTRAGEOUS!abcde

----------


## 137beth

I'm a few updates late, but I want to go to whatever university has enough topologists to get us our own department.

----------


## halfeye

https://xkcd.com/2636/

Aren't some of these just wrong?

July 8th's for example?

pi ^ e would be something between pi ^ 2 and pi ^ 3, which isn't a huge number.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

> https://xkcd.com/2636/
> 
> Aren't some of these just wrong?
> 
> July 8th's for example?
> 
> pi ^ e would be something between pi ^ 2 and pi ^ 3, which isn't a huge number.


July 8 is 2^(pi^e), which is about 5.8 million. 2^(pi^e) seconds is 66 days and 17 hours, per Wolfram Alpha, which is on the money.

----------


## halfeye

> July 8 is 2^(pi^e), which is about 5.8 million. 2^(pi^e) seconds is 66 days and 17 hours, per Wolfram Alpha, which is on the money.


How does that work?

pi is not a big number, and nor is e.

2 is also not a  big number.

2 ^ 2 is 4, 2 ^ 4 is 16, 2 ^ 16 is 65,536 (after some faffing), 2 ^ 24 = 16,777,216, 2 ^ 32 = 4,294,967,296. Okay, that looks as if it might work, but I stlll think he's taking the michael.

----------


## georgie_leech

> How does that work?
> 
> pi is not a big number, and nor is e.
> 
> 2 is also not a  big number.
> 
> 2 ^ 2 is 4, 2 ^ 4 is 16, 2 ^ 16 is 65,536 (after some faffing), 2 ^ 24 = 16,777,216, 2 ^ 32 = 4,294,967,296. Okay, that looks as if it might work, but I stlll think he's taking the michael.


pi^e is a little more than 22. You can check the numbers yourself. Google will happily calculate 2^(pi^e) if you type literally that into the search bar, for instance.

----------


## TheStranger

> How does that work?
> 
> pi is not a big number, and nor is e.
> 
> 2 is also not a  big number.
> 
> 2 ^ 2 is 4, 2 ^ 4 is 16, 2 ^ 16 is 65,536 (after some faffing), 2 ^ 24 = 16,777,216, 2 ^ 32 = 4,294,967,296. Okay, that looks as if it might work, but I stlll think he's taking the michael.


Exponents are fun and produce big numbers from small numbers quicker than intuition tells you (the wheat on a chessboard problem is a classic example). Pi^e is about 22.45. 2^22.45 is about 5.8 million. The math checks out.

----------


## Radar

> How does that work?
> 
> pi is not a big number, and nor is e.
> 
> 2 is also not a  big number.
> 
> 2 ^ 2 is 4, 2 ^ 4 is 16, 2 ^ 16 is 65,536 (after some faffing), 2 ^ 24 = 16,777,216, 2 ^ 32 = 4,294,967,296. Okay, that looks as if it might work, but I stlll think he's taking the michael.


Numbers can surprise you like that. This case here (stacked exponentiation) has even a specific notation and further extension. Some other cases are far less obvious and a bit tricky to see, why the numbers suddenly get larger than we can reasonably write down. For example Ackermann's function does not look so bad, but in actuality it reproduces the up-arrow notation linked earlier in this post. Of course there are plenty of procedures to get even more crazy numbers.

----------


## Maat Mons

Arguably, much of the universe is made of chemicals, so chemists should have a pretty big slice of that pie chart.

----------


## Thales

Yeah, but a lot of the universe is in a state where the laws of chemistry don't really matter. The void of space, or even when there's a stray proton floating around doesn't really have anything for chemistry to apply to. Large amounts of the mass of the universe are probably dark matter, which likely doesn't follow chemistry either. And even a large chunk of normal matter is bound up in things like plasmas, which are their own corner of chemistry, or locked behind an event horizon, beyond which chemistry is irrelevant.

----------


## Radar

Chemistry or astronomy is not really a question as it is all just applied physics anyway.

----------


## theangelJean

> Arguably, much of the universe is made of chemicals, so chemists should have a pretty big slice of that pie chart.


Depends on the ratio of star- to non-star matter. Not a lot of chemistry happening in stars, what with all the electrons and nuclei running around loose at those temperatures.

(And I'm a few years out of date, but last I remember they weren't sure whether dark matter was chemicals either.)

----------


## Rockphed

> Depends on the ratio of star- to non-star matter. Not a lot of chemistry happening in stars, what with all the electrons and nuclei running around loose at those temperatures.
> 
> (And I'm a few years out of date, but last I remember they weren't sure whether dark matter was chemicals either.)


Depends on the star as memory serves.  Some stars have cold enough atmospheres that some chemicals can form.  And I would describe emission and absorption lines as chemistry rather than physics, and those afflict all stars (we call it helium because we first discovered it in absorption lines in the sun).

----------


## DataNinja

A new What-If? is up, for those who don't tend to check that part of the site. (I idly wondered when it came in, and lo and behold, it's actually only 8h old).

----------


## WanderingMist

> A new What-If? is up, for those who don't tend to check that part of the site. (I idly wondered when it came in, and lo and behold, it's actually only 8h old).


Wait, what? That hasn't been updated in years.

----------


## IthilanorStPete

> Wait, what? That hasn't been updated in years.


There was a new post (Hot Banana) back in May, and then the one DataNinja mentioned (Hailstones) a week ago.

----------


## Keltest

From my understanding the absence of updates was due to using the materials for his book instead. Which, you know, fair enough.

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## WanderingMist

> From my understanding the absence of updates was due to using the materials for his book instead. Which, you know, fair enough.


Yeah, I figured that, too, which was why I haven't checked in a few months apparently.

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## DataNinja

Yeah, I honestly wasn't _expecting_ more, so it was a pleasant surprise out of force of habit more than anything.

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## Personification

If today's comic is to be believed, you can still just _BUY_ lab coats!

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## Dame_Mechanus

The worst part is that between working in LTC pharmacy and having a strong nursing background in my family, this is actually _less_ horrible than many of the worst things I've seen or heard of being done within a medical environment. (Excepting discussions of people being criminally neglectful of people in assisted care or the like; that's not funny, that's just horrifying.)

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## Rockphed

> If today's comic is to be believed, you can still just _BUY_ lab coats!


Sure!  I found some on Amazon for like $30!

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## Xihirli

Can anyone here tell me which one is the one where people fall in love and they're like "ha! You lost the game! I make you happy!"

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## Squire Doodad

> Can anyone here tell me which one is the one where people fall in love and they're like "ha! You lost the game! I make you happy!"


Are you thinking of the SMBC where a guy refuses to respond to blatant clickbait and goes off and enjoys life?
Or the xkcd where they're doing a scavenger hunt for true love

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## Maat Mons

The mention of a literal interpretation of "squaring the circle" in the mouseover text of the most recent comic makes me want to watch an animation of an increasingly accurate Fourier approximation of a square in polar coordinates.  Is that weird?

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## gomipile

> The mention of a literal interpretation of "squaring the circle" in the mouseover text of the most recent comic makes me want to watch an animation of an increasingly accurate Fourier approximation of a square in polar coordinates.  Is that weird?


You might also like Matt Parker's "squircle" video, then.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjtTcyWL0NA

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## Maat Mons

It doesn't seem to approach very quickly.  Friggin' discontinuities, amirite?

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## hajo

A new interactive comic !

Try steering with the cursor-keys.

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## theangelJean

> A new interactive comic !
> 
> Try steering with the cursor-keys.


Or if you're on mobile, tap directly left/right/below the focus.

(Now I'm wondering if tapping directly above the focus would do anything.) Edit: same as tapping below.

Edit: if you get lost (which I did almost immediately) - the little persistent circles do mean something. Go find them.

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## georgie_leech

> Or if you're on mobile, tap directly left/right/below the focus.
> 
> (Now I'm wondering if tapping directly above the focus would do anything.) Edit: same as tapping below.
> 
> Edit: if you get lost (which I did almost immediately) - the little persistent circles do mean something. Go find them.


Followed a circle, got trapped in the sun. 10/10, would get lost again

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## Maat Mons



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## georgie_leech

Having found a number of different worlds and planets, including a cluster of black holes, the planet from Le Petit Prince, and a global dog park... I think my favourite so far has to be the What If? Planet. It's so meta.

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## hajo

> A new interactive comic !


Click on the comic, then steer with the cursor-keys.

Try to get the cannonball orbiting the starting planet ;)

The dots around the ship indicate nearby objects.
Up and down are relative to the gravity of the nearest object.
Watch the background stars as a speed-indicator.



See explainxkcd for more info,
as well as forum (and old forum) and reddit.

*Spoiler: For the impatient:*
Show


List of Locations with Coordinates and some javascript for cheating  :Small Amused:

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