explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1851: Magnetohydrodynamics

2024-07-28T03:05:45Z

108.162.216.69:

Hey, how the hell am I seeing this comic here when I can't see it yet on xkcd??!!?! And I'm not even trying to explain this one, I feel my complete unfamiliarity with Magnetohydrodynamics, except for being able to parse the word, will greatly hinder my ability to sufficiently explain it. :) (And that any explanation should and will include explaining what it is). I'm just rather amused at the concept that he's hearing the word often enough to make a "whenever I..." statement about it, like he's hearing it daily or more. Especially since his clear unfamiliarity suggests he isn't in the field or anything. And hey, leave my comment first this time, huh? LOL! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:49, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
:Figured it out. I last loaded the page with the previous comic before midnight EST, then came here to comment a lot on it, but after midnight, after the comic was posted, the link was still dead, I had to Refresh to get the real link. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:11, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

""...I replace it with "magic" "" magic has 5 letters, one more than the average anglospeaker is able to understand.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.18.10|162.158.18.10]] 13:10, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
:Not necessarily. "Troll" has five letters and it's meaning and present applicability are easily understood. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 01:48, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Possible interpretation: It could also be that Cueball is simply unable to comprehend such a large word, and so compresses it into it's beginning and ending letters. Therefore, magnetohydrodynamic becomes mag...ic. {{unsigned ip|172.68.78.82}}

Randall is downplaying it. I used to work with magnetohydrodynamics when building systems for studying the solar wind. It's really hard because you've got masses of local and non-local (at sane timescales) interactions and the non-linearities don't cancel out nicely. Doing the same within the sun, especially at the boundary between the radiation zone and the convective zone, would require relativistic quantum magnetohydrodynamics, and that's got like every sort of hard in modern physics. I think I'll stick with simple things like trying to build a true AI. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.226|141.101.98.226]] 17:10, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
: The real question is what's harder: solving an MHD problem or building an AI to solve it for you? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.94.181|172.71.94.181]] 20:22, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

There is a typo in the caption: "magnetohydrodyanmics" :-) {{unsigned ip|188.114.102.202}}
:That's because we have a trivia section.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:10, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
::You meant to say "That's why we have a trivia section." :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:25, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

"Magnetohydrodynamics". I mean, the basic concept of magnets influencing water doesn't sound so bad, but the word itself sounds like a mad scientist having a stroke. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.135|162.158.62.135]] 19:23, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
:{{w|Fluid dynamics|Hydrodynamics}} is the study of liquids in motion - not only water. The term {{w|Hydraulics|hydraulics}} is an other example not much related to water nowadays. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:10, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
::I thought of that after I posted... The fact I didn't go right back and change it and didn't expect to be corrected suggests I forgot where I was, lol. All the same, thank you. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.135|162.158.62.135]] 22:16, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

I think he just calls it "magic" for the obvious reasons: the word is very long, and the concept denoted by it is really confusing. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.106|108.162.216.106]] 02:05, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

{{w|Fluid_dynamics|Hydrodynamics}} is the study of fluids, not just liquids, as it includes solids (though usually plain hydrodynamics or radiation-hydrodynamics is used in explosion simulations, e.g. dynamite or something) as well as liquids and gases (again rad-hydro is used here lots in stellar explosions) and things that are sort of in-between or not really SL or G. Hydrodynamics is regularly treated numerically using simulations, you can't solve it analytically (unless someone claims that prize) so you integrate it {{w|https://Numerical_integration|bit}} by tiny bit, loads of times. MHD adds a layer of difficulty as you might expect, it's used to describe interstellar gas where the magnetic bits gets important (e.g. stellar winds, the top few layers of the sun [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1112.5925.pdf (Solar Vortex Tubes!)]), MHD is widely used in the {{w|Magnetic_confinement_fusion|Magnetic Confinement Fusion}} community to simulate plasma flow/turbulence/horror in {{w|Tokamak|Tokamak}} or {{w|Wendelstein_7-X|Stellerator}} (and weirder) devices, it's pretty difficult to get right, hence very little fusion yet in these devices. Though it is worth noting that it is actually a simplification of particle kinetic behaviour and that it can't describe a lot of really fast time dynamics, or some of the more odd {{w|Plasma_stability|instabilities}}, so some poor sods (me sadly) have to use the {{w|Particle-in-cell|particle}} kinetic codes to simulate their plasmas.[[unsigned ip|127.0.0.1|20:39, 17 June 2017 (UTC)]]{{unsigned|Xoanon}}
:To make things more unpleasant, several of the assumptions MHD uses don't apply to most fusion plasmas (particularly the collisionality).[[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.160|108.162.215.160]]

Or it could just be greased lightning.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.195|172.68.132.195]] 17:54, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

The explanation of the title-text is a little inaccurate. Randall's not simply comparing magnetohydrodynamics to Maxwell's equations and the Navier-Stokes equations because of their difficulty. Maxwell's equations describe the behavior of electric and magnetic fields, and the Navier-Stokes equations describe the behavior of viscous fluids. They're both fundamental in modeling and studying magnetohydrodynamics. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.69|108.162.216.69]] 03:05, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

485: Depth

2022-05-09T18:54:54Z

108.162.216.69: Added a sentence about colorless green ideas sleep furiously

{{comic
| number = 485
| date = October 6, 2008
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| title = Depth
| image = depth.png
| titletext = The Planck length is another thousand or two pixels below the comic.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic is a companion piece to [[482: Height]], which explored a {{w|logarithmic scale}} from the edge of the observable universe down to the Earth's surface. ''Depth'' continues the process, viewing logarithmically smaller scales from Earth's atmosphere down to the interior of a single {{w|proton}}. This combination is reminiscent of Charles and Ray Eames' 1977 short film [http://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0 Powers of Ten].

Here's a walk through the entire comic:

* At the top, we see a cutaway view of a story apartment complex. From left to right, different activities can be seen in the apartments; [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] playing in a ball pit, Megan {{w|exorcising}} {{w|Windows Vista}}, [[Ponytail]] and Megan playing ''{{w|Guitar Hero}}'' or a similar game, Cueball at a desk, and what appear to be some sexytimes.
* The view descends into Cueball's tower PC.
* Entering the computer's internals, we see a mouse plugged into the PS/2 (6-pin mini-DIN) connector. This is a visual pun, since the mouse is an actual rodent and not a handheld device.
* Next, we dive into the CPU. We see a multi-layered pun on the question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" There may be a pun with a chip's connector pin, but the more obvious reference is Randall's answer of 32,767 = 215 - 1, the largest possible value of a signed 16-bit integer. Adding one rolls back over to -32,768, which is 32,768 devils or "negative angels." (See [[571: Can't Sleep]] for a similar joke and a more elaborate explanation.)
* A blood-sucking mosquito appears to be "leeching" a torrent.
* A {{w|segfault}} is a problem with memory access.
* We zoom in on a memory unit on the CPU. Cueball is being {{w|rickrolled}}, as indicated by the label "pixel on {{w|Rick Astley|Rick Astley's}} shoulder."
* A "fork();" command points at one of several unlabeled spermatazoa. Forking and sperm are capable of spawning "child processes."
* {{w|Peter Norton}} is the founder of {{w|Norton Antivirus}}. He is shown fighting a biological virus, rather than informatic malware.
* Showing the relative scale of {{w|carbon nanotubes}}, the suggestion is that these then lead on to a more megastructural {{w|Space Elevator}}, for which carbon nanotubes are often cited as a suitably strong component needed for the cable.
* We soon zoom in on a silicon atom in the CPU. In the {{w|electron cloud}}, the squiggles made out of arrows are {{w|Feynman diagram}}s. A Feynman diagram in the shape of a stick figure is saying "Sup?", a pun on the "Sup" particle (supersymmetric partner 'squark' to the Up quark) and an abbreviation of the greeting "What's up?"
* An 'iPod Femto' is shown, as a pun on the '{{w|iPod Nano}}' (both are {{w|SI prefixes}}), both of which refer to units far smaller than any iPod that has ever, or likely will ever, be created.
* {{w|Brian Greene}} is a theoretical physicist and {{w|Popular science|pop scientist}} who discusses the nature of the universe. The picture of him knitting is a pun on {{w|string theory}} and PBS miniseries, {{w|The Fabric of the Cosmos}}. The term 'knitting furiously' shows up in the 1857 Volume 14, page 46 of {{w|The Monthly Packet}}. Furthermore, Greene doing something furiously references "{{w|Colorless green ideas sleep furiously}}", a correctly-formulated sentence that nonetheless conveys no meaning or logic.
* The {{w|Planck length}} (<big>ℓ</big>P) is the smallest theoretically measurable distance, defined by three fundamental constants in physics: the {{w|speed of light}} in a vacuum (c), {{w|Planck constant|Planck's constant}} (h), and the {{w|gravitational constant}} (G). The Planck length is vastly smaller than any known particle that isn't a point mass, and modern physics is a long way from being able to investigate such a scale.

==Transcript==
:Sizes Accurate on a vertical log scale
:[Series of images of characters doing various things. The things they are doing are listed in left to right order.]
:Cueball and Megan playing in a ball pen
:Megan using witchcraft to ban vista "Out, Vista!"
:Ponytail and Megan play Rock Band
:A couple is having sex under the cover in bed.
:[Below this series of images, an image of a man on the computer.]
:Cueball is on a computer and the image expands as it goes down. Here are the labels from left to right, up to down:
:CD
:DVD
:Case
:North Bridge
:PS/2
:Mouse (rodent)
:RAM
:CPU Socket Pin
:32,767 Angels Dancing (one more and they'd roll over and become {{w|Two's complement|32,768 Devils}}), Rice, Torrent (a bug), CPU, upcoming segfault
:dust mite
:hair
:OVUM
:Data (a pixel on Rick Astley's shoulder), rust mite, fork();
:Peter Norton fighting a baxteriophage
:memory
:carbon nanotubes
:space elevator
:a line of silicon (Si), Electron Cloud, a man made out of arrows saying "sup?"
:silicon nucleus
:IPod femto
:Brian Greene knitting furiously [next to his knitting needles there is text saying ''clink, clink'']

==Trivia==
*The ballpit inside the apartment is a reference to [[150: Grownups]], in which Megan filled her apartment with playpen balls.
*The structure next to the couple in bed could be an elliptical dish to increase the sound from their [[Loud Sex]].
*[[1162: Log Scale]] and [[482: Height]] are other comics about the use of log scales.
*[[271: Powers of One]] mocks the concept of getting cool effects by zooming in/out by, instead of a log scale, using powers of one.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Illustrations of scale]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Rhythm Games]]
[[category:Sex]]

1002: Game AIs

2016-06-22T23:55:54Z

108.162.216.69: /* Computers Beat Humans */

{{comic
| number = 1002
| date = January 11, 2012
| title = Game AIs
| image = game_ais.png
| titletext = The top computer champion at Seven Minutes in Heaven is a Honda-built Realdoll, but to date it has been unable to outperform the human Seven Minutes in Heaven champion, Ken Jennings.
}}

==Explanation==
To understand the comic, you have to understand what the games are, so let's go (but first, the years in parenthesis in the comic are the year that the game was mastered by a computer):

===Solved===

: These games are considered "solved", meaning the ideal maneuver for each game state (Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four) or each of the limited starting positions (Checkers) has already been calculated. Computers aren't so much playing as they are recalculating the list of ideal maneuvers. The same could be said for the computer's human opponent, just at a slower pace.

*'''{{w|Tic-tac-toe}}''' or '''Noughts and Crosses''' in most of the rest of the British Commonwealth countries is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. This game nearly always ends in a tie, regardless of whether humans or computers play it, because the total number of positions is small.

*'''{{w|Nim}}''' is a mathematical game of strategy in which two players take turns removing objects from distinct heaps. On each turn, a player must remove at least one object, and may remove any number of objects provided they all come from the same heap.

*'''{{w|Ghost (game)|Ghost}}''' is a spoken word game in which players take turns adding letters to a growing word fragment. The loser is the first person who completes a valid word or who creates a fragment that cannot be the start of a word.

*'''{{w|Connect Four}}''' (or '''Captain's Mistress''', '''Four Up''', '''Plot Four''', '''Find Four''', '''Fourplay''', '''Four in a Row''', '''Four in a Line''') is a two-player game in which the players first choose a color and then take turns dropping their colored discs from the top into a seven-column, six-row vertically-suspended grid.

*'''{{w|Gomoku}}''' (or '''Gobang''', '''Five in a Row''') is an abstract strategy board game. It is traditionally played with go pieces (black and white stones) on a go board (19x19 intersections); however, because once placed, pieces are not moved or removed from the board, gomoku may also be played as a paper and pencil game. This game is known in several countries under different names.
:Black plays first, and players alternate in placing a stone of their color on an empty intersection. The winner is the first player to get an unbroken row of five stones horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

*'''{{w|Draughts|Checkers}}''' (in the United States, or '''draughts''' in the United Kingdom) is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces.

===Computers Beat Humans===

:The below games cannot be "solved" due to the factors of random numbers, an incredibly large number of starting positions, or the existence of multiple "ideal" maneuvers for each position. That said, a computer's faster reaction time, higher degree of consistency in making the right decision, and reduced risk of user error make the computer objectively better than the human opponent in nearly all situations.

*'''{{w|Scrabble}}''' is a word game in which two to four players score points by forming words from individual lettered tiles on a gameboard marked with a 15-by-15 grid.

*'''{{w|Counter-Strike|CounterStrike}}''' most likely refers to the popular multiplayer shooter video game about terrorists and counter-terrorists. Counter-Strike is notorious for the large variety of cheating tools that have been made for it; a computer would have essentially perfect accuracy and reflexes, essentially making it the {{w|aimbot}} from hell. It is theoretically possible for a skilled player to beat an AI, but it would be ''extremely'' difficult to do so.

*'''{{w|Beer pong}}''' (or '''Beirut''') is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup of beer on the other end.
:[http://hacknmod.com/hack/beer-pong-robot-precision-air-pressure/ Here's the video] of the University of Illinois robot mentioned in the comic.

*'''{{w|Reversi}}''' (marketed by Pressman under the trade name '''Othello''') is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side. Pieces typically are disks with a light and a dark face, each face belonging to one player. The player's goal is to have a majority of their colored pieces showing at the end of the game, turning over as many of their opponent's pieces as possible.

*'''{{w|Chess}}''' is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns, each of these types of pieces moving differently.
:The note mentions "the first game to be won by a chess-playing computer against a reigning world champion under normal chess tournament conditions", in the {{w|Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov}} match on February 10, 1996, and the [http://en.chessbase.com/post/bilbao-the-humans-strike-back Ponomariov vs Fritz] game in the Man vs Machine World Team Championship on November 21, 2005, considered the "last win by a human against top computer".

*'''{{w|Jeopardy!}}''' is an American quiz show featuring trivia in history, literature, the arts, pop culture, science, sports, geography, wordplay, and more. The show has a unique answer-and-question format in which contestants are presented with clues in the form of answers, and must phrase their responses in question form.
:Ken Jennings, mentioned in the title text, is a famous Jeopardy champion who was beaten by {{w|Watson (computer)|Watson}}, an IBM computer.

===Humans Beat Computers===

:The below games are incredibly difficult to "solve" due to the near-infinite number of possible positions. Computers built in the early 21st century would take years to calculate a single "ideal" move. Worse, the human opponent has the ability to "bluff"; that is, to make a bad move, thus baiting the computer into a trap. Complex algorithms have been devised to make moves in a reasonable timeframe, but so far they are all highly vulnerable to bluffing. As mentioned in the comic, focused research and development is working on refining these algorithms to play the games better.

*'''{{w|StarCraft}}''' is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game. The game revolves around three species fighting for dominance in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy known as the Koprulu Sector: the Terrans, humans exiled from Earth skilled at adapting to any situation; the Zerg, a race of insectoid aliens in pursuit of genetic perfection, obsessed with assimilating other races; and the Protoss, a humanoid species with advanced technology and psionic abilities, attempting to preserve their civilization and strict philosophical way of living from the Zerg. While even average Starcraft players can defeat the AIs that originally shipped with the games, Starcraft has since been adopted as a standard benchmark for AI research, largely because of its excellent balance. Thanks to that attention, computers can now challenge some expert players, and the trend does not look promising for human players.

*'''{{w|Poker}}''' is a family of card games involving betting and individualistic play whereby the winner is determined by the ranks and combinations of their cards, some of which remain hidden until the end of the game. It is also, however, a game of deception and intimidation, the ubiquitous "poker face" being considered the most important part of the game.

*'''{{w|Arimaa}}''' is a two-player abstract strategy board game that can be played using the same equipment as chess. Arimaa was designed to be more difficult for artificial intelligences to play than chess. Arimaa was invented by Omar Syed, an Indian American computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence. Syed was inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat at the hands of the chess computer Deep Blue to design a new game which could be played with a standard chess set, would be difficult for computers to play well, but would have rules simple enough for his then four-year-old son Aamir to understand. On April 18, 2015, a computer won [http://arimaa.com/arimaa/challenge/ the "Arimaa Challenge"], so this comic is now out of date with respect to Arimaa; it should move above ''Starcraft'' or ''Jeopardy!''.

*'''{{w|Go (game)|Go}}''' is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago. The game is noted for being rich in strategy despite its relatively simple rules. The game is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones on the vacant intersections (called "points") of a grid of 19×19 lines (beginners often play on smaller 9×9 and 13×13 boards). The object of the game is to use one's stones to control a larger amount of territory of the board than the opponent. '''Update:''' on March 15, 2016, Google's {{w|AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol|AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol}}, who was often seen as the dominant human player over the last decade, 4 games to 1 in a widely viewed match, and {{w|Computer Go}} was expected to become more dominant over time.

*'''{{w|Snakes and Ladders}}''' (or '''Chutes and Ladders''') is an ancient Indian {{w|race game}}, where the moves are decided entirely by die rolls. A number of tiles are connected by pictures of ladders and snakes (or chutes) which makes the game piece jump forward or backward, respectively. Since the game is decided by pure chance, it occupies the limbo where a computer will always be ''exactly'' as likely to win as a human (which might mean it should be located right between 'humans beat computers' and 'computers beat humans').

===Computers cannot compete===

*'''{{w|Mao (card game)|Mao}}''' (or '''Mau''') is a card game of the Shedding family, in which the aim is to get rid of all of the cards in hand without breaking certain unspoken rules. The game is from a subset of the Stops family, and is similar in structure to the card game Uno.
:The game forbids its players from explaining the rules, and new players are often told only "the only rule you may be told is this one." The ultimate goal of the game is to be the first player to get rid of all the cards in their hand. Computers would have a difficult time integrating into Mao either because they would know all the rules -- and thus be disqualified or simply ignored by the players -- or would need a complicated learning engine that quite simply doesn't exist.

*'''{{w|Seven minutes in heaven|Seven Minutes in Heaven}}''' is a teenagers' party game first recorded as being played in Cincinnati in the early 1950s. Two people are selected to go into a closet or other dark enclosed space and do whatever they like for seven minutes. Sexual activities are allowed; however kissing and making out are more common.
:As the game is focused on human interaction, there's not a whole lot a modern computer can ''do'' in the closet. It would need some kind of robotic body in order to interact with its human partner, and emotion engines that could feel pleasure and displeasure in order to make decisions. The title text claims that {{w|Honda|Honda Motor Company}} has invented a "{{w|RealDoll}}" (sex toy shaped like a mannequin) with rudimentary Seven Minutes in Heaven capabilities, but they pale in comparison to a human's.

And finally
*'''{{w|Calvin and Hobbes#Calvinball|Calvinball}}''' is a reference to the comic strip {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} by {{w|Bill Watterson}}.
:Calvinball is a game played by Calvin and Hobbes as a rebellion against organized team sports; according to Hobbes, "No sport is less organized than Calvinball!" Calvinball was first introduced to the readers at the end of a 1990 storyline involving Calvin reluctantly joining recess baseball. It quickly became a staple of the comic afterwards.
:The only hint at the true creation of the game ironically comes from the last Calvinball strip, in which a game of football quickly devolves into a game of Calvinball. Calvin remarks that "sooner or later, all our games turn into Calvinball," suggesting a similar scenario that directly led to the creation of the sport. Calvin and Hobbes usually play by themselves, although in one storyline Rosalyn (Calvin's baby-sitter) plays in return for Calvin doing his homework, and plays very well once she realizes that the rules are made up on the spot.
:The only consistent rule states that Calvinball may never be played with the same rules twice. Scoring is also arbitrary, with Hobbes at times reporting scores of "Q to 12" and "oogy to boogy." The only recognizable sports Calvinball resembles are the ones it emulates (i.e., a cross between croquet, polo, badminton, capture the flag, and volleyball.)
::Long story short, the game is a manifestation of pure chaos and the human imagination, far beyond the meager capabilities of silicon and circuitry.

==Transcript==
:Difficulty of Various Games for Computers

:[A diagram. The left column describes various levels of skill for the most capable computers in decreasing performance against humans. The right side lists games in each particular section, in increasing game difficulty. There are labels denoting the hard and easy ends of the diagram.]

:'''Easy'''
:{| class="wikitable" style="background:white;" align="center"
| rowspan="6" | Solved Computers can play perfectly
| rowspan="4" | Solved for all possible positions
| Tic-tac-toe
|-
| Nim
|-
| Ghost (1989)
|-
| Connect Four (1995)
|-
| rowspan="2" | Solved for starting positions
| Gomoku
|-
| Checkers (2007)
|-
| rowspan="6" colspan="2" | Computers can beat top humans
| Scrabble
|-
| CounterStrike
|-
| Beer Pong (UIUC robot)
|-
| Reversi
|-
| Chess<div style="font-size:smaller; text-align:left;">
* February 10, 1996: First win by computer against top human
* November 21, 2005: Last win by human against top computer
</div>
|-
| Jeopardy
|-
| colspan="2" rowspan="5" | Computers still lose to top humans
(but focused R&D could change this)
| StarCraft
|-
| Poker
|-
| Arimaa
|-
| Go
|-
| rowspan="2" | Snakes and Ladders
|-
| colspan="2" rowspan="4" | Computers may ''never'' outplay humans
|-
| Mao
|-
| Seven Minutes in Heaven
|-
| Calvinball
|}
:'''Hard'''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Calvin and Hobbes]]

357: Flies

2016-05-07T02:45:16Z

108.162.216.69: /* Connected Cueball's rudeness to his friend's purpose for rudeness to his mother. */

{{comic
| number = 357
| date = December 14, 2007
| title = Flies
| image = flies.png
| titletext = I don't know about houseflies, but we definitely caught a lot of fruit flies with our vinegar bowl. Hooray science!
}}

==Explanation==
The saying "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" means that people are more likely to be won over with politeness than hostility.

When [[Cueball]]'s friend tells him this after he replies to a "{{W|noob}}" using swear words, he then says that the saying is literally false by saying that {{w|balsamic vinegar}} attracts more flies than honey. He then tells his friend to try it with his own {{w|Fruit fly|fruit flies}}. Fruit flies are attracted to the products of fermentation, particularly to alcohol and ethanoic acid. The acidity in vinegar is due mostly to ethanoic acid.

When Cueball's statement is found true, as balsamic vinegar smells like sweet and decomposing fruit to the fruit flies, his friend complains to his mother (with a vitriol influenced by Cueball, perhaps to get some favor) that she lied to him. He then says that another saying, "a watched pot never boils", is also literally false. That saying means that an event that is monitored with impatient attention will seem to take longer.

In the title text it seems that [[Randall]] explains why he wrote this comic — his vinegar bowl attracted a lot of fruit flies. However, he has not done the experiment with {{w|Housefly|houseflies}}.

The notion of a watched pot not boiling is ascribed to Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym "Poor Richard". He writes "a watched pot is slow to boil", meaning "Time feels longer when you're waiting for something to happen."[http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/watched-pot-never-boils.html]

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is typing on a computer, and his friend is lying on the floor.]
:"Noob" (on computer): *$@#!
:Friend: Hey, ease up on the noobs. Like my mom always said, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

:[Cueball has turned his chair around.]
:Cueball: No, you don't.
:Friend: You don't?
:Cueball: Nope, set out a bowl of balsamic and a bowl of honey. The vinegar gets more.

:[Cueball's friend is now sitting on the floor.]
:Friend: ...Seriously?
:Cueball: You have fruit flies. Try it yourself.

:Later:
:[Cueball's friend is standing in front of a table, talking into a phone. On the table, there are two bowls, and the bowl on the left seems to be surrounded by flies.]
:Friend: Mother! You ''lied'' to me! And it gets worse. I was watching a pot yesterday, and guess what it did? It ''boiled,'' mother.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Science]]

519: 11th Grade

2015-08-03T12:05:35Z

108.162.216.69: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 519
| date = December 19, 2008
| title = 11th Grade
| image = 11th_grade.png
| titletext = And the ten minutes striking up a conversation with that strange kid in homeroom sometimes matters more than every other part of high school combined.
}}

==Explanation==
This strip is a comparison about the time spent in 11th grade doing various things, and how important those things are to one's future. The first two bars on the chart are 900 hours of class, which is about 180 hours short of how many hours kids spend in school each year (most likely to show the lunch hour), and 400 hours of homework, or an average of about 2.2 hours per school day. Conversely, idly messing around in {{w|Perl}} (a programming language) for only one weekend is shown to have a much larger impact on one's future — specifically Randall's, as learning how to code would have been key to his job as a robotics engineer. This is likely due to the skills one can pick up in even just a single weekend in contrast to the often redundant, trivial or generalist information that schools tend to convey.

The title text is a further exaggeration, claiming that striking up a conversation with the strange kid at school could be far more important than all four years of a high school education. There is always the chance that "that strange kid" might turn out to be the next {{w|Mark Zuckerberg}}. Or that he knows a guy who can find you your first job. Or he's the one who tells you about his interest in a to you yet unknown topic and sparks your interest in it as well, and maybe it turns into your future career. Or, conversely, the weird kid could be a school shooter.

==Transcript==
:[Above a bar graph:]
:11th-grade activities:
:[The y axis is labeled:]
:Usefulness to career success
:[Above the x-axis are two small and one huge bar. Below the axis each bar is labeled:]
:900 hours of classes
:400 hours of homework
:One weekend messing with Perl

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Programming]]

Talk:16: Monty Python -- Enough

2015-02-22T19:50:00Z

108.162.216.69:

An army of suicidal scotsmen are outside. They would like to object to your refusal to remember their plight. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

== Comic image broken ==

I'm hoping that someone else will notice this comment and fix it, since I'm not sure how to. --[[Special:Contributions/143.112.144.129|143.112.144.129]] 22:53, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

fixed. [[Special:Contributions/59.167.244.130|59.167.244.130]] 03:57, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

People are always asking my why I spend so much time quoting Monty Python, but I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition! It's the meaning of life, Bruce. My mother just says "He's a very naughty boy!", but that might just be because I dress in women's clothing and hang around in bars. No, no, no, sorry, it's all getting too silly now. My brain hurts, and now for something completely different. It's... [[Special:Contributions/178.98.31.27|178.98.31.27]] 16:52, 25 June 2013 (UTC) (PS., sorry for all this spam, spam, spam, spam and spam. Perhaps I should just have stripped naked and played with my organ, instead?)

"Always look on the bright side of life, always look on the right side of life." {{unsigned ip|108.162.249.223}}

In fairness, the urge to repeat things verbatim is the reason that The Odyssey, Beowulf, Cinderella, and countless other stories still exist. People aren't going to abandon the oral tradition just because it's become obsolete.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.69|108.162.216.69]] 19:50, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Talk:1465: xkcd Phone 2

2014-12-27T02:44:49Z

108.162.216.69:

I think the "Waterproof (interior only)" is related to a so-called joke that I first heard from a smart-ass salesman years ago in a camera store when I was considering a certain camera. "Is it waterproof?" I asked. "Oh yes," he replied, "once water gets into it, it will never come out again!" --[[User:RenniePet|RenniePet]] ([[User talk:RenniePet|talk]]) 08:05, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Can you unify the transcription and description? Since the transcript starts from the top left, while description starts from bottom left. [[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 09:43, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I have made http://www.xkcd.ga and http://www.xkcd.tk both forward to http://www.explainxkcd.com. Is this ok?[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 08:47, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Could the StackOverflow part also hint at StackSort and http://xkcd.com/1185/ ? [[User:Pinkishu|Pinkishu]] ([[User talk:Pinkishu|talk]]) 14:58, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
:No. StackOverflow is a really popular site for programmers and such. It's propbably to be expected that it has been mentioned multiple times here. Also, StackSort (or sorting in general) doesn't make much sense in this context. -- [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.13|141.101.104.13]] 23:02, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
::I think they meant that the OS could be built in a manner similar to the StackSort, taking various snippets of phone-os code and putting them together. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.69|108.162.216.69]] 02:44, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

I am thinking the "Fitbit fitness evaluator" is fully meta. That is it is meant to monitor/ asses the digital 'health/fitness' status of your human health/fitness monitoring device. [[User:Iggynelix|Iggynelix]] ([[User talk:Iggynelix|talk]]) 18:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

A phone for your other hand®–reads like the phone is capable of being operated by your non-dominant hand, leaving your dominant hand free for–er, other activities... [[User:Laverock|Laverock]] ([[User talk:Laverock|talk]]) 19:02, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
: Such as using the XKCD Phone model 1, of course! (You do have two ears, as well as two hands, don't you?) --[[User:RenniePet|RenniePet]] ([[User talk:RenniePet|talk]]) 01:27, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

1465: xkcd Phone 2

2014-12-26T06:50:37Z

108.162.216.69: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1465
| date = December 26, 2014
| title = xkcd Phone 2
| image = xkcd_phone_2.png
| titletext = Washable, though only once.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a followup to https://xkcd.com/1363/, which debuted the original xkcd Phone. Like [[xkcd Phone]] 1, this comic continues to parody modern smartphone advertisement by imitating a promotional image for a fictional phone. Like the previous XKCD Phone, the comic touts a variety of features which are either pointless, misleading, or physically impossible.

Going clockwise from the bottom left:
*'''Auto-Rotating Case: Phones often feature an auto-rotating display (to treat the phone as portrait or landscape), but this is useless.
*'''OS by Stackoverflow®:''' [http://stackoverflow.com/ Stackoverflow.com] is a public question/answer forum for programmers, indicating that the operating system of the XKCD Phone 2 was developed by anonymous internet volunteers rather than by a professional development team.
*'''3D Materials:''' As all real materials are 3-dimensional, which is a given.
*'''Scroll lock:''' A computer key invented by [http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/978:_Citogenesis/ Steven Chu], its use is unknown to all.
*'''Coin slot:''' In most phones, this would be the charging port. Payphones have coin slots.
*'''Bug drawer:''' This is most likely the cover for other ports, though looks like a small drawer, capable of only holding bug-sized items. Possibly a joke on software bugs, which would, being virtual rather than physical, easily fit inside this area.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}

{{comic discussion}}

1465: xkcd Phone 2

2014-12-26T06:40:02Z

108.162.216.69: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1465
| date = December 26, 2014
| title = xkcd Phone 2
| image = xkcd_phone_2.png
| titletext = Washable, though only once.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a followup to https://xkcd.com/1363/, which debuted the original xkcd Phone. Like [[xkcd Phone]] 1, this comic continues to parody modern smartphone advertisement by imitating a promotional image for a fictional phone. Like the previous XKCD Phone, the comic touts a variety of features which are either pointless, misleading, or physically impossible.

Going clockwise from the bottom left:
*'''Auto-Rotating Case: Phones often feature an auto-rotating display (to treat the phone as portrait or landscape), but this is useless.
*'''OS by Stackoverflow®:''' [http://stackoverflow.com/ Stackoverflow.com] is a public question/answer forum for programmers, indicating that the operating system of the XKCD Phone 2 was developed by anonymous internet volunteers rather than by a professional development team.
*'''3D Materials:''' As all real materials are 3-dimensional, which is a given.
*'''Scroll lock:'''
*'''Coin slot:''' In most phones, this would be the charging port. Payphones have coin slots.
*'''Bug drawer:''' This is most likely the cover for other ports, though looks like a small drawer, capable of only holding bug-sized items. Possibly a joke on software bugs, which would, being virtual rather than physical, easily fit inside this area.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}

{{comic discussion}}

853: Consecutive Vowels

2014-12-13T20:57:51Z

108.162.216.69: /* Explanation */ y IS a vowel here

{{comic
| number = 853
| date = January 28, 2011
| title = Consecutive Vowels
| image = consecutive_vowels.png
| titletext = But the windows! What if there's a voyeur watchi-- wait, now I'm turned on too.
}}

==Explanation==
After running some analysis on a database, [[Cueball]] shows [[Megan]] a chart depicting the relationship between sexual arousal and consecutive vowels, showing that a high amount of consecutive vowels is linked to higher sexual arousal. At first, it could be theorised to be due to drawn out moans or screams during lovemaking and orgasm (Ooooh! Yeeeees!).

Megan says she doesn't get it, but Cueball interrupts her with "queueing", a word with 5 consecutive vowels. This immediately arouses Megan, who grabs Cueball and shouts "FUCK ME NOW." It turns out that the consecutive vowels themselves appear to cause arousal, rather than arousal causing the use of consecutive vowels.

The title text shows that Cueball is fearful that there may be a voyeur peeking at them, but as "voyeur" has 4 consecutive vowels because "y" is a vowel in this case, Cueball gets turned on as well.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: I was running a factor analysis on this huge database, and check out what it found:
:[Cueball holds up the chart.]

:[A graph plotting "sexual arousal" against "consecutive vowels." The trendline is a smooth exponential curve.]

:Megan: Huh? This chart makes no sense. What-
:Cueball: "Queueing"

:[Megan grabs Cueball.]
:Megan: ''FUCK ME NOW.''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Sex]]

545: Neutrality Schmeutrality

2014-12-09T04:10:55Z

108.162.216.69: /* Explanation */ changed /shm/ to /ʃm/. /shm/ is the S sound followed by the H sound followed by the M sound. /ʃm/ is the SH sound followed by the M sound

{{comic
| number = 545
| date = February 18, 2009
| title = Neutrality Schmeutrality
| image = neutrality schmeutrality.png‎
| titletext = 'Hey, everyone, you can totally trust that I didn't do a word count on MY edit!'
}}

==Explanation==

{{w|Wikipedia}} is an online encyclopedia with content developed and submitted by volunteers around the world. In fact, its slogan is "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Most articles on the site can be altered by anyone with access to Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has set some standards for its operation, which it refers to as the "Five pillars of Wikipedia". One of these pillars is titled "Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view."

{{w|Pro-life}} and {{w|pro-choice}} refer to two opposing viewpoints in the debate of the moral and legal rights concerning abortion. For many on both sides, it is a very emotional topic.

[[Black Hat]] has decided to prove that you can create an article which fundamentally cannot remain neutral. Since his charitable donation is determined by the word count of the article, any submission to Wikipedia must result in supporting either pro-life or pro-choice. And with a reward of one million dollars, it is unlikely that either side would allow an article to remain unedited which supported its opponent.

The title text is a statement from the Wikipedia author in an attempt to assert the neutrality of the submission, claiming no word count was performed before posting (an unlikely scenario).

The title references an old (read, "pre-Internet") meme, possibly of Yiddish origin, known as [[wikipedia:shm-reduplication|shm-reduplication]]. The speaker replaces the initial consonant cluster (have it 0, 1, 2, or 1000+ consonants) with the cluster "schm", read /ʃm/, and says the new word after the unadulterated word, as in the title. This denotes an active apathy or an intentional disregard of the authority (for it is usually an authority or someone in a similar position) being mocked. In this case, Black Hat is disregarding Wikipedia's neutrality doctrine with his word-count dependent donation rule.

==Transcript==
:TRIVIA: It's possible to create events which Wikipedia cannot cover neutrally
:[Black Hat is at a press conference in which he is making an announcement.]
:Black Hat: In a week, I will be donating $1,000,000 to a recipient determined by the word count of the Wikipedia article about this event. If it's even, the money goes to pro-choice activists. If it's odd, pro-life.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]

Talk:329: Turing Test

2014-12-08T00:07:09Z

108.162.216.69: /* Victorian era ended in 1901 */ new section

I think this is also a pretty obvious joke about Cleverbot, which constantly insists that ''you'' are a robot and ''it'' is a human. (See also [[948: AI]]) [[Special:Contributions/24.41.66.114|24.41.66.114]] 02:33, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

== Victorian era ended in 1901 ==

Turing was convicted in 1952.

1456: On the Moon

2014-12-07T00:19:49Z

108.162.216.69: /* Explanation */ added #WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant

{{comic
| number = 1456
| date = December 5, 2014
| title = On the Moon
| image = on_the_moon.png
| titletext = "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on Venus and returning him safely to--" [an aide frantically whispers in the president's ear for a moment] "... of landing a man on Venus."
}}

==Explanation==
The phrase "If we can land a man on the Moon, why can't we <blank>" is commonly used to question a perceived shortcoming of some company, government or humanity in general. The {{w|Apollo program}} landed {{w|List of Apollo astronauts#Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon|twelve astronauts}} on the {{w|Moon}} in six landing missions from July 1969 to December 1972 and returned all of those twelve astronauts safely to the Earth. (However, from 1964 to 1967, there were eight deaths of astronauts or men training to be astronauts: three in the Apollo One fire, four in T-38 crashes, and one in a F-104 crash.) The premise is usually that, if "we" (whether referring generally to humanity, or specifically to the United States) have been able to achieve this extraordinary feat, our inability to achieve some lesser goal is questionable and/or ironic. Right after the Philae landing, the similar hashtag [https://twitter.com/hashtag/wecanlandonacometbutwecant #WeCanLandOnACometButWeCant] began on Twitter.

Here, Megan cuts Cueball's argument's short by implicitly reminding him that humanity has not put another human on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program in December 1972 (nearly 42 years at the time this comic was published). New manned programs to return to the Moon, such as the {{w|Constellation Program}}, have been repeatedly cancelled. The {{w|Orion (spacecraft)|Orion spacecraft}}, which will be capable of carrying humans beyond {{w|low Earth orbit}} for the first time in over 40 years, executed its first test flight on the day after this comic was published, but NASA and the U.S. government still lack a coherent vision for manned spaceflight to the Moon or any other destination beyond low Earth orbit.

The title text is a retelling of {{w|John F. Kennedy|President Kennedy's}} famous inspirational [http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/xzw1gaeeTES6khED14P1Iw.aspx address to the U.S. Congress in May 1961] ("I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth"), which set into motion the Apollo program, except that this time, the speaker is talking about putting a man on planet {{w|Venus}}. The aide presumably explains to the president that the surface of Venus is such a hostile place (due to factors including high temperature, crushing atmospheric pressure, strong winds, sulfuric acid clouds, etc.) that it is unlikely that anybody could land there and come back alive. Even unmanned hardened pre-cooled robotic probes either got crushed or fried before landing, or survived only {{w|Venera|a couple of hours at most}}. As a result, the president backtracks from the goal of returning the astronauts safely to the Earth and comically limits the aspiration to landing an astronaut on Venus, full stop, without regard to the astronaut's safe return. This differs slightly from Kennedy's goal, which included the safe return of at least one astronaut from the moon. Although the overall 8:12 ratio of deaths to moonwalkers (during the period for Kennedy's speech to the end of the Apollo program) was too high to be considered "safe" by most standards, Kennedy had specified the safety only of the men who landed on the moon, and set a goal of "a" man returning safely. Technically, even if most of the men who landed died, as long as one returned safely by the end of 1969, Kennedy's goal would have been met.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: If we could land a man on the Moon, why can't we-
:Megan: -land a man on the Moon?
:Cueball: ...ok, fair. But we're working on it, OK?

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Space]]

633: Blockbuster Mining

2014-10-07T00:35:03Z

108.162.216.69: /* Explanation */ "/w" to "with"

{{comic
| number = 633
| date = September 7, 2009
| title = Blockbuster Mining
| image = blockbuster mining.png
| titletext = The 2007 Bridge To Terebithia trailer put me off too much to see that particular movie, but I am cautiously optimistic about Where The Wild Things Are.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] has acquired the {{w|intellectual property}} rights to produce a movie, but is unsure of how to make it appealing to a wide audience. An off-screen character suggests hiring {{w|Michael Bay}}, a director and producer well known (and occasionally criticized) for his style of film adaptation. Cueball is unsure that the IP would be a good fit for a summer blockbuster, but is dismissed.

The following panels depict violent and gritty scenes from a spy thriller, starring an unknown and brutal female spy. In the last panel, she is revealed to be {{w|Harriet the Spy}}, the 11 year old protagonist of a bestselling children's book written by Louise Fitzhugh, as well as other spinoff books written by various other authors.

The comic references Hollywood's search for new stories to adapt to film, and how poor (not to mention {{w|Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters|violent}}) some of these adaptations can be. There is additional humor in the fact that the original novel is about school-child concerns such as friends and is not violent.

The {{w|Bridge to Terabithia (2007 film)|film adaptation}} of {{w|Bridge to Terabithia (novel)|Bridge to Terabithia}} had trailers that made it appear to have very little in common with the themes and tone of the novel. The actual movie is one of Hollywood's better book adaptations, but the trailers were extremely misleading & off-putting to fans of the novel, as in the title text. Viewers who were unfamiliar with the novel and saw the movie with expectations based on the trailer were also unprepared for the actual movie. The trailer was essentially every single special-effect shot from the movie, giving the impression it was a special-effects extravaganza, which would have been very inappropriate based on the novel, and does not reflect the actual content of the movie.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: We've acquired some new rights, but I'm not sure it's in the spirit to make it a blockbuster-
:Voice: Do it anyway. Take $100 million, hire Michael Bay.
:Cueball: But--
:Voice: ''NEXT!''

:[Panel is inverted, white on black background.]
:Harriet: They said if I were captured I should take my own life.
:Harriet: But I'd just as soon take yours.
:[Harriet is pointing two handguns at two men with machine guns.]

:''BOOM''
:[Harriet explodes off a cliff, carrying a rectangular object and a gun. In the background is a helicopter, some mountains, and the sea.]

:[Panel is inverted, white and red on black background.]
:Man: Stop! I'll talk!
:Harriet: No, I know everything, this is just for fun.
:[Harriet is holding a bloody pipe. Man is tied to a chair. There is blood pooling on the ground under the chair.]

:[Crosshairs follow a man.]
:Harriet: I'll be watching.

:[The panel is inverted colour, white on black.]
:Harriet
:the
:[in red] ''SPY''
:[A bloody spiral notebook, with blood streaks leading from it.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]