explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1179: ISO 8601

2020-03-08T15:05:43Z

141.101.107.168: Apparently that date format is also used in Korea?

{{comic
| number = 1179
| date = February 27, 2013
| title = ISO 8601
| image = iso_8601.png
| titletext = ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04.
}}

==Explanation==
When abbreviating the date into numerical form, {{w|Date format by country|various areas of the world}} tend to list the year, month, and day in different orders (as well as with different delimiting symbols), which can cause confusion particularly when the day value is 12 or lower allowing it to be easily interpreted as the month and vice versa. As a {{w|public service announcement}}, this comic states that there is in fact one international standard for writing numeric dates, set by the {{w|International Organization for Standardization}} in its {{w|ISO 8601}} standard: YYYY-MM-DD.

The comic then proceeds to list several discouraged ways of writing out the date of the comic's publication, as they do not match the standard. It begins with several commonly used ones in countries around the world, but then begins to list increasingly uncommon ways, ranging from strange (Roman numerals) to quirky (binary, Unix time) to essentially impossible (painting the numbers onto a black cat).

The title text provides a perfect example of the kind of ambiguity that can arise when non-standard formats are used. The ISO standard was in fact published on 1988-06-05 and amended on 2004-12-01. This is mentioned in the title text in MM/DD/YY format; however, there is no way to naturally figure this out, particularly with the second date. With the year truncated to two digits and all three numbers at 12 or lower, the date referring to December 1, 2004 may well be interpreted as 12 January 2004, or as 2012-01-04.

Date formats was again the subject in [[1340: Unique Date]].

The other mentioned formats are:

{| class=wikitable
! Date !! Explanation
|-
| 02/27/2013
| MM/DD/YYYY, used mostly in the United States.
|-
| 02/27/13
| MM/DD/YY, same as above but with the year shortened to two digits.
|-
| 27/02/2013
| DD/MM/YYYY, used variously in South America, Canada ({{w|Date_and_time_notation_in_Canada|officially uses ISO 8601}}), Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
|-
| 27/02/13
| DD/MM/YY, same as above but with the year shortened to two digits.
|-
| 20130227
| YYYYMMDD, same as ISO 8601 without delimiting punctuation. Allowed by the standard. Technically not ambiguous but is hard to read as a date at first glance.
|-
| 2013.02.27
| YYYY.MM.DD, used in Japan, South Korea and Hungary. Same as ISO 8601 except with different punctuation.
|-
| 27.02.13
| DD.MM.YY, used in Germany, Russia, and others.
|-
| 27-02-13
| DD-MM-YY, used in Denmark, Netherlands, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and others.
|-
| 27.2.13
| D.M.YY. It is common in several areas to abbreviate the month or day to a single digit and drop the leading zero when possible.
|-
| 2013. II. 27.
| YYYY. MM. DD., with month as {{w|Roman numerals}}, used in Hungary.
|-
| 27⁄2-13
| D⁄M-YY, traditional format in Sweden
|-
| 2013.158904109
| Year and decimal fraction of year. 0.158904109 is a decimal approximation of 58/365, with February 27 being the 58th day of the year. This format may be easier to read for computers/programs in some contexts, but is difficult for humans to interpret.
|-
| MMXIII-II-XXVII
| The ISO 8601 standard but written in Roman numerals. Never used as a traditional standard anywhere as it is hard to read, parse, and interpret for no benefit.
|-
| MMXIII LVII⁄CCCLXV
| Year followed by its partial fraction 57/365, all in Roman numerals. Equally useless as the above. As a note, apparently this 'standard' is different from the decimal fraction two rows above, as the decimal fraction notation uses the ''end'' of the day (first day of the year is 1/365 while the last is 365/365), while this uses the ''beginning'' (first day is 0/365 and last is 364/365).
|-
| 1330300800
| {{w|Unix time|UNIX Timestamp}}, a standard method of storing absolute time in many computer systems and defined as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 on 1970-01-01 (UTC). The Unix time listed here appears to mistakenly be for '''2012'''-02-27, which is also mentioned by [[Randall]] in the original transcript. The Unix Timestamp for 2013-02-27 would be 1361923200.
|-
| ((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/33
| A useless format where the numbers 2013, 2, and 27 written as needlessly long arithmetic expressions using just the digits 1 and 3. For additional confusion, the values are delimited by slashes, enabling confusion with the fraction bar. (If evaluated literally, the entire expression evaluates to 670.963, or 671 minus 1 divided by 27.)
|-
|    2  272013
| A nearly impossible to read date "format" that can be considered a parody "compromise" between different formats: rather than argue about the order in which the year, month, and day should be, they are simply all written on top of each other. As a "bonus", there is also no arguing over which separator character to use.
|-
| 10/11011/1101
| The US mm/dd/yy format in {{w|Binary number|binary}}, corresponding to 2/27/13. Never used for obvious reasons.
|-
| 02/27/20/13
| MM/DD/CC/YY, where CC stands for century. This format is never used. Note that while months and days count starting from 1, centuries and years in this format count from 0 for extra confusion. But the CC value is widely used on many operating systems to distinguish between the 20th and 21st century, represented by the values "19" and "20" because 1950 belongs to the 20th century.
|-
| <ruby><rb>0</rb><rb>1</rb><rb>2</rb><rb>3</rb><rb>7</rb><rt>2</rt><rt>3</rt><rt>1</rt><rt>4</rt><rtc style="ruby-position: under"><rt>5</rt><rt></rt><rt>67</rt><rt></rt><rt>8</rt></rtc></ruby>
| An obfuscated format where the small numbers indicate the positions where the large digits should be placed. In this reading, 0 is used at positions 2 and 5, 1 is used on position 3, etc.; the result being 20130227
|-
| [A hissing black cat with "2-27-13" painted on it]
| In Western cultures, black cats and the number 13 are associated with bad luck. The cat might also just be angry that someone covered it in paint.
|}

==Transcript==
:Public Service Announcement:

:Our different ways of writing dates as numbers can lead to online confusion. That's why in 1988 ISO set a global standard numeric date format. This is '''''the''''' correct way to write numeric dates:

::2013-02-27

:The following formats are therefore discouraged:
:*02/27/2013
:*02/27/13
:*27/02/2013
:*27/02/13
:*20130227
:*2013.02.27
:*27.02.13
:*27-02-13
:*27.2.13
:*2013. II. 27.
:*27⁄2-13
:*2013.158904109
:*MMXIII-II-XXVII
:*MMXIII LVII⁄CCCLXV
:*1330300800
:*((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/33
:*   2  272013 [the numbers 2013, 02, and 27 written overlapping each other]
:*10/11011/1101
:*02/27/20/13
:*2053112674378
:*[A black cat with 2-27-13 scrawled across its body in dripping white paint.]
:**Cat: ''Hissss''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Math]]

Talk:2271: Grandpa Jason and Grandpa Chad

2020-02-23T17:30:47Z

141.101.107.168:

Is the Title Text a callback to 2268 with the "no further research is needed" comment? [[User:Stickfigurefan|Stickfigurefan]] ([[User talk:Stickfigurefan|talk]]) 17:58, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
*That was the first thing that came to my mind. Since researching when people named Jason and Chad became grandparents is far from a top research priority, one can indeed say that further research is not "needed". That said, though, I would have liked to have seen the female counterparts, to indicate what "Grandma" names are also coming into vogue now. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.195|162.158.74.195]] 18:05, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
**Agree. I added a few sentences to that effect. To ela*borate: Enough research has been done to support the main joke which is the incongruity between what specific names implied in the 70's and what they imply today. More specific information would not improve the joke. And, let's face it, would not be very interesting. [[User:Epsilon|Epsilon]] ([[User talk:Epsilon|talk]]) 11:04, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
**Note: Should we explain *x* to any non-nerds (or, the non-nerd ?) reading this? For text rendered in plain ASCII the asterisks surrounding a word or a phrase imply that this text should have been rendered in bold. I.e. emphasized. This might not be obvious to everybody. [[User:Epsilon|Epsilon]] ([[User talk:Epsilon|talk]]) 11:04, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
*Looks like I may have edited the page at the same time as someone else. Sorry about that! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.148|108.162.216.148]] 18:41, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
*Does someone know of -- and can add to the explanation -- a reason why Jason and Chad are coming into popularity as names? In Australia, Jason Donovan was an actor who played a lead character in the popular soap "Neighbours" alongside Kylie Minogue (which is why, in Australia, we'd be getting "Grandma Kylie" coming into vogue. [[User:DrSamCarter|DrSamCarter]] ([[User talk:DrSamCarter|talk]]) 20:51, 21 February 2020 (UTC)DrSamCarter
**Well, to be precise, Jason and Chad came into popularity about 50 years ago, but I don't know why that happened at that time. While it's true that you should be seeing a bunch of "Grandma Kylie"s in Australia now, Kylie Minogue can't take the credit for that. She was born into a generation where the name was already popular. In 1970, Kylie was the 5th most popular name for baby girls in Australia, so Kylie Minogue, born in 1968, might have gone to school with a number of other Kylies, well before she joined the cast of "Neighbours" in 1986. The name Kylie didn't catch on in the U.S. until much later, so it'll be years before we see a significant number of "Grandma Kylie"s here. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.17|162.158.74.17]] 00:38, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
***{{w|Jason and the Argonauts (1963 film)|Jason and the Argonauts}} came out in 1963. Given the slower speed of film distribution, it is not farfecthed to think that some future parents were seeing it for the first time in the 70s and thought that would be a groovy name for their kids, or just watched it growing up and the name stuck with them. (Source for this being the most famous Jason: the Baby Boomers of America wouldn't talk about any other Jason while I was growing up).
:::Chad is a little harder. While there ''is'' a {{w|The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come|movie in the same time period with a protagonist named Chad}}, it was nowhere near as successful as Jason and the Argonauts. There was also a {{w|Chad Allan (musician)|famous Canadian TV host named Chad}} at the time. Since the nickname {{w|Chad (slang)|originated near the Canadian border}}, it seems like a more likely candidate.
:::--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.10|162.158.122.10]] 17:15, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

In case someone wants to do further research on The Netherlands, here's some data on first names popularity: https://www.meertens.knaw.nl/nvb/english --[[User:IByte|IByte]] ([[User talk:IByte|talk]]) 09:55, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Current wiki link to Chad (slang) might be better changed to {{w|Chad (name)}}. And, while we're there, one could also make Jason into the {{w|Jason_(given_name)}} link or similar? ((Re-edit to say that I understand the Chad Slang link is important. Maybe put that over another useful leap-off term, letting legitimate Jasons and Chads get their own glory???)) And I find the range of ages of grandparentage to be interesting, with both friends and relatives having rushed into new generations far quicker than me. (I have... four..? first cousins twice removed, if I haven't forgotten another one of them, and I think one of ''them'' might become a parent before I do.) Or maybe I'm just taking too long to settle down? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.26|162.158.159.26]] 15:12, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I look at that graph, then think about the fact that my grandfather was born in 1870, my father in 1918, and I in 1969 (so my grandfather was 48 when my dad was born, and would have been 99 when I was born) and if things work out and I have my first child this year I will be 51 when it is born. Who are the people having kids so young to pull that curve down so far that 50 is the *average* age for being a *grandparent?* I know there are occasional out-of-wedlock births to kids in college or even high school, but if those stats are correct that would seem to dramatically underscore the need for better sex education, and better access to birth control, in schools.
--[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.139|172.69.63.139]] 07:00, 23 February 2020‎ (UTC)
:For what it's worth, I'm a millennial and my parents "had me" at 32, and it was considered "a little late in life" by their peers, even though they were just following my grandparents before them. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.10|162.158.122.10]] 17:15, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
:I don't have his DOB handy (though its on a family tree file, I wrote up a few years ago) but my Grandad died when I was v.young, being quite old for his generation, but also maybe industry-related ill health didn't help his whole cohort; my father was very fit and active (for most of his life, until he wasn't) and died at a decent age of 88, but before I in turn had kids for him to grandparent (he was in his forties before I arrived on the scene and I've not been any more rushed in this). I could easily not see grandchildren of my own. And I have a cousin married to a Jason! (Not yet a grandpa, either - though it could easily happen in the next year or two, though that would depend very much upon his daughter of course, IYSWIM.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.168|141.101.107.168]] 17:30, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

1959: The Simpsons

2018-02-23T22:22:18Z

141.101.107.168: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1959
| date = February 23, 2018
| title = The Simpsons
| image = the_simpsons.png
| titletext = In-universe, Bart Simpson and Harry Potter were the same age in 1990. Bart is perpetually 10 years old because of a spell put on his town by someone trying to keep him from getting his Hogwarts letter.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by MATT GROENING - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

''{{w|The Simpsons}}'' is an American {{w|animated sitcom}} centered on the lives of the fictitious {{w|Simpson family}}. It is a very long-running series, having started with {{w|Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire|a Christmas episode}} in 1989, with the rest of {{w|The Simpsons (season 1)|the first season}} airing in 1990. As of the publication of this strip, it is still in production, having been on the air for 28 years with the same characters and primary cast. The decision was made early in the series that the characters wouldn't age, meaning that the parents, {{w|Homer Simpson|Homer}} and {{w|Marge Simpson|Marge}}, remained perpetually in their mid-thirties. The three children, {{w|Bart Simpson|Bart}}, {{w|Lisa Simpson|Lisa}}, and {{w|Maggie Simpson|Maggie}}, have remained 10, 8, and 1 year old, respectively. One of the interesting impacts of this dynamic is that the audience and the world have significantly aged over the course of the show, but the characters remain the same age. A rather dramatic example is that many of the early fans were similar in age to the children, but have now grown up, many have married and had children of their own, and they are now closer in age to the parents. This is a commentary on the longevity of the show.

The title text further relates this to the {{w|Harry Potter}} series, providing an explanation for why nobody has aged. Harry Potter is the protagonist in a series of young adult novels (later adapted into films) about the adventures of a boy wizard in his magical school, {{w|Hogwarts}}. The series begins when Harry is accepted to Hogwarts, at age 11, and the timeline implies that he was born in 1980. When "The Simpsons" began, Bart was 10, implying he was also born in 1980. Unlike Bart Simpson, Harry and his compatriots explicitly age over the course of the series. This strip ties the two series together, joking that the lack of aging in the Simpsons is a result of magic from the Harry Potter universe, intended to stop Bart from ever turning 11, for fear that he'd be accepted to Hogwarts.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|First draft. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A black frame containing a table of two columns and three rows, mostly in grey. The columns are titled 1990 and 2018, the rows are titled Lisa, Bart, and Homer & Marge. Lisa & Bart's ages now, as well as Homer & Marge's age in 1990, are in black, surrounded by a black jellybean-shaped loop visually grouping these three entries together.]

:Fun Fact:
:{| class="wikitable style="border:none;"|
|-
| || 1990 || 2018
|-
| Lisa || 8 || 36
|-
| Bart || 10 || 38
|-
| Homer & Marge || 36-ish || 64-ish
|-
|}

:[Caption below:]
:If you were Bart and Lisa's age during the first few seasons of The Simpsons, this year you're the same age as Homer and Marge.

==Trivia==
This is another entry in xkcd's [[:Category:Comics_to_make_one_feel_old|genre of comics]] that emphasize how surprising the passage of time can be.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Fun fact]]

1957: 2018 CVE List

2018-02-19T10:37:18Z

141.101.107.168:

{{comic
| number = 1957
| date = February 19, 2018
| title = 2018 CVE List
| image = 2018_cve_list.png
| titletext = CVE-2018-?????: It turns out Bruce Schneier is just two mischevious kids in a trenchcoat.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HACKING THIS WIKI VIA THE EDIT BOX - The explanation looks like a list. Explain the comic and put the security vulnerabilities in a table. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{|class="wikitable"
!Security vulnerability
!Notes
|-
|Apple products crash when displaying certain Telugu or Bengali letter combinations.
|This refers to a real vulnerability in iOS and MacOS publicized a few days before the comic released <ref>https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/iphone-text-bomb-ios-mac-crash-apple/</ref>.
|-
|An attacker can use a timing attack to extploit[sic] a race condition in garbage collection to extract a limited number of bits from the Wikipedia article on Claude Shannon.
|Timing Attack to exploit a race condition in garbage collection refers to Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws that can be exploited in cloud server like the ones in Wikipedia
|-
|At the cafe on third street, the post-it note with the wifi password is visible from the sidewalk.
|This could refer to the hawaian missile alert incident
|-
|A remote attacker can inject arbitrary text into public-facing pages via the comments box.
|Describes a common feature on news sites or social media sites like Facebook. The possibility for users to "inject" text into the page is by design. This is a humorous reference to the relatively common security vulnerability "[[Wikipedia:Cross-site_scripting|persistent cross-site scripting]]", where input provided by the user is displayed to other users in a dangerous fashion that allows attackers to inject arbitrary HTML or Javascript code into e.g. a comment section. It might also be a humorous reference to the events before, during and after the 2016 US Presidential elections where Internet Research Agency employees based remotely in St. Petersburg, Russia, but disguised as US citizens, "injected" arbitrary text in the form of political propaganda into comments on multiple web sites, according to an indictment returned by a federal grand jury on February 16, 2018.
|-
|MySQL server 55.45 secretly runs two parallel databases for people who say "S-Q-L" and "sequel."
|Some people pronounce "SQL" like "sequel", after SQL's predecessor "SEQUEL (Structured English Query Language)". MySQL is an open-source relational database management system, the latest version is MySQL 5.6.
|-
|A flaw in some x86 CPUs could allow a root user to de-escalate to normal account privileges.
|This vulnerability refers to DOM0 attacks on Virtualization CPUs, regulary escalate from normal(few privileges) to root (full privileges), this is the inverse.
|-
|Apple products catch fire when displaying emoji with diacritics.
|This is taking the first CVE to an extreme conclusion by combining it with the Samsung exploding phones
|-
|An oversight in the rules allows a dog to join a basketball team.
|This likely refers to the movie Air Bud. It's a movie about a dog playing basketball {{w|Air Bud}}. This has been a common theme in xkcd comics, see [[115: Meerkat]], [[1439: Rack Unit]], [[1819: Sweet 16]], [[1552: Rulebook]]
|-
|Haskell isn't side-effect-free after all; the effects are all just concentrated in this one. Computer in Missouri that no one's checked on in a while.
|Haskell is a functional programming language, functional programming is characterized by using functions that dont have side effects in other parts of the program.
|-
|Nobody really knows how hypervisors work.
|Virtualization programing is hard, Meltdown and Specter are related to this
|-
|CRITICAL: Under Linux 3.14.8 on System/390 in a UTC+14 time zone, a local user could potentially use a buffer overflow to change another user's default system clock from 12-hour to 24-hour.
|Jokes about arcane systems that are running linux, that have bugs that nobody can replicate because there are no more machines on this type where reproduce the bug to fix it.
|-
|x86 has way too many instructions.
|This is a joke account for random acronyms of processor assembled language many of them are overspecialized version of general ones
|-
|Numpy 1.8.0 can factor primes in O(log n) time and must be quietly deprecated before anyone notices.
|NumPy is the fundamental package for scientific computing with Python. If something can find the prime factors of a number this quickly, there are attacks to break many crypto functions used in internet security. However, prime numbers have only a single factor, and "factoring primes" quickly is a simpler problem.
|-
|Apple products grant remote access if you send them words that break the "I before E" rule.
|another joke on the first CVE and a common english writing rule. That's weird.
|-
|Skylake x86 chips can be pried from their sockets using certain flathead screwdrivers.
|Skylake x86 chips are a line of microprocessors, yes, you can remove forcefully any processor from his socket with a screwdriver, there are many reports from people not using common sense.
|-
|Apparently Linus Torvalds can be bribed pretty easily.
|Linux Torvals is the benevolent dictator of the Linux kernel codebase, normally it is hard to pass a change because he has the last word about what merge to the code base because that code is replicated in all linux installations, but apparently he is easy to bribe, that is a severe critical vulnerability to all linux server and machines
|-
|An attacker can execute malicious code on their own machine and no one can stop them.
|This is a common CVE description
|-
|Apple products execute any code printed over a photo of a dog with a saddle and a baby riding it.
|This could refer to a CVE vulnerability of JPG files where javascript is executed by some application, only this time is in a printed photo instead of a file .
|-
|Under rare circumstances, a flaw in some versions of Windows could allow Flash to be installed.
|This is another common CVE description, Flash was discontinued because is abismal security record. All security experts advise against install.
|-
|Turns out the cloud is just other people's computers.
|This refers to a computer meme where replace "cloud" with "other people's computers" must be used in all marketing presentation to CEOs and not computer literate persons to evaluate the security impact of using "Cloud services"
|-
|A flaw in Mitre's CVE database allows arbitrary code insertion.[~~CLICK HERE FOR CHEAP VIAGRA~~]
|Mitre's CVE database is the database where all CVE are listed, this is a joke between the 4th CVE in this list pointing that the site is also vulnerable
|-
|It turns out Bruce Schneier is just two mischievous kids in a trenchcoat. (title text)
|
|}
== References ==
<references/>

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

LEAKED LIST OF MAJOR 2018 SECURITY VULNERABILITIES

CVE-2018-????? Apple products crash when displaying certain Telugu or Bengali letter combinations.

CVE-2018-????? An attacker can use a timing attack to extploit[sic] a race condition in garbage collection to extract a limited number of bits from the Wikipedia article on Claude Shannon.

CVE-2018-????? At the cafe on third street, the post-it note with the wifi password is visible from the sidewalk.

CVE-2018-????? A remote attacker can inject arbitrary text into public-facing pages via the comments box.

CVE-2018-????? MySQL server 55.45 secretly runs two parallel databases for people who say "S-Q-L" and "sequel."

CVE-2018-????? A flaw in some x86 CPUs could allow a root user to de-escalate to normal account privileges.

CVE-2018-????? Apple products catch fire when displaying emoji with diacritics.

CVE-2018-????? An oversight in the rules allows a dog to join a basketball team.

CUE-2018-????? Haskell isn't side-effect-free after all; the effects are all just concentrated in this one. Computer in Missouri that no one's checked on in a while.

CVE-2018-????? Nobody really knows how hypervisors work.

CVE-2018-????? CRITICAL: Under Linux 3.14.8 on System/390 in a UTC+14 time zone, a local user could potentially use a buffer overflow to change another user's default system clock from 12-hour to 24-hour.

CVE-2018-????? x86 has way too many instructions.

CVE-2018-????? Numpy 1.8.0 can factor primes in O(log n) time and must be quietly deprecated before anyone notices.

CVE-2018-????? Apple products grant remote access if you send them words that break the "I before E" rule.

CVE-2018-????? Skylake x86 chips can be pried from their sockets using certain flathead screwdrivers.

CVE-2018-????? Apparently Linus Torvalds can be bribed pretty easily.

CVE-2018-????? An attacker can execute malicious code on their own machine and no one can stop them.

CVE-2018-????? Apple products execute any code printed over a photo of a dog with a saddle and a baby riding it.

CVE-2018-????? Under rare circumstances, a flaw in some versions of Windows could allow Flash to be installed.

CVE-2018-????? Turns out the cloud is just other people's computers.

CVE-2018-????? A flaw in Mitre's CVE database allows arbitrary code insertion.[~~CLICK HERE FOR CHEAP VIAGRA~~]

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1903: Bun Trend

2017-10-16T14:45:07Z

141.101.107.168: /* Bread product ≠ rabbit */ new section

== Bread product ≠ rabbit ==

Subject says it all.

Talk:1779: 2017

2017-01-02T07:39:58Z

141.101.107.168:

Well, we're ending the year off with an optimistic XKCD comic. Here's to another year!
[[User:GranadalandDreamer|GranadalandDreamer]] ([[User talk:GranadalandDreamer|talk]]) 23:07, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

What is five thirty eight? From the context I get it's most likely a TV-Show, but I believe some background information would help here. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.46|162.158.92.46]] 07:14, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
:It's a website. You can click on the link to get more information about it as it links to FiveThirtyEight's Wikipedia article. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.160|162.158.75.160]] 10:00, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Title text also can be reference to Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. [[User:Magras|Magras]] ([[User talk:Magras|talk]]) 15:52, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Is there some significance to the fallen tree that they are walking over? Or is it just a visual aid to give them something to do? {{unsigned ip|162.158.74.87}}

Note: in the Russian language words "prime (number)" and "easy" can in be translated to the same word "простой". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.168|141.101.107.168]] 07:39, 2 January 2017 (UTC)