explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2916: Machine

2025-02-26T10:44:42Z

141.101.98.245: I'm guessing unsigned-adder lives in UTC+8 and used their local time, not server-time, of the edit. Doesn't mean much, but confused me!

__NOTOC__

rather late for an april fools comic innit? also there doesn't seem to be anything exciting in this one lol, none of the usual cool exploration easter eggs, as far as i could tell at least [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.76|172.71.178.76]] 16:41, 6 April 2024 (UTC)Erfaniom
:Randall posted an eclipse comic on Apr. 1. All April Fools comics are interactive. [[User:Z1mp0st0rz|Z1mp0st0rz]] ([[User talk:Z1mp0st0rz|talk]]) 15:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

: We're exploring crowdsourced human creativity here, in a way, so it can be a lot more interesting then Randall's exploration comics, at least for me, because i did take two years of GCSE psychology and enjoyed it. [[Special:Contributions/172.64.238.130|172.64.238.130]]

: looks like the egg's on my face lmao, i think i was among the first people to make anything, so everywhere was under construction for me, i didn't even understand that it was like a crowd thing [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.52|172.70.210.52]] 14:19, 9 April 2024 (UTC)Erfaniom

Just popped over using Chrome on Android and all I see is four "missing picture" logos spinning around, plus another down the bottom right... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.68.193|141.101.68.193]] 18:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
:Okay, followup: it behaves quite differently on the non mobile site. You get two entry points with red balls and yellow balls and you need to place the various gizmos to direct the balls to the correct exit point. Once enough have correctly passed to turn the red X into a green tick, you have the option to submit. If you do, once you have named your design it will be added to the grid with other submissions all of which exist to push red and yellow balls around. (if you come across "Memories of Ragnarok", that's mine)
:this also happens with www.xkcd.com, except the pictures load, just xkcd.com works perfectly [[Special:Contributions/172.71.166.26|172.71.166.26]] 20:47, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Mine are "Balancing Act" and "100% Success Rate" [[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.14|172.71.146.14]] 21:11, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.207|172.71.134.207]] 18:27, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
::The number of inputs appears to vary between 1 and 4, each of a different color, with one color-coded output for each. [[User:Claire Kholin|Claire Kholin]] ([[User talk:Claire Kholin|talk]]) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

On the "machine" section, you see lots of "under construction cells". Perhaps this will develop as more are submitted. I notice the "under construction tape" has "DJIA" and "31415", perhaps a reference to "dow jones industrial average" and the first five digits of pi. [[User:Zeimusu|Zeimusu]] ([[User talk:Zeimusu|talk]]) 18:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
:Whenever someone submits a cell, it fills in one of the under construction cells. [[User:Claire Kholin|Claire Kholin]] ([[User talk:Claire Kholin|talk]]) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
[Robert'); DROP TABLE Student!:;--] i just got a machine with 3 outputs one yellow another red and a third blue AND green and 3 inputs one green one blue and one red blue and yellow https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=7&yt=50 hope its still there {{unsigned ip|172.70.115.173|18:01, 9 April 2024}}
:I think I just 'did' one with a Red+Yellow source (also separate singular Blue and Green) and a combined Blue+Green sink (and separate Yellow and Red). Got it working well, actually using fan-levitation to separate the R+Y enough to route them to their destinations, the Y then having to cross the occasional flying Green (which I was forced to "Bonk" and bounce up, entry being nearly at the bottom on right, exit being nearly at top on left) for its exit, everything else fairly simple. No idea if it got integrated, of course. Never seen any of my machines be accepted (when I later look around at what's there), so I'm still unsure if there's anything I can do to increase my chance of a successful square being made permanent on the grid.... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.49|172.70.163.49]] 20:58, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
:...still had it sitting there [https://imgur.com/kZdp3kH on my browser], though note that the Red+Yellow supply (mid-left) and the Green supply (right) aren't working here, through the "move the screen around, lose the feeds from 'Under Construction' squares" issue, or similar. But still I managed to submit it. The occasional Yellow and Red are falling from the Blue entrance in the top (I've not done anything special to filter those out/send them to a more proper exit, and it's too late to do so now anyway, it was just a Blue entry during the development process, of course).
:It's a pity you can't see it working, but I quite like my Yellow/Red separation. This might be the only time you see it in place, though, so a shame I didn't take a screenshot immedediately after submitting it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.49|172.70.163.49]] 21:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
:I encountered a puzzle with five distinct pairs of in/out (none combined): Two blue, two red, one yellow. It was difficult! AFAIK five pairs is the highest reported so far. When I submitted the solution to the Machine, it had Under Construction above and to each side, and (IIRC) empty below, and no balls were provided, alas.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.216|172.69.134.216]] 03:46, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
I wanted to add an image for each object, but do not have the necessary access, can someone who has access add the images that I linked in the table so they can be included? [[User:Claire Kholin|Claire Kholin]] ([[User talk:Claire Kholin|talk]]) 18:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I found a discussion with some guy talking about the API at https://euphoria.leet.nu/room/xkcd/ ; this could be useful for the wiki.

<code>
[c+1] now time to try fucking with the api
[c+1] https://incredible.xkcd.com/
[userwithnoaccount] 404
[c+1] it seems there are numbered machines under incredible.xkcd.com/machine/x
[c+1] returns a grid of individual machinlets
[c+1] which are uids like 3a7af27c-5389-5dcb-b660-3feab6be2ceb
[c+1] they're stored at urls like incredible.xkcd.com/folio/3a7af27c-5389-5dcb-b660-3feab6be2ceb
[c+1] there appear to be 33 machines total
[c+1] the json it returns seems to refer to these as "versions"
[c+1] $ curl -s https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/21 | jq ".version"
21
[c+1] there is a machine/0, but it's all null
[c+1] going to https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/current redirects to the current machine
[c+1] $ curl -sL https://incredible.xkcd.com/machine/current | jq ".version"
35
[c+1] wait, is that the *total* number of mahcines?
[c+1] i would've thought there'd be more
[c+1] this whole think is rather esoteric
[c+1] Written in rust, too: https://rapier.rs/
[c+1] Uh oh.
https://i.hypercone.us/?v=8e283d
[c+1] HMMM
https://i.hypercone.us/?v=079f8f
[c+1] it seems there is no limit
[c+1] i've uploaded a ~50M title
</code>

With this I was able to make a script that visualizes paths of the balls. I was hoping that there would be an interesting pattern somewhere but it appears to be mostly random (https://i.imgur.com/ZvLlucU.png) --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.131.24|172.71.131.24]] 17:12, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

[[Special:Contributions/172.70.57.146|172.70.57.146]]

Had quite a lot of fun, added a few 'successful' machines to the grid. Noted that whenever I try to use the Prism that (after a short delay) the comic-pane blanks and I need to refresh the page/get a completely new 'challenge' to start from scratch, so I'm just not using the prism at all (used most of the other items, in combination or 'just the one across the whole board', whichever seems most fun). But it doesn't seem to do what I'd like it to do, which is sort multiple colours from the same inflow into different outflow directions. Which would be ''very'' useful in a 'crossroads' situation, the general solution of directing them cross-path being too prone to random collisions. Also might be useful in the 'submitted machine grid', as I note that errors propagate, whereas adding a filter on all inputs would clean out (dispose of/send off to a valid gate?) the rogue balls. Anyway, gonna have to come back to this later when there's more time... Maybe then I'll even have something useful to add to the Explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.31|172.70.163.31]] 19:03, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

The balls appear to be different weights. I just saw a machine that used fans to separate yellows from greens and blues in a sort of 'wheat from the chaff' manner to direct them to their correct outputs. I wonder what other hidden tricks are included. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.1.159|172.68.1.159]] 19:40, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

They're not all accepted, though it makes you think they are. Or something else more complex is going on we haven't realized yet. I made a machine that was working reliably, submitted it, and saw it on the overall grid. Reloading from a different browser I found the same location of the machine, with the same surroundings, but my machine had been replaced. It's nowhere else on the grid either. The first browser still shows it (but not after a reload with a cache clear). I'm not sure if there's some kind of "save" event that needs to happen beyond seeing your machine in the broader one, or if all user collaboration is an illusion, or if the system changes its mind about us somehow.

: Yeah, i've been seeing this too. Please tell me if you find any of my machines, images at https://i.hypercone.us/?v=22d562 , https://i.hypercone.us/?v=ad8e3a , and https://i.hypercone.us/?v=8d4d6a . I want to be one of the few to have added Catalan and Spanish to the grid. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.164|172.71.134.164]] 20:56, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

I've added some more observations to the page. Also, a guess which is too uncertain to put on the main page: The ball launcher for the yellows on the far left side misses a lot, and the yellow container isn't the one on the left. So I think the whole machine with crossing streams will result in the colors being sorted in their container order, and possibly have the streams combined and deposited at the bottom just above the containers. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.100|172.71.147.100]] 21:07, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

has anyone seen the boat at the very bottom? [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 21:21, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

trying to see it on Firefox for Ubuntu and it just tells me to "visit xkcd.com to view" - THAT'S WHERE I AM?! Tried clearing website data (but not my entire cache) and that didn't help. Is there something I'm missing?

Oooh, just had one with four ball-entries (four colours) and ''three'' exits (one caters for two arrows). Pity it's rather complicated to get entries to exits (even if I can merge two of the streams). Might have to give up on it, but I'd like to have seen how it fits in with the 'submited grid'. i.e. someone else gets a two-colour introduction spot. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.119|162.158.74.119]] 22:37, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
:Me again. I'm just refreshing the page, looking at the pattern of entries/exits (just a dozen or so screens in, getting some repeats of pattern, indicating that it's going back to tiles it was suggesting before, probably depends on how many others are contributing and extending...)
:Found another 'double-colour' example. Two yellows ''from the same side'', which probably means that there's a two-yellows been asked to exit from the neighbour (will check shortly).
:Quickly adapting from my spreadsheet notation, "R, Y, G, B" in order, each "(Entry, Exit)", I've been using <dir> of L/R/T/B and a number (nominally percentage, though seems to include only values of 20, 30, 50, 70 and 80, so it ''might'' be more 1/6..5/6?) relating to the distance along from L to R (for T/B) or T to B (for L/R).
:This line is therefore (0,0)(L20+L70,R30+B70)(R80,L80)(T70,L50) ... no reds, two yellow pairings, a red pairing, a blue pairing. Would require at least two path-crossings (but I was going to calculate those things later, and double-colours might confuse my intended simple line-intersection calculation).
:...anyway, spent some time on this message, which might mean I'll get into a 'new batch' of available patterns as people have succeeded some of the challenges that I've been 'swiping left'. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.20|172.70.162.20]] 19:28, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
:...very next click: (0,0)(T30+L20,R20+R70)(R80,L80)(R50,B50), which is clearly the actual left-neighbour of the above. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.19|172.70.162.19]] 19:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
:Ok, stopped my refreshing to [https://imgur.com/a/OMFOmzy 'solve' a screen]. First of all I routed both yellows entries (right-upper and upper-right) to one yellow exit (middle-left) and gradually teased the greens across (lower-left to middle-right), as that way I was avoiding a criss-cross of balls, but the the other yellow exit (left-lower) was, of course, invalid.
:Changed it to drop one stream of yellows down towards the lower exit, across the rapidly firing greens (added a fan to filter away the occasional yellow that gets bounced over there, not much of an opportunity to filter falling-greens out of the yellow exit, so apologies to whoever gets the sceen below). Submited as "Two Yellows, One Green!", whether or not that'll save (apparently, I should continue to contribute and not refresh/close, or else the server will not keep the solution?).
:Interestingly, all four adjacent tiles are "Under construction", and if I scroll up... *DARN* the comic has blanked out (nothing there between the upper PREV/RANDOM/NEXT buttons and the lower ones, just whitespace). This may mean that it did not save. This is the kind of 'page crash' I get when I try using a Prism or get too many balls rattling around on top of a Black Hole. Perhaps it doesn't like that I'm scrolling into an Under Construction that shouldn't be there? (But then, why ''is'' it there?)
:Anyway, all extra information for everyone.
:I'll just refresh the page and go back and do some more entry/exit mapping, maybe? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.20|172.70.162.20]] 20:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

If you combine a bunch of these silly claw things in the middle by just spamming it, it begins to lag and do some chaotic collisions, even without balls colliding on it. It's curious how it does that seemingly randomly though. I wonder how calculations are added and if there's a tiny sprinkle of RNG. (Also, errors occur and say something about damaging recursion in the Rust programming language, so I guess we know how it was made. It's also pretty weird how there's not a lot of opening combinations? It's possible that the machine loops over in chunks of gears or something (that's what I'll call them). ([[User talk:Leo|talk]]) 13:15, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

If you place a black hole in the centre of a wheel, it makes the wheel behave unpredictably between resets. Sometimes it's almost normal, sometimes it's a lot faster than usual, and sometimes it's stopped but launches balls that touch it with extreme force. I was able to use this to submit a machine which didn't actually let a single ball through after being submitted. https://i.hypercone.us/?v=928bcd [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.149|162.158.33.149]] 01:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

The page says that (and I have taken note of) the ball hue is ''coded'' to certain values, but is there a logic to those values that might be derived from the colour (either as RGB triplet or HSV/other colourspace definition). For example, the two ball-types with zero green component in their makeup are 'unit density' (green is far heavier "green+red" is far lighter, so it's not a simple relationship, unless it converts from °hue, in some way) and the only secondary colour exhibits non-zero drag. There's the possibility that it just derived from "we need different properties, we need different colours, we have no reason to connect either with other deliberately" or even some non-mathematical symbology (fire=red, water=blue(?), earth=green, air(/sunlight?)=yellow). But it makes me wonder what combination of properties cyan/magenta balls might have, if added. (Or is the choice of those four colours constrained, anyway? Though R/G colorblindness is already something of an accessibility failure, if anyone suffers that.) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.205|172.69.194.205]] 17:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
:For color vision issues, on Mac, open System Preferences, select Accessibility, select Display (in the Vision group), select the Color Filters tab, select Enable Color Filters, then finally try the different filters in the Filter Type menu. One of them should help make the colors distinct.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.216|172.69.134.216]] 03:40, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

[https://pastebin.com/7PAiLnyF Python script to get the URL and title of each Cell in the current machine]

[https://pastebin.com/xBhywGde Result of running that script at the moment] (encoded with ROT13 because pastebin wouldn't let me save it otherwise)
:has anybody at all whatsoever been able to find their creation using this API? [[User:Bellydrum|Bellydrum]] ([[User talk:Bellydrum|talk]]) 21:58, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

[https://pastebin.com/jN5MP2za Result of running that script on the first 42 machines], at least on these it looks like the only difference is that one cell is added each time? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.99.195|172.71.99.195]] 17:22, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

I've submitted four now, none of which was accepted. I tend to spend a lot of time getting them just right. Any hints as to what the acceptance criteria might be? Or do I just stink at this?
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.204|172.69.59.204]] 19:47, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

There appears to be a new object: a cat that bats things that touch it.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.214.39|172.69.214.39]] 20:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Is anyone else experiencing the bug where prisms cause the comic to disappear (leaving only the white background where it was) after a while? It makes viewing the whole machine basically impossible. (On further testing it appears to be firefox-exclusive.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.38|172.70.162.38]] 20:31, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
:I've had the "Prisms break things" from the beginning (before any practical content). As in, trying to use them in a design breaks things. But I ''did'' glance upon their occasional use in the 'view submissions grid'. Right now I'm suffering from "white only" issue (see my "multi-yellow" accounts, above). I ''am'' using Firefox, if that's indeed relevant to this issue, but right now I'm not near any other up-to-date browser I care to use. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.31|172.70.163.31]] 21:37, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
:I'm getting the same issue with black holes (which probably makes more sense - put a black hole there and you'd expect everything else to disappear :o) - except that on one occasion I was able to put about 6 black holes in before the 7th one vanished everything.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.121|172.69.194.121]] 09:15, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Has anyone seen their own cell in the machine at all yet? A manual approval system is probably necessary for obvious reasons, but if so it does seem to be moving quite slowly.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.65.24|172.69.65.24]] 02:58, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I've never seen one of my own cells after refreshing the page. :( [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.122|172.70.110.122]] 20:27, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

How on earth is everyone seeing different parts of the grid? If I request "view machine" I can only see my own square, and the edges of everyone elses. Nothing else, definitely not all of the machine. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.64.149|172.68.64.149]] 21:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
::You should be able to click and drag the view around. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.54|172.71.242.54]] 21:41, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Whoever designed the room entirely full of fans is evil - every time I scroll near it my entire browser freezes up and becomes unresponsive. And then the comic usually blanks.[[;8Special:Contributions/172.69.194.81|172.69.194.81]] 08:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

None of [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2916:_Machine&diff=339487&oldid=339486 these edits] were anything to do with "grammar", so why would anyone describe the change as such? The spelling of "colo(u)r" is an internationali[s|z]ation issue, of note, and why I usually prefer to defer to using words like "hue", instead, in such contexts on this site. The change of the link from "The Incredible Machine" (where the page exists) to "The Credible Machine" (where it doesn't, because that's really just this comic's own joke) I aready changed back... If you think it doesn't properly explain the pun/negation, then rewrite; but don't make it an invalid link to something that doesn't even exist, as you'd know if you had even followed the link(s). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.141|172.69.194.141]] 15:22, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Folks might be interested in my list of all published blueprints with their titles and permalinks: https://github.com/scpso/incrediblexkcd. scpso [[Special:Contributions/172.68.144.147|172.68.144.147]] 13:18, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

== Level scrolling bug ==

When one views the whole machine, and scrolls down far enough, everything just disappears, and the comic is completely unresponsive. Has anyone else seen this? [[Special:Contributions/198.41.236.152|198.41.236.152]] 20:38, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

:I'm now seeing the same issue, I wasn't before. (I'm using Chrome) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.20|172.70.162.20]] 21:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

::A hard refresh appears to have fixed this for me (same person as above). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.101|141.101.99.101]] 10:28, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

:I've been having this issue as well (I'm using firefox). Opening the site in Edge instead seemed to work around it for me, so it might only affect Firefox (and derivatives). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.31|172.70.163.31]] 21:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)
::See also the 'firefox bug' comments currently immediately above this section. (Please don't ask me to start Edge up, I hate it, won't use it any more than the system requires me to...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.31|172.70.163.31]] 21:37, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

:Update - I did a hard refresh so I could play around with the new additions and I'm no longer encountering the bug, even on firefox. I think the "white screen" bug is fixed now and you just need to hard-refresh to download the fixed JS instead of using the cached one. (same person as 172.70.163.31 and 172.70.162.38) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.16|172.70.86.16]] 11:16, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

==New Category: Ball Pit?==

What do you think about a new category for comics with [[ball pits]]? [[150]], [[219]], [[485]], [[498]], [[2916]]? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.229|162.158.134.229]] 21:50, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

[[:Category:Playpen balls]] already exists.
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.174.133|172.70.174.133]] 17:35, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

== Prism Use? ==

Can the prism be used to sort balls by color? (or in any other way that is useful and different?) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.61|172.68.34.61]] 12:11, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
:From what I've seen, no. Though may be ''extremely'' susceptible to incident angle. As far as my own use has been, they seem to randomise the trajectory (possibly also do a total-internal-reflection, I've had balls bounce around and exit at ''really'' weird angles), but it's hard to collimate a feed of balls into a single exact track, even straight down from a ceiling-feed (if you have a ceiling feed directly over the floor exit, lucky you, it'll still occasionally perturb balls off to the sides just enough to be bounced out as a gate-miss, unless you add 'funnel' architecture of one kind or another). Oh, and when balls do a lot of 'internal bouncing' it often forced me to reload the comic (overloaded the physics engine?), so could not continue to tweak the same design.
:On the other hand, perhaps this was the ''intent'', and just code/browser failings made it work erratically. Maybe would be an idea to go back and retest for this (anybody who can), do a little !!science!! to be recorded and explained on the page. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.183|172.69.43.183]] 12:51, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
:So, ive did some testing and found..nothing. i ''did'' find some uses for the prism though. Like outting them diagonally makes the balls follow a "path", speeding up more and more (not really that great but it works with yellows), and that any ball hitting the left edge will try to go the the right edge. Not sure what else it can do, though. [[User:Begocc|Begocc]] ([[User talk:Begocc|talk]]) 09:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
::I did some thorough testing on a combined Red/Blue set of balls (carefully managed so that they were dropping into the target area as similarly as possible) and both rotated and moved the prism in various ways to check for any effects - like needing to enter parallel/perpendicular to the colour-bands, either to land on the 'target band' or start to pass across it, with the band then either facilitating or angling its 'fall through'. (Just visually checked, at first, then later adding 'buckets' below and to the sides, to try to catch balls departing on various trajectories in various 'clumps' making note of any that hit the 'bucket'-boundaries and bounced off elsewhere.)
::I found no significant sorting, and some balls would jitter around so much (within the prism) that they even launched almost straight back up where they came from (less poerfully than a Bonk-buffered ball, but not far off - also not reliable enough to use as a ball-elevator).
::In my experience, Yellow-sorting is easy (even against Blue and/or Red) by other means. Green is the easiest to have everything else sorted ''from'' (because it resists the fan method). The hardest to unmix are Reds from Blues, which one might think ''should'' be the most prism-differentiated but I'm afraid I just can't invoke that. Easier to have them fall a long way then bounce off a suitable bit of 'furniture', I can then get them to distribute ''fairly'' distinctly in two handy recepticles/onward-feed-hoppers, though it does need some careful placement of items to do it justice. It appears that none of my designs have made it to the 'public wall', but I have made a submitable machine or two that does such sorting sufficiently successfully to send it out (theoretically) to be seen. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.30|172.70.163.30]] 11:38, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

== Bugs and Exploits ==

You can use a sword to break the physics on the hinge thingy and create your very own "magnetic hill": https://imgur.com/a/IRZ0AlL [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.108|162.158.134.108]] 13:02, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
:Hard to tell from that what other fans (perhaps) you've got completely off-clip.
:Those hinge-thingies can definitely be shifted by horizontal (outwith ball-weight pressures), but I've not found them to be reliable components as the "Stop" button (ball reset) seems to let those 'hinges' slring back to level, which might need a re-reset by moving them back past the thing that's holding them off-level.
:I have tried a few things with them:
:*'Ticker' mechanism, almost like a clock escapement, nudged by the rotating 'waterwheel', perhaps to try to release balls through a stream of other balls whilst keeping the path clear of collisions for each set, in turn.
:*'Batch dumper', accumulating a number of balls (above the 'hinge', behind a vertical bulkhead) until there's weight enough to 'open the hatch' and roll them out. (Again, an attempt to reduce collisions, by clumping batches together).
:*Finely configured inclines, by shoving something up into a free end of hinge with better angular resolution (but, as mentioned, this doesn't seem to want to 'hold', so probably would fail upon submission).
:...I had wondered if there was supposed to be a "falling anvil creates a catapult/ballista" idea behind the piece, but we don't ''have'' falling anvils (and definitely not in a repeating manner), and ball-powered catapult (esssentially "clown/acrobat jumps on one end of seesaw, clown/acrobat on other end flies up into the air") also doesn't seem practical.
:I'll try to recreate ''your'' design, work out if there's anything new about it, but right now looks like it's a fan-powered incline-raiser. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.38|172.70.162.38]] 14:23, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
:: No fans! Here's a wider view: https://imgur.com/a/xPJcsor
:: It survives the reset, because the balls falling on the lever push it down to the sword and it gets stuck there every time. But you need to place the sword just right to make the gravity bug happen. And even then it depends on the number of balls in some ways. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.243.27|172.68.243.27]] 14:46, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
::: I've replicated the "tip of sword grabs the 'hinge'" thing, which is very interesting, but not the anti-gravity effect. The movement still seems ''to me'' more like a fan's 'area of effect' thing, than a wonky sense of gravity, the way that the balls are rolling/resisting/interacting with each other. No, I can't see where you've 'hidden' the fan (and I'm sure that fans can't act across submission-grid-boundaries, which was my next guess), so it's a bit of a funny thing that you've got there. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.49|172.70.163.49]] 21:35, 9 April 2024 (UTC)
:::: I did it!!!!! https://imgur.com/a/1qzg5BW {{unsigned ip|172.71.146.79|23:01, 25 February 2025}}
On occasion, two balls will fall from the containers as a pair, as if glued together. When this happens, they float down as if under much lower gravity, and then suddenly explode violently away from each other.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.182|172.69.43.182]] 10:56, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
:What contaniners?? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.252|172.70.110.252]] 14:58, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
::At the bottom of the grid are four containers that the balls are fired in to, from where they drop in to a pit with a boat.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.38|172.70.162.38]] 08:40, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

When the browser is running slowly, sometimes the chamber doors will open, but none of the balls in them will drop, which can lead to huge backlogs of balls building up. However, there appears to then be a limit to how many will dispense in one opening - only half a dozen or so layers are released before the door closes again.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.31|172.70.163.31]] 12:01, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

If you place a "hinge thingy," AKA hook, AKA scoop, etc., flat against the top or bottom border of your pre-submittal frame, you can force it through the opening where the balls come in or out. It takes a little manipulation but you can force the center black circle of the hinge over the center of the gear, which then causes the scoop and handle to rotate into and out of your frame. The "left-handed" hook, i.e. the handle with the hook on the left end, seems to work especially well for this. You can also use a pillow (experiments have shown this to be the best tool) to lift the handle so it's parallel to the side border and force it through side portals. You can even place a hook flat against any border, and then press the handle down and through the frame. If it tends to snap back a pillow can be used to hold it in place. The interesting result is that when you hit the submit button your hooks will appear in the adjacent cells, sometimes moving/rotating, sometimes hanging up on an obstacle, and often interfering with the machine and the movement of the balls. This probably annoys anyone who bothers to return to view their machine and finds it borked by a neighbor. It probably also seems mean-spirited to knowingly submit a machine with the potential to interfere with an adjacent machine, but I've experimented with hundreds of machines, many of which turn chaotic immediately after submittal (by design), and therefore allow few balls to exit through their proper portal. I can't help it! Every time I find a new and interesting (to me) set-up, I just have to explore all the permutations until I discover something new. Apologies to anyone inconvenienced to offended by my machines - I just think chaos is fun. [[User:Yusagi Yojimbo|Yusagi Yojimbo]] ([[User talk:Yusagi Yojimbo|talk]]) 03:56, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

if you put two b0nks on the front side and the back side of the hinge you basically get a catapult[[User:Ninojin|Ninojin]] ([[User talk:Ninojin|talk]]) 09:40, 28 December 2024 (UTC)ninojin

== The USS Buoyancy ==

Guys. The Buoyancy. She ''floats''. When all four sets of balls reach the ball pit there aren't further additions. The boat starts floating on them. I've been watching it for a while. It seems she moves left and will probably end up escaping the ball pit. [[User:DL Draco Rex|DL Draco Rex]] ([[User talk:DL Draco Rex|talk]]) 20:44, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
:Update: A new row spawned in and it reset just before the Buoyancy could escape. Here's a screenshot I grabbed a while before the reset, she'd moved further left by the time the reset occurred. https://imgur.com/gallery/8UCASCu [[User:DL Draco Rex|DL Draco Rex]] ([[User talk:DL Draco Rex|talk]]) 20:51, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I'm almost 100% of the time seeing Buoyancy sink. Yes, she *floats* at first. But as she drifts to the sides, instead of yellows going underneath, reds and greens pile on top. Then, as the balls under expire (90 second timeout), she will start to sink. Very consistent behavior over time.
[[User:Keybounce|Keybounce]] ([[User talk:Keybounce|talk]]) 19:20, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

What is the Bouaancy i cant find it anywhere??? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.252|172.70.110.252]] 14:58, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
== Added key combinations, found in source ==

ctrl+alt+b
ctrl+shift+option+d
wheel: arrow keys

: Can you clarify what "option" is? I have tried alt, function, and "operating system", and none are doing it.
::It is alt [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.252|172.70.110.252]] 14:58, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

== Fixed Number of Possible Machinelets? ==

I was resetting my browser to try and find new machinelet configurations, but there seem to be fewer and fewer as the game progresses. Hypothesis: the 'under construction' machinelets are set, and once one of them gets approved and added to the grid, that specific configuration of entrances/exits can't show up again.

== Advanced components? ==

How does one get access to the full set of components to build from? I'm only given planks, mallets, swords, scoops, anvils, bricks and fans. I never get any pillows, bumpers, cats, stick figures et cetera. Do they need to be "unlocked" through some achievement, or what? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.102|162.158.222.102]] 11:04, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

:This caught me for a while as well. I have since discovered that the tool box has a scroll bar and can be scrolled down; that's where the others are hiding.
::Invisible scrollbars – every GUI obfuscator's favorite tool for making users' lives harder. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.142|162.158.222.142]] 18:17, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

== Limit of 100 components? ==

Has anyone else seen this? At some point I started getting a count "95 / 100" towards the bottom of the toolbar. When it hits "100 / 100" the rest of the toolbar greys out, and I can't add anything more. (I suppose the physics engine has to keep a ceiling on the number of possible interactions between components.) —[[User:Scs|Scs]] ([[User talk:Scs|talk]]) 11:53, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
:Yes, quite early on I was dealing with a quite simple 'drop from ceiling straight down to floor' setup. After adding just enough 'funnel' to deal with 'splatter', I then built a castle wall in the open space just to make it fun (with some figures on/below it, that I've also tried to decorate in later submissions), of the 'grey blocks'.
:I actually hit the 100/100 ''exactly'' as I placed my final intended block. (No doubt that it's easy to hit the limit by just overlapping things so you can't see most of them, and other 'useless' placement, too...) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.48|172.70.85.48]] 19:57, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

== uss boyancy ==

Why have i not been seeing any uss boyancy [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.122|172.70.110.122]] 14:04, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Haha I dare you to go to https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=7&yt=57 and stare at the two black holes next to eachother >:) [[User:Z1mp0st0rz|Z1mp0st0rz]] ([[User talk:Z1mp0st0rz|talk]]) 15:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

== Build a "working" machine from parts? ==

Has anyone started working on this idea:

Since any given machine segment seems to be saved, even if not in the final result, *and* since these segments are failing when combined in the whole, how about a "really working" machine that starts replacing failing segments when they jam or otherwise fail to work in the real machine?

The idea being something like, start the machine. Watch the top row, and see where the parts are failing to pass balls properly after two minutes. Replace the segments that are failing/jaming/etc, and let the new part process balls.

As you work your way down, over about 2 hours at the current size, you will eventually get a machine that properly sends balls down to the bottom, without jamming, without having to "pretend" that off-screen parts are working.

I mean, it's not like a gigantic, 600 segment machine will overflow memory on modern 32gb systems, nor consume so much power that these big huge CPU's will fail, right?
There is a 100 piece limit sadly
[[User:Keybounce|Keybounce]] ([[User talk:Keybounce|talk]]) 17:41, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
ps.: Why do white holes, black holes, prisms, etc, cause problems on some machines like mine and not others?

== Foreshadowing ==

I think that this Machine comic / game is foreshadowed by comic # 2785 titled Marble Run. {{unsigned ip|172.70.130.120|22:15, 11 April 2024}}

== Implementation? ==

Should we have a section on how this thing is implemented? How much is known? Obviously it's hugely dependent on [https://rapier.rs/ Rapier], as credited in the header text. I assume everything else is written in {{w|Rust (programming language)|Rust}}, too. But how is it deployed? Does Rust compile to {{w|Web Assembly}}, or what? Under Color Routing, our explanation mentions that the ball "values were extracted from the code" — how much of the code is actually visible? —[[User:Scs|Scs]] ([[User talk:Scs|talk]]) 16:39, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
:There are source maps available for the client side. So most of the client source is pretty much there an available. DevTools will load these maps automatically by default, and you can find the ball parameters under incredible/src/components/widgets/Balls.tsx. As for the server, it has a Server header of Warp/3.3.31, a web server used for WAI applications in Haskell. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.44|172.70.114.44]] 13:37, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
::The source is available at https://github.com/xkcd/incredible --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.253.130|172.68.253.130]] 17:58, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

== XKCD Prize ==

I propose the award of "Good Job" trophies for answers to the following weighty questions:

Cells ...

:C1. There is always at least one entry-exit (same color) pair. I have seen up to five pairs. Is there a limit?

:C2. I have never seen a two-color entry or exit, in over 100 tries, but I have seen pictures posted of this case. How rare are they?

Entry points (where balls enter the cell) ...

:E1. The entry rate varies randomly. Is there a limit to the range of time between two balls?

:E2. Some entries produce balls much faster than others, forever. Does this depend on color? Location? Anything else?

Exit points (where balls leave the cell) ...

:X1. At exits there is a display indicating x or check, and a ring meter showing progress towards check. Eating the wrong color reduces the ring score. By how much? Is it the same amount as is gained by eating the correct color?

:X2. The ring countdown starts about 4 seconds after the last ball, and lasts about 10 seconds. Does this ever vary?

Object properties ...

:O1. The pillow clearly absorbs energy. What other objects have variation in bounce, and how much? By sending a stream of green balls at high speed into targets, it can be observed that the brick and the shot glass (outside edge) are more bouncy than the anvil, which in turn is more bouncy than the plank. Are other colors (such as red) affected the same way?

:O2. Does the bounciness of any objects vary over their shape? The head of the mallet seems a little bouncier, but it's hard to set its angle to precisely match other test objects. The shaft of the pivot thing seems to be sticky. The dead edges of the triangle bonkers seem to absorb all inward energy from green balls, but only some energy from red balls.

:O3. Do the bonkers give a constant exit speed, or does it depend on something like the arrival speed or ball color? Does the exit speed replace the entry speed, or are they combined somehow? Like the dead edges (see O2) I suspect the live edge also absorbs inbound energy before it fires, so the outbound energy may be constant, though maybe not for all colors.

Cats ...

:K1. Over what range and direction will the cat swat at a nearby ball?

:K2. Does the cat always add the same amount of energy when swatting a ball?

:K3. Does the cat always add energy in the same direction when swatting a ball? At first glance the direction seems to be random over a range of angles, but this may be due to random entry points, speeds, and directions for the balls, rather than due to randomness by the cat.

:K4. Is there a rate limit for how often the cat will act?

Black holes and Repulsers ...

:B1. At their default size, repulsers are much stronger than black holes. How much stronger?

:B2. How does effect scale with distance? Are black holes inverse-square? What about repulsers?

:B3. Is there frame dragging around black holes? (good luck :)

:B4. At an exit, does the rate of ring decay slow down if a black hole is nearby?

Bonus observation: Black holes have large solid centers. A red ball stuck to a black hole can be seen bouncing off the center.

Spoiler for B1 and part of B2: If five default size black holes and one default size repulser are all placed at the default center, they seem to cancel out exactly, at all distances, though the solid centers still repel direct collisions. So the ratio is 5:1 and the distance equation (whatever it is) seems to be the same for both objects.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.94|162.158.167.94]] 15:53, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

: C1: Current (as of y=70 filled) maximum across the machine is 5 pairs, only occuring 5 times, so I suppose it doesn't go higher. C2: So far there are only three combined gates in the machine, all two-color: one between (3, 8) and (4, 8) and two between (6, 50) and (7, 50). So yes, they are very rare. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.206|172.70.250.206]] 21:38, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

:Re. X1, I'm pretty sure (but don't have evidence, that the answer is 'no - a bad ball reduces it by more than a good ball increases it'. I can also think of an X3 - Does a good ball always increase the counter by the same amount; does this vary by colour or anything else? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.229|172.69.195.229]] 08:47, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

: E1: In the machine there is a value called ms_per_ball. Its value is 1000. Ie, a ball should be spawned every 1 second into the overall machine per entry. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.212|162.158.111.212]] 18:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
:: Measuring five random new puzzles, I found most entries deliver 1 ball per second, or almost that much. But I found one green entry that only provided 1 ball every 2 seconds (15 in 30, forever). When I delivered those green balls to the green exit point, I found the ring meter there filled up twice as much per ball consumed. Later I found a red entry that produced only 8 balls in 30 seconds, forever. Those red balls also filled the red exit ring meter much faster than usual. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.17|172.69.134.17]] 12:51, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
: K1: There are 3 collision zones defined for the cat swat: The head, its butt & a zone in front of it ("swat sensor"). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.212|162.158.111.212]] 18:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
: K2: Yes. There is in fact a hidden property called catMass. Its value is 2. I am not aware of any machines which submitted a different value. I have submitted my own (sadly not accepted) with stronger cats (a higher catMass value). [https://incredible.xkcd.com/folio/02092fc5-9e23-5468-990e-fba7d67d82c6 Here's an example]. This value is multiplied by 8 and then divided by the minimum of inverse mass of the ball or JS' Number.MIN_VALUE. So to answer your question: yes, it is the same, unless this value got altered (through external methods) and depending on the ball type. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.212|162.158.111.212]] 18:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
::I observe the cat imparts the same velocity to yellow balls and to green balls. The green balls weigh about 30x more than the yellow balls, so I think for "same energy" the answer appears to be no.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.28|162.158.167.28]] 15:29, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
: K4: A cat will at the fastest swat every 200 ms. However up to another 400 ms are added by random. So the limit is a range from 200 to 600 ms. (Simplified, there is a period called "baby jail" where the cat has stopped the 'swat' animation but still cannot swat a new ball. This time is included in the previous calculation.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.212|162.158.111.212]] 18:56, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
: C2: After trying well over 200 reloads, I obtained a cell with three entries (inputs) and four exits. One of the entries produces both blue and red balls, at different rates. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.17|172.69.134.17]] 12:47, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
: E1, E2, X1, X2 and X3: The example link posted above regarding K2 is very enlightening. It reveals (in JSON) that entries and exits have assigned speeds called "rate"s (partly addressing E1, E2, X1, X2 and X3). Rates range from at least 0.55 to 0.76 (maybe balls-per-second, and maybe up to 1.0). It also reveals the items we add are "widgets" and they each have names such as "board" and "catswat". Also the entries and exits are called "inputs" and "outputs", and the balls have types including 1 and 2 which probably correspond to colors. Further review of such examples could be used to update and harmonize the main explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.16|172.69.134.16]] 12:53, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

== Submission Rules ==

Has anyone had any luck determining what the rules for submission are? Like many others, I've submitted a few that I've taken painstaking care to get right only to have them disappear after the refresh, never to be seen again. At first I assumed it was first come, first served, with the first submission getting included, but I'm not so sure.

I took a look at the "[https://pastebin.com/jN5MP2za first 42]" versions that someone provided above, and noticed:
* The very first submission, "Pretty Bad" at (0,0) is still there.
* The second submission is "Don't Forget to Switch Your Fans" which is actually (7,0). It's also still there.
* These are followed by "sword" at (2,0) and "Fred" at (1,0), also still there.
* Next is "Pinball Bouncer" which is actually (0,1).
* Next is "undercomplicated". However this is then replaced by "OnlyFans" which is then replaced by "popcorn". "popcorn" appears at (3,0) and is still there.

What caused these to be added, then removed/replaced if it's first come, first served?

I also noticed over the weekend that I was getting assigned blocks that weren't even in the machine yet. I had rows 67 and 68, and the machine was only on row 65.

Also, I did two on row 68, then one on row 67.

None of these got added, which I assume means that someone else completed them before me, BUT that I started before they finished, otherwise I would hope I wouldn't have been assigned one that was already done.

Just now, I created one for a simple red-in, red-out at (7,73). I completed and submitted it. Then I refreshed and hit the edit button a few times and after a few tries I got another red-in, red-out with the input and output at the exact same place. I threw a couple of boards into it and submitted it and it showed it at the exact same spot, (7,73). So I was able to create a new one for the same spot I had already submitted one. I feel like this implied it's not first come, first served, as if so, why would it allow more people to submit for the same spot that someone had already successfully submitted? FWIW, the lowest row on the actual machine at this point is 70. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.54|172.70.134.54]] 15:16, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
:: The criteria is not known yet. But it seems you are supposed to be able to make multiple submissions per specific cell / puzzle type (there is a list of puzzles sent to the client, when you submit one, the server picks a position which fits that puzzle.). Then one seems to be chosen manually for a specific cell. There are times of day when the machine is being updated very often, and other times when nothing happens for a while, indicating it is likely a manual process. When a puzzle is added to the grid, the value `snapshot` is populated under its corresponding /folio/ URL. Otherwise it is null. The submission time does not seem to have an effect on if your machine would be accepted. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.195.183|172.68.195.183]] 18:29, 15 April 2024 (UTC)
:It's not simply the first submission, because then we'd see many more simple solutions. Most of the trivial cells get artistic designs and overcomplicated contraptions, which take longer to build and would have lost to simpler and quicker solutions. It's not always the most elaborate contraption, because there are a few really minimal solutions where surely someone else submitted something more complex. It's often not the most correct solution, because many designs get clogged quickly or lose many balls, and I've seen some good solutions get replaced with ones that mis-sort many more balls. It's not always a bad solution either, because there are some that work really well.
:It's possible that the server collects submissions for a while and then chooses one at random. It's also possible that the selection is manual, or maybe the manual step is just a final approval to ensure that no hate speech or other garbage gets in.

man I love messing with the hinges lol [[Special:Contributions/172.70.54.165|172.70.54.165]] 18:49, 18 April 2024 (UTC)Maxalon

==Is the Machine now 'complete'?==

For the first time, I'm seeing a machine with no 'under construction' cells. Do we think it has now stopped processing new submissions (despite still having the option to build them)? [NB - even with all the bottom row cells providing balls to the chambers, the Bouyancy is still only reaching the side of the pit and then sinking.][[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.146|172.70.91.146]] 11:57, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
:On the contrary, here. I submitted some machines. (Even did a hard-reload of the page, between them, in case I had to 'update' the scripting behind it.) I get my solution placed at the bottom layer (in once case, it had a "chuck across to the ball-bins" pipe, though nothing got sent across to the ball-bin/no activity was happening in the ball-pit and there's no USS Bouyancy floating around, in another, it just went into nothing) but I'm ''surrounded'' (to the sides, and above) with Under Construction Tape machine-cells. In one example, I had to scroll up 19 layers before I hit any actual machines (in another, it was well into the 20s, but I lost count).
:Latest submission was [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=9&yt=65&v=896 this one], didn't keep a note of the immediately prior ones. Not sure what it looks like from anybody else's perspective. (Nor [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=9&yt=66&v=896 a] [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=8&yt=69&v=896 selection] [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=10&yt=67&v=896 of] [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=1&yt=72&v=896 those] [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=1&yt=71&v=896 that] [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=5&yt=69&v=896 I] [https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=1&yt=72&v=896 noted] previously... And given that there are two "xt=1&yt=72"s in that list, it looks like I later 'redid' a cell anyway, presuming the "v=896" is my constant UID, as it has never changed since I started to note these things.) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.139|172.69.79.139]] 23:30, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
:Postscript: "[https://xkcd.com/2916/#xt=9&yt=65&v=896 this one]" doesn't even send ''me'' to my own just done machine, when I test it! In fact, I'm fairly sure that the one I was linking had green and red (maybe red) balls that needed 'servicing', not the Blue/Red of the "LBC" cell. If not that, it was green, red and blue, but I think that was the one before the hard-refresh. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.145|162.158.33.145]] 23:36, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

:Definitely still under construction - it's up to version 1233 as of now. I've been keeping an eye on it - you can see a list of all published machines with permalinks on my [https://github.com/scpso/incrediblexkcd github page] and search for the names of machines you've submitted to see if they ever got published, or download the csv if you want. None of mine have been published but I've still had a lot of fun. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.144.154|172.68.144.154]] 13:27, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

:As of May 23 2024 it looks complete - no "under construction" cells (except during page load). I also notice that the new blank machines on offer for solving have become simpler. Most have only one or two pairs of inputs/outputs now; rarely three. When the page was new it was possible to get four or even five pairs. BTW many of the submissions are very clever, so congrats to those who were chosen. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.158.116|172.71.158.116]] 20:03, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
::Nope, it's still going. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.59.204|172.69.59.204]] 23:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
::Maybe the reduction in input/output counts is intentional, to assist in fitting accepted submissions into the machine. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.56|172.69.22.56]] 14:44, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
:::I believe it might be complete now. I just submitted one and it replaced one of the existing cells not near the end of the machine. There are no "under construction" cells. [[User:InTheSky|InTheSky]] ([[User talk:InTheSky|talk]]) 09:09, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
::::Just yesterday, I had "construction all the way round" my submission (well, left, right, I was not on the bottom layer and the cell above had yellow tape; did not scroll to see diagonals/further), but I can't test the situation ''right now'', so it might have changed. But I am so used to entries being within a mass of 'taped off' neighbours (and not yet, SFAIK, had a permanent entry into the recurring composite 'board' that lasted beyond the period of submission). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.18|172.70.162.18]] 10:09, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

:Getting the machine layout in a JSON form (see above) always revealed a sructure with 128 rows, gradually filling up from version to version. I assume the complete version would have 128 rows filled. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.246.187|172.70.246.187]] 07:54, 4 June 2024 (UTC)
:: Guess you were right, you can no longer play the game, just see the grid. Which is sad. I would still like to play if I had an idea, even without submitting [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.185|172.70.162.185]] 00:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
:::You can still play the game; a bunch of new layouts just got added, including a 5i5o and 3i4o. But it does look like new rows are no longer being added, just put on top of existing ones.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.56|172.69.22.56]] 06:20, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

== Balls have spin ==

This is subtle, and hard to see because the balls no visible texture: The balls carry spin. It can be seen, with effort, using green balls (which are heaviest). Rolling down a slope (say, two boards), green balls accumulate spin in the direction they are rolling. Let them drop off the end and then bounce off a brick such that they travel upward, but with very little sideways motion. Then "catch" the balls with a brick just past their apex, when they are moving slowly. If the ball lands on a horizontal brick, it can be seen that the ball will suddenly accelerate left or right based on the spin. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.155.18|172.71.155.18]] 15:17, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
:I will add this to the explanation.[[User:PDesbeginner|PDesbeginner]] ([[User talk:PDesbeginner|talk]]) 03:05, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

The spin is easier to see when the balls have been accelerated by forceful interaction with tangible objects. Multiple precisely stacked bonks, which I use often in my experiments, make balls spin so quickly that they rocket across flat surfaces when they fall on them. I believe in some cases they may be spinning so fast that they float or hover, but I can't prove this. I've seen two different colored balls hovering or moving slowly together, seeming to touch. When they encounter a tangible object, they rocket off in opposite directions. I've seen similar effects with multiple stacked wheels and hinged scoops, which behave chaotically and cause balls to rebound fast enough that in some cases they pass through other tangible objects.[[User:Yusagi Yojimbo|Yusagi Yojimbo]] ([[User talk:Yusagi Yojimbo|talk]]) 19:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

== Stacking Objects ==

Stacking certain objects seems to stack their effects. For instance, enough Fans placed directly on top of each other are strong enough to redirect even green balls in mid-flight.

Multiple Bonks create a more powerful bounce, sometimes fast enough to make the ball seem to disappear briefly. These effects can be useful in overcoming certain restrictions and difficulties, or just for the joy of watching balls rocket around.

Stacking moving objects like Hinged Hooks and Wheels creates a completely different effect. Multiple hooks of either handedness - left or right - will lock together and then start to rotate slowly or swing wildly, together or separately, in both directions. Even when the hooks are moving slowly, balls that interact with them will sometime either rocket away or stick to them with a gravitation effect.

Combining left and right hooks has similar effects, but more than 4-6 of either hook will typically slow the animation, and eventually freeze it completely.

More Wheels can be stacked than hooks, with numbers in the dozens still allowing the animation to proceed. They will act in a similar fashion, sometimes locking and sometimes spinning wildly. Balls that strike them will be projected away at high speed, sometimes disappearing, or reappearing in a different section (a round Bonk will often flash briefly with no visible interaction).

Other interaction include sucking the ball into the interior of the wheel, where it sometimes disappears, or clinging to the surface like a gravitational attraction. The more Wheels, the more likely that the ball will simply disappear.

These techniques create interesting chaotic environments in the cell, but make it difficult to meet the ball feed requirements for submission. With multiple inputs it becomes effectively impossible. One work around is to separate streams for the balls at the source, protecting one stream to feed it into the output while allowing the rest to interact with the chaotic object. This is easiest with a single input at the top of the cell, but is still possible with one or more side inputs, depending on the location of the outputs.

The easiest way to stack hooks is to leave them at the spawn point and spawn more on top. Moving hooks and stacking them manually makes it hard to realign them perfectly to get the chaotic interaction, although they will still interact in unexpected ways. Wheels however can be effectively moved and stacked manually.

Adding another object on top may freeze the movement if the object is large large enough. A brick or a round Bonk will not significantly affect the Wheel, nor will a Black Hole or Repulser, but a Board, which extends beyond the Wheel, will lock it in place. The chaotic effects remain even when the wheels aren't moving - the balls seem to react as if they were spinning at high RPMs. [[User:Yusagi Yojimbo|Yusagi Yojimbo]] ([[User talk:Yusagi Yojimbo|talk]]) 17:22, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I've been playing with creating machines that satisfy the requirements to be submittable but allow me to make changes at the last second - after getting an active "submit" button but before submitting I make a change that would technically make it unsubmittable because it basically becomes a chaotic system. The most recent was a stacked mass of ships wheels directly below the sole entry for one color ball. I placed a plank above the wheel to direct the balls to the exit point on the lower border. When I got the submit button to activate I deleted the plank, and clicked the submit button. Even though it immediately became "unsubmittable" I was still able to name it and submit it, where it took its place in the machine grid. The stack of wheels spun at blindingly high speed, and flung the balls around madly. I noticed that some actually pierced the walls and appeared in adjacent machine cells. High energy physics at work! {{unsigned|Yusagi Yojimbo|03:08, 14 September 2024}}
:Now, this is part of why I feel I have to add a "colour-filter" step in almost anything I do (hard, when only some colours appear in 'design mode', to scoop up and test being mixed in)... The number of times a placed submission gets wildly wrong 'inputs' from the prior submitted machines' outputs (that ''sometimes'' I can resolve, but without knowing the actual needs until too late to account for them). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.48|172.70.163.48]] 05:32, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

== Wheel/Fan page crash ==

If you place a fan close to a wheel, such that the middle of the fan is about in line with the bottom edge of the lower wheel blade, and the fan blades are just barely touching the wheel blade, then the wheel accelerates apparently without bound. Eventually any ball that touches the wheel simply disappears from the page. Around 20 seconds later (as the wheel continues to accelerate apparently) the page crashes upon the next ball impact, with a javascript error:

<pre>Uncaught RuntimeError: unreachable executed
stepWithEvents rapier_wasm2d_bg.js:2726
step physics_pipeline.js:16
step world.js:111</pre>

At that point you lose your creation, which sadly I learned the hard way. This is fairly easy to reproduce. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.166.206|172.71.166.206]] 01:23, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I can't seem to get this to work. It could be because I'm dumb, though. That happens sometimes. [[User:Psychoticpotato|Psychoticpotato]] ([[User talk:Psychoticpotato|talk]]) 00:00, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

https://imgur.com/a/EhzlbCV --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.74|172.68.26.74]] 13:48, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

== Another glitch ==

Some pairs, like "xt=6&yt=124" and "xt=7&yt=124" cause a glitch. It is not related to the machine, for it is consistent for me (Fx 126.0.1, Windows 11). Does anyone else have these issues? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.11|172.70.34.11]] 19:02, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes the live huge machine is crashing very frequently now. If I scroll around it will crash and just freeze permanently. I can't tell which panel or panels is causing the crash though. Maybe it's just gotten too big? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.64.240|172.69.64.240]]

== Yet Another glitch ==

If you press a ball against the wall it clips out kinda cool {{unsigned|Xkcd machine guy|09:39, 16 June 2024}}
:You can observe this with pressing balls between (solid) elements, too, having placed one item (or more) then shifting a further one into contact with the prior(s) with a ball already landed there. (I ought to try it with two 'cups', mutually inverted, trap a ball in one then move either straight across the other.)
:It's often useful to (temporarily) clear out a system jam by sweeping the balls around with a throwaway object, but also you can force their time-outs by making their existence untenable (after some scene-editing that temporarily sent streams in totally in the wrong direction). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.49.94|162.158.49.94]] 14:04, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

== Entirely broken? ==

I can no longer play the game (have tried on two different computers, repeatedly for the last 24 hours). Starts out in the machine view, the machine freezes immediately, and there's no edit button. -- [[User:Rei|Rei]] ([[User talk:Rei|talk]]) 22:10, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Same here. If you scroll (drag) to view the bottom (USS Buoyancy), balls will move there, but there's no "Edit" button. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.159.7|172.71.159.7]] 23:14, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Also for me. Chrome and Firefox, balls traverse the bottom chamber and float the boat, but as soon as the bottom row of machines are within view, no balls spawn or move. I only just saw this comic today, which appears to be the day it broke, so... I've never seen it running. Came to Explainxkcd to see if it was just me, and here we are at the very bottom, not feeling buoyant. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.76|162.158.167.76]] 05:35, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible it will eventually be fixed? {{unsigned ip|162.158.175.151|13:44, 24 June 2024}}
:Many things are possible! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.34|141.101.99.34]] 20:55, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I opened [https://github.com/xkcd/incredible/issues/3a ticket on Github]. A day later it was fixed, so I assume that was the trigger. Yeay! :) -- [[Special:Contributions/172.69.144.162|172.69.144.162]] 11:14, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

On Chromakode’s (Max Goodheart, one of the devs of Machine) website, he has an article about the process of creating the game. In the very beginning, he mentions our explanation. Seeing as Randall most likely has seen this article, could it be possible that he has read our explanation and is aware of our existence? [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 15:10, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
:If and if and if, aside, I would imagine that he is fully ''aware'' of it but could be studiously (or at least overtly) not getting involved in it in any practical way.
:I'm trying to remember how much he actually involved himself in the old [forums|fora].xkcd.com, registered as an actual subdomain that ''belonged'' to him, and seem to think that he didn't really (at least identifiably).
:He has even less vested interest in this entirely 'fan-created' site. The most involvement might be from the willingness to allow/actively overlook copyight issues that would have liberties taken, but it's already basically all already CreativeCommons or similar (of the things uploaded here, there necessarily being "links only" out to some newspaper-affiliated stuff, etc) so already something he can blithely ignore (as he would the "I hate xkcd" anti-fan sites).
:Is there any actual reason you need him to be? You can always contact him in various other established ways, from email to formerly-Twitter. Why should he become further distracted by our particular brand of muddling-through to his thrice-weekly output, rather than just do what he does to entertain us on such a tight schedule? I've said before, and will doubtless say again, that Randall might or might not read this site (though, for various reasons, I'm not convinced he does) but would probably be wise to not ''visibly'' do so. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.109|172.70.90.109]] 23:53, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
:when xkcd still did official transcripts, sometimes the transcript writer would give up and link to our transcript. [[user talk:lettherebedarklight|youtu.be/miLcaqq2Zpk]] 12:46,

sometimes 2 balls get glitched while falling into the pit and stay together and falls slowly. collision unglitches the balls - [[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.79|172.71.146.79]] 18:51, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

3050: Atom

2025-02-17T09:44:58Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */

{{distinguish|1490: Atoms}}
{{comic
| number = 3050
| date = February 12, 2025
| title = Atom
| image = atom_2x.png
| imagesize = 281x385px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = What's weirder is that muons turned out to be INCREDIBLY cute.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a wobbly and wet BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Atoms are typically very, very small{{Citation needed}}, and [[1490: Atoms|generally]] cannot be seen with the naked eye nor individually discernable with human hands (despite almost all things that they can touch, and even themselves, being ''made'' of atoms). The humor here comes from the fact that atoms, normally intangible in a singular form, have been given a large physical presence that apparently feels gross and nonsensical. The characters in the comic have found this out using a so-called "quantum expander device" which would be a huge advance in modern physics (and possibly quite dangerous) if it existed, but unfortunately/fortunately it does not.

Although electrons are often depicted as orbiting an atomic nucleus very similarly to how planets orbit the Sun, this is an extremely simplistic model of how the electrons are positioned. Students are often taught a succession of more complex models over several years of schooling. In reality, [[2100: Models of the Atom|current understanding of]] the behavior of electrons is ruled by quantum mechanics and {{w|Uncertainty_principle|Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle}}. An electron doesn't have a single exact location relative to the nucleus; rather, its location is probabilistic. It can be considered to be "smeared out", with specific locations in space having higher or lower concentrations. This is often visualized to be similar to how a meteorological cloud can be dense or thin. It's often depicted by showing the shapes of the electron density patterns with varying intensities of color, or densely-packed dots vs. spread-out dots. This is sometimes referred to as the "electron cloud model", though electrons aren't ''really'' composed of tiny droplets. A cloud in the sky [https://gpm.nasa.gov/resources/faq/what-are-clouds-made-are-they-more-likely-form-polluted-air-or-pristine-air contains water], and is often assumed to be wet, but could be anything from vapour to ice-crystals. The feel of wetness is also a lot more complicated than we might think. Everybody knows what something wet feels like, but there are no "wetness"-detecting cells in the skin. [https://issuu.com/university_of_southampton/docs/reaction_magazine_winter_2021/s/14454287 Apparently] the brain uses various clues like temperature and pressure, along with past experiences, to determine when something feels "wet".

There are mathematical techniques known as "quantum expanders" which reveal more detail and better understanding about the statistical probabilities of the "quantum cloud". The joke is that someone created a device that actually expands the atom to a scale that it can be held in one's hands and the electron cloud could be felt.

Scientists generally wear latex gloves when touching certain subjects of study, certainly those that are expected to be damp, and perhaps [[Ponytail]] and [[Cueball]] should be doing that here.

The size of a mid-sized atom can be estimated as between 100 and 200 picometer ({{w|Atomic radii of the elements (data page)|full data table}}). Assuming an iron atom of ~150 pm size, to enlarge it up to a ~60-70 cm size as it is displayed in the comic, one would have to enlarge it by a factor of ca. 4 trillion. Doing the same enlargement with a ~2mm diameter peppercorn would enlarge that seed to a planet rivaling the Earth.

The title text expands on this, claiming that muons, a type of subatomic particle, apparently are "cute" despite ordinarily being subatomic particles with a mean lifetime of 2.2 microseconds, [[3043: Muons|give or take]]. Muons might be considered cute because they're small — like electrons and tau particles, they are considered to be point phenomena at the quantum level with no practical physical size (at or below {{w|Planck units#Planck length|subatomic Planck-scale}}), although ''possibly'' that (and the time they last) changes as a function of the quantum expander being applied to them. It might possibly also reference a certain way of pronouncing "muon", which starts with a "mew" sound, which in turn is associated with kittens (and {{w|Mew (Pokémon)|a fairly cute Pokémon}}).

In reality/practice, touching oversized electrons might not be recommended - as that may result in electric discharges - or protons being "ripped" out of your body and falling on the oversized electron, while normal electrons are "ripped" out of your body and scattered elsewhere (assuming that the oversized electron has proportionately bigger attraction and repulsion compared to normal-sized particles, which is not clear from the comic). In other words - you could be disintegrated and electrocuted, and a giant explosion will occur. Oversized electrons may also behave like [https://what-if.xkcd.com/140/ piles of densely packed electrons]. Oversizing a proton could also be dangerous for roughly same reasons - except this time, electrons wold fall on oversized proton, while normal protons would get scattered. Presumably, it's advisable to practice Quantum Expanding with neutrons instead, as it shouldn't react as violently to normal-sized particles.

However, a free neutron decays with a mean lifetime of about 14 minutes, converting part of its mass to 0.78 MeV energy. If the neutron was scaled up to the mass of a tennis ball (rather than remain the same mass, only larger), it would weigh about 57 grams. If that means that the decay energy is scaled up by the same factor, it would release about 25 orders of magnitude more energy upon decay: 1kT TNT equivalent or half the force of the 2020 Beirut explosion.

Upscaling muons or quarks to the size of watermelons may be utterly disastrous - even more so than packed electrons - as they may be the very foundation of the laws of physics; potentially, it may destroy the entire Universe. On top of that, upscaling quarks to the size of watermelons sounds like it could ruin color symmetry - as two quarks are now left without the third quark, and the big quark is now alone. That was explained in {{tvtropes|Fridge/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality|HPtMoR chapter 119}} and a particularly munchkinish build of {{tvtropes|GameBreaker/TheWorldOfDarkness|World of Darkness}} vampire mad scientist. Possibly, such destructive capacity of oversized muons (despite their "cuteness") may be part of the joke - as {{w|Mew (Pokémon)|a fairly cute Pokémon}} in question was a powerful "legendary Pokemon".

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is holding in one hand, away from himself, an atom approximately the size of his head with shaky lines drawn around the atom. Ponytail has her hand near the atom and her other hand above her chin. Lines near the edge of the atom near her hand indicates the atom is wobbling. Hairy stands to the right of Ponytail.]
:Cueball: Ugh, the electron cloud is so weird and wobbly! I hate it!
:Ponytail: Why is it so wet? How can it even ''be'' wet?
:Hairy: I don't want to do physics anymore.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:When our lab was building the quantum expander device, we didn't expect our first discovery to be "atoms are really gross."

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Atom02]]

3045: AlphaMove

2025-02-04T09:12:27Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3045
| date = January 31, 2025
| title = AlphaMove
| image = alphamove_2x.png
| imagesize = 500x526px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It struggles a little with complex positions, like when there are an even number of moves and it has to round down, but when run against itself it's capable of finding some novelties. At one point I saw six knights on the board at once; Stockfish rarely exceeds four.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE SEVENTH KNIGHT, WAITING IN ANTICIPATION FOR THE BETA RELEASE. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic shows a new {{w|chess engine}}, presumably created by [[Randall]], which takes a list of all legal moves (in {{w|Algebraic notation (chess)|algebraic notation}}) in alphabetical order and chooses the median.

A playable implementation of this game can be found here: [https://enn-nafnlaus.github.io/AlphaMove/alphamove.html AlphaMove].

Algebraic notation begins with a symbol for which piece is being moved, which is always the first letter of the piece name, with the exception of knights (N) and pawns (nothing). This is then followed by the square that the piece is being moved to. (Rc4 would indicate a move that moved a rook to c4.) Other symbols include a lowercase x before the destination, indicating that the move is a capture; a plus sign (+) after the destination, indicating that the move places the opposing king in check; and a hash sign (#) after the destination, indicating that the move places the opposing king in checkmate, thus winning the game. There are also O-O and O-O-O notations, which indicate that a player is castling kingside or queenside, respectively.

In practice, this algorithm runs into a few issues. As seen in the comic, the algorithm rarely moves bishops and rooks due to their relative lack of moves in the early game, and their tendency to inhabit the edges of any list when they do have sortable moves. Among basic moves, only pawns destined to move in the first two files of a board can ever sort higher than bishops, and nothing other than another rook can be closer to the far end than a rook. The algorithm favors knight and king moves, with entries starting with the most alphabetically middling "K" and "N" list entries, and (to a lesser extent) pawns destined to move up the right side of the board, the "h"-file pawn generally having the greatest statistical chance. Castling moves would also occur near the middle of the list, as they are denoted with letter 'O' characters as O-O or O-O-O. The shortcomings of AlphaMove are instantly apparent from looking at the game board presented in the comic; roughly ten moves into the game, White has lost three pawns, captured nothing, and advanced their king into the open rather than developing any pieces, while Black (presumably being played by a 'stronger' conventional chess engine) has taken control of the center with a knight and two pawns, developed a bishop, and advanced their queen to f2.

The ''actual'' middle of the list might vary away from the usual alphabetic median if the moves (and the pieces removed by the opponent) are heavily biased to a particular subset of player-pieces. It is conceivable that an opponent could identify the AlphaMove strategy as being used, and then use their foreknowledge of the algorithm's 'developing game' to strategically make (normally non-optimal) moves designed explicitly to force the algorithm down their own choice of path, such as targeting undefended rooks and queens (either capturing them with impunity, or just strategically restricting their movements by moving into contact with them in such a way as to normally be a suicidal sacrifice), in order to make certain other pieces take their own moves. Although given the established failings of uncritically sticking to the algorithmic plan, it is probably ''vastly'' more effort to precisely engineer a given game-state than to merely play properly and respond with half-decent responses to the overwhelmingly sub-optimal series of moves. For example, setting Stockfish (Black) against AlphaMove (White) results in the following fifteen-move victory for black:
# f3 e5
# e4 Bc5
# d4 Bxd4
# f4 d5
# g4 Qh4+
# Ke2 Qf2+
# Kd3 dxe4+
# Kxe4 Nf6+
# Kd3 e4+
# Kc4 Be6+
# Kb5 a6+
# Ka5 Bc3+
# Ka4 b5+
# Ka3 Qc5+
# b4 Qxb4#
On the other hand, a person playing black who knew that white was using AlphaMove could win in six moves (possibly fewer):
# f3 e5
# e4 Qh4+
# Ke2 b6
# g3 Ba6+
# Ke1 Qh3
# c3 Qxf1#
However, chess tournaments do not award more points for quicker victories, and playing like this would be risky because if White initially uses AlphaMove and Black goes for the six-move checkmate, White could capture Black's undefended queen on move five, revealing the AlphaMove emulation to just be a ruse to get Black to expose a queen. White would then be in a winning position after 5. Bxh3 or 5. Nxh3 and could play smartly for the rest of the game and would likely win, so opting for the fifteen-move mate would likely be safer. Indeed, playing Stockfish against itself after 5. Nxh3 yields the following 41-move win for white:
# f3 e5
# e4 Qh4+
# Ke2 b6
# g3 Ba6+
# Ke1 Qh3
# Nxh3 c5
# f4 Bb7
# Nc3 Nc6
# d3 Be7
# Nb5 Rd8
# Nc7+ Kf8
# Bg2 d6
# Kf2 Nf6
# Rf1 exf4
# Nxf4 Rc8
# Ncd5 Ne5
# Nxf6 Bxf6
# Kg1 h6
# c3 Rd8
# d4 cxd4
# cxd4 Nd7
# Be3 Kg8
# h4 Kh7
# Nh5 Rhg8
# Qf3 Ba6
# Rfc1 Kh8
# Bh3 Bd3
# Bxd7 Bxh4
# Qxf7 Bxe4
# gxh4 Rdf8
# Qe7 Bg6
# Rc7 Rf7
# Nf4 Rxe7
# Nxg6+ Kh7
# Nxe7 Rf8
# Rf1 Rb8
# Rf7 Kh8
# Be6 Kh7
# Bf5+ Kh8
# Ng6+ Kh7
# Rxg7#
(While white technically does let black capture white's undefended queen on move 34, this is not the same as what black did on move 5 because after 34. … Rxe7, the rook doing the capturing has moved into a position where 35. Nxg6+ forks it and black's king while capturing a bishop. This allows white to recoup {{w|Chess_piece_relative_value|eight points}} in the following two moves, which represents a greater proportion of black's remaining firepower than the nine points that white just lost. Indeed, with black having only one piece (besides the king) left to help with defense, white can force checkmate in six moves. Thus, the AlphaMove ruse, where white pretends to use AlphaMove in order to trick black into hanging the black queen, can be advantageous for white if black falls for it. However, even after 1. f3 e5 2. e4, white has a weakened kingside early in the game and has not been the most productive at allowing for future development, so black should focus on development (e.g., 2. … Nc6 or 2. … Bc5) and use the advantage that black already has instead of risking falling into a trap. (Of course, the AlphaMove ruse would only have any chance of working if the opponent reads xkcd, which is another reason to not try it.)

Even if AlphaMove ever found one or more of its potential moves to be one that happens to result in checkmate, it has no reason to do anything other than choose its "mid-list move", as described, and the chances are high that such a mate would never be invoked. Along those lines, Qa4+ is a relatively safe move to create a short-term check, to put immediate pressure upon the Black king, and potentially a longer term inconvenience with 'only' a predictable response preventing it from developing into a mate. But it is not in the right list position to attempt, never mind whether it would then be correctly followed up.

This engine may be named for and inspired by the real chess engine {{w|AlphaZero}}, or {{w|AlphaGo}} which plays a different game but has a more similar name. Another real name, mentioned in the title text, is {{w|Stockfish (chess)|Stockfish}}, a widely used (and powerful) chess engine.

On this board, Black can win the game instantly with ...Bb4{{w|Checkmate|#}}. Rather than do anything to defend against this, White just moves an unrelated piece, almost certainly losing immediately afterward. Randall has also chosen a setup where the king is placed in a position where it cannot make any legal moves, thus removing it from the list of pieces that can perform any moves. Almost certainly this was a choice, both to make the list without king moves and also to make it pretty easy to see how one more move would be checkmate.

The title of the comic is a play on words. As the name of the chess engine, it refers to the strategy of choosing moves based on alphabetical ordering, while in popular usage, an "alpha move" is an action that would assert dominance over someone else. This makes it an ironic name for the chess engine; rather than asserting dominance, it loses quickly.

The title text mentions games with "six knights", which implies that two pawns have been promoted to knights. Pawns can promote to bishop, knight, queen or rook, so the middle of this list is tied between knight and queen. It is rare that a pawn is promoted to a knight; in most situations a queen would be preferred. The exceptions (perhaps where promoting to queen would cause either an immediate stalemate from what was a winnable position, or let the king survive on a square that's a knight's move away from the newly-promoted queen) are common in contrived chess puzzles but rare in actual gameplay. Promotion to rook or bishop would be even rarer, as these pieces have fewer move possibilities than a queen without the alternative moves of the knight. It would probably be due to a 'forced' promotion, in lieu of moving a more vital piece currently perfectly positioned for the endgame, and the player concerned should be perfectly aware of they must or must not promote to, ahead of time. However, when AlphaMove plays itself, the pawns tend to preferentially move up (and down) the right-hand side of the board, and may meet each other in double-files, or more, ''possibly'' with the opportunity to cross over to capture an opponent. If the alphabetical balance of moves becomes such that multiple right-hand files of pawns are dodging past each other, it is not unrealistic that multiple pawns would reach the respective back ranks and 'choose' to promote to knights.

Chess is a [[:Category:Chess|recurring theme]] on xkcd, with another recent example being [[3036: Chess Zoo]].

==Transcript==
:[A standard chessboard is shown with Black at the top. The boards "black squares" are light gray. Black (which is drawn as dark gray) has made moves resulting in Qf2, Nd4, e4, a5, Bc5, e5 and Ne7 while other black pieces are in starting positions. White has made moves resulting in c4, f4, h4, Kc3, Ne2 and three white pawns are removed from the board while other white pieces including a- and b-pawns are in starting positions. Two squares associated with white's move Ne2 are highlighted in yellow, it has moved there from its starting position g1.]

:[To the right of the chess board is a vertical list of possible moves listed in alphabetical order. The text is in light gray, except the move Ne2 in the middle which is black and highlighted in yellow. Two light gray double arrows with a line at the end of each arrow head goes from the top to just above the yellow move, and from just below this to the bottom. A short but thick black arrow points in between the space between the two gray arrows pointing at the yellow move.]
:a3
:a4
:b3
:b4
:Bd2
:Bd3
:Be2
:Be3
:Bg2
:Bh3
:f5
:fxe5
:h5
:Na3
:Nd2
: '''Ne2'''
:Nf3
:Nh3
:Qa4+
:Qb3
:Qc2
:Qd2
:Qd3
:Qe1
:Qe2
:Qf3
:Qg4
:Qh5
:Qxd4
:Rh2
:Rh3

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My new AlphaMove chess engine, which sorts the list of legal moves alphabetically and picks the middle one, was quickly defeated by stronger engines.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Chess]]

User talk:FaviFake

2025-01-29T13:40:40Z

141.101.98.245: /* YouTube template */ Deletable comment.

<big><big><big><big>Hey there, feel free to '''[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:FaviFake&action=edit&section=new send me a message]''' :)</big></big>{{TOC}}</big></big>

== Objects table ==
Thanks for replying. The current table in the main text looks good, but still it is a ''description'' or just ''enumeration'' of game objects, not an ''explanation'' (or in some cases: partly an explanation). Supposing we keep the current structure, it is possible to add explanations for the planet names in the '''Explanation''' column. For example, first sentence of the second paragraph is a good ''explanation'' for the Uzumaki planet's name. On the other hand, Andal has only a ''description'' (what it looks like and what features are present on the surface) and no ''explanation'' (that it refers to Animorphs series of books). There's also a question where one should put explanations of items and messages. Some do not need an explanation ('You found a stick'), but most do: what they mean and what they refer to, both in xkcd context (such as when there's a comic about the thing) and in general context. I hope you understand the difference between ''description'' and ''explanation''. Maybe there's also some misunderstanding resulting from a language barrier; English is not my native language.

What is also missing in the table are many structures or objects found on the planets and, most importantly, dialogues or monologous of the characters, which contain many puns and references, and also hints for the player. There's simply no place for them in the current structure. Making more columns may be messsy. That's why I proposed making several tables covering different aspects.

Please take my remarks as proposals to improve the structure and not as a criticism or request for you to make everything right and fill every cell of the table. I think we need to create a clear structure for everyone else to fill in with details; but also to provide good examples to follow.

Technical remarks:
* In my opinion, the filename column is not needed, it does not appear anywhere while playing, it's in source code only. Better remove it to have more horizontal space for the rest. The names given to the planets by the editors of the explanation page shown in the Description column are fine.
* Coordinates are also not useful for a regular player, who does not use some Javascript addition/cheats, maybe remove it as well; textual directions in '''Explanation''' column are sufficient.

-- [[User:Malgond|Malgond]] ([[User talk:Malgond|talk]]) 19:59, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
:> Thanks for replying. The current table in the main text looks good, but still it is a ''description'' or just ''enumeration'' of game objects, not an ''explanation'' (or in some cases: partly an explanation). Supposing we keep the current structure, it is possible to add explanations for the planet names in the '''Explanation''' column. For example, first sentence of the second paragraph is a good ''explanation'' for the Uzumaki planet's name. On the other hand, Andal has only a ''description'' (what it looks like and what features are present on the surface) and no ''explanation'' (that it refers to Animorphs series of books).
:Hey! Yeah, that's the state of the table ''right now'', and I 100% percent agree with everything you're saying here. All planets and items that need an explanation should be explained and not just described. I mostly just copied and pasted the "planet description/explanations" from the old list to the table: creating the table was way more painful than i thought. I was actually surprized to see that nobody explained what Andal referred to, but I don't know anything about it so more knowledgeable people will have to chip in on that

:>There's also a question where one should put explanations of items and messages. Some do not need an explanation ('You found a stick'), but most do: what they mean and what they refer to, both in xkcd context (such as when there's a comic about the thing) and in general context. I hope you understand the difference between ''description'' and ''explanation''.
:I do! And I wish other people could help here. I'm not sure if you've seen it, but this is the banner i put above the table:
----
'''ALL ITEM EXPLANATIONS NEED TO BE TRANSFERRED FROM THE OLD PLANET LIST TO THE NEW TABLE''' 
We are currently switching from a disorganized list (below, inside the green banner) to the new organized table, but the explanations for specific items are missing from the new table. Please help by copying the item explanations from the old list and adding them to the new table ''in this format:'' 
<code>The item message &ndash; <nowiki>''Where to find it &ndash; Explanation, such as references etc''</nowiki></code> 
Example: You found a cheese platter (Your tanks recharge faster) – ''Next to the cell tower – The cheese is a reference to [https://example.com 1234: Cheese]''
----
'''OTHER ISSUES:'''
* upgrades that end in "???" need to be replaced by the exact upgrade message shown to the user.
* the "Tiles (X, Y)" column for planet coordinates is empty

:As you can see, the explanations should be put right next to the items and messages. Unfortunately no one has started to add them to the table yet

:> Maybe there's also some misunderstanding resulting from a language barrier; English is not my native language.
:Your English is excellent :)

:> dialogues or monologous of the characters, which contain many puns and references, and also hints for the player. There's simply no place for them in the current structure. Making more columns may be messsy. That's why I proposed making several tables covering different aspects.
Almost all the dialogues are on the [[2765: Escape Speed/Transcript]] page, so I guess they should be added there. I don't know if they're already here, I haven't looked at it enough
:: The transcript is not the place for explanations. Puns and references shall be explained elsewhere. I continue working on the transcript but there's still quite a way to go. -- [[User:Malgond|Malgond]] ([[User talk:Malgond|talk]]) 5 May 2023

:> Please take my remarks as proposals to improve the structure and not as a criticism or request for you to make everything right and fill every cell of the table. I think we need to create a clear structure for everyone else to fill in with details; but also to provide good examples to follow.
:Yeah; i totally get everything you said. In my last reply I think I was a bit too rude for some reason, maybe it's because I just finished the table and was tired.

:>* In my opinion, the filename column is not needed, it does not appear anywhere while playing, it's in source code only. Better remove it to have more horizontal space for the rest. The names given to the planets by the editors of the explanation page shown in the Description column are fine.
:* Coordinates are also not useful for a regular player, who does not use some Javascript addition/cheats, maybe remove it as well; textual directions in '''Explanation''' column are sufficient.
I was heavily inspired by the table in the [[2712: Gravity]] explanation, which included these. I kind of agree that the filename could be removed, and the filenames could be added to the planet name or explanation, i didn't think about that. About the tiles, someone might use them someday, but if the column keeps remaining empty, i don't mind seeing it disappear

:I really liked your ideas, if you don't mind I'll copy and paste this discussion in the actual comic discussion page and see what others think --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:37, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

::Update: I found a way and added all the coordinates, and moved the planet filenames to the Planet Name column to make more space for the other columns :)

::: Hi, what about dividing planets and objects like in [[User:Malgond/Drafts/Escape_Speed|my experiment]]? There's plenty of horizontal space for explanations and the entries are quite compact vertically. I also think about color-coding the different Types of game objects. -- [[User:Malgond|Malgond]] ([[User talk:Malgond|talk]]) 5 May 2023

::::Hmm, I think it looks a little messy and maybe too complicated. Do any other comics have two different tables? Also, I'm personally not a fan of mixing items, landscapes, and people. I think most people reading the table are there to get an overview of the planets and what they contain. Do we really have to explain everything in such detail? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 14:09, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

:::::We do not have to follow other explanations too closely, we could use a new form if it seems clearer and better. The current form has no place neither for explaining items nor for dialogues/monologues. More columns could be problematic (specifically in today's world of high and narrow screens of smartphones). Should we explain everything? Well, it us up to collective "us". Personally, I would like someone explain a few puns/dialogues I do not understand.
:::::For now, there's only a handful of people still interested in somehow finishing the explanation for this huge comic. Maybe if we two can agree on some format we could put it in discussion page and ask for votes. (Discussion needs a cleanup, BTW). -- [[User:Malgond|Malgond]] ([[User talk:Malgond|talk]]) 22:00, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

:::::Hey, I'm back. I see you're enhancing your example table, and iI was wondering, do you plan to move your edits to the actual article after you're done and use the test to see how the formatting looks? Isn't it easier to just add them to the main page directly? Just wondering. If you want I can help you port them over :)
:::::Keeping the contents of the table on your talk page and then porting them over afterwards could lead to a loss of information added after you started editing your user page [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 13:11, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

::::::I'm back too. Yes, I intend to put it in the main article, but I am a bit shy to replace a lot of your work; I've asked for opinions in the talk page. Let's see how it sorts out. Maybe someone has a still better idea. -- [[User:Malgond|Malgond]] ([[User talk:Malgond|talk]]) 21:50, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

::::::Oh. I think the structure of the current table in the article is better than the one you've been working on: for example, it's easier to sort for items, is more compact, and is just one. Why don't you just add a "transcript" column like the table on [[2712: Gravity]] to put what things and people say, and add the rest of the information on the respective columns? Personally, I think you're making it a little bit too complicated. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 15:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

== Haltones ==

"They're not **predominantly** gray, the two main colors are just white and black. Sometimes he uses the gray color just like when he uses any other color" ... It didn't say that they were predominantly grey(/'gray'), any more than it said that they'd be predominently black (as [[:Category:Comics with inverted brightness]], often, in preference to white). The point being that even the most "black and white" images aren't monochrome, but have degrees of grey at the boundaries, with smoothly antialiased boundaries between the full black of the line (or filled area) and the full white of the background (or inverted detail). You'll see this if you zoom in, with your favourite image editor. And very often in images with a default RGB colourspace, even if the effective pallette employed covers just greyscale values. But greys actually do feature a lot, too (often the first choice of non-black-and-white, for slight lessening of prominence, as opposed to 'red pen' ''increased'' visibility). So it's technically inaccurate to describe them as pretty much monochrome. But how to convey this in <...counts...> less than 157ish words? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.173|172.71.242.173]] 16:35, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
:The wiki page says
::::"xkcd comics are usually plain, predominantly black-and-white line drawings, but sometimes they make use of hues beyond the usual monochrome colors, even if it is just red-penned annotations.
:I think it's enough, since, even if grey is more used than other non-monochrome colors, I don't believe it's so important that it needs to be included as a "third" main color. If Randall uses many bright colors, that he will obviously also use simpler hues of grey when needed. What do you think? [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:51, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
:Aside from the antialising edging gradient, I just used the Random Page link and landed on [[1301: File Extensions|something with functional greys]], [[734: Outbreak|an unusual use of 'Post-It' yellow]], an unremarkably "just black pen" comic and then [[1788: Barge|more functional grey]]. I'd argue against "monochrome" as a description, as clearly there is more than just #000000 and #FFFFFF, often enough, in an actual fill-colour/broad-brush context. Even if that's #808080 or another no-hue shade. (I was expecting to land on a "grey pen" comic to assess, after enough clicks but, having seen what I got in the random first handful, I saw no need to go on.)
:And "monochrome" can be/often is coloured. Sepia photographs or "night vision" green displays are perfect examples of monochrome (with or without halftones/dithering/whatever). As is [[267: Choices: Part 4]] (other Choices comics may be considered "duotone", in different ways).
:Maybe "...are often drawn as black shapes on white, or occasionally white shapes on a dark background, but may feature at least one additional highlighting shade or an even fuller colour pallette." Does that sufficiently cover that whole breadth of use? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.154|172.70.86.154]] 19:48, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

== Childish slang. ==

Agree with you on the recent change that you (generic 'you', not ''you'' 'you'!) sound infantile, any which way, upon use of the words mentioned. Which is how it was still said before the revert in that version of edit. But with <code>"pretty gay" and "retarded" are infantile and offensive slang for "foolish" or "contemptible"</code>, you miss the point. Foolishness is just one distant contender for what "pretty gay" is often intended to mean (even if not actually being used for someone/something 'effeminate'). And "retarded" is more in the whole "thick, stupid, dumb" line of insult than "contemptible" (which is more "horrible, dislikable, repulsive"..?).
 Personally, I also thought it better with not actually defining insults (correctly or otherwise), as it adds power to them. I can call someone a "numpty" in jest, for example, and colloquially that might be understood as the low-level insult (if that) which it is intended to be. But if I start to bandy around its {{wiktionary|numpty#Scots|dictionary definition}} then it becomes more of a seriously accusatory description.
 Just my opinion. Not really understanding the latest revert when it had seemed to be improved (if anything) in the version you reverted away. Just putting it there. I know you're doing a lot of editing (good stuff!) just wondering if you considered this one carefully enough in your obvious zeal. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.89|172.71.182.89]] 16:31, 28 May 2023 (UTC)
:Addendum. Meant to say, if you decide to undo/reform your own revert (I won't do it, but on the offchance you see my point), I'd have not said "''commonly'' used". They're used in slang, but I don't think we can say how frequently they pop up. They're "used in slang" (and also not in slang, or at least not insulting slang, where "gay" has a long history of just meaning "happy", whilst "retarded" is often to do with decceleration/minimised acceleration of physical systems) but I'm not sure they're no more than minority words in the whole world of such language. They depict a subset of insult-givers (like the character in the comic, for whom it adds a certain additional characterisation) amongst all the many and varied insult-givers, and Randall surely chose such semi-bowlderised terms to not have to write any of all the far worse words he might also have done. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.94.31|172.71.94.31]] 16:46, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

== IP page to delete ==

I didn't see your thinking about why the Deletion category was not needed there. And, believe me as an IP myself, I've never known anything useful being said on an IP's User or User Talk page. With that example not breaking the pattern any. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.131|172.70.85.131]] 00:41, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
:I just don't think there's a reason to delete it, it's useful to have a previous talk page if the IP continues to edit and people want to communicate with them [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:51, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
::"The IP" is whichever one of 'us' happens to land on that particular Cloudflare route.
::I'm not going to go back and find out which IP it represents, to check if it's in their current stock of connected gateways, but it might not be. Or it was even (depending on date) a pre-Cloudflare 'straight' access unproxied and thus no longer seen, even if the exact same editor on the exact same IP lucked on ''their'' initial gateway.
::Certainly it won't map to a meaningful 'user', chances may even be that it doesn't map to ''any'' user. IP-version User/User Talk pages are anachronisms pretty much as soon as they're created. Or before, if based upon trying to contact an author of an older edit. I was on 172.70.85.131, above, but who knows (before I submit it) what this reply's sign-off will say.
::And a one-shot editor may never ever see the results of any conversation that was tried to be started. Whereas I ''might'' see any response, anywhere, that contextually makes it plain that they're talking about an edit I once made.
::Honestly, I think it'd be worthwhile checking ''every'' IP-focussed namespace page and archiving anything truly interesting that found itself in there in some other central location then condemning them all to deletion. Maybe, if possible, prevent their creation too. But I don't have the ability to do anything (except sift through them for any of the very rare gems of quality, but I wouldn't be able to do anything about it from there on in, so...
::...not gonna do anything more about it (I can't, other than reinstate the To Be Deleted membership, whch I won't bother with), but I hope you understand my perspective on this. I've seen you become a very useful member of the community, who I generally respect for your input and tweaks to the site, and don't expect you to take instruction from li'l ol' me (not even working with an established identity). Just consider this as food for thought, and leave it at that if you wish. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.19|162.158.34.19]] 20:12, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

== RTL/LTR: "...but I think it refers to me" ==

Yeah, it does. The point being that we might not do anything about the smartarses who vandalise knowingly (and I don't see a problem with what you otherwise did), but when someone thinks ''they'' have unique and funny joke (along the lines of putting "Citation needed"s ''everywhere'') they might spot the comment and then realise how we've seen it all done before so refrain from the prank. I can't even recall how many times we have had to revert things, but best to put off the casual comedian, and it won't change the outcome either way for the dedicated vandal with their blood up and looking to cause trouble. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.107|141.101.98.107]] 20:00, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
:I guess you're right, I just thought it was very clear for everyone that rendering an entire article unreadable was an act of pure vandalism, but I guess an editor comment doesn't hurt. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

== The reason "the image size wasn't there"? ==

...because it didn't need an image-size restriction, originally? Compare the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:Miss_lenhart.png previous and current version sizes]. Nice to have a (''huge!'') high-res headshot, no doubt, but clearly that's why you found that it now needs artificially constraining... No actual mystery. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.63|172.70.85.63]] 17:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

:Yeah you're right, I just assumed every comic had the image size to be future-proof. The weird thing was that the "imagesize: " part was already there, but there was no value. Anyway, nothing important.

: Just out of curiosity, are you the same IP guy from [[#IP page to delete]]?--[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

== I disagree with Oxford commas. ==

"For breakfast I had some bread, toast, and jam." - A legitimate(ish) case of ", and ". Or "I created the world, and saw that it was good." I otherwise prefer to suscribe to replacing all non-final conjunctions in sequence with commas but ''not'' adding one before the ultimate (remaining) conjunction. That's like having "Fish, and chips", where it isn't an actual afterthought. And best to rephrase or repunctuate (e.g. with super-listing semicolons to separate) if you have confusing comma-breakout clauses that ''so'' easily clash (or lead you down funny garden paths) with Oxford Commas. My opinion, but this is why syntax is clearer when leaving out OCs. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.93|172.70.85.93]] 13:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
:I just think it's better to use it everywhere to avoid any possible confusion. If we used it half the time, it would be inconsistent. But it's no big deal.
::Similarly, no big deal. Except that it ''looked'' like an error. You've done a lot of useful changes, recently... A ''lot''... Which is not a bad thing, I must add. Occasionally I've seen what (I thought!) you intended to say, and I've helped out with a misplaced word or two. And I honestly do not feel like OCs read correctly in many circumstances. How would you even OC something like "...you should paint it red, yellow or, maybe, orange"?
::The comma already does a lot of heavy lifting, four or five different uses can occur in the same sentence, with it commonly doing duty as a sub-clause parenthetical (except without the clear open/close distinction of an actual parenthetical) ''as well as'' conjunction-replacement within a list. You will find many instances of non-OCed lists on the site. In fact I find the "Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd..." bit, below this edit box, to be the exception and not the rule.
::Anyhoo... I 'corrected' an example, but did not re'correct' it once you made it obvious what rule you were working to. I think you're less right than me, naturally, even if I wouldn't say that you're more wrong. ;) But I thought I'd make you a brief note of my thoughts rather than edit-warring the issue. Less brief, now, but I hope you still take it in good humour. (Oh, yeah, I'm sort of Ok with Oxford Spelling, insofar as it's mostly what I use naturally. Except for the "-ize" bit. That and their Comma are totally against how I was taught at school, a number of decades ago. :P ) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.71|172.71.242.71]] 15:26, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
:::You really seem to care about this a lot more than I do, if you want feel free to revert my edit back. I'm not even sure why we're here talking about commas lol
:::I'm no expert and I just like commas. Thanks for checking my edits, I think I've seen a few of your corrections. I have a lot of free time at the moment and I seem to like fixing up unorganized things here --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:42, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

== Science Girl/Hairbun ==

You may have noted that several of the Talk pages attached to those you changed already had discussions about whether someone was Hairbun or (a possibly grown-up version of) Science Girl, and you had people like Kynde support the change ''to'' treating her as Science Girl. No skin off my nose, but I'm not sure your arguments are strong enough to support your broad sweep changes in that regard. I think I'd side with "bun with trailing hair" being SG (regardless of apparent age/maturity, as the description only really says ''usually'' a child, whether you take that as prescriptivist or descriptivist) but not enough that I'd reverse your considerable efforts in this matter. But on the off-chance that you hadn't noticed the prior discussions and conclusions, before making your own assessment. FYI, only. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.204|172.71.178.204]] 14:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

:I will properly reply to you tomorrow since it's midnight here. Btw thanks for letting me know these hyperlinks were rendered correctly, and for fixing my 1 typo <s>(after i corrected 100)</s>
::Guys, some things may be being taken too seriously. Assuming [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1608:_Hoverboard&diff=prev&oldid=317396 this was the 'one error'], yeah, the Pedant's Curse hits us all, that's the point. Easy to see how it was done (read as "a Category:Interactive..." rather than "an interactive", or whatever). Happens to the best of us, when concentrating on loads of other things. Not sure about the Jill thing, at all, myself, but that discussion is probably for soewhere else. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.158|172.69.79.158]] 22:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

:::Nonononono I wasn't serious when I thanked you about the typo, I was also just kidding. I was joking about how after I corrected a ton of typos I added one more.
:::On the main topic you brought up: I think Jill's main characteristics (I'll talk about why I renamed her) are that she is a child, she is usually interested in science, and has always one or two buns with trailing hair. [[Hairbun]] isn't as defined as Jill: she just has a bun. This is what the page [[Hairbun]] (written entirely by Kynde, I haven't reformatted to remove the bullet points yet), say about the bun:
----
:::*Her appearance, apart from her glasses, can also change.
:::**In 703: Honor Societies, 708: Sex Dice, 1511: Spice Girl, 1601: Isolation and in every instance in 1608: Hoverboard her hair looks somewhat different, curly and with some kind of ponytail, but since '''her main distinguishing characteristic is the hair bun''', these comics are included.
:::[...]
:::*There are some characters with hair buns that are not Hairbun:
:::**Since she is a grown woman, she should not be confused with Jill or any other small girls with hair bun like in 1584: Moments of Inspiration.
----
:::And on the Page for Jill, before I ever touched it, it said:
:::*As she is usually also clearly a child she usually cannot be confused with Hairbun
----
:::Kynde mentioned [[1511: Spice Girl]] and [[1601: Isolation]] as featuring Hairbun and not Jill, but they look exactly like a grown-up Jill. Plus, on the gallery section on [[Hairbun]] (I'm working on adding back a better one since the old one was kinda broken UPDATE 11:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC): Added the gallery back with vector images), this was the first picture of Hairbun:
:::[[File:Hair Bun Girl with curly hair and ponytail.png]]

:::So, to recap: Hairbun has always had a version with a bun with trailing hair, but it was inconsistent between comics, so I settled on Jill is a girl that always has trailing hair and Hairbun is an adult that sometimes has trailing hair.

:::On the topic of renaming Jill:
:::*I searched the wiki for Jill and found 3 discussions. One of them ended up "why world we even create a page for that girl, there aren't many comics featuring her.", but didn't criticize the name too much iirc
:::*We did the same thing for [[Danish]]. The only time she was given ''any'' name ("Danish in the sense of "darling" iirc), that was the name used.
:::*If we change our minds and Jill also becomes a woman, we don't have to remove the "girl" part.
:::*I'm not sure about this, but I think she's slowing being added more and more outside science comics.

:::Wow this was long --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:20, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

== In reply to [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2794:_Alphabet_Notes&curid=26437&diff=321127&oldid=320916 this query]... ==

There's {{w|Welsh orthography|the Welsh}}, at the very least! (Well, you did ask! Even if it's truly not so relevent. ;) ) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.159|172.70.86.159]] 11:29, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
:Lol. TIL! --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 20:13, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

== Plural animals ==

Following on from Ferret->Ferrets, what about the last remaining singular that is Category:Apatosaurus? (I must admit, all your edits/re-edits are making my head spin, as worthy as they often are, but this seems like the next logical step that I thought you might have done to finish that particular neatening job.) But I'll leave it up to you as to whether it's Apatosauruses, Apatosaurii or whatever else you might consider most appropriate... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.98|172.70.85.98]] 10:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
:I actually thought about it, and I came to the conclusion that I don't know what the plural of that word is. Feel free to research if there's a "right" word and rename that category :)
:> (I must admit, all your edits/re-edits are making my head spin,
:Yeah I don't really organize everything I want to change beforehand, so whenever i notice a little thing is missing, I add it to every page that needs it. I guess it's easier to review my edits in bulk from a page's version history lol --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

== Username ==
I spotted a spam-like user named "Papyrus". [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 21:55, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
:Interesting, i edited that comic's page yesterday. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:49, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
== Community portal spam ==
The spammers seem to be deleting text from Community Portal. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 07:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
:Thanks, but I couldn't find any recent example concerning me. Do you mind giving an example? --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:49, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

== Possible Adminship? ==

Hi FaviFake, I’m Victoria. I’m planning on reaching out to Jeff via Twitter/X because there’s a long list of things that only he can do. You can see the list at my [[User:42.book.addict#To_Do_List_for_Jeff|user page]]. One of these tasks is promoting more admins. Seeing as you are quite active, and have done quite a lot of edits (top 10 in CS score-wow!), would you like to be mentioned in my message as a possible admin candidate? [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 17:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
: Oh hey, thanks for messaging me! I started caring a lot for this site about a year ago, went on a complete pause for a few months, and came back this week. You seem very active, love to see some new active users! I saw your message on the community portal saying you were trying to find a way to contact Jeff. That's actually something I've thought about doing for a long time but never actually tried since not even Davidy22 was able to contact him at one point iirc.
:Anyway, yes, I'd love to be an admin for this site since there are so many things I can't do as a user (i have my own to-do list, which includes 1) actually deleting pages in Pages to delete and 2) improving/fixing the comic templates and Main page).
: So yeah, I wish you good luck contacting him! My only advice is to use any possible way to (or to get someone else to) contact him without worrying too much about annoying him. His last contribution was more than a year ago, he can totally jump back in for a moment after being unreachable for so long. I really like your message, it's very well-written, now the hard part is getting it to him. Asking Davidy22 for his email address (or finding it online) sounds like a great idea to me. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 22:12, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

== Trivia below transcript ==
The FAQ page says that trivia is below transcript. I'm very sorry about this. [[User:ConscriptGlossary|ConscriptGlossary]] ([[User talk:ConscriptGlossary|talk]]) 00:41, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
:Nono don't be sorry, you're totally right! I came back here after months of being offline and forgot about the order! I realised my mistake yesterday but didn't have the time to go look for the article to revert my edit. Please revert it if you get the chance to do it before me. [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 04:53, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
::There, I should've fixed it now. I see you also reverted my edit, thanks! [[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 04:59, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

== On the Ghosts in the NavPane ==

When I saw 42's inclusion of Ghosts in the Character NavPane, I was pondering asking for Demons and Aliens (the blob-monster types, or near variations, from both UFO-ish comics and far-future) to be added alongside.

But I agree with you that they're not ''really'' minor characters. Yet I think they (all of them) deserve a slot there, as they are as much a feature as the (Animals/)Squirrels section. Originally thought to suggest "Groups" (could include "Multiple Cueballs" and even "Children" for groups with otherwise un-IDed child characters), which you could still ''also'' add (but for human-character groups only), but now thinking "Other Beings" could hold Ghosts, Demons and Aliens (maybe "Future Beings" separate from the latter, or at least the differently-futuristic "Floating Orbs" as ''another'' other classification category in there). As a section between Real People and Animals, I thought, unless it's decided best to put them after Animals.

Food for thought, anyway. You (and 42, and maybe others) may have your own ideas on this, and I wouldn't (and can't) spring my own ideas upon you by suddenly just editing the appropriate source. It probably needs discussion. I nearly put my earlier thoughts in the Community Portal area, but as you're personally active on this at the moment I thought it might be easier for you to ponder if I finally commited it to writing just here. (Feel free to move this contrib/advertise it wider, if you see fit.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.62|172.70.91.62]] 14:19, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
:Just popping in to add my 2 cents-I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of having “other beings” in the navbox. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 16:02, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
::Hey there, thanks a lot for messaging me about this. I disagree with you for one specific reason: the navbox was initially supposed to catalogue the recurring characters in the comics which displayed more or less the same behaviours across comics, such as [[Black Hat]] and [[Beret Guy]]. It then expanded to include real people, such as politicians, which still remained the same characters across different comics. The animal section is different in that some of them are the same animals across comics (such as bobcats and red spiders, for example), but since we had to include them, we included EVERY animal, even when they were completely different every time, because it'd look weird if the only animals there were the specific ones i mentioned.
::If we included a section such as Other beings that includes ghosts, I believe it would be filled with characters that are not the same in every comic they appear in and the navbox would completely lose its intended purpose. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:13, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

== (Whoops, forgot a header!) ...FYC ==

If you agree with {{diff|356369|these additions/changes}}, with or without other adjustments, I was wondering if you'd like to do the respective changes to the Incomplete Article category page, as I find it's semi-protected and I'm thus locked out from the edits that I thought I might duplicate there too (in my IP state – yes, I know I could change this, but I'm happier just to leave it up to you/whoever). Anyway, for your consideration. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.75|162.158.202.75]] 17:09, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
: Done! Thanks. I removed a few technical details. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:24, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

== Interesting streamlined 'table furniture', but... ==

...I'm wondering about the current (slight) usage differences between:
style="text-align:center" | {{{1}}}
and:
style="white-space:nowrap" |
Do you need to add the Param1 to the nowrap/remove if from the text-alignment?

And what if someone wanted no-wrap+centre at the same time? There maybe ''are'' ways to combine <code><nowiki>{{ac|<foo>}}</nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki>{{nw}}</nowiki></code>, but it seems non-trivial to to do. (Unless you make a <code><nowiki>{{nwac}}</nowiki></code>, but then where do you end?) I'm wondering if you should try it without the |-character.

Let's see if that ''could'' work:
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|+ Test
|-
! Foo !! Bar !! Baz
|-
| Normal text of a normal style || style="text-align:center" style="white-space:nowrap" | This is as if using variations <code><nowiki>{{ac|<foo>}}</nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki>{{nw}}</nowiki></code> as rendered without the pipe-character or inconsistent parameter, which is tricky to demonstrate with the actual templates.|| More normal text of a normal style
|-
| Normal text of a normal style || style="text-align:center" | style="white-space:nowrap" | This is how <code><nowiki>{{ac|{{nw}} <foo>}}</nowiki></code> might look || More normal text of a normal style
|-
| Normal text of a normal style || {{ac|{{nw}} This is how <code><nowiki>{{ac|{{nw}} <foo>}}</nowiki></code> ''does'' look, using the current state of the templates.
----
<s>''NB. Why is it in bold? Is that a normal feature of a style of text-align:center?''</s>}}
| More normal text of a normal style
|-
| Normal text of a normal style || style="white-space:nowrap" | style="text-align:center" | This is how <code><nowiki>{{nw}} {{ac|<foo>}}</nowiki></code> might look || More normal text of a normal style
|-
| Normal text of a normal style || {{nw}} {{ac|This is how <code><nowiki>{{nw}} {{ac|<foo>}}</nowiki></code> ''does'' look, using the current state of the templates.}}
----
<s>''Also goes bold, I notice!''</s>
| More normal text of a normal style
|}

So, yes, it looks like it might be better to just remove the pipe (or pipe-and-param) and rely on the table-writer to just put in the relevent bare style-giving {{}} (or {{}}s) before the pipe. (I must look into why there's unexpected boldness. I don't know if that comes from the way you templated it or as an associated function of the aligh-center style. But it doesn't appear when I do it 'raw'.) Anyway, food for thought, over to you. It looks like I ''could'' edit your templates, but that might be rude, and would of course instantly break whatever it is you're currently using them (singly) for. That's the ''What If?'' table, I suppose? Anyway, you can both 'fix' how they work and adjust how they are invoked, rather than leaving me to guess about the latter. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.49|162.158.74.49]] 19:04, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:PS: Yes, I have just checked, and, yes you've added (apparently ''after'' I saw and copied the original {{template|ac}} for my own testing and emulating purposes!) the bolding to the aligh-centering template. That part of the mystery is solved! :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.49|162.158.74.49]] 19:10, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:PPS: I know what happened. I copied the (slightly '''formatted''') 'plaintext' as it appeared in the template. If I'd have edited it and copied the wikisource then I'd have grabbed the <nowiki>'''formatted''</nowiki> as you already had it by the time I passed by. Don't mind me, it was just something that made me wonder. Probably moreso than the thing that I was ''actually'' trying to prod and poke and solve! IOW: Ignore me. On this bit, at least! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.151|172.68.205.151]] 19:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

::I love how interested you are about this! Honestly i'm not really sure what exactly it is you're asking, but you seem very smart so do whatever you want! My only request is that the {{:ac}} thing keeps working as expected, so i don't have to change the table again. I had forgotten about the {{:nw}} thing, you can delete it or change it or do anything else, I don't use it anymore. Feel free to add to the documentation that these are just for 1 table and might break everything if used anywhere else. Or, if they already work everywhere, great! I remember I created them expecting the entire page to be destroyed when used, and being pleasantly surprised when they worked. So yeah go wild! --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 21:19, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
:::I'm not going to make any change without taking time to check your tables and making sure the appropriate change doesn't inflict damage on your attempts to curate the tables you're probably using it for.
:::But, in short, I understand that you're streamlining the (often longwinded) style="" statements, an admirble task. In the structure of "| cell || another cell || etc", you're doing something to save from having to do cumbersome "| cell || style="this-style: that; that-style: that; the-other-style: the.other" | another cell || etc", all of which makes editing 'difficult'. (I tend to do such things in Notepad, or whatever separate text editor I have, which lets me add temporary whitespace and use with no-wrap on the markup while I'm working on it, rather than in this textbox editor.)
::: But the single-pipe that formats the cell isn't a ''great'' difficulty to maintain (indeed, it is useful to line up). As such I'd suggest "| cell || <nowiki>{{??}}</nowiki> | another cell || etc" would be as good. i.e. leave the pipe (intended for the table-cell) out of the template. For the no-wrap version, that's easy enough. Though I do understand that you want to put bold-format about the cell contents, so that's why you give it as a param and explicitly bold the Param1 as you pass it back out.
::: Maybe the solution to ''that'' is to also add (to the style, along with the text-align:center) the "font-weight: bold" doublet. Then "... || <format(s), as templates and/or raw> | Cell Text || ..." doesn't ''need'' to 'enclose' the Cell Text in any way.
::: But making the change from something that expects to transclude the range of the template "... || format | Cell Text || ..." to "... || format | Cell Text || ..." obviously requires that each and every table-cell item that uses "... || <nowiki>{{template|Cell Text}}</nowiki> || ..." to be converted to "... || <nowiki>{{template}}</nowiki> | Cell Text || ...", or... it'll definitely not work as it was originally set.
::: Anyway, that's just my own vision of how you can do what you seem to have wanted to, without introducing more complications. As the cell-formatting gladly accepts multiple statements of the form style="..." (it adds <code>style="..." style="..." style="..."</code> together, much as <code>style="...; ...; ..."</code> does), an editor now has complete freedom to compound the two format-templates you created. And any additional ones that might be useful. Such ones to usefully colour cell backgrounds as red/yellow/green (for use on the various Confusion Tables), something that I sometimes take a couple of goes to do... not least because I habitually spell 'color' as 'colour'..! ;)
::: ...but that's just to explain so that (should you/anybody else wish to follow my own instincts on the matter), you have some decent idea of what I'm getting at. There are probably other ways of doing it. Templates can be made to detect and extract pipes, so that "... || <nowiki>{{template1|{{templete2|Cell Text}}}}</nowiki> || ..." ''or'' "... || <nowiki>{{template2|{{templete1|Cell Text}}}}</nowiki> || ..." would equally produce "... || templateOneOrTwoFormat templateTwoOrOneFormat | Cell Text || ...", but that would take a degree of of unwieldy parameter-processing functions (that I'd have to work out, probably would involve some subst-function, but might depend upon what's available in the installed mediawiki version). I just think you could avoid all that trouble! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.118|162.158.74.118]] 22:51, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

:::Forgot to say, that for what you want to use it for, there's ''another'' way:
{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|+ Example 2
|-
! Number (Centered) !! Foo !! Bar (Centered) !! Baz
|-
! 1
| Normal text of a normal style
! Some text of whatever size (centered)
| More normal text of a normal style
|-
! 2
| Normal text of a normal style
! Some text of whatever size (also centered, though not so obviously so)
| More normal text of a normal style
|}
:::... This is only possible by newlining each new cell, in the example (you can't do "! cell || cell !! cell || cell", you have to line-break it as you change from "!"-/"|"-starting cell-groups), but it isn't really so great a loss to do so.
:::The "wikitable" class gives these 'header cells' a different background too, but (if you really don't like that) it that can be adjusted in various other ways (including with scope="col", I think), or you can leave the wikitable class off (it centres and bolds, but doesn't give cell-borders) and re-add the whole-table bordering style that this now leaves out. But you really don't want me listing ''every'' idea I had, just this one was the other (template-free) option to enforcing centre-aligning bold text on ''certain'' cells. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.119|162.158.74.119]] 23:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

::::Huh, I was actually thinking of doing the opposite of what you're suggesting: include even more pipes inside the template so the editor is cleaner and easier to use. (UPDATE: this probably worse than the other option you gave at the end, see below). So instead of this:

|-
<nowiki>| {{ac|4}} || </nowiki>

::::You would just use this:

|-
<nowiki>{{ac|4}}</nowiki>

::::And it would contain all the pipes needed. I guess then we would have to update the documentation to point out that this template's use case is extremely narrow. Also, if you want to see how it is currently used, the table is on my user page! That's the only place where it's used

::::Since you seem very interested in templates, What do you think of the idea of a creating a template like these:

<nowiki>{{yt|YTNUMBER (1, 2, 3, etc)|YTLINK|VIDEOTITLE (optional)}}</nowiki>

::::It would be used in the column that we still need to create. It would also colour the cell in '''red'''. I was also thinking of doing a similar thing for the What If? books:

<nowiki>{{bk|WHICH-BOOK|CHAPTER-NUMBER|CHAPTER-TITLE (if different)}}</nowiki>

::::For example, it would look like this: (This one would also colour the cell based on the book, e.g., green for WI?1, yellow for WI?2, blue for WI10th ed.)

<nowiki>{{book|2|69|Jellyfish}}</nowiki>

What If? 2, chapter '''69: Jellyfish'''

::::Would you be able to create something like this? I know nothing about templates, and i doubt I'll be able to ask chatgpt to do everything for me correctly. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 07:16, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

:::::> Forgot to say, that for what you want to use it for, there's ''another'' way:
:::::Oh, i think i had forgotten to read this part!! This seems very interesting! I should try that, since it seems much simpler. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:10, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

:::::'''Update:''' {{Done}} I applied your suggestion, now the numbers are in their own row:
|-
!1
| The rest of the table
--[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 10:33, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

== YouTube template ==
Hey FaviFake, on the <code><nowiki>{{yt}}</nowiki></code> template, you asked for help on fixing the code of the template. What help do you need to “improve” it? I’m willing to help now that I’m not sick, as I was last week. '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 18:35, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

:Thank you! Glad to hear you're healthy. That message was mostly a joke, but it is in fact barely held together. (Try modifying the hyperlink that's displayed when a title isn't provided, somehow what you add gets duplicated??) If you have the time and know how to make it more reliable and easily editable in the future, please do! I am honstly scared to touch it fearing it might explode.

:Buuut, to be fair there is one template that i desperately needed help with, and that is [[:Template:book]]. I wasted a ton of time to try to get it to change the cell background, and it never worked, so i decided to create [[Template:book1]], [[Template:book2]], [[Template:book3]], [[Template:book4]], and these do work beaytifully, but are harder to edit in bulk. (I still have profound hatred towards [[Template:book]]...). If you actually manage to do what i wanted (which i'm not sure is even clear after the all the mess i've made... ask me if you can't figure it out!), I would be very grateful. PS. I'm not sure if i should warn you, given my very low ability to create templates, but it's definitely not easy, imo.

:I'm not sure how skilled you are at template editing, so if you want, you can absolutely continue uploading the What If? thumbnails like you did a few days ago! I just added [[User:FaviFake|a new batch of articles]] (about 60) thanks to some annoyingly complex jailbreaking of Google's NotebookLM. The new table of course includes the quick 100px link to upload a file. Again, thanks for reaching out! --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 19:04, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

::The YT link appears to be going to <nowiki>[[whatever the name of the YouTube video is called]]</nowiki> and not acting as a [youtube.com filler thingy] linking to a YouTube video. I’m going to hit the books on template writing and try to see if I can do anything about it. Cheers! '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 03:11, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

:::Oh great, that's broken too. I didn't even realise it. Thanks!--[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 04:57, 21 January 2025 (UTC)

:Partly because you've removed the bit about how to better sort the book-column elements, but are using the same trick in the youtube-column, and partly because it's easier (more on that in a moment), I've just modified the {{template|yt}} to give it the sort value (of article number) directly. Have not removed the expression test to make "6th video ..." into "06th video ...", for sorting purposes, but I feel confident that you ''can'' do that (and remove the comment about making it give "006th video ...", in future, should that become necessary) if you now so wish.

:For the books, I was thinking that if, instead of <code>="<nowiki>{{{1|0}}}</nowiki>"</code>, you could maybe use <code>="<nowiki>{{#expr:10000+{{{1|0}}}}}</nowiki>"</code> for ''What If?'' (in {{template|book1}}) and <code>="<nowiki>{{#expr:20000+{{{1|0}}}}}</nowiki>"</code> for ''What If? 2'' (in {{template|book2}}), to let it sort by book ''and then'' chapter within book...

:For ''What If? 10th Anniversary Edition'' ({{template|book3}}), I was thinking if you could make the added-to number 11000. Though anything from above 10000+<last chapter number> and below 20000-<last chapter number> would do (and 15000 would work), it leaves room to make any appearance of the 15th anniversary, 20th anniversary, 42nd anniversary, ..., 95th anniversary be able to use the mnemonic offsets of 11500+, 12000+, 14200+, ..., 19500+.. ;) Obviously, it would need revamping if there becomes a centenary edition of Book 1 (or any version of it ever gets ''so many'' "bonus chapters" that it breaks out of its own sequence into the next extant anniversary edition. But you'd need to start adding 100 newly-numbered chapters ''per year'' to do that, so probably not likely. But, right now, the sorting on the "Exclusive to ''What If? 10th Anniversary Edition''" line sorts ''before'' the "NNth chapter of ''What If?''" lines. The above should fix that...

:And the format can be used for other (future?) books and their (possible) reissues: For ''What If? '''N''''', reissued '''YY''' years after the original, that's the number "NYY00", to which you add the chapter number. Fairly futureproofed, but if Randall ''ever'' publishes anything that makes you need to make the offset "NNYYY000" (e.g. for the quarter-of-a-millenium reissue of ''What If? 15'', having a total of 512 chapters being 15250000+[1..512]) then I reckon the requisite changes will be easy enough to handle as and when, swapping in the expanded offset. And... hey... if they're still being written, ''and'' published, then I can only hope I'm still around to be able to add that edition to my bookshelf!

:You could even redo the {{template|book}} idea (parameters of ...|book=#|chapter=#|optional:edition=#?|...) to only ever need to maintain the one source with ''all'' this flexibility. You've already got experience (by the 1st/2nd/3rd/Nth code) with what's needed to translate Book Number(+Edition Number, if applicable) into unique background colour codes.

:The big problem, though, is still the non-numeric chapter 'numbers' in ''WI?2''. I have two (or three) different thoughts about that.

:*For only the numeric bits (currently, in the test for less-than-10, etc; in the above for within the <code>data-sort-value="..."</code>) you might want to switch <code><nowiki>{{{1|0}}}</nowiki></code> with <code><nowiki>{{#if:{{#ifexpr:{{{1|0}}}}}|99|{{{1|0}}}}}{{{1|0}}}</nowiki></code>... This should test the param1 value for being a valid value (or missing, when you already make it zero... though not sure for what circumstance you should consider it validly missing) and using it if it is so, or else using the value "99" (or you could have "0", or "0.5", or whatever floats your boat). Then at least you'd get ''a'' value (that doesn't cause errors), though it probably wouldn't be sorted very precisely (though appear just after/before all other chapters of the book).

:*The other idea is to use <code><nowiki>{{{effectiveChapter|{{{1|0}}}}}}</nowiki></code>, then you can append a parameter of <code>...|effectiveChapter=11.5}}</code> to a non-numeric one sitting between actual chapters 11 and 12 (I haven't checked if that's an actual example, but imagine it is...). Also, for multiple items on page-chapter, you could even have =11.51, =11.52, =11.53, etc, to retain order within the book and ''upon the page''... (You could also give effectiveChapter as "NYYCC(.optional)" format, direct, for ''all'' what if? Numbers, YYearly-editions and CChapters (with possibly sub-positions), come to that, but I don't see that as any simpler a solution as building it in.)

:*The third option would be to use (for hidden sorting-only purpose, mostly) a value of P(.optionalDecimal) either as another numeric parameter or a named one, with P as ''page number'', not chapter number. But, given how hardback vs. paperback (or just another imprint, not necessarily even a Anniversary redo, but I've got the UK edition with an additional UK foreword) ''might'' effect page numbers and/or where end-of-pages interupts any given chapter internals, it's possible that this is not consistent enough. But food for thought, maybe. Only needs to be definitively done once (or thoroughly checked and shuffled along as nevessary if redone to include other changes that require consistency).

:Any of that make sense? Hopefully I've at least given you enough examples to ponder, where not immediately obvious. I'd ''really'' rather not change all your hard work just for the sake of a minor cosmetic change with a possibly major set of retouches, which is one of the reasons why I thought I'd do just the basic Youtube 'sort assisting' bit and let those of you who have already had so much 'fun' (tweaking the table formats) decide if and how you make full use of it. Assuming it isn't (differently) broken, for whatever reason may crop up, it shouldn't be a problem if you do nothing at all more with it (either in the {{template|yt}} or {{template|book#}}s). [[Special:Contributions/172.71.241.26|172.71.241.26]] 14:38, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

*Thank you so much! Would you mind if I moved your message to [[Talk:What If? chapters]], to group everything regarding the index in one place? Anyways:
*I did the thing on the yt and {{template|blog}} one and it works!

For the books, I was thinking that if, instead of <code>="<nowiki>{{{1|0}}}</nowiki>"</code>, you could maybe use <code>="<nowiki>{{#expr:10000+{{{1|0}}}}}</nowiki>"</code> for ''What If?'' (in {{template|book1}}) and <code>="<nowiki>{{#expr:20000+{{{1|0}}}}}</nowiki>"</code> for ''What If? 2'' (in {{template|book2}}), to let it sort by book ''and then'' chapter within book...
*Done! Thanks! For ({{template|book3}}) i used 30000 to have the chapter in chronological order.

You could even redo the {{template|book}} idea
*Sorry but I'm not touching that... ''thing'' anymore. That template traumatized me (jk! if you want to try fixing it i'd be very happy)

For only the numeric bits (currently, in the test for less-than-10, etc; in the above for within the <code>data-sort-value="..."</code>) you might want to switch <code><nowiki>{{{1|0}}}</nowiki></code> with <code><nowiki>{{#if:{{#ifexpr:{{{1|0}}}}}|99|{{{1|0}}}}}{{{1|0}}}</nowiki></code>... This should test the param1 value for being a valid value (or missing, when you already make it zero... though not sure for what circumstance you should consider it validly missing)
*I'm not sure why that's needed 8and also how to actually implement it). What happens if the value is invalid? it seems to work. Or is it required for the other improvements you suggested?

The other idea is...
The third option would be...
*Yeah this seems pretty hard to solve easily (which is why i'd love it if you did it!). I guess it'll stay slightly broken until it becomes a bigger issue. --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 16:54, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
::It seems like you just forgot to escape pipe characters in the [[Template:book|book template]] in the table within the switch statement, so it just interpreted the non-formatting statements to be a case grouped with the next 'actual' case [[User:Firestar233|guess who]] ([[User talk:Firestar233|if you desire conversing]] | [[Special:Contributions/Firestar233|what i have done]]) 07:23, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
::BTW I fixed the book template. It should now appear the same as the other templates, and even work with the youtube template [[User:Firestar233|guess who]] ([[User talk:Firestar233|if you desire conversing]] | [[Special:Contributions/Firestar233|what i have done]]) 09:13, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

== What If Chapters ==
Hey FaviFake, there are some What If? Chapters that aren’t included in the blog. Are we going to add them to the table? '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 17:41, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

:Great timing! You sent me this message while i was in the process of replying to the question. I'm not good at prioritising, I should've definitely responded before doing other edits. Check out my <s>list of questions for y'all</s> reply above! --[[User:FaviFake|FaviFake]] ([[User talk:FaviFake|talk]]) 18:10, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

3040: Chemical Formulas

2025-01-21T14:51:19Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */ I think it's the off-panel voice, from context.

{{comic
| number = 3040
| date = January 20, 2025
| title = Chemical Formulas
| image = chemical_formulas_2x.png
| imagesize = 275x335px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Can you pass the nackle?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BORON-OXYGEN-TANTALUM-URANIUM-TITANIUM-MOLYBDENUM-TITANIUM-CARBON-ALUMINUM-LITHIUM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is another comic on [[:Category:How to annoy|How to annoy]] people, in this case chemists.

In this comic, Cueball humorously mispronounces the chemical names of {{w|carboxylic acid}}s. Instead of pronouncing the individual components of "HCOOH" (for what is technically methanoic acid, or named {{w|formic acid}} from its association with {{w|Formicinae#Identification|ants}}) and "CH₃COOH" (ethanoic acid, also known as {{w|acetic acid}}, most often encountered in vinegar) according to their standard chemical names, he says them phonetically as if they were words, as "hakoo" and "chuckoo," which Randall describes in the caption as "How to annoy chemists". This is similar to Randall's pronunciation guide of equations in [[2492: Commonly Mispronounced Equations]]. In addition, the chemical formula for formic acid includes an unnecessary fifth bond between the carbon atom and OH-group, annoying chemists even further.

The title text continues this trend to the humor by referencing the phrase "Can you pass the salt?" but, instead of referring to the commonly understood "salt", the speaker uses "nackle", perhaps sarcastically. This is an apparent attempt to pronounce "NaCl", the chemical formula for {{w|sodium chloride}} (the primary constituent of ordinary {{w|table salt}}, as well as {{w|rock salt}}): a compound which is known well enough that it's reasonably recognizable by just the pronunciation and the context, commonly occurs in everyday conversation, yet includes enough letters that it sounds somewhat like its own word (unlike H₂O "hoe" and CO₂ "koe").

Incidentally, there ''are'' three Pokémon whose names contain the letters "nacl" pronounced roughly as in the title text, introduced in ''Scarlet and Violet'': [https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nacli_(Pok%C3%A9mon) Nacli], [https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Naclstack_(Pok%C3%A9mon) Naclstack], and [https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Garganacl_(Pok%C3%A9mon) Garganacl].

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

:[Cueball is holding a pointer and gesturing towards a whiteboard that shows the chemical formulas HCOOH and CH₃COOH. Below these, respectively, are classic diagramatic representations of formic/methanoic acid [with an apparently accidental doubled bond between the carbon and the hydroxy group] and acetic/ethanoic acid; being, in turn, a single- and double-carbon chain molecule with a double-bonded oxygen (carbonyl group) plus an oxygen-hydrogen (hydroxy) upon one carbon of each, to form the full carboxyl grouping, and hydrogens completing all other expected bonds.]
:Cueball: The two simplest carboxylic acids are hakoo and chuckoo.
:Off-panel voice: '''''No!!'''''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:How to annoy chemists

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:How to annoy]]

Talk:3038: Uncanceled Units

2025-01-16T09:36:50Z

141.101.98.245:

DUDE I'M STILL IN SCHOOL RN, WHAT?
(also, the joke is that energy is power*time, so kWh is kJ/s... in an hour [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 13:27, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I guess not every comic can be a winner. Talking about an appliance using a certain amount of kWH per day is clear and normal. Power gets billed by the kWh, not the Joule. While technically not wrong, wanting "cancel" a sub-part of the commonly-used energy unit kWh and leaving it in deliberately-obscured units most people are less familiar with is the sort of insanity I'd more expect from White Hat than Cueball. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.35.171|172.70.35.171]] 13:39, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:Maybe that is a meta-joke? To frame kWh/day as something crazy by giving that line to whitehat --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:There's a difference between instantaneous power draw, and the total "volume"(/area, really) of power over time. Though a fridge is "always on", it is still only irregularly at full-draw. But, to the power company (or to the gas company, who will generally give a kWh measure of 'energy taken from the network'), they don't (generally) care whether you used twice as many kW over half the time or half as many over twice the time, within any given total billing period, even if it affects what you think. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.46|172.70.163.46]] 14:39, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::Using joule as if it was an everyday unit of energy would be weird but I don't agree that watt is crazy. It's a normal unit of energy consumption that does mean something to people, e.g. 1000W microwave, 100W (incandescent) light bulb. Don't get me wrong kWh/day is also useful to translate it to your energy bill, but I do feel slightly uncomfortable every time I see that time divided by time :-) [[User:Mtcv|Mtcv]] ([[User talk:Mtcv|talk]]) 14:40, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:I don't think the complaint is that it's unclear, it's that Cueball/Randall instinctively wants units simplified - as they would be in a science context rather than a useful-for-normal-people's-everyday-needs context. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.183|108.162.238.183]] 02:40, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

This is especially funny with US units. My car needs about 5l/100km, or 0.05mm². Now I am wondering how many ft^(-2) my car does... --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 13:49, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
: You make a good point about the units (at least in one instance). Shouldn't the reduced units for fuel economy be inverse area? Effectively, it is a measure of the distance the vehicle could travel while consuming a column of fuel with a specific height and specific top (or bottom) surface area. Or, The better the fuel economy, the less the surface area that is necessary to move a specific distance. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 20:41, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::It depends on what the original unit is. In my country (Germany) we measure it in volume/distance, which would reduce to area. North American convention is in distance/volume which would reduce to inverse area. Good thing about distance/volume is that "high number = good". However I think outside of escaping from a nuclear disaster or in a zombie apocalypse it isn't a really helpful thing to know. Because how often do you know "I got x amount of fuel. Wonder how far I can get." But you will likely be in the situation where you quickly want to see "How much fuel do I need to get to place x which is y distance from here". --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 21:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::: how often do you know "I got x amount of fuel. Wonder how far I can get." Quite often, because the question I'm really asking is whether I can get where I'm going with some margin built in before I need to refuel my car. When I do refuel or recharge the car, I'll go to 100% of capacity. I just want to know whether I have to do that now or if I can wait and do it later because later would be more convenient. The only time I want the number the other way is when I'm buying a car and want to make it as efficient as possible. Once I have it, the amount of fuel I need isn't going to change.[[User:Yttrium|Yttrium]] ([[User talk:Yttrium|talk]]) 09:02, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
:: More usefully imagined as the front (or back) end of a horizontal column (or, twisting as it may, a pipeline) that traverses the journey made by the vehicle. As if (instantaneous variations excepted) you consume precisely the fuel that your vehicle passes 'through/around'. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.92|141.101.76.92]] 20:45, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
::: Yeah. Maybe we should express fuel consumption in terms of the speed fuel needs to be drawn through a standard fuel line. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 21:01, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

fridge [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.147|172.70.126.147]] 14:22, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

The late [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay Sir David MacKay] wrote an excellent book, [http://www.withouthotair.com/ Sustainable Energy – without the hot air] (which is available free online).
On [http://www.withouthotair.com/c2/page_24.shtml this page] he talks about the units he uses in the book: kWh for energy ("one unit") and kWh/day for power - becuase it's simple for lay-people to understand - how many units does this appliance use per day.
It's a good book if any of you are interested in sustainable energy (although it was written in 2008, so some bits might be out of date by now) {{unsigned ip|172.70.85.33|14:33, 15 January 2025}}

If anyone's curious, I found an online gallons per square foot calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/gallons-per-square-foot [[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.6|172.71.223.6]] 15:54, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

The answer to Cueball's question is likely NO in the US and YES in the UK, due not just to gallon size but also fridge size (a model like that is a particularly large fridge, when I bought one 10 years ago going for the smallest available I had to modify my cabinet above the fridge as there wasn't one less than 6'8"- the fridge hole was 6' previous).[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 16:02, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I disagree with this comic, and I think the final paragraph in the explanation about Hubble's constant best explains why. [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 15:57, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:It doesn't make any sense to 'disagree' with an observation.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 09:36, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Technically, kWh should be written as kW⋅h or kW h, because it literally means "kilowatts multiplied by one hour", not "kilowatts per hour" as many people assume. However, almost nobody writes it correctly. (kW/h is sometimes also seen, but egregiously incorrect.) Also, particularly now that electric vehicles are becoming more popular, people often get confused between kW and kW h. The car can charge at a peak or average rate expressed in kW, but energy billed by a charging service provider is expressed in kWh. People frequently either add or remove the "h" incorrectly because they don't understand the difference. In some places like India, a kilowatt-hour is simply referred to as a "unit" to avoid confusion. In my opinion, it was an enormous mistake to use kWh when we could be using mJ instead, which I think is probably something close to the point Randall may have been trying to make. Anyway, I wasn't sure if there was a place for any of this random trivia in the article itself, but feel free to use it. [[User:Equites|Equites]] ([[User talk:Equites|talk]]) 17:11, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Relevant XKCD… I mean relevant YouTube video: "Cursed units" 1 and 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkfIXUjkYqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg7xe8MkJHs [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 17:31, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

: Highly relevant, in fact. The first video referred to the kilowatt-hour as "cursed", which became a highly polarizing issue in the comments, something that was addressed at the beginning of part 2. Assuming these responses weren't cherry-picked, I get the impression that there are a lot of people on both sides of this. It seems like the same kind of thing we're seeing in this very comment section. [[User:ISaveXKCDpapers|ISaveXKCDpapers]] ([[User talk:ISaveXKCDpapers|talk]]) 18:10, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I always wonder why people here prefer liter/m^2 for the amount of rain. Where the same number as mm is way easier to imagine. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.99|172.68.50.99]] 18:14, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
: At first, I was wondering if you would have rather had it in microliters/mm^2, but you meant the column height of the rain, like inches are used in the US. Along the line of L/m^2, something like mL/cm^2 might be nice considering the density of water, although the value also would be different by a factor. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 20:51, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
: That's the neat thing about the metric system, they are trivially simple to convert. 1l/m² is exactly 1mm. The fact that the meteorology uses the former just stems from the fact that that's how they measure it. The catch the rain on an area of 1m² into a beaker that contains some volume which is measured in liters. What annoys me though, is that noone seems to be talking about how terribly inefficient the fridge in the comic is. Mine only needs a tenth of the one that Whitehat tries to sell, and that's not even particularly good. --21:21, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
:: UK measurements, once it gets to weather reports/forecasts, tend to be in millimetres (or centimetres, where more for the layperson who don't need mm-resulution; or occasionally recast as 'old money' inches, with ''really'' bad rain events summarised in relation to whole feet), which is implicitly the depth to which ''any'' area would be filled (in a case where large catchment + funnelling valley situation is concerned, suffering from the run-off, might be ''reported'' as "equivalent to ''N'' feet of rain", down where the bad effects get concentrated, but this is not a meteorological measure as such).
:: Not sure I've ever seen volume/area as an end-result figure (might be relevent as an intermediate for measurement/calculation, especially when discussing the funelling effects of the given local geography), but of course it's trivially relatable.
:: Density of water would only figure in from replacing litres with kilogrammes (litres are 1/1000th of metres³ and any m² is 10,000 times the cm² (or millilitre), so a factor of 10 between L/m² and mL/cm²; divide L to mL by 1000, times m² to cm² by 10,000, => 10x) but I always find it useful to know that three 2L bottles of pop are (very close to, going by the nominal water content alone) 6kg... makes me feel better about lugging the weekly shopping home, where these might be the single most significant part of the weight. More usefully than cross-converting into length-cubed measure. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.69|141.101.98.69]] 21:42, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Isn't the point that KwH/day can be simplified to Watts (an average perhaps, but still) {{unsigned ip|162.158.41.72|21:24, 15 January 2025}}
: Yes, the joke seems pretty clearly about watts or kilowatts, not megajoules. Using megajoules doesn't result in any units being canceled; the denominator remains "/day". [[User:BatmanAoD|BatmanAoD]] ([[User talk:BatmanAoD|talk]]) 23:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

If the argument for kWh/day is that it's easy for the consumer to understand how it will affect their electricity bill – then kWh/month would be the right choice, because I doubt anyone receives an electricity bill every day. But the salesman prefers 3 kWh/day because it sounds like a smaller number than 90 kWh/month. And of course, if electricity bills were written in joules instead of illogical watt-hours, then MJ/month would be the easiest for the consumer. {{unsigned ip|162.158.134.90|22:31, 15 January 2025}}
:Per-month is tricky. You seem to assume month=30 days, when it can be 28-31 and is only 30 days a third of the time. Per quarter(-year) is a bit more consistent, less fractionally variant ''and'' closer to most utility bill frequencies as well, if you're looking for something not as eye-wateringly frightening as an annual estimate (which 'only' varies every 4.1237... years, on average). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.47|172.70.163.47]] 00:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
:: "''Per-month is tricky. You seem to assume month=30 days, when it can be 28-31...''" My electric bill for December 2024 is 33 days. The company closes the book when it is convenient, not per some calendar. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 05:22, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Which is why electric consumption per month is even more tricky. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:33, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
:::It's still per some calendar. Just a calendar of the electric company, that you're not privy to.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 09:36, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

2698: Bad Date

2022-11-15T08:52:34Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */ Real-time upload not indicated. Typo.

{{comic
| number = 2698
| date = November 14, 2022
| title = Bad Date
| image = bad_date_2x.png
| imagesize = 666x261px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "Even split between us, this will pay way better than the Jumanji sponsorship I came into the date with."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT CAPITALIZING ON ITS SOCIAL LIFE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is a spoof of Internet {{w|Influencer marketing|influencers}}. These are people with large social media followings who mention products in their videos in exchange for payment from the companies that produce these products, as a form of advertising.

In the comic, Megan and Cueball are not intentionally making a video, but someone around them has uploaded a video of their date, because they were having an argument about the movie {{w|Jumanji}}. Megan realized that they can capitalize on this by getting a sponsor.

The argument then shifts to whether they're going to sleep together after the date. Cueball says he won't go home with Megan because she doesn't have the [[2096|mattress brand sold by their sponsor]]. She responds by pointing out a feature of that brand: their same-day delivery policy. This argument could easily be a TV commercial for the mattress, though Cueball's ultimate retort suggests (whether he wants it to or not) that that there still won't be a "happy ever after" conclusion to this play-acting, either fictionally or once real life resumes.

The title text hints, however, that Megan was already before the date going to promote the {{w|Jumanji (franchise)|Jumanji franchise}}, for her own gain. Megan's realization that she could not discuss this subject since Cueball had not seen it leads to her initial reaction starting their date to be shared, but not for the reason she had anticipated. But then when she sees they are still going viral, she is ready to use this new situation to bring in a lot of "mattress money". And as it turns out even when splitting with Cueball she will earn more. Since Cueball presumably came into the date with the intention of finding a romantic partner rather than gaining a sponsorship, he will probably get even less happy with Megan. Alternatively, as he plays along with her in the last frame, he sees this as an acceptable or even preferable arrangement (considering that the date wasn't going all too well in the first place).

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are sitting at a table in a restaurant with their meals still on their plate and filled wine glasses. Megan hands her cellphone over the table to Cueball.]
:Megan: ''Psst -- this date is going so badly that the people around us are posting it live. ''
:Megan: ''Look.''

:[Zoom in just on Cueball in his chair. He is holding the cellphone while he sees a video. What the video shows is shown above him in a frame. The "video" window shows a scene from earlier in their date. And below the picture there is a title and below that an eye with the number of followers shown. In the scene they are sitting as in the first panel, but both has their arms raised. Cueball's arms towards Megan and she has her arms above her head. Small lines from above her head from where her speech line comes out indicates that she is agitated and speaks loudly.]
:Megan in video: Unbelievable - Have you even ''seen'' Jumanji?
:Video caption: Date disaster 252k following
:Cueball: ''Oh no.''

:[Zoom in on Megan in her chair.]
:Megan: ''But it's okay: I got us a sponsorship.''
:Megan: ''You just need to play along...''

:[Scene expands to include the two nearest people at the two nearby tables. Both are typing frantically at their phones, (indicated with vibration lines on either side of their phones), using both hands, to document the date disaster live. Ponytail is to the left of them with food on her plate and a glass of water on her table and Hairy is to the right with a wine glass on his table. Cueball has raised one hand with a finger pointing up. Megan points a finger towards Cueball but is looking down at her phone held up in the other hand, to check their following.]
:Cueball: I could '''''never''''' go home with someone with such bad taste in mattresses. I need the soft support of the ProFirm 3000.®
:Megan: Wait, I can order one! With same-day delivery, it can-
:Cueball: '''You had your chance.'''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Social networking]]

2516: Hubble Tension

2021-09-16T07:56:18Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */ A few matters, at least one wikilink.

{{comic
| number = 2516
| date = September 15, 2021
| title = Hubble Tension
| image = hubble_tension.png
| titletext = Oh, wait, I might've had it set to kph instead of mph. But that would make the discrepancy even wider!
}}

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

The fact that most galaxies are receeding from us, and that the distance to the galaxy is directly proportional to the speed (as measured by redshift) was discovered in the 1920s by Edwin Hubble and others. This constant of proportionality is known as the Hubble Constant.

One way of measuring the Hubble Constant is to measure the distance to (relatively) nearby galaxies. Once distance is obtained, speed can be easily obtained by measuring the red-shift and thus the Hubble Constant calculated. Measuring the distance turns out to be fiendishly difficult because a distant bright star looks the same as a dim star that is closer, and localised movements can influence the speed of recession — though less significantly, for multiple reasons, the further away are the objects are that you study.

In practice, astronomers have a number of ways of measuring distance that work at different scales, and they can be built upon to measure distance to far away galaxies. This is known as the cosmological distance ladder.

The first rung is parallax. As the Earth orbits around the Sun, nearby stars appear to move slightly relative to distant stars; a star that moves by one second of arc is said to have a distance of 1 Parsec — about 3¼ light years or 30 trillion (3x1013) kilometres.

The next rung is Cepheid variables, which periodically brighten and dim. The frequency of variation is related to the absolute brightness of the star, and thus by comparing the absolute to the relative brightness (subject to the {{w|Inverse-square law|inverse square}} where not otherwise obscured) the distance can be measured.

The final rung is Type 1a Supernovae, which occur when an accreting white dwarf exceeds 1.4 solar masses. Because the initial mass is always identical, the absolute brightness of the explosion is as well, so the distance can be similarly calculated.

Putting these together, the best measurement of the Hubble Constant is 73 km/s/Mparsec.

This is in conflict with the other main way of measuring the Hubble Constant, analysing makeup of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, which yields a value of 68 km/s/Mparsec. The difference is statistically significant, and well outside the error bounds of each measurement.

Since the CMB technique relies on our understanding and assumptions about the early universe, as well as on the cosmological effects of General Relativity on large scales, if this discrepancy proved real it could be the gateway to new discoveries in cosmology and gravity, as well as possibly shed light on the origin of the universe and a '{{w|Theory Of Everything}}'. Cosmologists got quite excited about this. It might also be that there was a previously unaccounted-for error in any of the rungs of the cosmological distance ladder, and that once that is fixed, the two results will be consistent.

The third method introduced in this comic is a guy named Dave who is trying to use a police radar gun to try to measure the movement of astronomical bodies. A radar system works by sending electromagnetic radiation from the gun and then measuring the returned radiation to determine how far away or how fast a moderately distant object is moving. Because of the transmission and return times required (and the inverse-square law), a radar device will only be able to get information about the very closest objects, such as the Moon and other objects orbiting the Earth (or the ''perhaps'' the Sun), where the influence of being in orbit utterly dominates over any possible Hubble-shift. And that still needs powerful radar systems like the former {{w|Arecibo Telescope}} to be able to get any useful information that far away, a hand-held radar gun would not be able to 'lock on' across even those distances.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball and Ponytail are walking to the right. Ponytail has her palm raised]
:Ponytail: There are three main estimates of the universe's expansion rate and they all disagree.

:[They keeping walking to the right.]
:Ponytail: Measurements of star distances suggest the universe is expanding at 73 km/s/megaparsec.

:[They are still walking to the right.]
:Ponytail: Measurements of the cosmic microwave background suggest it's expanding at 68 km/s/megaparsec.

:[They continue walking to the right. Ponytail points to Dave, off screen]
:Ponytail: And Dave, who has a radar gun, says it's expanding at 85 mph in all directions.
:Dave (off-screen): ''Those galaxies are really booking it!''
:Ponytail: Thanks, Dave.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]

2478: Alien Visitors 2

2021-06-19T08:36:57Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2478
| date = June 18, 2021
| title = Alien Visitors 2
| image = alien_visitors_2.png
| titletext = "Although fresh juice DOES sound--" "NO! For humanity to survive we must learn from the mistakes of the past."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a 1920s ELIXIR. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In the return of the aliens from the [[2477: Alien Visitors|previous comic]], they show more "advanced" inventions that are less efficient or more harmful than their current forms, and most have been invented by humans and replaced.

{{w|Biplane}}s are planes with two sets of wings, which provide more of the necessary lift at slow speed than a contemporaraneous {{w|monoplane}}, but develop increased drag and aerodynamic and airframe issues as higher airspeeds became possible/necessary. Biplanes have been obsolete for most purposes since the 1930s, though they remain in use for agriculture and aerial sports.

A {{w|blimp}} is a lighter than air aircraft with no internal structure. The point raised about hydrogen would be because it is highly flammable and dangerous. The {{w|Hindenburg disaster}} was a famous explosion of a hydrogen airship, although zeppelin airships are not blimps because they have an internal structural framework and they're called rigid airships in contrast to blimps that just rely on the internal pressure of their lifting gas to maintain their shape. Blimps are still used today, but use helium, and are typically used for advertising or for aerial photography/videography. Various modern {{w|Zeppelin_NT|semi-rigid}} and {{w|Hybrid_Air_Vehicles_Airlander_10|cable-rigid}} designs have been redeveloped in recent years to service possibly niche roles such as tourist cruising and heavy-lift capabilities, amongst others.

{{w|Tetraethyllead}} ((CH3 CH2)4Pb) is a chemical added to gasoline (mostly from the 1920s to the 1990s — although some countries [https://web.archive.org/web/20171115235249/http://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/17542/MapWorldLead_March2017.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y still use it to this day]) to prevent {{w|engine knocking}}, until it was revealed to have highly toxic effects. The aliens seem unaware of these toxic effects (it is unclear whether the chemical hurts aliens as well, or whether it doesn't hurt them but they don't realize the toxic effects on humans), and indeed quite concerned by them, implying they might be using leaded gasoline themselves.

{{w|Juicero}} was a juicer known for its absurd inefficiency and greedy business model: {{Citation needed}} the machine would only work on the company's proprietary branded single-serving bags of pulped fruit sold for $7-10 each, and more juice could be extracted from the bags by hand than by the press. Basically, they were selling $10 bags of chopped fruit and a $700 machine to squeeze them into a cup for you. The title text aludes to the notion that this was a terrible product whose time should be in the past.

After the latest showing of unimpressive "inventions", the humans start questioning how "advanced" the aliens really are, asking if they built the flying saucer themselves and suggesting that it might be wise to avoid standing directly beneath it in case it suddenly crashes to earth.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A flying saucer is hovering high above Ponytail, White Hat, Cueball and Megan, drawn very small standing on the ground beneath it. The aliens inside speak to them from inside their saucer, indicated with zigzag lines between it and the text. Ponytail approaches the others on the ground from the left.]
:Aliens: Greetings, humans. We have returned.
:Aliens: Since you already have pyramids, we've brought you more advanced wonders.

:[Zoom in on the flying saucer which has two beams below it, the left showing an outline of a biplane and the right is showing an outline of a blimp. Cueball replies off-panel.]
:Aliens: These machines will let you conquer the sky!
:(off-panel voice 1): A biplane?
:(off-panel voice 1): Aren't monoplanes more efficient?
:(off-panel voice 2): Does that blimp use hydrogen?

:[Zoom in on the 4 humans looking up, the Aliens reply from above the panel. There is a chemical formula in an outline from the alien flying saucer:]
:Aliens: (CH3 CH2)4 Pb
:Aliens (off-panel): Add this elixir of lead to your gasoline and your engines will run smooth.
:White Hat: Lead? Isn't that stuff toxic?
:Aliens: Is it?
:Aliens: Oh no.

:[Zoom back out, as in first panel. The flying saucer has a beam showing an outline of a juice machine]
:Aliens: Okay, uh.
:Aliens: This device's electric press can squeeze fresh fruit juice from bags of pulp!
:Ponytail: ...Just curious, did you build that saucer?
:Cueball: Maybe we shouldn't stand right under it.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Aliens]]
[[Category:Alien Visitors]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Alien Visitors 2]]

Talk:1505: Ontological Argument

2015-03-30T14:56:54Z

141.101.98.245:

Reminds me some kind of the [http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Babel_Fish#Philosophical_implications Babel Fish]... [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 06:54, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

:Isn't the greatest fallacy of ontological argument the fact that the set of entities may not be well-ordered by "greatest" or "goodness"? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:17, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

::That's a great point, and (IMHO) a truly serious problem in these attempts to "order" gods (maybe it stems from being tied down to monotheistic thinking?). But it's not really a "fallacy," properly speaking. Not all flaws in reasoning are fallacies...

::I think that (using this argument) the first flaw arises when defining the "set of entities". How can we define it and make sure that it is indeed a set? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 14:56, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Yay a potential large, all-encompassing argument about religion waiting to happen. Oh glory day. [[User:YourLifeisaLie|The Goyim speaks]] ([[User talk:YourLifeisaLie|talk]]) 13:37, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Any chance this is really about an omnipotence paradox? Can god create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it? Is he so powerful that he can find a flaw in any argument that proves he exists?

Why is the William Lane Craig section in there? If there are dozens of versions of the ontological argument on wikipedia, it makes sense to list the original (Anselm), the most famous critique of it (Dawkins), and then refer the reader to wikipedia for more information. The Craig variant is not explained here and seems cherry-picked out of the long list on wikipedia for no clear reason. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 14:08, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

1493: Meeting

2015-03-03T04:23:50Z

141.101.98.245:

{{comic
| number = 1493
| date = March 2, 2015
| title = Meeting
| image = meeting.png
| titletext = Here at CompanyName.website, our three main strengths are our web-facing chairs, our huge collection of white papers, and the fact that we physically cannot die.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Beret Guy]]'s business, as previously seen in [[1032: Networking]] and [[1293: Job Interview]], is going well, although it is unclear why. The common theme in these three comics is that Beret Guy misuses common business cliches. The following are examples and phrases that [[Randall]] is likely making a joke about:

* "If you're reading this, the webserver was installed correctly." When a web server is installed automatically (like apache using apt-get), it typically comes with a minimal configuration meant to deliver a single page saying all is working fine. Usually, a company will then configure the web server to provide actual meaningful content. It appears that in this case Beret Guy's company kept the page as is, but also trademarked the sentence as the company's motto, and proudly displays it under the company logo.

* "Welcome to a meeting!" The usual way to start a meeting is to welcome the participants by telling them in which meeting they are (e.g. "Welcome to the meeting on ..."). Here, the complete lack of specifics in this sentence is an indication that the meeting has, in fact, no purpose at all, except to be just "A meeting". It could also mean that Beret Guy does not know the proper way to welcome people to a meeting.

* "I'm almost out of words so I'll keep this short." A common theme in the busy world of business is lack of time, so "I'm almost out of time" would be a valid reason for keeping a meeting short, rather than a finite quantity of words. Aside from the fictional movie [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_Words_%28film%29 A Thousand Words] or people taking a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vow_of_silence Vow of Silence], people usually don't have a particular quota on the number of words they have or can use.

* "Just wanna touch bases." Often business professions will contact a customer to "touch base," meaning to check in for a status update. The use of the plural "bases" suggests Beret Guy does not know what this means. This could also be a word play on the expression "Cover some bases".

* "Self-driving car project" Google has been working on self-driving cars, which usually shouldn't be lost track of and found by the police. The statement "by accident during this morning's carpool" implies that the employees all somehow left the car while it was moving, and it kept moving until it somehow stopped (hit something, ran out of fuel, etc.)

* "Sales, any luck figuring out who our customers are?" In the real world, when companies want to find out "who [their] customers are", they are talking about learning more about their existing customers in order to more closely match these customers' needs, and to discover ways to attract more of them. Here, Beret Guy and [[Ponytail]] apparently use the phrase literally. In a normal enterprise, however, money doesn't usually appear from nowhere, and most businesses would be very unsettled if their cash flow was from an unknown source.

* "Cool red beetle in the hallway" Beret Guy might be referring to seeing an insect. But given his continually surreal world, he might have instead seen a red Volkswagen Beetle, meaning there is an actual car in the hallway. This also matches with the "self-driving car project", potentially explaining why the car is inside the building. Randall's all-caps lettering hides the "beetle" versus "Beetle" distinction.

* "Bug tracker" usually refers to systems used to track discovery, analysis, and fixing of software bugs, not the location of actual insects or Volkswagen Beetles which are also called bugs.

* "Web-facing" (title text) usually refers to software or a server that is connected to the internet using a web interface. However, in this case the term is applied to chairs placed in front of a computer with internet browsing capability.

* "White papers" (title text) are usually policy recommendations, but Beret Guy is likely talking about actual (near-worthless) blank white pieces of paper.

* "Main strengths" (title text) typically refer to one's skills, but "we physically cannot die" refers to the fact that incorporated companies are in a sense anthropomorphised—they're legally treated as "persons", with the ability to sue and be sued in civil courts. Or that Beret Guy is literally immortal.

There is an alternative explanation for the company portrayed: it is run by computers. This explains the misinterpretations of language, the empty chair, the non-traceable money (perhaps from other computers) and the self-driving car project.

==Trivia==
"CompanyName.website" is actually a domain name that was registered on 2014-11-20 and [http://companyname.website which redirects to xkcd.com]. Presumably, it is owned by Randall, for the same reason as in [[305]].

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy is shown in silhouette. Above Beret Guy there is a black sign with white (and grey) text. Above this is his address to those in the meeting:]
:Beret Guy: Welcome to a meeting! I'm almost out of words, so I'll keep this short. Just wanna touch bases.
:[White text in the black sign (''.website'' in grey):]
:CompanyName.website
:''If you're reading this, the web''
:''server was installed correctly.''TM

:[Beret Guy stands in front of an office chair and a table talking]
:Beret Guy: First, a few updates. We've learned from the state police that the self-driving car project we launched by accident during this morning's carpool has come to an end about 90 miles outside of town. Very exciting!

:[Pony tail sits at the table.]
:Beret Guy [off-panel]: Profits are up. Sales, any luck figuring out who our customers are?
:Ponytail: Nope. Money keeps appearing, but we have no idea how or why.
:Beret Guy [off-panel]: Great!

:[Back to the situation from frame two]
:Beret Guy: Oh, and one last thing— I saw a cool red beetle in the hall. Can someone add it to the bug tracker?
:[person off-panel]: Just did!
:Beret Guy: Thanks!

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]

Talk:1488: Flowcharts

2015-02-21T12:46:12Z

141.101.98.245:

A little bit more of 730? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.108|141.101.80.108]] 06:53, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
:More along the lines of 94, 210, 518, 627, 844, 845, and 1195, though I see similarities with 730. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 07:09, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
How should we do the transcript? [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 07:09, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

You could do the transcript as a number list formatted like: "[Title of item] IF YES(GOTO X), IF NO(GOTO Y)" (where "X" and "Y" are the numbers on the list for the corresponding next option). Derek [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.107|108.162.216.107]] 13:25, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I would just like to say that I find some of the linked spiral-images ''very'' disturbing. Although for some they'd be the same even ''without'' the spirals, admitedly. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.188|141.101.98.188]] 09:47, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I believe this will end up being one of the most challenging explanations yet (of those that are completely explicable) - got quite a task up ahead... -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 10:35, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Normally (for a flowchart) the Start symbol should not have an input. The electrical circuit is not a rectifier! Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.103|108.162.254.103]] 10:59, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
:In the newly corrected version, it is. [[User:Knob creek|Knob creek]] ([[User talk:Knob creek|talk]]) 16:58, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
::But it doesn't need to be, since the rectification is done by the flow chart. Two of the diodes will never be used. (Is it still a rectifier if it's not rectifying?) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.182|108.162.249.182]] 21:49, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
:::Yes it's still a rectifier. It just appears to be out of a job, that's all. Anyone else notice that the bridge rectifier IS a flowchart? The two decision trees feeding it are completely unnecessary. Getting rid of them gives the rectifier back it's job! Also, to give Randall a break, the original diagram of the bridge is actually a ring modulator. It's been decades since I've been in RF so I had to track it down and confirm.[[User:ExternalMonolog|ExternalMonolog]] ([[User talk:ExternalMonolog|talk]]) 23:24, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
OCD comment: There appear to be two lines missing, 1) from scatter plots to data or axis, 2) from the bottom of positive or negative DC terminal to the negative terminal of the battery. Also, I would be happier if the two left hand diodes of the full wave rectifier were reversed. {{unsigned ip|173.245.52.95}}

:Scatter plots don't have lines, that's the joke. {{unsigned ip|199.27.133.71}}
::It wasn't a joke; in the corrected version the lines are there. I suspect Randall uploaded a work-in-progress version of the comic by mistake. {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.245}}

Either I was really tired this morning, or the spiral was not actually present in the first version of this comic.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.98|108.162.254.98]] 13:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

It seems like the options for the "Do you like flowcharts?" box should be reversed (only putting someone through the flowchart if they say they like flowcharts). I think it makes less sense to have the first option "annoy" someone with a flowchart option until they say they don't like flowcharts, then put them through a flowchart. Derek [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.107|108.162.216.107]] 13:31, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I see no evidence that the "time or your happiness" box is asking you to "choose whichever you value more". The graph shows your happiness as a function of time, not "your time" (it's not as if you were asked to choose between, say, more happiness or more spare time for yourself). I think it is just asking you to choose which axis of the graph you want to follow. The flowchart for the line graph and the scatter plot are similar; since "X or Y" is not interpreted as a question about value, why should "time or your happiness" be?
Zetfr 14:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

The comment on the Fibonacci and Golden Spirals being the same is not correct. According to Wikipedia{{w|Golden_Spiral|[1]}}{{w|Fibonacci_number|[2]}}: "A Fibonacci spiral '''approximates''' the golden spiral using quarter-circle arcs inscribed in squares of integer Fibonacci-number side." - [[User:Prometheusmmiv|Prometheusmmiv]] ([[User talk:Prometheusmmiv|talk]]) 14:55, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Randall has uploaded a new version, it fixes some missing lines: The scatter graph is now connected, as is the DC terminal, and the battery is now in a circuit. Some of the explaination above needs updating [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.47|141.101.99.47]] 15:32, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Clicking on the image takes you to http://xkcd.com/spiral/ {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.149}}
:Good catch about http://xkcd.com/spiral/ ! --[[User:Guest|Guest]] ([[User talk:Guest|talk]]) 17:46, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

'''NOTE''' this comic has been changed, oddly. http://xkcd.com/1488/ [[User:Halfhat|Halfhat]] ([[User talk:Halfhat|talk]]) 18:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

How do we change this wiki to have the updated image? The XKCD site is updated, but this page still shows the old image. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 18:59, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
:I have uploaded the correct version now. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 19:30, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
:: The image is still out of date as it lacks the Yes / Never! markings on the Path of Least Resistance decision box. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.174|173.245.54.174]] 21:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Is it a coincidence that a Fibonacci sequence has a link to the golden ratio? I think not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTWKKvlZB08 [[User:SirKitKat|sirKitKat]] ([[User talk:SirKitKat|talk]]) 21:08, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Wow - I tried the random button once and got to this comic: [[1359: Phone Alarm]]. For a second I thought he had rigged it - but that is was not the case. But that was not getting to something else ;-) [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:19, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

:I got [[518]] and started laughing all over again. He really should rig the random button on this page to point to only flowchart comics. He has enough of them: [[94]], [[210]], [[518]], [[844]], [[851]], [[854]], [[1066]], [[1195]], [[1359]]. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.98|108.162.216.98]] 15:20, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
::Thanks, you found one that wasn't in Category:Flowcharts. Fixed it. [[User:gijobarts|gijobarts]] ([[User Talk:gijobarts|talk]]) 21:31, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
:I only got [[1100: Vows]]. The comic was posted yesterday, though. Is it possible that he rigged it, but only for yesterday? [[User:gijobarts|gijobarts]] ([[User Talk:gijobarts|talk]]) 21:36, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

There is a new corrected version. The current one has a "Line or Axis" diamond in the topmost line, instead of "Data or Axis". {{unsigned ip|141.101.102.217}}

1488: Flowcharts

2015-02-21T12:39:19Z

141.101.98.245: /* Trivia */ clarification

{{comic
| number = 1488
| date = February 18, 2015
| title = Flowcharts
| image = flowcharts.png
| titletext = Whoa, and if you overlay a Fibonacci spiral on a golden spiral it matches up almost perfectly!
}}
*If you click on the comic at xkcd you get to the following page: http://xkcd.com/spiral/.
*The arrow at the bottom of this comic points to the [http://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ "Random" button] at the bottom of the xkcd page.
**Go to the comic, as always, by clicking on the date line above this comic.

==Explanation==
'''Note''': A flawed version of this comic was posted at first and then quickly a correct version was uploaded. But this gave rise to several misunderstandings and confusion. See the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section below.

This comic is a {{w|flowchart}} style. Interestingly, the first option, ''Do you like flowcharts?'' loops back to itself if you say ''Yes''. This will cause the reader who actually likes flow charts to go into an endless loop of choosing ''Yes'', until they are so annoyed by flowcharts that they do not like them anymore and can progress by saying ''No''.

After asking about flowcharts, the reader is asked whether they like {{w|line graph|line graphs}}. If they follow the yes line, it becomes a line graph where "Time" is the x-axis and "Your Happiness" is the y-axis, and shows that your happiness increases with time. If you don't like line graphs, they are asked the same question about {{w|scatter plots}} where again the lines turn into the points and the axis of such a plot.

Taking yet another line, the reader is asked "Charge a battery?" If they follow the line marked yes they are asked whether they are {{w|Alternating current|A/C}} or {{w|Direct current|D/C}} current and are led to a portion of the flowchart which resembles a {{w|circuit diagram}} of a {{w|rectifier bridge}} with a battery connected to it.

If the reader follows the "no" line, they are asked if they like spirals. If they choose "no" they are told to take the {{w|path of least resistance}}. This part of the flowchart resembles a circuit diagram, and the word "{{w|resistance}}" is a pun because resistance can have several meanings. In electricity it is an electrical quantity that measures how the device or material impedes the electric current flow through it. Going left is the "Never" option, which goes through extra resistors and a diode, therefore making the "Yes" option the "path of least resistance". However, when asked if you choose the path of least resistance and answers ''never'' it could also mean that you do not try to avoid a little trouble.

Whether they choose "Yes" or "No", they arrive at "Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?" If they choose "yes" the line fades into a drawing of a golden spiral, and we see that the flowchart is structured around it. If they choose "no" they are asked if they are tired of flowcharts. If not, they are taken to the beginning to start over again. If they are tired, the line points to the "random" button on the xkcd website.

The title text and the faint image of a golden spiral parody the fact that the golden spiral is superimposed on nearly ''everything''. The golden spiral is a spiral that has the growth rate of the golden ratio, a number that has inspired both artists and mathematicians alike. However, people try to find the golden ratio in seemingly random objects, and they fall to confirmation bias when drawing a golden spiral on top that seemingly fits. The comic links to http://xkcd.com/spiral/, where one can see exactly that- golden spirals Randall "found" in random photographs. This may be a spoof of the viral video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPCkcKNUVoo Illuminati Confirmed]. The limit of consecutive terms of the Fibonacci sequence is equal to the golden ratio, so it matches up almost perfectly for a good reason, unlike the coincidental matchings of the pictures in the mobile site link.

This comic bears reminiscence of [[730: Circuit Diagram]], although it is not exactly the same idea.

===List of Items in Flowchart===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Text in boxes
! Explanation
! Successor(s)
! Predeccessor(s)
|-
| Start
| Start here
| Do you like flowcharts?
| Tired of flowcharts yet?
|-
| Do you like flowcharts?
| Asking whether or not the reader likes flow charts. Recursively returns to itself until the reader is annoyed enough to not like flowcharts and can move on to the next point.
| Do you like flowcharts?, Do you like line graphs?
| Start, Do you like flowcharts?
|-
| Do you like line graphs?
| It asks if you like {{w|line graph|line graphs}}
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs], Scatter plots?
| Do you like flowcharts?
|-
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs]
| It is asking if you wish to be the data or the axis. If you choose the line, the flow chart line turns into a line graph with a positive curve. The same question will be asked later if you say no to line graphs and yes to scatter plots.
| [A line in a line graph], Time or your happiness?
| Do you like line graphs?
|-
| Time or your happiness?
| If you choose ''time'' the flow chart line becomes the x-axis of time and if you choose ''your happiness'' it becomes the y-axis in the line graph with the line from before indicating that your happiness increases over time (maybe because you like line graphs and are now becoming part of one?)
| [Time axis], [Your Happiness axis]
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs]
|-
| Scatter plots?
| If you don't like line graphs then maybe you like {{w|scatterplot|scatter plots}}?
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots], Help charge a battery?
| Do you like line graphs?
|-
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots]
| It is asking if you wish to be the data or the axis. If you choose the data, the flow chart line turns into a scatter plot that is also a flowchart where each of the 10 flow chart boxes is black with two white arrow, one pointing up and the other to the right. They are all connected with multiple connections. The same question was asked earlier if you said yes to line graphs.
| [A flow chart that looks line points in in a scatter plot], X of Y?
| Scatter plots?
|-
| X or Y?
| Which axis do you prefer? The line you chooses turns in to this axis in the scatter plot.
| [X axis], [Y axis]
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots]
|-
| Help charge a battery?
| From here on the flowchart is at the beginning of morphing into a circuit diagram.
| Like spirals?, Are you A/C or D/C?
| Scatter plots?
|-
| Are you A/C or D/C?,
| Asks whether you are an {{w|AC current}} or a {{w|DC current}}.
| Positive or negative phase?, positive or negative DC terminal?
| Help charging a battery?
|-
| Positive or negative phase?
| Conventional current will flow forwards during the positive phase of AC current, whereas in the negative phase the forwards directions matches the actual flow of electrons (see [[567: Urgent Mission]]).
| Positive or negative DC terminal? [To either side of this box]
| Are you A/C or D/C?
|-
| Positive or negative DC terminal?
| This box looks like a {{w|rectifier bridge}}, which is used to convert AC to DC. The single output leads to a battery which is joined in a circuit to the bottom of the rectifier bridge.
| Battery [plus or minus]
| Positive or negative phase?
|-
| Like spirals?
| Well, do you? If you do you instantly goes to the question of golden spirals. If not you take a detour.
| Take the path of least resistance?, Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Help charge a battery?
|-
| Take the path of least resistance?
| This one is a pun. If resistance is seen as electrical resistance, then the bottom one labeled ''yes'' is the one with least resistance. The other labeled "Never" sends you through ''more'' resistance, and a 'protective' diode. But in either case you are lead to the same decision box. Also the resistors could look like spirals - making this detour for those who dislike these even more painful.
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Like spirals?
|-
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Here is a question regarding if you like the idea that some people can find and superimpose a {{w|golden spiral}} on a random image. No matter which options you choose you are forced to admit that it is totally BS ({{w|bullshit}}). But maybe you like it anyway? If you choose the ''Yes, even though it's total BS'' option the flow chart continues to the side of the chart, then starts to spiral up only to fades out to a very faint golden spiral aligned to the other items in the flow chart. It is almost impossible to see it before you follow this line. The other option is of course ''No, it's total BS''. If you do like it - then click on the [http://www.xkcd.com/1488/ comic on xkcd].
| Tired of flowcharts yet?, [A very faint golden spiral]
| Like spirals?, Take the path of least resistance?
|-
| Tired of flowcharts yet?
| Have you had enough of flow chart? If not then you are returned to the ''start'' box at the top of the chart. Maybe you have not tried all options yet, although you have already answered that you are tired of flow charts if you get this far. If you have had enough and answers ''Yes, I want to look at something else'' this option leads to the random comic button below the comic (only on xkcd). This decision ''literally'' breaks the fourth wall in traveling through the image's nominal boundary to point at a specific button to look at some other comic.
| Start, [The xkcd [http://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ Random] comic button]
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
|}

==Transcript==
:[A flow chart. The first option the start box is white text on a black rectangle. The other boxes are rhombuses standing on edge. Except for the first there are always two options going out. Most onlyhave one option coming in, but there are exceptions with two options going in]
:Start
:[One arrow points to the first real choice]
:[Below the text on the two options going out from each option will be indented. The top of these two options will be the one to be mentioned first below. Then the chart will be mapped like this going back to the previous unfinished option]
:Do you like flowcharts?
::Yes
::No
:[Yes goes back where it came from]
:Do you like line graphs?
::Yes
::No
:Data or axis?
::Line
::Axis
:[The line is just a line – but now as the line in a line graph]
:Time or your happiness?
::Time
::Your happiness
:[These two lines turn into the x and y axis of the line graph]
:Scatter plots?
::Yes
::No
:Data or axis?
::Data
::Axis
:[The data line turns into the points in a scatter plot]
:X or Y?
::X
::Y
:[These two lines turn into the x and y axis of the scatter plot]
:Help charge a battery?
::Yes
::No
:Are you A/C or D/C?,
::A/C
::D/C
:Positive or negative phase?
::+
::-
:[The D/C option also goes to this next option, but directly. This next rhombus looks like a part of a circuit diagram]
:Positive or negative DC terminal?
::+
::-
:[These two lines goes to the + and – poles of a battery]
:Like spirals?
::No
::Yes
:Take the path of least resistance?
::Never
::Yes
:[Never goes through two resistors and a diode before reaching the point of the Yes option, which then also goes though yet another resistor. Both thus end at the same option, which is also the one that Yes to like Spirals ends up at:]
:Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
::Yes, even though it's total BS.
::No, it's total BS.
:[Yes option takes the chart into a fading line that turns into a golden spiral spanning the whole chart.]
:Tired of flowcharts yet?
::No
::Yes, I want to look at something else
:[No takes you back to the start box at the top]
:[Yes takes you out of the comic and points to the Random button at xkcd.]

==Trivia==
*A corrected version of the comic was uploaded later on the same day.
**This is the second time in February 2015 this has occurred; previously with [[1482: NowPlaying]].
*It appears that an unfinished version of the comic was uploaded, with several of the lines and labels missing, and the bridge circuit incorrectly drawn.
*This [[Media:OriginalFlowcharts.png|original]] comic can be seen on the link.
*The errors were:
**Missing yes/no at the line graph options.
**Missing yes/no at the scatter plot options and missing the line for the yes option going to the second Data axis.
**Missing yes at charge a battery options
**Missing DC from the AC or DC options and missing the line for the DC option going to the terminal.
**Missing the arrow pointing to the terminal from the "-" option of the phase.
**Missing +/- at terminal option and missing the line going from the negative pole of the battery to the terminal.
**The terminal, which is a rectifier bridge, had both diodes drawn in the wrong direction on the left side of the decision box.
**There was a + floating between the phase and terminal option. This was deleted.
**Missing yes at the spiral options.
**Missing yes/never! at the least resistance options. Also the arrow pointing to the next option was missing.
*The comic has reference to charging a battery, and was posted on the 270th birthday of Alessandro Volta, the original creator of the battery. This could, however, have been a coincidence.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Flowcharts]]

1488: Flowcharts

2015-02-21T12:27:01Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1488
| date = February 18, 2015
| title = Flowcharts
| image = flowcharts.png
| titletext = Whoa, and if you overlay a Fibonacci spiral on a golden spiral it matches up almost perfectly!
}}
*If you click on the comic at xkcd you get to the following page: http://xkcd.com/spiral/.
*The arrow at the bottom of this comic points to the [http://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ "Random" button] at the bottom of the xkcd page.
**Go to the comic, as always, by clicking on the date line above this comic.

==Explanation==
'''Note''': A flawed version of this comic was posted at first and then quickly a correct version was uploaded. But this gave rise to several misunderstandings and confusion. See the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section below.

This comic is a {{w|flowchart}} style. Interestingly, the first option, ''Do you like flowcharts?'' loops back to itself if you say ''Yes''. This will cause the reader who actually likes flow charts to go into an endless loop of choosing ''Yes'', until they are so annoyed by flowcharts that they do not like them anymore and can progress by saying ''No''.

After asking about flowcharts, the reader is asked whether they like {{w|line graph|line graphs}}. If they follow the yes line, it becomes a line graph where "Time" is the x-axis and "Your Happiness" is the y-axis, and shows that your happiness increases with time. If you don't like line graphs, they are asked the same question about {{w|scatter plots}} where again the lines turn into the points and the axis of such a plot.

Taking yet another line, the reader is asked "Charge a battery?" If they follow the line marked yes they are asked whether they are {{w|Alternating current|A/C}} or {{w|Direct current|D/C}} current and are led to a portion of the flowchart which resembles a {{w|circuit diagram}} of a {{w|rectifier bridge}} with a battery connected to it.

If the reader follows the "no" line, they are asked if they like spirals. If they choose "no" they are told to take the {{w|path of least resistance}}. This part of the flowchart resembles a circuit diagram, and the word "{{w|resistance}}" is a pun because resistance can have several meanings. In electricity it is an electrical quantity that measures how the device or material impedes the electric current flow through it. Going left is the "Never" option, which goes through extra resistors and a diode, therefore making the "Yes" option the "path of least resistance". However, when asked if you choose the path of least resistance and answers ''never'' it could also mean that you do not try to avoid a little trouble.

Whether they choose "Yes" or "No", they arrive at "Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?" If they choose "yes" the line fades into a drawing of a golden spiral, and we see that the flowchart is structured around it. If they choose "no" they are asked if they are tired of flowcharts. If not, they are taken to the beginning to start over again. If they are tired, the line points to the "random" button on the xkcd website.

The title text and the faint image of a golden spiral parody the fact that the golden spiral is superimposed on nearly ''everything''. The golden spiral is a spiral that has the growth rate of the golden ratio, a number that has inspired both artists and mathematicians alike. However, people try to find the golden ratio in seemingly random objects, and they fall to confirmation bias when drawing a golden spiral on top that seemingly fits. The comic links to http://xkcd.com/spiral/, where one can see exactly that- golden spirals Randall "found" in random photographs. This may be a spoof of the viral video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPCkcKNUVoo Illuminati Confirmed]. The limit of consecutive terms of the Fibonacci sequence is equal to the golden ratio, so it matches up almost perfectly for a good reason, unlike the coincidental matchings of the pictures in the mobile site link.

This comic bears reminiscence of [[730: Circuit Diagram]], although it is not exactly the same idea.

===List of Items in Flowchart===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Text in boxes
! Explanation
! Successor(s)
! Predeccessor(s)
|-
| Start
| Start here
| Do you like flowcharts?
| Tired of flowcharts yet?
|-
| Do you like flowcharts?
| Asking whether or not the reader likes flow charts. Recursively returns to itself until the reader is annoyed enough to not like flowcharts and can move on to the next point.
| Do you like flowcharts?, Do you like line graphs?
| Start, Do you like flowcharts?
|-
| Do you like line graphs?
| It asks if you like {{w|line graph|line graphs}}
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs], Scatter plots?
| Do you like flowcharts?
|-
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs]
| It is asking if you wish to be the data or the axis. If you choose the line, the flow chart line turns into a line graph with a positive curve. The same question will be asked later if you say no to line graphs and yes to scatter plots.
| [A line in a line graph], Time or your happiness?
| Do you like line graphs?
|-
| Time or your happiness?
| If you choose ''time'' the flow chart line becomes the x-axis of time and if you choose ''your happiness'' it becomes the y-axis in the line graph with the line from before indicating that your happiness increases over time (maybe because you like line graphs and are now becoming part of one?)
| [Time axis], [Your Happiness axis]
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to line graphs]
|-
| Scatter plots?
| If you don't like line graphs then maybe you like {{w|scatterplot|scatter plots}}?
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots], Help charge a battery?
| Do you like line graphs?
|-
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots]
| It is asking if you wish to be the data or the axis. If you choose the data, the flow chart line turns into a scatter plot that is also a flowchart where each of the 10 flow chart boxes is black with two white arrow, one pointing up and the other to the right. They are all connected with multiple connections. The same question was asked earlier if you said yes to line graphs.
| [A flow chart that looks line points in in a scatter plot], X of Y?
| Scatter plots?
|-
| X or Y?
| Which axis do you prefer? The line you chooses turns in to this axis in the scatter plot.
| [X axis], [Y axis]
| Data or axis? [The one after yes to scatter plots]
|-
| Help charge a battery?
| From here on the flowchart is at the beginning of morphing into a circuit diagram.
| Like spirals?, Are you A/C or D/C?
| Scatter plots?
|-
| Are you A/C or D/C?,
| Asks whether you are an {{w|AC current}} or a {{w|DC current}}.
| Positive or negative phase?, positive or negative DC terminal?
| Help charging a battery?
|-
| Positive or negative phase?
| Conventional current will flow forwards during the positive phase of AC current, whereas in the negative phase the forwards directions matches the actual flow of electrons (see [[567: Urgent Mission]]).
| Positive or negative DC terminal? [To either side of this box]
| Are you A/C or D/C?
|-
| Positive or negative DC terminal?
| This box looks like a {{w|rectifier bridge}}, which is used to convert AC to DC. The single output leads to a battery which is joined in a circuit to the bottom of the rectifier bridge.
| Battery [plus or minus]
| Positive or negative phase?
|-
| Like spirals?
| Well, do you? If you do you instantly goes to the question of golden spirals. If not you take a detour.
| Take the path of least resistance?, Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Help charge a battery?
|-
| Take the path of least resistance?
| This one is a pun. If resistance is seen as electrical resistance, then the bottom one labeled ''yes'' is the one with least resistance. The other labeled "Never" sends you through ''more'' resistance, and a 'protective' diode. But in either case you are lead to the same decision box. Also the resistors could look like spirals - making this detour for those who dislike these even more painful.
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Like spirals?
|-
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
| Here is a question regarding if you like the idea that some people can find and superimpose a {{w|golden spiral}} on a random image. No matter which options you choose you are forced to admit that it is totally BS ({{w|bullshit}}). But maybe you like it anyway? If you choose the ''Yes, even though it's total BS'' option the flow chart continues to the side of the chart, then starts to spiral up only to fades out to a very faint golden spiral aligned to the other items in the flow chart. It is almost impossible to see it before you follow this line. The other option is of course ''No, it's total BS''. If you do like it - then click on the [http://www.xkcd.com/1488/ comic on xkcd].
| Tired of flowcharts yet?, [A very faint golden spiral]
| Like spirals?, Take the path of least resistance?
|-
| Tired of flowcharts yet?
| Have you had enough of flow chart? If not then you are returned to the ''start'' box at the top of the chart. Maybe you have not tried all options yet, although you have already answered that you are tired of flow charts if you get this far. If you have had enough and answers ''Yes, I want to look at something else'' this option leads to the random comic button below the comic (only on xkcd). This decision ''literally'' breaks the fourth wall in traveling through the image's nominal boundary to point at a specific button to look at some other comic.
| Start, [The xkcd [http://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ Random] comic button]
| Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
|}

==Transcript==
:[A flow chart. The first option the start box is white text on a black rectangle. The other boxes are rhombuses standing on edge. Except for the first there are always two options going out. Most onlyhave one option coming in, but there are exceptions with two options going in]
:Start
:[One arrow points to the first real choice]
:[Below the text on the two options going out from each option will be indented. The top of these two options will be the one to be mentioned first below. Then the chart will be mapped like this going back to the previous unfinished option]
:Do you like flowcharts?
::Yes
::No
:[Yes goes back where it came from]
:Do you like line graphs?
::Yes
::No
:Data or axis?
::Line
::Axis
:[The line is just a line – but now as the line in a line graph]
:Time or your happiness?
::Time
::Your happiness
:[These two lines turn into the x and y axis of the line graph]
:Scatter plots?
::Yes
::No
:Data or axis?
::Data
::Axis
:[The data line turns into the points in a scatter plot]
:X or Y?
::X
::Y
:[These two lines turn into the x and y axis of the scatter plot]
:Help charge a battery?
::Yes
::No
:Are you A/C or D/C?,
::A/C
::D/C
:Positive or negative phase?
::+
::-
:[The D/C option also goes to this next option, but directly. This next rhombus looks like a part of a circuit diagram]
:Positive or negative DC terminal?
::+
::-
:[These two lines goes to the + and – poles of a battery]
:Like spirals?
::No
::Yes
:Take the path of least resistance?
::Never
::Yes
:[Never goes through two resistors and a diode before reaching the point of the Yes option, which then also goes though yet another resistor. Both thus end at the same option, which is also the one that Yes to like Spirals ends up at:]
:Do you like when people find the golden spiral in random images?
::Yes, even though it's total BS.
::No, it's total BS.
:[Yes option takes the chart into a fading line that turns into a golden spiral spanning the whole chart.]
:Tired of flowcharts yet?
::No
::Yes, I want to look at something else
:[No takes you back to the start box at the top]
:[Yes takes you out of the comic and points to the Random button at xkcd.]

==Trivia==
*A corrected version of the comic was uploaded later on the same day.
**This is the second time in February 2015 this has occurred; previously with [[1482: NowPlaying]].
*It appears that an unfinished version of the comic was uploaded, with several of the lines and labels missing, and the bridge circuit incorrectly drawn.
*This [[Media:OriginalFlowcharts.png|original]] comic can be seen on the link.
*The errors were:
**Missing yes/no at the line graph options.
**Missing yes/no at the scatter plot options and missing the line for the yes option going to the second Data axis.
**Missing yes at charge a battery options
**Missing DC from the AC or DC options and missing the line for the DC option going to the terminal.
**Missing the arrow pointing to the terminal from the "-" option of the phase.
**Missing +/- at terminal option and missing the line going from the negative pole of the battery to the terminal.
**The terminal, which is a rectifier bridge, had both diodes drawn in the wrong direction on the left side of the diagram. This was corrected.
**There where a + floating between the phase and terminal option. This was deleted.
**Missing yes like spirals options.
**Missing yes/never! at the least resistance options. Also the arrow pointing to the next option was missing.
*The comic has reference to charging a battery, and was posted on the 270th birthday of Alessandro Volta, the original creator of the battery. This could, however, have been a coincidence.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Flowcharts]]

1462: Blind Trials

2014-12-19T13:27:00Z

141.101.98.245: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1462
| date = December 19, 2014
| title = Blind Trials
| image = blind_trials.png
| titletext = Plus, you have to control for the fact that some people are into being blindfolded.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
In research, a {{w|Blind Experiment|blind trial}} is an experiment where certain information about the test is concealed from the subjects and/or the testers, in order to reduce sources of bias in the results. A scientific approach requires the use of {{w|control groups}} to determine the significance of observations in (clinical) trials. The members of the control group receive either no treatment or the standard treatment.

A double-blind trial is one where neither the subject nor the testers know who has recieved treatment, and who is in the control group. It is vital that there are no clues available to distinguish between the different groups, either for the subjects or the testers. In a clinical drugs trial for example, it would not be suitable for some people to be given blue pills and others red pills, so an identical placebo pill should be used, typically a sugar pill with no medical value.

Challenges exist in designing placebo alternatives to certain physical treatments that might be being tested, such as acupuncture; in this case the best quality trials have typically used either special 'joke' retractable needles that only give the illusion of proper penetration or the practitioner/researcher deliberately and safely avoids the traditional {{w|Meridian_(Chinese_medicine)|meridians}} on the body for the treatment concerned so that the patient remains 'blind' to their role in the trial (the practitioner must otherwise be consistent in treatment between groups and not be involved in the medical assessment phase for properly double-blinded conditions), where the most reliable results still seem to only show a significant placebo effect at work.

There are, however, certain cases where it is almost impossible to make the experience of the control group identical to that of the test group. In the described experiment, it will be challenging (to say the least) to make the control group think they are having lots of sex, when in fact they are just taking a sugar pill.

Scientific research involving humans is extremely challenging to conduct because of the difficulty in finding appropriate control groups. This is one of the reasons animal experiments (for instance involving inbred strains of mice) are so common.

The title text adds another twist by taking “blind” literally, and noting that for some people, being blindfolded increases their enjoyment of sexual activity.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is pointing at charts hanging on the wall.]
:Megan: We've designed a double-blind trial to test the effect of sexual activity on cardiovascular health.
:Both groups will ''think'' they're having lots of sex, but one group will be actually getting sugar pills.

:[Caption reads]
:The limitations of blind trials

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1462: Blind Trials

2014-12-19T12:55:14Z

141.101.98.245:

I think I finished the transcript [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.219|108.162.250.219]] 09:21, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

:I think the item Megan is pointing at should not be referred to as "chart", but as "charts", since a chart is "a sheet of information in the form of a table, graph, or diagram", while there is clearly both a table and a diagram, therefore two "charts".[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 12:45, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

I wonder though, if it makes sense to account for Placebo Effect when you're mesuring something that does not involve subjective perception. In the example case, one can measure, say, heart rate for the group that practices sex and the monastic control group and have valid results. Of course, you lose the option of passing a survey with questions like "Have you lately felt tired?" or the like. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.49.106|173.245.49.106]] 09:33, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

: Of course it does make sense, placebo effect can be observed on test for disease such as cancer. The idea is that thinking you are taking a cure might, will trigger physiological change. It is quitte likely, that the testing of pills for the heart would induce some placebo effect. What you might be refering too is some kind of perseptive bias, which could be observed in psychological test. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.100|108.162.229.100]] 11:51, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Hmmmm ... maybe you could make the control group think they have sex with hallucinogens ... but somehow I don't think it would make useful control group, not speaking about most hallucinogens being illegal. Alternatively, you can get both groups drunk and - ... ok, this doesn't sound like good idea either. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:44, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

:I was thinking maybe hypnotherapy... --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 12:48, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

When I was diagnosed with accute hypochondria and then suffered a number of psychosomatic injuries, those sugar pills actually saved my life!  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 12:55, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1461: Payloads

2014-12-17T13:27:34Z

141.101.98.245:

It's possible he's talking about [http://poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/earth-and-moon/ this comic].
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.203|108.162.249.203]] 07:20, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I think he used horses as a reference to the unit of work, horse power, but in this case instead of being the 550 foot pounds per second, it is the force required to put a horse at that altitude
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.195|199.27.128.195]] 08:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
:The top one clearly says "Spacecraft mass" and the bottom says "Capacity" (which is normally either the mass or volume something can hold), so I don't think either refers to force. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.175|173.245.54.175]] 08:32, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Horses might also be used as a length unit... I am wondering if this is somehow related to the size of SRBs [http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp] ;-) {{unsigned|Ld75}}

A few mass calculations: (All masses from wikipedia)

* ISS - 450,000 kg / 932 Horses = 483 kg/Horse
* Skylab - 77,088 kg / 171 Horses = 450 kg/Horse
* Mir - 129,700 kg / 286 Horses = 453 kg/Horse
* Shuttle Payload - 24,400 kg / 54 Horses = 452 kg/Horse
* Compton GRO - 17,000 kg / 38 Horses = 447 kg/Horse

It looks like Randall probably used 450kg as a standard horse, which seems like a fairly average weight for a {{w|Horse#Size and Measurement|horse}}. --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 09:06, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Curious: the Atlas-Centaur rocket is listed as lifting Centaurs, not horses. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.244|141.101.98.244]] 09:11, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
:Plus the Pegasus rocket is labelled as lifting one (mythical, horse-sized?) Pegasus. I took this as synchronicity, but currently someone (who missed the Centaur reference in the part of the main text about "joke additions/deviations") who edited the the main text seems to think that it's purely a mythical reference. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 13:27, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

The Keyhole captions are wrong; assuming 450 kg/horse, 40 horses for the [[wikipedia:KH-7 Gambit|Keyhole 7]] would be around 18,000 kg. Documents declassified a couple of years ago give the mass as around 2,000 kg. The [[wikipedia:Corona (satellite)|Keyhole 3]] was even smaller. The mass and dates are about right for [[wikipedia:KH-11 Kennan|Keyhole 11]] satellites but I don't know where the 3 and 7 have come from (the dates are wrong for the third and seventh Keyhole 11s) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.85|141.101.99.85]] 09:43, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Initially I thought that the position of 'T Rex' along the X axis (approx 1985) may be a link to the band {{w|T. Rex (band)|T.Rex}}, but according to wiki that was 1967-1977. I guess it could be a random date, but thats not usually Randall's style... --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:51, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
:The T Rex "Sue" was discovered in August 1990. Not quite right, either. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.214|108.162.250.214]] 11:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

The Oldsmobile is probably a reference to the movie ''{{w|Mom and Dad Save the World}}''. The title characters' station wagon was from around that era -- and it ''did'' go into space in the movie. --[[User:Aaron of Mpls|Aaron of Mpls]] ([[User talk:Aaron of Mpls|talk]]) 11:47, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1460: SMFW

2014-12-17T13:17:28Z

141.101.98.245:

Reading this is like listening to the video of that lady who imitates the sound patterns of different languages, but without actually saying any real words! --[[User:Elipongo|Elipongo]] ([[User talk:Elipongo|talk]]) 05:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
:link? -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 15:41, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybcvlxivscw [[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.192|199.27.130.192]] 19:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
:No. It's absolutely '''nothing''' like that. If this were reddit I'd downvote you. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.180|173.245.54.180]] 19:18, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

It would sound more natural if it were "''SMFW '''as''' an acronym almost makes sense''". Is the fact that "as" was omitted from that sentence supposed to give us a hint as to what "SMFW" might mean? [[User:Nicksh|Nicksh]] ([[User talk:Nicksh|talk]]) 07:16, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

: As "the Internet is for porn", in many contexts SFW, lit. Safe for Work, can be taken to mean sex-free content, while NSFW, Not Safe for Work, would mean sex-positive content, then SMFW might be interpreted to me SM For Work, where SM would be humorously interpreted as some graphically explicit sex-positive content, perhaps SadoMachoism, which outside of paperwork is generally classified NSFW. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.29|199.27.133.29]] 10:31, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

:: And "wtfw it's like smho tbfh, imdb." might be a defensive reaction to those what would not find humour of SM For Work. "what the fooking wut? It's like stick my humble opinion, to be fooking honest, in my dead body. (or database)." [[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.29|199.27.133.29]] 10:38, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

:: Additional evidence of SM For Work, would be the posture in the task chair with respect to the desk and laptop (hunched over, feet not resting on ground, etc) seems the opposite of ergonomic advice which might lead to muscle strain, pain and fatigue -- the type of unsexy, self-inflicted torments that workers do to themselves "for work" {{unsigned ip|199.27.133.29}}

: >It would sound more natural
: You're missing the whole point. It's not ''supposed'' to sound natural. It's supposed to look strange and confuse you. That's the joke. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.180|173.245.54.180]] 19:20, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I thought it was simply 'Save Me From Work' - being unhappy at work is common, and using the internet as a distraction from work is common as well. - So sending a quick message to a friend "SMFW" is a request for them to send you a link or other internet distraction, or otherwise help you come up with an excuse to not be productive. {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.206}}

I thought of So Much For Work as a possible meaning. {{unsigned ip|173.245.50.178}}

SMFW: Single Mode Fiber Waveguide * {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.39}}

I think "SMFW" is a mixture of SMF and MFW: "So Much Fun When". It fits the sentence. The only thing is that Cueball doesn't look like he's having fun.

Smoke more fucking weed could be a replacement for something like "Bloody hell" or "Shit the bed".
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.252|141.101.98.252]] 09:05, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

So why doesn't "xkcd" appear on the acronyms list? --[[User:Koveras|Koveras]] ([[User talk:Koveras|talk]]) 09:47, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
: Because xkcd isnt an acronym. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.61|108.162.216.61]] 09:56, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

I would like to add STFW ("Search the fucking web", [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/STFW]) as an acronym that SMFW is close to (same except for the second letter)...but there might be enough examples? [[User:Aquaplanet|Aquaplanet]] ([[User talk:Aquaplanet|talk]]) 11:07, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

SMFW makes perfect sense. Shaking my face when (SMH+MFW) an acronym almost makes sense. {{unsigned|Sederts}}
:Seconded, "Shaking my face when" seems to be the best decryption so far... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.249|108.162.219.249]] 23:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

See My Face When an acronym almost makes sense... makes perfect sense. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.4|141.101.99.4]] 13:26, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

"So Much Frustration When an acronym ''almost'' makes sense."
: +1 -- [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 15:44, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
: I'd also like to add in my +1 on this -- [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.188|108.162.216.188]] 19:39, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

"What to feel when it's like some message has only to be f...ing hashtags, is mostly deep bafflement." [[User:Ackegard|Ackegard]] ([[User talk:Ackegard|talk]]) 14:35, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

None of these are acronyms. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.115|199.27.128.115]] 14:55, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

So Much F*cking Want. So, uh. Yeah. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.124|108.162.237.124]] 15:10, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Small Men Fear Women [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.39|108.162.216.39]] 15:27, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

So Many Fucking Ways an acronym almost makes sense. Makes sense to me. {{unsigned ip|108.162.230.209}}

Staring, Mildly Frustrated When...? [[User:Kirdneh|Kirdneh]] ([[User talk:Kirdneh|talk]]) 17:50, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

"SMHO" could also be related to "LMHO," or "Laughing My Head Off." So, "Shaking My Head Off"? Something that makes you shake your head so hard it might fall off? [[User:Shanek|Shanek]] ([[User talk:Shanek|talk]]) 16:12, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

SMFW is an initialism. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.230.131|108.162.230.131]] 16:45, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

<pedantic>Initialisms are only acronyms when they can be pronounced </pendantic> [[User:Sideshowtanley|Sideshowtanley]] ([[User talk:Sideshowtanley|talk]]) 17:16, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

: smif-whaa? (smfw) wha-ti-fuh? (wtf) zik-cid? (xkcd) Can be pronounced or intended to be pronounced? Two very different things. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.64|108.162.216.64]] 01:47, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

I was thinking "So M*therf*cking what?" as the meaning for the acronym, but Randall is more arcane than that :) [[Special:Contributions/173.245.49.148|173.245.49.148]] 17:49, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

"Social Media Forum Warrior" is what came to my mind. I may have been on the internets for too long. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.137|141.101.104.137]] 19:22, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Could be an example of a stacked acronym with an acronym recursively nested in an acronym. Or it could be a portmanteau of two acronyms. Is there a term for a portmanteau of two acronyms? Portmonym? Acmanteau? --[[User:Gbleck|Gbleck]] ([[User talk:Gbleck|talk]]) 19:31, 15 December 2014 (UTC)gbleck

It's not meant to make sense. It's a play on acronyms not making sense. It is a single statement in a single sentence, but the play is on the fact that the acronym doesn't make sense. {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.207}}

Smacks My Face When an acronym almost makes sense. {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.160}}

Two things - 1) these are all abbreviations, not acronyms - no-one goes around saying "Smfw" - they'd say "S.M.F.W."; 2) WTFW is "whatever the fuck works" - used quite often on a couple of forums I've been on. [[User:Grutness|Grutness]] ([[User talk:Grutness|talk]]) 23:11, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
: I think there are two different, valid definitions of acronyms. Personally the first "acronym" I think of as an example is ATM machine, which you're saying is an abbreviation. I guess some people draw the line if it uses the initials of words, and other draw the line at being pronounced. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.187|108.162.215.187]] 12:45, 16 December 2014 (UTC)
:Of course you're suffering from RAS Syndrome when you say "ATM Machine", anyway, whatever you call it. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 13:17, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

TDEMSYR!!! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.217|141.101.89.217]] 10:03, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Maybe “SMFW” could mean “So Much Fun When” — wait, that makes too much sense. [[User:Jolbucley|Jolbucley]] ([[User talk:Jolbucley|talk]]) 02:28, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

I thought it meant "So Much For Work" Something I would mutter to myself when distracted by XKCD [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.222|108.162.250.222]] 04:54, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't SMFW mean "Sorta My Face When"?
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.27|108.162.231.27]] 05:11, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1458: Small Moon

2014-12-10T10:37:32Z

141.101.98.245:

Probably another dig at the Pluto "dwarf planet" controversy?[[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.109|199.27.133.109]] 06:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

This is too good. I laughed for about 2 straight minutes.. :D [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.89|199.27.128.89]] 06:50, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Added a short placeholder explanation for the comic itself, using [[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.109|199.27.133.109]]'s suggestion. Needs refining and explaining of the alt text. Cheers. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.207|173.245.54.207]] 07:04, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

In the movie, they didn't have 3 hours to argue over the thing. Not sure if that's relevant... [[User:Haelbarde|Haelbarde]] ([[User talk:Haelbarde|talk]]) 07:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The reason it couldn't be a space station would be that something so large would wind up collapsing in on its own gravity. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.204|173.245.54.204]] 08:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:It's not solid, it's a comapritively low density on the whole (on the order of ten thousand million''th''s that of Earth's sea-level atmospheric pressure, if I've not thrown a rogue zero or two in to the calculation by accident, so is doubtless mostly vacuum outside of the functional/habitable/structural areas), there are obviously various gravitational compensators for the inhabited sections (hence "looking sideways out of the equator ring" and along the beam-channel, yet "up from the surface" from the trench system defence turrets and other internal shafts are also vertiginously 'up-down' in nature) and doubtless its structural stength is composed of various Unotanium (i.e. "durasteel") alloys and the like, way beyond what we could currently build with Earthly technology. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 10:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I would note that a Death '''Star''' can not be a moon. [[User:Briff|Briff]] ([[User talk:Briff|talk]]) 10:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:Note that it is canon that the "Star Destroyer"s are neither (if taken literally) capable of destroying stars nor (in the sense of "star ship" in general) are they technically destroyer-class ships. You've got to put it down to The Empire just having no sense of relevence when it comes to naming its vessels. Probably too much influence from clone-thinking... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 10:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)