explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2222: Terminator: Dark Fate

2019-10-30T22:34:46Z

162.158.38.16: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2222
| date = October 30, 2019
| title = Terminator: Dark Fate
| image = terminator_dark_fate.png
| titletext = I was sent here to stop the robot that was sent here to protect the human who was sent here to protect the human who was sent here to destroy the robot that was sent here to vacuum the floor.
}}
It is a common trope in science fiction to go into the past to stop events from ever happening (this is seen in the Terminator series). This comic plays this trope to the extreme by having Cueball's future self come to stop him from watching Terminator: Dark Fate, which leads to a Cueball from that timeline to come tell him to watch it, and then two more of himself come back in order to stop him from watching it, so on so forth, making the time travelling Cueballs go up by an exponential rate.
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
It
==Transcript==
:[One Cueball is walking to the right. Another Cueball floats in a bubble which emits a burst of energy.]
:ZAP!

:Cueball (Future 1): I've traveled back in time to stop you from seeing ''Terminator: Dark Fate''!

:Cueball (Present): But it looks so good! Reviews are actually decent! Mackenzie Davis! '''''Linda Hamilton is Back!'''''

:Cueball (Future 1): I know, but you always think this, and you're always disappointed.
:Cueball (Present): I ''guess''...

:[Another Cueball appears in a bubble the same way as the first.]
:ZAP!
:Cueball (Future 2): Hi, I'm from the future where you didn't watch it and I realize I still kind of want to see it.
:Cueball (Present): Let's go together!

:[Another bubble appears, this time containing two Cueballs.]
:Cueball (Future 3): No! We're both of you from the future! We're here to stop you!

:[Five more individually-wrapped Cueballs appear.]
:Cueball (Future 5): I'm here to stop '''''you!'''''
:Cueball (Future 6): I'm here to stop the robot sent to stop you!
:Cueball (Future 7): I'm here to protect you from...you? I lost track.
:Cueball (Future 8): I'm here to kill Hitler. Did I get the right year?
:Cueball (Future 9): I'm here to get tickets because in like 20 minutes you people buy them all.
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Fiction]]

2222: Terminator: Dark Fate

2019-10-30T22:34:12Z

162.158.38.16: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2222
| date = October 30, 2019
| title = Terminator: Dark Fate
| image = terminator_dark_fate.png
| titletext = I was sent here to stop the robot that was sent here to protect the human who was sent here to protect the human who was sent here to destroy the robot that was sent here to vacuum the floor.
}}
It is a common trope in science fiction to go into the past to stop events from ever happening (this is seen in the Terminator series). This comic plays this trope to the extreme by having Cueball's future self come to stop him from watching Terminator: Dark Fate, which leads to a Cueball from that timeline to come tell him to watch it, and then two more of himself come back in order to stop him from watching it, so on so forth, making the time travelling Cueballs go up by an exponential rate.
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
It
==Transcript==
:[One Cueball is walking to the right. Another Cueball floats in a bubble which emits a burst of energy.]
:ZAP!

:Cueball (Future 1): I've traveled back in time to stop you from seeing
''Terminator: Dark Fate''!

:Cueball (Present): But it looks so good! Reviews are actually decent! Mackenzie Davis! '''''Linda Hamilton is Back!'''''

:Cueball (Future 1): I know, but you always think this, and you're always disappointed.
:Cueball (Present): I ''guess''...

:[Another Cueball appears in a bubble the same way as the first.]
:ZAP!
:Cueball (Future 2): Hi, I'm from the future where you didn't watch it and I realize I still kind of want to see it.
:Cueball (Present): Let's go together!

:[Another bubble appears, this time containing two Cueballs.]
:Cueball (Future 3): No! We're both of you from the future! We're here to stop you!

:[Five more individually-wrapped Cueballs appear.]
:Cueball (Future 5): I'm here to stop '''''you!'''''
:Cueball (Future 6): I'm here to stop the robot sent to stop you!
:Cueball (Future 7): I'm here to protect you from...you? I lost track.
:Cueball (Future 8): I'm here to kill Hitler. Did I get the right year?
:Cueball (Future 9): I'm here to get tickets because in like 20 minutes you people buy them all.
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Fiction]]

Talk:2135: M87 Black Hole Size Comparison

2019-04-11T09:58:36Z

162.158.38.16:

inb4 anti-semitic troll vandalizes the page [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.64|162.158.78.64]] 19:38, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
:Jeez, it hasn't happened yet? --[[User:Youforgotthisthing|Youforgotthisthing]] ([[User talk:Youforgotthisthing|talk]]) 19:54, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
::Shhh! You'll jinx it! [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 21:07, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
::I’m surprised. [[User:Netherin5|“That Guy from the Netherlands”]] ([[User talk:Netherin5|talk]]) 23:06, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Am I the only to one who is amazed at just how *far* Voyager has come? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.61|162.158.111.61]] 19:52, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I thought the dark disk on the photo is 2.6 Schwartzchild radii, not 1? --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.46|172.68.54.46]] 20:50, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

I Googled to get a sense of scale. Apparently the sun would be less than 4 miles across if compressed into a black hole. The magnitude is incomprehensible. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.210.64|172.69.210.64]] 02:54, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I believe "Voyager I" in the title text is a typo and Randall meant to say Voyager II. The location Randall notes would correspond closer to Voyager II than I(9.3 billion miles away from earth vs 11 billion miles). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.4|172.69.247.4]] 06:21, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

'''Rephrase scale reference'''
2.5 times smaller is not a good way to express reduction in size. It's clearer to say that it's two-fifths as big or it's 40% of the size. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.16|162.158.38.16]] 09:58, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Talk:1806: Borrow Your Laptop

2017-03-04T09:33:41Z

162.158.38.16:

I can only imagine the mouse wheel. I use a free spinner, so it sounds fun... And something to get my machine to hate me
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.159|162.158.62.159]] 13:59, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

One assumes this is a software development environment or similar

{|
!Statement
!Explanation
|-
|Oh, just hit both shift keys to change over to QWERTY.
| Likely has keyboard in DVORAK
|-
|Caps lock is control. And spacebar is capslock.
| Changing Caps Lock to a "more useful" key is common. However to change an even larger key to be capslock (Space) is odd
|-
|And two-finger scroll moves through time instead of space.
|Two finger scrolling is often used to move through a document or application on a mousepad or touchscreen device - this could be seen as moving through space (despite the cursor not actually being real). Randall is presumerably making a comment re: Space Time continuum or similar?
|-
|Once I've used a computer for a while no one else will ever use it again.
|It is unlikely that any user who tries using a computer configured like this would be expecting it and would find the workflow very hard - they are unlikely to ask again to use Cueball's computer
|}
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.197|141.101.99.197]] 07:55, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Just a minor point QWERTY is not the standard "Roman" keyboard but "English" as "French" is AZERTY and German is something else. The other thing is that just the change from US to UK can really mess things up, $>£ is trivial as @ not only moves, but the symbol keys all seem to do different things. [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 08:58, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
:Yeah, in the UK I often have to use a Windows box misconfigured as US, where @ is in the wrong place. At work, one had a postit note explaining how to get the @ symbol, until I spent all of 5 seconds fixing it. Worse though is Apple, who insist on using US keyboard layout even in the UK. [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 09:24, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
::Have tried to change this. I have a keyboard that has qwerty at the top, but it is not English as we have letters not used in the English language (ÆØÅ) which moved all kinds of other keys around. So we can type on an English qwerty keyboard, but not find all the special keys. The layout is though still called qwerty, albeit the Danish version. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm surprised that no one has pointed out the impossibility of changing from DVORAK to QWERTY by pressing both shift keys, seeing as most laptops have hardware keyboards.
unless he has somehow rigged a voltronesque keyboard or he has a touchscreen keyboard or an onscreen one.
[[User:Dudeonyx|Dudeonyx]] ([[User talk:Dudeonyx|talk]]) 09:20, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
: Dvorak users typically just change the keymap. Since it's designed for touch typing,there's no real point to lettering on the keys [[User:Luckykaa|Luckykaa]] ([[User talk:Luckykaa|talk]]) 09:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
::(Wrote this before Luckykaa posted but had an edit conflict with him so only replies to the first comment here:)
::The keyboard is probably QWERTY but the keys assigned to these are in the dvorak layout. If Cueball can type ten fingered dvorak blindly then it is no concern for him that the keys would give a different letter than what is on the keys! See other dvorak comics as referenced in the explanation. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The part "The next point on the list makes little sense" is not exactly true. Swapping caps lock with ctrl is actually quite common (if extravagant), google it. Some do it because they are used to some old layout (probably either pre-PC era or from the Unix world, see some Sun keyboards from the 90s). Most do it because ctrl is useful but small (especially on laptops), while caps lock is a large, rarely used key. Opinions on the ergonomy of this vary, trending towards negative, although there certainly are avid supporters.

So, the line actually starts like something you may actually hear in real life (I know I have). And then you get to... SPACE?!? Why would you turn space into a caps lock?! That's where the joke hits. It's not that the whole point of the list makes little sense, it's that it takes an existing, somewhat justified but controversial idea and turns it on its head midway through. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.102.76|162.158.102.76]] 09:29, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
:Is that not also what is made clear in the explanation now? It is not the only joke with the last being the scroll time travel. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:40, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Apple has a feature actually called time machine to go back to old file versions. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.62|162.158.88.62]] 12:00, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Sounds like my laptop. Because I primarily use the nipple as a pointer,and the trackpad is in a good position for the thumb, I changed the trackpad to be a scrollpad, so it doesn't move the cursor, it moves content. I have given up on trying to explain the setup, they always end up just scrolling around on the screen and tapping the trackpad like it was a mouse-button.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.70|162.158.114.70]] 15:03, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Any chance that "spacebar is caps lock" is a reference to [[1172: Workflow]]? [[User:Tkil|Tkil]] ([[User talk:Tkil|talk]]) 16:38, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
:NO.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 01:20, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Older computer users will recall that before the introduction of the (now standard) 101-key keyboard, it was quite common for the Ctrl key to be immediately to the left of the A key, where Caps Lock is now. Touch typists from the 70's or 80's had a hard time converting to the new placement; I personally rewired the first 101-key keyboard I got to put Ctrl back "where it belonged". (This was long before keyboard remapping software was a thing.) [[User:Mr. I|Mr. I]] ([[User talk:Mr. I|talk]]) 16:47, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
:Focus on this comic. There is no 70's or 80's keyboard.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 01:19, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

;Cueball is NOT Randall
Randall writes comics -- not an autobiography! So unless there is a strong evidence Cueball is NOT Randall. Think about other comics and what Randall all must have been done. Or does anyone really have a proof??? --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 01:16, 4 March 2017 (UTC)
:I believe any time the caption text is written in first-person it is assumed that Randall is talking about himself. In that case, Cueball here would be a stand-in for Randall, albeit taken to the extreme.--[[Special:Contributions/172.68.142.83|172.68.142.83]] 01:48, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Re: Information text "Everything is senseless -- who changes the keyboard layout without changing the keyboard itself? Typing blindly is just a guess but not shown in the comic."
This is a bit harsh wording. There are many of us who routinely switch keyboard layouts without changing the keyboard. I am Swedish, living in Ireland so Irish/British keyboards are the norm. Now and then I need write text in Swedish. As I learned touch typing in Sweden, that layout is engrained in my spine so typing blindly is not a problem. I have many friends here who do the same when they need to write something in their native language, be it French, Russian, etc. / Sven Rosvall