explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2283: Exa-Exabyte

2020-03-21T11:07:51Z

162.158.38.66:

Is this the first non-coronavirus related comic after eight in a row? -- brad

My personal suspicion is that this one came out so late in the day because Randall was trying to think up another coronavirus-related comic so as not to break his streak :) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.5|108.162.242.5]] 20:05, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

We sure this is not covid-19 related? A comic revolving around how hard biology is doesn't seem to me like a definite chain breaker for a biology related topic. Though I'll admit its a bit of a stretch [[Special:Contributions/172.69.198.58|172.69.198.58]] 21:14, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the comic is SARS-CoV-2 related. The virus genome can be found all over the internet lately, it is even used for spamming. [[User:Condor70|Condor70]] ([[User talk:Condor70|talk]]) 21:32, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
:Did someone already modified SARS-CoV-2 to be able to infect computers as well? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:35, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
::Hm, not that I can find... This looks like a job for xkcd readers! Somebody get right on this, please.
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 06:12, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

so, is she counting all of humanity as one string of DNA data, or does each human count separately, or each cell in a human's body, or what?
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.215|162.158.74.215]] 21:48, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
: According to the NYT article, it was calculating "number of cells contained in each organism and multiplied that by the amount of DNA contained in each cell". [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.161|172.69.33.161]] 22:46, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
:: So, very small part of it would be each human cell counted separately. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:35, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
::Good lord, that's got to be 92% or more redundant data; somebody teach these folk about the wonders of compression & differential versioning databases. ;S
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 06:15, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

'This is a comic about the difficulty of picturing or understanding large numbers. As mentioned in the comic, an exabyte is 10^18 bytes, while an "exa-exabyte" -- not a real word but one that makes sense if you apply the principles of metric prefixes' One of the principles of metric prefixes (which can be found in the linked page) is 'Prefixes may not be used in combination.' So "exa-exa" does not make sense in the metric world. It only makes "sense" in the messed up world were you lbf/lbm has the value 1 instead of g.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.138|172.68.65.138]] 01:54, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Most the data is redundant though. Compressed, and it definitely should be, it would take only about 2% as much space to store. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 05:32, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
::Glad somebody else already noted that.
::'''I think this should be noted in the explanation.'''
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 06:18, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

It is worth mentioning that Randall is also mocking the education system for its lack of ability of explaining complex stuff to pupils. The teacher here is supposed to be able to provide different analogies from real life so that there is a chance of getting a feeling of the magnitude of the underlying number. Instead, she just repeats the explanation in the same mathematical terms as the original concept. That clearly doesn't help. Even worse, it prompts another student to attempt to explain it in even simpler terms but miss the point completely. The irony here is that incorrect but easy to understand explanation is accepted and not the correct one. Here it's also possible to mention similarities regarding climate change information not getting through to the general public but that would be a stretch. Also, what's the whole point of understanding these numbers if they are just a funny statistical fact? -- [[User:SomethingLike|SomethingLike]] ([[User talk:SomethingLike|talk]]) 06:15, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

"if(`Can you picture 36?`){return `Picture a number with 36 digits.`;}
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.154.70|172.68.154.70]] 09:25, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.154.70|172.68.154.70]] 09:30, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Suppose there are 4e37 base pairs. There are four possible bases, although the pair has to match, so each pair still only encodes two bits, for a total of 8e37 bits, or 1e37 bytes. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.66|162.158.38.66]] 11:07, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:1982: Evangelism

2020-03-14T09:03:15Z

162.158.38.66:

I want to know where vi vs. emacs fits on this spectrum.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.53|108.162.238.53]] 15:12, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:I use vi by virtue of the fact that it once opened on my computer and I don't know how to close it [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.76|108.162.219.76]] 15:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

When you say people open bananas from the other side, which side is the proper side and which is the other? I open from the proper side, not the side with the stem (just like the monkeys taught us) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.76|108.162.219.76]] 15:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:Why are you being taught by monkeys? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.28|108.162.219.28]] 22:43, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:Since the stem makes for a natural handle to peel from, it's the intuitive side from which to peel. Which makes it the "proper" side for that part of the discussion here. :) At one point I saw a thing say "Just check out videos of monkeys eating bananas", only videos I found showed monkeys mashing the banana out of the peel, LOL! (for reference though, I've been opening bananas from the non-stem end for months, it feels like the peel breaks apart easier). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:36, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
:Also, by opening it away from the stem you can hold the banana from the stem while eating it [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.76|108.162.219.76]] 12:16, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
::Also (the selling point for me) is that you end up with a banana peel that looks like ones in cartoons, with the stem in the middle. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:06, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

The title text seems to be a reference to the big-endian/little-endian war in "Gulliver's Travels".[[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:04, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

And 3 miles to the right of the banana conflict is "iPhone vs. Android" [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 17:07, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
:What about tabs vs spaces? It somehow feels like a lot of popular and appropriate conflicts and opinions were left out. Another example of high evangelism intensity is people who eat kiwis whole. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.58|162.158.134.58]] 09:00, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I ''LOVE'' the "Pun Intended" tag. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.28|108.162.219.28]] 22:43, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I suggest we use the metric system, and keep Fahrenheit, but modify it so "0" is room temperature. So a positive temp is usually warm, and vice versa. [[User:Linker|Linker]] ([[User talk:Linker|talk]]) 02:11, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The day this comic was posted was Banana day (https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/banana-day/). I noticed because a popular radio station in my area has a recurring segment talking about "What day" it is, obviously they also talked about the "other end" factoid yesterday. I'm not sure who came up with this "day", but daysoftheyear.com may have been an inspiration for the comic. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.151|162.158.111.151]]

The following paragraph was in the article:
“Due to the fact that these issues have a more trivial impact on life, evangelists may become more frustrated when people refuse to adopt these ‘simple’ changes and therefore argue more strongly for them.”
I removed it because an increase in frustration from unsuccessful convincement does not follow from the triviality of the issues. However, I note this here because the writer (or someone else) may be able to extract a more coherent thought from this. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.71|172.68.26.71]] 16:15, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

'''The CAPTCHA system for this page (and presumably others) is broken. If I'm not logged in it says reCAPTCHA V1 IS SHUTDOWN" and to tells someone about it...which is what I'm doing right now. Weirdly (or perhaps not!), typing "reCAPTCHA v1 IS SHUTDOWN" into the text entry box works just fine!''' [[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.179|172.69.70.179]] 18:24, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
: Any text at all will work, as it turns out! But you do have to type in something.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 13:40, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
::And ''that'' is why they are upgrading the wiki. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 13:36, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm sceptical that people actually aggressively promote their ideas in this order, which the comic explanation takes at face value. I want citations, and I want the number of TV station dedicated to promoting each belief taken into account. I say only National Geographic has the banana thing. Thnks for the reCAPTCHA tip. I think it's not broken but closed. Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@excite.com [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.49|162.158.154.49]] 00:52, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
:It has the ring of truth to me, and I've actually done the door to door proselytizing thing. People are more likely to push friends to adopt metric conversion or weird sock tricks to others than to invite them to come to church. You mention dedicated TV stations. Those are just that: dedicated stations where the evangelism is the only thing on them. Compare to the number of you-tube channels that have at one time or another promoted metric over imperial. Your note is true in a few ways. A lot more MONEY gets put into religious evangelizing. That's not quite the same thing as "intensity", which is pretty hard to define in the first place. Also, as the scale moves from left to right it does intentionally get sillier.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 13:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm greatly amused by the fact that I tried opening bananas from the other end several months ago, have been doing it ever since (it actually opens easier, the bonds in the peel are far weaker down there, like it's waiting for it), yet I've told almost nobody about it. LOL! Then I got irritated at the Fahrenheit vs. Celsius thing. :) F allows smaller measurements without decimals? I grew up with Celsius, and I've never seen decimals except in scientific context. If I hear a summer day is 23, 24, 25, 26 Celsius, it's all about the same, mid-20s is as precise as anybody needs to know. If I hear it's 24 and it's actually 25, I won't even know. 1 degree is plenty of precision. Honestly, this whole idea of F being based on how things feel just seems horribly vague and imprecise. Celsius having 0 be the freezing temperature of water and 100 being the boiling temperature just feels scientific. Nice solid basis. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:31, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
: Oh, sure, play the reasonable non-fanatic. Leftist! According to the strip anyway. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.220|108.162.216.220]] 05:22, 20 April 2018 (UTC) Gene Wirchenko genew@telus.net
:: But he is sooo right (not left ;-). Come one now US, start using the same system as the rest of us. And to those from the UK start driving on the RIGHT side of the road! as well as also using the metric system in daily life, not just in principle (I had a pint, a mile down the road, sitting on a four feet stool) :p --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 11:15, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Arguing that people should buy all one type of sock is a no-brainer. It's far cheaper and easier. It saves a HUGE amount of time! Everyone should do it. But telling people that isn't evangelism. It's like arguing that iPhones suck, the Kia Sol is ugly or the dress is blue. It's just common sense, and anyone who disagrees can just suck it, and spend all their time folding socks. [[User:Roguetech|Roguetech]] ([[User talk:Roguetech|talk]]) 12:36, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

;The sock thing isn't about color

The whole sock subsection is wrong or at least doesn't match the "one kind of sock" people I've seen in the wild.

There are three kinds of people in this world (usually it's two, but sock choice is unusually complex).

# People who buy any old sock and wear them until they develop holes or massive stains
# People who have an obscene variety of novelty "fun socks" and are constantly loosing and replacing them
# People who have found their One True Sock, and won't buy anywhere else.

Randall's talking about group 3. It's based on manufacturer or sometimes generic material, not color. I don't know who's that worried about time lost to matching sock colors, but I wouldn't trust them with sharp instruments. The One True Sock is some unreal combination of durable, comfortable, breathable, and warm. It's offered in at least a few colors, one pair costs as much as a whole pack of generic gym socks, and apparently, it will change your life.

Examples: https://gear.lifehacker.com/these-are-your-five-favorite-everyday-mens-socks-1785365259
https://www.powder.com/gear/the-all-american-sock/
https://www.runnersworld.com/man-i-just-love-this/why-i-only-wear-swiftwick-socks

--[[Special:Contributions/172.69.198.10|172.69.198.10]] 05:57, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

:I'd say the people Randall is talking about are Group 1 people who converted to Group 3. At least, Group 1 people who feel "Well, I should make sure they at least MATCH", and are tired of trying to match socks everytime. I especially think so because it specifies throwing out their old socks. :) They're so worn they're disposible anyway, right? :) That they then find one good sock that's effective but also CHEAP, so that it isn't ridiculous to do this and buy a bunch at once. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:03, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

:The one-sock policy doesn't work, though. You have to wash the socks. That makes them fade. So the two you have worn are now a slightly different shade than the others. Over time some will get more faded than others - random selection, or maybe the ones nearer the front of the drawer are more likely to be picked, and socks being put into the drawer are more likely to be at the front. Depends on the person. But the socks end up mismatched..

:The best method I have found for having matched socks is, when you bring new socks back from the shop, stitch a random number between 10 and 99 under the toes. You can get random numbers from www.random.org. Then when the socks are washed, you do a bucket sort. Socks can easily be laid out on your bed or table, low numbers to the left, high to the right. Pairs automatically end up close together and are easily identified from the number. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.66|162.158.38.66]] 09:03, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

;Randall forgot

Randall forgot the people from comic 1070
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.58|172.68.174.58]] 16:51, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

What if you want to keep US units but modify them with metric/SI prefixes (so instead of the mile we'd have the approximately equivalent measure of 5 kilofeet?) 16:24, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Talk:1892: USB Cables

2020-02-07T17:47:34Z

162.158.38.66:

> Carries data but not power - Not typically done, but it could happen if the wires or pins get damaged.

> Charges phone slowly - More likely a problem with the charger than the cable, but may happen if the wires are damaged.

Some manufactures limits charging / fast charging to approved devices only, and this can also be done by some non-standard trick within cable connectors, so non-OEM cable do no charge or charge slower

>Plug doesn't fit through case - There's no standard for what the plastic housing around the USB connector should look like, and sometimes these are moulded so they don't quite fit in the phone socket or through the charging port of an external case.

There is standard defining clearances for plastic housing of connectors, but not all manufactures care

/mhcmega
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.10|162.158.202.10]] 15:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

:Not just an OEM-being-dicks thing. USB type C specification requires a smart chip inside the connector that communicates with the devices on each side and contains information about what protocols that cable is capable of, which pins are connected through, thunderbolt support, etc. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.22|162.158.63.22]] 16:17, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I think Weird shape has to do with mould doing a 90 degree turn.
[[User:Trimutius|Trimutius]] ([[User talk:Trimutius|talk]]) 15:55, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

:Agreed. You can see the 90 degree turn in the silhouette. The plug isn't big enough to be Type B. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.159|162.158.62.159]] 13:01, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

I honestly think this entire comic is a protracted anatomy joke. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 00:54, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

: At a first glance I thought the pictures on the left side were sperm. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.40|162.158.34.40]] 20:24, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

And then there are all those cables I've saved in case I get a new device with that particular connector on the other end.

>Needs to be twisted to keep working. Might have to do with the wire, but most likely (our case for the 12-footers) is that a dropped phone messed up the plug, that then will charge only if the wire and the phone are set "just so". We keep those wires because they *are* 12-footers, natch.

Referring to title text, I am 'too short', as my charging cable is short.Boeing-787lover 15:56, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

USB-A to micro-usb or USB-c yes, but also mini-usb. A lot of cheap mp3 players still use it in 2020. (And given the limited life expectancy a device can expect when it is playing podcasts to me, I am not going to use an expensive device for that.) 17:47, 7 February 2020 (UTC)