explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2275: Coronavirus Name

2021-05-10T18:23:51Z

162.158.75.194: /* Explanation */ Notable real world development affecting the interpretation of this comic.

{{comic
| number = 2275
| date = March 2, 2020
| title = Coronavirus Name
| image = coronavirus_name.png
| titletext = It's important to keep the spider from touching your face.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is the first comic in a long [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] about the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic|pandemic}} of the {{w|coronavirus disease 2019}}, COVID-19 for short. For several weeks in a row, all comics were related to this pandemic.

This is thus [[Randall|Randall's]] first take on the COVID-19 pandemic. As of the publication date (March 2, 2020), the pandemic had infected more than 90,000 people, and had caused more than 3,000 deaths.

Coronavirus is a category of viruses named for their appearance, which is similar to a halo or crown, and includes four different viruses which can cause the common cold in humans. However, the virus itself is not called COVID-19, but is called {{w|severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2}} (SARS-CoV-2). So calling the virus or disease "coronavirus" is like calling a specific strain of flu ''The Influenza virus''. However, since the new coronavirus is so hyped in the media it has attracted so much attention, so the name "coronavirus" has become associated with COVID-19, making it difficult to discuss other types of coronaviruses later on.

As of March 2, 2020, COVID-19 in China has a 20% hospitalization rate and a 2% death rate by current estimates, compared to a [https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-myths.html typical rate of around 0.1% for the flu in the US].

In this comic, researchers [[Ponytail]], [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are discussing that it is by now too late to try calling the disease its official name COVID-19, as the name coronavirus has stuck. [[Cueball]] reacts with dismay, since there are many other types of coronaviruses.

To illustrate that Cueball's complaint is excessively pedantic and inconsequential, Ponytail — rather than using a more real-world analogy — compares the coronavirus naming to a giant car-eating spider living on top of the skyscrapers of the town, which people similarly refer to generically as simply "The Spider," even though that is not the most technically-accurate name (it is technically a mutated ''{{w|Tigrosa annexa}}'' {{w|wolf spider}}). Everyone knows what you mean when you say "Coronavirus", as they do when you mention "The Spider".

The comic then goes on to poke fun at itself by treating Ponytail's example as a real concern, as [[Megan]] then asks if they should not also do something about the spider. But Ponytail and Cueball agree that they can only tackle one problem at a time, and coronavirus takes up all their time. Ponytail further notes that she simply began altering her route to circumvent the location where The Spider has taken up residence, as evidence that the Spider issue can be easily avoided, and is therefore not an immediate concern.

The title text references the health advice that people avoid touching their face with unwashed hands, in order to prevent infections that they picked up by touching things from entering their mucous membranes. (It's a lot easier for an infection to enter the body through the inside of your nose than your hands.) It is likewise quite important to keep the giant spider from touching your face, but for the dissimilar reason that it might bite and eat you.

Notably, the rename to COVID-19 did eventually catch on as the default description of the disease caused by "The Coronavirus" SARS-CoV2.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is carrying a box with biohazard symbols on it towards a desk where Ponytail (wearing safety glasses) is working on a laptop, across from Cueball (also wearing safety glasses) who is putting a test tube into a PCR machine. There's also a flask on the desk.]
:Ponytail: Feels like we missed the window for the "COVID-19" renaming. "Coronavirus" is just too catchy.
:Cueball: But it's not specific! There are a lot of coronaviruses.

:[In a frameless panel, Ponytail (still wearing safety glasses) is pointing at a screen or picture showing a modern city skyline with a large spider crawling across three of the high-rise buildings.]
:Ponytail: I think it's fine. It's like, you know the giant spider downtown that sits on the buildings and sometimes eats cars? I think ''technically'' it's a mutant ''T. annexa'' wolf spider, but everyone is just calling it "the spider" and we all know what they mean.

:[Back to the setting from the first panel. Megan is standing and Ponytail had turned towards her and Cueball has stepped back from the machine.]
:Megan: I've been meaning to ask, what's '''''with''''' that spider? Should we...do something?
:Ponytail: Honestly I've been too busy with the virus stuff to look into it-I just changed my commute to avoid Main St.
:Cueball: Yeah, that's fair. One thing at a time.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Spiders]]

2454: Fully Vaccinated

2021-04-23T18:41:46Z

162.158.75.194: changed turfs to tufts in the transcript

{{comic
| number = 2454
| date = April 23, 2021
| title = Fully Vaccinated
| image = fully_vaccinated.png
| titletext = "You still can't walk into someone's house without being invited!" "What? Oh, I see your confusion. No, this vaccine is for a bat VIRUS. I'm fine with doorways and garlic and stuff."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FULLY VACCINATED VAMPIRE, which want's to know more about the vampire lore invoked in the title text, and who and how it is misunderstoodand who says what... Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is another in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|2019–20 coronavirus outbreak|2020 pandemic}} of the {{w|coronavirus}} {{w|SARS-CoV-2}}, which causes {{w|COVID-19}}, specifically regarding the [[:Category:COVID-19 vaccine|COVID-19 vaccine]].

The {{w|Centers for Disease Control and Prevention}} (CDC) has stated that once people are fully vaccinated, they are able to visit other people's houses (and not risk spreading/catching coronavirus). The implication, of course, is that you can visit people that you would also have visited before the outbreak. The humor in this comic comes from [[Megan]] who is just going to visit a random stranger's house. She explains this is okay because she is fully vaccinated, telling the person in the house that she is two weeks past her second dose. This was part of the topic of the last vaccine comic [[2450: Post Vaccine Social Scheduling]].

Restrictions to socializing, brought in as various governments reacted to the emergent COVID-19 pandemic, often disallowed or discouraged visiting family, friends, etc, beyond a mutually isolating 'support bubble', which meant that many house visits that might have occurred beforehand were no longer advisable. With the development and distribution of vaccines, and the eventual receiving of a second dose as applicable, the rules have been modified to allow those vaccinated to once again resume some degree of their prior outgoing behavior where the risks have been mitigated.

In this instance, though, Megan has taken the advice even further. Rather than opening back up to a situation closer to the 'old normal', she has taken it as an official sanction to ''exceed'' the old social limits and pester complete strangers. Alternately, this ''is'' what she always used to do, and only stopped 'for the duration', this unlucky householder being (one of) the first to be subjected to this 'guerilla visiting' now that there seems to be no reason not to continue.

In the title text, the owner of the house explains to Megan that just because she has been vaccinated she just can't enter into someone's house without being invited - a commonly understood form of property law. {{Citation needed}}

But due to the vaccine type Megan thinks the owner has mixed this up with a commonly understood element of vampire lore, that vampires must be {{tvtropes|MustBeInvited|invited into a home}} before they can pass through the doorway.
In vampire lore, vampires are often able to transform into bats, and these two are thematically associated with each other. Since the coronavirus is likely a {{w|bat virome}} that has entered into humans, Megan misunderstands the owner's objection to her entry, believing that the homeowner thinks that the vaccine has made her a vampire. (The virus may have either gone directly to a human from a bat, or it could have come to humans through another animal, see {{w|Bat virome#Coronaviruses|this section}} on the bat virome page).

Megan thus begins to explain that the vaccine works on a bat virus and has nothing to do with bats. And since she is thus not a vampire she has no problems entering a doorway uninvited, and further explains she also tells that she is also not repelled by garlic or other classic weakness of vampires. Vampire lore states that they are [https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2010/02/22/six-ways-to-stop-a-vampire/ repelled by garlic], crosses, holy water, sunlight and wooden stakes through the heart (the last is a problem for humans in general, vampiric or otherwise).

The owner is attempting to explain that Meagan does not have the legal or moral right to enter simply because she is vaccinated, but this seems to not register with Megan.

Doing ridiculous things that were never allowed, even normally, after being vaccinated of low-risk, was also the theme of xkcd number 2434: vaccine guidance https://xkcd.com/2434/

==Transcript==
:[Megan is standing in front of a three-step stair leading up to an open door. She has one hand in the air while talking to someone inside the house, who replies. The ground outside has small tufts of grass.]
:Megan: Hi, I'm here to visit!
:Voice, from inside the house: Do I know you?
:Megan: No, it's cool, I'm two weeks past my second dose.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Remember, once you're fully vaccinated, the CDC says you're free to visit other people's houses.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

Talk:2382: Ballot Tracker Tracker

2020-11-09T15:12:12Z

162.158.75.194: i added a comment stating it reminded me of the xkcd comic stud finder finder i am new sorry if i broke something

Could this also refer to sites that track whether one’s ballot has been counted? --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.239|172.68.132.239]] 03:31, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

This sense of "calling it" is relatively uncommon, especially for non-native English speakers to encounter. Although having it in quotes is good, some explanation should be added in parentheses. [[Special:Contributions/188.114.110.4|188.114.110.4]] 04:13, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
:See [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/550851/call-the-race-in-the-election English.stackexchange.com] [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 07:50, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

I remember an earlier comic,Cueball trying to incinerate an incinerator.(xkcd1821),and people tracking trackers(xkcd2376),Maybe there should be a "meta-usage" catogry?(e.g using an incinerator to incinerate another incinerator,using a tracker to track a tracker etc.) [[User:Xkcdjerry|Xkcdjerry]] ([[User talk:Xkcdjerry|talk]]) 13:34, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The current explanation refers to a ballot tracker as a government site, but I believe they're typically independently provided by either news organizations or political information websites. However, I decided not to edit the explanation yet until someone else confirms they have the same interpretation of the term "ballot tracker" here. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 14:27, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

:Well, I see that the next paragraph talks about "ballot tracker" in the context of my interpretation, so I'm not sure whether to modify the first paragraph that mentions government sites or not, but I would support removing that first part and just simplifying it to talk about the news organization interpretation of the term. Other input from anyone? [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 14:31, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

:I strongly agree that the correct interpretation for "ballot tracker" is the various sites that provided updates on the ongoing ballot counts at the various states. I think the first interpretation of sites where individual voters can check their ballots is wrong. It especially does not make sense to track how quickly those sites update, since one voter can only view the one site for their ballot, and can't see it updating at some frequency. On the other hand I was an example of the topic of this comic. I obsessively refreshed the New York Times tracking pages to add numbers to spreadsheets graphing trends while also refreshing the live blog at fivethirtyeight.com. As a result I noticed that the live blog quoted results from tracker site Decision Desk HQ several minutes before the same results from the states appeared on the NYT tracker page. I consider myself an example of the target of this comic using that interpretation. [[User:Bugstomper|Bugstomper]] ([[User talk:Bugstomper|talk]]) 21:39, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

The article that is linked to is not about tracking tracker sites. The article title is "Tracking Which News Outlets Have Called the Presidential Race in Each State". The article tracks which news sites have called which states. Each such news site presumably has a tracker page for each state in which they display the current reported vote counts. Cueball's tracker tracker is tracking how often each news site's tracker pages are updated with new counts. Each news agency has a "decision desk" which uses the data from their tracking page plus other related information to decide when they will declare a projected win for a candidate in a state. That is referred to as "calling" the race in a state. [[User:Bugstomper|Bugstomper]] ([[User talk:Bugstomper|talk]]) 06:45, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Well now AP's called it. Biden won. [[User:Bubblegum|bubblegum]]-[[User_talk:Bubblegum|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Bubblegum|contribs]] 06:57, 8 November 2020 (UTC) (hm, my name looks to be in a different font than the timestamp, odd)
:Also, is anyone up for creating a recursive names category?
:News organizations may have called it, but states still have to certify the results, and certification in some states can't happen until pending litigation has finished making its way through the court system, which will take a few weeks. [[User:Dogman15|Dogman15]] ([[User talk:Dogman15|talk]]) 11:04, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

this makes me think of stud finder finder

Talk:2370: Prediction

2020-10-09T23:36:44Z

162.158.75.194:

Is that a JoJo's reference?!1!! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.142.213|172.68.142.213]] 23:18, 9 October 2020 (UTC)
: Dunno who or what JoJo is (unless Jojo Siwa? But how would that be relevant?), but this is at least 70% likely to be a reference to the current election season in the USA and 538's (and others') predictions of Donald Trump's chance of winning the election in 2016 and 2020. In 2016, if I recall correctly, Trump had about a 30% chance to win (and thus Clinton had a 70% chance to win), and when 538's model launched earlier this year, the chances were basically the same (28-71 (with a 1% of an electoral college split because the USA's election system is phenomenally stupid)). Since then, Trump's chances of winning legitimately (538 does not attempt to model the chances and effects of election interference or votes not being counted) have slipped to about a 15% chance of winning which sounds bad, but will still happen in approximately 1 of every 7 tries, or about the number of Mondays in a week. Not great, but not impossible, either....)[[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.194|162.158.75.194]] 23:36, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2369: All-in-One

2020-10-08T01:00:45Z

162.158.75.194: /* Multi-function machines in pairs */ new section

Is the title text a reference the Librareome project in Rainbow's End (Vernor Vinge)?

See, e.g., [http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1856]

--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.124|162.158.79.124]] 18:06, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if Randall took inspiration from [this Dilbert](https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-04-25). [[User:Moosenonny10|Moosenonny10]] ([[User talk:Moosenonny10|talk]]) 18:52, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't think "eat" and "corrugate" are intended as malfunctions. People sometimes eat paper -- it's a common trope in spy parodies where someone will eat a document to prevent someone from getting access to it. And corrugate just sounds like it's making corrugated cardboard from the input paper. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:22, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
:I changed it. What do you think? ''welp, i'' [[User:Donthaveusername|Donthaveusername]] ([[User talk:Donthaveusername|talk]]) 19:37, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Seems like plagiarize would be somehow related to scan and copy.
: I imagine the internal sub-functions would be: Scan (or read from prepocessed page data from an original document 'sent to printer'), OCR (as necessary - implied in Translate but not mentioned as a function, despite being an actually popular 'one touch' function with appropriate desktop software involved), Comprehend (natural-language processing), De-Source (remove references that indicate the true source, including headers, watermarks, logos), Re-Arrange (optional shuffling/re-wording in places, maybe even synonyms), Re-Source (personalise back up again, for the plagiarist's benefit), then Print (if scan-for-copy/printed) or Save (if scan-for-storage, maybe even 'print'-to-storage via the device). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.52|141.101.98.52]] 00:21, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

shred and scan (or scanf) are also unix and C functions. Shred overwrites a file on disk, deleting it and preventing any subsequent recovery of the lost data. scan reads input according to a format string. Should one take a standard file and scan a string per the format '%s', the program will read in the variable until an end-of-line character is encountered. If the file were shredded first, resulting in a random set of bits, this end of line character might never be read. This seems to be more of a memory problem than a CPU problem, thus might not be the full explanation of the alt-text. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.126|162.158.126.126]] 21:10, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

The incomplete template mentions that there might be a reason for Randall making this topic, but I don't think there is other than just making a funny joke. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.146|172.69.34.146]] 22:42, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

What, it can fold but not spindle or mutilate? :( [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.114|162.158.75.114]] 23:14, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Is staple removal a real printer feature? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 23:17, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
:Doubt it. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.243|172.68.132.243]] 23:39, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
::Staple-detection is (fairly) trivial, but consistently extracting them 'nicely' while preserving the paper as much as possible might be beyond a device (it's tricky enough for a person, sometimes). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.211|141.101.99.211]] 23:51, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
:::It's not beyond a staple remover. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.59|172.69.35.59]] 00:52, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm disappointed there's no "jam for no particular reason in the most difficult place to access" option. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.184|108.162.216.184]] 23:18, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
: I thought there should be Paper Cranes in the right-hand column... But your suggestion is also an obvious omission. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.211|141.101.99.211]] 23:51, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the "possibility that this printer is a complex computer": most printers are. Any printer which can process postscript OR is connected to network obviously contains computer more powerful than first {{w|IBM Personal Computer|IBM PCs}}, not speaking about the computer used in {{w|Apollo Guidance Computer|Apollo}}. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:35, 8 October 2020 (UTC)
:Well, it's ''more'' complex now. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.59|172.69.35.59]] 00:53, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

== Multi-function machines in pairs ==

I used to work for a temporary services company. At a tech-company, I noticed several instances where there were two multi-function machines close to each other. I asked about that. I was told company security policy forbade having a copier connected to a communications line. So, one machine was used only for copying. The other machine was used as a fax machine. The security police came about because, in the past, some people trying to copy company confidential pages sometimes mistakenly faxed them. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.194|162.158.75.194]] 01:00, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

2324: Old Days 2

2020-06-25T17:54:35Z

162.158.75.194: Typo

{{comic
| number = 2324
| date = June 24, 2020
| title = Old Days 2
| image = old_days_2.png
| titletext = The git vehicle fleet eventually pivoted to selling ice cream, but some holdovers remain. If you flag down an ice cream truck and hand the driver a floppy disk, a few hours later you'll get an invite to a git repo.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GIT ICE-CREAM VAN. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this sequel to [[1755: Old Days]], released more than 3.5 years ago, the conversation continues, as if no time has passed, between (young) [[Cueball]] and (old) [[Hairbun]] about computer programming in the past. As in the first comic in this "new" [[:Category:Old Days|series]], Cueball, having only a faint idea of just how difficult and byzantine programming was "in the old days", asks Hairbun to enlighten him on the specifics. Hairbun promptly seizes the opportunity to screw with his head.

The claims:
* The cloud was smaller and called a "Mainframe" and was near Sacramento.
** This is a joke on many cloud services replacing mainframes. In these early days, it is true that large mainframes would handle multiple people's jobs at once, using techniques like {{w|Time-sharing}} (although they were not located specifically near Sacramento). What's more, the basic ideas behind how cloud computing are used go way back. {{w|Multics}} was an early time-sharing system designed to "support a computing utility similar to the telephone and electricity utilities" (from {{w|Multics|wikipedia}}). The idea was similar to the cloud, where anybody could just hook up and get computing service, as well as other services built into the mainframe. For this reason, many of the computer security concepts we have today - such as {{w|Kernel_(operating_system)|kernelized operating systems}} - come from early systems like Multics.
* It was on the state landline.
** This is probably meant to astonish Cueball, who in this context may associate {{w|landline}}s (i.e. hard wired telephone connections) with an imagined stone age technology, and which nobody today uses for anything at all. And of course even in the age of all landlines, there was never such a thing as "the state landline", imagined as an immense shared {{w|Party line (telephony)|party line}} to which the governor would have priority access for making calls. This could be a reference to early {{w|dial-up modem}}s, which ''did'' use landlines, and so users would have to disconnect from the Internet for making phone calls.
* No memory protection; instead, people would call around to ask whether anyone else using an address, and Microsoft's early foothold in computing was because of {{w|Bill Gates}} lying about his usage of addresses.
** Memory protection is coded preventative measures designed to stop an outsider (or another thread running in the code) from accessing and editing the memory on a device unauthorized, to avoid tampering with or corrupting it. Hairbun is correct in that this sort of code was not well-developed early on, but she claims that there wasn't any centralized management of the memory at all, and the only way to check if editing a particular address in the Mainframe was safe was physically asking all the other developers if they were already making changes to it. Her implication is that Bill Gates took advantage of this honor system to restrict people not working for Microsoft from making changes, allowing the company to take ownership of a lot of code.
* "Git" was a van that drove around gathering tapes to copy, and the term "pull request" came from the van physically pulling over when signaled with an air horn.
** {{w|Git}} is a {{w|version control system}}, which employs and manages a centralized copy of a coding project to prevent and resolve conflicts from multiple people editing the project at once. It works by having individual contributors {{w|Pull request|pull}} the project onto their device, make their changes, and then push those changes back to the master copy to be integrated into it. Data used to be stored on cartridges of {{w|magnetic tape}}; in order for version control to exist at this time, there would have to be a master tape that was copied and physically distributed to each contributor, and then the edited tapes would be gathered afterward and conflicts resolved. Hairbun claims that Git provided this service back then using vans. In reality, Git did not exist until 2005, long after digital computers and networked servers became widely accessible and the "early internet" was history.
* Before terminals we all used punch cards, which were originally developed to control looms, and so the looms would produce sweaters when code was run.
** Another initial truth going into complete nonsense. It is true that looms were driven by {{w|punch card}}s (dating back to 1745), and so were early computers and at the same time ({{w|Charles Babbage}} used them around 1830 to control his Analytical Engine). However, Hairbun's statement is that because of this, the ''same'' punch card machines would run both ''simultaneously'', such that feeding a set of cards to compile code would necessarily cause a sweater to be produced by the connected loom, which was then sent to the developer. For one a loom doesn't produce sweaters, but a (if punch cards are involved often patterned) piece of fabric. And it's not likely that any punch patterns used in computer coding would be interpretable as a suitable pattern for a sweater.
* (From the title text) You can still hand in a floppy disk to an ice cream truck and get an invite to a git repo a few hours later.
** Git repo is short for Git {{w|Repository (version control)|repository}}, the place where all the files associated with a project are stored. Hairbun tries to convince Cueball that modern ice cream truck drivers service Git in the same way she says the vans did before and that it's still possible to give them a floppy disk (an early magnetism-based storage device) in order to gain access to a repo. The ice cream industry has no connection to computing{{Citation needed}}. Also it is unknown how it should know in which repo to create a pull request and whom to contact about it.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[In a slim panel, Cueball and Hairbun are walking together to the right. Hairbun has her palm raised.]
:Cueball: What was the Internet like in the olden days, for a developer?
:Hairbun: Oh, things were very different.

:[Cueball and Hairbun have stopped walking. Zoomed in on Hairbun.]
:Hairbun: The cloud was a lot smaller. It was called a "mainframe" and it was near Sacramento.
:Hairbun: It was on the state landline, so the whole industry paused when the governor had to make a phone call.

:[Zoomed back out. Hairbun has her palm raised.]
:Hairbun: There was no memory protection. If you wanted to write to an address, you would call around to ask whether anyone else was using it.
:Hairbun: Often Bill Gates would say he was, even when he wasn't. That's how Microsoft got its early foothold.
:Cueball: Wow.

:[Zoomed back in Hairbun. Cueball responds off-screen.]
:Hairbun: "Git" was originally a van that circled around gathering data tapes to copy and distribute. We all took turns driving it.
:Hairbun: When you saw it coming you'd blow an air horn to request that it pull over.
:Hairbun: That's where "pull request" came from.
:Cueball (off-screen): Oh, neat!

:[Cueball and Hairbun continue walking to the right. Hairbun has her palm raised.]
:Hairbun: Before terminals, we all used punch cards, which were originally developed to control looms.
:Hairbun: Early mainframes would produce a sweater each time you ran your code.
:Hairbun: Eventually we got them to stop. We had enough sweaters.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Old Days]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Old Days]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Version Control]]