explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1998: GDPR

2018-05-25T21:58:55Z

172.68.90.82: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1998
| date = May 25, 2018
| title = GDPR
| image = gdpr.png
| titletext = By clicking anywhere, scrolling, or closing this notification, you agree to be legally bound by the witch Sycorax within a cloven pine.
}}

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

This comic was released on the date on which the {{w|General Data Protection Regulation|General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)}} law went into effect. Most people will have already seen a large number of updated privacy policies in the week or two leading up to this law going active. And while [[xkcd]] would likely be outside of the jurisdiction that the law can enforce, it technically does fall within the scope of the law (as certainly EU citizens visit xkcd).

There are several references made to this law, but also several jokes are included about the way people treat privacy policies specifically, and user agreements in general.

The comic is a joke privacy policy, with terms that no one would agree to under normal circumstances. In most cases, website users will use websites without reading the policies, potentially "agreeing" to something unexpected.

"purely out of the goodness of our hearts" is a phrase never expected to be found ever anywhere in any privacy policy. "and has nothing to do with ..." is a blatantly transparent lie - if this was a real privacy policy.

"governs your interactions" starts out as a plausibly valid statement including "the service" and "the website". But then balloons outward to include the entire internet and Facebook. As this supposedly is a privacy policy only for XKCD, this policy should not attempt to claim Mark's stuff or the entire internet.

"Please don't send us your personal information" is also a phrase never expected to be found ever in a privacy policy. A privacy policy, by default, is a contract users agree to BECAUSE personal information is being stored.

The phrase "quartering troops in your home" is likely a reference to the {{w|Third Amendment to the United States Constitution}}, which explicitly forbids this practice during peacetime. Refusing to quarter troops in one's home was previously referenced in [[496: Secretary: Part 3]].

"If you tell us your name" is presumably something that Randall does in real life and is not part of a privacy policy.

"This website places pixels" is something websites are designed to do and has nothing to do with privacy policies.

"We use cookies to enhance your performance." apparently says that Randall is giving out actual cookies that can be eaten. Privacy policies normally deal with electronic cookies that track user activity and store personal information.

"may use local storage" is threatening to turn the user's device into cloud storage should Randall run out of space on his drive.

The [http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Warning_beacons_of_Gondor Warning beacons of Gondor] were a system to call for aid used by {{w|Gondor}} in ''{{w|The Lord of the Rings}}''. They were used before the [http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Siege_of_Gondor Battle of the Pelennor Fields] to request the aid of the {{w|Rohan (Middle-earth)|Rohirrim}}. The use of the Beacons has previously been mentioned in [[921: Delivery Notification]].

{{w|3rd Party}} was a three-member dance-pop group that released one album in 1997, "Alive". In software, "third-party extensions" are small programs that plug into a larger program to modify its behavior, and are created neither by the maker of the larger program nor the user.

"requesting permission" can be construed in several frightening ways. 1. We will ask you after you die if you are willing to donate your organs. 2. We were not asking permission before, but now we have to ask. 3. We will ask you, but your answer doesn't actually matter. 4. We've switched from an organ donation program (legal) to an organ harvesting program (wildly illegal). Besides these frightening scenarios, there is also the question of how a website (and not a doctor) is going to perform the harvesting.

"supersedes" is an apparently valid statement. It's inclusiveness is quite extreme, but appears to be a technically valid statement.

"unenforceable" claims to have higher jurisdiction than any court and can somehow maintain legality even if a court disagrees. A typical policy would read that an unenforceable provision would not invalidate the rest of the policy.

"not liable" and "shall not be construed" are blanket statements that are supposed to have limiters. For example, a restaurant could have a policy stating "not liable for burns received from our hot coffee." A statement made to a court could say "The defendant's statement of giving the prostitute money shall not be construed as an admission of committing a crime."

The Food and Drug Administration has nothing to do with privacy policies. As such, this is an accurate statement. Silly, but accurate.

"cure and treat any disease" is claiming to be a medical panacea. Panacea do not exist.

The title text is a reference to Shakespeare's "{{w|The Tempest}}", in which the witch {{w|Sycorax}} imprisoned the sprite Ariel in a cloven pine prior to Ariel's rescue by Prospero.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The picture shows a long text:]
:'''Privacy policy'''
:We've updated our privacy policy. This is purely out of the goodness of our hearts, and has nothing to do with any hypothetical unions on any particular continents. Please read every part of this policy carefully, and don't just skip ahead looking for sex scenes.
:This policy governs your interactions with this website, herein referred to as "The Service", "The Website", "The Internet", or "Facebook", and with all other websites and organizations of any kind. The enumeration in this policy, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the users. By using this service, you opt in to quartering troops in your home.

:'''Your personal information'''
:Please don't send us your personal information. We do not want your personal information. We have a hard enough time keeping track of our ''own'' personal information, let alone yours.
:If you tell us your name, or any identifying information, we will forget it immediately. The next time we see you, we'll struggle to remember who you are, and try desperately to get through the conversation so we can go online and hopefully figure it out.

:'''Tracking pixels, cookies, and beacons'''
:This website places pixels on your screen in order to form text and images, some of which may remain in your memory after you close the page. We use cookies to enhance your performance. Our website may use local storage on your device if we run low on space on our end. We may use beacons to call Rohan for aid.

:'''3rd party extension'''
:This service may utilize 3rd party extensions in order to play the song '''''Can U Feel It''''' from their debut album '''''Alive'''''.

:'''Permission'''
:For users who are citizens of the European Union, we will now be requesting permission before initiating organ harvesting.

:'''Scope and limitations'''
:This policy supersedes any application federal, state, and local laws, regulations and ordinances, international treaties, and legal agreements that would otherwise apply. If any provision of this policy is found by a court to be unenforceable, it nevertheless remains in force.
:This organization is not liable and this agreement shall not be construed. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This website is intended to treat, cure and prevent any disease.
:If you know anyone in Europe, please tell them we're cool.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1998: GDPR

2018-05-25T20:56:34Z

172.68.90.82:

This comic is a joke privacy policy, playing off a few things.
Everyone right now is updating their privacy policy to meet the new requirements from the European Union coming into effect today, 2018-05-25, the GDPR. Link to wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation].
It also is pointing out that no one ever reads them "by using this website you opt in to quartering troops in your home", something you probably did not agree to.
--[[User:Fwacer|Fwacer]] ([[User talk:Fwacer|talk]]) 19:35, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Your wording "joke privacy policy" is really good and you should add it to the existing explanation.
[[User:Lassombra|Lassombra]] ([[User talk:Lassombra|talk]]) 19:41, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
: Thanks, I have added that. First edit! --[[User:Fwacer|Fwacer]] ([[User talk:Fwacer|talk]]) 20:25, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

Fortunately, this doesn't appear to supersede the Shadow Proclamation. Also, I wouldn't mind quartering troops in my home if they were sexy... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.90.82|172.68.90.82]] 20:56, 25 May 2018 (UTC) SiliconWolf

1978: Congressional Testimony

2018-04-09T19:00:27Z

172.68.90.82: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1978
| date = April 9, 2018
| title = Congressional Testimony
| image = congressional_testimony.png
| titletext = James Cameron's Terminator 3 was the REALLY prophetic one. That's why Skynet sent a robot back to the 1990s to prevent him from ever making it, ultimately handing the franchise over to other directors.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created in the past by a TERMINATOR - Please change this comment in the future when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon or in the past.}}

[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are discussing Mark Zuckerberg's upcoming testimony.

Megan then starts talking about rewatching ''{{w|The Terminator}}'', a movie about a killer robot.

Megan recalls that it was weird how the phone book turned into {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}}.

The title text makes the claim that Skynet, likely in fear of humans seeing it, had a robot time travel in order to stop the creation of ''Terminator 3'' by James Cameron, who was responsible for the first two films.

It is unclear if Randall is:
*1. Commenting on his lack of interest in the news regarding yet another internet tool being used for purposes it was not intended for by comparing it to the much more interesting movie "Terminator".
*2. Pointing out that using programs in ways they are not originally designed for is actually quite common in both reality and fiction.
*3. Pointing out that FaceBook stores names and phone numbers and could thus be considered to have a phone book database...
*4. All of the above

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball sitting against a leafless tree; they are on opposite sides.]
:Megan: Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress this week.
:Cueball: Should be interesting.

:[Beat panel.]

:Megan: I recently re-watched ''Terminator''.
:Cueball: Yeah?

:Megan: It's weird that the thing that evolved into Skynet wasn't our nuclear launch systems '''''or''''' our humanoid robots.
:Megan: It was the phone book where the Terminator looked up Sarah Connor's address.
:Cueball: Funny how things turn out.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

1978: Congressional Testimony

2018-04-09T18:54:54Z

172.68.90.82: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1978
| date = April 9, 2018
| title = Congressional Testimony
| image = congressional_testimony.png
| titletext = James Cameron's Terminator 3 was the REALLY prophetic one. That's why Skynet sent a robot back to the 1990s to prevent him from ever making it, ultimately handing the franchise over to other directors.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created in the past by a TERMINATOR - Please change this comment in the future when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon or in the past.}}

[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are discussing Mark Zuckerberg's upcoming testimony.

Megan then starts talking about rewatching ''{{w|The Terminator}}'', a movie about a killer robot.

Cueball recalls that it was weird how the phone book turned into {{w|Skynet (Terminator)|Skynet}}.

The title text makes the claim that Skynet, likely in fear of humans seeing it, had a robot time travel in order to stop the creation of ''Terminator 3'' by James Cameron, who was responsible for the first two films.

It is unclear if Randall is:
1. Commenting on his lack of interest in the news regarding yet another internet tool being used for purposes it was not intended for by comparing it to the much more interesting movie "Terminator".
2. Pointing out that using programs in ways they are not originally designed for is actually quite common in both reality and fiction.
3. Pointing out that FaceBook stores names and phone numbers and could thus be considered to have a phone book database...
4. All of the above

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball sitting against a leafless tree; they are on opposite sides.]
:Megan: Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress this week.
:Cueball: Should be interesting.

:[Beat panel.]

:Megan: I recently re-watched ''Terminator''.
:Cueball: Yeah?

:Megan: It's weird that the thing that evolved into Skynet wasn't our nuclear launch systems '''''or''''' our humanoid robots.
:Megan: It was the phone book where the Terminator looked up Sarah Connor's address.
:Cueball: Funny how things turn out.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Talk:1938: Meltdown and Spectre

2018-01-05T22:44:09Z

172.68.90.82:

The "trolley problem" is the ethical dilemma thought experiment where an out-of-control trolley is heading to a junction (which you have control over) - to one side it'll kill one group of people - to the other, some others. Your moral dilemma is deciding which is the "best" outcome (eg, hitting a dozen five year old children or three Nobel laureats). This is like a software "if" statement. Speculative execution in most CPU chips is where the computer always takes both sides of a decision like this - explores what will happen down each path - and only causes the effects of the decision to happen when the decision as to which way to proceed is decided. This allows it to keep on doing useful work while some slower decision is made. The "quantum" aspect of this is that in some versions of quantum theory, quantum-level particles take every possible path at once and the result is the sum of all of them.

In a sense, the computer is exploring the consequences of the trolley problem in a quantum-like manner.

This would all be OK if it were not for the fact that devious black-hat hackers can come up with devious ways to see the information that should have been discarded in the "path-not-taken". So even though the computer will eventually decide that some piece of information should not be accessible - you can find out the value it would hypothetically read - even though it will soon decide that it should not access the information.

The "rowhammer" problem is something entirely different. Computer memories are organized as a two-dimensional grid of rows and columns - and are physically constructed from tiny capacitors. If you apply just the RIGHT pattern of rapid changes to one row of the grid, you can cause one of the capacitors on the next row to incorrectly change state. This is a design flaw in the memory chip - and it allows (in some circumstances) programs to change data in memory locations that they have no right to change.

[[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 19:33, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

uhhh did you just copy and paste your entire edit into talk? [[User:DPS2004|DPS2004'); DROP TABLE users;--]] ([[User talk:DPS2004|talk]]) 20:19, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

: Pretty much. When I got here, there was no information about the comic at all. Since I'm unfamiliar with all of the other stuff that goes into an explain, I left it as a comment so someone else could use it...but after a while, nobody did, so I copy-pasted it into the explanation...with some tweaks! Sorry if that was a faux-pas of some variety! [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 21:53, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

What? Servers are vulnerable to actual hammers? Huh, do you suppose they're be vulnerable to an actual trolley as well? I have a spare server, does anyone have a spare trolley? ~~ SiliconWolf