explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3034: Features of Adulthood

2025-01-09T10:00:03Z

172.70.162.170: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3034
| date = January 6, 2025
| title = Features of Adulthood
| image = features_of_adulthood_2x.png
| imagesize = 704x620px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I don't dig pit traps and cover them with sticks and a thin layer of leaves nearly as much as I expected; I find a chance to do it barely once a month.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete| Unexpectedly created by an adult BOT digging pit traps - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is a graph comparing the (mostly) common ideas of adulthood from a young person's perspective with reality of it. The plot is fully populated, with many issues (both common and uncommon) matching expectations pretty well, as well as features that are much rarer than expected (like encounters with quicksand, crocodiles and explosives), and some very common issues that don't occur to young people, such as deciding what to eat, or dealing with weird noises and smells.

It is clear that much of the 'lower-right triangle' (things that don't come up nearly as often as expected) are ''direct'' references to fictional scenarios on film or TV, likely particularly the type of fiction that [[Randall]] consumed as a child (probably including cartoons and action movies). In contrast, the complimentary 'upper-left triangle' largely consists of the type of mundane adult activities that children don't see or notice in real life, and which often aren't interesting enough to be disproportionately common in fiction.

==Events==

{| class="wikitable"
! Event
! Expected frequency in adulthood
! Actual frequency in adulthood
! Notes
|-
| {{w|Eating utensil etiquette#Fork etiquette|Which fork you're supposed to use for what}}
| 0%
| 0%
| Traditional, formal dining involves {{w|Fork#Types of forks|different types of forks}} for different courses of a meal. Learning {{w|Table setting#Place setting|which fork to use}} for which course might be taught in {{w|etiquette school}}, and is perceived as a signifier of social class (though this is likely an exaggerated concern). Dining has generally become less formal in Western society since the mid-20th century; as a result, most people are used to only using a single fork, or at most two, for their meals. This means that, for most people, {{tvtropes|FormalFullArrayOfCutlery|the issue rarely comes up}}, even in adulthood.
|-
| {{tvtropes|CartoonBomb|Lit fuses}}
| 40%
| 0%
| Explosives with visible lit fuses are commonly seen in movies and TV shows, particularly in cartoons. In reality, the average person is unlikely to deal with explosives at all. When explosives are used, they're usually electrically detonated, or sometimes use a concealed fuse (e.g. {{w|grenade}}s). Visible, burning fuses are sufficiently obsolete that most people will never encounter them directly.
|-
| {{tvtropes|PalatePropping|Shoving a stick}} in a {{w|crocodile}}'s mouth to wedge it open
| 80%
| 0%
| Placing a vertical stick in a crocodile’s mouth is a popular TV trope to prevent the crocodile from {{w|Crocodile attack|biting down}} (usually on the stick placer). Crocodile attacks on humans are common only in specific geographical areas, meaning that most people will never encounter them. Even when such an encounter happens, using a stick in that way would almost certainly be ineffective.
|-
| {{w|Quicksand}}
| 100%
| 0%
| Quicksand is {{tvtropes|QuicksandSucks|common in adventure fiction}}, but it's quite rare in real life (nor does it generally behave the way it's depicted in such fiction). The average person is unlikely to ever encounter it.
|-
| {{w|Car chase}}s
| 35%
| 5%
| Car chases are frequently seen in movies and TV shows involving police, including real-life police shows, but unless you're a police officer or criminal trying to evade them, you'll probably never be involved in one.
|-
| {{w|Grappling hook}}s
| 100%
| 5%
| A grappling hook is a device, typically made of metal, with multiple hooks and feature to allow it to be secured to the end of a rope. It can be thrown to either grab an object at a distance and pull it toward you, or to anchor the rope to an elevated point (such as on a cliff or building) to aid in climbing. The latter use is quite common in action and adventure fiction. While such devices do exist in real life, they generally have specialty uses that the average person is unlikely to encounter.
|-
| People offering free drugs
| 30%
| 10%
| Children being warned about illicit drugs have often been cautioned that drug dealers would inevitably approach them and offer them free drugs, in order to encourage an addiction and gain a reliable customer. In real life, drug dealers virtually never work that way, and are unlikely to part with their product unless payment has been made. Most people are introduced to drugs by friends or acquaintances, who might offer some for free, but that's only likely in specific social groups and situations.
|-
| {{w|Parachute}}s
| 80%
| 10%
| {{w|Parachuting}} allows people to jump out of planes at altitude, or from other elevated heights, and slow their descent enough to land safely. This is dramatic enough to come up often in adventure fiction. Parachutes are, of course, used in real life, but are specialized enough that most people will only encounter them if they put the money and effort into recreational skydiving.
|-
| {{w|Barrels}}
| 95%
| 10%
| Wooden or {{w|Drum (container)|metal}} storage containers are frequently used as concealment, improvised weapons and (sometimes explosive) obstacles in popular media. While barrels are actually quite common, they're large enough that the majority of people rarely have a reason to interact with them, unless they happen to work in a job that either sells or uses liquids in large quantities.
|-
| {{w|Middle name}}s
| 15%
| 20%
| A second (or occasionally also third or more) {{w|given name}}, common in some traditions. In most Anglophone countries, having a middle name is common, but most people only use them in formal situations where a full name is required (as when filling out legal documents). This is true to the point where most people don't know the middle names of most of their acquaintances, or even if they have one. In consequence, both as a child and as an adult, middle names will be encountered occasionally, but not regularly
|-
| {{w|Food fight}}s
| 50%
| 20%
| A common trope in fiction has a young people eating together (often in a cafeteria), and someone playfully begins throwing food, causing others to retaliate, until the whole room devolves into a food fight. Such a fight is inherently messy and irresponsible, but is unlikely to actually hurt anyone seriously, and so represents youthful hijinks. Such events aren't unknown in real life, but aren't necessarily pleasant (food is wasted and people might miss their meal as a result, you might end up covered in food all day, clean-up is a big job, punishments are likely to be handed out, and clothes might be permanently stained), so they aren't nearly as common as someone raised on fiction might imagine.
|-
| {{tvtropes|TwinSwitch|Twins switching places}}
| 90%
| 20%
| In fiction, if a pair of identical twins are introduced, it's almost inevitable that they'll trade places at some point, each trying to pass for the other, whether as a prank, or for some more serious purpose. Actual identical twins are quite rare (roughly 1 in 300 live births), even identical twins might not look exactly alike, and many twins get tired of being confused for one another at a young age, and so have no interest trying to trade places as adults. Frankly, a real life percentage above 0% may be a joke.
|-
| {{w|Flat tire}}s
| 10%
| 25%
| Anyone who drives a vehicle with tires faces the possibility of a tire going flat, due to either wear or road damage. This is usually merely an inconvenience, as it requires stopping to change or patch the tire, but a person lacking the knowledge or equipment to do so might have to call for help and/or be stranded until help arrives. Young people tend to be aware of this possibility, but it may happen a bit more often that they'd expect.
|-
| {{w|Briefcase}}s
| 70%
| 25%
| Frequently used to carry documents and other small office equipment, they've historically been treated as part of the standard kit for a white collar worker. Often portrayed as {{tvtropes|BriefcaseFullOfMoney|a means to carry a large amount of cash}} or {{tvtropes|BriefcaseBlaster|conceal a firearm}}. The popularity of briefcases has been declining after the 1980s. In modern times, documents are likely to be kept digitally and people are far more likely to carry a laptop bag for work than a briefcase.
|-
| {{w|Martial arts}}
| 95%
| 25%
| A child raised on action films and TV shows is likely to assume that use of martial arts is a normal part of life for most adults. In reality, most adults aren't trained in martial arts, and those who are very rarely use them in an actual fight. Martial arts are generally encountered only in classes or competitions set up specifically for it.
|-
| {{w|Water damage}}
| 0%
| 25%
| Water getting into the wrong places can be a serious problem, causing damage to homes and other buildings, vehicles, infrastructure, and all kinds of property. Such damage can happen without much warning, can be hard to detect at first, and can be hard to deal with. While precautions are usually taken to prevent such things from getting wet, water incursion can still happen, due to weather events, flooding, plumbing leaks, accidental spills, and even condensation. Children are likely to be entirely unaware of this, but many adults have to deal with it at some point in their lives.
|-
| {{w|Backpack}}s
|
|
| Backpacks of various sizes are a versatile means to carry items. They are almost as popular in real life as in fiction, though the contents may be somewhat different.
|-
| My {{w|Transcript (education)|academic record}}
| 95%
| 30%
| A child's life revolves around school: it's where they spend a large fraction of their waking hours, classmates make up most of their social circle, class schedules dictate when and how they spend their free time, and parental figures often punish/reward children based on their academic performance. The child may assume that school will continue to be an ever-present all-ecompassing feature of their future life, with their grades constituting a "permanent record" that will follow them into adulthood.
In reality, academic records aren't anywhere near that important. Some entry-level jobs may consider a candidate's past grades, but they're a tertiary concern after job interviews and professional references. By the time a person reaches their late 20s, academic records become irrelevant and are supplanted by the person's professional résumé.
|-
| {{w|Adhesive}}s
| 15%
| 50%
| Adhesives such as {{w|glue}}, {{w|adhesive tape|tape}} and {{w|epoxy resin}} are used to bond items together, typically for use in arts and crafts. They also have widespread industrial applications.
|-
| {{w|Board game}}s
|
|
| Board games of various kinds (such as {{w|chess}}, {{w|checkers|checkers/draughts}}, {{w|Monopoly (game)|Monopoly}}, {{w|Parcheesi}}/{{w|Ludo}}, {{w|Risk (game)|Risk}}, {{w|Snakes & Ladders}}, {{w|Cluedo|Clue/Cluedo}}, {{w|Trivial Pursuit}} or [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3149/lost-valley-of-the-dinosaurs Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs]) were often a staple for family home entertainment, in the past. Although they still may exist, possibly at the back of a cupboard, the ubiquitous nature of video games and other entertainments may have suppressed the opportunity for the adults and/or children to unbox them to while away the hours during a rainy afternoon or provide fireside entertainment for the family and its guests between the evening meal and supper.
Ironically, many classic boardgames have often been converted to video games, either as faithful reproductions (that may even enable online play and remote participation) or just as a nostalgic/premade thematic flavor as applied to a largely solo screenbound distraction.
|-
| Tying {{w|knot}}s
| 85%
| 40%
| There are a large number of knots, with a similar variety of uses. Knowing the right types of knots can be highly useful in certain situations, but how often those situations come up heavily depends on individual circumstances. Camping, fishing and rock-climbing require tying specialty knots quite frequently, but for people who don't have such hobbies, their use is less common. The high expected frequency suggests that [[Randall]] was encouraged to learn knots as a child, possible due to involvement in {{w|scouting}}, or some other outdoor activity, and the emphasis suggested that they'd come up a lot. When interest in knot-heavy activities wanes, the application of knots tends to fall off as well.
|-
| {{w|Cable management}}
| 0%
| 50%
| Cable management is an annoying but often required task for most adults. Cable management is the act of tidying up the cables in and around a computer or other device. Most children are never involved in this task, and don't even realize that it exists until they're old enough to both be responsible for significant electronics and care about tidiness.
|-
| {{w|Laser}}s
| 90%
| 50%
|Lasers are common in sci-fi and spy stories, but are much less commonly interacted with in real life. However, in real life, they are a very interesting technology and equipment, and something Randall is interested in, so he is likely to interact with lasers much more than the average person. For a time, many people interacted with lasers on a regular basis (albeit without necessarily being aware of it), as they are used to read data from optical media such as DVDs and Blu-ray. As these media have fallen out of favour, the amount of these interactions will have reduced.
|-
| Dangerous driving situations
|
|
|
|-
| {{w|Pizza}}
|
|
| Often thought of as takeout or delivery food. A favorite of {{w|Spider-Man}} and the {{w|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles}}.
|-
| {{w|Star Wars}}
|
|
|
|-
| Cool toys
|
|
|
|-
| {{w|Weather forecast}}s
|
|
|
|-
| {{w|Batteries}}
|
|
|
|-
| {{w|Power tools}}
|
|
|
|-
| {{w|Video game}}s
|
|
| Generally thought of as a childish pastime in earlier times, it has become increasingly normalised for adults to play video games.
|-
| Figuring out what to have for dinner
|
|
| For many children, dinner is something that just 'arrives', having been decided by the relevant responsible carer. They may therefore not appreciate the thought that needs to go into that decision. Additionally, the range of foodstuffs available to affluent people in Western societies has significantly increased since Randall's childhood, which may induce choice paralysis when confronted with them.
|-
| {{w|Heating, ventilation and air conditioning|HVAC}} issues
| 20%
| 80%
| HVAC is an acronym that stands for 'heating, ventilation and air conditioning.' If one owns a home, problems with the heater or air conditioner can quickly make your home very uncomfortable (too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer) and becomes something you have to deal with right away. Thus HVAC issues become a much more frequent part of an adult's life than a child may assume.
|-
| {{w|Cooking}}
|
|
|
|-
| Secret {{w|password}}s
|
|
| Traditionally, in fiction, secret passwords have been portrayed as used for purposes such as espionage and admission to secret clubs. Nowadays many people do use secret passwords on a daily basis, but for more mundane purposes such as accessing websites and voicemail.
|-
| Laundry
|
|
|
|-
| {{w|Tax}}es
| 100%
| 85%
| One of two inevitable things in life, {{w|Death and taxes (idiom)|the other being death}}
|-
| Customer service
|
|
|
|-
| Shopping
| 100%
| 90%
|
|-
| Unexplained smells or noises
|
| 100%
|
|-
| Pocket radio communicators
|
| 100%
| Examples include {{w|cell phone}}s, {{w|pager}}s and {{w|walkie-talkie}}s.
|-
| Bills
| 90%
| 100%
| Most households have to contend with electricity, water and telecommunication service bills.
|-
| Digging {{w|pit trap}}s (title text)
| N/A
| N/A
| Inside the Star Destroyer in [[1608: Hoverboard]] we see [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/f/fd/1608_1055x1090y_Trap_covered_with_leaves_and_flying_Ponytail_at_bottom_of_hull.png Cueball cover a pit trap with leaves], so this is something Randall actually thinks about sometimes!
|}

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

:[Shown is a scatter plot, with arrowed labels on the axes:]
:Y axis label: How often it comes up in my adult life
:X axis label: How often I expected it to come up in my adult life

:[First row of items (comes up very often, from least to most expected):]
:Unexplained smells or noises; customer service; pocket radio communicators; bills; shopping
:[Items row by row from the second row onwards:]
:Figuring out what to have for dinner; HVAC issues; secret passwords; laundry; cooking; taxes
:Weather forecasts; batteries; video games; power tools
:Cable management; dangerous driving situations; pizza; Star Wars; lasers; cool toys
:Adhesives; board games; tying knots
:Water damage; backpacks; my academic record
:Flat tires; briefcases; martial arts
:Middle names; people offering free drugs; food fights; parachutes; twins switching places; barrels
:[Last row (comes up very rarely, from least to most expected):]
:Which fork you're supposed to use for what; car chases; lit fuses; shoving a stick in a crocodile's mouth to wedge it open; grappling hooks; quicksand

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Scatter plots]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Board games]]
[[Category:Animals]]

244: Tabletop Roleplaying

2024-12-25T12:42:31Z

172.70.162.170: Undo revision 360264 by 162.158.170.234 (talk) Tautology. And not-quite-right grammar.

{{comic
| number = 244
| date = April 4, 2007
| title = Tabletop Roleplaying
| image = tabletop roleplaying.png
| titletext = I may have also tossed one of a pair of teleportation rings into the ocean, with interesting results.
}}

==Explanation==
Four people are playing a {{w|role-playing game}}. [[Megan]] is the game master (GM), describing the events of the adventure and what happens. The other people control imaginary characters in the game. [[Cueball]] attempts to have his character lead other characters in the imaginary construction of dice and gaming sheets. This would allow his character to become the GM of a new game inside the game they're currently playing, effectively taking control of the game away from Megan (at least temporarily). To "recurse" refers to {{w|recursion (computer science)|recursion}}, a concept of computer programming where a piece of code calls itself, essentially making the code run multiple times "within" itself. This may be the simplest way to implement an otherwise long and complicated action. (For example, a folder may contain files inside, but also more folders inside. Asking a computer to 'search through everything' in a folder may involve first checking the files in that folder, and then checking the folders in that folder and 'searching through everything' again in those folders. The single command to 'search through everything' may cause numerous additional 'search through everything' commands to trigger on increasingly nested folders, stopping only once a folder(s) with only files inside (and no folders inside) is found.)

It should be noted that Megan, the current GM, has multiple ways of dealing with this scene to prevent Cueball from attempting to take control of the game. She could simply allude to the success or failure of the recursive game and "skip to the next scene." She could also allow the roleplaying to continue more literally, with crafting checks determining the quality of the miniatures and a gambling check determining the outcome of the in-universe RPG session. Finally, she could simply have the party's plans {{tvtropes|ChandlersLaw|be interrupted by some sort of threat}}, or just {{tvtropes|RocksFallEveryoneDies|drop huge rocks on the party}}.

The title text refers to a pair of fictional rings. Anything passing through one gets teleported instantly to the other, as if the two rings were next to each other. There's an old gamer theory that, if you drop one of the rings in the ocean, water will naturally pass through it and out the other ring, potentially draining the entire ocean, or at least creating a perpetual seawater fountain out of the other ring. And if you teleported one ring directly to the bottom of the ocean, the amount of pressure pushing the water through would cause a gigantic, never-ending torrent, obliterating anything placed in its path. That idea is drawn out in [[969: Delta-P]]. A similar concept is addressed in [https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ Drain the Oceans], where a reader asked "How quickly would the oceans drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained?". This question may have been inspired by the mention of throwing teleport rings into the ocean in this cartoon.

The rings themselves are most likely inspired by the "Ring Gates" item from the {{w|wikipedia|Dungeons and Dragons}} 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide (the most recent edition of Dungeons and Dragons at the time this comic was published), which had a similar function. However, a key thing to note is that the rings only allow 100 lbs of material to pass through them each day, meaning that your geyser would only erupt every 24 hours (though this may still qualify as an "interesting result").

==External Links==
* [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#ringGates The DnD 3.5 SRD's "Ring Gates"]
* [http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?123123-Pair-of-teleportation-rings-ocean A Giant in the Playground forum thread discussing the "pair of teleportation rings"]

==Transcript==
:[Four people sit around a table. Megan has an open gamebook in front of her.]
:Megan: Your party enters the tavern.
:Cueball: I gather everyone around a table. I have the elves start whittling dice and get out some parchment for character sheets.
:Megan: Hey, no recursing.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball‏]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueball‏s]]
[[Category:Recursion]]
[[Category:Games]]

Talk:3026: Linear Sort

2024-12-25T12:40:42Z

172.70.162.170:

First in linear time![[User:Mr. I|Mr. I]] ([[User talk:Mr. I|talk]]) 13:28, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Due to the fact that O(nlog(n)) outgrows O(n), the Linear Sort is not actually linear. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.227|162.158.174.227]] 14:21, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
:If your sleep() function can handle negative arguments "correctly", then I guess it could work. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.91|162.158.91.91]] 16:27, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
::Yes, on a machine where sleep() allowed negative values (somewhat similarly but more limited than [https://esolangs.org/wiki/TwoDucks TwoDucks]), the algorithm would take linear time regardless of the used constant in place of 1e6. Also, with a smaller constant, the so-called linear optimization is not completely dissimilar to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_sort Radix sort], which has time-complexity of O(mn), where m is the bitlength of the item, which becomes linear for any item of limited bitlength (such as int64_t). In school we were taught that this is effectively linear, but that is deceptive, since the actual sort time grows to log(n) by virtue of requiring longer memory per item to fit more items in such a list, because a radix sort of 16 bit integers would be limited to useful lists of up to 65536 unique values to sort, and you'd need to grow them to 32 bit integers. If the sleep constant was chosen precisely to match the worst case [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timosrt Timsort] would take - and I pick timsort because in addition to having O(n) best case, equal items won't be swapped or take time for such swaps - the time complexity deception would be identical to that of Radix sort: The algorithm would be linear, but only until you exceed e^(sleeping steps) unique items in the list (same as radix sort, although radix sort becomes unusable, and LinearSort() only becomes slower), and the time wasted is comparable as it in both cases bounded by a number proportional to the bitlength of the (longest) value, which is usually larger than log(n'), and never smaller, if n' are the number of distinct values. So, in some ways, 1e6 is corresponding to m in a radix sort. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.190.145|172.68.190.145]] 12:10, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:It relies on 1 second being long enough to outcompete the maximum input length provided. The joke is that most sort operations that take an entire second or more are considered too slow to be worth doing. 02:30, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

That was fast... [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 15:35, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Do I even want to know what Randall's thinking nowadays? [[User:Definitely Bill Cipher|⯅A dream demon⯅]] ([[User talk:Definitely Bill Cipher|talk]]) 16:02, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
:Does anyone every want to know what Randall is thinking nowadays? :P [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.177|198.41.227.177]] 22:02, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

The title text would be more correct if Randall used e.g. Timsort instead of Mergesort. They both have the same worst-case complexity O(n*log(n)), but the former is linear if the list was already in order, so best-case complexity is O(n). Mergesort COULD also be implemented this way, but its standard version is never linear. [[User:Bebidek|Bebidek]] ([[User talk:Bebidek|talk]]) 16:35, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

According to my estimates extrapolated from timing the sorting of 10 million random numbers on my computer, the break-even point where the algorithm becomes worse than linear is beyond the expected heat death of the universe. I did neglect the question of where to store the input array. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.35|162.158.154.35]] 16:37, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
:If the numbers being sorted are unique, each would need a fair number of bits to store. (Fair meaning that the time to do the comparison would be non-negligible.) If they aren't, you can just bucket-sort them in linear time. Since we're assuming absurdly large memory capacity. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.253|162.158.186.253]] 17:14, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

What system was the person writing the description using where Sleep(n) takes a parameter in whole seconds rather than the usual milliseconds? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.216.162|172.70.216.162]] 17:20, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
: First, I don't recognize the language, but sleep() takes seconds for python, C (et. al.), and no doubt many others. Second, the units don't have to be seconds, they just have to be whatever `TIME()` returns, and multiplicable by 1e6 to yield a "big enough" delay. Of course, no coefficient is big enough for this to actually be linear in theory for any size list, so who cares? To be truly accurate, sleep for `e^LENGTH(LIST)`, and it really won't much matter what the units are, as long as they're big enough for `SLEEP(e)` to exceed the difference in the time it takes to sort two items versus one item. Use a language-dependent coefficient as needed. [[User:Jlearman|Jlearman]] ([[User talk:Jlearman|talk]]) 18:02, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
: Usual where, is that the Windows API? The sleep function in the POSIX standard takes seconds. See https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/sleep.3.html . [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.194|162.158.62.194]] 18:57, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

If I had a nickel for every time I saw an O(n) sorting algorithm using "sleep"… But this one is actually different. The one I usually see feeds the to-be-sorted value into the sleep function, so it schedules "10" to be printed in 10 seconds, then schedules "3" to be printed in 3 seconds, etc., which would theoretically be linear time, if the sleep function was magic. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 17:25, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

This comic also critiques/points out the pitfalls of measuring time complexity using Big-O notation, such as an algorithm or solution that runs in linear time still being too slow for its intended use case. [[User:Sophon|Sophon]] ([[User talk:Sophon|talk]]) 17:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Current text is incorrect, but I'm not sure how best to express the correction -- there do exist O(n) sorting algorithms, they're just not general-purpose, since they don't work with an arbitrary comparison function. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_sort counting sort]. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.151|172.69.134.151]] 18:25, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi! I'm just gonna say this before everyone leaves and goes on their merry way. Significant comic numbers coming soon:
Comics 3100, 3200, 3300, etc, Comic 3094 (The total number of frames in 'time'), Comic 4000, Comic Whatever the next April fools day comic will be, and Comic 4096. Wait for it...[[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 20:42, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
:Comic 3141.592654[[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.144|172.70.163.144]] 09:16, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

As everyone observed, the stated algorithm is not theoretically linear, but only practically linear (in that the time and space to detect O(n log n) exceeds reasonable (time, space) bounds for this universe). Munroe's solution is much deeper than that though - it trivially generalises to a _constant_ O(1) bound. [run a sort algorithm, wait 20 years, give the answer]. That's the preferred way of repaying loans, too. {{unsigned ip|172.69.195.27|21:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)}}

Continues comic 3017's theme of worst-case optimization. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.207.115|172.70.207.115]] 00:32, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

It looks as though this function does not actually do the sort in Linear Time, it only returns in Linear Time.
The MERGESORT Function itself looks to only take one parameter and does not have an obvious return value indicating that it performs an in-place sort on the input mutable list.
This means that the list is sorted at the speed of the MERGESORT function, but flow control is only returned after Linear Time.
For a single threaded program calling this function there is no practical difference, but it would make a difference if some other thread was concurrently querying the list.
A clearer linear time sort might look like this:

function LinearSort(list):
StartTime=Time()
SortedList=MergeSort(list)
Sleep(1e6*length(list)-(Time()-StartTime))
return SortedList

Leon {{unsigned ip|172.70.162.70|17:31, 19 December 2024}}
:There's such a thing as pass-by-reference, variously implemented depending upon the actual programming language used. It's even possible to accept both ''list'' (non-reference, to force a return of ''sorted_list'') and ''listRef'' (returns nothing, or perhaps a result such as ''number_of_shuffles made''), for added usefulness, though of course that'd need even more pseudocode to describe. For the above/comic pseudocode, it's not so arbitrary that a programmer shouldn't know how to implement it in their instance.
:I might even set about to do something like use a SetStartTime() and CheckElapsedTime() funtion, if there's possible use; the former making a persistant (private variable) note of what =Time() it is, perhaps to an arbitrary record scoped to any parameterID it is supplied, and the latter returning the 'now' time minus the stored (default or explicitly IDed) moment of record. I could then have freely pseudocoded the extant outline in even briefer format, on the understanding what these two poke/peek functions are. Which is already left open to the imagination for MergeSort(). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.182|172.69.43.182]] 18:04, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

There are situations where you want to return in O(1) time or some other time that is not dependent on the input data to prevent side-channel data leaks. While the run-time of Randall's "O(n)" algorithm has an obvious dependencies on the input data, using the "Randall Algorithm" to obscure a different algorithm can reduce the side-channel opportunities. A more sure-fire way would be to have the algorithm return in precisely i seconds, where i is the number of seconds between now and the heat death of the universe. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.167.89|172.71.167.89]] 17:49, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

;Please write an explanation for non-programmers!
I don't understand this explainxkcd. The comic itself was less confusing. Can please someone who really gets this stuff write a section of the explanation that explains the joke to people like me who do not have a theoretical programming degree? I know that is a tall task but right now it reads as rambling and a bunch of 0(n) that makes no sense to me. I can cut and paste a bash script together and make it work. I can understand that putting a sleep for a million seconds in a loop somewhere makes it slow. But a layperson explanation of what makes a sort linear, what is linear, what is funny about that approach, would be better than all the arguing about 0(n) because we don't get it. Thanks in advance! You folks are awesome! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.210|172.71.147.210]] 20:51, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
:Maybe this would be a good start:
::--cut here--
::An algorithm is a step-by-step way of doing things.
::A sorting algorithm is a step-by-step way to sort things.
::There are several commonly used sorting algorithms. Some have very little "overhead" (think: set-up time or requiring lots of extra memory) or what I call "molassas" (yes, I just made that up) (think "taking a long time or lots of extra memory for each step") but they really bog down if you have a lot of things that need sorting. These are better if you have a small list of items to sort.

::Others have more "overhead" or "molasses" but don't bog down as much when you have a lot of things that need sorting. These are better if you have a lot of things to sort.

::A linear sorting algorithm would take twice as long to sort twice as many unsorted items. If it took 100 seconds to sort 100 items, then it would take 200 seconds to sort 200, 300 seconds to sort 300, and so on. Algorithms that take "twice as long to do twice as much" are said to run in "Order(n)" or "O(n)" time, where "n" is the number of items they are working on, or in the case of a sorting algorithm, the number of items to be sorted.

::For traditional sorting algorithms that don't use "parallel processing" (that is, they don't do more than one thing in any given moment), a linear sorting algorithm with very little "overhead" or "molasses" would be the "holy grail" of sorting algorithms. For example, a hypothetical linear sorting algorithm that took 1/1000th of a second to "set things up" (low "overhead") and an additional 1 second to sort 1,000,000 numbers (not much "molasses") would be able to sort 2,000,000 numbers in just over 2 seconds, 10,000,000 numbers in just over 10 seconds, and 3,600,000,000 numbers in a hair over an hour.

::The reality is that there is no such thing as a general-purpose linear sorting algorithm that has very little overhead (in both time and memory) and very little "molasses." All practical general-purpose sorting algorithms either use parallel processing, they have a lot of overhead (set-up time or uses lots of memory), a lot of "molasses" (takes a long time or uses lots of memory for EACH item in the list) or they are "slower than linear," which means they bog down when you give them a huge list of things to sort. For example, let's say the "mergesort" in Randall's algorithm doesn't have much "overhead" or "molasses" and it sorts 1,000,000 items in 1 second. It's time is "O(nlog(n))" which is a fancy way of saying if you double the number, you'll more than double the time. This means sorting 2,000,000 items will take more than 2 seconds, and sorting 4,000,000 items will take more than twice as long as it takes to sort 2,000,000. Eventually all of those "more than's" add up and things slow to a crawl.

::The joke is that Randall "pretends" to be the "holy grail" by being a linear sorting algorithm, but he has lots of "molasses" because his linear sorting algorithm takes 1 million seconds for each item in the list, compared to the 1,000,000 items per second in the hypothetical "linear sorting algorithm" I proposed.

::As others in the discussion point out, Randall's "algorithm" is "busted" (breaks, doesn't work, gives undefined results) if the mergesort (which is a very fast sort if you have a large list if items) is sorting a list so big that it takes over 1 million seconds per item to sort anyways. I'll spare you the math, but if the mergesort part of Randall's "algorithm" could do 1,000,000 numbers in 1 second with a 1/1000th of a second to "set things up," it would take a huge list to get it to "bust" Randall's "algorithm."
::--cut here--
:[[Special:Contributions/162.158.174.202|162.158.174.202]] 21:44, 19 December 2024 (UTC)

:Layman's guide to O(n) time, second try:
::--cut here--
::First, "O" is "Order of" as in "order of magnitude." It's far from exact.
::O(1) is "constant time" - the time it takes me to give you a bag that contains 5000 $1 bills doesn't depend on how many bills there are in the bag. It would take the same amount of time if the bag had only 500, 50, or even 5 bills in it.
::O(log(n)) is "logarithmic time" - the time is the time it takes me to write down how many bills are in the bag. If it's 5000, I have to write down 4 digits, if it's 500, 3, if it's 50, 2, if it's 5, only 1.
::O(n) is "linear time" - the time it takes me to count out each bill in the bag depends on how many bills there are. It takes a fixed amount of time to count each bill. If there's 5000 $1 bills it may take me 5000 seconds to count them. If there's 500 $1 bills, it will take me only 500 seconds.
::O(nlog(n)) is "linear times logarithmic time" - the time it takes me to sort a pre-filled bag of money by serial number using a good general-purpose sorting algorithm (most good general-purpose sorting algorithms are O(nlog(n)) time). If it takes me 2 seconds to sort two $1 bills, it will take me about 3 or 4 times 5000 seconds to sort 5000 $1 bills. The "3 or 4" is very approximate, the important thing is that "logarithm of n" (in this case, logarithm of 5000) is big enough to make a difference (by a factor of 3 or 4 in this case) but far less than "n" (in this case, 5000).
::O(n2) is "n squared" time, which is a special case of "polynomial time." "Polynomial time" includes things like O(n3) and O(n1,000,000). Many algorithms including many "naive" sorting algorithms are in this category. If I used a "naive" sorting algorithm to sort 5000 $1 bills by serial number, instead of it taking about 15,000-20,000 seconds, it would take about 5,000 times 5,000 seconds. I don't know about you, but I've got better things to do with 25,000,000 seconds than sort paper money.
::It gets worse (O(2n) anyone? No thanks!), but you wanted to keep it simple.
:[[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.177|198.41.227.177]] 23:30, 19 December 2024 (UTC)
::Personally, I've got better things to do than sort dollar bills, full stop.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.130|172.70.91.130]] 09:37, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
:: O() notations is about behavior with large values, not small values. Try the "handing a bag of bills" algorithm with a few million dollar bills. You're going to need a forklift. Getting a forklift is not, in practice, instantaneous. Big N notation is almost always a joke for people trying to solve real problems. It only works on an abstract machine with some really weird (not physically achievable) properties. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.141|162.158.155.141]] 20:54, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

Friendly reminder that some users of this site are just here to learn what the joke is, and not to read the entire Wikipedia article on Big O Notation. Perhaps the actual explanation could be moved up a bit, and some of the fiddly Big-O stuff could be moved down? I'd do it myself, but I'm not really sure which is which. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.176.28|172.70.176.28]] 06:42, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
:I mean, it is fairly fundamental to the joke, and therefore to the explanation. It might be possible to slim it down a bit, but I don't think you can explain the joke without ''some'' explanation of Big O.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.130|172.70.91.130]] 09:37, 20 December 2024 (UTC)

I've just come to the conclusion that I will never 100% understand 3026. [[User:Dogman15|Dogman15]] ([[User talk:Dogman15|talk]]) 10:14, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
:Tell me that again when you've actually tried the official process...
function Understand(comic):
StartTime=Time()
ReadExplanation(comic)
Sleep(1e12*length(comic)-(Time()-StartTime))
return
:[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.56|172.70.162.56]] 11:10, 20 December 2024 (UTC)
::The article should start off "This is a joke about Big-O notation and sorting algorithms, a topic in introductory computer science education." then continue with something like "An algorithm is computer code for solving a general problem. Big-O notation is a method for describing the efficiency of algorithms." and maybe something like "Randall has designed an algorithm that appears more efficient than commonly considered possible, claiming to solve a popular challenge of many decades, by trying to game how the Big-O approach to analysis ignores the real speed of an algorithm, instead considering how it changes when the data is changed." [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.209|172.68.54.209]] 02:43, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's my crack at a shorter explanation of the joke, without explaining the entirety of the Big-O notation Wikipedia article and without getting unnecessarily pedantic. (Please keep this in mind when critiquing this explanation! I probably know whatever simplification you notice.)
:The joke here consists of two parts: (1) a linear-time sort of a list is mathematically impossible, and yet (2) a linear-time algorithm is presented, with it being roughly correct because Big-O notation hides the full picture on purpose. The title-text joke is that someone realizes (1) and investigates (2) because of the purposeful full-picture-hiding.
:Let's start with part (2): how Big-O notation is a bit handwavy and inexact. This is not to say it's not useful in computer science research and explaining differences between algorithms, but it inherently and on purpose hides the full picture. It's kind of like rounding away unnecessary digits when doing a back-of-the-envelope physics calculation, except in Big-O, the thing that is rounded is a mathematical formula. The formula is for calculating the time it takes for an algorithm to run (whether in (nano)seconds or something abstract like "number of operations"), and it will be in terms of ''n'', which is basically "how many things does your algorithm need to process" (in this case, it's the size of a list). An algorithm might be calculated to have a running time of something complicated like 32''n''2.796+1.31''n''+6500, but it's Big-O "rounding" would be expressed as O(''n''2.796). This is because as ''n'' grows larger and larger (into the billions), the extra stuff is irrelevant: except in special cases, an algorithm with a running time of O(''n'') will take less time than an algorithm taking O(''n''2) time, because no matter what the stuff you "rounded away" was, the former will eventually be less than the latter once ''n'' grows big enough.
:With the relevant bits of Big-O notation explained, we can look at the problem of sorting a list. This is a classic problem in computer science and it comes up in coursework all the time, so Randall assumes a lot of his audience will be familiar with it. Part (1) of the joke is that a linear, ''i.e.'' O(''n'') time, sorting of a list is mathematically impossible: just checking whether a list is sorted in the first place requires comparing every pair of elements at least once, taking O(''n'') time, and after this you have to swap elements that are out of place and check again. If you build an algorithm carefully you can get away with doing log(''n'') "scans" back and forth along the list, ending up doing log(''n'') scans of ''n'' time each, which comes to O(''n'' × log(''n'')) time. This "O(''n'' log ''n'')" time is accepted as the lowest general sorting algorithm average-case run-time, and all improvements to sorting algorithms are in improving the stuff that Big-O notation hides – remember how we rounded away all those factors as unnecessarily complicated and irrelevant? Turns out they're actually relevant in practice! They can be fine-tuned for real computers and practical inputs; the mergesort in the comic is special because it's guaranteed to always take the same time, no matter the input.
:Putting both parts together: the "linear sort" presented is "linear", taking O(''n'') time, not because it has actually magically found a way to cheat at math and do sorting faster than is possible, but because O(''n'') notation hides the fact that it just waits for a million (milli)seconds for each item in the list: O(''n'') looks faster than O(''n'' log ''n''), but what's actually going on is that 1,000,000''n'' is way slower than mergesort's O(''n'' log ''n'').
:Curiously, this is actually a thing that [[wikipedia:Galactic algorithm|does happen in computer science]], although not as blatantly as this: there are some problems for which there exists an algorithm with a "better" Big-O-notated time, but which for whatever technical reason run worse in practice on real computers than apparently-slower algorithms.
(And again, please remember that I've on purpose left out irrelevant technical details! I know about radix sort etc., and I know the difference between O, Θ and Ω, and I know about space complexity also; I do actually have a master's degree in this stuff and know what I'm talking about.) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.136.141|172.69.136.141]] 16:09, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:Actually I already thought of an improvement to this explanation (if it were to be used as the main explanation): it's unnecessary to bring up Big-O notation in the first place, until explaining the title text. The comic itself just talks about linear time, and mergesort (and sorting in general) could just be explained as requiring "more than linear time" because of the repeated comparisons I already mentioned. (O(''n'' log ''n'') is "quasilinear" or "log-linear" time but introducing that term can – and in my opinion should – be avoided). The title text explanation requires explaining that "O(n) means linear", and a bit about how Big-O notation is "rounding" away the complicated parts of the formula. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.136.165|172.69.136.165]] 16:42, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Why is the prose so terrible on this site? Who writes "As one can image in most contexts one would wish for...." and thinks other people can understand it? Please run your text through ChatGPT, it's free now. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.54|172.71.147.54]] 17:31, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Regarding {{diff|360113|this edit}}, I have my reservations. While Log2 ''may'' be 'logical' in a system using binary, there's no reason why the algorithm cannot be implemented upon a trinary-based "machine code" system, or one in quad (and I actually have created a four-instruction 'ultra-RISC' microcode kernel, of sorts, that used base-4 principles, not base-2), or decimal/BCD, and then byte-size is commonly 8-bit with 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit extensions to the basic unit and ''could'' translate to an equivalent higher-base if you are bothered about ''n'' vs. log''x'' ''n'' efficiency at lower ''n''s and higher ''x''s. Could even be natural-log (for reasons entirely unrelated to the hardware/firmware/software it is implemented on, just what it needs to do). Most of the time, we don't care if it's O(log10 ''n'') or O(ln ''n'') or whatever, because the difference is an appropriate constant multiple. That's something generally not retained... we may have O(''m'' log ''n''), for independent variable ''m'', but something like O(2 log ''n'') is treated as O(log ''n'') equivalent, like O(2) is just O(1) in the final analysis, and why the O(1e8*n) reality sneaks through here as O(n). So, ''by actual implementation'', you can't actually say that O(''n'' log ''n'') will be gte O(''n'') always. With 1<''n''<log_base, it won't be. ...Whether or not we're free to consider either generality, though, I definitely won't ask you how algorithms actually stack up next to each other where run under ''n''=0 conditions! But at least O(''n''-1) isn't a common thing... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.19|172.69.194.19]] 18:01, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:What does this possibly have to do with explaining the comic? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.23.81|172.68.23.81]] 18:07, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:Hi, I made this edit. I removed that bit because it's too pedantic for an ExplainXKCD explanation, and in my opinion completely unnecessary. We don't need to explain Big-O, we need to explain the comic. In addition, while the math is strictly speaking true in that x>x*loga(x) when x<a, in computer science literature and discussion base-2 logs are typically assumed to be the default; if it isn't, it needs to be marked as such. Additionally the whole point of Big-O is growth: sure, that inequality holds when x is small, but we're not interested in it being small. As for ternary or whatever, those never come up. A few ternary machines existed in the 60s, sure, whatever, and occasionally someone experiments with something weird, but of the billions of computers that are in use, all are binary. So basically my message is to remember what forum we're speaking in. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.136.141|172.69.136.141]] 18:43, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
::Interesting, and it probably can do without saying the bit that is removed, but not for the reason given in the removal. As pointed out, above, practical timing issues don't depend upon the base computer being binary or not ("assume log-base-2 because computers are all binary" isn't really a useful argument). Some theoretical function creating and using a basic binary tree might (according to its operational needs) scale its operational speed by log-base-2 as a key factor, but a version that uses a k-d tree by log-base-k (you can imagine them being ultiately functionally equivalent by way of a Cantor-pairing(/tripling/etc) equivalence, if you want justification for this hypothetical choice between). They'd both be considered O(... log N ...), give or take any other accompanyting factors (or overriding terms). But you can't say that an O(... log N ...) solution will take a-specific-base-of-N multiple of time, certainy not base-2. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.58.45|172.70.58.45]] 20:01, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:::I do understand your point, I have a degree in this stuff also, but the useful argument here was succinctly put in above as "What does this possibly have to do with explaining the comic?" [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.148|162.158.134.148]] 21:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Thank you to whomever put us out of our misery. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.83|172.70.211.83]] 21:07, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
:Could do with more info... BRB... /goes to put +2345 bytes extra in with 'useful' additional information. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.178|172.68.205.178]] 21:22, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
::Please don't. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.148|162.158.134.148]] 21:36, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Here’s what I don’t get about this joke: why would the recipient of this program ever initially think it was O(n)? Are there people who check the complexity of an algorithm by literally running it on a bunch of different inputs then fitting the time taken to a curve? That should be illegal! {{unsigned ip|162.158.154.104|10:14, 24 December 2024}}
:It's clearly targeted at those who take a statement that it's O(n) at face value. e.g. sorting(!) any {{w|Sorting algorithm#Comparison of algorithms|comparison list}} by the 'best sorting performance'. You'd have it pop up at the top just like a search engine's Sponsored Link, and there'll be people who'll 'click on it' through sheer lack of analysis. And it'd not be an outright lie, so an uncritical analysis wouldn't mark it as actually ''wrong''/delete it (it could sneak by an AI's basic 'understanding', perhaps, if not a human with any concept of algorithmic trolling) when it's probably far easier to establish its dubiously established ''bona fides'' than most sorting algorithm claims to O()ness.
:But, really, it's just a Wicker Man suggestion. (Like a Straw Man one, where you destroy it specifically by burning.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.30|172.70.91.30]] 13:10, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

What about true linear sort? Will it work?

Function TrueLinearSort(list):
MergeSort(list)
Return

Now, what efficiency '''this''' variant has in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation Big O notation]?{{unsigned ip|172.71.98.138|08:23, 25 December 2024}}
:Might depend upon the implementation of MergeSort(), as intrinsic parallelisation is possible (but becomes less relevent as you pass into n>2*threads), though it tends to be O(n log n) for worst and average cases, which the call to the unadulterated function that calls it won't do much to change. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.170|172.70.162.170]] 12:40, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

765: Dilution

2024-07-29T14:54:14Z

172.70.162.170: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 765
| date = July 12, 2010
| title = Dilution
| image = dilution.png
| titletext = Dear editors of Homeopathy Monthly: I have two small corrections for your July issue. One, it's spelled "echinacea", and two, homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Homeopathy}} is the belief that poisons, bacteria, and other harmful substances can actually cure the diseases they normally cause, if they are administered in sufficiently dilute form. The normal procedure is to prepare a solution, then successively dilute it with water or alcohol by multiple factors of 10. (There's also a "succussion" step between rounds, which basically consists of shaking or striking the mixture, but no serious mechanism for how this would affect anything has been provided.) In the medical world, it's known to be completely ineffective, with countless scientific studies repeatedly showing it to have no more effectiveness than a {{w|placebo}}. Keep in mind that homeopathy was invented when standard treatments included blood letting, drugs made with mercury and arsenic, and natural remedies made with nightshade and hemlock. So doing effectively nothing like homeopathy had better results than doing harm to an individual.

Here we find [[Cueball]], a firm believer in homeopathy, applying the idea to fertility by diluting his semen. 30X means that the semen has been diluted with water at a 1:10 ratio 30 times, so the solution contains 1 part semen to one-nonillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) parts water. Since the average ejaculation contains 200 to 500 million sperm cells, this means the solution Cueball is holding has a 3.5x10-20% chance of containing even a single sperm cell. Clearly, [[Megan]] will not be getting pregnant from this, so she and Cueball will not be passing on their genes to the next generation, which is why the comic states that "the belief in homeopathy is not, evolutionarily, selected for".

According to the belief of homeopathy, diluted sperm should not help in getting pregnant, but help to cure the symptoms, e.g. pregnancy, caused by it{{fakt}}. So even if diluting it 30X, would have a homeopathic effect, it would be the opposite of the one Cueball states he wants to achieve.

{{w|Echinacea}} is a genus of flowers commonly used in herbal remedies to stimulate the immune system. Scientific studies have not shown that such an effect exists. The title text is intended to represent a letter to the editors of fictitious journal 'Homeopathy Monthly', starting with a minor complaint that they seem unable to perform the basic proof-reading and fact-checking necessary to correctly spell one of the most well-known herbal remedies. This is followed up by a complete dismissal of homeopathy as a whole and the magazine in particular.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball stands at a desk with a beaker in one hand and a turkey baster in the other. Megan lies in a bed in the same room.]

:Cueball: Okay, this time I've diluted the semen 30x.
:Megan: We'll be ''sure'' to get pregnant now!

:Belief in homeopathy is not, evolutionarily, selected for.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

225: Open Source

2024-07-15T09:11:25Z

172.70.162.170: /* Trivia */ fix youtube link

{{comic
| number = 225
| date = February 19, 2007
| title = Open Source
| image = open source.png
| titletext = Later we'll dress up like Big Oil thugs and jump Ralph Nader.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Richard Stallman]], or ''rms'' after his handle, is an old-school hacker known for establishing the {{w|Free Software Foundation}} (FSF) and initiating the {{w|GNU Project}} in the early 1980s, which produced major portions of what would later be the {{w|Linux|GNU/Linux}}<ref>https://itsfoss.com/gnu-linux-copypasta/</ref> operating system. In this capacity, he's also known for being one of the most ardent and outspoken proponents of {{w|open source software}}, often referred to by Stallman as {{w|free software}}. In fact, his advocacy is so emphatic and polemical that he has garnered active dislike from traditionalists who believe that software {{w|source code}} should be retained as a trade secret by its developer(s). Stallman has expressed that he did not even wish to be in a comic using the phrase '''Open Source''' (see the [[#Trivia|trivia section]]).

While this dislike may not rise to the level of hiring {{w|ninja}} assassins to remove him from the world though that is historically inaccurate, it is strong. The joke of the comic, as it also turns out, is that the two [[Cueball]]s dressed up as ninjas were just out to have a fun time teasing Stallman, and they seemed to know that Stallman's paranoia about {{w|Microsoft}} makes him sleep with no fewer than two {{w|katana}} swords near his bed. This type of sword was one of the traditionally made Japanese swords that were used by the {{w|samurai}} of feudal Japan mainly as a sidearm. A ninja or more accurately a Shinobi no mono was basically special forces in feudal Japan. They specialized in espionage, sabatoge, etc. they were a rough combination of MI6, CIA, and Navy SEAL in feudal japan. Although they did not specialize in assassinations, that is something that they could do. Although samurai could also be shinobi/ninjas if they chose to do that job, samurai is a social class while shinobi no mono/ninjas were a job, not a social class. So this makes sense in this comic with Stallman, the samurai, and the ninjas, the lackeys of the oppressing Microsoft (at least in his mind). It also turns out that they specifically choose targets for their raids who have reason to be paranoid of larger companies that might send someone after them, and thus sleep with weapons near their beds. Stallman has received a Katana due to this comic (see the [[#Trivia|trivia]] section).

{{w|GPL}} refers to the 'GNU General Public License', which is a copyright license written by the FSF that covers much GNU software and plenty of other free software besides. It stipulates that software so copyrighted must always be provided along with full source code, and that everyone in possession of such software is free to use, study, modify, and redistribute it for any purpose whatsoever (including sale or resale), provided they give due credit to any other contributing developers and provide access to the complete source code and retain all copyright notices.

Legally, this gives all users of such software exactly the same rights under copyright as the developer(s) and prevents any developers from ever taking away those rights from users, which is the defining feature of '{{w|Free software#Definition|free-as-in-libre}}' software. It also has the effect of making all software ''derived'' from GPL software thereby also GPL, even if 'derived' merely means 'borrowed a few lines of code from'. Some (e.g. Microsoft's {{w|Steve Ballmer}}) have therefore argued that this makes GPL software behave as a kind of {{w|viral license|'license virus'}}, which spreads GPL-guaranteed freedoms to any software used in close conjunction with GPL'd software during development, such that businesses should actively avoid adopting {{w|FOSS|free and open source software}}, so as not to jeopardize software developers' legal standing with regard to {{w|proprietary software|proprietary IP copyright}}s.

During the attack, Richard Stallman begins to speak like he quotes an old play. For instance, the wording "For a GNU dawn!" is pronounced "For a g'new dawn!", following the pronunciation of {{w|GNU}}, so it is a version of ''New Dawn'', a sentence used often in fiction. He even gets annoyed when it turns out that the ninjas just run away. He had clearly waited a long time to, even looking forward to, defending himself with his katanas.

Because the two "ninjas" had so much fun pranking Stallman, they plan to do more of these raids, even mentioning two other possible future targets on their way out of the window:

{{w|Eric S. Raymond}} is a famous {{w|Hacker (programmer subculture)|hacker}} who wrote ''{{w|The Cathedral and the Bazaar}}'' and has been something of an unofficial spokesperson for open source as a {{w|Open-source software development|software development methodology}}. The plan to prank Eric Raymond could be a bad one, since he is an experienced martial artist, swordsman, and firearm enthusiast. However, this seems to be the attraction of these two "ninjas," as can be seen by what they seem to know about their other possible target:

{{w|Linus Torvalds}} is the creator of {{w|Linux kernel|Linux}}, a free/open source operating system kernel inspired by the {{w|Unix}} kernel, which proved to be the final component that, combined with then pre-existing GNU system functions and {{w|userland}} components, produced the first fully free operating system, {{w|Linux|GNU/Linux}}. The plan to prank Torvalds would at first sound more boring as the mild-mannered {{w|Finland|Finn}}, while known to be strongly, abrasively opinionated, is otherwise mostly harmless. However, one of the ninjas seems to know otherwise, since it is rumored that Linus sleeps with {{w|nunchaku|nunchucks}} in the same way that Stallman sleeps with two katana swords. The ''nunchaku'' is a traditional Okinawan martial arts weapon consisting of two sticks connected at one end by a short chain or rope.

A third possible target of this prank is mentioned in the title text. {{w|Ralph Nader}} is a famous consumer rights advocate, most famous for {{w|Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2000|his controversial 2000 presidential run}}, and the 1965 book ''{{w|Unsafe at Any Speed}}''. Nader is an environmentalist and a member of the Green Party, and he supports clean energy, thus naturally being opposed to "Big Oil" companies.

==Transcript==
:[The first panel has the second panel inside it. It also has a slightly light gray background color. Just above the inlaid second panel is Richard Stallman lying in his bed sleeping, the bottom part at the foot of the bed hidden behind the second panel below. Below his bed under his head lies a katana sword in its sheath, and another one hangs in its sheath behind the end of the bed. Two ninjas with swords and black cloths around their heads jump through the skylight, smashing it so glass scatters around them. Each of them is hanging one-handed from the same rope coming down from the skylight. The rope ends just above the inlaid frame below. The two ninjas shout at Richard Stallman, from four speech bubbles that have pointy ends to indicate how the two alternately speak. (These bubbles are white, not gray.)]
:Richard Stallman: ''Zzzz''
:Top Ninja: Richard Stallman! Your viral open source licenses have grown too powerful.
:Bottom Ninja: The GPL must be stopped.
:Top Ninja: At the source.
:Bottom Ninja: You.

:[In the second inlaid panel (with normal white background), Richard Stallman wakes up immediately, and while sitting up in bed, he pulls out both his katana swords from their sheaths, leaving the sheaths under and behind the bed. One hand is up in the air with the sword from behind the bed, and the other is still pointing down with the swords from below the bed. Lines indicate the fast movement of the swords. His three speech bubbles are like those of the ninjas, the last two even breaking the panel entering into the large first panel.]
:Katana swords: Shing! Shing!
:Richard Stallman: Hah! Microsoft lackeys! So it has come to this!
:Richard Stallman: A night of blood I've long awaited. But be this my death or yours, free software will carry on! For a GNU dawn! For freedom!
:Richard Stallman: ...Hey, where are you going?

:[An outside scene at night with black sky. Richard Stallman's gray house can be seen with the broken white skylight on the roof. The ninjas are jumping out of a window at ground height while taking off their ninja cloth around their heads, holding them in their hand, thus revealing that they both look like Cueball. The first one is already on the grassy ground beneath the window, his sword pointing down and to the left; the other just jumps from the window pane, his sword pointing up and to the right. Again, they have speech bubbles like before. It is not possible to tell which of the two ninjas from before is first out the window.]
:Ninja in window: Man, you're right, that never gets old.
:Ninja on the grass: Let's do Eric S. Raymond next.
:Ninja in window: Or Linus Torvalds. I hear he sleeps with nunchucks.

==Trivia==
*The phrase "So it has come to this" is the title of [[1022: So It Has Come To This]].
*In [[1624: 2016]], [[Cueball]] smashes through the ceiling, also hanging on a rope, to wake a person in a bed. Not as a threat though, but still a very similar situation.
*In the title text of [[163: Donald Knuth]], [[Black Hat]] reveals that he broke into [[Donald Knuth]]'s house through the skylight as well.
*Because of this comic, Stallman has [http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-stallman/ been given a katana] by fans of xkcd.
*At his [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHp_Vh9TESU&t=1645 talk at JCCC3] (as well as in a note in ''[[xkcd: volume 0]]''), [[Randall]] mentioned that the comic he originally published had the assassins say "free software," and Richard Stallman says "open source software." He swapped the two terms after complaints that Richard Stallman was [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html opposed to the phrase "open source."] Even after this change, he got an e-mail from Stallman himself saying that he didn't even want to be portrayed in the same comic as the words "open source." The full note in volume 0 is:
{{quote|Originally, I had the phrases "open source" and "free software" reversed here, but a flood of 1:00 AM letters told me Stallman notoriously hates the term "open source" and would never use it. The comic title was "Open Source" and I couldn't change that, so I just switched who said what and went back to sleep. Only one person wrote in post-change to complain about "Open Source" still being used in the title - Stallman himself}}
:*Stallman's well-known opposition to the term "open source" stems from the fact that "open source" refers specifically to a methodology for software development involving allowing customers to actively participate in development and testing of software products by giving them access to in-development source code and soliciting feedback; as such, the term was first adopted as a means to promote free software ideas to business interests. In contrast, Stallman and the FSF view free software as a political issue concerning the basic freedoms that should belong to all computer users, and thus 'open source' as an appeal to software businesses misses the point of getting individuals to think about their rights as users.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Computers]]

Talk:2777: Noise Filter

2023-05-22T08:05:09Z

172.70.162.170:

Took me a moment. It is very on-point for me. Randal proposes a sound level meter in such as Google reviews. Showing the real-time racket in a restaurant or other venue. Just this week I walked out of a new TOO-LOUD restaurant. I wish this feature existed! It is not total fantasy. Any Android cellphone "could" report location and sound-level to its masters.

I'm autistic. I would have liked this feature since I was first going places on my own.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.167|162.158.2.167]] 02:31, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Hear hear! (Pun intended.) There are several restaurants my family won't go back to because they're too loud. One was PAINFULLY loud - well over 80 dBA. Hmm. Maybe I should take my sound level meter with me next time we eat out, and put the readings into a review. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.214|172.70.110.214]] 12:24, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I interpreted the title as a pun on noise filters that block out ambient noise. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:13, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

How long until another of Randall's xkcd "jokes" becomes real? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.173|108.162.216.173]] 15:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I would like one for temperature, some places are just too damn cold. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 18:40, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Should the explanation include recent news articles about how restaurants are louder than they were a few decades ago? Such as https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/how-restaurants-got-so-loud/576715/ and https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/restaurant-noise-levels-solutions/ [[Special:Contributions/172.69.65.46|172.69.65.46]] 20:13, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

: I think it should. Good get.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.35|162.158.91.35]] 22:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

The thing that gets me is the different radio/checkbox/range selection techniques being used. Almost like the same UI designer didn't add each subsection into this bit of the interface.
*Obvious "radio"-like choice for the opening Hours. You choose one or other presets ("Any"/no preference, "Now"/current status) or a probable pop-up dialogue ("Open at...") for date/time of more flexible choice or range.
*Rating that's also "radio"-appearing, as a way of giving the single minimum acceptible value for Rating.
*The slider which implies the single ''maximum'' acceptible value for noise level. Could have been set up similar to that with Rating (though clearly needs more than the six guide-labels as buttons, and "<=value" rather than "value+").
**The version for Party Mode would have been like the minimum for Rating, both of which could either be "top-down selected" sliders or this bottom-up one but reverse-labeled. Or "number+" buttons.
*Buttons of a multi-select/checkbox type for Price choice. Not visually different from 'radio buttons', except for that they have been multi-selected... perhaps the real thing in the appropriate interface-tk would show more rounded/square button profiles. Or give another clue as to whether selecting a second would add to/replace anything previously selected in that grouping. But it ''could'' have been a range-type choice for "up to", really.
**Or a double-slider, to accomodate minimum and maximum, allowing mid-sub-range "$$+$$$", if not "$+$$$$" for only extremes. Or a slider and separate toggle between whether the slider is bottom-up and top-down.
**But would you ever anticipate split-range choices? And also to what relative quantities do the given numbers of $s map onto, subjectively?
It shows that the design decisions involved weren't part of the same holistic design-time process. (This is not a comment against Randall's compositional choices, he's clearly parodying the actual "options"-type configuration screens that you get. Consciously or unconsciously replicating ''their'' design and implemention inconsistencies.)
 But thought it wasn't really worth a main-page explanation about, just thought it worth an extended comment in here for possible passing interest of others. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.153|172.70.86.153]] 23:45, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

The slider should go down to 30dB. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.89|172.70.114.89]] 02:48, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
: It should go up to 111dB [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.169|172.70.85.169]] 08:02, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I, and probably every other autistic person here, wishes this were a thing. For me at least, sound louder than about 70 dB physically hurts. [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] [[User talk:Beanie|talk]] 10:02, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I ALWAYS carry hearing protection. I play bassoon in wind ensembles and orchestras and sometimes need to ‘stopper’ because of trumpets, etc. It comes in handy in other noisy situations and takes up almost no space in my pocket.
[[User:Joem5636|Joem5636]] ([[User talk:Joem5636|talk]]) 11:39, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
:You should make sure you have pockets big enough for a bassoon, too. Be popular at parties. (At least at first.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.100|172.70.90.100]] 18:09, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I find the current basic explanation awkward and clunky... Instead it should generalize/skip through the unimportant parts, like "The comic shows restaurant search filters, with normal settings of Hours, Rating, and Price, each set to defaults. These controls are greyed out, showing they're not the point. In full colour and circled in red is a setting for Current Noise Level.". Seems much more straightforward than what's there right now. Also, explaining "Any" as "limitless" sounds like that author missed the meaning, this simply means the user doesn't care, this is not a filter the user wishes to use at this time, it's to disable this filter. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:53, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
:Generally agree. (Though "limitless" here means that there is no upper limit, surely. It doesn't mean that it ''must'' be infinitely loud, any more than it ''must'' be actually 85db, as it is currently set ...but if you've got a better word?) Please do feel free to edit it if you're convinced you can do it better. The worst that can happen is that someone edits it back/elsewise because they think it's not good enough. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.158|172.70.162.158]] 18:21, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
: Agreed. There's been an increasing trend in recent 'explanations' to effectively replicate the transcript in the first two or three paragraphs, which isn't particularly... explanatory.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.170|172.70.162.170]] 08:05, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

User talk:ClassicalGames

2023-05-17T02:36:37Z

172.70.162.170:

You can create pages.

I've changed my password for you. [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 23:00, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

:Thank you. You can change your password back and continue to use your own computer. [[User:ClassicalGames|ClassicalGames]] ([[User talk:ClassicalGames|talk]]) 07:28, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
::As a computer security professional, can I just internally scream at this whole premise of a scenario? If it's even a real premise. I'm not convinced. But bad practice, regardless. And even more bad to publicly announce such things when you would clearly have had another more private back-channel (or even in-person chat) that you used to coordinate the initial request through, without then 'going public' with such inanities. You're liable to being modded out of existence, in some places, for even suggesting that you're sharing accounts.
::Look, kids, whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own server-rooms (whether with a 'friend' or even on your own) is all well and good, but the message should be to ''always'' practice Safe Hex. And "oral hex" doesn't mean that you have to indiscretely talk about it afterwards! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.172|172.71.242.172]] 12:34, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
- Don't wait for him to acknowledge. He would ignore your post.
- He logged in several times but paid no attention!!!!!
- - If not for him, it's a useful message to others. And don't delete others' contributions if they aren't spam/scam/vulgar/wrong/etc. And the above is none of those. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.170|172.70.162.170]] 02:36, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

:: Done! [[User:ChristmasGospel|ChristmasGospel]] ([[User talk:ChristmasGospel|talk]]) 22:54, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2480: No, The Other One

2023-05-15T22:28:20Z

172.70.162.170:

We might want a table for this comic, with three columns: one for the name of the town, one for which state the copycat is in, and one for the original. We could also add a column for "why the original is well known," but that might be a bit much. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.124|108.162.245.124]] 20:38, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
: I agree, this feels like a very table-able comic. Especially to get all the cities and not make readers try to see "hey, did I miss one?" [[Special:Contributions/172.70.117.158|172.70.117.158]] 20:49, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
:: I think the term copy-cat should not be used here, since Lincoln, IL, for instance is older and carries the name longer than Lincoln, NE.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.74|162.158.88.74]] 21:05, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
::: Although the people in Lincoln, UK (also Boston, Washington, Richmond, Plymouth, Newhaven...) might have prior claims - Richmond is an even more interesting case, in fact. And of course I also recognise Lisbon and others. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.244|141.101.98.244]] 21:26, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
:::: May I suggest merging the first two columns and just listing [City, State] under "Place name in comic"? [[User:MajorBurns|MajorBurns]] ([[User talk:MajorBurns|talk]]) 21:38, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

In the map there are (at least) three Lincoln, two Jamestown, five Houston... [[User:Vdm|Vdm]] ([[User talk:Vdm|talk]]) 20:52, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
: There is a Jamestown in NY and PA also. I would expect to find a Jamestown in at least half of the states. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 22:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

There seems to be an extra dot in the northeast corner of Colorado - It looks like it might correspond with the Atlanta label, but there is no Atlanta in Colorado. Based on the position of the dot I'm guessing it may correspond to Akron or Yuma.--[[User:MajorBurns|MajorBurns]] ([[User talk:MajorBurns|talk]]) 21:56, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
: Google Maps says there's an Atlanta, Colorado, but it is in the south-east corner of the state, not where the dot is. It looks like it is in the middle of nowhere outside of Springfield. [[User:Blaisepascal|Blaisepascal]] ([[User talk:Blaisepascal|talk]]) 00:42, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Jersey Shore PA - I just drove from New Jersey across the state of Pennsylvania, and saw the sign for Jersey Shore in the mountains in the middle of PA. What the? Turns out there was a town founded by two brothers from New Jersey called Waynesburg. When a neighboring town wanted to insult them by calling them "Jersey Shore" they went ahead and officially made Jersey Shore the name of the town. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore,_Pennsylvania]. I wonder how many people turn off the highway in the middle of PA wanting to go to the Jersey Shore hundreds of miles away. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 22:06, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Why no Hollywood, Florida? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,_Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood,_Florida]
: Same reason there's no Richmond, Dublin, or Pittsburg (admittedly, a different spelling), California, just to name some of the closest ones to me. The map would be solid black if it labeled every "other one." [[User:Borglord|Borglord]] ([[User talk:Borglord|talk]]) 01:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

..''No'' Springfields? Really? There's gotta be 30+ of them! [[User:Danish|Danish]] ([[User talk:Danish|talk]]) 02:00, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
:The comic doesn't seem to include the duplicates that are fairly well known, like Hollywood, FL. And the prevalence of Springfield is well known due to "The Simpsons". I think Groening chose that name ''because'' it wouldn't be associated with any particular state. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

`The most frequently occurring community name varies through the years. In a past year, it was "Midway" with 212 occurrences and "Fairview" in second with 202. More recently, "Fairview" counted 288 and "Midway" 256. The name "Springfield" is often thought to be the only community name appearing in each of the 50 States, but at last count it was in only 34 states.` https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-most-common-citytown-name-united-states [[User:Steve|Steve]] ([[User talk:Steve|talk]]) 02:48, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

The comic has been updated to remove Charlestown and move Salem, CT. The extra dot in Colorado remains, however. The image attachment has been updated, but I think I'm still seeing the cached version. [[User:Orion205|Orion205]] ([[User talk:Orion205|talk]]) 03:47, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
: While we're on the subject, I thought it was more likely referencing {{w|Charles Town, West Virginia|Charles Town, WV}}. There are quite a lot of {{w|Charlestown}} locations and I don't think any of them are particularly famous. Which is probably why it was removed. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 13:54, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Since so many of the names are duplicated multiple times, shouldn't the title be "No, ''An'' Other One"? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:06, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm surprised he missed Minneapolis, Kansas (about 75 miles west of Manhattan). Though maybe it would've made Kansas too crowded. --[[User:Aaron of Mpls|Aaron of Mpls]] ([[User talk:Aaron of Mpls|talk]])

:I'm surprised he missed Duluth, GA too, but we can't have everything we want. ( --Don from Rochester . . . but not from New York ;^) Oh yeah; there's also a Buffalo in MN too. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.190|172.70.34.190]] 11:00, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

::In Indiana, there's also another Nashville, another Columbus, a Kokomo... even a Mexico. If every fairly well-known place name were included, wherever it was duplicated, it would need one of those scrollable mega-maps, just to fit it all. -- Just visiting from Indiana, 12:53 UTC 24 June 2021

I'd like to see a map of all these. Lines linking each of the dots to the location of the more famous town. Possibly with lines in different colours connecting to the oldest and largest other ones, where they're not the same as the most famous one. (I suspect a significant number of the "oldest" lines would point off the right edge of the image) [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 08:37, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

:There's also a Bowling Green, Missouri. [[User:WhiteDragon|WhiteDragon]] ([[User talk:WhiteDragon|talk]]) 13:12, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I wish Lansing Illinois (just south of Chicago off I-80) had made the list. When I was traveling there for work, our hotel reservations were frequently messed up, because the central booking office had us in Michigan. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.144|172.70.130.144]] 13:17, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
: Reminds me of the time a "Microsoft tech support" scammer called and claimed to be calling from Lansing despite obviously being in a call center in India. When we asked what state Lansing was in, he claimed to be calling from "Lansing, Miami." [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.121|172.69.63.121]] 13:41, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I feel like there is an opportunity for adding "Other examples not in comic" such as Brooklyn, Iowa or the absurd number of Mount Pleasants [[User:OddOod|OddOod]] ([[User talk:OddOod|talk]])

: At first, I thought about suggesting this, as well. But, it would be an enormous list (orders of magnitude longer than the ones that _are_ in the comic), and therefore not really tenable. For example, I sometimes describe the place I live as being on the line from Jamaica to Florida, adjacent to Jacksonville and just off Halifax. That's Florida, MA and the rest in southern Vermont. That's four just within 20 miles of where I sit. Also, I grew up in Bristol (RI, not England), but there are about 40 places in the US with that name. And, on a different tack the nearby "city" actually promotes itself in being the _only_ place named Brattleboro. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 22:27, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

I can't believe they missed Dublin and/or Albany in the SF bay area in California!

I actually have a place in Bangor,NY it confuses people all the time [[User:Mr.Do|Mr.Do]]

Is the {{w|Washington_(state)|State of Washington}} not considered more significant than a mere district? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.149|172.69.35.149]] 18:14, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
: I mean, Washington DC is the capital of the entire country, so both are very significant. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.97|172.69.33.97]] 20:08, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Ontario, CA - I have gotten packages that originated in Ontario, CA and wondered why they were shipping from Canada, until I realized that they were coming from Ontario, California. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 20:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

How did Lebanon come to be such a popular name (sixth most common according to the Wikipedia list)? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.182|162.158.92.182]] 09:04, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

How about entries for what the lesser-known city is known for? I can start: Austin MN is home of Hormel, maker of Spam, and features the Spam Museum. Who is next? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.58|172.70.126.58]] 10:29, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
:Richmond, VT is home of a person (also apparently given the job of "Weigher Of Coal") who helped to establish the name of Spam (as in unwanted advertising)... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.79|141.101.99.79]] 11:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

So, anyway, the Transcript is both empty and marked incomplete. Really, it would at best be a Transcriptised non-tabular list of the named places, grouped to their 'other one' states. I can't see much more that can be done, save for "line-drawn state lines and dots" being mentioned. It's very much an inferior copy of the table itself, but definitely should be there to fulfil the general needs of the Transcript. I'll do it myself if nobody else has (or otherwise resolved) by the time the next comic goes up. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.79|141.101.99.79]] 11:14, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
:Agree that there should be a transcript. It should mention what type of map and that all states have their abbreviation in gray text. Then proceed approximately in reading order giving each states abbreviation and then the cities mentioned in each state. That would be great. Do not have the time the next week, else this was something I often have done with large transcripts. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:54, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
::I prepped a version that satisfies almost all your demands, already, except that it's arranged alphabetical to state ID, because that seemed more logical to dive into than to try a 'reading order' of any kind. I also took a couple of other small liberties with the usual Transcript notation to improve understanding, not having found a prior example that has done this in a 'better' way. I'll pop it in right now and then leave it to the multitudinous Gods Of Wikiediting to correct it, 'correct' it, improve it and 'improve' it as they see fit. Fill yer boots! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.124|141.101.98.124]] 21:42, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

here is a challenge: find a regex that matches all the cities in this map in the top half of the US, but not the ones in the bottom half. have fun and dont use the auto-regex-golf thing, thats just no fun. :) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.7|172.69.63.7]] 16:40, 25 June 2021 (UTC)Bumpf
:Unless I misunderstand you, it's probably impossible. Houston in Ohio is in the top half of the map (however you define that line) while the Houston in the usual Alaska map-discontinuity is in the bottom half of the map. And I bet that a moment's search will find others amongst the shared names. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.104|141.101.99.104]] 17:35, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
::Bowling Green (OH and FL) splits even on true latitude, at well within each band of top/bottom value ranges. Assuming you don't add the home-state code (which could be the only thing needed to even try to regex, if you do), there's no wedge you can apply. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.105|162.158.158.105]] 22:10, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
:Using Automatic tools is always fun! fun-ctional. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.183|162.158.91.183]] 12:32, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Bloomington MN is an odd one — it is both larger
by area and by population than Bloomington IN! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.206|141.101.98.206]] 20:31, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
:Bloomington, IL is comparable in population and slightly larger in area than Bloomington, IN; Bloomington, MN has IL beat in both metrics. If counting Bloominton-Normal, IL as one twinned city, it easily beats both [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.87|172.70.130.87]] 01:51, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
Even if there's no plans for a wall around Mexico, NY, maybe that's who Trump expected would pay for his wall. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 13:19, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm really annoyed that he included Portland. Doesn't everybody know about Portland, ME?

NYC here - I had no idea about Portland, ME [[Special:Contributions/172.70.117.92|172.70.117.92]] 01:44, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

Here's how he might have come up with this list. (1) Find all duplicates in a list of U.S. city names. (2) Select the top 100 (searched on the web, occurring on the web, etc.) names (or enough to fill the comic nicely). An alternate (2) is select the top 100 (or some number) largest cities of those.
Moscow,ID

I likewise wondered about the omission of Hollywood, FL (as well as Miami, OH) but it’s true that it can’t list every single one. It would be interesting to list some of the other pronunciation differences, as is currently done for Newark. (E.g., Albany, GA is pronounced al-BEN-ee) [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 18:15, 2 July 2021 (UTC)
:I think you mean Oxford, Ohio; home to Miami ''University''. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami,_Ohio] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.117|162.158.166.117]] 07:28, 15 July 2021 (UTC)
:There's also Cleveland, Mississippi; Princeton, Indiana; and Jackson, New Jersey. [[User:JsfasdF252|JsfasdF252]] ([[User talk:JsfasdF252|talk]]) 00:18, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

In the New England area, there are quite a few towns with duplicate names, probably brought over with the colonists. Seems all the New England states have a Milford, a Bedford, a Plymouth, A Belmont, a Winchester...

How do you miss London, OH?

There are places in China whose name literally translates to "Pennsylvania", "Connecticut"{{citation needed}} and "Texas" respectively, and this can lead to confusing translations on public signs. Imagine that you see "Welcome to Pennsylvania" in China. {{citation needed}} Additionally, a word that literally translates to "Washington" can be found in names of apartment groups. {{citation needed}} --[[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 10:45, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, there are 3 places called Buda in the US – [[wikipedia:Buda, Texas|a city in Texas]], [[wikipedia:Buda, Illinois|a village in Illinois]] and [[wikipedia:Buda, Nebraska|an unincorporated community in Nebraska]]. In the same county as the latter, there is also a city called [[wikipedia:Ravenna, Nebraska|Ravenna]] and a township called [[wikipedia:Odessa, Nebraska|Odessa]]. There are so many place names in the US that are homographs or homophones of other place names (both in and outside the US) that they just require a much bigger map. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.126|172.68.50.126]] 20:09, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
:Just done a bit of checking, and currently Washington seems to be the most popular US placename (named for the person, I would imagine, rather than the ancestral home that he was patronimically named for), then Springfield (descriptively geonymic, probably), Franklin (again, mostly for the man?) and Greenville (another geonym). ((Above, "Midway" and others were mentioned, it's possible that my checked list has a different qualifying criterium than the list looked at for that answer.)
:Looking worldwide, San José has thousands of examples, by some counts, but also with a heavy emphasis on "San"s and "Santa"s in that obvious thematic vein as you continue down that particular list. Maybe a few "no horse" 'town's in that tally, though.
:In the UK, we have almost a dozen Newports, scattered around. And more if you count names with Newport in them, like Newport Pagnell. Which (as an example) is 70 miles from the sea, but then Newport (as it was, give or take spelling, in Norman and even pre-Norman times before being gifted to the Pagnell family) actually means "New ''Market-town''", just to indicate why you shouldn't expect all Newports to be coastal (or on significantly navigable trading rivers of some historic note). – And there are dozens of Newport places in the US, but how many are purely descriptive of originally being an actual new ''port'' and how many are more just imitative of original places (or named for people, themselves named for places of (familial) origin) in a suitable/unsuitable geophysical locale to match the inference, I wouldn't care to say. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.170|172.70.162.170]] 22:28, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

784: Falling Asleep

2023-05-13T13:01:07Z

172.70.162.170: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number =784
| date =August 25, 2010
| title =Falling Asleep
| image =falling_asleep.png
| titletext =Sweet unintersecting dreams!
}}

==Explanation==
The first two panels of this strip seem romantic and sentimental, as it's common to hear that people sleep better next to people they love. Then the second to last panel starts a feeling that it might be going wrong, and then the very last panel reveals that [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are actually going through some relationship trouble, because Cueball uses her presence as a good reason for leaving this world behind. He does, however, not intend to commit suicide to escape from her and the world; he just wishes to escape by falling asleep (either that, or it's a double-meaning joke based on the fact that he's about to fall out of the bed).

As the title text reveals, he also wishes to avoid her in his dreams, as he wishes their dreams do not intersect - i.e. he hopes he will not dream of her (and vice versa). The opposite of "I'll see you in my dreams".

The cartoon seems to be a homage to the webcomic [http://www.asofterworld.com/ a softer world], which takes the same format.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball gets into bed.]
:It's so much easier
:falling asleep

:[Megan is lying in bed, gripping her pillow.]
:With you beside me—

:[Cueball is lying on his back in bed.]
:All the incentive I need

:[Full shot of the bed, Megan is on the left, gripping the pillow, Cueball is as far to the right as possible, nearly falling off, facing away from her.]
:To leave the world behind.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Romance]]

1324: Weather

2023-05-11T21:27:06Z

172.70.162.170: Undo revision 312895 by LostXOR (talk) I can actually see why it was mentioned. Modified revert, to make that more obvious/phrase better. Alternate 'record' might be more apt, but works as a fact.

{{comic
| number = 1324
| date = January 31, 2014
| title = Weather
| image = weather.png
| titletext = At least if you're really into, like, Turkish archaeology, store clerks aren't like 'hey, how 'bout those Derinkuyu underground cities!' when they're trying to be polite.
}}
==Explanation==
Social norm accepts casual small-talk as an ice breaker for interaction — usually it is always safe to talk about the weather without hitting any disagreements as there are rarely any personal viewpoints about the weather — in contrast small-talk is never about political subjects or similar where chances are that there are strong personal viewpoints.

In this strip [[Cueball]] is described a "weather geek", enjoying subjects such as {{w|meteorology}} and {{w|weather forecasting}}. When [[Hairy]] makes a comment about the weather, Cueball launches into a detailed technical discussion, not realizing Hairy is simply trying to engage in small-talk. Only weather geeks would have this problem, but this topic is a common opening for a conversation in casual small-talk. Cueball switches to small-talk once he realizes that Hairy is confused and didn't expect this level of technical information.

As to the jargon:
*{{w|Jet stream|Jet streams}} are strong air currents high in the atmosphere which have a big influence on the weather.
*18z is 18:00 {{w|Coordinated Universal Time|UTC}} (6 PM in London, 10 AM in California). See {{w|ISO 8601}} at Wikipedia. The letter "Z" is used as 'Zulu' in the {{w|NATO phonetic alphabet}}, meaning just UTC.
*GFS is the {{w|Global Forecast System}} (also known as NCEP-GFS). It is a computer model used by the {{w|National Weather Service}} to predict the weather up to 16 days in advance. The model is run 4 times a day and the output is distinguished by the UTC hour it was started (18z in this case).
*Part of the prediction is the {{w|atmospheric pressure}} expressed in {{w|Bar (unit)|millibars}} (or mb). 960 mb is very low pressure, which is usually associated with seriously bad weather (for comparison, the record low pressure for Minnesota was 963 mb until 1998).
*"Think it'll verify?": A forecast "verifies" when an analysis of observations at the forecast time are found to match the forecast. Cueball is asking if Hairy thinks the prediction of a 960 mb low will be shown to have been correct.

The title text clarifies the problem weather nuts like Cueball here have: Unlike other geeky pursuits (like, say, the {{w|Derinkuyu Underground City|Derinkuyu Underground Cities}}, [[1368: One Of The|one of the]] most well-known {{w|History of Turkey|archaeological sites in Turkey}}) weather is a fairly common small talk subject. As a result, weather geeks have to be constantly vigilant so as not to launch into technical monologues.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Hairy are talking.]
:Hairy: So, how 'bout this weather?
:Cueball: I ''know,'' right? The whole jet stream layer is ''nuts!''
:Hairy: Um, sure...
:Cueball: The 18z GFS forecasts 960mb by Tuesday. Think it'll verify?
:Hairy: What?
:Cueball: ...Right. Sorry. Uh, yeah! Weather sure has been crazy.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Weather geeks have it tough.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]
[[Category:Weather]]

Talk:2659: Unreliable Connection

2023-04-13T09:32:26Z

172.70.162.170: You don't alter others' posts for trivial reasons. It's a slippery slope.

I don’t think this has anything to do with teleconferencing. Am I missing something? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.81|172.70.214.81]] 22:46, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
:Yes. The impliction is that people are expecting you to be available for online communications, and you can use the unreliable Internet connection as an excuse to get out of it. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 22:51, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
::I think it's more about communication in general. He doesn't want anybody calling him or sending him emails, so by saying he has an "unreliable" connection people might assume it will be hard to get in touch with him.
:::Back in the day, email was usually configured so that it could easily overcome such unreliability, and it's still doable,[https://discourse.mailinabox.email/t/running-from-home/6459/7] but today email for most people is a web or local client-server app, as opposed to a local mail store in a peer-to-peer app. Even people in urban areas can suffer unreliable internet, when squirrels or backhoes gnaw through data cables, copper theives strike, or 5G mind control base stations are congested. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.143|172.70.210.143]] 23:45, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
:::This could equally cover other instant communication methods where your availability is advertised (e.g. Whatsapp). It could also be about alleviating the social pressure the subject feels to continuously check and immediately respond to messages (including emails), because the immediacy is already hindered by the spotty connection (cf the standard "I will have limited access to email" out of office line, which gives the account owner psychological permission to check it infrequently). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.5|172.70.85.5]] 09:02, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

According to a PhET simulator (https://phet.colorado.edu/sims/html/plinko-probability/latest/plinko-probability_en.html) for this situation, the ideal standard deviation is 1.732 and ideal mean is 6. I don’t feel like doing the calculations :P [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 23:34, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
:If we assume 50-50 for each bounce, the probability that internet is off will be about (11 choose 3)/(2^11), or 8%.--[[User:Account|Account]] ([[User talk:Account|talk]]) 23:51, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
::My first thought was, why so complicated? ''If'' each of the twelve switches is equally (and solely) likely to be struck by each ball, it's (100/12)% of the time, or 8⅓%.
::Although the equal-chance is wrong, so you're definitely doing "end up with exactly 7 bounce rights and 3 bounce lefts, but in any combination" or similar are you? I'd have summed it differently, though. And not sure where the choose ''3'' comes in... Just one bounce left off any row-end pin 11 sends to 11 if all others bounce right. Three bounces left hits switch 9, not eight. If I'm counting correctly. Or am I doing telegraph-poles/wires miscounting?
::Too early in the morning for me to untangle. The only thing I'm sure about is your division by 2^11 (how many total paths there are to get down). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.78|172.70.91.78]] 05:00, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
:::Me again. I hadn't checked that the transcript (which said it was switch #8) was correct. Have now, and found it to be wrong. Have hence also just corrected the Transcript. So I'm gonna assume your 11-choose-3 is entirely correct after all. ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.78|172.70.91.78]] 05:08, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
:It's actually 12 switches, not 11, but that doesn't affect the math too much. I originally thought "off" was switch 10, which would have changed the math (to 3%), but that's just the one the current ball hit. The actual "off" switch is switch 9. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]])
::It previously said that there were eleven "on" switches and one "off" switch (which is twelve in total, but it didn't add them up explicitly), and the change to say that there are 12 Ons and 1 Off made it wrong. I corrected/rephrased it (see if you agree with however it looks by the time you get around to reading this) to avoid that reading error (one which happened to me with my own first glance at the phrasing used, but I thought that was just me at the time) without adding any new misinterpretation or easy misinterpretationality.
::The maths above is indeed correct enough. The 2^11 relates to the total number of unique paths it can take (assuming a bounce left/right just enough to strike the nearest offset pin below to force a new left/right bounce choice) from the first divider through to any of the 11 final left-right pin-bounces (and onto the 12 switches, at which point we're not bothered with the bouncing - diagram suggests the balls leap outwards and don't hit any other switches).
::"11 choose 3" is a way how to ask, given 11 items (possible bounces), how many unique and unordered combinations of exactly 3 of these must exist (leftward-bounces, the rest being right-bounces) to filter onto the off-connected switch. (This is the same as "11 choose 8", if you decide to ask how many right-bounces are necessary, the rest being left-bounces.) That could be layer 1 (the 1-pin), 2 (the 2-pins) and 3 (...), before going consistently right to the final strike of the switch, or layers 9+10+11 (after being pure-right 1..8), but with many intermediate tracks across the pin-spacs (165 in total, as it happens; and it would be 55 to hit switch 10. Or 2, instead of 3, if you orientate things the other way round).
:: 165/2048 (paths hitting the off-switch (at #9) divided by all paths that might happen) is a tad over 8%. On the assumption that it's fair and unbiased and you don't get more rattling around than a simple (single half-step) left/right distribution. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.78|172.70.91.78]] 03:20, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

To whomever did [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2659:_Unreliable_Connection&diff=292862&oldid=292861], doesn't [https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2018/8817/pdf/LIPIcs-FUN-2018-26.pdf] prove that symmetrical configurations nearly identical to those shown can produce uniform distributions? They seem to show it's just a matter of horizontal pin spacing. However, I for one can not verify the proof, which uses unusual (novel?) non-Unicode math notation, and a fairly opaque method of proof. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 00:07, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
:Not sure, but [https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%98%E8%AA%BF%E6%95%B4 this Japanese Wikipedia article] is fascinating. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.213|172.70.206.213]] 01:51, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
:Please see section 3.5 on pp. 16-18 of the currently first reference [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.05706.pdf]. I am particularly intrigued by, "Open Problem 2: Is every uniform distribution of output probabilities of the form 1/2k constructible by a 50-50 Pachinko?" on p. 18. However I haven't dived in enough to even know where the parentheses are supposed to be in that expression, yet. [[User:Liv2splain|Liv2splain]] ([[User talk:Liv2splain|talk]]) 17:27, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
: Good question! https://ibb.co/sRwGwB9 don't look triangular, but it seems the proof might suggest much more triangular solutions. Worth thinking about! [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.115|172.69.33.115]] 21:24, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

What is the chance that the ball will bounce off the first pin, go down the outside of the pins and miss all the switches?
:Probably quite high if it's a bouncy ball. With idealized physics though it'd just hit the leftmost/rightmost switch. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.254.127|172.70.254.127]] 00:45, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I would describe the device as a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton_board. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.230.109|172.70.230.109]] 00:30, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

I was watching the photo and hover-over text and the image disappeared and "Unreliable Connection" showed up in its place. I don't know how often this happens.
: Very neat if not a fluke! Can anyone replicate this experience on https://xkcd.com ? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.134|172.70.211.134]] 14:21, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

"An added source of humour is that Randall could likely achieve the same effect by looking through the router's settings - which most modern ones have a feature to turn on and off at scheduled times - or via purchasing a smart power strip." But by using these other methods, the connection would still be reliable. If it goes out at regular or pre-scheduled intervals then you know when it will be available or not, hence reliable. I think the joke here is that the contraption does in fact make the connection unreliable. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.77|172.70.114.77]] 14:18, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
: Addressed at [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2659:_Unreliable_Connection&diff=292926&oldid=292924]. [[User:Liv2splain|Liv2splain]] ([[User talk:Liv2splain|talk]]) 14:44, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
:(Edit conflicted by at least the above, but my answer to the same question...) From a user POV, unless they happen to know that at 11:53 each day (and 12:14, 15:02, 15:07, 16:31, etc...) the scheduler disables tracfic for one (or two, or three) minutes, it is still unreliable, if ultimately predictable ''once you know'' the schedule, having seen it go round a few times and taken note. Similarly a timered power-strip could be used (or even several, in serial, the two or three daily interventions by the first also stopping and delaying the subsequent strips' interventions, making their timings uneven, further down the chain) and until you got the pattern it might as well be 'random', not entirely deterministic. (I'm wondering about some OR-gate-like/etc implementation, so power can pass by at least one parallel timer-shut-off to maintain power at the lower levels while ''some'' mid-way timers get depowered and thus 'shuffled' in interesting ways, and the resulting single output is governed by an intricate multi-dependent set of routes, but I bet an electrician would be wary about wiring that up...)
:You could hack (or patch) the management firmware to be a bit more (pseudo)random about it, though it would still be pseudorandom LFSR/Xorshift with a (long) repetition cycle.
:Or make it dependant upon an external factor (if the modulo 12 of the cumulative sum of all observed packet-destination IPs is zero, shut off for the five times the prior modulo 12 test value, in seconds..?), but that's ''practically'' the pachinko solution but with software hacking rather than hardware-making/hacking as per the comic.
:More effort is needed to make it ultimately unpredictable, but it can still be considered unreliable if it goes out just when you 'want' it.... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.5|172.70.85.5]] 15:02, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

For real though, isn't this kind of a good idea? [[User:Fephisto|Fephisto]] ([[User talk:Fephisto|talk]]) 14:34, 16 August 2022 (UTC)
:Talk to edtech people in the {{w|MOOC}} space and they will tell you asynchronous is worth it, but talk to people who study educational quality factors like time to receive answers to unanticipated questions, and they will have different ideas. [[User:Liv2splain|Liv2splain]] ([[User talk:Liv2splain|talk]]) 14:44, 16 August 2022 (UTC)

Does anyone have an openWRT (or other) implementation of this feature yet?
:You can induce it on stock firmware without reflashing, but you need to know the parameters like how often balls come out of the hopper, and what exactly the on/off switches do. As pseudocode:
::<tt>#!/bin/sh</tt>
::<tt>while true ; do</tt>
:::<tt>sleep </tt>''seconds''
:::<tt>if [ `rand100` -le 8 ] ; then</tt>
::::<tt>wifictrl off</tt>
:::<tt>else</tt>
::::<tt>wifictrl on</tt>
:::<tt>fi</tt>
::<tt>done</tt>
:[[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.81|172.70.214.81]] 00:38, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

There are spaces between the button that the balls can fall into, and this could complicate the stuff a bit. However if the ratio between probability of hitting ON and probability of hitting OFF remain the same (1883:165), the average OFF time will still be the same (165/2048 of the time). The behavior that the network is switching between ON and OFF will probably be changed though. [[User:Lamty101|Lamty101]] ([[User talk:Lamty101|talk]]) 04:44, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

I would have expected the negative reviews to have mentioned all the balls on the floor and perhaps the need to periodically refill the hopper. [[User:Philhower|Philhower]] ([[User talk:Philhower|talk]]) 16:18, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
:If it's a Pachinko machine instead of just a Galton board, then refilling the hopper is done automatically by robotics behind the back wall of the device. Someday remind me to tell you about the Japanese recession caused by out-of-work hopper refillers when that innovation was introduced. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.95|172.70.206.95]] 02:12, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

There is an online chat program called UC and it had stopped upgrading since 2012. Many people stopped using it probably due to its "unreliable connection". [[User:Unreliable Connection|2659: Unreliable Connection]] ([[User talk:Unreliable Connection|talk]]) 02:05, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

2759: Easily Confused Acronyms

2023-04-06T15:49:15Z

172.70.162.170: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2759
| date = April 5, 2023
| title = Easily Confused Acronyms
| image = easily_confused_acronyms_2x.png
| imagesize = 557x444px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 'Lever' was originally an acronym for Load Emplification by the Vimulated Emission of Radiation.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a RIGHT OMPLIFICATION BY THE BIMULATED OMISSION OF TADIATION - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, [[Randall]] compared the Acronym "Laser" with various other five-letter acronyms. He first explained the "Laser" and "Maser" correctly, but the following three are simply the full name of "Laser" with the first word and initials changed. The replacement first word is correct for these acronyms, but the other words formed from changing the first letter are nonsense.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
!Acronym !! Comic !! Actual
|-
| {{w|LASER}} || Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation || Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation
|-
| {{w|MASER}} || Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation || Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation
|-
| {{w|SONAR}} || Sound Omplification by the Nimulated Amission of Radiation || SOnic Navigation And Ranging
|-
| {{w|RADAR}} || Radio Amplification by the Dimulated Amission of Radiation || RAdio Detection And Ranging
|-
| {{w|LIDAR}} || Light Implification by the Dimulated Amission of Radiation || LIght Detection And Ranging
|-
| {{w|lever}} (title text) || |Load Emplification by the Vimulated Emission of Radiation. || ''(not an acronym in common usage)''
|}

Laser and maser are true-to-life acronyms. The remaining 3 words' true meanings are as follows: sonar is short for "sound/sonic navigation and ranging", radar for "radio detection and ranging", lidar for "light detection and ranging". (Note that these 3 each include the second letter from their first word in the acronym.)

The three false definitions simply suppose that all 5 of the acronyms follow the same model and swap out the necessary letters to fit, in a square-peg-round-hole manner.

The title text extends this to the 5-letter word "lever". This is an ordinary word (derived from the French word ''levier'', which share the same definition), not an acronym at all. Levers have been used since time immemorial (even [https://quatr.us/physics/levers-simple-machines-physics.htm animals have been known to use them)], and predates high-tech uses of radiation by millennia (it's one of the {{w|simple machines}} that {{w|Archimedes}} studied in Ancient Greece). [https://www.etymonline.com/word/lever#etymonline_v_9445 Etymonline] traces the origin of the word to the year 1300, from the French "levier."

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:Easily-confused acronyms cheat sheet

:Laser

:Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation

:Maser

:Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation

:Sonar

:Sound Omplification by the Nimulated Emission of Radiation

:Radar

:Radio Amplification by the Dimulated Amission of Radiation

:Lidar

:Light Implification by the Dimulated Amission of Radiation

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Science]]
[[Category: Language]]

2656: Scientific Field Prefixes

2023-03-29T14:12:00Z

172.70.162.170: /* Table with explanations */

{{comic
| number = 2656
| date = August 8, 2022
| title = Scientific Field Prefixes
| image = scientific_field_prefixes.png
| titletext = Massage: Theoretical (10), Quantum (6), High-energy (2), Computational (1), Marine (1), Astro- (None)
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a Quantum Dentist - Fill in this [[#Table with explanations|table with explanations]]. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
{{w|Google Scholar}} is a search engine for academic publications, and [[Randall]] has been having fun with it.

Randall searches for various terms that are composed of some common prefixes and common suffixes, but not always commonly associated with each other in each possible combination, and tabulates the results. See this [[#Table with numbers|table with numbers]] for easy overview.

This reveals some very commonly used full terms like "{{w|Theoretical Physics}}", the most discovered, which represents almost four million hits compared to the next highest, "{{w|Computational Biology}}", with almost 3 million hits and {{w|Astrophysics}} with 2 million hits. Ducking just below 1 million hits is fourth placing {{w|Marine Biology}}. Of the 42 possible fields just 14 have more than 100,000 hits, and only four more have over 10,000.

But there are also some that have much lower numbers, eight with fewer than 10 hits in the table. "High-Energy Psychology" and "Marine Dentistry" have just one apparent occurrence each (equivalent to a {{w|Googlewhack}}), whilst there are no hits at all recorded for four of the initially combined terms. In total (with the title text) there are 48 fields, see a full [[#List of Scientific fields|list of scientific fields]] below.

An explanation for both existing and fictive scientific fields can be given below in the [[#Table with explanations|table with explanations]].

In the caption to the table Randall list four potential research opportunities i.e. those with no hits in the table: Quantum Dentistry, High-Energy Dentistry, Astrodentistry, and High-Energy Theology

He thus suggests that, because of the (apparent) lack of current studies in these specialized sub-fields, there may be unexplored potential for a study. This could be that the more "used" areas have far too much competition and be might already be "used up" for potentially useful discoveries. (This does not account for how much 'study space' might be available in a given box of research, even though Randall has previously hinted that anything "Astro"-related is potentially [[2640: The Universe by Scientific Field|full of many things to study]].)
Of course the real reason for no one studying these fields are that they make no sense. {{w|Dentistry}} is related to fixing peoples teeth. The quantum world has no effect on human teeth{{Citation needed}}, and high-energy bombardment of a human's mouth may also be a bit dangerous (although x-rays and radiation treatment in the mouth could be seen as high energy). Astrodentistry is not really relevant if seeing this as something used on humans. Of course astronauts might need dentistry while in space, but it would be a stretch to call the study of dentistry in zero-G, "astrodentistry". "High-energy Theology" as a term, seems more likely to have been used...

In the title text Randall lists the figures for another 'major' field suffix, {{w|Massage}}, and the numbers of its prefixed forms. From this, we learn that Astromassage is another 'open' field that is currently unstudied, but none of the five others have more than 10. Probably the most surprising aspect of the title text is that there are hits for both quantum massage and high-energy massage.

===Table with numbers===
*Here the table is presented with only numbers, so it can be sorted.
**Massage from the title text has been added.
{|class="wikitable sortable"
!
! Physics
! Chemistry
! Biology
! Engineering
! Psychology
! Theology
! Dentistry
! Massage
|-
| Theoretical
| 3990000
| 445000
| 553000
| 2460
| 15500
| 726
| 41
| 10
|-
| Quantum
| 478000
| 740000
| 7620
| 21100
| 699
| 447
| 0
| 6
|-
| High-Energy
| 844000
| 9600
| 3
| 119
| 1
| 0
| 0
| 2
|-
| Computational
| 510000
| 599000
| 2910000
| 67400
| 4620
| 40
| 11
| 1
|-
| Marine
| 3920
| 136000
| 945000
| 108000
| 35
| 6
| 1
| 1
|-
| Astro-
| 2010000
| 20600
| 226000
| 430
| 64
| 580
| 0
| 0
|}

===List of Scientific fields===
This is included for easy reading of the numbers:
*Theoretical Physics: 3,990,000
*Theoretical Chemistry: 445,000
*Theoretical Biology: 553,000
*Theoretical Engineering: 2,460
*Theoretical Psychology: 15,500
*Theoretical Theology: 726
*Theoretical Dentistry: 41
*Theoretical Massage: 10
*Quantum Physics: 478,000
*Quantum Chemistry: 740,000
*Quantum Biology: 7,620
*Quantum Engineering: 21,100
*Quantum Psychology: 699
*Quantum Theology: 447
*Quantum Dentistry: None
*Quantum Massage: 6
**5 of these are objections to pseudoscientific healing nonsense. The last is from a Dutch medical text in which one sentence ends with "quantum" and the next begins with "massage", published in 1895 and having nothing to do with quantum mechanics.
*High-Energy Physics: 844,000
*High-Energy Chemistry: 9,600
*High-Energy Biology: 3
**Two of these are for the same conference proceedings about use of accelerators in biological research. The third is from an article which mentions a list of research areas: "extensive programs in chemistry, physics (other than high energy), biology".
*High-Energy Engineering: 119
*High-Energy Psychology: 1
**Job ad from October 31st, 2001, asking for "high energy psychology, speech pathology or special education majors to work with our mildly autistic son"
*High-Energy Theology: None
*High-Energy Dentistry: None
*High-Energy Massage: 2
*Computational Physics: 510,000
*Computational Chemistry: 599,000
*Computational Biology: 2,910,000
*Computational Engineering: 67,400
*Computational Psychology: 4,620
*Computational Theology: 40
*Computational Dentistry: 11
*Computational Massage: 1
**This is an article about modular wearable electronic devices, in the form of clothing, which provide massage.
*Marine Physics: 3,920
*Marine Chemistry: 136,000
*Marine Biology: 945,000
*Marine Engineering: 108,000
*Marine Psychology: 35
*Marine Theology: 6
*Marine Dentistry: 1
**The paper mentions the application of something in "Transportation, Marine, Dentistry, Electronics" and other fields
*Marine Massage: 1
**Article in "Professional Beauty" of 2021, mentioning "An exceptional massage technique with the professional-only Oligo-Marine Massage Cream includes smoothing, relaxing and stretching movements for total relaxation and optimal skin"
*Astrophysics: 2,010,000
*Astrochemistry: 20,600
*Astrobiology: 226,000
*Astroengineering: 430
*Astropsychology: 64
*Astrotheology: 580
*Astrodentistry: None
*Astromassage: None

==Table with explanations==
*Here all 48 fields can be explained in a table:
{|class="wikitable sortable"
! Field
! Number of Searches
! Explanation of field
|-
| Theoretical Physics
| 3990000
| {{w|Theoretical Physics}} is a whole field in itself, with journals made only for that type of physics. Also the one with by far most hits.
|-
| Theoretical Chemistry
| 445000
| {{w|Theoretical chemistry}} is the branch of chemistry which explores the underlying explanations for chemical phenomena, and has major overlaps with Quantum Chemistry.
|-
| Theoretical Biology
| 553000
| {{w|Theoretical biology}} aims at the mathematical representation and modeling of biological processes, using techniques and tools of applied mathematics. It has applications in the modelling of biological systems and evolutionary systems.
|-
| Theoretical Engineering
| 2460
| 'Theoretical engineering' is a term that can be applied to many different types of engineering. A few that can be found on the front page, as of the time of writing, are software engineering, mobile engineering, band engineering and engineering optimisation. The term itself simply talks about the theory to do with those types of engineering.
|-
| Theoretical Psychology
| 15500
| Searching this term yields almost five million results, at the time of writing. According to the [https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ps.04.020153.002251 first result], this branch is the {{w|epistemological}} analysis of psychological science.
|-
| Theoretical Theology
| 726
| Theoretical Theology is a bit of a misnomer, considering that Theology is theoretical from the outset. Theoretical Theology would hence be equivalent to Theology, that is, the systematic study of divine nature and religion in general. Unless, perhaps, it concerns itself with questions of how any given theology would have to be under differing conditions, e.g. how a society would interact under the aegis of different moralities or deitic purposes than those currently understood to exist by that society.
|-
| Theoretical Dentistry
| 41
| While there is theory in dentistry, as with all other sciences, there is no branch of dentistry specifically concerning it{{Citation needed}}.
|-
| Theoretical Massage
| 10
| Theoretical Massage is not a real scientific field{{Citation needed}}, but rather the theory about it, in contrast to the practical application of {{w|Massage|massage}}. This term is most likely to be used in the context of learning or studying massages, for example during the process of becoming a massage therapist. Alternatively this term could refer to the studying of the masses of matter, (or its massage if you will). This would make it a field of physics.
|-
| Quantum Physics
| 478000
| As with Theoretical Physics, above, {{w|Quantum Physics}} is an entire field within itself.
|-
| Quantum Chemistry
| 740000
| A field within chemistry, quantum chemistry is the study of how quantum-level effects extrapolate to chemical properties, such as the shape of electron orbitals.
|-
| Quantum Biology
| 7620
| {{w|Quantum Biology}} is a legitimate field, strange as though it may seem. It also applies another "strange" field elsewhere in this table: theoretical chemistry.
|-
| Quantum Engineering
| 21100
| Quantum engineering is the engineering of technology that uses the laws of quantum mechanics for their operation. It is used in the manufacture of quantum sensors and quantum computers. An emerging field, it is slowly growing alongside the current rise in quantum applications in technology and the push towards quantum computing.
|-
| Quantum Psychology
| 699
| Quantum Psychology is used in a similar manner to Quantum Theology (see below) - a way push pseudoscience under the guise of quantum phenomena. While quantum effects can be seen in the brain, it would mostly fall under the purview of neuroscience.
|-
| Quantum Theology
| 447
| Using 'Quantum' as a buzzword to prop up forms of spirituality is a common form of pseudoscience today, and is used to push fringe beliefs under the illusion of 'quantum phenomena'.
|-
| Quantum Dentistry
| None
| This would presumably be dentistry done on teeth which are too small to be observed on normal levels, or do not exist will also existing.
|-
| Quantum Massage
| 6
| Similar to Quantum Theology, the word 'quantum' is being used as a buzzword to promote massage services which no actual relation to quantum phenomena.
|-
| High-Energy Physics
| 844000
| High-Energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. Also known as particle physics, it is a major subfield of theoretical and quantum physics.
|-
| High-Energy Chemistry
| 9600
| High-Energy Chemistry refers to the chemistry of high-energy compounds.
|-
| High-Energy Biology
| 3
| High-Energy Biology would probably refer to biology at high energies. However, at that point, biology stops being biology and starts being physics.
|-
| High-Energy Engineering
| 119
| High-Energy Engineering would most likely refer to engineering undertaken for high-energy environments. However, this is not a real subfield of engineering and would more likely be done by as a part of another subfield of engineering.
|-
| High-Energy Psychology
| 1
| High-Energy Psychology would presumably refer to psychology done at high energies. However, the result which this refers to is, in fact, an advertisement for a job which requires knowledge of psychology, and the the ability to sustain your energy for a large period of time.
|-
| High-Energy Theology
| None
| High-Energy Theology presumably involves theology performed at extremely high energies. It is unknown if one can find God in a particle accelerator however.{{citation needed}}
|-
| High-Energy Dentistry
| None
| High-Energy Dentistry would most likely involve performing dentistry with high-energy particle beams, which would be incredibly damaging to a human being. High energy lasers do exist and are used in dentistry, however they are orders of magnitude less energetic than the high-energy beams this prefix would refer to.
|-
| High-Energy Massage
| 2
| High-Energy Massage could either mean a massage done with lots of energy, which may or may not be a soothing experience, or a massage that leaves you with lots of energy, which is a claimed benefit by many massage therapists.
|-
| Computational Physics
| 510000
| The field of using computational models to simulate physical systems. Such models are commonly used in both theoretical and applied physics, hence the large number of hits.
|-
| Computational Chemistry
| 599000
| The field of using computational models to simulate chemical systems. Commonly used in the field of theoretical chemistry.
|-
| Computational Biology
| 2910000
| Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. Due to its very high relevance in the fields of genetics, biochemistry, evolution, neuroscience among others, has the highest number of hits for the 'Computational' prefix, and 2nd highest overall.
|-
| Computational Engineering
| 67400
| Computational Engineering is a relatively new discipline that deals with the development and application of computational models for engineering. Being a subfield of engineering, it has a moderate amount of hits.
|-
| Computational Psychology
| 4620
| Computational Psychology, also known as {{w|Computational cognition}} is the study of learning and cognition via mathematical modelling and computer simulation.
|-
| Computational Theology
| 40
| Computational Theology is a very fringe field, that seeks to explore the relations between God, religion and computer science and related phenomena.
|-
| Computational Dentistry
| 11
|Computational Dentistry refers to using artificial intelligence to improve dentistry. This could presumably be used to allow a robot to do troublesome tasks, such as root canals.
|-
| Computational Massage
| 1
| It is unknown what computation would be required for massage, if any. Searches show results for a paper on 'Computational Modeling of Deep Tissue Heating by an Automatic Thermal Massage Bed: Predicting the Effects on Circulation'.
|-
| Marine Physics
| 3920
| Marine Physics is a subfield of oceanography that focuses on the fundamental physical processes in the marine environment and their effects on the biosphere.
|-
| Marine Chemistry
| 136000
| Marine chemistry studies the chemistry of marine environments including the influences of different variables, such as plate tectonics, currents, sediments, pH levels, atmospheric constituents, metamorphic activity, and ecology.
|-
| Marine Biology
| 945000
| Marine biology is the study of marine organisms, their behaviors and interactions with the environment. A very well established subfield of Biology, hence the high number of hits.
|-
| Marine Engineering
| 108000
| Marine engineering is the operation, maintenance and monitoring of mechanical systems aboard marine vessels, including boats, ships and submarines. Moderately known, due to the continued growth of the modern shipping industry.
|-
| Marine Psychology
| 35
| Marine Psychology is a subfield of Psychology that studies psychosocial issues and behavioral and safety concerns inherent in life and careers at sea. It does not refer to the psychology of marine life as one would assume, however.
|-
| Marine Theology
| 6
| Marine Theology is not an organised field of study, and is merely a convinient way to refer to Theology in Marine Biology.
|-
| Marine Dentistry
| 1
| Marine Dentistry is dentistry performed on marine animals, which falls under the field of veterinary science.
|-
| Marine Massage
| 1
| Marine Massage would probably be about underwater massages. Its unknown what benefits this might give over a traditional massage however.
|-
| Astrophysics
| 2010000
| Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. Just like Theoretical Physics, it is a field onto itself, and has the 3rd highest hits for a scientific field in the comic.
|-
| Astrochemistry
| 20600
| Astrochemistry is the study of molecules in the universe, and their interaction with radiation. A hybrid field of astronomy and chemistry with overlap with Astrophysics, especially when dealing with nuclear reactions.
|-
| Astrobiology
| 226000
| Astrobiology is a scientific field that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. Fairly known due to the unanswered nature of the question 'Is there life beyond Earth.'
|-
| Astroengineering
| 430
| Astronomical engineering is engineering at the astronomical scale. Highly speculative, as humanity barely has progressed beyond the earth, and mostly the realm of science fiction.
|-
| Astropsychology
| 64
| {{w|Psychological Astrology}}, also known as Astropsychology, is a form of pseudoscience blending together astrology with fields of psychology.
|-
| Astrotheology
| 580
|{{w|Astrotheology}} is the worship of heavenly bodies as deities or by association to deities. It has its roots in ancient polytheistic religions, and has survived in various forms to present-day.
|-
| Astrodentistry
| None
| Astrodentistry presumably relates to performing dentistry on astronomical objects. As astronomical bodies do not have teeth{{citation needed}}, this is impossible to perform, and hence impossible to research.
|-
| Astromassage
| None
| Astromassage can either mean performing massages on astronomical objects, which would be impossible, or performing massages on beings in space. Since there have been no trained massage therapists in space, it is unknown how one can massage a body in space, or how the human body reacts to massages in space.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A table is drawn with seven columns and six rows. Above each column and to the left of each row there is a label. All 42 fields are filled out with a number, except when the number is 0, then is says none in a red font. Above the table there is a large header:]
:<big>Number of search results on Google Scholar</big>
:{|class="wikitable"
|
| Physics
| Chemistry
| Biology
| Engineering
| Psychology
| Theology
| Dentistry
|-
| Theoretical
| 3,990,000
| 445,000
| 553,000
| 2,460
| 15,500
| 726
| 41
|-
| Quantum
| 478,000
| 740,000
| 7,620
| 21,100
| 699
| 447
| ''None'' 
|-
| High-Energy
| 844,000
| 9,600
| 3
| 119
| 1
| ''None'' 
| ''None'' 
|-
| Computational
| 510,000
| 599,000
| 2,910,000
| 67,400
| 4,620
| 40
| 11
|-
| Marine
| 3,920
| 136,000
| 945,000
| 108,000
| 35
| 6
| 1
|-
| Astro-
| 2,010,000
| 20,600
| 226,000
| 430
| 64
| 580
| ''None'' 
|}

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Potential research opportunities: Quantum Dentistry, High-Energy Dentistry, Astrodentistry, and High-Energy Theology

{{comic discussion}}

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