explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2326: Five Word Jargon

2020-06-30T18:41:55Z

173.245.52.211:

{{comic
| number = 2326
| date = June 29, 2020
| title = Five Word Jargon
| image = five_word_jargon.png
| titletext = My other (much harder) hobby is trying to engineer situations where I have an excuse to use more than one of them in short succession.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by BARYOGENESIS. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Another comic in [[Randall]]'s [[: Category:My Hobby|My Hobby series]], this hobby involves "collecting" and presumably using five-words-long technical jargon. In the comic, [[White Hat]] uses one of the phrases when talking to [[Cueball]], causing Cueball to look up the jargon on his phone, or possibly record the words for future usage. Randall then proceeds to list 4 such phrases as a caption below the panel.

In the title text, Randall says that he has a second hobby to find or create situations to use ''multiple'' such phrases. It would seem difficult to combine the 4 listed phrases in a conversation, as they are from 4 separate fields (medicine, economics/statistics, biology, and physics/cosmology), but he has succeeded in using them close together in this comic.

===Technical jargon===
'''Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt placement''':
: A {{w|transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt}} (TIPS) is "an artificial channel within the liver that connects the inflow portal vein and the outflow hepatic vein". It is used to treat various intestinal bleeding. This term can be found in this publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16850140/
:;transjugular
::the shunt is inserted via the jugular vein
:;intrahepatic
::within the liver
:;portosystemic
::blood is shunted from the portal vein (draining blood from the intestines to the liver) to the systemic circulation (returning blood from the liver to the heart)
:;shunt
::a tube within the body that bypasses the normal flow of something (whether a natural defect, or an artificial device)
:;placement
::the operation to insert it

'''Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model''':
: A {{w|Autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity|generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity}} (GARCH) model is a statistical model for economic research. An autoregressive model of a time series is one that uses previous values of the time series to predict the next value. A conditional probability model is one that divides data into inputs and outputs and models the relation between them using a conditional probability distribution of the outputs given the inputs. A heteroskedastic distribution is one in which the variance (or standard deviation) of a random variable is not the same across all values of the variable. This phrase can be found in this publication: https://www.scirp.org/html/11-1241334_99870.htm

'''Unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria group A''':
: A {{w|unicellular}} {{w|diazotrophic}} {{w|cyanobacteria}} is a single-celled type of bacteria that is able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a more usable form, and also generates oxygen through photosynthesis. "Group A" refers to the "first" group of several groups in a controlled experiment, or a scientific study. This term can be found in this publication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4303622/

'''Anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis''':
: This is a term from {{w|Particle physics}}/{{w|cosmology}}. {{w|Baryon}}s are subatomic particles containing an odd number of quarks; protons and neutrons are the most familiar examples. {{w|Baryogenesis}} is the hypothetical physical process that took place during the early universe that produced more matter than antimatter in the observable universe (or it could be any process that produces baryons). {{w|Sphaleron}} is a static (time-independent) solution to the {{w|electroweak}} field equations of the Standard Model of particle physics, and is involved in certain hypothetical processes that change the number of baryons or {{w|leptons}} (e.g. forming baryons and removing leptons). It is believed that the electroweak interaction is responsible for baryogenesis, but that at the temperatures involved (~1015 K), sphaleron interactions would wipe out any excess of baryons; therefore, for baryogenesis to "stick", it must have occurred at the ''transition'' out of the electroweak era...unless there were some kind of ''anomaly'' in the formation or interaction of sphalerons. Google reports no matches (other than this page) for the entire phrase in quotes, but shows about 70 results unquoted, indicating it finds only partial matches.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[White Hat is speaking to Cueball, who has his phone out, searching the phrase. White Hat has his palm raised.]
:White Hat: Yeah, I learned about it when I was researching anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis.
:Cueball: Cooool.
:Phone: ''A-N-O-M-''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My Hobby: Collecting really satisfying-sounding five-word technical phrases.

:Current favorites
:<li>Transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt placement
:<li>Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model
:<li>Unicellular diazotrophic cyanobacteria group A
:<li>Anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:My Hobby]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Statistics]]

977: Map Projections

2020-02-11T20:50:42Z

173.245.52.211: /* A Globe! */

{{comic
| number = 977
| date = November 14, 2011
| title = Map Projections
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = map_projections.png
| titletext = What's that? You think I don't like the Peters map because I'm uncomfortable with having my cultural assumptions challenged? Are you sure you're not... ::puts on sunglasses:: ...projecting?
}}
{{TOC}}
==Explanation==
{{w|Map projection}}, or how to represent the spherical Earth surface onto a flat support (paper, screen...) to have a usable map, is a long-time issue with very practical aspects (navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) as well as very scientific/mathematical ones, involving geometry or even abstract algebra among other things. There is no universal solution to this problem: Any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality. Many projections have been proposed in various contexts, each intending to minimize distortions for specific uses (for nautical navigation, for aerial navigation, for landmass size comparisons, etc.) but having drawbacks from other points of view. Some of them are more frequently used than others in mass media and therefore more well-known than others, some are purely historical and now deprecated, some are very obscure, etc.

[[Randall]] suggests here the idea that someone's "favorite" map projection can reveal aspects of their personality, then goes through a series of them to show what they can mean.

He may actually believe that all map projections are in a way bad. This could be inferred from the fact that he much later began publishing a series of [[:Category:Bad Map Projections|Bad Map Projections]], starting with [[1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize]], which was Bad Map Projection #107 on his list, and was followed up by #79: [[1799: Bad Map Projection: Time Zones]]. The projections below could be #1-#12 on that list, although the last one, where Randall hates those that love it, might be somewhat further down the list.

===Mercator===
[[File:MercatorProjection.jpg|frame|The Mercator projection]]
The {{w|Mercator projection}} was introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The main purpose of this map is to preserve compass bearings; for example 13 degrees east of north will be 13 degrees clockwise from the ray pointing toward the top of the map, at every point. A mathematical consequence is the mapping is conformal, i.e. if two roads meet at a certain angle on the surface of the Earth, they will meet at that same angle on the map. It also follows that at every point the vertical and horizontal scales are the same, so locally i.e. considering only a small part of the map, geographical features (shapes, angles) are well represented, which helps a lot in recognizing them on-the-field, or for local navigation in that small part only. For this reason, that projection (or a close variant) is used in several online mapping services (such as Google Maps when this comic was published, but they switched to a globe, see below), which means that it is frequently encountered by the general public. A straight line on the map corresponds to a course of constant bearing (direction), which was very useful for nautical navigation in the past (and thus made that projection very well-known).

However, from a global point of view, this projection is radically incorrect in how it shows the size of landmasses (for instance, Antarctica and Greenland seem gigantic), and furthermore, it always excludes a small region around each pole (otherwise the map would be of infinite height), so it doesn't provide a complete solution for the problem of map projection. The comic implies that people who like that projection aren't very interested with map issues, and typically use what they are offered without thinking much about it.

{{clear}}

===Van der Grinten===
[[File:VanDerGrintenProjection.jpg|frame|The Van der Grinten projection]]
The {{w|Van der Grinten projection}} is not much better than the Mercator. It was adopted by {{w|National Geographic}} in 1922 and was used until they updated to the Robinson projection in 1988.

The Van der Grinten projection is circular as opposed to the Mercator projection. The fictional person believes a circular map is more fitting to the real Earth's three-dimensional spherical nature because both are round. This belief fails to recognize that a two-dimensional circle has very little in common with the surface of a sphere, and thus this projection still causes a vast distortion of space and area. Because of this, Randall implies the Van der Grinten enthusiast to be optimistic and childishly simple-minded (e.g. "you like circles").

{{clear}}

===Robinson===
[[File:RobinsonProjection.jpg|frame|The Robinson projection]]
The {{w|Robinson projection}} was developed by {{w|Arthur H. Robinson}} as a map that was supposed to look nice and is often used for classroom maps. National Geographic switched to this projection in 1988, and used it for ten years, switching to the {{w|Winkel tripel projection|Winkel-Tripel}} in 1998.

{{w|The Beatles}} was a rock band that enjoyed great commercial success in the 1960s, and are widely considered the best act ever in the genre of popular music. The Beatles, coffee, and running shoes are all things that are very commonly enjoyed and largely uncontroversial, as well as being comforting. Liking these specific things suggests an ordinary, easygoing lifestyle paralleled by the projection.

{{clear}}

===Dymaxion===
[[File:DymaxionProjection.jpg|frame|The Dymaxion projection]]
Also called the Fuller Map, the {{w|Dymaxion map}} takes a sphere and projects it onto an icosahedron, that is a polyhedron with 20 triangular faces. It is far easier to unwrap an icosahedron than it is to unwrap a sphere into a 2D object and has very little skewing of the poles. {{w|Buckminster Fuller}} was an eccentric futurist who believed, for example, that world maps should allow no conception of "up" or "down". He was therefore more than happy to defy people's expectations about maps in the pursuit of mathematical accuracy.

Randall associates the projection to geek subculture and niche markets:
*{{w|Isaac Asimov}} was an American science-fiction writer, who (as well as publishing many textbooks) is considered the father of the modern concept of robots. He invented the {{w|Three Laws of Robotics}}. He also worked on more than 500 books throughout his career.
*{{w|XML}} is the eXtensible Markup Language. It is used to represent data in a format that machines can read and understand, as well as being human-readable. In practice, XML is cumbersome to read.
*{{w|Vibram FiveFingers|Toed shoes}} are a [[1065: Shoes|favorite]] of Randall's to pick on. In society they are seen as a {{w|geek}} clothing item.
*Brought to the world by {{w|Dean Kamen}}, the {{w|Segway PT}} was supposed to be a device that changed the way cities were built. In reality, most jurisdictions have put in place rules specifically against Segways, making them a frustration to own and use within the law (in some states in Australia, it is illegal to use them on public footpaths or roads). Also, the former owner of {{w|Segway Inc.}}, the late {{w|Jimi Heselden}}, accidentally rode his Segway off a cliff in 2010.
*At the time of comic release, 3D goggles, nowadays widely known as {{w|Virtual reality headset|VR headsets}}, were considered a gimmick at best. The original idea is as old as 3D graphics, but it never really took off until mid-2010s. Earlier products were very unwieldy and offered poor graphics quality, so no one took this technology seriously.
*{{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}} is an alternate keyboard layout to {{w|QWERTY}}. According to legend, QWERTY was invented to help keep manual typewriters from jamming (by placing the most used keys far from each other) but Dr. {{w|August Dvorak}} performed many studies and found the mathematically optimal keyboard layout to reduce finger travel for right handed typists. While some claim Dvorak is technically better than QWERTY, QWERTY had become the standard. All the keyboards were laid out in QWERTY format, but a lot of software exists to remap the keys to DVORAK for those interested in typing faster. Retraining the brain to use Dvorak takes perhaps a week. It has become a [[:Category:Dvorak|recurrent theme]] on xkcd.
**It seems likely that Randall looked at this comic when he made the [[1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize]], and given that he then released a comic about Dvorak, [[1787: Voice Commands]], the week after that, it seem like this old comic may also have inspired that Dvorak reference, see this [[1787: Voice Commands#Trivia|trivia item]].

{{clear}}

===Winkel-Tripel===
[[File:Winkel-TripelProjection.jpg|frame|The Winkel Tripel projection]]
Proposed by Oswald Winkel in 1921, the {{w|Winkel tripel projection}} tried to reduce a set of three (German: Tripel) main problems with map projections: area, direction, and distance. The {{w|Kavrayskiy VII projection|Kavrayskiy projection}} is very similar to the Winkel Tripel and was used by the USSR, but very few in the Western world know of it.

The comic links this projection to {{w|hipster}} subculture. The hipster stereotype is to avoid conforming to mainstream fashions. "Post-" refers to a variety of musical genres such as {{w|post-punk}}, {{w|post-grunge}}, {{w|post-minimalism}}, etc. that branch off of other genres.

;Trivia
*In German "Winkel-Tripel-Projektion" means Winkel's triple projection, and therefore the hyphen shouldn't be there: "Winkel Tripel" or "Winkel tripel".
*This projection was later used in [[2242: Ground vs Air]].

{{clear}}

===Goode Homolosine===
[[File:GoodeHomolosineProjection.jpg|frame|The Goode Homolosine projection]]
The {{w|Goode homolosine projection}} takes a different approach to skewing a sphere into a roughly circular surface. An orange peel can be taken from an orange and flattened with fair success; this is roughly the procedure that {{w|John Paule Goode}} followed in creating this projection. Randall is suggesting that people who like this map also prefer relatively easy solutions to other things in life, despite those solutions having nuanced problems that are more difficult to address.

Common people make arguments that if normal people would run the United States, then the US wouldn't be in the trouble it is. This is from the belief that career politicians are simply out to make money and will only act in the interest of their constituency when their continued easy life is threatened (usually around election time).

Airline food is another, much maligned, problem. How do you store enough food to feed people on long airplane trips? What kind of food can be served in an enclosed, low-air-pressure environment? The common solution is to use some kind of prepackaged, reheated meal. Randall is saying that the people in favor of the Goode Homolosine wonder why the airlines don't simply order meals from the restaurants in the airport, store that food, and serve it, rather than using bland reheated food.

Older cars burned oil like mad fiends, and oil back then would become corrosive to the innards of an engine, so oil had to be changed often. But, with the introduction of synthetic motor oil and better designed engines, new cars only need their oil changed about every 10,000 to 15,000 miles. A common conspiracy theory is that modern automobile oil manufacturers still recommend that car owners change their oil every 3,000-5,000 miles to "drum" up more business, even though that frequency is unnecessary.

All of these references suggest that people who like the Goode Homolosine projection are fans of easy solutions to problems. However, the solutions would not necessarily work in practice. For instance: the restaurants might have trouble making enough food for the whole plane, and it could get cold before being served; the air conditions [http://www.nbcnews.com/health/one-reason-airline-food-so-bad-your-own-tastebuds-6C10823522 aboard planes] can affect taste, so airlines say they optimize for this; there is no such thing as a "normal" person, and if there were, he/she would have virtually no chance at actually getting into government office; and the Goode Homolosine projection, while mostly resembling a flattened orange peel as suggested by the earlier analogy, does indeed cut down on distortion, but also has serious problems of its own, such as leaving huge gaps of nothingness between the continents, making distances across the oceans difficult to visualize.

{{clear}}

===Hobo–Dyer===
[[File:Hobo-DyerProjection.jpg|frame|The Hobo–Dyer projection]]
The {{w|Hobo–Dyer projection}} was commissioned by Bob Abramms and Howard Bronstein and was drafted by Mick Dyer in 2002. It is a modified {{w|Behrmann projection}}. The goal was to be a more visually pleasing version of the Gall–Peters.

As is discussed in the Gall–Peters explanation, the Gall–Peters was developed to be equal area, so that economically disadvantaged areas can at least take comfort in the fact that their country is represented correctly by area on maps.

Randall associates the Hobo–Dyer projection to "crunchy granola" — a stereotype associated with vegetarianism, environmental activism, anti-war activism, liberal political leanings, and some traces of {{w|hippie}} culture.

With feminism becoming mainstream and alternative genders being more widely accepted, some have begun to invent gender-neutral pronouns so that when referring to a person whose gender is not known they cannot be offended by being referred to by the wrong pronouns. In {{w|Middle English}} 'they' and 'their' were {{w|Singular they|accepted genderless pronouns that could replace 'he', 'she'}} as well as be used to represent a crowd, but this usage is considered by some to be grammatically incorrect because of the plural/singular debate ([http://www.merriam-webster.com/video/0033-hisher.htm stupid Victorian Grammarians!]). There have been {{w|gender-neutral pronoun#Invented pronouns|many attempts at popularizing invented gender-neutral pronouns}} and they are beginning to achieve some degree of success in the mainstream.

{{clear}}

===Plate Carrée===
[[File:PlateCarreeProjection.jpg|frame|The Plate Carrée projection]]
Also known as the {{w|Equirectangular projection}}, it has been in use since, apparently, 100 AD. The benefit of this projection is that latitude and longitude can be used as x,y coordinates. This makes it especially easy for computers to graph data on top of it.

According to the comic, the projection appeals to people who find much beauty in simplicity.

{{clear}}

===A Globe!===
[[File:GlobeProjection.jpg|frame|The Globe "projection"]]
In any good discussion there has to be at least one smart-alec. This is a comic about map projections, that is, the science of taking a sphere and flattening it into 2 dimensions. The smart-ass believes that we shouldn't even try: a sphere is, tautologically, the perfect representation of a sphere.

To quote ''{{w|The Princess Bride}}'': "Yes, you're very smart. Shut up."

A globe is, of course, the "map projection" used by {{w|Google Earth}}, and recently by other mapping software (including Google Maps) as computers and phones get increasingly powerful 3D graphics.

{{clear}}

===Waterman butterfly===
[[File:WatermanButterflyProjection.jpg|frame|The Waterman Butterfly projection]]
Similar to the Dymaxion, the {{w|Waterman butterfly projection}} turns a sphere into an octahedron, and then unfolds the net of the octahedron, which was devised by mathematician {{w|Waterman polyhedron|Steve Waterman}} based upon the work of {{w|Bernard J.S. Cahill}}.

Bernard Cahill published a [http://www.genekeyes.com/B.J.S._CAHILL_RESOURCE.html butterfly map] in 1909. Steve Waterman probably has the only extant "ready to go" map following the same general principles, though Gene Keys may not be far behind. Waterman has a poem with graphics in a similar vein to this xkcd comic that is worth reading.[http://web.archive.org/web/20120118095915/http://watermanpolyhedron.com/worldmap.html]

[https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/pcr.2016.48.issue-4/pcr-2016-0014/pcr-2016-0014.pdf Polyhedral projections] like Cahill, Dymaxion or Waterman typically offer better accuracy of size, shape and area than flat projections, at the expense of compass directionality, connectedness, and other complications.

The joke is that the person responding deeply understands map projections; anyone who knows of this projection is a person that Randall would like to get to know.

{{clear}}

===Peirce quincuncial===
[[File:PeirceQuincuncialProjection.jpg|frame|The Peirce Quincuncial projection]]
The {{w|Peirce quincuncial projection}} was devised by {{w|Charles Sanders Peirce}} in 1879 and uses {{w|complex analysis}} to make a {{w|conformal mapping}} of the Earth, that conforms except for four points which would make up the midpoints of sides and lie on equator (the equator is represented by a square and the corners connect the sides in the middle.)

{{w|Inception}} was a 2010 movie about {{w|meta}} {{w|lucid dream}}ing. It has a complex story that is difficult to follow and leaves the viewer with many questions at the end, and almost needs to be watched multiple times to be understood.

The human brain is not well developed to deal with oddly obvious things. One example is that everyone has a skeleton, but everyone is surprised to see a part of their body represented by an X-ray. Another is the fascinating complexity of the human hand, a machine which is amazingly complex, driven by a complex interplay of electrical and chemical signals; yet is the size of the hand and so useful. A fascination with or fixation on [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ContemplatingYourHands such thoughts] is often associated with an altered state of mind brought on by marijuana consumption. Therefore, Randall may be implying that this map would appeal to stoners.

{{clear}}

===Gall–Peters===
[[File:Gall-PetersProjection.jpg|frame|The Gall–Peters projection]]
The {{w|Gall–Peters projection}} is mired in controversy, surprisingly for a map. {{w|James Gall}}, a 19th-century clergyman, presented this projection in 1855 before the {{w|British Association for the Advancement of Science}}. In 1967, the filmmaker {{w|Arno Peters}} created the same projection and presented it to the world as a "new invention" that put poorer, less powerful countries into their rightful proportions (as opposed to the Mercator). Peters played the marketing game and got quite a few followers of his map by saying it had "absolute angle conformality," "no extreme distortions of form," and was "totally distance-factual" in an age when society was very concerned about social justice. All of these claims were in fact false. The Mercator projection distorts size in favor of shape, and Gall-Peters distorts shape in favor of size, being especially inaccurate at the equator and the poles.

The implication is that the fans of this map are pompously concerned with social justice, and willing either to lie or convey marketing mistruths to promote that cause. Alternatively Randall just dislikes this map projection so much due to the above mentioned inaccuracies, that he hates anyone who likes it.

{{clear}}

===Title text===
The title text makes a joke that goes to the familiar meme from ''{{w|CSI: Miami}}'', in which the star, David Caruso starts a sentence, then puts on his sunglasses and ends the sentence with a corny pun. In this case, the pun is on {{w|map projection}} and {{w|projection (psychology)|projection}} in psychology. Psychological projection is an unconscious defense mechanism wherein a person who is uncomfortable with their own impulses denies having them and attributes them to other people, and blames these people for these impulses. The Sunglasses internet meme has been used [[:Category:Puts on sunglasses|in other comics]] as well.

==Transcript==
:What your favorite
:'''Map Projection'''
:says about you
:[All of these are organized as Title, a copy of the particular projection underneath, and what it says about you under that.]

:*Mercator
:**You're not really into maps.
:*Van der Grinten
:**You're not a complicated person. You love the Mercator projection; you just wish it weren't square. The Earth's not a square, it's a circle. You like circles. Today is gonna be a good day!
:*Robinson
:**You have a comfortable pair of running shoes that you wear everywhere. You like coffee and enjoy The Beatles. You think the Robinson is the best-looking projection, hands down.
:*Dymaxion
:**You like Isaac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes. You think the Segway got a bad rap. You own 3D goggles, which you use to view rotating models of better 3D goggles. You type in Dvorak.
:*Winkel-Tripel
:**National Geographic adopted the Winkel-Tripel in 1998, but you've been a W-T fan since ''long'' before "Nat Geo" showed up. You're worried it's getting played out, and are thinking of switching to the Kavrayskiy. You once left a party in disgust when a guest showed up wearing shoes with toes. Your favorite musical genre is "Post–".
:*Goode Homolosine
:**They say mapping the Earth on a 2D surface is like flattening an orange peel, which seems enough to you. You like easy solutions.You think we wouldn't have so many problems if we'd just elect ''normal'' people to Congress instead of Politicians. You think airlines should just buy food from the restaurants near the gates and serve ''that'' on board. You change your car's oil, but secretly wonder if you really ''need'' to.
:*Hobo-Dyer
:**You want to avoid cultural imperialism, but you've heard bad things about Gall-Peters. You're conflict-averse and buy organic. You use a recently-invented set of gender-neutral pronouns and think that what the world needs is a revolution in consciousness.
:*Plate Carrée (Equirectangular)
:**You think this one is fine. You like how X and Y map to latitude and longitude. The other projections overcomplicate things. You want me to stop asking about maps so you can enjoy dinner.
:*A Globe!
:**Yes, you're very clever.
:*Waterman Butterfly
:**Really? You know the Waterman? Have you seen the 1909 Cahill Map it's based— ...You have a framed reproduction at home?! Whoa. ...Listen, forget these questions. Are you doing anything tonight?
:*Peirce Quincuncial
:**You think that when we look at a map, what we really see is ourselves. After you first saw ''Inception'', you sat silent in the theater for six hours. It freaks you out to realize that everyone around you has a skeleton inside them. You ''have'' really looked at your hands.
:*Gall-Peters
:**I ''hate'' you.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Maps‏‎]]
[[Category:Dvorak]]
[[Category:Puts on sunglasses]]

2220: Imagine Going Back in Time

2019-10-25T21:36:04Z

173.245.52.211: Fix several typos

{{comic
| number = 2220
| date = October 25, 2019
| title = Imagine Going Back in Time
| image = imagine_going_back_in_time.png
| titletext = I wonder what the trendy adults in 2019 who are too cool for Pokemon will be into. Probably Digimon!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Very rough first draft. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic starts with Cueball stating a complaint related to the game Pokemon Go ("a frog Pokemon in the gym next to mine") and U.S. President Donald Trump ("a player named 'Reelect Trump 2020"). Megan wonders how one would have reacted to such a statement 20 years ago. Cueball then tests the scenario in practice by using a time machine to talk to himself from 20 years ago. His 1999 personality reacts by asking questions about the popularity of Pokemon and the demographics of its players.

Pokemon is a media franchise that debuted in 1996 in Japan, as both a video game and a trading card game. It was originally designed for and marketed t,o younger children (the tie-in cartoon series constantly emphasizes its main characters are ten years old), with a design, aesthetic and gameplay that were optimized for a younger audience. As the franchise continued to thrive and evolve, it's gone through multiple generations, including ''Pokemon Go'', an augmented reality game for smartphones. These latest versions, in particular, have become popular with adults, some of whom grew up playing the earlier generations.

In 1999 in North America, only the first generation of Pokemon video games was released, consisting of Pokemon Blue and Pokemon Red for the Nintendo Gameboy. The second generation of Pokemon video games, would not even be announced in Japan until {{w|Pokémon Gold and Silver#Release|November 1999}}, and advertising for the North American release would begin in December of 1999 with only the launch of the {{w|List of Pokémon: Adventures on the Orange Islands episodes|second season of the tie-in cartoon series}}; however, whether there would be a sequel game to tie in with this new season was only a matter of fan speculation in North America at that time. Since then, and up to 2019, there have been a total of eight generations of video games on consoles. A person living in 1999, who has only seen the first generation, with no official confirmation that a second generation was even being considered, and unable to predict the nostalgia market that would appear later, would quite plausibly wonder about its popularity 20 years later.

Donald J. Trump is the current president of the United States. He was elected in 2016, in a stunning upset. Even during his campaign, the idea of his election was considered absurd in many circles, as he had never held any kind of public office, and had no background that would lend itself to expertise in government or public policy. Prior to his election, he was primarily known as a New York real estate mogul and host of the 2003 reality television show ''The Apprentice''. While he'd been teasing the idea of a presidential run since the 1980's, most people saw the idea as unserious, and the concept of him actually being President of the United States would have been hugely unexpected to most Americans in an earlier era.

[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog Pepe the Frog] is an internet meme that has become associated with Donald Trump after his use of it during his presidential campaign. The use of a frog pokémon, therefore, is a callback to this internet phenomenon.

This comic's joke is similar to one used in the 1985 science-fiction film ''{{w|Back to the Future}}'', in which Doc Brown (of 1955) is shocked to learn that {{w|Ronald Reagan}} would be the President of the United States in thirty years' time, when in 1955 Reagan was an actor.

Presumably, Megan thought that the concept of Donald Trump being President was the most shocking part of Cueball's sentence, but younger Cueball seems much more focused on the idea that a) ''Pokemon'' still exists as a media franchise and b) his adult self is still playing it 20 years in the future. Cueball defensively insists that he's focusing on the wrong thing.

Digimon, as mentioned in the title text, is another media franchise which is similar to Pokemon in some ways, though it is often perceived as more "cool" and "adult" oriented. Its popularity in North America rose around 1999 with the airing of its anime series, but never became as popular as Pokemon [https://www.geekinsider.com/digimon-vs-pokemon-retrospective-monster-marketing/].

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

[Megan and Cueball standing, facing each other.]
:Cueball: Ugh. A player named "Reelect Trump 2020" put a frog Pokemon in the gym next to mine.

[Megan puts her hand to her face. Cueball is holding a handheld device with an antenna.]
:Megan: Imagine going back in time and saying that to yourself 20 years ago.
:Cueball: Oh, I have a time machine! I'll try that.

[sound effect between panels]
:BZZZZT

[panel caption: 1999]
[Two Cueballs standing, facing each other. The one on the right, from 2019, is holding the handheld device.]
:Cueball from 2019: ... next to mine.

[Cueball from 1999 is shown, with Cueball from 2019 speaking off panel.]
:Cueball from 1999: I see. Pokemon is still popular in 2019?
:Cueball from 2019: Yeah.

[Both Cueballs again, with Cueball from 2019 holding his arm in a threatening gesture toward Cueball from 1999.]
:Cueball from 1999: And it's cool for people your age to play it?
:Cueball from 2019: OK, I did not come here to be mocked.
:Cueball from 1999: This is a sobering cautionary tale.
:Cueball from 2019: '''Listen, self...'''

{{comic discussion}}

409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)

2014-10-15T23:51:36Z

173.245.52.211: /* Explanation */ Added link to the Calvin and Hobbes wiki as proof of "building character" being a recurring theme.

{{comic
| number = 409
| date = April 11, 2008
| title = Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)
| image = electric_skateboard_double_comic.png
| titletext = Unsafe vehicles, hills, and philosophy go hand in hand.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is an affectionate parody of ''{{w|Calvin and Hobbes}}'', a newspaper comic drawn by {{w|Bill Watterson}} that ran for ten years from November 1985 to December 1995. Calvin and Hobbes follows the daily life of a rambunctious, precocious six-year-old named Calvin and his sarcastic stuffed tiger Hobbes. Sunday strips (for both Calvin and Hobbes and many other print comics) often consisted of two comics strung together, the first one often lasting one or two panels and the second one being more elaborate. This comic follows the Sunday strip pattern, hence the "Double Comic" in the title. The artwork in the second strip is distinctly Wattersonian as well.

[[Randall]] has a special fascination with motorized {{w|skateboard}}s. A {{w|Longboard (skateboard)|longboard}} is a skateboard that is longer, and is used for downhill races, and skating through less urban areas (college campuses, for example).

{{w|Mario Kart}} is a game for {{w|Nintendo}} game consoles that allows four players to race each other while having good spirited fun ([[290|sometimes]]) while throwing items at each other. The objects in the fourth panel are Koopa Troopa shells, items in the game. They can be thrown like projectiles to crash into foes.

Calvin and Hobbes frequently involves heavy philosophical discussions. In one recurring theme, they ride down a dangerous hill in a red wagon while discussing the nature of morality, usually ending in a crash (examples [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2013/04/21] [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/2012/05/20]). This comic inverts that by having [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] go uphill while discussing philosophy. Naturally, they collide with Calvin and Hobbes' wagon - which prompts the title text.

Cueball uses the {{w|C (programming language)|C}} and {{w|Python (programming language)|Python}} programming languages as analogies for their ride. In general, Python is easier than C, and abstracts a lot of C's hairier features ("boring parts," as Randall calls them). Moving from C to Python is quite a [[353|freeing experience]]; programmers no longer have to worry about pointers, and memory allocation, and just lets the code flow through the programmer until they are one with the Force. Erm, computer. Although it seems - before the crash - that the idea that, programing in C (and skating without electricity) builds character, is about to be explored philosophically (building character is also a recurring theme in Calvin and Hobbes, as documented delightfully in the [http://www.calvinandhobbes.wikia.com/wiki/Building_character Calvin and Hobbes wiki]).

Electric skateboards have been the subject of several other comics like [[139: I Have Owned Two Electric Skateboards]], a panel in [[442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel]] and the entire [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:The_Race The Race] five part comic series.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball showing off electric skateboard to girl reading something.]
:Cueball: Check it out! An electric longboard!
:Megan: Sweet!

:[Cueball riding longboard with Megan sitting onboard — people in background.]
:Longboard: ''RRRR''

:[Megan turned around on longboard.]
:Megan: I feel like we're missing something...
:Cueball: Yeah...

:[Cueball throwing 3 green Koopa Troopa shells; Megan throwing 1 red Koopa Troopa shell - like Mario Kart.]
:''Music Playing''
:Longboard: ''RRRR''

:[Cueball and Megan still on longboard, going up an incline.]
:Cueball: Skating uphill like this is amazing. Years of gliding downhill and pushing uphill, and now suddenly it's gliding both ways.
:Longboard: ''RRRRRRR''

:[Cueball and Megan after passing an S-curve and boulder.]
:Cueball: It's like going from C to Python. You don't realize how much time you were spending on the boring parts until you don't have to do them anymore.
:Megan: But coding C or assembly makes you a better programmer. Maybe the boring parts build character.

:[Cueball and Megan on longboard.]
:Cueball: Yeah... but it depends how you want to spend your life. See, my philosophy is-
:[Longboard gets into an accident.]
:'''WHAM'''

:[Calvin and Hobbes laying down in the grass near the Cueball and Megan laying down on the grass - Calvin and Hobbes's wagon is on the path, as is the longboard - all characters seeing stars.]
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Electric skateboard]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Calvin and Hobbes]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Mario Kart]]

Talk:1412: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2014-08-26T03:09:19Z

173.245.52.211:

Looks like they renamed the Wikipedia article mentioned as "Maple Syrup Urine '''Syndrome'''" to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup_urine_disease Maple Syrup Urine '''Disease'''].[[User:Keavon|Keavon]] ([[User talk:Keavon|talk]]) 05:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

This rythmic sounding has to do with metrical <strike>foots</strike> feet, I think. Maybe someone more into it than I can explain...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_%28prosody%29 [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.164|108.162.229.164]] 05:21, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: It's just a 4-foot trochaic ("trochaic octameter"?) meter. ^- ^- ^- ^-. Also, I'm curious now, is "foots" the proper plural when discussing meter, or is that just a typo/misunderstanding? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 06:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

:: Oh, right, the plural must be "feet". I just had a brain fart. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.164|108.162.229.164]] 10:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

:: It is a trochaic tetrameter. Tetra = 4, octa = 8.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.38|108.162.216.38]] 12:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

::: Right, it's number of feet, not number of syllables. My mistake. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 15:04, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: This one is definitely related: http://xkcd.com/856/ --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.68|141.101.104.68]] 08:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Unless "Gloucester" is two syllables, Randall made a mistake/wanted to see if we're awake.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.224|108.162.246.224]] 06:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
:Depending on where you're from, it can be pronounced (quasi-phonetically) as "Glow-ster". [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

: Actually it is. Silly British accents. It's pronounced roughly "Gloss-ter". [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.150|199.27.128.150]] 06:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

::In that case, I retract my previous statement and apologize.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.224|108.162.246.224]] 07:20, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

With regards to the roll-over text, mention could be made of the long-running BBC radio show "I'm sorry I haven't a clue" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_A_Clue ). It is comedy panel game, and one of the regular rounds is 'One Song to the Tune of Another'. It may be coincidence, but one panellist of the show is Barry Cryer ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Cryer ) who happened to have recorded Purple People Eater... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.184|141.101.98.184]] 08:26, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Why isn't Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the list? [[Special:Contributions/103.22.201.120|103.22.201.120]] 11:41, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

There's a typo in "Quantuum vacuum plasma thruster". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.184|141.101.98.184]] 12:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Dang someone beat me to writing in the transcript. Oh well, you did a much better job than I was doing anyway. =8o) [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Is it just me, or do these lyrics not REALLY match the TMNT title song? The first three lines are OK, but the following lines just repeats the pattern - the TMNT song has a different rhythm. {{unsigned|141.101.98.16}}
:Each title is meant to be sung only to the "TMNT" part of the song. They aren't meant to be sung one after another to match the whole song. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 03:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1400: D.B. Cooper

2014-07-28T18:08:19Z

173.245.52.211:

Feels like a conspiracy(?) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.227.35|108.162.227.35]] 12:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Oh, this is a hilarious comic! --[[User:Dangerkeith3000|Dangerkeith3000]] ([[User talk:Dangerkeith3000|talk]]) 15:14, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Could someone explain what "the Citizen Kane of ____" is all about? --[[User:NeatNit|NeatNit]] ([[User talk:NeatNit|talk]]) 17:05, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

: "Citizen Kane" is regarded as a masterpiece landmark film, and other films are often compared to it as a highly favorable compliment. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 18:08, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

This is really just a curiosity, but what is unusual about the phrasing "You are tearing me apart"? (I'm obviously not a native speaker) [[User:Ly mar|Ly mar]] ([[User talk:Ly mar|talk]]) 17:12, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
* Beyond using "You are" instead of "You're", not much. The oddness of the line is mostly through the delivery in the film, not the grammar. [[User:ImVeryAngryItsNotButter|ImVeryAngryItsNotButter]] ([[User talk:ImVeryAngryItsNotButter|talk]]) 17:14, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

== photograph ==

Is this the first xkcd to feature a full color photograph of a person? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.52|108.162.216.52]] 17:38, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Talk:1308: Christmas Lights

2013-12-25T07:47:39Z

173.245.52.211:

If I am reading the graphs right, except for the very top there is no blue lights.
[[User:Traisjames|From the guy with his eye on the sky.]] ([[User talk:Traisjames|talk]]) 06:41, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Presumably the top is gold? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 07:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Also the spike in the near IR of the large graph is likely to be a mercury line. I think fires would have a smoother curve of a black body.
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.122|199.27.128.122]] 06:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Could someone make a coloured version?[[User:Guru-45|Guru-45]] ([[User talk:Guru-45|talk]]) 07:22, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Also the light at the top of the tree seems to be emitting in the UV range. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a fluorescent lamp? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.7|108.162.245.7]] 07:30, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1308: Christmas Lights

2013-12-25T07:45:37Z

173.245.52.211:

If I am reading the graphs right, except for the very top there is no blue lights.
[[User:Traisjames|From the guy with his eye on the sky.]] ([[User talk:Traisjames|talk]]) 06:41, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Presumably the top is gold?

Also the spike in the near IR of the large graph is likely to be a mercury line. I think fires would have a smoother curve of a black body.
[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.122|199.27.128.122]] 06:47, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Could someone make a coloured version?[[User:Guru-45|Guru-45]] ([[User talk:Guru-45|talk]]) 07:22, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Also the light at the top of the tree seems to be emitting in the UV range. Perhaps it’s supposed to be a fluorescent lamp? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.7|108.162.245.7]] 07:30, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

802: Online Communities 2

2013-12-23T05:09:15Z

173.245.52.211: /* Blogosphere (Core Region) */

{{comic
| number = 802
| date = October 6, 2010
| title = Online Communities 2
| image = online_communities_2.png
| titletext = Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.
}}
A larger version of this picture can be found here: [http://xkcd.com/802_large/ http://xkcd.com/802_large/].
<div class="toclimit-3" style="float:right; margin-left: 10px;"> __TOC__ </div>
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Not all of the regions are fully explained.}}
This comic shows a map of internet communities where the size of each region roughly corresponds to its size, and its proximity to other regions indicates similarities.

This is the successor of [[256: Online Communities]]. It differs in that it is updated, and furthermore, instead of using the ''membership'' of whichever service to determine its size on the map, it uses its "daily social activity."

The map actually has two super−maps: the online community map is surrounded by the "countries" of E−Mail and SMS ("Instant Messaging"). These, in turn, are surrounded by the "Spoken Language" country (which is odd, considering that e−mail, SMS, and the Internet in general are based on ''written'' language) with its own sub−country, "cell phones" (which ''do'' involve e−mail and the Internet while being the mean medium of SMS's).

At the title text [[Randall]] explains that, using his definition of "most activity per day", Farmville is actually the ''second'' most popular "Facebook farming game". This will strike many as odd, because Farmville is by far the most famous, leading one to wonder how the most famous could not be the most played. The phrase "browser-based social-networking-centered farming game" is an example of [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNarrowSuperlative an overly-narrow superlative].

==Facebook Region==
The Facebook region deals with social networks, that is, websites oriented towards having people meet.

'''{{w|Facebook}}''' is a social networking site that allows people to meet old real−life friends and make new friends that share similar interests. One of its most notable features is that a member can update a "status" or make normal posts about the happenings of the member's life, complete with pictures, other members "liking" these posts. The size of the Facebook region is not exaggerated; most websites seem to allow "liking" their content or allow/require logging in the website with a Facebook account. There even are cell phones with a "Facebook" button!

'''Farmville''', '''Happy Farm''', and '''Farm Town''' are all Facebook games. The "Unethical Bay" refers to how these games tend to addict players into constantly buying virtual items of questionable value.

The '''People You Can't Unfriend''' refer to people whom, due to real-life expectations and relationships, unfriending them is difficult, no matter how you really feel about them.

The '''Data Mines''' refer to the data mining that Facebook does with the interests of its members. This fuels the profitable advertising business at the expense of customer trust.

The '''Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions''' refer to how interactions with family members on Facebook suddenly become more awkward because everyone on Facebook (and sometimes ''off'' Facebook, given that you do not necessarily need to log in if you want to see someone's Facebook account) if you are discussing with your family through post comments.

'''"Old Facebook" Resistance''' refers to Facebook's earlier users, who have often resisted (and resented) changes made to Facebook as it became more popular.

'''Privacy Controls''' is located on the map surrounded by a Lava Pool, which is a reference to how difficult it is to find the privacy controls within Facebook.

While Facebook is the largest "country" of the Facebook Region, there are a lot of smaller "countries" that represent smaller social networks.

*Below Facebook (and "'Old Facebook' Resistance") is '''{{w|Diaspora (social network)|Diaspora}}''', a fully open-source, decentralized, privacy-respecting-and-expecting alternative to Facebook. From what this map tells, Diaspora is little-known, even if Facebook is taken out of the context.
*'''{{w|Taringa!}}''' is a Spanish-speaking social network that is based on a forums. Copyrighted material is frequently found there.
*'''{{w|Classmates.com}}''' is a services in which the user can meet fellow classmates that came from the same high school. The website is probably best-known by its memetic advertisement that said [http://dudemanphat.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-am-i-supposed-to-care-about-nick.html "She married him??!! And they've got 7 kids??"] (Incidentally, [http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2003325519_adcouple27.html there is more to the coupled picture than what the advertisement says.])
*'''{{w|MySpace}}''' is a social networking website that is a kind of proto-Facebook: users could customize their one-page websites with whatever they wanted, make their interests and daily lives public, and interact with other users. Back in the mid 2000's, MySpace was the largest social network, many people using the website; however, the surprisingly-less-customizable Facebook ended up taking the place of MySpace. The "bands" country of MySpace refers to how a lot of bands in the day advertised and interacted using the website. Indeed, the latest incarnation of MySpace (in terms of 2013) is more oriented towards band members.
*'''{{w|LinkedIn}}''' is a social network aimed towards people in the workplace.
*'''{{w|Orkut}}''' is one of Google's first social networks before Google made [https://plus.google.com/ Google+].
*'''{{w|Hi5}}''' is a social network that is very popular among people in Latin America.
*'''{{w|Renren}}''' ('''「人人」''', "people" in Chinese) is "a Chinese copy of Facebook."

Other areas of note are the '''Niche Market Mountains''', where social networks aimed towards more niche markets are located. Similar to how mountains tend to be isolated from mainland, niche social networks tend to be just that: niche, without much interaction with the general populace. Above the Niche Market Mountains are the '''Charred Wasteland of Abandoned Social Networks'''. Given the popularity of MySpace and Facebook, there would be no doubt tons of websites wanting to take advantage of the success of these websites or even wanting to compete or even overpower with them. Even so, these websites tend to not have the userbase or even the expertise towards the long-term, hence they become wastelands: environments devoid of life, except the few life forms that are from these wastelands (in this case, the ones who are loyal to the website or which are sadly few). Within the '''Charred Wasteland of Abandoned Social Networks''' stands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias Ozymandias], the titular broken statue of Shelley's poem. In the poem, only "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" and a "shattered visage" are all that remain of the once-great statue and both of these features are present in the comic.

Also visible are the '''Duckface Mountains''', the '''Red Cup Mountains''', and '''Buzzword Bay'''. "Duckface" refers to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/duck-face this incredibly obnoxious facial expression], and "red cup pictures" are any pictures containing party-goers holding disposable red plastic beverage cups. Facebook is absolutely flooded with both types of pictures. {{w|Buzzword}}s are words and phrases that make you sound a lot more topical than you actually are, used to garner attention; again, Facebook status updates are commonly filled with buzzwords.

==MMO Isle==
MMO's (short form of "MMORPG", short form of "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Player Game") are websites that host online games where multiple people take the role of a character and play in a setting hosted by the website. These types of games tend to be fantastical in setting. Frequently, missions are added to the game, giving current player more incentive towards playing more.

*'''[https://www.habbo.com/ Habbo Hotel]''' is a website where someone creates a human avatar an interacts in a virtual world that is not that different from the one in real life.
*'''[http://www.clubpenguin.com/ Club Penguin]''' is [http://disney.com/ Disney's] MMO where someone creates a penguin avatar and interacts with other in a more polar, cartoony setting. Club Penguin is aimed towards children.
*'''[http://maplestory.nexon.net/ Maple Story]''' is an MMO that has a more natural setting. The most distinguishing feature of Maple Story is its cartoony pixel art.
*'''[http://www.gamefaqs.com/ GameFAQs]''', while not an MMO, is a website that has the largest repository of walkthoughs, that is, guides that help someone beat a game. GameFAQs is notable for not only its large repository of walkthroughs of games that are across an extreme variety of consoles, handhelds, and even computers (not all of them MMOs), but also the drama that is rumoured to happen in the GameFAQs forums.
*'''[http://www.ign.com/ IGN]''' (full: '''Imagine Games Network'''), while also not an MMO, is the largest website that gives news on video games in general, not just MMOs. Each of the games mentioned in the site have pages that have summaries, reviews, screenshots, other art, videos, and links to news related to its games.
*'''[http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml FFXI]''' (full: '''Final Fantasy XI''') is an MMO from SquareEnix, being the first MMO of the popular ''Final Fantasy'' series.
*'''[http://www.runescape.com/community Runescape]''' is an older MMO.
*'''[http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ Starcraft II]''' is a realtime strategy game with a science fiction setting that heavily involves space travel. While technically not an MMO, it has a significant online multiplayer component.
*'''[http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ WoW]''' (full: '''World of Warcraft''') is the definitive MMO, being not only the most popular and one of the longest-running but also the most expansive (having its own spinoff games, comic books, novels, and even figurines), WOW giving the idea of how an MMO should be. A player can choose from a variety of races, each with its own heavy history.
*'''[http://secondlife.com/ Second Life]''' is similar to Habbo, albeit with a bigger suspension of disbelief (one example being that the player does not need to be a human) and in a 3D setting.
*'''[http://www.nationstates.net/ NationStates]''' is a text-based political simulation game. Notably, some of its traffic comes not from the actual game (which is optional), but the extensive set of political, roleplaying, and general forums attached.
*'''[http://www.eveonline.com/ Eve Online]''' is a science fiction MMO which is notable because of its virtual economy.
*'''[http://www.gaiaonline.com/ Gaia]''' (full: '''Gaia Online'''), while not an MMO, is a forums oriented towards pop culture, including video games and Japanese media. Its most notable feature is the heavy customization possible of a member's pixel-art avatar. Its members tend to roleplay a lot, albeit in a more written, story-based form. Gaia has gained a revaination of its members stealing art and causing drama.

Other notable regions include:
*The '''Mountains of Steam''', referring to the game distribution service [http://store.steampowered.com/ Steam] where people could buy and download video games in general, not just MMOs.
*'''River Grind''' refers to "grinding." In most MMOs, the character is a fighter of some sorts, yet starts at a level 1, signifying the character's aptitude level in combat. The character can level up and gain more aptitude levels through earning experience, of which the most reliable and otherwise common way is the process of "grinding," that is, repeatedly fighting opposing monsters (sometimes of a level notably lower that your character's), gaining experience points from winning these battles until your character gains a level, that is, "levels up". While a practical necessity in strengthening the character, this process can be tiresome, hence the expression "grinding."
*'''Spawn Camp''' refers to "spawn points", the places in combat-oriented MMO's tend to produce ("spawn") random AI-powered creatures, and the act of "spawn camping", in which the player character simply stands behind or around the spawn points to fight the enemy creatures as soon as they appear.
*'''Gulf of Lag''' refers to how the MMO can be slowed down a considerable amount due to the large amount of players simultaneously using the same server, this congestion bogging down the server and frustrating the users.
*'''[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/final-boss-of-the-internet End Guy for the Internet]''' refers to "end bosses", the last -- and usually hardest to defeat -- "bad guy" in a game (or a section of a game).

==YouTube Region==
The YouTube region refers to websites that are based on user-created content.

'''[https://www.youtube.com/ YouTube]''' is the definitive video website where people can upload videos with the purpose of public viewing, ranging from home movies through official music videos through Let's Plays of people playing video games to questionably-legal uploads of cartoons and films. Google had purchased YouTube.

Many of the sites on the map are just references to {{w|viral video}}s at {{w|YouTube}}:
*'''Viral Shores''' refers to how viral videos (whether they be viral marketing or simply memes) tend to proliferate on YouTube.
*'''Britney''' likely refers to pop singer {{w|Britney Spears}} and the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc‎ "Leave Britney Alone" guy].
*'''Maru Gulf''' refers to Maru the Cat, a YouTube celebrity [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/676:_Abstraction also mentioned in xkcd].
*'''Prairie Dog Habitat''' likely refers to the viral video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw Dramatic Chipmunk] (which is actually a Prairie Dog).
*'''Rick Rolling Hills''' references, well, {{w|Rickrolling}}. More information [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ here]. The "deserted" note likely refers to how Rick Astley himself is tired of the meme, or again, how people tend to leave the video upon getting "Rick Roll'd," never actually going to the video with the express purpose of viewing the video.
*'''Lunar Landing Soundstage''' is, of course, a reference to the {{w|Moon landing conspiracy theories}}, which Randall has railed on before.
*'''{{w|OK Go}} Bay''' refers to the band "OK Go" who have multiple viral music videos on YouTube, most famously [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA "Here it goes again"] featuring treadmills.

The '''HTML5 swamp''' refers to the spotty support of HTML 5 (an update on HTML that is frequently touting its media capabilities, making HTML 5 a viable alternative to Flash) YouTube has. Of course, by the time the comic was written, HTML 5 was still in its infancy. The Music Video Bay refers to the amount of music videos (official or otherwise) are present in YouTube.

Other counties of the YouTube region include:
*'''[https://secure.flickr.com/ Flickr]''', a website where people can upload and share photographs they took.
*'''[http://fotolog.com Fotolog]''', a photo website very popular in South America in 2004-2008, which was used as a social network.
*'''[https://vimeo.com/ vimeo]''', a website where people tend to showcase artistic content that they made on their own, notably independent studios.
*'''[http://www.last.fm/ Last.fm]''', a music website that is notable of its "scrobbling" feature.
*'''[https://www.newgrounds.com/ Newgrounds]''', a website that hosts art, (Flash-based) videos, audio, and (Flash-based) games to which other users can comment and rate. Even so, content from Newgrounds tends to be obscene, though there is a filtering system if a viewer does not wish to see obscene content.
*'''[http://www.deviantart.com/ deviantArt]''', the largest art website, where people can upload, sell, and buy not only art itself, but also video, audio, Flash-work, and even skins (the original purpose of deviantArt). While many big-name/professional people and organizations have their works in deviantArt, the site is more infamous for the large amount of people who upload low-quality fan-art and fan-characters, most notably of media from Japan. Another point of infamy is the large amount of drama that can happen in the website.
*'''[http://www.chatroulette.com/ Chatroulette]''' is a website where people are randomly paired up with each other and video/text chat.
*'''[https://tumblr.com/ Tumblr]''', where people could make a blog and post text, pictures, video, audio, quotes, and links. The most distinguishing feature is the ability to "reblog" these posts from other's people's blogs into the user's own blog. Notable features of Tumblr include sketchblogs (where people upload their sketches), Ask blogs (where people answer questions other users ask, the moderators of these blogs usually pretending to be a character from a form of media), and the large amount of "social justice" (where people fight against racism, sexism, and other forms of negative discrimination). (See also [[1043: Ablogalypse]].)

The '''Isle of teenagers who just discovered macroeconomics''' is a joke about how teenagers tend to think that the world and the economy are a lot simpler than they actually are. Combined with the typical internet mindset, this leads to a lot of teenagers posting blogs and videos and comments on blogs and videos describing how idiotic the government and other red-tape-related adults are.
The '''Snob Sound''' could refer to the large amount of people who look down on others in the surrounding websites (one example being an original artist looking down on people who draw mainly fan-art).

==Twitter Region==
*'''Bieber Bay''' is a reference to {{w|Justin Bieber}} a pop singer whose singing sprouted on YouTube and became very popular on Twitter and other social media. He is very much vilified because of his rather feminine appearance and his hordes of fans (called "Beliebers") that seem to support him to ridiculous extents. Lately, though, Justin Beiber has taken a "bad boy" attitude because of all the Beliebers who are willing to defend him no matter what, him partaking in a lot of questionable activities that include tattoos, questionably-legal substances, and buying prostitution, thus lowering his popularity in the general populace.
*'''{{w|Google Buzz}}''' is a former social network attempted by Google. It has since been shut down.
*'''Bit.Ly Mountains''' is a reference to the URL shortening service {{w|bit.ly}}.
*'''Kayne's Isle of Sadness''' is a reference to the musician {{w|Kayne West}}.
*'''Sarah Palin USA''' is the Twitter handle of former politician {{w|Sarah Palin}}.
*'''Clueless Politician Coast''' is a reference to the number of politicians on Twitter and other social networks who repeatedly share clueless updates that more often create an uproar than help their election chances.
*'''Desert of Food Updates''' is a reference to the number of pictures of food that are shared on social media (especially Twitter). There has even been some controversy on posting such pictures.
*'''Journalists Trying to Find the Cutting Edge''' is referencing journalists on Twitter trying to keep up with the way that news is gathered and delivered now, despite usually working for a newspaper that publishes once a day.
*'''{{w|SHAQ}}''' is a reference to the former NBA basketball player, {{w|Shaq}}.
*'''{{w|identi.ca}}''' is an open source social networking and micro-blogging service, being an alternative to Twitter.
*''' Breaking! Waves''' is a pun on the fact that so many people used the word "Breaking" at the beginning of tweets that do not warrant that tag that the word has lost most of its meaning and become a joke. It is a pun because waves "break" on the shore.
*'''Web 3.0''' refers to the unofficial term {{w|Web 2.0}}. In this case, "Web 1.0" refers to accessing the Internet using Web Browsers, e-mail, and chatting, mainly through the use of computers. "Web 2.0" refers to accessing the Internet through new means (for example, RSS Feeds that read the news) through more devices (for example: tablets and cell phones). As such, "Web 3.0" means either what the Internet is like now in its current state of development, or what it will soon develop into; either way, it is still very much Under Construction.

==Geotagged Bay==
*'''{{w|Yelp}}''' is a website where people post reviews of real-life public locations (one example being restaurants).
*'''{{w|Geocaching}}'''
*'''{{w|Foursquare}}''' is a location-based social network.
*'''Latitude''' refers to {{w|Google Latitude}}

==Troll Bay and the Sea of Memes==
*'''Reddit''' - {{w|Reddit}} is the self-described "front page of the Internet" in which users submit stories, photos and videos and the best are "up-voted" to the top of the page.
*'''Wikipedia talk pages'''
*'''{{w|Wikia}}''' is a 3rd party wiki software.
*'''StumbleUpon'''
*'''Delicious'''
*'''{{w|Digg}}''' is a former competitor to Reddit in the social-news sphere, but now has been sold and restarted as a aggregator of news stories.
*'''Slashdot''', labeled "/." on the map,
*'''Fark'''
*'''YTMND''' is an acronym for "You're The Man Now, Dog!" It's also a community in which users can create meme-type nonsense by playing music over an image (either static or animated).
*'''IRC isles'''

==Skype Region==
The Skype Region refers to different IM, or Instant Messaging services, that enable almost-real-time text chatting between multiple people. These often allow services like voice chat and even video calls.

*'''[http://xkcd.com/ xkcd]''' is "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The comics are stick figures that talk about technological things, bigger philosophies, or simply events in the author's life. More information about the webcomic can be found [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/xkcd here].
*'''{{w|Skype}}''' is, according to Randall, the most popular of these among the internet. It has many features to allow peer-to-peer voice chats, as well as allowing calls to be made at a price to actual phones.

==Blogosphere==

==Blogosphere (Core Region)==
Gossip Blogs:
*Jezebel
*Deadline
*TMZ
*Gawker
*LJ Oh No They Didn't
*Doucheblog
*Isle of Mockery

Liberal Blogs:
*Huffington Post
*Paul Krugman
*Daily Beast
*TPM
*Ezra Klein
*Think Progress
*Kos

Bay of Flame:
*Politics Daily
*CNN Political Ticker
*Mediaite
*NY Times
*The Talk
*Libertarian Isle

Conservative Blogs:
*Pajamas Media
*Michelle Malkin
*Hot Air
*Red State
*American Thinker
*Townhall

Tech Blogs:
*Boy Genius Report
*Gizmodo
*Engadget
*Crunchgear
*Techcrunch
*Joystiq
*Kotaku

Assorted:
*BoingBoing
*Lifehacker
*Deadspin
*Meatorama

==QQ Region==
*'''Baidu Baike''' (「百度百科」, "Baidu Encyclopedia") is a Chinese search engine.
* The '''Ma Le Ge Bi''' and the '''Grass Mud Horse Bay''' could refer to the {{w|Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures}}.
*'''{{w|Tencent QQ}}''' is a Chinese instant messaging program.
*In English communities "QQ" has several more common definitions:
**An {{w|emoticon}}, representing a face with two large, crying eyes.
**A synonym for "rage quit", in which a video game player quits the game out of sheer frustration. It originated in ''Warcraft II'' multiplayer, where pressing Ctrl+Q+Q would quit the game, and became more widely known in ''World of Warcraft''.
**These definitions are commonly combined, usually to mock the "rage quitter".
*The Gulf of China refers to how sites in the region are based in People's Republic of China ("Red China"). The '''Great Firewall''' refers to {{w|The Great Firewall of China}}, a pun on {{w|The Great Wall of China}}. Similar to how The Great Wall of China was meant to keep intruding nations out of the then-capital of the city, The Great Firewall of China is meant to keep visitors from visiting censored websites. However, either a VPN or remote access to a computer in a "freer" country can circumvent the Firewall.

==Forums Islands==
Forums are websites where one person post a topic to which other people can discuss.

While the map has a zoomed in version, this article shall discuss the two bigger islands, first.

*'''[http://www.2ch.net 2channel]''' is a Japanese imageboard that was actually the original inspiration for 4chan.
*'''[http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites Craigslist]''' is a classified advertisement website with sections devoted to just about everything... which formerly included prostitution services, hence the '''The Former Site of Adult Services'''.

In the zoomed-in map, there is...
*'''420chan''' and '''7chan''', other imageboards in the style of 4chan (see below). Their relative lack of popularity and derivative nature leads a lot of 4chan users to mock them; hence, their position on Randall's map suggests that they're mere wads of semen.
*'''[http://ohinternet.com/ Encyclopedia Dramatica]''', labeled '''ED''' on the map , is a wiki site dedicated to chronicling internet memes and other noteworthy sites, events, people, and anything else that catches their attention in an incredibly arbitrary and vulgar manner. The site is ''heavily'' steeped in the attitude of veteran, vulgar 4chan users. People who have articles in the website tend to react with despair, given not only the cruelty in which the articles talk about the person in question, but the presence of the article means that the person is now an eternal target from the trolls. The user can not retaliate, since the userbase of Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan tends to overpower the victim easily...
:...usually. Due to the founder's talk against the Australian Aborignals (the founder is Australian), legal action has gone against the founder to the point of the founder having to shut down Encyclopedia Dramatica, founding the far tamer Oh, Internet! website, instead. Trolls responded by not only uploading their own mirror of the website but also vilifying the former founder forever.
:(Please note that, due to the malicious nature of the pop-up advertisements of Encyclopedia Dramatica, the link above points to its safe-for-work successor, Oh, Internet!)
*'''[https://www.4chan.org/ 4chan.org]''' is an {{w|imageboard}} in which people can upload pictures while others comment on them. The website is infamous for its loose/often non-existent rules, incredibly vulgar userbase, source of new memes, and spawning of trolls. 4chan's random board, known internally as '''/b/''', is almost constantly flooded with porn and image macros. This is why Randall's incarnation of 4chan is shaped like a penis.
*'''Tunnel to Habbo''' is a reference to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pools-closed the 2006 Habbo Hotel Raids], in which hundreds of 4chan Anons simultaneously logged onto Habbo Hotel and proceeded to be as obnoxious as possible, standing in formations of swastikas and penises or body-blocking the swimming pools.
*'''{{w|Catbus}} Route''' is likely a reference to {{w|Lolcat}}s in general.
*'''[http://www.ebaumsworld.com/ eBaum's World]''' is a media-hosting website founded by Eric Bauman. The site has lost a lot of traffic after (quite valid) accusations of stolen content.
*The gulf labelled '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) Anonymous]''' is a reference to the trolls that label themselves "Anonymous" who recently had gained national acknowledgement because of the group's real-life tirades, including cracking attacks against the Church of Scientology and the founding of WikiLeaks (a website that leaks confidential material related to governments).
*[http://www.somethingawful.com/ SomethingAwful] is a website that is meant to showcase all things "awful". SomethingAwful also has a large trollbase, but they tend to be more honorable than the ones from Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan. One example is there being a spotty holding of the no-furries rule in the forums. The forums themselves are famous because of the holding of the Let's Plays of [http://lparchive.org/Dangan-Ronpa/ Dangan Ronpa] and [http://danganronpa2mirror.tumblr.com/ Super Dangan Ronpa 2], which had cooked up public interest to the point of there being an English-language release of the games.
Please note that, due to these Let's Plays being in a forums that frequently hides behind a "paywall" that requires a paid account before accessing, the links provided go to their mirrors.

==Transcript==
:'''Map of Online Communities'''
:Size on map represents volume of Daily Social activity (posts, chat, etc). Based on data gathered over the Spring and Summer of 2010.

:[Two insets on the upper left-hand corner shows that this map is a tiny portion of the huge continent of Spoken Language, encompassing portions of the Internet, Email, and Cell Phones (SMS).]

:[The largest landmass on the map by far, which takes up nearly the entire northern half of the map is "Facebook" - with large states in the south-east of the country labeled 'Farmville' and 'Happy Farm'. There is a much smaller state to the west of these called 'Farm Town'. To the north of these states is a large swath of unremarkable land entitled 'Northern Wasteland of Unread Updates.' This is directly north of the large Dopamine Sea.

:A peninsula on the south-west, just below the Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions, houses many tiny states, such as MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Bebo, & Hi5. It is bordered on the south by Buzzword Bay, which contains several islands of varying sizes. Among these are YouTube and Twitter (the largest), which are separated by the Social Media Consultant Channel. To the south-east of Twitter, across the Sea of Protocol Confusion, is another, equally large island. Most of it is Skype, with the north having two largish states called AIM and Windows Live Messenger. On the south-west part of the island are two smaller states called GG and Yahoo Messenger.

:The Island of Skype is extremely close to, but separated by the Great Firewall (a dashed line), the large landmass of QQ. It's north shore is the Gulf of China and Grass Mud Horse Bay. Outside of these bays, over the Great Firewall are two islands called Craigslist and 2Channel.

:In the Dopamine Sea, off the southern shores of Farmville and Happy Farm, is MMO Isle. Its largest state is WoW, with Runescape, Lineage, Maple Story, Habbo, and the Mountains of Steam among its notable landmarks. To the southeast of the island is the Gulf of Lag, in which sits the CDC Games island, with Eve Online.

:To the east of Twitter is Troll Bay, with such islands as Reddit and Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicio.us, and Wikipedia Talk Pages. To their south are the IRC isles, of which one is the tiny island of #xkcd.

:East of these islands, and north of Skype island, is the Sea of Memes. In this sea, to the north of Craigslist and 2Channel, is an archipelago of tiny islands. There is an inset, labeled 'Forums.' (See below.)

:To the southwest if Twitter island, in the Sea of Opinions, are the blog islands. These lie south of the islands in Buzzword Bay, as well. The northernmost islands in this group are centered around the Bay of Drama, on which can be found Diary Blogs, Gossip Blogs, and Livejournal. Gossip Blogs share an island with Political, Music, and Tech Blogs. To the north of this island is a smaller island called Photo Blogs. South of Diary Blogs, and off the southwest coast of Music blogs is a smaller island called Fandom Blogs. South of Tech Blogs, off of which sprouts the small peninsula of Business Blogs, is the Spamblog Straits. On the other side of the straits is a large island made up of Miscellaneous Blogs, with two states demarcated as Religious Blogs and Blog Blogs. Southwest of the Blog Islands is the Sea of Zero (0) Comments.]

:[An inset of a group of islands in the sea of memes located on the lower right corner of the map, labeled 'Forums'. The largest by far is 4chan and /b/. Also found here are D2JSP, JLA Frums, Fan Forum, Something Awful, and many smaller ones, too numerous to list here.]

:[The northeastern third of Gossip/Political/Tech Blogs island is another inset labeled 'Blogosphere (Core)'. This can be found on the lower left corner of the map. Two peninsulas in Political Blogs bookend the Bay of Flame -- these are Liberal Blogs and Conservative Blogs. Between them lie several tiny islands such as Politics Daily, CNN Politcal Ticker, and Mediaite. Off the coast of Liberal Blogs lies the island of NYTimes, off the coast of Conservative Blogs is Libertarian Isle. Between the two lies The Talk. The northern peninsula of Tech Blogs contains places such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Joystiq, and Kotaku.]

:[Text found between the two insets, which are directly below the main map.]
:ABOUT THIS MAP
:Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community's current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community -- that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there. This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent.

:Estimates are based on the numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, nonrandom sampling, a 20,000-cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leaf reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up).

:Sources of data include Google and Bing, Wikipedia, Alexa, Big-Boards.com, StumbleUpon, Wordpress, Akismet, every website statistics page I could find, press releases, news articles, and individual site employees. Thanks in particular to folks at Last.fm, LiveJournal, Reddit, and the New York Times, as well as sysadmins at a number of sites who shared statistics on condition of anonymity.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Internet]]

Talk:251: CD Tray Fight

2013-12-10T20:15:15Z

173.245.52.211:

This may be a reference to a bug in certain old versions of FUSE that causes the CD tray to load almost immediately after being ejected. [[Special:Contributions/162.72.40.137|162.72.40.137]] 13:18, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

Incomplete because there is a missing Terminator reference or something???--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:46, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
:Reference to Skynet? I don't know enough about Terminator to be sure. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 20:15, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

The opposite of this kept happening to me, when I tried to burn Ubuntu to a disc Windows kept opening the disc drive whenever I clicked on Burn, then informed me that the disc drive was open. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.246|141.101.98.246]] 19:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Also, it must be noted that this may damage the device. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.199|108.162.212.199]] 23:05, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1052: Every Major's Terrible

2013-12-09T20:53:03Z

173.245.52.211:

Panel 1's cueball is in the same pose as Rodin's "The Thinker"

Panel 4 background is the periodic table of elements.

Panel 5, Fowler's Toad emits a noxious secretion that irritates skin and mucous membranes (it was previously thought to cause warts)

Panel 6, Psychology = a serial killer with a chainsaw, Sociology = hobo; Social Psych = hobo serial killer with chainsaw.

Panel 15, LISP, Scheme, and other computer languages with an excess of parentheses.

Panel 16, biohazard symbol

Panel 19, bongos were played by Richard Feynman

Panel 27, fear of snakes, study of reptiles

Panel 28, a picture of a stomach, pun on "stomach" being slang for "tolerate"

Panel 30, words in all lowercase like e.e.cummings

-- [[Special:Contributions/75.103.23.206| 75.103.23.206 ]] 22:04, 7 December 2012‎
:Hobo serial killer with chainsaw? Social psych sounds awesome!
:[[Special:Contributions/24.2.217.188|24.2.217.188]] 22:42, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
----
In panel 22 (History), what's the theme connecting the years 1935, 1969, and 1991?
[[User:Wwoods|Wwoods]] ([[User talk:Wwoods|talk]]) 15:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

----
This explanation is very small for that big comic. I am starting to add the transcript and after that I will do more investigations to that opera. This should be the key to explain all the panels.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

:The answer won't lie in the song, trust me. Pirates of Penzance is probably my favorite comic opera out there. Plus Randall gives that the lie in saying you can use the tune from the elements song (a well-known parody) or even Marry Poppins (similar tune, but not exactly the same). I think each panel is just a reference to the words, I don't think that Randall is actually involving The Pirates of Penzance in any way other than the tune. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 20:53, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

802: Online Communities 2

2013-12-09T20:39:07Z

173.245.52.211: /* Facebook Region */ Added explanation of Ozymandias (Great poem, fyi)

{{comic
| number = 802
| date = October 6, 2010
| title = Online Communities 2
| image = online_communities_2.png
| titletext = Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.
}}
A larger version of this picture can be found here: [http://xkcd.com/802_large/ http://xkcd.com/802_large/].
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Not all of the regions are fully explained.}}
This comic shows a map of internet communities where the size of each region roughly corresponds to its size, and its proximity to other regions indicates similarities.

This is the successor of [[256: Online Communities]]. It differs in that it is updated, and furthermore, instead of using the ''membership'' of whichever service to determine its size on the map, it uses its "daily social activity."

The map actually has two super−maps: the online community map is surrounded by the "countries" of E−Mail and SMS ("Instant Messaging"). These, in turn, are surrounded by the "Spoken Language" country (which is odd, considering that e−mail, SMS, and the Internet in general are based on ''written'' language) with its own sub−country, "cell phones" (which ''do'' involve e−mail and the Internet while being the mean medium of SMS's).

At the title text [[Randall]] explains that, using his definition of "most activity per day", Farmville is actually the ''second'' most popular "Facebook farming game". This will strike many as odd, because Farmville is by far the most famous, leading one to wonder how the most famous could not be the most played. The phrase "browser-based social-networking-centered farming game" is an example of [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNarrowSuperlative an overly-narrow superlative].

==Facebook Region==
The Facebook region deals with social networks, that is, websites oriented towards having people meet.

'''{{w|Facebook}}''' is a social networking site that allows people to meet old real−life friends and make new friends that share similar interests. One of its most notable features is that a member can update a "status" or make normal posts about the happenings of the member's life, complete with pictures, other members "liking" these posts. The size of the Facebook region is not exaggerated; most websites seem to allow "liking" their content or allow/require logging in the website with a Facebook account. There even are cell phones with a "Facebook" button!

'''Farmville''', '''Happy Farm''', and '''Farm Town''' are all Facebook games. The "Unethical Bay" refers to how these games tend to addict players into constantly buying virtual items of questionable value.

The '''People You Can't Unfriend''' refer to people whom, due to real-life expectations and relationships, unfriending them is difficult, no matter how you really feel about them.

The '''Data Mines''' refer to the data mining that Facebook does with the interests of its members. This fuels the profitable advertising business at the expense of customer trust.

The '''Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions''' refer to how interactions with family members on Facebook suddenly become more awkward because everyone on Facebook (and sometimes ''off'' Facebook, given that you do not necessarily need to log in if you want to see someone's Facebook account) if you are discussing with your family through post comments.

'''"Old Facebook" Resistance''' refers to Facebook's earlier users, who have often resisted (and resented) changes made to Facebook as it became more popular.

While Facebook is the largest "country" of the Facebook Region, there are a lot of smaller "countries" that represent smaller social networks.

* Below Facebook (and "'Old Facebook' Resistance") is '''{{w|Diaspora (social network)|Diaspora}}''', a fully open-source, decentralized, privacy-respecting-and-expecting alternative to Facebook. From what this map tells, Diaspora is little-known, even if Facebook is taken out of the context.
* '''{{w|Taringa!}}''' is a Spanish-speaking social network that is based on a forums. Copyrighted material is frequently found there.
* '''{{w|Classmates.com}}''' is a services in which the user can meet fellow classmates that came from the same high school. The website is probably best-known by its memetic advertisement that said [http://dudemanphat.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-am-i-supposed-to-care-about-nick.html "She married him??!! And they've got 7 kids??"] (Incidentally, [http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2003325519_adcouple27.html there is more to the coupled picture than what the advertisement says.])
* '''{{w|MySpace}}''' is a social networking website that is a kind of proto-Facebook: users could customize their one-page websites with whatever they wanted, make their interests and daily lives public, and interact with other users. Back in the mid 2000's, MySpace was the largest social network, many people using the website; however, the surprisingly-less-customizable Facebook ended up taking the place of MySpace. The "bands" country of MySpace refers to how a lot of bands in the day advertised and interacted using the website. Indeed, the latest incarnation of MySpace (in terms of 2013) is more oriented towards band members.
* '''{{w|LinkedIn}}''' is a social network aimed towards people in the workplace.
* '''{{w|Orkut}}''' is one of Google's first social networks before Google made [https://plus.google.com/ Google+].
* '''{{w|Hi5}}''' is a social network that is very popular among people in Latin America.
* '''{{w|Renren}}''' ('''「人人」''', "people" in Chinese) is "a Chinese copy of Facebook."

Other areas of note are the '''Niche Market Mountains''', where social networks aimed towards more niche markets are located. Similar to how mountains tend to be isolated from mainland, niche social networks tend to be just that: niche, without much interaction with the general populace. Above the Niche Market Mountains are the '''Charred Wasteland of Abandoned Social Networks'''. Given the popularity of MySpace and Facebook, there would be no doubt tons of websites wanting to take advantage of the success of these websites or even wanting to compete or even overpower with them. Even so, these websites tend to not have the userbase or even the expertise towards the long-term, hence they become wastelands: environments devoid of life, except the few life forms that are from these wastelands (in this case, the ones who are loyal to the website or which are sadly few). Within the '''Charred Wasteland of Abandoned Social Networks''' stands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias Ozymandias], the titular broken statue of Shelley's poem. In the poem, only "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" and a "shattered visage" are all that remain of the once-great statue and both of these features are present in the comic.

Also visible are the '''Duckface Mountains''' and the '''Red Cup Mountains'''. "Duckface" refers to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/duck-face this incredibly obnoxious facial expression], and "red cup pictures" are any pictures containing party-goers holding disposable red plastic beverage cups. Facebook is absolutely flooded with both types of pictures.

==MMO Isle==
MMO's (short form of "MMORPG", short form of "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Player Game") are websites that host online games where multiple people take the role of a character and play in a setting hosted by the website. These types of games tend to be fantastical in setting. Frequently, missions are added to the game, giving current player more incentive towards playing more.

* '''[https://www.habbo.com/ Habbo Hotel]''' is a website where someone creates a human avatar an interacts in a virtual world that is not that different from the one in real life.
* '''[http://www.clubpenguin.com/ Club Penguin]''' is [http://disney.com/ Disney's] MMO where someone creates a penguin avatar and interacts with other in a more polar, cartoony setting. Club Penguin is aimed towards children.
* '''[http://maplestory.nexon.net/ Maple Story]''' is an MMO that has a more natural setting. The most distinguishing feature of Maple Story is its cartoony pixel art.
* '''[http://www.gamefaqs.com/ GameFAQs]''', while not an MMO, is a website that has the largest repository of walkthoughs, that is, guides that help someone beat a game. GameFAQs is notable for not only its large repository of walkthroughs of games that are across an extreme variety of consoles, handhelds, and even computers (not all of them MMOs), but also the drama that is rumoured to happen in the GameFAQs forums.
* '''[http://www.ign.com/ IGN]''' (full: '''Imagine Games Network'''), while also not an MMO, is the largest website that gives news on video games in general, not just MMOs. Each of the games mentioned in the site have pages that have summaries, reviews, screenshots, other art, videos, and links to news related to its games.
* '''[http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml FFXI]''' (full: '''Final Fantasy XI''') is an MMO from SquareEnix, being the first MMO of the popular ''Final Fantasy'' series.
* '''[http://www.runescape.com/community Runescape]''' is an older MMO.
* '''[http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ Starcraft II]''' is a realtime strategy game with a science fiction setting that heavily involves space travel. While technically not an MMO, it has a significant online multiplayer component.
* '''[http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ WoW]''' (full: '''World of Warcraft''') is the definitive MMO, being not only the most popular and one of the longest-running but also the most expansive (having its own spinoff games, comic books, novels, and even figurines), WOW giving the idea of how an MMO should be. A player can choose from a variety of races, each with its own heavy history.
* '''[http://secondlife.com/ Second Life]''' is similar to Habbo, albeit with a bigger suspension of disbelief (one example being that the player does not need to be a human) and in a 3D setting.
* '''[http://www.nationstates.net/ NationStates]''' is a text-based political simulation game. Notably, some of its traffic comes not from the actual game (which is optional), but the extensive set of political, roleplaying, and general forums attached.
* '''[http://www.eveonline.com/ Eve Online]''' is a science fiction MMO which is notable because of its virtual economy.
* '''[http://www.gaiaonline.com/ Gaia]''' (full: '''Gaia Online'''), while not an MMO, is a forums oriented towards pop culture, including video games and Japanese media. Its most notable feature is the heavy customization possible of a member's pixel-art avatar. Its members tend to roleplay a lot, albeit in a more written, story-based form. Gaia has gained a revaination of its members stealing art and causing drama.

Other notable regions include:
* The '''Mountains of Steam''', referring to the game distribution service [http://store.steampowered.com/ Steam] where people could buy and download video games in general, not just MMOs.
* '''River Grind''' refers to "grinding." In most MMOs, the character is a fighter of some sorts, yet starts at a level 1, signifying the character's aptitude level in combat. The character can level up and gain more aptitude levels through earning experience, of which the most reliable and otherwise common way is the process of "grinding," that is, repeatedly fighting opposing monsters (sometimes of a level notably lower that your character's), gaining experience points from winning these battles until your character gains a level, that is, "levels up". While a practical necessity in strengthening the character, this process can be tiresome, hence the expression "grinding."
* '''Spawn Camp''' refers to "spawn points", the places in combat-oriented MMO's tend to produce ("spawn") random AI-powered creatures, and the act of "spawn camping", in which the player character simply stands behind or around the spawn points to fight the enemy creatures as soon as they appear.
* '''Gulf of Lag''' refers to how the MMO can be slowed down a considerable amount doe to the large amount of players simultaneously using the same server, this congestion bogging down the server and frustrating the users.
* '''[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/final-boss-of-the-internet End Guy for the Internet]''' refers to "end bosses", the last -- and usually hardest to defeat -- "bad guy" in a game (or a section of a game).

==YouTube Region==
The YouTube region refers to websites that are based on user-created content.

'''[https://www.youtube.com/ YouTube]''' is the definitive video website where people can upload videos with the purpose of public viewing, ranging from home movies through official music videos through Let's Plays of people playing video games to questionably-legal uploads of cartoons and films. Google had purchased YouTube.

Many of the sites on the map are just references to {{w|viral video}}s at {{w|YouTube}}:
* '''Viral Shores''' refers to how viral videos (whether they be viral marketing or simply memes) tend to proliferate on YouTube.
* '''Britney''' likely refers to pop singer {{w|Britney Spears}} and the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc‎ "Leave Britney Alone" guy].
* '''Maru Gulf''' refers to Maru the Cat, a YouTube celebrity [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/676:_Abstraction also mentioned in xkcd].
* '''Prairie Dog Habitat''' likely refers to the viral video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw Dramatic Chipmunk] (which is actually a Prairie Dog).
* '''Rick Rolling Hills''' references, well, {{w|Rickrolling}}. More information [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ here]. The "deserted" note likely refers to how Rick Astley himself is tired of the meme, or again, how people tend to leave the video upon getting "Rick Roll'd," never actually going to the video with the express purpose of viewing the video.
* '''Lunar Landing Soundstage''' is, of course, a reference to the {{w|Moon landing conspiracy theories}}, which Randall has railed on before.
* '''{{w|OK Go}} Bay''' refers to the band "OK Go" who have multiple viral music videos on YouTube, most famously [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA "Here it goes again"] featuring treadmills.

The '''HTML5 swamp''' refers to the spotty support of HTML 5 (an update on HTML that is frequently touting its media capabilities, making HTML 5 a viable alternative to Flash) YouTube has. (Of course, by the time the comic was written, HTML 5 was still in its infancy.)
The Music Video Bay refers to the amount of music videos (official or otherwise) are present in YouTube.

Other counties of the YouTube region include:
* '''[https://secure.flickr.com/ Flickr]''', a website where people can upload and share photographs they took.
* '''[http://fotolog.com Fotolog]''', a photo website very popular in South America in 2004-2008, which was used as a social network.
* '''[https://vimeo.com/ vimeo]''', a website where people tend to showcase artistic content that they made on their own, notably independent studios.
* '''[http://www.last.fm/ Last.fm]''', a music website that is notable of its "scrobbling" feature.
* '''[https://www.newgrounds.com/ Newgrounds]''', a website that hosts art, (Flash-based) videos, audio, and (Flash-based) games to which other users can comment and rate. Even so, content from Newgrounds tends to be obscene, though there is a filtering system if a viewer does not wish to see obscene content.
* '''[http://www.deviantart.com/ deviantArt]''', the largest art website, where people can upload, sell, and buy not only art itself, but also video, audio, Flash-work, and even skins (the original purpose of deviantArt). While many big-name/professional people and organizations have their works in deviantArt, the site is more infamous for the large amount of people who upload low-quality fan-art and fan-characters, most notably of media from Japan. Another point of infamy is the large amount of drama that can happen in the website.
* '''[http://www.chatroulette.com/ Chatroulette]''' is a website where people are randomly paired up with each other and video/text chat.
* '''[https://tumblr.com/ Tumblr]''', where people could make a blog and post text, pictures, video, audio, quotes, and links. The most distinguishing feature is the ability to "reblog" these posts from other's people's blogs into the user's own blog. Notable features of Tumblr include sketchblogs (where people upload their sketches), Ask blogs (where people answer questions other users ask, the moderators of these blogs usually pretending to be a character from a form of media), and the large amount of "social justice" (where people fight against racism, sexism, and other forms of negative discrimination). (See also [[1043: Ablogalypse]].)

The '''Isle of teenagers who just discovered macroeconomics''' is a joke about how teenagers tend to think that the world and the economy are a lot simpler than they actually are. Combined with the typical internet mindset, this leads to a lot of teenagers posting blogs and videos and comments on blogs and videos describing how idiotic the government and other red-tape-related adults are.
The '''Snob Sound''' could refer to the large amount of people who look down on others in the surrounding websites (one example being an original artist looking down on people who draw mainly fan-art).

==Twitter Region==
* '''Bieber Bay''' is a reference to {{w|Justin Bieber}} a pop singer who became very popular on Twitter and other social media.
* '''{{w|Google Buzz}}''' is a former social network attempted by Google. It has since been shut down.
* '''Bit.Ly Mountains''' is a reference to the URL shortening service {{w|bit.ly}}.
* '''Kayne's Isle of Sadness''' is a reference to the musician {{w|Kayne West}}.
* '''Sarah Palin USA''' is the twitter handle of former politician {{w|Sarah Palin}}.
* '''Clueless Politician Coast''' is a reference to the number of politicians on Twitter and other social networks who repeatedly share clueless updates that more often create an uproar than help their election chances.
* '''Desert of Food Updates''' is a reference to the number of pictures of food that are shared on social media (especially Twitter).
* '''Journalists Trying to Find the Cutting Edge''' is referencing journalists on Twitter trying to keep up with the way that news is gathered and delivered now, despite usually working for a newspaper that publishes once a day.
* '''{{w|SHAQ}}''' is a reference to the former NBA basketball player, {{w|Shaq}}.
* '''{{w|identi.ca}}''' is an open source social networking and micro-blogging service.
* ''' Breaking! Waves''' is a pun on the fact that so many people used the word "Breaking" at the beginning of tweets that do not warrant that tag that the word has lost most of its meaning and become a joke. It is a pun because waves "break" on the shore.

==Geotagged Bay==

==Troll Bay==

==Skype Region==
The Skype Region refers to different IM, or Instant Messaging services, that enable almost-real-time text chatting between multiple people. These often allow services like voice chat and even video calls.

* '''[http://xkcd.com/ xkcd]''' is "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The comics are stick figures that talk about technological things, bigger philosophies, or simply events in the author's life. More information about the webcomic can be found [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/xkcd here].
*'''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype Skype]''' is, according to Randall, the most popular of these among the internet. It has many features to allow peer-to-peer voice chats, as well as allowing calls to be made (at a price) to actual phones.

==Blogosphere==

==Blogosphere (Core Region)==

==QQ Region==
*'''Baidu Baike''' (「百度百科」, "Baidu Encyclopedia") is a Chinese search engine.
* The '''Ma Le Ge Bi''' and the '''Grass Mud Horse Bay''' could refer to the {{w|Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures}}.
*'''{{w|Tencent QQ}}''' is a Chinese instant messaging program.

(Incidentally, in English-speaking communities "QQ" has several more common definitions:
** An {{w|emoticon}}, representing a face with two large, crying eyes.
** A synonym for "rage quit", in which a video game player quits the game out of sheer frustration. It originated in ''Warcraft II'' multiplayer, where pressing Ctrl+Q+Q would quit the game, and became more widely known in ''World of Warcraft''.
** These definitions are commonly combined, usually to mock the "rage quitter".)

The Gulf of China refers to how sites in the region are based in People's Republic of China ("Red China"). The '''Great Firewall''' refers to {{w|The Great Firewall of China}}, a pun on {{w|The Great Wall of China}}. Similar to how The Great Wall of China was meant to keep intruding nations out of the then-capital of the city, The Great Firewall of China is meant to keep visitors from visiting censored websites. However, either a VPN or remote access to a computer in a "freer" country can circumvent the Firewall.

==Forums Islands==
Forums are websites where one person post a topic to which other people can discuss.

While the map has a zoomed in version, this article shall discuss the two bigger islands, first.

* '''[http://www.2ch.net 2channel]''' is a Japanese imageboard that was actually the original inspiration for 4chan.
* '''[http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites Craigslist]''' is a classified advertisement website with sections devoted to just about everything... which formerly included prostitution services, hence the '''The Former Site of Adult Services'''.

In the zoomed-in map, there is...
* '''420chan''' and '''7chan''', other imageboards in the style of 4chan (see below). Their relative lack of popularity and derivative nature leads a lot of 4chan users to mock them (hence, their position on Randall's map suggests that they're mere wads of semen).
* '''[http://ohinternet.com/ Encyclopedia Dramatica]''', labeled '''ED''' on the map , is a wiki site dedicated to chronicling internet memes and other noteworthy sites, events, people, and anything else that catches their attention in an incredibly arbitrary and vulgar manner. The site is ''heavily'' steeped in the attitude of veteran, vulgar 4chan users. People who have articles in the website tend to react with despair, given not only the cruelty in which the articles talk about the person in question, but the presence of the article means that the person is now an eternal target from the trolls. The user can not retaliate, since the userbase of Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan tneds to overpower the victim easily...
:...usually. Due to the founder's talk against the Australian Aborignals (the founder is Australian), legal action has gone against the founder to the point of the founder having to shut down Encyclopedia Dramatica, founding the far tamer Oh, Internet! website, instead. Trolls responded by not only uploading their own mirror of the website but also vilifying the former founder forever.
:(Please note that, due to the malicious nature of the pop-up advertisements of Encyclopedia Dramatica, the link above points to its safe-for-work successor, Oh, Internet!)
* '''[https://www.4chan.org/ 4chan.org]''' is an {{w|imageboard}} in which people can upload pictures while others comment on them. The website is infamous for its loose/often non-existent rules, incredibly vulgar userbase, source of new memes, and spawning of trolls. 4chan's random board, known internally as '''/b/''', is almost constantly flooded with porn and image macros. This is why Randall's incarnation of 4chan is shaped like a penis.
* '''Tunnel to Habbo''' is a reference to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pools-closed the 2006 Habbo Hotel Raids], in which hundreds of 4chan Anons simultaneously logged onto Habbo Hotel and proceeded to be as obnoxious as possible, standing in formations of swastikas and penises or body-blocking the swimming pools.
* '''{{w|Catbus}} Route''' is likely a reference to {{w|Lolcat}}s in general.
* '''[http://www.ebaumsworld.com/ eBaum's World]''' is a media-hosting website founded by Eric Bauman. The site has lost a lot of traffic after (quite valid) accusations of stolen content.
* The gulf labelled '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) Anonymous]''' is a reference to the trolls that label themselves "Anonymous" who recently had gained national acknowledgement because of the group's real-life tirades, including cracking attacks against the Church of Scientology and the founding of WikiLeaks (a website that leaks confidential material related to governments).
* [http://www.somethingawful.com/ SomethingAwful] is a website that is meant to showcase all things "awful". SomethingAwful also has a large trollbase, but they tend to be more honorable than the ones from Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan. One example is there being a spotty holding of the no-furries rule in the forums. The forums themselves are famous because of the holding of the Let's Plays of [http://lparchive.org/Dangan-Ronpa/ Dangan Ronpa] and [http://danganronpa2mirror.tumblr.com/ Super Dangan Ronpa 2], which had cooked up public interest to the point of there being an English-language release of the games.
Please note that, due to these Let's Plays being in a forums that frequently hides behind a "paywall" that requires a paid account before accessing, the links provided go to their mirrors.

==Transcript==
:'''Map of Online Communities'''
:Size on map represents volume of Daily Social activity (posts, chat, etc). Based on data gathered over the Spring and Summer of 2010.

:[Two insets on the upper left-hand corner shows that this map is a tiny portion of the huge continent of Spoken Language, encompassing portions of the Internet, Email, and Cell Phones (SMS).]

:[The largest landmass on the map by far, which takes up nearly the entire northern half of the map is "Facebook" - with large states in the south-east of the country labeled 'Farmville' and 'Happy Farm'. There is a much smaller state to the west of these called 'Farm Town'. To the north of these states is a large swath of unremarkable land entitled 'Northern Wasteland of Unread Updates.' This is directly north of the large Dopamine Sea.

:A peninsula on the south-west, just below the Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions, houses many tiny states, such as MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Bebo, & Hi5. It is bordered on the south by Buzzword Bay, which contains several islands of varying sizes. Among these are YouTube and Twitter (the largest), which are separated by the Social Media Consultant Channel. To the south-east of Twitter, across the Sea of Protocol Confusion, is another, equally large island. Most of it is Skype, with the north having two largish states called AIM and Windows Live Messenger. On the south-west part of the island are two smaller states called GG and Yahoo Messenger.

:The Island of Skype is extremely close to, but separated by the Great Firewall (a dashed line), the large landmass of QQ. It's north shore is the Gulf of China and Grass Mud Horse Bay. Outside of these bays, over the Great Firewall are two islands called Craigslist and 2Channel.

:In the Dopamine Sea, off the southern shores of Farmville and Happy Farm, is MMO Isle. Its largest state is WoW, with Runescape, Lineage, Maple Story, Habbo, and the Mountains of Steam among its notable landmarks. To the southeast of the island is the Gulf of Lag, in which sits the CDC Games island, with Eve Online.

:To the east of Twitter is Troll Bay, with such islands as Reddit and Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicio.us, and Wikipedia Talk Pages. To their south are the IRC isles, of which one is the tiny island of #xkcd.

:East of these islands, and north of Skype island, is the Sea of Memes. In this sea, to the north of Craigslist and 2Channel, is an archipelago of tiny islands. There is an inset, labeled 'Forums.' (See below.)

:To the southwest if Twitter island, in the Sea of Opinions, are the blog islands. These lie south of the islands in Buzzword Bay, as well. The northernmost islands in this group are centered around the Bay of Drama, on which can be found Diary Blogs, Gossip Blogs, and Livejournal. Gossip Blogs share an island with Political, Music, and Tech Blogs. To the north of this island is a smaller island called Photo Blogs. South of Diary Blogs, and off the southwest coast of Music blogs is a smaller island called Fandom Blogs. South of Tech Blogs, off of which sprouts the small peninsula of Business Blogs, is the Spamblog Straits. On the other side of the straits is a large island made up of Miscellaneous Blogs, with two states demarcated as Religious Blogs and Blog Blogs. Southwest of the Blog Islands is the Sea of Zero (0) Comments.]

:[An inset of a group of islands in the sea of memes located on the lower right corner of the map, labeled 'Forums'. The largest by far is 4chan and /b/. Also found here are D2JSP, JLA Frums, Fan Forum, Something Awful, and many smaller ones, too numerous to list here.]

:[The northeastern third of Gossip/Political/Tech Blogs island is another inset labeled 'Blogosphere (Core)'. This can be found on the lower left corner of the map. Two peninsulas in Political Blogs bookend the Bay of Flame -- these are Liberal Blogs and Conservative Blogs. Between them lie several tiny islands such as Politics Daily, CNN Politcal Ticker, and Mediaite. Off the coast of Liberal Blogs lies the island of NYTimes, off the coast of Conservative Blogs is Libertarian Isle. Between the two lies The Talk. The northern peninsula of Tech Blogs contains places such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Joystiq, and Kotaku.]

:[Text found between the two insets, which are directly below the main map.]
:ABOUT THIS MAP
:Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community's current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community -- that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there. This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent.

:Estimates are based on the numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, nonrandom sampling, a 20,000-cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leaf reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up).

:Sources of data include Google and Bing, Wikipedia, Alexa, Big-Boards.com, StumbleUpon, Wordpress, Akismet, every website statistics page I could find, press releases, news articles, and individual site employees. Thanks in particular to folks at Last.fm, LiveJournal, Reddit, and the New York Times, as well as sysadmins at a number of sites who shared statistics on condition of anonymity.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Internet]]

Talk:354: Startling

2013-12-03T01:00:18Z

173.245.52.211: Thoughts on title text. Its really not that complex.

This comic isn't that simple:
*what is Cueball doing every few months?
*is 2004 correct? If yes, what does it mean?
--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:09, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

: Every few months, Cueball halts his work and realizes that he is in the twenty-first century. Someone who grew up in anticipation of the new millennium (and the new century along with it) may take quite a while to adjust to it. The second bullet point, however, requires some research. --[[User:Quicksilver|Quicksilver]] ([[User talk:Quicksilver|talk]]) 07:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

"in which he lives in" – this is redundant. It should be "in which he lives. This could be a reference to the song "Live and Let Die", but unless this reference is more clearly explained, it does not belong in the explanation.{{unsigned ip|75.69.96.225}}

:I would expand on this thought and state it should be altered to "in about the time in which he lives in is living in" just to clarify specifically that it's that specific time in which he specifically lives in generally. [[User:Thokling|Thokling]] ([[User talk:Thokling|talk]]) 15:06, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the future is specifically 2004. It is unthinkable to Cueball (and hence Randall) that we are even in the twenty-first century. For him, the 21st century was "the future," a whole new millennium. I think the point of the title text isn't that the future occurred in 2004, its that we're living in "the future." [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 01:00, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1286: Encryptic

2013-11-06T16:17:01Z

173.245.52.211: Pointed out another pokemon link.

The answer to the weathervane sword/ favorite apostle hint has got to be Matthias. It is 8 characters long, Matthias was the apostle chosen to replace Judas and in the Redwall series Matthias is one of the wielders of the Sword of Martin a sword that was hung on a weathervane.

It is unclear to me if these are actual hashes from Adobe file? That would be very cool... but actual file seems to have passwords in slightly different format. http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/how-an-epic-blunder-by-adobe-could-strengthen-hand-of-password-crackers/ [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.211|108.162.229.211]] 09:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC) pavel

:I wouldn't call 3DES secure ... but yes, in this situation the real problem is not using per-user salt. Note that I would expect that at least some of those examples would be solvable ...any idea? Hmmm ... sword of weather vane and one of apostles might be Martin ([http://redwall.wikia.com/wiki/Sword_of_Martin]) ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

::It's Jonathon (for John). Not sure what it has to do with weather vane swords though... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.240.18|108.162.240.18]] 12:42, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

:Umm. "Peter" does not seem to have 8 characters, does it? Encryption method suggests it should be 8 characters, as do 8 character boxes on the right... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.211|108.162.229.211]] 10:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC) pavel

::I'd say "weather vane sword", "name1" and "favorite of 12 apostles" is (Saint) Peter. "Weather vane" as symbol for the rooster in the denial, and the sword Peter used when Jesus was arrested. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.177|108.162.254.177]] 10:25, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

::: ... interesting that google search didn't mentioned it :-) Seems bible have too low pagerank. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

::: The 'favourite' apostle was John the Evangelist though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved . The other biblical clue here is 'with your own hand you have done all this' - Judith 15:10. If that's Judith1510 then the 'name and shirt number' is 'Judith15'. The TOS/earlobes clue seems to be "Spock's brain" and "Spock's (ears?)". And the Michael Jackson one is (obviously) ABC123. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.214|141.101.99.214]] 11:14, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:::: Perhaps "favorite" in this case refer's to the user's favorite, not Jesus's. [[User:Yomikoma|Yomikoma]] ([[User talk:Yomikoma|talk]]) 16:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:::: The Michael Jackson password should just be "ABC". (The other clue refers only to letters, and the proper song title also has only letters.) —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 20:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::: Given that name1 is two blocks long, I would guess that the apostle's name is going to be eight characters long, with the second hash block being 1+seven spaces (or nulls if Adobe pads it with nulls and not spaces). But then again, as the only disciple with a name eight letters long is Thaddeus maybe not {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.214}}

:::: "St.Peter" is 8 characters, and having a "special" character (the period) makes it a good choice for passwords that might require 1 non-alphanumeric character (and ban spaces). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.223|141.101.99.223]] 11:47, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

:::: I think it is obvious that Name1 refers to {The user's name} + 1. I wonder though if we should be referring to one of the other 12 apostles in a different context? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Apostles_%28disambiguation%29 - [[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.11|108.162.242.11]] 18:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::::: Is the "weathervane sword" referring to Redwall? I haven't read the book myself, but would it be referring to the "Sword of Martin"? [http://redwall.wikia.com/wiki/Sword_of_Martin] --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 19:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Another article about using passwords hints from multiple users to find the passwords from the breach. http://7habitsofhighlyeffectivehackers.blogspot.com/2013/11/can-someone-be-targeted-using-adobe.html [[User:Bugefun|Bugefun]] ([[User talk:Bugefun|talk]]) 11:06, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

"Sexy earlobes" makes me think of [http://misswiu.livejournal.com/5385.html "The ABC of Aerobics"], but that would make that Shirley Clarke, and nothing in Star Trek has anything to do with Shirley that I am aware of, except possible [http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Ruth Shirley Bonne as Ruth]. I skimmed a list of episode titles, but nothing jumps out at me as particularly earlobish. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.187|108.162.219.187]] 11:20, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

:Sexy earlobes might have something to do with Ferengi, but they didn't appeared in TOS. 141.101.99.214's idea is better. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:42, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

:OK, we know that "sexy earlobes" and "best TOS Episode" are the same for the first eight character, but differ after that, while "best TOS" and "sugarland" are the same after the first 8 characters. So, my guesses are : Best TOS episode: "Charlie X"; "Sexy Earlobes": Someone with the first name of "Charlie"; "Sugarland": some city in Texas (perhaps "HoustonTX") [[User:JamesCurran|JamesCurran]] ([[User talk:JamesCurran|talk]]) 16:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Note that you should not ever use cipher in {{w|Block_cipher_mode_of_operation#Electronic_codebook_.28ECB.29|ECB (electronic codebook)}} mode, i.e. encrypt each block separately and independently, but use chaining. --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 12:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: And for passwords you shouldn't be using a cipher at all, but rather a hash function. (Or a cipher in one of the approved hash constructions, if you must.) And really you shouldn't be using a standard hash function, but be following best practices for passwords instead: salting the hash, using a *slow* hash function, etc. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 20:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, i'm rather confused about the last few on the list though. Assumedly the password for "he did the mash, he did the" would be "monster mash", but that would leave "purloined" with a password of either "monsterm" or "monster ". which doesn't make much sense. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.240.18|108.162.240.18]] 13:47, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

(charlie sheen) a1f9b2b6299e7a2b eadec1e6ab797397 sexy earlobes - He did a 2 and a half men episode on sexy earlobes
:(charlie x) a1f9b2b6299e7a2b 617ab0277727ad85 best tos episode - Star Trek has so many good episodes...
::(houstontx) 39738b7adb0b8af7 617ab0277727ad85 sugarland - Sugarland is in Houston, TX

I don't know about anyone else, but the "hints" column incidentally reminded me of {{w|Darwinian poetry|Darwinian Poetry}}... Not intentionally, I'm sure. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 14:46, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Somehow I've missed out on this issue until this comic alerted me to it, but: once a few passwords are correctly guessed, does that make it straightforward to recover the encryption key, and then be able to decrypt '''all''' of them? —[[User:Scs|scs]] ([[User talk:Scs|talk]]) 14:50, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

: Answering my own question: not really straightforward, no. 3DES is still pretty strong, and what knowing a few passwords gives you is a known-plaintext attack, which helps a little, but is by no means a giveaway. —[[User:Scs|scs]] ([[User talk:Scs|talk]]) 15:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

:: Note that if blackhat used this service, he would know at least one plaintext - his own password--[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 15:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

:No, for calculating the encryption key of Triple DES, there is no real benefit in knowing million passwords, you would still need to brute force it. You would need to know at least 232 different passwords to make it easier but you can't do that with the leaked file (there are about 30 times less of them and moreover many of them are not unique). [[User:Sten|'''STEN''']] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 16:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Okay, so the first column is the encrypted password, the second one is the hint chosen by user. What do rectangles mean? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.151|173.245.53.151]] 15:28, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:That are the fields to fill the characters in just as you do in a crossword puzzle. There are small fields at the beginning that take one character each and one large field at the end that takes one to eight characters. [[User:Sten|'''STEN''']] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 15:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Water 3 is an egg group: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Water_3_(Egg_Group) . Given the length of the key, it will probably be 9-16 characters. (Crawdaunt, tentacool, and tentacruel are most likely) [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.139|199.27.128.139]] 15:43, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:-- which means 9dca1d79d4dec6d5 is either L, EL, or T, but I can't find a way for that to match up with any variation of "monster mash." [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.209|173.245.55.209]] 16:15, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:: Same problem here... Monster mash must not be correct, but it is one of the easier ones, I can't give up on it. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 17:35, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::: Maybe, he did the MASH is about the book, movie or TV Show M*A*S*H instead? --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 17:49, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:: Monster Mash was written by Bobby Pickett, maybe it has something to do with him? [[User:Sten|'''STEN''']] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 18:38, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::: Maybe it's not "monster mash" but just "monster". This would allow the Water-3 Pokemon to be "Cloyster". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.5|108.162.237.5]] 19:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:::: You are having trouble counting to eight. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 20:22, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::::: You are forgetting the space. Assuming space is stored as a null character, this might actually work.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 01:43, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
:::::: Nobody in their right mind would encode spaces as nulls. For us to suppose that they did, we'd need to have some specific clue to that effect. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.5|108.162.238.5]] 09:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me there are two puzzles here, if folks are right that this is not actual data from the hack. 1) Figure out Adobe's master 3DES encryption password, for the big prize. 2) figure out Randall's 3DES encryption password for this puzzle based on these hints, and knowing it will be something clever. [[User:Nealmcb|Nealmcb]] ([[User talk:Nealmcb|talk]]) 16:12, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Trying to decode the passwords (As Randall obviously wants us to)
"with your own hand you have done all this" is from the book of Judith.
Working on decoding the others. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 17:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

8babb6299e06eb6d = password
a0a2876eb1ea1fea = 1
85e9da81a8a78adc = 57
--[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 18:10, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Weather Vane Sword may be a reference to Game of Thrones Ascent. The "Sworn Sword", I believe is "Rona" which is also a name. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.216|173.245.55.216]] 18:27, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: It needs to be a name of an apostle (as per line 7) and have 7 or 8 characters (as line 3 needs a continuation) so this leaves Matthew, Thaddeus and (Judas) Iscariot. [[User:Sten|'''STEN''']] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 18:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

If a password(or 8 character segment) is guessed can it be confirmed? Somebody should take this leaked list and create a website that presents it like in the comment and lets people guess. It can fill in the guessed ones. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.117|108.162.246.117]] 19:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm putting in Mattias for the sword, name1 and disciple because of Saint Matthias [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Matthias] and Redwall Matthias [http://redwall.wikia.com/wiki/Matthias] who held the Weathervane Sword (Also known as the sword of Martin [http://redwall.wikia.com/wiki/The_Sword_of_Martin] ) --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 19:27, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: I've also removed "monster mash" from the list as it can't be right. Doesn't match the pokemon or the purloined clues. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 19:27, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Based on the Water-3 Pokemon hint, the only possibilities of more than 8 characters are tentacool, tentacruel, barbaracle, crawdaunt, carracosta, clauncher, and clawitzer. This would mean "9dca1d79d4dec6d5" would be l, el, le, t, ta, or r. --[[User:Dvorakmd|Dvorakmd]] ([[User talk:Dvorakmd|talk]]) 19:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: This is assuming there are no characters before the actual name of the pokemon. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.209|173.245.55.209]] 20:30, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: Assuming Randall has constructed this comic to have a unique answer, it can't end in r because then the clue would be ambiguous (could be clauncher or clawitzer). [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 21:53, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: Some of these can be ruled out; it's very unlikely to be a Generation VI Pokémon (Barbaracle, Clauncher and Clawitzer) as this has only just come out and someone would have had to set up their pasword within the last few weeks. And the Pokémon that are also in the Water-1 group are probably more likely to be thought of as Water-1 than Water-3 (Crawdaunt and Carracosta). This only leaves Tentacool and Tentacruel as longer than 8 letter Water-3 only Pokémon that have been known of for a reasonable length of time; and Tentacool is no one's favourite, as the annoying multitude of them that show up whenever you try to Surf anyway makes them as reviled as Zubats in caves, if not moreso. :P Of course, the password need not be simply the Pokémon's name alone. "SexyShellder" "Cloyster1987" "Misty'sStarmie"... Who knows? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.252|141.101.99.252]] 01:03, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to the end either, but here's a list of people who did the Monster Mash, from Wikipedia:
* Bobby Picket (as Boris Picket)
* Garpax Records (Gary S. Paxton)
* The Misfits
* far, far too many other covers to list
And here's some synonyms for "purloined", from thesaurus.com:
* stole
* pilfered
* filched
* misappropriated
* embezzled
* burglarized
* shoplifted
* poached
* pillaged
* cheated
* pinched
* heisted
* thieved
* plundered
* appropriated
* lifted
* took
* snitched
* defrauded
* swindled
* ripped off
* made off with
Good luck with these!
—[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 20:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

What about Purloined referring to "The Purloined Letter?" When choosing hints, people, at least in my experience, tend to use word association rather than synonyms. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.209|173.245.55.209]]

Purloined could also be a reference to the Monster.com hack (http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/monster-trojan). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.11|108.162.237.11]] 21:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Words meaning purloined that can have the listed suffixes could be '''embezzle'''/'''embezzler''' or '''scrounge'''/'''scrounger'''. Not sure if it fits to the mash clue. There was a loan shark character who would acquire things on MASH called Rizzo, it is a stretch though. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.117|108.162.246.117]] 21:01, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm still trying to figure out how the solutions go into the spaces on the right -- it may be more obvious once the last couple clues are figured out. I suspect the ordering and numbers of clues have some sort of meaning. Why are there 5 of the 877... passwords, 2 with no clues? Why is one of the 4e18.... passwords separated from the rest? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.28|108.162.221.28]] 21:07, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Could Purloined be a reference to the "Purloined Shadows" book in Elder Scrolls? --[[User:Dvorakmd|Dvorakmd]] ([[User talk:Dvorakmd|talk]]) 21:09, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: Or 'The Purloined Payroll', a WoW quest? "Purloined in Petrograd" is also a lyric to a Decemberists song (The Bagman's Gambit). Google n-grams suggests that "Purloined Image", and "purloined documents" are a Thing. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 21:58, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Purloined could be a reference to something that is known as have been stolen like a work of art, or it could be something that was stolen in an XKCD comic. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.117|108.162.246.117]] 21:18, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

'''EdgarPoe'''(author of The Purloined Letter)/'''EdgarPoet''' fits, but again not really anything to do with MASH. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.117|108.162.246.117]] 21:27, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Water-3 pokemon (egg group) are given here: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Water_3_(Egg_Group) ...if I split off the letters of their names after the 8th letter, we see l, el, le, t, ta, and r. So the MASH item ends with one of those suffixes. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.167|199.27.128.167]] 21:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: Can't end in 'r', because then that clue would be ambiguous. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 21:53, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: Speaking of pokemon, could the clue to purloined have something to do with the pokemon Purrloin? http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Purrloin_(Pok%C3%A9mon) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.43|108.162.221.43]] 23:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Is there a reason "MASH" is capitalized in the above sections? Given the context, it shouldn't be, and I still haven't given up on the password being a reference to the monster mash. That said, we can't ignore the movie/show MASH.
Also, now that I think about it: pokeMONstermash? I don't know, just throwing ideas out :P [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.209|173.245.55.209]] 22:08, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

On [http://de.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1pvwyf/xkcd_encryptic_analysis_at_the_link_below/ reddit] they suggest "Letterman" (which is wrong, too many letters) based on the M*A*S*H episode, "Letters". [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 22:11, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:...on the other hand, I wonder if an answer like "ALANALDA" would work? As in, someone who "did the M*A*S*H"... [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 22:13, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:: Sadly, no. Because it needs to be more than 8 characters. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 22:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::: No, I mean, "an answer of this form", not ALANALDA exactly. The Edgar Allan / Alan Alda congruence is tasty, but I can't make it work. ALLANPOE works as an answer for "Purloined" but that makes something like ALLANPOET the answer to "he did the MASH" (CRAWDAUNT is then the pokemon). But that's misspelling Alda's name for the MASH clue, doesn't quite work. There's also JAMIEFARR (Cpl Klinger) as a better answer to "he did the MASH" but then that makes JAMIEFAR the answer to "purloined" and I can't plausibly make that work. ALLANARBUS is another M*A*S*H actor, but that doesn't work at all. Can anyone come up with other/better ideas in this vein? [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 22:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::: Don't misspell Alda's name; misspell Poe's! —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 02:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

In crossword puzzles, a clue ending in -ed (like 'purloined') is most commonly a hint that the answer ends in 'ed'. Cross referencing that with the Pokemon clue, the solution for "he did the MASH" becomes a nine or ten letter answer ending in: -edl, -edel, -edle, -edt, or -edta (excluding -edr due to non-uniqueness), with ......edle looking the most "English-y" to me. My hunch would be something else Robert Altman or Alan Alda "did"... but nothing seems to end in 'edle.' --[[User:Willowy burrito|Willowy burrito]] ([[User talk:Willowy burrito|talk]]) 23:07, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: There is no indication that this is a standard crossword. Most users don't respect crossword conventions when writing password hints. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 23:59, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
:: Aside from the title. And the text. And the fact these didn't come from users, but were just chosen for a puzzle designed by Randall, who would include just this sort of puzzler hint/in-joke in a comic about puzzles. It's moot, because no synonyms for 'stolen' make any sense with a couple other letters tacked on the end. But still, there've been worse hunches. --[[User:Willowy burrito|Willowy burrito]] ([[User talk:Willowy burrito|talk]]) 00:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

For all we know, his favourite Water-3 Pokémon could be Shell Smash Cloyster or Shell Smash Omastar - "OmastarSmash" as a password would fit in with "Monster mash". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.252|141.101.99.252]] 23:16, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
: I like that idea, although it leaves "Monster " (with a trailing space) as the answer to "Purloined", which makes no sense. But interesting idea. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 00:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

MonsterMash
MonsterM
TheWiscash {{unsigned|Jcupcake}}
: It's "Whiscash", and it's Water 2 (not 3) and "MonsterM" makes no sense as an answer for the hint "Purloined". But I like the idea of adding "The" in front of the pokemon answer; perhaps we're being too restrictive by looking only at pokemon with length > 8. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 23:59, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
::Yeah, sorry about the typo - last one would be TheWhiscash. MonsterM absolutely makes sense. http://www.hoax-slayer.com/monster-666.shtml The purloined letter here IS M [[User:Jcupcake|Jcupcake]] ([[User talk:Jcupcake|talk]]) 02:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

So somewhere above this someone pointed out that purloined could refer to a monster.com hack...in which case, could the first two passwords be "monster mash" and "monster"? That would allow for another previous suggestion of "OmastarSmash" Also, here's my IP Address and a remarkably not-random timestamp: [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.195|108.162.219.195]] 01:31, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

It could also be that there are modifiers to the base. I always thought of Monster Mash as MonstaMash. This would line up closely with My Corphish written as "mycorphish" My favorite pokemon is my pikachu not just any pikachu, but mine, sort of logic. [[User:Bitassassin|Bitassassin]] ([[User talk:Bitassassin|talk]]) 01:43, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Could "he did the mash" be referring to brewing and/or the Maillard reaction? [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 05:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I was just thinking that "MonsterM Ash", "MonsterM", both seem to make sense, and Ash had a few water pokemon in the water 3 egg group, so could it potentially be something along the lines of "Corphish Ash"? That was the only 8 letter water 3 pokemon he had and it fits with the other clues [[User:NewToThis|NewToThis]] ([[User talk:NewToThis|talk]]) 07:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Has the idea of pokemon fusion been considered? http://pokemon.alexonsager.net/ referenced by http://kotaku.com/how-the-website-that-lets-you-create-frankenstein-pokem-510517336
--[[User:Oukansz|Oukansz]] ([[User talk:Oukansz|talk]]) 19:25, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

;Fanservice

Randall must know about this site. This comic doesn't work without people to crack the code. Should we have a fanservice category? :-) --[[User:SurturZ|SurturZ]] ([[User talk:SurturZ|talk]]) 23:32, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm beginning to suspect that the wide boxes will have the key in it. Assuming he used regular DES (or DES3, for that matter, but using the same 8-byte key 3 times), it could be plausible. The 5 in the middle could be 'abcde', a lot of the other 'second halves' are numbers, and the likely known one that's not seems to be an 'x' -- which could certainly be involved in writing a hex number... problem is there's 11 of those boxes. Trying to guess what signficance the positioning of those boxes have. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.28|108.162.221.28]] 00:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like the boxes line up perfectly such that the wide bits (for second-half) will only touch the words they apply to. Order will be more or less what they are (I see the wide boxes as, in order, 1, 57, 10, Sheen, and X, with the 8 char boxes as Matthias, Password, Judith15, Charlie, and HoustonT). The next 5 are odd -- I'm not sure if we repeat the alpha/obvious password 5 times, or it's 5 chars long (abcde) and one per box. The last set is still under discussion, of course. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.28|108.162.221.28]] 00:20, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

;MASH capitalized
I'm currently chasing down the idea that MASH refers to [[Wikipedia:MASH-1]]. Haven't seen any name yet that looks like it might satisfy "Purloined". - [[User:BozoTheScary|BozoTheScary]] ([[User talk:BozoTheScary|talk]]) 01:56, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I think MASH is a transcribing error. The comic doesn't have any difference on those letters as far as I can tell. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.222|173.245.50.222]] 03:18, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The Purloined Letter is a Edgar Alan Poe story starring C. Auguste Dupin. Might help. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.5|108.162.249.5]] 03:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

There is also a strong association between the Monster Mash and the Mashed Potato, just throwing another idea into the ring. Also try the name BobbyPickett. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.5|108.162.249.5]] 03:22, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Frankenstein did the Monster Mash in the cartoon for the song. That leads to a Pokemon card ending in 'tein' and 'frankens' for the hint Purloined. I could not find a Pokemon card that ended in 'tein' nor could I link 'frankens' with Purloined. I ran 'frankens' through Google Translate but found nothing. Also, it's the same password for the "monster mash" hint and the entry with no password hint so I think it's an obvious password (something someone can recall without a hint). Frankenstein fits that part but not the other ones. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.222|173.245.50.222]] 03:35, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

My $0.02: "He did the mash..." might allude to the expression "doing the math" only (intentionally) misspelled and something like "numbert" or "numb" could be the answer. --[[User:RagnarDa|RagnarDa]] ([[User talk:RagnarDa|talk]]) 04:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

graveyard smash fits for the first clue (though lyrically incorrect). Gives smash as second block, but cannot find association between graveyard and purloined. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.5|108.162.249.5]] 04:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

If we take The Monster Mash for the first answer, it could be written as TheMonsterMash or The Monster Mash, giving either TheMonst erMash or The Mons ter Mash as the two blocks. This gives either Themonst or The Mons as Purloined and either ermash or ter Mash for second block of pokemon answer. Suggestions? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.5|108.162.249.5]] 04:15, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
: Only problem is that the word "the" is the last word of the hint.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.117|108.162.237.117]] 04:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I know that the water-3 group is not the same, but it seems like an odd coincidence that another pokemon group is the "monster" group. --[[User:Natnee|Natnee]] ([[User talk:Natnee|talk]]) 04:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

There is a Scooby Doo comic book story titled "[The Purloined Poe-M](http://scoobydoo.wikia.com/wiki/The_Purloined_Poe-M)", which has an odd similarity to the "MonsterM" possible password. This would leave the pokemon password ending "ash" who, of course, is a pokemon character ... which makes no sense in that place. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.83|199.27.128.83]] 05:51, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Here's one that fits: 
facemash4077 (Combination of facemash by zuckerberg and M*A*S*H) 
facemash (Site made by Zuck in The Social network.) 

Maybe facmashklinger.. The eggklinger being a water-3 Pokemon? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.39|108.162.215.39]] 06:14, 5 November 2013 (UTC)rbnm

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Orchard John Orchard] played in M*A*S*H and also was in the movie "The Letter" [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.8|108.162.250.8]] 05:02, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

;Working Backwards
I'm attempting to take a different tact, by trying to find the key itself. I'm assuming its something easy to guess. I've tried the top 100 Adobe passwords (you can get them [http://stricture-group.com/files/adobe-top100.txt here]) using the following bash script (testing the word "matthias", as this one seems pretty certain):

<code>
while read p; do echo -n $p\: && echo -n "matthias" | openssl enc -e -des-ede3 -nosalt -nopad -pass pass:$p | xxd -p; done < passwords.txt
</code>

For this to work, I pre-processed the top 100 passwords file with:

<code>
cat adobe-top100.txt | cut -c51- > passwords.txt
</code>

…and then trimmed the cruft with a text editor (leading text paragraph and table headers). So far no luck; perhaps someone with more time on their hands can try some obvious XKCD-related passwords (I've tried XKCD, xkcd, xkcd.com, randall, rmunroe, encryptic, and Encrytic) and see if the encrypted version(s) match up with what we have here. [[User:Yaztromo|Yaztromo]] ([[User talk:Yaztromo|talk]]) 09:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
:I should mention that I've also tried OpenSSL's des-ede mode and des-ecb, as Im not sure if Randall used one, two, or three key mode. I'm also assuming the key has been generated from the password using OpenSSL's default key generation method, any of with I suppose could be incorrect. [[User:Yaztromo|Yaztromo]] ([[User talk:Yaztromo|talk]]) 09:39, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
:: Nice work. Note that the puzzle is very specific about using "block mode 3-DES" (usually called "ECB"). DES keys are actually 56 bits; each of the 8 bytes has odd parity (the number of 1 bits is odd). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard wp], "Bits 8, 16,..., 64 are for use in ensuring that each byte is of odd parity." As a wild guess, I'd suggest that, if Randall chose a readable 8-ASCII-character passphrase, he also selected only characters that would make the parity bit zero (so that the result was ASCII). That is, <code><nowiki>[ #%&)*,/12478;=>@CEFIJLOQRTWX[]^abdghkmnpsuvyz|]</nowiki></code>. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 16:34, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
::: Uh, hold one. Read the "Explanation" section above. It's clear that the hashes are not real, so brute-forcing the key isn't going to work. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 16:48, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
:::: Just to note, there are actually three options for keys in TripleDES: having three independent keys (K1, K2, K3), having two independent keys (K1, K2, K1), or using a single key (K1, K1, K1). When run in ECB mode, OpenSSL calls these '''des-ede3''' and '''des-ede''' for options 1 and 2 (option 3 is for backwards compatibility with DES, and can be run using just '''des-ecb'''). See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_DES#Keying_options Triple DES - Keying Options] for details. In addition, the password and the key are two different entities -- typically the password is run through a keying algorithm first (commonly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2 PBKDF2] for 3DES), so there is no need to select password characters based on parity patterns. All of which is moot now that we know that the data isn't in fact TripleDES encrypted in the first place. I'm actually disappointed in Randall now :P. [[User:Yaztromo|Yaztromo]] ([[User talk:Yaztromo|talk]]) 19:01, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I Hadn't seen it mentioned yet, but Monster Mash was written by Robert George Pickett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Pickett), Whose last name goes closely with the second clue, Purloined, which means "stolen". I can't make it work, but I figured it was worth pointing out. (Nov 5th 1:26 pm utc ) [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.24|173.245.56.24]] 13:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
: It's a good connection. Maybe we should reorganize the discussion and start a list of "interesting ideas we can't quite make work" in the hopes that someone else has an insight. Edgar Allan / Alan Alda, Pickett / "Pick it", Klinger / Kingler, etc. Most of these are just manifestation of the human brain's ability to find patterns even in random coincidence, of course, but one of them might be on the right track. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 16:23, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Just quick thoughts.
I feel like Cpl klinger and the water type kingler is too solid a connection to ignore even though I can't really use it.
Kingler was owned in the series by Ash.
Ash is a three letter word and the last three letters of the phrase monstermash.
Monsterm=8 letters so the first block ash=3 letters in the second block.
Monsterm is about the monster.com thing, therefore purloined. It's a double reference, the .co has been purloined from the purloined website.
Then blastoise -3, or rather blastois3 - 3 (mocking the common password meme of replacing letters with numbers)
So the last password, which is super hard to guess and well chosen even with the clue is, blastoisash? It's a feasibly memorable password that would not be quickly forgotten by a pokemon fan while still being hard to guess.
Can you think of a way to check it? Maybe go into the old command line xkcd and try it as a password? (From a contributor to my talk page) --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 13:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
: That's really a stretch. ".co is purloined from monster.com?" really? The answer will be far more obviously correct... once we figure it out. Look at the other answers, for example. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 16:23, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

;another quick idea for monster mash

It could be deflection. Maybe whoever put it in was paranoid. Or just dumb. Or who knows.

But, there is a pokemon that's in the monster/water(-1) hybrid group called Marshtomp.

Monster mash, mashed (ie anagrammed) can give us all but the P out of that... which is fine, as it's a 9-letter name.

Thus we have E, N and S left over (and indeed a further T, H, E), which could become overall, e.g, Marshtomens (...Marshtomethens? Or w/e), which you can split up as you like to represent something which has been stolen (personally). Possibly in german slang or something. It doesn't have to be a direct thesaurus link, it could well be complete misdirection (on Randall's behalf, or that of his notional Adobe user), same as for the pokemon.

And for the pokemon itself, it could well be "Marshtomp3" ;)

Also, don't forget about reversed words and so-on.

Heck, I've used very personal and/or random things (like, maybe two or three people in the world may recognise it in connection with me, and it's not online, at least not anywhere it can be found - basically it's just in my head and dies with me), reversed, with numbers substituting random characters, as passwords before. That covers each individual base in just one PW...

Now we just have to start feeding the guesses into a hash engine and try to figure out, maybe brute force, what the original key was. Knowing almost all of the other answers already makes this far, far easier for those who may have the facility to run the tests already. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.213|141.101.99.213]] 14:54, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
: This is not a real excerpt from the password file, this is a puzzle which Randall made up. Therefore, the answer to the last group will not be random, and it will not be a stretch. It will be obvious (as obvious as the previous ones)... once we figure out the catch. [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 16:23, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

FWIW, Eve Online also features a "Purloined Sansha Codebreaker". [[User:Cscott|Cscott]] ([[User talk:Cscott|talk]]) 17:16, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the solution has to be obvious - especially after its revealed. If this were a crossword puzzle, then the clues like Purloined might be followed by a question mark. Purloined? a cat that is loined - a cat that is covered with cloths? Puss in boots? Or something along those lines... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.34|108.162.215.34]]rbnm

purloined=phished (Corphish)? {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.227}}

i wonder if the link between the last three clues is more like a cryptic crossword puzzle---for instance, --purloined= heisted; the other clues reading it as he/is/ted...?--[[User:Wwd|Wwd]] ([[User talk:Wwd|talk]]) 22:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if the pokemon could be the name of an ubuntu release, per "Not Really Into Pokemon" at http://xkcd.com/178/ --[[User:Willowy burrito|Willowy burrito]] ([[User talk:Willowy burrito|talk]]) 22:45, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

You could also abbreviate Robert Pickett's name (the co-writer of Monster Mash) as "Rob Pickett" which goes even more with purloined (the first 8 letters are now "Rob Pick"). [[User:Davheld|Davheld]] ([[User talk:Davheld|talk]]) 06:21, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

;Capitalization hints?

I have no idea who first put the capital letters in "MASH" and "Purloined" in the transcript (and I don't want to check), but now that I've gotten rid of the second (after somebody else got rid of the first), I want to record them here for the record. Possibly Randall put them in and was feeding us clues (so ''MASH'' the book or movie, and ''Purloined'' a title such as Poe's). I consider this unlikely (after all, I removed one of these capitalizations), but the possibility should be recorded. —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 01:17, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I can't be a coincidence that this comes up as the top google news search for 'purloined:' http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/05/adobe_users_purloined_passwords_were_pathetic/ {{unsigned ip|108.162.246.120}}

"38a7c9279cadeb44 9dca1d79d4dec6d5 he did the mash, he did the": Ministermash (sounds like monster mash)
"38a7c9279cadeb44 purloined": Minister (based on the character Minister D-, who stole the letter in the Edgar Allen Poe story)
"a8ae5754a2b7af7a 9dca1d79d4dec6d5 fav water-3 pokemon": OmastarSmash (Shell Smash Omastar)
So,38a7c9279cadeb44 = minister, 9dca1d79d4dec6d5 = mash, a8ae5754a2b7af7a = omastars
04:07, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
:Probably one of the best complete theories I've heard [[User:Davheld|Davheld]] ([[User talk:Davheld|talk]]) 06:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I suggest "alligato" (a form of Latin ''alligatus'', perfect passive participle of ''alligo'' "bind up"), and "alligator" (Referencing "Land of 1000 Dances"). [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.62|199.27.128.62]] 05:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I think there is a transcribe mistake. 
Instead of "fav water-3 pokemon" 
Could it be "fay water-3 pokemon" 
Look at the Y and V letters in the non-chopped letters above. I think it is a Y and not a V. 
{{unsigned ip|108.162.215.51}}
*About the Pokemon, is it possible everyone's ignoring a much simpler explanation? Every Pokemon game begins with a choice of one of the three starter Pokemon, each of which have an evolutionary line of three Pokemon. In first gen, if your "favorite [is] water [from the] 3 Pokemon", then you'll be using Squirtle, followed by Wartortle and Blastoise. 2nd gen: Totodile, Croconaw, Feraligatr. 3rd gen: Mudkip, Marshtomp, Swampert. 4th gen: Piplup, Prinplup, Empoleon. Perhaps the answer uses one of these, or some combination of them? --Anon 08:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Boris Blacher wrote an opera based on 'The purloined letter' This may fit with Bobby 'Boris' Pickett who sang Monster Mash [[User:YellowYeti|YellowYeti]] ([[User talk:YellowYeti|talk]]) 11:11, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The "Boris" in "Boris Pickett" is a reference to Boris Karloff. (In his other work, Pickett doesn't use that name.) —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 12:36, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

An alternative tack: how about Barbaracle for the Pokemon, BarbaraC(Jordan) for purloined and Barbara Clark - famous for doing Monster Mash-up novels. Does Barbara Jordan have some purloined link with watergate?
No, because the pokemon has a different starting string as the other two. --[[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.119|199.27.128.119]] 13:48, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I think it is not coincidence that it is the last one that you can't solve. It may be an experiment by Randall to see if people can find a solution for a puzzle that doesn't make any sense. That said, if it does have a solution, it should not be "monstermash" since that is too close to the clue. If that was the password, everyone could guess it easily from the clue. It has to be one level "removed" from those words, guided by the clues for the matching passwords. The point of the post was that using unsalted crypt in the passwords allows you to combine clues, right? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.201|108.162.219.201]] 13:42, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Not an answer, but maybe an approach: Look at it from the "what piece of information is Randall trying to tell us?" angle. In the first few puzzles, he teaches us the rules of the game. We disambiguate clues by later ones, which we can only do because of the missing salts. For example, the "name and jersey number" just tells us the format of the answer to the previous clue about Judith 15:10. Otherwise, there would have been no way to guess that exact string without the space and colon. Also, "Charlie X" and "Charlie Sheen" demonstrate that spaces are used in a "fair" way. I would not expect a trailing space on a password, for example. So what about the Pokemon then? The first half of the crypt for the Pokemon isn't used anywhere else. The easiest interpretation I can come up with is that this is just trying to restrict the common second part of the word to letters from the list of Water-3 Pokemon. Let's assume it wasn't made very difficult, so take just 'el', 'le', and 'l' from the Water-3-only group on bulbapedia. Then the puzzle is this:

something related to 'monster mash': 8 letters plus the ending 'el', 'le', or 'l'
something related to 'purloined' or related to 'letter': the same 8 letters, minus the ending
pokemon: completely unrelated, just chosen to have a well known list of 9 or 10 letter words to restrict search space for first line

I suck at crosswords, but can someone solve this restated version? There can't be that many 8 letter words that also make a word with 'el', 'le', or 'l' added to them? 15:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Looking at some word lists at http://www.litscape.com/words/ending_with/l/9_letter_l_end_words.html , this doesn't seem to be leading anywhere good. Can someone fix my logic? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.201|108.162.219.201]] 15:33, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if anyone else has pointed out yet, but there is a pokemon named purrloin http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Purrloin_%28Pok%C3%A9mon%29 . That seems like far too much of a coincidence to not be related. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 16:17, 6 November 2013 (UTC)