explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3245: Results Age

2026-05-14T16:47:23Z

209.66.205.201: title text also shouldn't be in table

{{comic
| number = 3245
| date = May 13, 2026
| title = Results Age
| image = results_age_2x.png
| imagesize = 478x669px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created BY AN INTERNET GRANDPA. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic shows how likely it is that a bug reported will be fixed, based on the age of some past post that matches your search for details of the problem.

A table is shown below of the explanations of each table row:
{| class="wikitable"
!Age of post !! Explanation given !! Full Explanation
|-
|2 hours ago || A service outage. Not very long to fix - Just wait. ||The recentness of the information implies that it has just happened, and other people have noticed it and started to post about the issue. Large-scale problems like a service outage are obvious priorities, and will (hopefully!) be fixed quickly.
|-
|5 days ago || A new update just broke something big. High chance to be fixed, but you might have to wait for a patch || Similar to before, a large breakage would be very high priority to be fixed. However, as it's been five days since reporting it, the bug is likely taking a while to be found, so - as pointed out in the comic - you could have to wait a bit longer for this one to be resolved.
|-
|3 months ago ||A new product isn't working for some users. Decent chance of finding a solution in replies || This problem is clearly not considered a priority for a fix by the creators, judging by how long it's been there. It possibly isn't an issue affecting everyone, or even a large proportion of users. However, people are innovative, and someone may well have found their own fix, patch or kludge to get around the product limitations.
|-
|2 years ago||You've run into an edge case. Low chance to be fixed, but the replies could help with troubleshooting||An edge case is a rare situation that the developers did not think to account for, usually causing a logic error, where the program works, but outputs something unexpected which might cause an error down the line. Very few people will suffer from this precise problem, which may mean that it's not considered worth the effort to apply a fix. The developers or other users may have encountered similar issues on this or similar software, and noting how they solved ''those'' problems might lead you towards how to solve your own.
|-
|13 years ago||You're the only one with this problem. Very Low chance to be fixed, and the post is likely irrelevant||A post of this age likely predates the software you're using, or at least the current version of it. It's probably a coincidental match to your search query, and doesn't actually relate to the problem you've encountered. Since no-one else has posted about this issue or anything similar within a recent timeframe, it's likely that you're the first person (or at least, one of very few people) to have come across it.
|-
|24 years ago||Oh god how is the Internet so old. Maybe whoever posted the message's children can help you out. || This is another comic where Randall [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|makes people feel old]], in this case by pointing out that {{w|the Internet}} is very old, and people posting comments in the early period of the Internet have now had time to have kids who have reached an age where they are themselves posting. It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
The {{w|Internet}} is, in fact, significantly over forty years old, based upon original infrastructure and methods that were set up for perhaps up to two more decades previous to that. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) was launched in the late 1990s, which are still practically older than this notional post. The biggest surprise might be that some information published on a webpage in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive/{{w|Mirror site|mirror}} of that original information on some archival/successor site). For example, any topical write-up of a then extant case of this issue, if documented upon web pages originally hosted by {{w|GeoCities}}, would have otherwise been made permanently inaccessible by the end of 2014.
|}

The title text appears to be a conversation taking place in a distant future with the descendant of an ancient internet post. The 'last living descendant' is a common trope in fiction where arcane knowledge is passed down through a family line (often on the previous generation's deathbed). The suggestion is that the solution to the user's issue is a closely guarded secret that has had to be kept safe in this way.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:Implications of the age of the posts you see when you Google an error message

:[A search engine prompt field is shown, containing part of an error code message (beginning with E-21, and what looks like a 9 and 3 next to it). Below this are search results shown as obscured text, except for a the phrase '3 years ago' in the first heading. This is expanded into an ellipse that obscures the rest of the search field.]
:[A table, with 3 columns, labelled "Age of post", "What it means", and "Probability of a fix"]

:[Row 1: Age of post:] 2 hours ago
:[What it means:] There's an infrastructure outage
:[Probability of a fix:] Very high -- just wait

:[Row 2: Age of post:] 5 days ago
:[What it means:] A recent update broke something big
:[Probability of a fix:] High, but you might have to wait for a patch

:[Row 3: Age of post:] 3 months ago
:[What it means:] A new product isn't working for some users
:[Probability of a fix:] Decent chance of a solution in the replies

:[Row 4: Age of post:] 2 years ago
:[What it means:] You've run into an edge case
:[Probability of a fix:] Low, but maybe the replies can help with troubleshooting

:[Row 5: Age of post:] 13 years ago
:[What it means:] You're the only person with this problem
:[Probability of a fix:] Very low -- post is likely not relevant

:[Row 6: Age of post:] 24 years ago
:[What it means:] Oh God how is the Internet this old
:[Probability of a fix:] Maybe whoever posted this message has kids who can help you

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

3245: Results Age

2026-05-14T16:44:23Z

209.66.205.201: remove 3 year row: if it's not in the comic's table it shouldn't be in ours

{{comic
| number = 3245
| date = May 13, 2026
| title = Results Age
| image = results_age_2x.png
| imagesize = 478x669px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This page was created BY AN INTERNET GRANDPA. Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
This comic shows how likely it is that a bug reported will be fixed, based on the age of some past post that matches your search for details of the problem.

A table is shown below of the explanations of each table row:
{| class="wikitable"
!Age of post !! Explanation given !! Full Explanation
|-
|2 hours ago || A service outage. Not very long to fix - Just wait. ||The recentness of the information implies that it has just happened, and other people have noticed it and started to post about the issue. Large-scale problems like a service outage are obvious priorities, and will (hopefully!) be fixed quickly.
|-
|5 days ago || A new update just broke something big. High chance to be fixed, but you might have to wait for a patch || Similar to before, a large breakage would be very high priority to be fixed. However, as it's been five days since reporting it, the bug is likely taking a while to be found, so - as pointed out in the comic - you could have to wait a bit longer for this one to be resolved.
|-
|3 months ago ||A new product isn't working for some users. Decent chance of finding a solution in replies || This problem is clearly not considered a priority for a fix by the creators, judging by how long it's been there. It possibly isn't an issue affecting everyone, or even a large proportion of users. However, people are innovative, and someone may well have found their own fix, patch or kludge to get around the product limitations.
|-
|2 years ago||You've run into an edge case. Low chance to be fixed, but the replies could help with troubleshooting||An edge case is a rare situation that the developers did not think to account for, usually causing a logic error, where the program works, but outputs something unexpected which might cause an error down the line. Very few people will suffer from this precise problem, which may mean that it's not considered worth the effort to apply a fix. The developers or other users may have encountered similar issues on this or similar software, and noting how they solved ''those'' problems might lead you towards how to solve your own.
|-
|13 years ago||You're the only one with this problem. Very Low chance to be fixed, and the post is likely irrelevant||A post of this age likely predates the software you're using, or at least the current version of it. It's probably a coincidental match to your search query, and doesn't actually relate to the problem you've encountered. Since no-one else has posted about this issue or anything similar within a recent timeframe, it's likely that you're the first person (or at least, one of very few people) to have come across it.
|-
|24 years ago||Oh god how is the Internet so old. Maybe whoever posted the message's children can help you out. || This is another comic where Randall [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|makes people feel old]], in this case by pointing out that {{w|the Internet}} is very old, and people posting comments in the early period of the Internet have now had time to have kids who have reached an age where they are themselves posting. It is also (presumably) rare enough to be a [[979: Wisdom of the Ancients|DenverCoder9 situation]], and 13 years is longer than the time in that comic, so 13 years might be such a situation too.
The {{w|Internet}} is, in fact, significantly over forty years old, based upon original infrastructure and methods that were set up for perhaps up to two more decades previous to that. The World Wide Web (to many, synonymous with the Internet) hails from the early 1990s, and Google (one of the more commonly used search engines, through which this error search might have been made) was launched in the late 1990s, which are still practically older than this notional post. The biggest surprise might be that some information published on a webpage in 2002 (and still relevant to your search) survives on some still live web server (or as an archive/{{w|Mirror site|mirror}} of that original information on some archival/successor site). For example, any topical write-up of a then extant case of this issue, if documented upon web pages originally hosted by {{w|GeoCities}}, would have otherwise been made permanently inaccessible by the end of 2014.
|-
|Title text||Please, we need your help. Our research suggests you're the last living descendant of the person who knew how to format this config file.||The title text appears to be a conversation taking place in a distant future with the descendant of an ancient internet post. The 'last living descendant' is a common trope in fiction where arcane knowledge is passed down through a family line (often on the previous generation's deathbed). The suggestion is that the solution to the user's issue is a closely guarded secret that has had to be kept safe in this way.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}

:Implications of the age of the posts you see when you Google an error message

:[A search engine prompt field is shown, containing part of an error code message (beginning with E-21, and what looks like a 9 and 3 next to it). Below this are search results shown as obscured text, except for a the phrase '3 years ago' in the first heading. This is expanded into an ellipse that obscures the rest of the search field.]
:[A table, with 3 columns, labelled "Age of post", "What it means", and "Probability of a fix"]

:[Row 1: Age of post:] 2 hours ago
:[What it means:] There's an infrastructure outage
:[Probability of a fix:] Very high -- just wait

:[Row 2: Age of post:] 5 days ago
:[What it means:] A recent update broke something big
:[Probability of a fix:] High, but you might have to wait for a patch

:[Row 3: Age of post:] 3 months ago
:[What it means:] A new product isn't working for some users
:[Probability of a fix:] Decent chance of a solution in the replies

:[Row 4: Age of post:] 2 years ago
:[What it means:] You've run into an edge case
:[Probability of a fix:] Low, but maybe the replies can help with troubleshooting

:[Row 5: Age of post:] 13 years ago
:[What it means:] You're the only person with this problem
:[Probability of a fix:] Very low -- post is likely not relevant

:[Row 6: Age of post:] 24 years ago
:[What it means:] Oh God how is the Internet this old
:[Probability of a fix:] Maybe whoever posted this message has kids who can help you

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>

[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

Talk:1033: Formal Logic

2026-05-12T22:04:18Z

209.66.205.201: Σmary

- What can we learn from this? - I've learned that everyone who drives a car loves Formal Logic that if they press a horn actuator while driving, a horn will sound (Thank you Mr. XKCD). Now can I comment if I love your undeniable genius and your unexpected life's lessons? - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 14:36, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

"So, there is nothing you can do except starting to love formal logic"
That isn't what this comic means. It means "I am a fan of formal logic, and if you are too, you may honk to indicate this. If you honk for any other reason at all, don't be surprised if I jam a pitchfork up your ass."
Re-write, please. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.58|108.162.219.58]] 08:37, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
:Why would you even think that is correct? -Pennpenn [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.205|108.162.249.205]] 03:19, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
:: Elementary, my dear [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.58|108.162.219.58]]! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.148|108.162.254.148]] 19:50, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
::: It does not say "honk ''when'' you ..." [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.55|141.101.104.55]] 16:54, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
So, what do you do if you hate formal logic? Honk twice? {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.113}}
:The "iff" statement also means "if you don't love formal logic, you're not allowed to honk at all". [[User:Zowayix|Zowayix]] ([[User talk:Zowayix|talk]]) 04:23, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Can anyone figure out what kind of car this is? [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 18:28, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
:It's the all-new xkcd car! [[Special:Contributions/209.66.205.201|209.66.205.201]] 22:04, 12 May 2026 (UTC)