explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1269: Privacy Opinions

2013-10-01T07:07:34Z

68.190.213.83: Added comment with explanation option

This comic could be meant to satirize those who trivialize the opinions of privacy advocates. I doubt many reading this comic would assume this is either a fair or exhaustive list of opinions on internet privacy as it is highly unlikely that the reader him/herself would hold any of these opinions. 00:05, 1 October 2013

Sometimes I think all my burritos are imaginary. [[User:Nathkingcole|Nathkingcole]] ([[User talk:Nathkingcole|talk]]) 11:55, 25 September 2013 (UTC)Nat.

This may be pointless, but Kudos to 63.85.81.254's edit. [[User:Saibot84|Saibot84]] ([[User talk:Saibot84|talk]]) 13:13, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
:This may be offensive, but Redeemer's edit was both excellent and necessary. [[Special:Contributions/96.254.46.231|96.254.46.231]] 13:26, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::I wouldn't call it offensive (outside the language); it's simply opinionated. Thanks Saibot84. [[Special:Contributions/63.85.81.254|63.85.81.254]] 13:37, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::Fail on both counts, from me (for Redeemer's contribution), as neither excellent ''nor'' necessary. Only in the light of that does 63.etc's edit (who has just ninjaed me with an edit conflict... hi there!) actually make any sort of sense. But what do I know? I'm just an IP, and you can probably find that I'm not even in the US, from that...
:::Redeemer's meta-analysis of Randall, even if false, was still an exemplary display of critical thinking that I've found to be surprisingly lacking with XKCD fans. If Randall is anything like the person I think he is, he would appreciate such an alternative perspective. Additionally, it was an ''absolutely'' necessary defense against a straw man-like simplification of an all too legitimate concern for privacy rights. I will agree that Redeemer's edit would have been more appropriate here as a Discussion item rather than an edit to the Explanation, but this differing viewpoint should still be heard. [[Special:Contributions/96.254.46.231|96.254.46.231]] 15:26, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
::Can we just have a proper explanation, instead, please? Let's say something like: there's those that overthink the situation, those that over-''do'' it, some overestimate the problem, some overestimate ''other'' problems, some enjoy the idea too much and some just enjoy their food more. Eh? Any good for ya? I'm sure it can be tweaked, to taste. [[Special:Contributions/31.109.31.130|31.109.31.130]] 13:41, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::::Done. Or at least a start. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 14:04, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I have an opinion, but I'm keeping it private for now. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 13:24, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

One mention of the NSA, one mention of Google. I'm not sure how Randall's politics are relevant, or how he's excusing privacy concerns, and the "explanation" says a lot about the interpretation and US-centric perspective of the poster without adding to the comic. Unless it was a deliberate parody of the conspiracy panel, not appropriate, dude. (And I'm a Brit - I definitely didn't vote for any political party in the states. But hello, Echelon.) [[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]]) 13:37, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::The comment was so off the wall I think it pretty much had to be parody, in keeping with panel 3. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 14:04, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I wonder why '''some''' Americans consider that '''world-wide''' issues like on-line privacy have to be related '''only''' to U.S. politicians.{{unsigned ip|88.9.73.162}}

I'm pretty sure the explanation of the Nihilist isn't right. In my opinion Randall jokes that if all of your actions are meaningless (the nihilistic way of thought) then the same applies to all your data. [[Special:Contributions/188.174.192.237|188.174.192.237]] 14:51, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks to whoever classed this place up by deleting that vitriol.{{unsigned ip|50.148.241.3}}

I'm a fan, but I'm disappointed. Don't tell me I didn't "get it" though. I "got it" very well. I love XKCD very much, but not today. I would like to thank Saibot84 and 96.254.46.231 for their heartwarming support. A Reddit post about the edit can be found here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/restorethefourth/comments/1n3rz0/my_protest_against_xkcds_underhanded_defense_of/ My protest against XKCD's underhanded defense of the NSA] -- Yours truly, Redeemer [[Special:Contributions/31.172.30.1|31.172.30.1]] 16:37, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::I'm genuinely concerned about internet security issues, and I'm entirely sympathetic to your perspective, Redeemer. But, whatever Randall's background or motivation, this comic stands alone in poking fun at extreme positions on the subject. I don't believe it either trivialises the argument or makes a reasoned statement about an acceptable position - none of the panels show a "normal" perspective. Whether or not Randall intended it to be, there are many more sources of privacy concerns world-wide than the NSA, and many reasons to hold an opinion on NSA network analysis other than support for a political party (which to me rarely means support for every position that they hold). Let's stick to explaining the comic, not meta-analyzing Randall's motivations for posting it. This is not the place, no matter how your perspective may colour your interpretation of the message behind the comic. [[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]])
:::TL;DR, but the current NSA incidents are a source for Randall's ideas here. It should be mentioned. Incomplete done tag by me.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:52, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::::Too impatient, can't be qualified to comment. Randall mentions the NSA in one panel. The issue isn't whether the NSA is a concern, it's that the NSA is not the only source of internet privacy concerns or media scares; if not mentioning it "excuses" the NSA/current US Government, singling it out "excuses" other organizations (other governments and surveillance bodies, Google, Facebook, network operators...) - and Randall himself mentions Google. Don't assume this is just about the NSA. Even if that was Randall's inspiration, it's not the only context for the comic. There have been repeated incidents regarding GCHQ, for example.[[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]])
::I also can claim "web scraping, network administration and security <nowiki>[as]</nowiki> my professional area of expertise" (only currently on personal time, hence this pseudo-anonymous IP, which I know wouldn't fool the NSA), but I think you just don't get it, Redeemer. Nor do some of your Reddit contributors. Not wanting to reddit (by a name I'd jump into there with, that is), I won't even attempt to disabuse you of your opinion, however. But you ''do not'' vandalise key areas of wikis with such personal venom. Bad show for doing so, and stick to your blogs. Anyway, for myself: Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, line 358, second half. [[Special:Contributions/31.109.31.130|31.109.31.130]] 23:07, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
:::"These foils have all a length"?[[Special:Contributions/150.135.210.50|150.135.210.50]] 23:22, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
::::"The rest is silence." according to Shakespeare-navigators.com. Much as I'd love to be educated enough to know that by heart.[[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]])

Is it just me, or is it actually Danish instead of Megan in the Nihilist panel? The hair looks too long to be Megan's. [[User:Sciepsilon|Sciepsilon]] ([[User talk:Sciepsilon|talk]]) 00:09, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I have to disagree with "''Since a large percentage of people and companies present in the internet don't have the ability or intention to do strong cryptography''". Strong encryption is extremely available to 100% of people and companies. It is public and free to use. Most significant companies use VPN's and encrypted hard drives. It is just untrue to suggest that strong cryptography is not available to anyone. [[Special:Contributions/184.66.160.91|184.66.160.91]] 06:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
:That is the difference between availability and ability. While the necessary software is freely available, people don't understand how to use it (no ability), even don't want to learn how to use it (no intention).
:Also in "strong cryptography" I would require not only algorithms to be strong but also authentication schemes. The current SSL system uses Certificate Authorities, which are broken by design, thus not "strong" in the sense I was meaning it.
:While good companies using VPNs and encrypted hard drives is a good ideal, 90% of the companies do without them to save the money involved (performant hardware + setting up). Additionally they do not use encryption when communicating with others (e.g. their customers). Think of all the websites that cannot be accessed with HTTPS (including this one). -- [[User:Xorg|Xorg]] ([[User talk:Xorg|talk]]) 10:14, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
::Strong encryption in form of VPN is available to everyone and I believe lot of companies are using it. Also HTTPS is used relatively often, although many sites lack it, only use it for most important areas or only for administration for performance reasons. Thats all. Most importantly, no way of encrypting email is simple enough to be actually used by public, and I seriously doubt that majority of instant messaging is point-to-point encrypted (I know for sure Skype chat aren't - they may be encrypted on wire but keys are available to their servers).
::Note that while centralised solution of Certificate Authorities is less secure that decentralized ones, you can still get usable security in SSL ... unless you need it for HTTPS. The fact that NO HTTPS page is signed by multiple authorities is the real problem. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

At the present moment, what exactly is incomplete in this explanation? When Dgbrt added the incomplete tag, it was because "it should be mentioned that the NSA incidents are a source for Randall's ideas here", however the very first line of the explanation reads "Randall parodies some of the reactions to Edward Snowden's revelations of widespread intrusive surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency" which pretty much covers it. Furthermore, that line was already in place when the incomplete tag was added. Am I missing something? [[Special:Contributions/88.9.73.162|88.9.73.162]] 19:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
:Wait, what? That'll teach me to read the comments page rather than checking changes to the explanation. Randall's comic is about reactions to *all* internet privacy concerns. It explicitly mentions Google. Why is everybody assuming that the NSA is the only source of issues here? Sure, there have been recent revelations about the NSA. And GCHQ (indeed, by Snowden). And Google. And Facebook. And every country introducing mandatory network filters. And my employers (and anyone else's with a firewall data sniffer). And quite probably a lot more I don't know about. Can we please stop putting words in Randall's mouth and having a blinkered focus on the NSA as though it's the only source of problems when the comic itself mentions more concerns than that. I didn't think it was my place to remove the incomplete tag, but I now support the assertion that it's inaccurate, rather than incomplete. (Sorry; I was annoyed enough to register here in order to try to balance this bias! Perhaps someone with more seniority can paraphrase?) [[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]]) 21:52, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
::NSA is not only source of issues, but it's definitely the most currently debated one. Even mentioned companies are currently debated in context of their collaboration with NSA. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:56, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
:::The NSA scandal is not the most topical example. Ed Snowden's leaks about the NSA and GCHQ (including GCHQ spying on G20 Summit attendees) happened primarily in May, four months ago. The UK government has been proposing opt-out traffic inspection for porn filtering since July; one of the Australian political parties has made a similar proposal this month. The current Miss Teen USA was the subject of a recent privacy scandal, though webcam related rather than about data inspection. A media watchdog report about Google's expectation of privacy in gmail hit the news in August. Facebook drew criticism for security issues in August, and the inability to manage sex hate issues at the end of May. The NSA relationship with Google, Facebook et al. as part of PRISM is certainly an issue, but not the only, and arguably not greatest, source of concern for many about those companies and other organizations. The Snowden case is, in many places, old news, and - while it may have been reported solely in the context of the NSA in the US, it certainly hasn't been in the UK (other than regarding the issues of his asylum). Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to call out the NSA, and it's not like I avoid Google et al. I just believe that it's blinkered to attribute the comic solely either to the Snowden case in general or to the NSA in particular. I'd be happy with "Randall parodies some extreme reactions to internet security concerns, such as those raised by Edward Snowden's revelations about widespread intrusive surveillance by the NSA and other agencies." Is that reasonable? [[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]]) 18:57, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
::::O.o I'm not sure I entirely agree with the analysis about what Randall wants us to believe (I'm called a "nut" about a number of things without taking offence at any of them, for example), but I'll admit that the current version removes my objection that the explanation was overly-biased in exclusively referring to the NSA. So thank you, Davidy22 (edit war aside), and I'll pick my battles. [[User:Fluppeteer|Fluppeteer]] ([[User talk:Fluppeteer|talk]]) 13:19, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
::::I didn't write that analysis, I just stepped in when another user was autoreverting it for being "too long." It is a pretty good bit of text though. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:44, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1193: Externalities

2013-04-04T06:59:18Z

68.190.213.83:

Any chance we can convince Randall to let other universities in: the Canadian ones only work if they have a .edu, so uwaterloo.ca and sfu.ca are out.
: As are [schools].ac.in
: I can't get my university (PUC-Rio, in Brazil) too... =/ [[Special:Contributions/139.82.240.51|139.82.240.51]] 18:28, 1 April 2013 (UTC) etandel
: It looks like he may have lifted the restriction, considering all the different urls such as google.com, reddit.com, and even what I have to assume is a porn website. --[[User:LRFLEW|LRFLEW]] ([[User talk:LRFLEW|talk]]) 03:46, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

--[[Special:Contributions/137.147.40.248|137.147.40.248]] 13:53, 1 April 2013 (UTC) For an easier time spotting the changes, go to [http://xkcd.com/1193/#verbose] and open your web console

[[Special:Contributions/199.48.226.89|199.48.226.89]] 10:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC) I put in "caltech.edu" and hashed a lot of words, and "Twilight Sparkle is best pony." was the best result I managed, only off by 496 bits.
: Lol, "only". The results should be binomially distributed, with a mean of 512, so 496 isn't even close to the scores in the ranking. [[User:BKA|BKA]] ([[User talk:BKA|talk]]) 12:44, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

I noticed when looking at the list of scores that a large number of universities have a best score at 420. According to my calculations, the amount of universities with this score is 2516 out of the 2824 universities listed. Is there any reason that so many universities have the exact same score? --[[User:LRFLEW|LRFLEW]] ([[User talk:LRFLEW|talk]]) 03:38, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

: +1! A few hours ago this wasn't the case... What's up with all the 420's?? [[Special:Contributions/108.218.230.91|108.218.230.91]] 03:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
:People keep posting hash values on the internet. Those universities are dirty cheaters, and they're all just entering the 420 hash in for their university without actually calculating it. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:05, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:: While this copy-cattism might be the reason for the proliferation of 420s (which, in India, is slang that, funnily enough, refers to a confidence-trickster) - note that at the beginning of the contest, a lot of different domain names all had 'scores' between 400-500. Now, if I'm not wrong, the hash contains 1024 bits. So you could be off by 1024 in the worst case, and 0 in the best case. But the spread was very narrow. Admittedly, you wouldn't notice the higher numbers, because only the best case scenario has been published, but from the clustering of the different universities (with respect to their scores), as well as the fact that it's taking this long for even ONE clear best score to emerge, seems to suggest that there IS something special about the 400-500 score band. Does anyone have any layman-level information on the statistics of the entropy of the Skein hash function? And the statistics of what error figure for random hash compared to given hash is most frequent? [[Special:Contributions/220.224.246.97|220.224.246.97]] 18:26, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:::a hash is, at best, very close to a random number. Here, we have two 1024-bit random numbers. It makes sense that most commonly, two such random numbers differ in about half of the bits - for each bit, there's a 50% probability that the bits will be the same and 50% that they will differ. Therefore the spread centers on 512, but of course we just see the lower part of the spread here. [[Special:Contributions/2.223.68.79|2.223.68.79]] 23:46, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:: My test here shows that the 420s is that 420 Bits wrong is about what a single computer can get to within a few hours. So its no wonder that 420s are common for a lot of universities. Its just someone there who is running a little script to break the hash.
[[Special:Contributions/91.214.44.212|91.214.44.212]] 23:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

::: Although it's true that if you run a PC for a couple of hours, you're very likely ending up somewhere between 415 and 425, this does not explain such a peak at 420. If you consider the probability function for a PC's best result within a day, then maybe 420 is the most likely outcome, but you should see a lot of 421s, 419s, 418s and so on: Seeing a number in 419...415 before you see a 420 should have a chance > 0.5. [[User:BKA|BKA]] ([[User talk:BKA|talk]]) 11:47, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

All I see is a blank white 780x969 image. Nothing appears when I hover over stuff. [[Special:Contributions/109.65.100.208|109.65.100.208]] 09:04, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
:Sometimes it does that. It takes a while to generate, and it doesn't always render correctly. Try updating your browser or refreshing. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
The person who provided the shopped image either isn't using a modern browser or is using IE. The font is supposed to be "xkcd-Regular", which I assume is a font that gets downloaded from XKCD's server. Loading the same page in IE 9 gave me that Times New Roman-esque font instead (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera use the special font, although it's rendered a little fuzzy in Firefox). [[Special:Contributions/129.21.119.153|129.21.119.153]] 09:25, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The dog part now shows "FREEPRIME@AMAZON.COM" underneath the sliders for me. --[[User:Gefrierbrand|Gefrierbrand]] ([[User talk:Gefrierbrand|talk]]) 09:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
:I think it matches the company in the first panel? (Currently CAREERS@XLINX INC for me.) --[[Special:Contributions/81.138.95.57|81.138.95.57]] 10:53, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The page where the company name is supposed to be fetched from is "Sith" now, but I checked and the company is not there. I think this will take some time to decipher ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:12, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

: .... uh, remember few pages ago where we JOKED about being used as distributted computer? Now we ARE used to crack the provided hash ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:15, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

: It's April 1st. Maybe the idea that the company is sourced from a Wikipedia page is not true. That would explain the link to the Wikipedia fund raising page as an apology for the fact that there will be many XKCD readers vandalising the Sith page [[User:Jeremyp|Jeremyp]] ([[User talk:Jeremyp|talk]]) 11:38, 1 April 2013 (UTC).

:: ... AND it's [wikipedia:Jean-Luc_Picard|Jean Luc Picard] now. AND there is actually Apple linked from it. While the Google is company doing recruiting now ... hmmm ... but Google actually IS mentioned in one of previous version of page ... damn vandals. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:35, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:::WAIT. Randal now mentioned "... Final Fantasy Tactics. But link on Jean Luc Picard could beat it". So either it's something like "taken from last edited page" or he is doing it manually. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:42, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

::::"Microsoft Corporation is the first NASDAQ-100 company mentioned on the wikipedia page 'IBM'. But a link on 'Oprah' could beat it." -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:::::... AND wikipedia editors started observing the comics to edit-protect wikipedia entries BEFORE the vandals strike, as shown [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elixir_%28comics%29&action=history here]. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:49, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The top of the page for the comic now mentions this: "You can change the company in this comic. Mouse over its name in the first panel. The schools are selected by a hash breaking competition." Don't think that was there before. More interesting is the first sentence. Do we have a list of wikipedia pages that he's tracking for the first company mentioned in the page? [[Special:Contributions/220.224.246.97|220.224.246.97]] 17:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Ignorant question: What is this hash finding competition? Was it announced somewhere? [[Special:Contributions/129.67.199.117|129.67.199.117]] 11:56, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

: Click that panel: http://almamater.xkcd.com/ [[User:Jeremy1026|Jeremy1026]] ([[User talk:Jeremy1026|talk]]) 12:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC).

:: Looking in the [http://c7.xkcd.com/stream/comic/externalities?method=EventSource&lastEventId=&r=362667083523542 externalities file], another usefull link is "... full standings at [http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv]" -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:24, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:
The sad thing is that people are probably only donating to a good cause to see the dog-drawing get bigger. [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 14:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:In that case it's good Randal used GOOD cause. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 14:24, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

::Actually, the sad thing is taht people are vandalizing Wikipedia. --[[Special:Contributions/189.61.0.28|189.61.0.28]] 19:26, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone explain what, if anything, the name/email/education values (fifth panel) refer to? [[Special:Contributions/108.36.128.122|108.36.128.122]] 19:34, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:Looks like one random string and one random pair of strings. [[Special:Contributions/178.238.159.109|178.238.159.109]] 20:12, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone been able to reproduce the 1024-bit Skein hash values that he is generating at http://almamater.xkcd.com/? The hashes that he shows don't match the ones I'm getting from my Skein hash calculator (using 1024 bit output and 1024 bit internal state size). I tried feeding the same string into the hash function both with and without a trailing null character and neither matches. For example, if I type abc into the form, he shows 35a599...1f1f (edited for brevity), but I calculate that a hash of the 3-byte message "abc" should be 10a866...035c.[[User:Theodric|Theodric]] ([[User talk:Theodric|talk]]) 22:03, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:I'm getting completely different values also. [[Special:Contributions/173.22.172.7|173.22.172.7]] 22:57, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:I have the same problem as you. I'm thinking that Xkcd is using an older standard of the encryption. I'm currently trying out the php versions of the code to see if I can get it to work. --[[User:LRFLEW|LRFLEW]] ([[User talk:LRFLEW|talk]]) 23:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

::Nope. Tried all I could and still couldn't figure it out. My guess is that he's using a secret salt. --[[User:LRFLEW|LRFLEW]] ([[User talk:LRFLEW|talk]]) 23:37, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

:::'''Solved!''' :) I was originally using version 1.2 of the Skein hash function. Version 1.3 uses different constants and yields different results. The almamater page seems to be using version 1.3 -- my calculator now matches Randall's hashes.--[[User:Theodric|Theodric]] ([[User talk:Theodric|talk]]) 03:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

::::Where are you getting the implementation? I can't seem to get it to work even with v1.3. --[[User:LRFLEW|LRFLEW]] ([[User talk:LRFLEW|talk]]) 04:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

::::I'm using source code from here: http://www.skein-hash.info/sites/default/files/NIST_CD_102610.zip. I'm using the code in the Optimized_64bit directory. All C files were compiled with gcc as well as http://theodric.com/test_skein.c --[[User:Theodric|Theodric]] ([[User talk:Theodric|talk]]) 10:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:::::Thank you for the example code. I had two errors in how I was implementing it. The interesting problem I ran into was that the string to hash needs to be formatted for the web (so space becomes '+', ext.) --[[User:LRFLEW|LRFLEW]] ([[User talk:LRFLEW|talk]]) 17:02, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:::: Confirmed, xkcd uses skein 1.3. Did anyone find another implementation (besides the reference implementation)? I wasted an hour starting with the Java impl, before I decided to re-fresh my C, but now I am running roughly 7 million tests per minute on my poor notebook ;) Still way too slow to catch up with the current leaders. My best score is 415. [[User:BKA|BKA]] ([[User talk:BKA|talk]]) 12:26, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

"Wikipedia article on {{hint: The perpetrators of the largest extinction in Earth's history}}" Would this be humans? I'm afraid to get in on the Wikipedia editing since I'm already in so-so standing due to some childishness in 2006... [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 21:54, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The opening line of the first panel has changed. It's now "Ahoy, Carnegie Melonites!" (for the current school) rather than "Hey, [university] students!" (as listed in all the current entries for the changing first panel text). The question and response seem to be the same as before.
And the fifth panel now has "if they're clever with their applications" instead of "provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly". So showing the text as static in the comic image is no longer accurate.
--[[Special:Contributions/50.0.108.18|50.0.108.18]] 23:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

If I visit http://xkcd.com/1193/ then the font is xkcd-Regular, whereas if I visit http://www.xkcd.com/1193/ then the font is the default serif font… (Iceweasel with NoScript) [[Special:Contributions/178.238.159.109|178.238.159.109]] 02:44, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

: The font is loaded from [http://xkcd.com/fonts/xkcd-Regular.otf], regardless of where you see the comic from. However, Iceweasel (and presumably Firefox) dissallow cross-site access. For this reason, https://xkcd.com/1193/ also gets the default serif font. [[Special:Contributions/128.211.198.17|128.211.198.17]] 22:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Someone, please explain what hash breaking is. [[User:Jackdavinci|Jackdavinci]] ([[User talk:Jackdavinci|talk]]) 04:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:A cryptographically-secure hash function maps a set of numbers onto another set of numbers in such a way that converting forwards is easy, but converting back is difficult. The idea is that given a key and a lock, you can check the key against the lock by hashing the key and seeing if it maps to the lock. But given just the lock, you can't generate the key (easily). Randall gave us a lock, and the competition is to find the closest key. This is basically a competition to see who has the most computing power to generate lots and lots of keys. Keep in mind, I've glossed over a lot of technical details here. --[[Special:Contributions/173.162.57.51|173.162.57.51]] 15:22, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:: There should be some cleverness involved in addition to access to computers. It all comes down to who can generate the most hashes in the time available, because as a good cryptographic hash Skein gives you no hint about how to change your input to get a result closer to your target, you just have to keep making guesses. But that is not just a matter of how many computers you have. For example, Googling around for implementations of Skein I didn't find any ready to run libraries for GPUs of Skein 1024 1024. A team at a university could have stuck with an existing C implementation running on an available set of computers, or taken the time to get it running on GPUs and get quite a bit of extra speed. Also, I haven't experimented with it, but a hash function should be faster if you give it a smaller input. The current best result from CMU would take on the average about 1 quadtrillion (1e15) trials to find. Given that the input to the hash has to be in the form of URL-safe printable characters, if you assume that your team will not have time to generate more than, say 1e16 hashes and the character set you have to work with is 100 characters (my guess from looking at my keyboard) then your test input strings do not have to be longer than 8 characters. Anyone who is generating test input for the hash that is any longer, for example if they are, as a really bad example, converting 1024-bit numbers to 256 ASCII character hex, is doing at least 32 times too much work for each hash calculation. [[User:Bugstomper|Bugstomper]] ([[User talk:Bugstomper|talk]]) 00:37, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
:The time it takes to compute a Skein hash depends only on the number of bits of internal state, not of the input. This is intentional; if the execution time were dependent on input length, an attacker could execute a timing attack on the hash. AES is known to be sensitive to such attacks, but Skein is resistant. [[Special:Contributions/140.254.153.76|140.254.153.76]] 04:14, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it over now that it's after midnight? When I moused over the school name, it didn't give me a pop-up showing the next hint. [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 06:06, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

:I would assume so. The wikipedia challenges needed to be done manually, automatic ones would be blocked by wikipedia staff (see my point about Elixir page). Also, making people vandalize wikipedia is not exactly nice. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 08:52, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Do you suppose the "Needs more Bob" possibility in the second panel is a reference to Microsoft Bob (an absolutely and justly reviled Microsoft product from the 90's)? [[Special:Contributions/66.140.241.100|66.140.241.100]] 11:25, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Scary Thought #392:
'Time' and 'Extenalities' are giving Explainxkcd heavy loads. This may be on purpose. Randall might upload yet another 'heavy' comic. [[User:Greyson|Greyson]] ([[User talk:Greyson|talk]]) 14:05, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
:It does feel like he sometimes just releases comics that do unusual edge-casey things, just to see us wiki editors struggle with handling the comic. Then again, it might just be Randall trying to make a really dynamic and novel webcomic. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:28, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
:At the moment, xkcd.com seems to be down. Coincidence? --[[User:Johnsmith|Johnsmith]] ([[User talk:Johnsmith|talk]]) 06:49, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm surprised no one had added the Activision/Blizzard versions. I know it wasn't up for long, but I expected we'd have a ton of gamers jumping at the chance to add that version of the comic. (Good thing I screen-captured it so I had a reference to work from!)

1193: Externalities

2013-04-04T06:50:33Z

68.190.213.83: /* Sixth Panel */

{{comic
| number = 1193
| date = April 1, 2013
| title = Externalities
| image = externalities.png
| titletext = Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
This comic isn't a static image - even the title text changes depending on which part of the image you're hovering over. The blank regions in the above image are dynamically generated from various sources.

*The university that is being recruited changes depending on which university is winning the hash finding competition in the fifth panel.
*The company doing the recruiting is randomly selected from a pool of companies. It was formerly the first NASDAQ-100 company mentioned on a varying Wikipedia page.
*The text in the second panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Second Panel|this section]].
*The text in the third panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Third Panel|this section]].
*The text in the fourth panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Fourth Panel|this section]].
*The text in the fifth panel [[1193: Externalities#Fifth Panel|changes]], depending on which university is currently in third place in a hash finding competition. Clicking on the panel takes you to [http://almamater.xkcd.com/ a webpage] where people can enter their school's domain name and hash data, and ranks schools on how close their students can come to matching a Skein 1024 1024 hash value.
*The text in the top half of the sixth panel may vary. See [[1193: Externalities#Sixth Panel|this section]]. The second half of the panel is always the same.
*The last panel varies with the amount donated to the Wikimedia Foundation via [https://donate.wikimedia.org/?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=xkcd_april1 this link]. For past images, see [[1193: Externalities#Seventh Panel|this section]].

===Hashing Competition===
For the two days until comic 1194 appeared, a competition was underway to see who could come closest to breaking a [[wikipedia:Skein_%28hash_function%29|Skein hash]]. The first text line of the first panel contains a link to http://almamater.xkcd.com. This page contained the text:

:Currently looking for Skein 1024 1024 input matching 5b4da95f5fa08280fc9879df44f418c8f9f12ba424b7757de02bbdfbae0d4c4fdf9317c80cc5fe04c6429073466cf29706b8c25999ddd2f6540d4475cc977b87f4757be023f19b8f4035d7722886b78869826de916a79cf9c94cc79cd4347d24b567aa3e2390a573a373a48a5e676640c79cc70197e1c5e7f902fb53ca1858b6

On this page, users were invited to enter "Your school's domain name"—presumably intended to be their college alma mater. (At least in the beginning, only a few top-level domains were accepted.) If the user entered an acceptable domain (by xkcd's rules, which apparently changed during the 48 hours of the competition), he could then enter data values one at a time. For each data value entered, xkcd returned a hash value and the number of bits by which it differed from the target value. The object was to achieve the lowest possible number of differing bits, ideally zero.

A ranking page showed the lowest value achieved for each domain name entered, but not the data that achieved it. The first name on the list was substituted in various panels, and the third-place school showed in panel five. No data values were reported by xkcd, but various results were posted by users of the xkcd forums and on other websites, leading to copycat submissions, so that occasionally large numbers of institutions would show the same moderately low value.

After the end of the contest, the data submission page vanished, replaced by the final list of rankings, which shows that Carnegie Mellon University achieved the best score with 384 bits incorrect out of 1024. The rankings only show a few hundred out of the several thousand domains submitted—presumably Randall chose to chop the copycat submissions off the end of the list, retaining only honestly obtained results.

===First Panel===
In some cases, Megan's reply seems to correspond to the company.
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you applied to [company] yet?
:Megan: The recruiter hasn't emailed me back in over three minutes.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you applied to [company] yet?
:Megan: The recruiter hasn't emailed me back in over an hour!
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: I'm not that good at math.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: What do they even do?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: I don't like monopolies.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Only in my darkest moments.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Be part of the Apple experience!
:Megan: I'm not really a fan of turtlenecks.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work at Microsoft!
:Megan: I only came to this tech talk for the xbox giveaway.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Y U No Work Yahoo?
:Megan: I like working from home!
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Become a partner at Starbucks!
:Megan: But green's not my colour.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work in the Amazon!
:Megan: I don't have to actually move to South America, do I?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Not after that presentation.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Thought about working for Intel?
:Megan: I'm not that great at division.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Dude, you should work at Dell!
:Megan: That catchphrase is so old.
|-
|
:Ahoy, carnegie melonites!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Not after that presentation.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you looked for a job at Kraft Foods?
:Megan: I'm allergic to sugar
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:How about working for Whole Foods?
:Megan: Could I afford the food if I did?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work at EBay!
:Megan: Maybe if they made a good bid.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work for Activision... er... Blizzard... er...
:Megan: Activision Blizzard?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come find your future at Baidu!
:Megan: But nothing about Tiananmen Square.
|}

===Second Panel===
The text in the second panel is based on the company in the first panel:
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|
:When the Singularity happens, it will happen here.
:Ponytail: [Company] has outgrown us.
:Men: It is time.
|-
|
:Think of ways to make things smaller and smaller!
:Ponytail: I'm worried mine is too big.
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:Think of ways to make things smaller and smaller!
:Ponytail: But will it blend?
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:You'll be part of a dynamic research team envisioning the future.
:Ponytail: It probably looks cool.
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:You'll be creating the future of commerce platforms!
:Ponytail: More recommendations.
:Men: Yep.
|-
|
:You'll be an insignificant cog in our giant machine
:Ponytail: We should improve Notepad
:Men: Nah
|-
|
:We can't tell you what you'll be working on.
:Ponytail: [Confidential]
:Men: [Redacted]
|-
|
:You'll be an insignificant cog in our giant machine
:Ponytail: Needs more Bob.
:Men: Nah
|-
|
:You'll help set the future of the company
:Ponytail: Wait. You hired a college grad as the CFO?
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:At Qualcomm, we know you're born mobile.
:Ponytail: Born mobile!
:Men: Texting!
|-
|
:Short or tall, we've got a grande job for you!
:Ponytail: How many job openings are there?
:Men: Ele-venti or so.
|-
|
:You'll help direct the future of nutrition
:Ponytail: Microwaveable toast
:Men: Delicious
|-
|
:Help us find and provide the best healthy, local, and sustainable products.
:Ponytail: Hey guys, how about kale cookies?
:Men: Sounds great!
|-
|
:We're the Classmates.com to Facebook's Craigslist.
:Ponytail: Maybe we should use game theory.
:Men: Why Bother?
|-
|
:Whatever. Come create the future of gaming!
:Ponytail: Call of Duty 14.
:Men: That's genius!
|-
|
:It takes great minds to stifle other great minds.
:Ponytail: Let's block Canada
:Men: Sounds good.
|}

===Third Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|We're a convenient four hour drive from New York City (15,000 hours by roomba)
|-
|Only a short commuter flight away!
|-
|Travel to us by roomba, we're *that* close!
|-
|We're so close you can get to us by roomba.
|-
|Free roomba rides every morning while you have coffee.
|-
|Your roomba comes in black & slate, or white & silver
|-
|Just a short roomba ride up the coast, try not to fall off.
|-
|We know what everyday life is like for your generation:
|}

===Fourth Panel===
{| class="wikitable sortable plainlinks table-padding"
|-
|Our recruiting team is on the lookup for promising young [university] graduates.
|-
|We hired a new recruiting startup to help us hire [university] students.
|-
|We borrowed the botanical gardens' net to catch promising recruits.
|-
|We prefer to recruit from [university] students, of course.
|-
|Our recruiters are on the hunt for unaware [university] graduates.
|}

===Fifth Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|Or students from [university], if they're clever with their applications
|-
|Possibly [university] grads, if their form-filling startup works out.
|-
|Or [university] graduates, provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly.
|-
|Or [university] graduates, if they manage to fill out the application correctly.
|}

The text in the form varies independently of the text at the top, sometimes related to the organization in 3rd place:

{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
!Organization
!Name
!Email
!Education
|-
|MIT
|Oliver Smoot
|pgp encrypted
|have you ever really looked at the fourier
|-
|
|Wheeeee
|ford.com
|stealing lunches from startups
|-
|CMU
|leeroy jenkins
|me@car
|I can cut up melons
|-
|CMU
|pittsburgh
|me@car
|I can cut up melons
|-
|
|SEGMENTATION FAULT
|save trees
|Contra dancing.
|-
|Cambridge
|I'm applying
|cam.gov
|on going problems with birds
|-
|
|certainly
|elephant
|An excellent year in the Sahara
|-
|Stanford
|Stanford
|ford.com
|Stealing lunches from startups
|-
|Stanford
|Yes Please
|@twitter
|Are you Stanford?
|-
|
|Applying
|For a job
|I would like to work at you
|-
|
|Me olaf
|You Helga
|Hunting wooly mammoths
|-
|Ohio State
|Oh!
|IO
|O HAI O
|-
|
|FOLLOWBACK
|TOTALLY.EDU.US
|CONVENIENT US DOMAIN REDIRECTS
|-
|
|Mancher
|Outlook
|Made a collage out of macaroni
|-
|Stanford
|Yes Please
|ford.com
|Are you Stanford?
|-
|Michigan
|ANN
|SOUTH DETROIT
|HUNT LIKE A WOLVERINE
|-
|
|christopher
|POBox 12532
|p.s. ill find my frog
|-
|Oxford
|Bond, James
|Righto
|We're better than Cambridge
|-
|
|Which one
|Forget it
|Riding the L all night long
|-
|
|Kat
|Oh dear
|Something something sleep
|-
|Google
|My G+ handle?
|Any
|I'm feeling lucky
|}

===Sixth Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|At [company], you'll work at a scale you won't find anywhere else
|-
|Explore the depths of expensive and undocumented tools!
|-
|At Apple, we believe in pushing the boundary of perfection.
|-
|At Microsoft, you just need to relax and embrace the machine 
|-
|Yahoo management aren't just suits. We code too!
|-
|At [company], you'll have the opportinity to work on cutting-edge projects.
|-
|At Amazon, you'll be shaving the most cutting-edge of yaks.
|-
|You get to bid first on any auction, and use other experimental tools!
|-
|At QUALCOMM, Device driver code quality is job #1
|-
|Make use of our powerful in-house game creation tools.
|-
|We're even working on some experimental biotechnology
|}

===Seventh Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|[[File:externality-dog1.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog2.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog3.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog4.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog5.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog6.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog7.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog8.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog9.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog10.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog11.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog12.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog13.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog14.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog15.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog16.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog17.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog18.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog19.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog20.png]]
|}

==Title Text==
The title text documents the different sources of data in the comic. The different title texts are:

{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
!Comic region
!Title text
|-
|Most of the comic.||Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.
|-
|Most of the text in the first panel.||Happy April 1st, Everyone!
|-
|Fifth panel.||[University] has the third best hash. See the full standings at http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv
|-
|Last panel.||The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the wikimedia foundation via this link. Currently at [amount donated]
|}

==Transcript==
:[The comic is dynamically generated from multiple sources.]

:[First panel [[1193: Externalities#First Panel|transcript varies.]]]

:[Second panel [[1193: Externalities#Second Panel|transcript varies.]]]

:[Third panel [[1193: Externalities#Third Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:[Ponytail riding on a roomba.]

:[Fourth panel [[1193: Externalities#Fourth Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:[A group of people waiting outside a door. One of them is holding a large net.]

:Or [university] graduates, provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly.
:Name: [random]
:Email: [Third place university]

:[Sixth panel [[1193: Externalities#Sixth Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:Cueball: What does "make dog" do?
:Off-panel: Experimental dog generator. Don't click on it; the default size isn't set, so-
:'''*click*'''

:''KZZZT''
:BIP
:Off-screen: Uh-oh.

:[Last panel's [[1193: Externalities#Seventh Panel|transcript varies.]]]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]

1193: Externalities

2013-04-04T06:48:48Z

68.190.213.83: /* Second Panel */

{{comic
| number = 1193
| date = April 1, 2013
| title = Externalities
| image = externalities.png
| titletext = Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
This comic isn't a static image - even the title text changes depending on which part of the image you're hovering over. The blank regions in the above image are dynamically generated from various sources.

*The university that is being recruited changes depending on which university is winning the hash finding competition in the fifth panel.
*The company doing the recruiting is randomly selected from a pool of companies. It was formerly the first NASDAQ-100 company mentioned on a varying Wikipedia page.
*The text in the second panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Second Panel|this section]].
*The text in the third panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Third Panel|this section]].
*The text in the fourth panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Fourth Panel|this section]].
*The text in the fifth panel [[1193: Externalities#Fifth Panel|changes]], depending on which university is currently in third place in a hash finding competition. Clicking on the panel takes you to [http://almamater.xkcd.com/ a webpage] where people can enter their school's domain name and hash data, and ranks schools on how close their students can come to matching a Skein 1024 1024 hash value.
*The text in the top half of the sixth panel may vary. See [[1193: Externalities#Sixth Panel|this section]]. The second half of the panel is always the same.
*The last panel varies with the amount donated to the Wikimedia Foundation via [https://donate.wikimedia.org/?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=xkcd_april1 this link]. For past images, see [[1193: Externalities#Seventh Panel|this section]].

===Hashing Competition===
For the two days until comic 1194 appeared, a competition was underway to see who could come closest to breaking a [[wikipedia:Skein_%28hash_function%29|Skein hash]]. The first text line of the first panel contains a link to http://almamater.xkcd.com. This page contained the text:

:Currently looking for Skein 1024 1024 input matching 5b4da95f5fa08280fc9879df44f418c8f9f12ba424b7757de02bbdfbae0d4c4fdf9317c80cc5fe04c6429073466cf29706b8c25999ddd2f6540d4475cc977b87f4757be023f19b8f4035d7722886b78869826de916a79cf9c94cc79cd4347d24b567aa3e2390a573a373a48a5e676640c79cc70197e1c5e7f902fb53ca1858b6

On this page, users were invited to enter "Your school's domain name"—presumably intended to be their college alma mater. (At least in the beginning, only a few top-level domains were accepted.) If the user entered an acceptable domain (by xkcd's rules, which apparently changed during the 48 hours of the competition), he could then enter data values one at a time. For each data value entered, xkcd returned a hash value and the number of bits by which it differed from the target value. The object was to achieve the lowest possible number of differing bits, ideally zero.

A ranking page showed the lowest value achieved for each domain name entered, but not the data that achieved it. The first name on the list was substituted in various panels, and the third-place school showed in panel five. No data values were reported by xkcd, but various results were posted by users of the xkcd forums and on other websites, leading to copycat submissions, so that occasionally large numbers of institutions would show the same moderately low value.

After the end of the contest, the data submission page vanished, replaced by the final list of rankings, which shows that Carnegie Mellon University achieved the best score with 384 bits incorrect out of 1024. The rankings only show a few hundred out of the several thousand domains submitted—presumably Randall chose to chop the copycat submissions off the end of the list, retaining only honestly obtained results.

===First Panel===
In some cases, Megan's reply seems to correspond to the company.
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you applied to [company] yet?
:Megan: The recruiter hasn't emailed me back in over three minutes.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you applied to [company] yet?
:Megan: The recruiter hasn't emailed me back in over an hour!
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: I'm not that good at math.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: What do they even do?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: I don't like monopolies.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Only in my darkest moments.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Be part of the Apple experience!
:Megan: I'm not really a fan of turtlenecks.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work at Microsoft!
:Megan: I only came to this tech talk for the xbox giveaway.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Y U No Work Yahoo?
:Megan: I like working from home!
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Become a partner at Starbucks!
:Megan: But green's not my colour.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work in the Amazon!
:Megan: I don't have to actually move to South America, do I?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Not after that presentation.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Thought about working for Intel?
:Megan: I'm not that great at division.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Dude, you should work at Dell!
:Megan: That catchphrase is so old.
|-
|
:Ahoy, carnegie melonites!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Not after that presentation.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you looked for a job at Kraft Foods?
:Megan: I'm allergic to sugar
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:How about working for Whole Foods?
:Megan: Could I afford the food if I did?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work at EBay!
:Megan: Maybe if they made a good bid.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work for Activision... er... Blizzard... er...
:Megan: Activision Blizzard?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come find your future at Baidu!
:Megan: But nothing about Tiananmen Square.
|}

===Second Panel===
The text in the second panel is based on the company in the first panel:
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|
:When the Singularity happens, it will happen here.
:Ponytail: [Company] has outgrown us.
:Men: It is time.
|-
|
:Think of ways to make things smaller and smaller!
:Ponytail: I'm worried mine is too big.
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:Think of ways to make things smaller and smaller!
:Ponytail: But will it blend?
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:You'll be part of a dynamic research team envisioning the future.
:Ponytail: It probably looks cool.
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:You'll be creating the future of commerce platforms!
:Ponytail: More recommendations.
:Men: Yep.
|-
|
:You'll be an insignificant cog in our giant machine
:Ponytail: We should improve Notepad
:Men: Nah
|-
|
:We can't tell you what you'll be working on.
:Ponytail: [Confidential]
:Men: [Redacted]
|-
|
:You'll be an insignificant cog in our giant machine
:Ponytail: Needs more Bob.
:Men: Nah
|-
|
:You'll help set the future of the company
:Ponytail: Wait. You hired a college grad as the CFO?
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:At Qualcomm, we know you're born mobile.
:Ponytail: Born mobile!
:Men: Texting!
|-
|
:Short or tall, we've got a grande job for you!
:Ponytail: How many job openings are there?
:Men: Ele-venti or so.
|-
|
:You'll help direct the future of nutrition
:Ponytail: Microwaveable toast
:Men: Delicious
|-
|
:Help us find and provide the best healthy, local, and sustainable products.
:Ponytail: Hey guys, how about kale cookies?
:Men: Sounds great!
|-
|
:We're the Classmates.com to Facebook's Craigslist.
:Ponytail: Maybe we should use game theory.
:Men: Why Bother?
|-
|
:Whatever. Come create the future of gaming!
:Ponytail: Call of Duty 14.
:Men: That's genius!
|-
|
:It takes great minds to stifle other great minds.
:Ponytail: Let's block Canada
:Men: Sounds good.
|}

===Third Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|We're a convenient four hour drive from New York City (15,000 hours by roomba)
|-
|Only a short commuter flight away!
|-
|Travel to us by roomba, we're *that* close!
|-
|We're so close you can get to us by roomba.
|-
|Free roomba rides every morning while you have coffee.
|-
|Your roomba comes in black & slate, or white & silver
|-
|Just a short roomba ride up the coast, try not to fall off.
|-
|We know what everyday life is like for your generation:
|}

===Fourth Panel===
{| class="wikitable sortable plainlinks table-padding"
|-
|Our recruiting team is on the lookup for promising young [university] graduates.
|-
|We hired a new recruiting startup to help us hire [university] students.
|-
|We borrowed the botanical gardens' net to catch promising recruits.
|-
|We prefer to recruit from [university] students, of course.
|-
|Our recruiters are on the hunt for unaware [university] graduates.
|}

===Fifth Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|Or students from [university], if they're clever with their applications
|-
|Possibly [university] grads, if their form-filling startup works out.
|-
|Or [university] graduates, provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly.
|-
|Or [university] graduates, if they manage to fill out the application correctly.
|}

The text in the form varies independently of the text at the top, sometimes related to the organization in 3rd place:

{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
!Organization
!Name
!Email
!Education
|-
|MIT
|Oliver Smoot
|pgp encrypted
|have you ever really looked at the fourier
|-
|
|Wheeeee
|ford.com
|stealing lunches from startups
|-
|CMU
|leeroy jenkins
|me@car
|I can cut up melons
|-
|CMU
|pittsburgh
|me@car
|I can cut up melons
|-
|
|SEGMENTATION FAULT
|save trees
|Contra dancing.
|-
|Cambridge
|I'm applying
|cam.gov
|on going problems with birds
|-
|
|certainly
|elephant
|An excellent year in the Sahara
|-
|Stanford
|Stanford
|ford.com
|Stealing lunches from startups
|-
|Stanford
|Yes Please
|@twitter
|Are you Stanford?
|-
|
|Applying
|For a job
|I would like to work at you
|-
|
|Me olaf
|You Helga
|Hunting wooly mammoths
|-
|Ohio State
|Oh!
|IO
|O HAI O
|-
|
|FOLLOWBACK
|TOTALLY.EDU.US
|CONVENIENT US DOMAIN REDIRECTS
|-
|
|Mancher
|Outlook
|Made a collage out of macaroni
|-
|Stanford
|Yes Please
|ford.com
|Are you Stanford?
|-
|Michigan
|ANN
|SOUTH DETROIT
|HUNT LIKE A WOLVERINE
|-
|
|christopher
|POBox 12532
|p.s. ill find my frog
|-
|Oxford
|Bond, James
|Righto
|We're better than Cambridge
|-
|
|Which one
|Forget it
|Riding the L all night long
|-
|
|Kat
|Oh dear
|Something something sleep
|-
|Google
|My G+ handle?
|Any
|I'm feeling lucky
|}

===Sixth Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|At [company], you'll work at a scale you won't find anywhere else
|-
|Explore the depths of expensive and undocumented tools!
|-
|At Apple, we believe in pushing the boundary of perfection.
|-
|At Microsoft, you just need to relax and embrace the machine 
|-
|Yahoo management aren't just suits. We code too!
|-
|At [company], you'll have the opportinity to work on cutting-edge projects.
|-
|At Amazon, you'll be shaving the most cutting-edge of yaks.
|-
|You get to bid first on any auction, and use other experimental tools!
|-
|At QUALCOMM, Device driver code quality is job #1
|-
|We're even working on some experimental biotechnology
|}

===Seventh Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|[[File:externality-dog1.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog2.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog3.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog4.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog5.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog6.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog7.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog8.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog9.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog10.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog11.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog12.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog13.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog14.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog15.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog16.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog17.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog18.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog19.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog20.png]]
|}

==Title Text==
The title text documents the different sources of data in the comic. The different title texts are:

{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
!Comic region
!Title text
|-
|Most of the comic.||Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.
|-
|Most of the text in the first panel.||Happy April 1st, Everyone!
|-
|Fifth panel.||[University] has the third best hash. See the full standings at http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv
|-
|Last panel.||The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the wikimedia foundation via this link. Currently at [amount donated]
|}

==Transcript==
:[The comic is dynamically generated from multiple sources.]

:[First panel [[1193: Externalities#First Panel|transcript varies.]]]

:[Second panel [[1193: Externalities#Second Panel|transcript varies.]]]

:[Third panel [[1193: Externalities#Third Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:[Ponytail riding on a roomba.]

:[Fourth panel [[1193: Externalities#Fourth Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:[A group of people waiting outside a door. One of them is holding a large net.]

:Or [university] graduates, provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly.
:Name: [random]
:Email: [Third place university]

:[Sixth panel [[1193: Externalities#Sixth Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:Cueball: What does "make dog" do?
:Off-panel: Experimental dog generator. Don't click on it; the default size isn't set, so-
:'''*click*'''

:''KZZZT''
:BIP
:Off-screen: Uh-oh.

:[Last panel's [[1193: Externalities#Seventh Panel|transcript varies.]]]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]

1193: Externalities

2013-04-04T06:46:41Z

68.190.213.83: /* First Panel */

{{comic
| number = 1193
| date = April 1, 2013
| title = Externalities
| image = externalities.png
| titletext = Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete}}
This comic isn't a static image - even the title text changes depending on which part of the image you're hovering over. The blank regions in the above image are dynamically generated from various sources.

*The university that is being recruited changes depending on which university is winning the hash finding competition in the fifth panel.
*The company doing the recruiting is randomly selected from a pool of companies. It was formerly the first NASDAQ-100 company mentioned on a varying Wikipedia page.
*The text in the second panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Second Panel|this section]].
*The text in the third panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Third Panel|this section]].
*The text in the fourth panel may vary: See [[1193: Externalities#Fourth Panel|this section]].
*The text in the fifth panel [[1193: Externalities#Fifth Panel|changes]], depending on which university is currently in third place in a hash finding competition. Clicking on the panel takes you to [http://almamater.xkcd.com/ a webpage] where people can enter their school's domain name and hash data, and ranks schools on how close their students can come to matching a Skein 1024 1024 hash value.
*The text in the top half of the sixth panel may vary. See [[1193: Externalities#Sixth Panel|this section]]. The second half of the panel is always the same.
*The last panel varies with the amount donated to the Wikimedia Foundation via [https://donate.wikimedia.org/?utm_medium=socialmedia&utm_campaign=xkcd_april1 this link]. For past images, see [[1193: Externalities#Seventh Panel|this section]].

===Hashing Competition===
For the two days until comic 1194 appeared, a competition was underway to see who could come closest to breaking a [[wikipedia:Skein_%28hash_function%29|Skein hash]]. The first text line of the first panel contains a link to http://almamater.xkcd.com. This page contained the text:

:Currently looking for Skein 1024 1024 input matching 5b4da95f5fa08280fc9879df44f418c8f9f12ba424b7757de02bbdfbae0d4c4fdf9317c80cc5fe04c6429073466cf29706b8c25999ddd2f6540d4475cc977b87f4757be023f19b8f4035d7722886b78869826de916a79cf9c94cc79cd4347d24b567aa3e2390a573a373a48a5e676640c79cc70197e1c5e7f902fb53ca1858b6

On this page, users were invited to enter "Your school's domain name"—presumably intended to be their college alma mater. (At least in the beginning, only a few top-level domains were accepted.) If the user entered an acceptable domain (by xkcd's rules, which apparently changed during the 48 hours of the competition), he could then enter data values one at a time. For each data value entered, xkcd returned a hash value and the number of bits by which it differed from the target value. The object was to achieve the lowest possible number of differing bits, ideally zero.

A ranking page showed the lowest value achieved for each domain name entered, but not the data that achieved it. The first name on the list was substituted in various panels, and the third-place school showed in panel five. No data values were reported by xkcd, but various results were posted by users of the xkcd forums and on other websites, leading to copycat submissions, so that occasionally large numbers of institutions would show the same moderately low value.

After the end of the contest, the data submission page vanished, replaced by the final list of rankings, which shows that Carnegie Mellon University achieved the best score with 384 bits incorrect out of 1024. The rankings only show a few hundred out of the several thousand domains submitted—presumably Randall chose to chop the copycat submissions off the end of the list, retaining only honestly obtained results.

===First Panel===
In some cases, Megan's reply seems to correspond to the company.
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you applied to [company] yet?
:Megan: The recruiter hasn't emailed me back in over three minutes.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you applied to [company] yet?
:Megan: The recruiter hasn't emailed me back in over an hour!
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: I'm not that good at math.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: What do they even do?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: I don't like monopolies.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Only in my darkest moments.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Be part of the Apple experience!
:Megan: I'm not really a fan of turtlenecks.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work at Microsoft!
:Megan: I only came to this tech talk for the xbox giveaway.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Y U No Work Yahoo?
:Megan: I like working from home!
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Become a partner at Starbucks!
:Megan: But green's not my colour.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work in the Amazon!
:Megan: I don't have to actually move to South America, do I?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Not after that presentation.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Thought about working for Intel?
:Megan: I'm not that great at division.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Dude, you should work at Dell!
:Megan: That catchphrase is so old.
|-
|
:Ahoy, carnegie melonites!
:Have you thought of a career at [company]?
:Megan: Not after that presentation.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Have you looked for a job at Kraft Foods?
:Megan: I'm allergic to sugar
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:How about working for Whole Foods?
:Megan: Could I afford the food if I did?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work at EBay!
:Megan: Maybe if they made a good bid.
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come work for Activision... er... Blizzard... er...
:Megan: Activision Blizzard?
|-
|
:Hey, [university] students!
:Come find your future at Baidu!
:Megan: But nothing about Tiananmen Square.
|}

===Second Panel===
The text in the second panel is based on the company in the first panel:
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|
:When the Singularity happens, it will happen here.
:Ponytail: [Company] has outgrown us.
:Men: It is time.
|-
|
:Think of ways to make things smaller and smaller!
:Ponytail: I'm worried mine is too big.
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:Think of ways to make things smaller and smaller!
:Ponytail: But will it blend?
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:You'll be part of a dynamic research team envisioning the future.
:Ponytail: It probably looks cool.
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:You'll be creating the future of commerce platforms!
:Ponytail: More recommendations.
:Men: Yep.
|-
|
:You'll be an insignificant cog in our giant machine
:Ponytail: We should improve Notepad
:Men: Nah
|-
|
:We can't tell you what you'll be working on.
:Ponytail: [Confidential]
:Men: [Redacted]
|-
|
:You'll be an insignificant cog in our giant machine
:Ponytail: Needs more Bob.
:Men: Nah
|-
|
:You'll help set the future of the company
:Ponytail: Wait. You hired a college grad as the CFO?
:Men: Yeahhh
|-
|
:At Qualcomm, we know you're born mobile.
:Ponytail: Born mobile!
:Men: Texting!
|-
|
:Short or tall, we've got a grande job for you!
:Ponytail: How many job openings are there?
:Men: Ele-venti or so.
|-
|
:You'll help direct the future of nutrition
:Ponytail: Microwaveable toast
:Men: Delicious
|-
|
:Help us find and provide the best healthy, local, and sustainable products.
:Ponytail: Hey guys, how about kale cookies?
:Men: Sounds great!
|-
|
:We're the Classmates.com to Facebook's Craigslist.
:Ponytail: Maybe we should use game theory.
:Men: Why Bother?
|-
|
:It takes great minds to stifle other great minds.
:Ponytail: Let's block Canada
:Men: Sounds good.
|}

===Third Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|We're a convenient four hour drive from New York City (15,000 hours by roomba)
|-
|Only a short commuter flight away!
|-
|Travel to us by roomba, we're *that* close!
|-
|We're so close you can get to us by roomba.
|-
|Free roomba rides every morning while you have coffee.
|-
|Your roomba comes in black & slate, or white & silver
|-
|Just a short roomba ride up the coast, try not to fall off.
|-
|We know what everyday life is like for your generation:
|}

===Fourth Panel===
{| class="wikitable sortable plainlinks table-padding"
|-
|Our recruiting team is on the lookup for promising young [university] graduates.
|-
|We hired a new recruiting startup to help us hire [university] students.
|-
|We borrowed the botanical gardens' net to catch promising recruits.
|-
|We prefer to recruit from [university] students, of course.
|-
|Our recruiters are on the hunt for unaware [university] graduates.
|}

===Fifth Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|Or students from [university], if they're clever with their applications
|-
|Possibly [university] grads, if their form-filling startup works out.
|-
|Or [university] graduates, provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly.
|-
|Or [university] graduates, if they manage to fill out the application correctly.
|}

The text in the form varies independently of the text at the top, sometimes related to the organization in 3rd place:

{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
!Organization
!Name
!Email
!Education
|-
|MIT
|Oliver Smoot
|pgp encrypted
|have you ever really looked at the fourier
|-
|
|Wheeeee
|ford.com
|stealing lunches from startups
|-
|CMU
|leeroy jenkins
|me@car
|I can cut up melons
|-
|CMU
|pittsburgh
|me@car
|I can cut up melons
|-
|
|SEGMENTATION FAULT
|save trees
|Contra dancing.
|-
|Cambridge
|I'm applying
|cam.gov
|on going problems with birds
|-
|
|certainly
|elephant
|An excellent year in the Sahara
|-
|Stanford
|Stanford
|ford.com
|Stealing lunches from startups
|-
|Stanford
|Yes Please
|@twitter
|Are you Stanford?
|-
|
|Applying
|For a job
|I would like to work at you
|-
|
|Me olaf
|You Helga
|Hunting wooly mammoths
|-
|Ohio State
|Oh!
|IO
|O HAI O
|-
|
|FOLLOWBACK
|TOTALLY.EDU.US
|CONVENIENT US DOMAIN REDIRECTS
|-
|
|Mancher
|Outlook
|Made a collage out of macaroni
|-
|Stanford
|Yes Please
|ford.com
|Are you Stanford?
|-
|Michigan
|ANN
|SOUTH DETROIT
|HUNT LIKE A WOLVERINE
|-
|
|christopher
|POBox 12532
|p.s. ill find my frog
|-
|Oxford
|Bond, James
|Righto
|We're better than Cambridge
|-
|
|Which one
|Forget it
|Riding the L all night long
|-
|
|Kat
|Oh dear
|Something something sleep
|-
|Google
|My G+ handle?
|Any
|I'm feeling lucky
|}

===Sixth Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|At [company], you'll work at a scale you won't find anywhere else
|-
|Explore the depths of expensive and undocumented tools!
|-
|At Apple, we believe in pushing the boundary of perfection.
|-
|At Microsoft, you just need to relax and embrace the machine 
|-
|Yahoo management aren't just suits. We code too!
|-
|At [company], you'll have the opportinity to work on cutting-edge projects.
|-
|At Amazon, you'll be shaving the most cutting-edge of yaks.
|-
|You get to bid first on any auction, and use other experimental tools!
|-
|At QUALCOMM, Device driver code quality is job #1
|-
|We're even working on some experimental biotechnology
|}

===Seventh Panel===
{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
|[[File:externality-dog1.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog2.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog3.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog4.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog5.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog6.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog7.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog8.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog9.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog10.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog11.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog12.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog13.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog14.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog15.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog16.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog17.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog18.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog19.png]]
|-
|[[File:externality-dog20.png]]
|}

==Title Text==
The title text documents the different sources of data in the comic. The different title texts are:

{| class="wikitable table-padding"
|-
!Comic region
!Title text
|-
|Most of the comic.||Mouse over words and things to see where they come from.
|-
|Most of the text in the first panel.||Happy April 1st, Everyone!
|-
|Fifth panel.||[University] has the third best hash. See the full standings at http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv
|-
|Last panel.||The dog gains a pound for every $10 donated to the wikimedia foundation via this link. Currently at [amount donated]
|}

==Transcript==
:[The comic is dynamically generated from multiple sources.]

:[First panel [[1193: Externalities#First Panel|transcript varies.]]]

:[Second panel [[1193: Externalities#Second Panel|transcript varies.]]]

:[Third panel [[1193: Externalities#Third Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:[Ponytail riding on a roomba.]

:[Fourth panel [[1193: Externalities#Fourth Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:[A group of people waiting outside a door. One of them is holding a large net.]

:Or [university] graduates, provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly.
:Name: [random]
:Email: [Third place university]

:[Sixth panel [[1193: Externalities#Sixth Panel|transcript varies.]]]
:Cueball: What does "make dog" do?
:Off-panel: Experimental dog generator. Don't click on it; the default size isn't set, so-
:'''*click*'''

:''KZZZT''
:BIP
:Off-screen: Uh-oh.

:[Last panel's [[1193: Externalities#Seventh Panel|transcript varies.]]]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]