explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2109: Invisible Formatting

2019-02-08T15:39:36Z

GuB:

This reminds me of the person who used l (lower-case "L") instead of 1 for data entry at some business. Amazingly, the computer accepted it (BAD programming!) and it wasn't found out until the end of the tax year, when all heck broke loose! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.136|162.158.75.136]] 14:50, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
:Some programming puzzles are often solved with stuff like this: AΑ [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 15:19, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
:"l" (lower-case "L") is a valid suffix to integer literals in C and derived languages. It indicates the number is of the "long int" type as opposed to a plain "int". Because C automatically upconverts the "int" type into "long int" when needed, the "l" suffix is rarely used. The result: "long int a = 1;" and "long int a = 1l;" mean exactly the same thing, and both statements are perfectly standard and won't raise any warning from compilers. "ll" (double el) is also a valid suffix, this time for the "long long int" type. [[User:GuB|GuB]] ([[User talk:GuB|talk]]) 15:39, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

I went to this page, expecting it to be self-referential. Was not disappointed. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 15:19, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

505: A Bunch of Rocks

2016-05-16T21:39:22Z

GuB: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 505
| date = November 17, 2008
| title = A Bunch of Rocks
| image = a_bunch_of_rocks.png
| titletext = I call Rule 34 on Wolfram's Rule 34.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, including {{w|quantum mechanics}} and {{w|general relativity}}. Next Cueball creates a computer that can process any possible function, out of rocks and rules for the interaction between rocks. He then simulates a particle followed by the interactions between particles, followed by the entire universe. The amount of time it takes to simulate the change in the universe from one instant to the next takes an extremely long time as the time it takes to update just one row of rocks can be measured in eons.

Cueball then apologizes for any flaws we see in the simulation. This implies that the audience is living in Cueball's simulation, making Cueball essentially God.

The final frame cuts to a classroom where a bored student stares at his hands waiting for class to end. Cueball admonishes the student for thinking that class is lasting forever. The joke being that the boredom felt in a classroom is nothing compared to the boredom that inspires Cueball to spend his time toiling to keep the universe moving. Indeed the minutes of lecture actually took many "billions and billions of millennia" for Cueball to simulate.

The title text suggests that {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|Rule 34}} should be called on {{w|Elementary cellular automaton#Random initial state|Wolfram's Rule 34}}. Rule 34 (see [[305: Rule 34]]) is a humorous rule of the Internet which states "If you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Wolfram's Rule 34 is a cellular automaton. Therefore, the title text says that someone has made pornography featuring the cellular automaton in question.

===Graphs===
The three diagrams in the "Physics, too. I worked out the kinks..." panel are, from left to right:
# The {{w|Normal distribution}} of the {{w|Gaussian curve}} marking the points that represent a standard deviation of σ and 2σ. This is one of the fundamental building blocks of statistics. In quantum mechanics particles are viewed as inherently random, therefore the time at which a particle will decay, the position of a particle and its velocity are all calculated using similar curves. A deviation of at least σ occurs 32% of the time where a deviation of 2σ or more occurs about 5% of the time.
# The {{w|Inclined plane#History|Epitaph of Stevinus}}, an explanation of the mechanical advantage of using an {{w|inclined plane}}. The inclined plane is one of the six classical {{w|simple machine}}s, one of the fundamental building blocks of mechanical and civil engineering.
# The last graph is unknown. It may represent coupled pendulums, {{w|length contraction}}, or a hypothetical solution to something we haven't derived yet.

The graph that represents particle interaction is a {{w|Feynman Diagram}}. This shows the interaction of subatomic particles that collide and exchange some momentum via a photon. The slope of the middle line represents the distance moved and the time lost/gained during the interaction.

===Notes===
The Swiss patent office line refers to {{w|Albert Einstein}}, who was employed as a Swiss patent clerk while coming up with his theory of special relativity. This joke is also referenced in [[1067|1067: Pressures]]. Also, there is a standing joke that very few important inventions have come from Switzerland, since the country hadn't been involved in the world wars, and thus has not been part of the weapons race, nor was it a driving force in the preceding Industrial Revolution.

In the center of the comic, the binary numbers pointing to the particle are both 42. This is a reference to the comedic answer to the ''Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything'' from the ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series.

Cueball mentions that if we see an artifact flutter in and out of reality he must have made a mistake in the last "billions and billions of millennia." This implies that the small period of time the artifact is present in his time is much longer than our universe has existed. That is a ''very'' long time.

===Cellular Automaton===
Cueball uses the rocks to build a {{w|cellular automaton}}, a computational model based on simple rules to advance from one state to the next. Certain cellular automata are {{w|Turing-complete}}, which means that they can be used to represent any conceivable algorithm if expanded infinitely. He specifically seems to be running Wolfram's {{w|Rule 110}}, which is capable of universal computation.
When using Rule 110 for universal computation, one builds a background pattern, which can be seen in the comic as the pattern of smaller triangles, and then performs computation by sending out "rockets" to collide and interact with each other.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing in a desert with lots of rocks lying around. He is narrating his own situation. The first panel spans the entire width of the comic. The first line of text is written to the left of him, the second line to the right.]
:So I'm stuck in this desert for eternity.
:I don't know why. I just woke up here one day.

:[The next four panels take up the second line of the comic.]
:[Cueball stand in the desert.]
:I never feel hungry or thirsty.

:[Cueball walks in the desert.]
:I just walk.

:[Zooming out while Cueball continues to walk in the desert.]
:Sand and rocks

:[Zooming far out as Cueball again just stands in the desert. First line of text, above him, is a continuation of the text in the previous panel. The second line is below him.]
:stretch to infinity.
:As best as I can tell.

:[The next three panels take up the third line of the comic. The last takes up half the width.]
:[Cueball is sitting in the desert, in a contemplative position. First line of text above him the second below.]
:There's plenty of time for thinking out here.
:An eternity really.

:[Cueball is sketching stuff in the sand. First line of text above him the second below.]
:I've rederived modern math in the sand
:and then some.

:[Three different graph types are depicted. First line of text above them the second below.]
:Physics too. I worked out the kinks in quantum mechanics and relativity.
:Took a lot of thinking, but this place has fewer distractions than a Swiss patent office.

:[The next eight panels take up the fourth and fifth line of the comic. All pictures are the same size.]
:[Cueball is walking along the desert, laying out rocks on a line. Four has been deployed, he is laying down the fifth and has a sixth in his other hand.]
:One day I started laying down rows of rocks.

:[Cueball with a rock in his hand, continues to deploy rocks 16, in a more intricate pattern. There are grid-lines in the sand (5 rows, 6 columns), with each intersection either empty of filled with a rock. No rocks lay anywhere but at an intersection on the grid.]
:Each new row followed from the last in a simple pattern.

:[Zooming out showing even more laid out rocks. Cueball is seen directly from above, and we see his shadow falling on the grid of rocks (7 rows, 14 columns).]
:With the right set of rules and enough space,

:[Continues to zoom further out showing clear triangular patterns (with no rocks) in the laid out grid of rocks. Cueball is not seen. (8 rows, 42 columns). First line of text above the grid, the second line below.]
:I was able to build a computer.
:Each new row of stones is the next iteration of the computation.

:[Zooming far out (no Cueball) with rows intersected by five clear V lines on top of them. The V's are drawn inside each other, with the smallest V at the top right, and the other V's starting just to the right of the previous one, and then continuing the same distance past the previous V, as the total length of the first V. The "*" in the first line of text above this grid, references to the footnote below written in a smaller font.]
:Sure it's rocks instead of electricity, but it's the same* thing. Just slower.
:<nowiki>*Turing-complete</nowiki>

:[Cueball stands in contemplative pose (on a clean white background - i.e. no dessert).]
:After a while, I programmed it to be a physics simulator.

:[A black panel with white drawings and text. A small white dot (a particle) is labeled by two arrows coming of two binary strings.]
:Every piece of information about a particle was encoded as a string of bits written in the stones.
:00101010
:00101010

:[A Feynman diagram showing two particles interacting. Two arrows going in and out with a snaking line between them.]
:With enough time and space, I could fully simulate two particles interacting.

:[The next two panels take up the sixth line of the comic. The second panel takes up three quarter of the width.]
:[Cueball standing before the vastness of the desert, with his programmed lines of rock stretching to infinity.]
:But I have infinite time and space.

:[A black panel with white drawings and text. Depiction of two large galaxies, one with four jets coming out of it's center, the other a flat disc. Several smaller galaxies and/or stars are shown around them.]
:So I decided to simulate a universe.

:[The next four panels take up the seventh line of the comic. They are of similar widths.]
:[Cueball is walking by his grid of rocks, lines indicate he has just thrown another rock down in it's place. It falls so hard it thinks into the sand that splashes out around it. The 14 rocks above him lies on the grid, four other below this grid, have not been used yet.]
:The eons blur past as I walk down a single row.

:[Zoom far far out to show multiple rows of rocks. It is not very clear that there are several triangular patterns (with no rocks) in different sizes in the laid out grid of rocks. There are about 50 rows and 90 columns. There are six large triangles on top of each other at the left edge. To the right there are three even larger triangles from top to bottom, the one in the middle further to the left than the one above, but further right than the bottom one.]
:The rows blur past to compute a single step.

:[Shows the placement of two particles in the simulation.]
:And in the simulation...

:[The two particles have moved just long enough as to not overlap with their the previous position which are shown as an after-image with faint gray lines. The text continues directly the one from the previous panel.]
:another instant ticks by.

:[The next two panels take up the eight line of the comic. They each take up half the width.]
:[A Cueball like person (you) observes a mote of dust vanish.]
:So if you see a mote of dust vanish from your vision in a little flash or something

:[Cueball is standing between two rocks on the ground, while holding two rocks, one lifted up to his head. The first line of text is above him. It is a direct continuation of the text in the previous panel. The second line stands below to the right of him.]
:I'm sorry. I must have misplaced a rock
:sometime in the last few billions and billions of millennia.

:[Cueball stands in the "clean" part of his infinite desert, in front of the vastness of his infinity of infinite lines or rocks.]
:Oh and...

:[A Cueball like student sitting in a classroom with his head in his hands, Megan sits behind him and a teacher points to the blackboard; A clock shows the time at five minutes to ten.]
:If you think the minutes in your morning lecture are taking a long time to pass for ''you''...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Programming]]

505: A Bunch of Rocks

2016-05-16T21:38:47Z

GuB: Undo revision 120200 by GuB (talk)

{{comic
| number = 505
| date = November 17, 2008
| title = A Bunch of Rocks
| image = a_bunch_of_rocks.png
| titletext = I call Rule 34 on Wolfram's Rule 34.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, including {{w|quantum mechanics}} and {{w|general relativity}}. Next Cueball creates a computer that can process any possible function, out of rocks and rules for the interaction between rocks. He then simulates a particle followed by the interactions between particles, followed by the entire universe. The amount of time it takes to simulate the change in the universe from one instant to the next takes an extremely long time as the time it takes to update just one row of rocks can be measured in eons.

Cueball then apologizes for any flaws we see in the simulation. This implies that the audience is living in Cueball's simulation, making Cueball essentially God.

The final frame cuts to a classroom where a bored student stares at his hands waiting for class to end. Cueball admonishes the student for thinking that class is lasting forever. The joke being that the boredom felt in a classroom is nothing compared to the boredom that inspires Cueball to spend his time toiling to keep the universe moving.

The title text suggests that {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|Rule 34}} should be called on {{w|Elementary cellular automaton#Random initial state|Wolfram's Rule 34}}. Rule 34 (see [[305: Rule 34]]) is a humorous rule of the Internet which states "If you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Wolfram's Rule 34 is a cellular automaton. Therefore, the title text says that someone has made pornography featuring the cellular automaton in question.

===Graphs===
The three diagrams in the "Physics, too. I worked out the kinks..." panel are, from left to right:
# The {{w|Normal distribution}} of the {{w|Gaussian curve}} marking the points that represent a standard deviation of σ and 2σ. This is one of the fundamental building blocks of statistics. In quantum mechanics particles are viewed as inherently random, therefore the time at which a particle will decay, the position of a particle and its velocity are all calculated using similar curves. A deviation of at least σ occurs 32% of the time where a deviation of 2σ or more occurs about 5% of the time.
# The {{w|Inclined plane#History|Epitaph of Stevinus}}, an explanation of the mechanical advantage of using an {{w|inclined plane}}. The inclined plane is one of the six classical {{w|simple machine}}s, one of the fundamental building blocks of mechanical and civil engineering.
# The last graph is unknown. It may represent coupled pendulums, {{w|length contraction}}, or a hypothetical solution to something we haven't derived yet.

The graph that represents particle interaction is a {{w|Feynman Diagram}}. This shows the interaction of subatomic particles that collide and exchange some momentum via a photon. The slope of the middle line represents the distance moved and the time lost/gained during the interaction.

===Notes===
The Swiss patent office line refers to {{w|Albert Einstein}}, who was employed as a Swiss patent clerk while coming up with his theory of special relativity. This joke is also referenced in [[1067|1067: Pressures]]. Also, there is a standing joke that very few important inventions have come from Switzerland, since the country hadn't been involved in the world wars, and thus has not been part of the weapons race, nor was it a driving force in the preceding Industrial Revolution.

In the center of the comic, the binary numbers pointing to the particle are both 42. This is a reference to the comedic answer to the ''Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything'' from the ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series.

Cueball mentions that if we see an artifact flutter in and out of reality he must have made a mistake in the last "billions and billions of millennia." This implies that the small period of time the artifact is present in his time is much longer than our universe has existed. That is a ''very'' long time.

===Cellular Automaton===
Cueball uses the rocks to build a {{w|cellular automaton}}, a computational model based on simple rules to advance from one state to the next. Certain cellular automata are {{w|Turing-complete}}, which means that they can be used to represent any conceivable algorithm if expanded infinitely. He specifically seems to be running Wolfram's {{w|Rule 110}}, which is capable of universal computation.
When using Rule 110 for universal computation, one builds a background pattern, which can be seen in the comic as the pattern of smaller triangles, and then performs computation by sending out "rockets" to collide and interact with each other.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing in a desert with lots of rocks lying around. He is narrating his own situation. The first panel spans the entire width of the comic. The first line of text is written to the left of him, the second line to the right.]
:So I'm stuck in this desert for eternity.
:I don't know why. I just woke up here one day.

:[The next four panels take up the second line of the comic.]
:[Cueball stand in the desert.]
:I never feel hungry or thirsty.

:[Cueball walks in the desert.]
:I just walk.

:[Zooming out while Cueball continues to walk in the desert.]
:Sand and rocks

:[Zooming far out as Cueball again just stands in the desert. First line of text, above him, is a continuation of the text in the previous panel. The second line is below him.]
:stretch to infinity.
:As best as I can tell.

:[The next three panels take up the third line of the comic. The last takes up half the width.]
:[Cueball is sitting in the desert, in a contemplative position. First line of text above him the second below.]
:There's plenty of time for thinking out here.
:An eternity really.

:[Cueball is sketching stuff in the sand. First line of text above him the second below.]
:I've rederived modern math in the sand
:and then some.

:[Three different graph types are depicted. First line of text above them the second below.]
:Physics too. I worked out the kinks in quantum mechanics and relativity.
:Took a lot of thinking, but this place has fewer distractions than a Swiss patent office.

:[The next eight panels take up the fourth and fifth line of the comic. All pictures are the same size.]
:[Cueball is walking along the desert, laying out rocks on a line. Four has been deployed, he is laying down the fifth and has a sixth in his other hand.]
:One day I started laying down rows of rocks.

:[Cueball with a rock in his hand, continues to deploy rocks 16, in a more intricate pattern. There are grid-lines in the sand (5 rows, 6 columns), with each intersection either empty of filled with a rock. No rocks lay anywhere but at an intersection on the grid.]
:Each new row followed from the last in a simple pattern.

:[Zooming out showing even more laid out rocks. Cueball is seen directly from above, and we see his shadow falling on the grid of rocks (7 rows, 14 columns).]
:With the right set of rules and enough space,

:[Continues to zoom further out showing clear triangular patterns (with no rocks) in the laid out grid of rocks. Cueball is not seen. (8 rows, 42 columns). First line of text above the grid, the second line below.]
:I was able to build a computer.
:Each new row of stones is the next iteration of the computation.

:[Zooming far out (no Cueball) with rows intersected by five clear V lines on top of them. The V's are drawn inside each other, with the smallest V at the top right, and the other V's starting just to the right of the previous one, and then continuing the same distance past the previous V, as the total length of the first V. The "*" in the first line of text above this grid, references to the footnote below written in a smaller font.]
:Sure it's rocks instead of electricity, but it's the same* thing. Just slower.
:<nowiki>*Turing-complete</nowiki>

:[Cueball stands in contemplative pose (on a clean white background - i.e. no dessert).]
:After a while, I programmed it to be a physics simulator.

:[A black panel with white drawings and text. A small white dot (a particle) is labeled by two arrows coming of two binary strings.]
:Every piece of information about a particle was encoded as a string of bits written in the stones.
:00101010
:00101010

:[A Feynman diagram showing two particles interacting. Two arrows going in and out with a snaking line between them.]
:With enough time and space, I could fully simulate two particles interacting.

:[The next two panels take up the sixth line of the comic. The second panel takes up three quarter of the width.]
:[Cueball standing before the vastness of the desert, with his programmed lines of rock stretching to infinity.]
:But I have infinite time and space.

:[A black panel with white drawings and text. Depiction of two large galaxies, one with four jets coming out of it's center, the other a flat disc. Several smaller galaxies and/or stars are shown around them.]
:So I decided to simulate a universe.

:[The next four panels take up the seventh line of the comic. They are of similar widths.]
:[Cueball is walking by his grid of rocks, lines indicate he has just thrown another rock down in it's place. It falls so hard it thinks into the sand that splashes out around it. The 14 rocks above him lies on the grid, four other below this grid, have not been used yet.]
:The eons blur past as I walk down a single row.

:[Zoom far far out to show multiple rows of rocks. It is not very clear that there are several triangular patterns (with no rocks) in different sizes in the laid out grid of rocks. There are about 50 rows and 90 columns. There are six large triangles on top of each other at the left edge. To the right there are three even larger triangles from top to bottom, the one in the middle further to the left than the one above, but further right than the bottom one.]
:The rows blur past to compute a single step.

:[Shows the placement of two particles in the simulation.]
:And in the simulation...

:[The two particles have moved just long enough as to not overlap with their the previous position which are shown as an after-image with faint gray lines. The text continues directly the one from the previous panel.]
:another instant ticks by.

:[The next two panels take up the eight line of the comic. They each take up half the width.]
:[A Cueball like person (you) observes a mote of dust vanish.]
:So if you see a mote of dust vanish from your vision in a little flash or something

:[Cueball is standing between two rocks on the ground, while holding two rocks, one lifted up to his head. The first line of text is above him. It is a direct continuation of the text in the previous panel. The second line stands below to the right of him.]
:I'm sorry. I must have misplaced a rock
:sometime in the last few billions and billions of millennia.

:[Cueball stands in the "clean" part of his infinite desert, in front of the vastness of his infinity of infinite lines or rocks.]
:Oh and...

:[A Cueball like student sitting in a classroom with his head in his hands, Megan sits behind him and a teacher points to the blackboard; A clock shows the time at five minutes to ten.]
:If you think the minutes in your morning lecture are taking a long time to pass for ''you''...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Programming]]

505: A Bunch of Rocks

2016-05-16T21:38:03Z

GuB:

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] awakens to find himself trapped for eternity in an endless expanse of sand and rocks. At first, he uses this time to derive all of mathematics and physics, including {{w|quantum mechanics}} and {{w|general relativity}}. Next Cueball creates a computer that can process any possible function, out of rocks and rules for the interaction between rocks. He then simulates a particle followed by the interactions between particles, followed by the entire universe. The amount of time it takes to simulate the change in the universe from one instant to the next takes an extremely long time as the time it takes to update just one row of rocks can be measured in eons.

Cueball then apologizes for any flaws we see in the simulation. This implies that the audience is living in Cueball's simulation, making Cueball essentially God.

The final frame cuts to a classroom where a bored student stares at his hands waiting for class to end. Cueball admonishes the student for thinking that class is lasting forever. The joke being that the boredom felt in a classroom is nothing compared to the boredom that inspires Cueball to spend his time toiling to keep the universe moving. Indeed the minutes of lecture actually took many "billions and billions of millennia" for Cueball to simulate.

The title text suggests that {{w|Rule 34 (Internet meme)|Rule 34}} should be called on {{w|Elementary cellular automaton#Random initial state|Wolfram's Rule 34}}. Rule 34 (see [[305: Rule 34]]) is a humorous rule of the Internet which states "If you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions." Wolfram's Rule 34 is a cellular automaton. Therefore, the title text says that someone has made pornography featuring the cellular automaton in question.

===Graphs===
The three diagrams in the "Physics, too. I worked out the kinks..." panel are, from left to right:
# The {{w|Normal distribution}} of the {{w|Gaussian curve}} marking the points that represent a standard deviation of σ and 2σ. This is one of the fundamental building blocks of statistics. In quantum mechanics particles are viewed as inherently random, therefore the time at which a particle will decay, the position of a particle and its velocity are all calculated using similar curves. A deviation of at least σ occurs 32% of the time where a deviation of 2σ or more occurs about 5% of the time.
# The {{w|Inclined plane#History|Epitaph of Stevinus}}, an explanation of the mechanical advantage of using an {{w|inclined plane}}. The inclined plane is one of the six classical {{w|simple machine}}s, one of the fundamental building blocks of mechanical and civil engineering.
# The last graph is unknown. It may represent coupled pendulums, {{w|length contraction}}, or a hypothetical solution to something we haven't derived yet.

The graph that represents particle interaction is a {{w|Feynman Diagram}}. This shows the interaction of subatomic particles that collide and exchange some momentum via a photon. The slope of the middle line represents the distance moved and the time lost/gained during the interaction.

===Notes===
The Swiss patent office line refers to {{w|Albert Einstein}}, who was employed as a Swiss patent clerk while coming up with his theory of special relativity. This joke is also referenced in [[1067|1067: Pressures]]. Also, there is a standing joke that very few important inventions have come from Switzerland, since the country hadn't been involved in the world wars, and thus has not been part of the weapons race, nor was it a driving force in the preceding Industrial Revolution.

In the center of the comic, the binary numbers pointing to the particle are both 42. This is a reference to the comedic answer to the ''Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything'' from the ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series.

Cueball mentions that if we see an artifact flutter in and out of reality he must have made a mistake in the last "billions and billions of millennia." This implies that the small period of time the artifact is present in his time is much longer than our universe has existed. That is a ''very'' long time.

===Cellular Automaton===
Cueball uses the rocks to build a {{w|cellular automaton}}, a computational model based on simple rules to advance from one state to the next. Certain cellular automata are {{w|Turing-complete}}, which means that they can be used to represent any conceivable algorithm if expanded infinitely. He specifically seems to be running Wolfram's {{w|Rule 110}}, which is capable of universal computation.
When using Rule 110 for universal computation, one builds a background pattern, which can be seen in the comic as the pattern of smaller triangles, and then performs computation by sending out "rockets" to collide and interact with each other.

1669: Planespotting

2016-04-18T16:24:03Z

GuB: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1669
| date = April 18, 2016
| title = Planespotting
| image = planespotting.png
| titletext = No, a hydroplane doesn't land on water--that's an aquaplane. A hydroplane is a plane that gets electric power from an onboard water reservoir with a tiny dam and turbines.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|So far mainly a list. Could be listed better either bullet or in a table.}}

[[Cueball]] and a [[:Category:Characters with Hats|man with a hat]] are "{{w|Aircraft_spotting|planespotting}}," an activity which seems to be similar to bird watching, but for airplanes. The name is probably a reference to {{w|trainspotting (hobby)|trainspotting}}, a hobby in which amateur enthusiasts collect detailed information about the types of train cars and engines that operate in their area, and attempt to identify and catalog them as they pass by. The man with the hat asks Cueball to identify the airplane flying overhead. Cueball, who "assumes" he knows a lot about planes (but does not) gives a long, nonsensical answer.

This is probably not [[Black Hat]] as he would not normally care what plane was in the sky. But due to the silhouette drawing is cannot either be determined that this is [[White Hat]] although that would be more in character.

{{w|Boeing}} is a company that designs and builds aircraft.

The {{w|French submarine Astrée (Q200)|Q404}} was a French submarine captured by Germany during World War II.

{{w|Category:Twin-engined_aircraft|Twin-engine}} refers to aircraft with two engines.

Communication equipment that can use 4 different radio frequency bands is called {{w|Quad band}}.

{{w|MiG}} suggests an aircraft produced by the Russian manufacturer. However, MIG-380 is a type of welding equipment ({{w|metal inert gas}}, 380V).

A {{w|Hybrid vehicle}} is able to use more than one distinct power source. The most common combination is a combustion engine and an electric motor.

{{w|Dual wield}}ing is using two weapons, one in each hand. It is highly unlikely that the aircraft is dual-wielded by its pilot, and it is equally ridiculous to imagine that the plane is dual-wielding anything.

"Mk." (or Mark) is usually used to specify a model number using a Roman numeral. However, IVII is not a standard number in the {{w|Roman_numerals|Roman numeral system}}.

{{w|Aircraft_diesel_engine|Turbo diesel}} engines are sometimes used in aircraft.

The {{w|Boeing 797}} has never been produced, but a hoax design has been circulating the Internet since the mid-2000's.

A hydroplane is either an {{w|aquaplaning|undesirable activity}} of a wheeled vehicle crossing shallow water, or a type of {{w|hydroplane (boat)|boat}} for which hydroplaning is the desired mode of travel.
Powering an aircraft with a miniature {{w|hydroelectric dam}} connected to an on-board reservoir is a physical impossibility, comparable to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
The energy that power hydro plants come from the potential energy released by a mass of water as it goes down. But here, because of the reservoir is on board, the water should go up instead of down and thus cannot produce energy.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a man with a hat is seen in silhouette standing on the ground looking towards the sky. A fixed wing aircraft can be seen in the sky, also in silhouette.]
:Man with hat: What's That Airplane?
:Cueball:Oh, That's a Boeing Q404 twin-engine quad-band mig-380 hybrid dual-wield Mk. IVII Turbodiesel 797 Hydroplane.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I've always assumed I'm one of those people who knows a lot about planes, but I've never actually checked.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Characters with Hats]]

explain xkcd:Community portal/Miscellaneous

2016-02-08T10:40:52Z

GuB: /* Sightless readers offended by the "It's 'cause you're dumb" tagline. */

<noinclude>{{Community portal}}</noinclude>

== The Community Portal's design ==

{{tl|Community portal}} looks too Wikipedia-ish (because that's where I got it). Someone who can design things should probably fix that. It isn't protected for the time being, though it probably will be in the future (high-visibility template). --''[[User:Philosopher|Philosopher]]'' [[User talk:Philosopher|Let us reason together.]] 00:54, 4 August 2012 (EDT)

== Common mistake ==

This affects all pages that ever say "alt text" in reference to the TITLE text on xkcd images. "Alt text" is incorrect; Alt text refers to the text that is shown as an alternative when images are not displayed. Title text is what xkcd uses and is shown as a tool tip-like bubble when images are hovered over.

I would correct this myself but I saw no way to edit the main page. --[[User:Jillysky|Jillysky]] ([[User talk:Jillysky|talk]]) 14:21, 6 August 2012‎ (UTC)

:You actually don't need to edit the main page to fix it, as what's there is just a mirror (transclusion) of the actual content from the comic page, at [[Curiosity]], which is open for editing by anyone. Then again, the "alt-text" in that case is generated by a template, {{tl|comic}}, so that's where we should fix this. The template's code, however, is currently a terrible mess (sorry!), so I went ahead and took care of it. Thanks for catching that! --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 16:24, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

:Ah? So it's wrong, for instance, on http://m.xkcd.com? because of that I took it for granted that we could call it the alt-text... - [[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 17:38, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

:: Yes. If you look at the page's html source, you'll see:
<nowiki><img
id="comic"
src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/curiosity.png"
title="As of this writing the NASA/JPL websites are still overloaded. Trying CURIOSITY-REAR-CAM_[256px_x_256px].torrent.SwEsUb.DVDRip.XviD-aXXo.jpg instead."
alt="Curiosity"></nowiki>
::(line breaks added for clarity) --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 23:54, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

:::That was my error in the template. I knew "image text" that has been commonly used by Jeff was not techically correct, but I didn't actually go back and confirm it was alt text before I included that tag in the template. That's to Waldir (I believe?) for correcting the template. [[User:TheHYPO|TheHYPO]] ([[User talk:TheHYPO|talk]]) 14:14, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

== When the "official" transcript is wrong? ==
I did [[903: Extended Mind]]. Interestingly, the transcript on xkcd.com is missing the bottom line "When Wikipedia has a server outage, my apparent IQ drops by 30 points." I assume we want a complete transcript, rather than whatever xkcd.com says it is...? [[User:Stevage|Stevage]] ([[User talk:Stevage|talk]]) 04:10, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

:We're focusing on the actual transcript of the comic, not the xkcd.com transcript. The official transcript is usually right, but even Randall makes mistakes sometimes. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 04:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

== Milestone: half the comics explained!! ==

Hi all! I'm pleased to announce that we have just broke the 50% mark for xkcd explanations! The page that balanced the count (568 explained, 568 to go, at the time) was [[877: Beauty]], created 01:31 UTC, 21 November 2012 by [[User:Davidy22]]. Congratulations!! :D --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 03:10, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

:The caterer's been called! The punch will be arriving soon! Go [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]! [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 06:53, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

::[[File:freedom.png]] Punch is served! [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]][[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>(talk)</tt>]] 07:11, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

But the Main page says 407 explanations, 731 to go! What's up with that? --[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 21:00, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

== Reverse? ==

Why in the Archive why are all the thing up until "Heatmap" in Reverse? Can someone please answer? [[User:Tmack3|Tmack3]] ([[User talk:Tmack3|talk]]) 08:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
:Archive? Can you provide a link or screenshot? '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:43, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

http://xkcd.com/archive/ [[User:Tmack3|Tmack3]] ([[User talk:Tmack3|talk]]) 08:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

::Ah, that's because the comic right after that, rtl, has a right-to-left character in it that flips all the proceeding text. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 00:13, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Ah, ok, i see that now. When I 1st saw that RTL I just thought that it was random letters, thankyou for explaining it for me. [[User:Tmack3|Tmack3]] ([[User talk:Tmack3|talk]]) 08:28, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

It also depends on what browser you are on because on Google Chrome it was normal. [[User:Tmack3|Tmack3]] ([[User talk:Tmack3|talk]]) 09:08, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

== Do you think this question was asked by one of the xkcd people? ==

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090301060752AAtYugc [[User:Tmack3|Tmack3]] ([[User talk:Tmack3|talk]]) 08:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

== Matthew Reilly ==

I would just like to tell everyone that I asked Matthew Reilly (the author) if he is ever scared that a velociraptor is going to attack him, and he said NO! He clearly needs to start worrying about them! [[User:Tmack3|Tmack3]] ([[User talk:Tmack3|talk]]) 10:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

== What can we learn section ==
First of all I love your work. I believe deeper understanding of each XKCD can make a world a better place and I thank you sincerely for starting this webpage. I wanted to ask what you think about "What can we learn?" section I've been adding to some of the pages. Thank you - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 13:27, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

:This site is actually the work of multiple editors working slowly and steadily to fill in explanations for all the old comics. Some of the xkcd comics are incredibly deep - comic [[956]] is such a poignant comic that digs into the DRM issue on so many levels. Your reflections on many of the comics are very much warranted and you're helping us create talk pages with high-quality opening posts, which is great for future discussion on this wiki. It'd be nice if you could refrain from putting headers in talk pages, technical limitations of the wiki make long explanation pages choke when headings are in the discussion page. Other than that, keep up the good work! '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:42, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

::I've put in my 2 cents to comic [[956]], and thank you for teaching me how to comment and link to other comics - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 13:58, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

::: FYI, you can always make pseudo-headings using a horizontal rule and a bold "header", but honestly I think a simple standard opening sentence would suffice. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 12:14, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

:Oh, and the guy who draws xkcd is called {{w|Randall Munroe}}. So many glowing things to be said about him. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:44, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

::Yes, I can't thank him enough for simplifying complex issues to funny stories, I think it's exactly what our generation needs - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 13:58, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

:I'm in favor of a Mr. Rogers style of 'what lesson can be learned' on the talk page, but make sure your comments don't come across as sanctimonious and holier-than-thou as that can be really off-putting. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 19:06, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

:: You are absolutely correct, I have not thought of that, please trust me I did not do it on purpose. Thank you Mr. Lcarsos - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 19:55, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you David, and I apologize that I've not made it clear that by your work, I do mean your collective work (the wiki is only as good as all the people behind it). I was trying to put the headers to allow others to find the section easier in case they start looking for it, perhaps I could make a suggestion to make it a standalone section so that others would be encouraged to contribute their own understanding of lessons they have noticed from each comic. I know the lessons I've seen, but I would love to learn from others as much as I hope they can learn from me and Mr. XKCD, thank you. - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 13:48, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

== DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD ==

Hello fellow editors. Do you remember the last time we were hit by a surge of automated spam? Neither do I. ConfirmEdit has really done a number on the volume of spam that we're eating - one spam account has been created since we finished configuring confirmEdit, and zero anon edits have been spam. Zero. Can you say happiness? Can you say party? '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 14:41, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

:Hehe, I'm glad! Thanks for being so relentless on the spam-fighting all this time! Maybe we should make up a new reason to make Jeff remove the /wiki/ in the URL? ;) –[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 18:11, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

:: Awesome news! Finally the patrolling feature will be usable: [{{fullurl:Special:RecentChanges|hideanons=1&hidepatrolled=1&from=20121204025000&days=365&limit=1000}} Unpatrolled changes by registered users] / [{{fullurl:Special:RecentChanges|hideliu=1&hidepatrolled=1&from=20121204025000&days=365&limit=1000}} Unpatrolled changes by anonymous users] :) --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 12:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

== 1000th comic explanation!! ==

Hi all! It apparently went unnoticed that '''we have recently surpassed the mark of 1000 comic explanations!''' Some calculations based on [[:Category:Comics]] and [[Special:NewPages]] led me to the conclusion that the 1000th explanation was [[681: Gravity Wells]], created by [[User:AlexRNL]] just yesterday! Yay! This calls for a celebration, no? Congrats to [[Special:ContributionScores|everyone]] who made this happen! I'll edit [[Mediawiki:Sitenotice]] with a congratulatory message. Way to go, guys! --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 16:04, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
:ps - I also took the opportunity to flesh out our [[explain xkcd|about/history page]]. Please take a look and fix/add any details I might have missed. --[[User:Waldir|Waldir]] ([[User talk:Waldir|talk]]) 16:06, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

== Style guide ==
Is there a style guide for this wiki? --[[User:PeterMortensen|PeterMortensen]] ([[User talk:PeterMortensen|talk]]) 20:14, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
:Oh, sorry, I did forget to answer here. A guide on this is not easy, many individual comics do need special layouts because they have content never can match to a style guide. But I will give a try [[Help:Style Guide]].--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:18, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

== Adblock ==

I've whitelisted the site in adblock, but the ads are still blocked.
Anyone know what' going on here and how I can fix it?--[[User:ParadoX|ParadoX]] ([[User talk:ParadoX|talk]]) 04:34, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
:Huh. I was wondering why our impression counts weren't rising. I thought it was just because this site had high turnover. I've changed the webpage that the word whitelisting links to, try the instructions there instead. Project wonderful is our ad provider, and they've been pretty good to us so far. Also, thanks for helping to support the site! '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:40, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
::Great! I don't really mid ads as long as they aren't intrusive. Works now, Hope everyone else does it as well.--[[User:ParadoX|ParadoX]] ([[User talk:ParadoX|talk]]) 05:16, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
::I saw you wrote "the webpage that the word whitelisting links to" so I went to the search box and typed whitelisting. My search didn't yield anything useful: [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?search=whitelisting&go=Go&title=Special%3ASearch]. I don't know how to create the missing page but there oughta be a link for someone like me who searches for whitelist or whitelisting, to take them to the instructions you refer to. [[User:SaxTeacher|SaxTeacher]] ([[User talk:SaxTeacher|talk]]) 10:59, 17 May 2014 (UTC)
:::We already have this linked somewhere, but [https://www.projectwonderful.com/adblock.php this] is the link you want. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:41, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

I normally access this site through the android app "xkcd browser". That app only links to the content part of the site and doesn't show the side bar, so the adds aren't shown either. Might be worth discussing it with the author. [[Special:Contributions/109.158.126.139|109.158.126.139]] 08:06, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

:We support those avenues completely, you don't need to feel bad if you use an app to browse this site. We're only really concerned when we put up ads and our impressions are less than half our page hits, because that essentially means more than half our readers aren't contributing to server costs. That's really hard to deal with. We have enough daily page hits to qualify as web publishers at very big ad agencies, but we've had to settle for relatively low rates at the smaller Project Wonderful because 60% of our users were using adblock, so the agencies rejected us because our valuable "paying" audience was too low for them to consider us. That's been the difference between us using dedicated servers to host the site and hiring a contractor to set it up, and the (admittedly somewhat decent) shared hosting plan that we have to settle for now. We can only afford the shared hosting, because the small-scale advertisers at Project Wonderful don't even pay for full days of advertising; most of the time, we make less per day than the posted $3.90 price. That said, we're grateful that Project Wonderful would take us as a publisher when no one else would, but it really feels like the difference between being accepted to community college and being accepted to an ivy league school. For a similar reason, the Google ads route was not sufficient to satisfy our needs; not a large enough proportion of our users were looking at ads, so we either needed to spam them and degrade the site, or we needed to make them refresh, which makes pages slow and causes needlessly high traffic for a lot of users. We didn't want our ads to make the site worse, because that would drive away users and defeat the purpose of us being a public resource for xkcd readers. We actually decided to go the agency route pretty early, because adsense takes a massive cut of revenues and gives us little control over what ads or advertisers actually showed, which was not okay with us. Whoah, I wrote a lot. I hope it was coherent. Maybe someday I'll collect my thoughts and write a proper summary on how and why we advertise. Also, if you have any questions about anything ad-related, you can always ask us at [[explain xkcd talk:Advertise Here]]. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 11:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

== Feynman? ==

Feynman (both in [[182: Nash|living]] and [[397: Unscientific|zombie]] form) probably deserves an entry in the [[Template:Navbox characters|character navbox]] template doesn't he? [[Special:Contributions/128.250.152.198|128.250.152.198]] 02:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
:That's two comics out of 1200+. Three if you count the song. Not quite enough yet. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
:: If that's the criterion, then we need to get rid of [[Brown Hat]]. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 19:30, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

== Job Interview (Electric Soup) ==

The soup is clearly being poured out of an electric socket. This "electric soup" is probably not a reference to the alcoholic brew favoured by Scottish tramps, but more likely to the virtual nature of the company. {{unsigned|Sulis}}
:Hey, go here [[Talk:1293: Job Interview‎]] for discussions. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:58, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

== Is there a similar, transcripted service for The Oatmeal? ==

Hi everyone - this site is a real gem, I've sent it to a friend of mine who can't read XKCD because she's blind. The transcripts on this site are a real boon!

Does anyone know if there is a similar service for The Oatmeal? I've searched and searched, but found nothing so far.

Thanks :)

Jeff

:As far as I know we are kind of unique in the web comics world. I think we get away with it because Randall publishes all his comics as Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial. We liberally link back to xkcd, and we don't make a penny (The ads are just to cover server expenses, because wikis and the databases that support them get big when you're covering a body of work like xkcd). I haven't looked into the copyright Matt uses for the Oatmeal, but he seems like a cool enough guy to not kill a community transcripting effort of his comics. [[User:Lcarsos|lcarsos]]_a ([[User talk:Lcarsos|talk]]) 20:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

== what if 103: Vanishing Water - comics ==

Please explain the 2nd and the 4th comics from http://what-if.xkcd.com/103/

"Just tried to sail my boat over land, because I didn't learn from that kid in the Zephyr." (who's the kid from Zephyr?)

"A third time?" (maybe whales were dropped twice before in other what-ifs?) [[User:Daniel Carrero|Daniel Carrero]] ([[User talk:Daniel Carrero|talk]]) 21:57, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

:"A third time?" is a reference to a whale falling twice in "Hitchiker's guide to the Galaxy". Been a while, so I don't remember the details of how this fit in, but the second time it happened to the whale, he thought "Not again" or something along those lines. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 18:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Raises the question of if we should explain jokes imbedded in What If comics. [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 18:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

== Discussion usage ==

Am I being a killjoy in feeling that the discussion section should be mainly limited to discussion on improving the explanation, gathering consensus and that type of thing.
Specifically, the discussion for [[1418: Horse]] is quickly turning into every man and his dog posting a sentence in the style of the comic, which doesn't really add anything to the page other than clutter.

Personally, I'd just delete most of them, but I think I might be turning into a grumpy old bugger... --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 20:32, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
:The discussion is also there for just talking about the comic. Those guys aren't wildly off-topic, there's no need to clamp down on what they get to talk about. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 17:44, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

::Yep, I must just be grumpy and draconian! Lesson learned --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 20:32, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

== 2014 Christmas header ==

Since the header for the site current contains a [http://imgs.xkcd.com/store/store_default.png graphic link to the store] that promises that Randall probably won't ship you a [[:Category:Bobcats|bobcat]], it seems to me that probably ought to be preserved and explained somewhere. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.189|173.245.56.189]] 17:45, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

== XKCD at LanguageLog ==

Arnold Zwicky (of the well-known linguistics blog Language Log) has put together a list of linguistics-related XKCD strips, here: http://arnoldzwicky.org/the-language-of-comics/comics-lists/xkcd-cartoons/ I thought it might be appropriate for a copy of the list (maybe a category) to be created from it. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.79|199.27.133.79]] 03:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
:[[:Category:Language]] '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:39, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

== Bookmarklet ==

Hello there, I've created a little bookmarklet (https://ginkobox.fr/shaarli/?a77vQw) and I thought it might be useful for someone out there.

When launched, it adds the 'explain' before xkcd.com and the browser loads the explainxkcd page. I've tested it only on Firefox.

(Contact @ https://ginkobox.fr/wiki/doku.php?id=about) {{unsigned ip|‎108.162.229.100}}

== Is there a RSS feed for What If? ==

Is there a RSS feed for What If?--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 11:59, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
:No, because we cover the comics. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:57, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

== My User Page ==

Can someone help me with [[user:17jiangz1|my user page]]? I can't seem to remove the large space on top.--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 07:43, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
: The only solution I've found is to remove the contribution scores (data6=...). Not sure what exactly is triggering this bug. --[[User:SlashMe|SlashMe]] ([[User talk:SlashMe|talk]]) 21:02, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
I am receiving "Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character ""." for <code><pre>{{#expr: {{formatnum:{{#cscore:17jiangz1|pages}}|R}}/{{formatnum:{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}|R}}*100 round 5 }}</pre></code>--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 05:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
:Bump?--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 06:48, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

== What-If ==

It hasn't updated for 2 weeks. why?--[[User:17jiangz1|17jiangz1]] ([[User talk:17jiangz1|talk]]) 06:50, 25 April 2015 (UTC)
:Looks like they're on hold for a few months (Until July 14th). Too bad, I enjoyed them. ([http://what-if.xkcd.com/ Look at the top of the What-If page]) --[[User:Zman9600|Zman9600]] ([[User talk:Zman9600|talk]]) 20:24, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
:What is so special about the date and time? Seems very specific: ''July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT.'' --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.99|141.101.98.99]] 12:48, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Looks like it's set for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz mission launch. {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.158}}

What If updates will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT. By that time {{w|New Horizons}} will have it's closest approach to {{w|Pluto}}. See here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/ --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:34, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

== thanks for having a working website ==

the search function on xkcd.com was taken off, and now the random function seems to be having issues, but it's nice that here both work [[Special:Contributions/188.114.97.114|188.114.97.114]] 19:09, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
:We do our best. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 22:27, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

== Ada Munroe ==

The latest [[what if?]] number 139 has a question by "Ada Munroe". Is she related to [[Randall]] in any way? --{{User:17jiangz1/signature|06:57, 09 August 2015}}

== Out of curiosity ==

I notice that whenever someone links to tvtropes.org in an explanation, someone changes the link to the matching page on allthetropes.org. I'm curious as to why that is. Is there some kind of terms of use conflict at play here that an editor should be keeping in mind? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.156|199.27.128.156]] 06:33, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
:TVtropes does not restrict links to their site, and if this has been happening there are some time-outs that I need to be handing out. Can you point me to some of the edits where this is happening? '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 08:24, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
::The specific example I had was, um, [[1468: Worrying]]. On Jan 3rd the links went to tvtropes.org, and on March 18th they were all changed over to allthetropes.orain.org. I just found it curious, I wasn't sure what the reason for it was [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.47|162.158.255.47]] 10:32, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
:::Reverted. Typically, the reason people change perfectly good links to specific, obscure links in wikis is usually self-advertising. I'll be watching that guy's edits in the future. Thanks for the heads up. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 18:00, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

== Sightless readers offended by the "It's 'cause you're dumb" tagline. ==

I'll admit, every now and again the comic is over my head. ...because I'm dumb in that particular field. However, blind users who enjoy xkcd must do so through explainxkcd. They are NOT dumb. They are *blind*. Without explainxkcd, they would have no idea what is in the comics panels.

Explainxkcd is a great site. There is no question it provides a service to the internet community.

Please see this thread (last paragraph) on Userfriendly.org. Keep in mind, the end user is sightless and explainxkcd is "viewed" through a screen reader.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/read.cgi?id=20160207&tid=3930989

Honestly, I never even noticed the tagline in question. Humorous to sighted folks, sure. ...but obviously offensive to those who have no choice but to access xkcd through explainxkcd.

I'll leave it to the administrators or the community to figure something out, if anything at all. Maybe no one cares? I didn't come here to make any suggestions, only to point out how offensive those 4 words are to some users of the website. {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.88}}

:Alright, put a link here in the site notice. What does everyone else think? I'm open to changing it, it's something people complain about fairly periodically and our identity isn't completely tied to the tagline, I feel. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:16, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

::Well, we definitely shouldn't change anything because that particular guy is upset. It's one thing to be offended, but he's also attacking both this site and Randal Monroe. I don't think that sort of behavior should be rewarded. I actually have a rule online where, if someone acts like a jerk to me, I will be kind, but I won't give them what they want. I think a lot of the problems with people being jerks to others is that they still get what they want, so what reason do they have to stop? If he wants us to change it, he should address us like an adult and ask us himself.

::But you claim this is a common complaint. Then I would say we need more info. My instinct would be that people don't understand that it's a joke. But then my solution would be to do what the site is designed to do and explain the joke, rather than take it down. If there's actually something about it that's offensive to an entire class of people, that's different. I am unaware of a stereotype that blind people are stupid, but I'm open to the idea that I don't know.

::I'm not particularly married to the tag line. I actually didn't even notice it was there. But I'm loathe to take it down over a misunderstanding. I can't think of a similarly humorous replacement that would not be offensive, but I can at least suggest "Because nobody knows everything." --[[User:Trlkly|Trlkly]] ([[User talk:Trlkly|talk]]) 09:42, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

"Just in case you feel dumb"? "Some comics may be funnier than they appear"?[[Special:Contributions/199.27.130.198|199.27.130.198]] 09:55, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

How about simply removing it? At least until we find something that isn't offensive to anyone - which might be very hard to obtain. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 10:34, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Because you're crippled... That's worse I guess. 
But before considering the "you're dumb" tagline, one must think about the name of this wiki. It is called '''Explain''' xkcd, not read xkcd, and explaining is for dumb people, not blind people. 
Maybe one thing we can do is add a "(unless you are just here for the transcript)" subtext, with a link to the transcript section, which has the advantage of both taming offended blind readers (maybe) and provide a direct, "spoilerless" link. --[[User:GuB|GuB]] ([[User talk:GuB|talk]]) 10:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

1606: Five-Day Forecast

2015-11-20T13:49:20Z

GuB: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1606
| date = November 20, 2015
| title = Five-Day Forecast
| image = five_day_forecast.png
| titletext = You know what they say--if you don't like the weather here in the Solar System, just wait five billion years.
}}
==Explanation==
{{w|Weather forecasting}} is an extremely difficult task, even if it is only for five days. In numerical models, extremely small errors in initial values double roughly every five days for variables such as temperature and wind velocity. So most {{w| Meteorology#Meteorologists |meteorologists}} only provides us with a five day forecast.

In this comic [[Randall]] takes this to the extreme by first showing a [[Five-Day Forecast]] and then progressing to five-month, year, million, billion and finally trillion-year forecast.

Since the first weather symbol is the same in all six rows, we must assume this indicates the weather today (and not tomorrow on in a trillion year). It is first in the second panel that we have made the first jump according to the label.

When moving past the five days, the weather is just a qualified guess based on the time of year. In a month it is Christmas as shown in the second panel of the second row. And then it is winter with January and February so snow is likely, but certainly not something that happens on all days of a winter month.

When going for a yearly forecast it makes no sense at all. Is it the weather on a given day, or just a mean over a full year? But for these first three rows the weather symbols are all of the same three types. Sun, clouds and some kind of {{w|precipitation}}, rain or snow. And the temperature range from 21 to 44°F (-6.1 to 6.6°C), winter temperature. So it seems like it is the same time a year in the five-year forecast.

Then we go into the far future, jumping a million year from panel to panel. But still the weather symbols stay the same. However, in 3 million years time aliens (or advanced humans) attack with energy beams from something looking like {{w| flying saucers}}. They are gone a million years later. The temperature range is still the same (except that it rises to 52°F or 11.1°C, a possible reference to global warming) in one panel. But then while the attack is going on the temperature rises to 275°F (135°C).

Once we get to the billion-year mark it actually becomes more meaningful to try to predict the "weather". Because now we reach the times when the {{w|Sun}} begins to change. Although the Sun will continue to burn hydrogen for about 5 billion years yet (while in it's {{w|Sun#Main_sequence| main sequence|}}), it will still grow in diameter as it begins to exhaust it's supply of fuel. The core will contract to increase the temperature, and the outer layer will then compensate be expanding slightly. This is what is indicated in panel two and three where the color of the Sun changes towards red as the surface becomes less hot as it expands away from the center of the Sun. The temperature will rise on Earth as indicated in the panels (105°F = 40.5°C and 371°F = 188 °C). So in two billion years the temperature is hot enough that all the earth's oceans will have boiled away… Actually this will happen already in about [http://phys.org/news/2015-02-sun-wont-die-billion-years.html a billion years].

Then once there is {{w| Sun#After_core_hydrogen_exhaustion|no longer enough hydrogen}} the Sun will truly expand into a {{w|red giant}}. This should not happen until five billions years from now, but in the forecast it is indicated to happen already in three. Maybe this is Randall taking liberties to show what happens during this phase, which would not fit into a five-billion-years forecast. Alternatively it is just indicating how uncertain these kind of forecasts are, or a statement that we may not know for certain that it will take five not three billion years.
Disregarding this, the fourth panel shows the temperature at Earths position inside the red giant Sun. The color of the panel indicates that we are inside the Sun. The temperature is 71 million degrees Fahrenheit, (almost 40 million degrees Celsius). The current temperature of the center of the Sun is "only" 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). And although that may rise by a factor ten during {{w| Stellar nucleosynthesis |helium fusion}} then that will only be at the very core and not out in the solar atmosphere reaching out to Earth Here the temperature would only be of the order of thousands of Fahrenheit, since the Suns outer temperature decreases as it increases it's diameter. So this panels temperature also makes little sense.

The red giant phase only last half a million years, so a billion year after the Sun has been a red giant it's outer atmosphere will for sure have disappeared leaving only a {{w|white dwarf}} to cool down. Given Randall's version of this time schedule, then it will have had about a billion years to cool down, but would still likely be the brightest object in the sky as seen from where the Earth once was. It is not indicated in the last panel, where we just see other stars of the Galaxy. The temperature is down to that of the {{w|Cosmic microwave background |background radiation}}. Today this radiation has a temperature of 2.72548 Kelvin = -270.4245ºC = -454.7641ºF. So this is a few degree F colder than what is shown in the comic which states the temperature is -452ºF = 4.26 kelvin. This higher temperature may have been chosen to reflect that even the star light from other stars would increase the actual temperature.

In the last panel with trillion years, we jump right past the Suns Red Giant phase, to a panel looking much like the one after five billions years with only other stars. Over the next three trillion years the stars becomes fewer and fewer and dimmer and dimmer as the run out of fuels and fewer new stars form. After four trillion years the background temperature even decreases one degree to -453ºF as the universe keeps expanding and the wave length of the radiation does the same (thus decreasing it's temperature).

The title text is a play on comments referring to fast-changing weather on a more ordinary human timescale, such as Mark Twain's quip "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

A ten days forecast was used in [[1245: 10-Day Forecast]].

==Transcript==
:[A grid with six rows of five columns, where each row is labeled to the left. For each of the 30 squares a temperature is given in Fahrenheit at the top left. The rest of the square represents the weather as in a weather forecast (or some other relevant items for the comic), mainly in bright colors. Below are the six labels given above each of their five weather symbols with temperature given below these symbols description.]

:'''Your 5-day forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:41°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:44°F

:'''Your 5-month forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A green Christmas tree with red presents beneath it.]
:29°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:21°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:24°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:35°F

:'''Your 5-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:25°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:37°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:41°F

:'''Your 5-million-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:52°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:40°F
:[Two red flying saucers (with bright domes) are shooting energy beams downwards. One of the beams seems to impact with something at the bottom of the panel, which then explodes. Two plumes of smoke rises up from below, drifting to the right.]
:275°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F

:'''Your 5-billion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A larger orange sun.]
:105°F
:[A very large red sun.]
:371°F
:[A pale yellow panel with no drawing.]
:71.488.106°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F

:'''Your 5-trillion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with many stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with fewer not so bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with few dim stars.]
:-453°F

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

790: Control

2015-10-23T14:01:23Z

GuB: no hallucinations != safe

{{comic
| number = 790
| date = September 8, 2010
| title = Control
| image = control.png
| titletext = Which, at one point, led to a study showing that LSD produces no more hallucinations than a placebo.
}}

==Explanation==
In a product experiment, two groups of people are given a certain pill or lotion. Some people are given the product to be tested, while others (the control group) are given a placebo; nobody is told which group they belong to. The control group acts as a norm for comparison against the others.

Randall has messed with this process by giving LSD ({{w|lysergic acid diethylamide}}) to the control group. LSD is a drug that causes hallucinations and distortions in the perception of time and space. [[Megan]], apparently a control, is experiencing spiders in her hallucinations. Since the control group is supposed to reflect what "normally" happens, this is indeed very confusing to the scientists.

The title text suggests that, in a different study, this substitution was performed when the product being tested was itself LSD. This lead to the conclusion that LSD is no more likely to cause hallucinations than a placebo, somehow implying that LSD is not a hallucinogen. We can only hope they were able to redo the test, as in layman's terms "Nonsense MUST be wrong".

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the frame:]
:My Hobby:

:[Cueball looks down at his arm calmly, while next to him Megan is violently flailing around in terror. In the foreground a Cueball-like guy stands next to Ponytail who is holding a clipboard. They look on in puzzlement.]
:Cueball: My rash seems to have shrunk by about 20% today.
:Megan: Oh god spiders
:Cueball-like guy: ? ?
:Ponytail: ?

:[Caption below the frame:]
:Sneaking into experiments and
:giving LSD to the control group.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:My Hobby]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Spiders]]
[[Category:Science]]

Talk:790: Control

2015-10-23T13:56:29Z

GuB:

Soon followed by psychologists recommending the tested drug as a depressant after looking at the results of the trials. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:21, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

This has always bothered me: If LSD Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, why isn't it LAD? What's so special about the S in LySergic that it beats out the A in Acid? Anonymous 01:06, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

: It is from the German "Lysergsäure-diethylamid" where "säure" refers to the acidity. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.240.6|108.162.240.6]] 14:39, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

::Ah, that makes sense. Anonymous. 00:10, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

LSD invokes hallucinations, not delirium. By definition, you know when you're hallucinating. Just saying. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.111|108.162.249.111]] 00:21, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

: Hallucinations are, in fact, indistinguishable from reality, like delirium. LSD-like effects, where things feel real but you know they aren't are sometimes called pseudohallucinations. Delirants like belladona, datura, mandrake or even nutmeg are more likely produce true hallucinations, usually of the unpleasant kind. [[User:GuB|GuB]] ([[User talk:GuB|talk]]) 13:56, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Talk:690: Semicontrolled Demolition

2015-09-14T12:59:49Z

GuB:

Sorry haven't posted before so probably doing this in the wrong way. The description says there's no video footage of the first plane, but there's a video taken of firefighters checking man hole covers who caught it. It's on you tube, but I didn't think it was right to post the link.

Edit: on second look I see a link has been put to second impact, so no reason not to post link to first:

[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g6V8KZE3GA]]

[[Special:Contributions/86.150.177.79|86.150.177.79]] 09:58, 5 April 2013 (UTC) Bob

: Thanks for your input, and you're right! I corrected that in the explanation.
: You only "did this in the wrong way" in that you should have edited directly the explanation [[File:Face-wink.svg|20px]]. As on most wikis, the general motto here is ''[[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Be bold|Be bold]]'': don't hesitate, just do it!
: Thanks again - [[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 10:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

----
Is it just me or is the bottom part of it blanked out for everyone? http://xkcd.com/690/
[[Special:Contributions/203.104.11.12|203.104.11.12]] 12:26, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

:It seems as if it is censored. [[Special:Contributions/203.104.11.11|203.104.11.11]] 05:52, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

: Just you! [[User:MR|MR]] ([[User talk:MR|talk]]) 02:19, 4 May 2013 (UTC)MR

----
Unless an incomplete shows a specific lack, and I can't find one myself, I will delete the incomplete tag. Anonymous. 00:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
:The incomplete tag is back. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:50, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

----

Why was mention of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g6V8KZE3GA the firefighter video] removed/reverted and it states again that “there is no video of a plane flying into the north tower”? [[User:Sten|'''STEN''']] ([[User talk:Sten|talk]]) 12:45, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't the most extreme claim be that the entire collapse of the towers was faked? ...as in, they're still there, but with help from Copperfield, They hid it from everyone and created the whole media storm to distract from blah blah blah? [[User:Brettpeirce|Brettpeirce]] ([[User talk:Brettpeirce|talk]]) 20:48, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

----

Even if the truth ''does'' always lie between the two extremes, how do we know it wasn't the South Tower that was the inside job? Then Cueball would be twice as wrong as the MSM (who were right about the North Tower) ''or'' the truthers (who were right about the South Tower). [[User:Promethean|Promethean]] ([[User talk:Promethean|talk]]) 23:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

----

Could the "between the two extremes" mean that the event actually happened mid-air, between the two towers? This, of course wouldn't make sense.--[[User:GuB|GuB]] ([[User talk:GuB|talk]]) 12:59, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

1549: xkcd Phone 3

2015-07-10T12:20:03Z

GuB:

{{comic
| number = 1549
| date = July 10, 2015
| title = XKCD Phone 3
| image = xkcd_phone_3.png
| titletext = If you're not completely satisfied with the phone after 30 days, we will return you to your home at no cost.
}}

{{Incomplete|First draft}}

==Explanation==
This is a follow up to [[1363: xkcd Phone]] and [[1465: xkcd Phone 2]]. It parodies common smartphone specs by attributing absurd or useless features to a fictional phone.

{| class="wikitable"
!Feature
!Explanation
|-
|'''Ear screen'''
| An overcomplicated term for a speaker, connecting a screen which emits light to send visual information, and the portion of a speaker which vibrates to send auditory information. Comparing the two makes a speaker a screen for the ear.
|-
|'''Heartbeat accelerator'''
| A mashup of heartbeat sensor and accelerometer. May be some sort of external pacemaker. If that's the case, it's worrying that it only accelerates, potentially causing a positive feedback (heart attack). It may also be the result of the phone being so exciting or frustrating that it increases its user heart rate.
|-
|'''MobilePay money clip'''
| While mobile pay is a form of payment involving electronic transfers via cellphone, this model includes a money clip; a way of holding physical bills together, which defeats the purpose of electronic payment. Whether this is a clip that transfers money digitally or the phrase mobile pay is just a marketing tag is unknown.
|-
|'''Siri, or whoever it was we put in here'''
| A joke on intelligent personal assistants. It also jokes that Siri and the like are actual people, trapped inside of phones.
|-
|'''Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through'''
| A reference to surface screens. Possible reference to smartphones with screen display wrapping one or more edges, like Samsung Galaxy Note Edge or Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, or dual-screen smartphones with screen on the back (usually e-ink) like YotaPhone 2, or smartphones with minimal bezel like e.g. Sharp AQUOS Crystal.

Screen going ''all the way through'' would leave no place for innards of smartphone: processor, battery etc.
|-
|'''theknot.com partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding ceremonies and does so at random'''
| [https://www.theknot.com/ theknot.com] is a website that assists in all stages of wedding planning. Due to this partnering, the phone has apparently obtained legal status as a {{w|Justice of the peace}} capable of performing legally valid marriages. It exerts this capability randomly however, so the phone's owner (or potentially any other unsuspecting bystander) could suddenly find themselves with a new spouse without their knowledge, generally an undesired effect. Whether this would result in unintentional {{w|bigamy}} or if the phone enacts divorce first if necessary is left unclear.
|-
|'''Fingerprint randomizer'''
| Presumably randomises the user's finger print, which may or may not be inconvenient depending on the intent of the user. It is not clear whether the device will change the person's fingerprint into a human-like fingerprint that is randomly selected from all possibilities, or if it completely mangles the fingerprint of the user
|-
|'''USB E (hotswappable)'''
| A USB cable that presumably charges the phone and allows to transfer files like normal, but this kind lets you perform {{w|Hot swapping}} (replacing computer system components without turning the system off) with it, which would be pointless because the USB will not affect the phone if you took the components out, so you can keep it in away. May be a reference to the eSATAp (Power over eSATA) hybrid port that is functioning as a USB and eSATA port at the same time. The Serial ATA bus interface has standardised hot swapping support.
Furthermore, hot swapping of usb-cables has also been a primary design goal of the USB standard since its first inception, and is therefore not worth mentioning separately other than for marketing reasons. Hot-swapping of the ''connector itself'' would be novel, but useless.
The most recently released version of the USB standard was {{w|USB-C}}. A hypothetical next version would likely use "D" first, so the "E" is just suggesting being "more advanced" without any substantiation.
|-
|'''waterproof, but can drown'''
| Perhaps a reference to Siri or the person trapped in the phone drowning, but the phone itself staying functional. This is another human-like function, which the first 2 XKCD Phone comics had.
|-
|'''Foretold by prophecy'''
| Likely mocking people on the internet who attempt to predict when Apple will release their next device.
|-
|'''Runs Natively'''
| Usually a description given to software, this statement doesn't make any sense when referring to hardware. When software writers would like to run their apps on multiple platforms, they usually have two choices: use a framework that allows them to write the code once and run it on multiple systems, or re-write the bulk of the code for each target system. The latter strategy takes more time and developers, but the end result is usually software that loads quicker, runs faster and makes better use of all the platform's features. Such software is referred to as "running natively", because the code doesn't need to be translated on the device into instructions that the device understands.
In this case, it may be that the phone has legs and can litteraly run.
|-
|'''Wristband'''
| Probably mocking trending smart watches
|-
|'''Wireless discharging'''
| Many modern cellphones feature wireless charging, which uses electromagnetic induction to charge the battery of the device. This model, apparently uses the same technology to discharge the battery; which, of course is something undesired, as one needs the battery's energy to run the phone. May also refer to the standard behaviour of the phone's antenna, which communicates wirelessly via EM radio waves, but discharges the battery in doing so.
|-
|'''Magnetic stripe'''
| Likely a dig at the NFC (near-field communication) wireless radio modules in many modern phones. NFC allows, among others functions, mobile payment. This magnetic stripe could be a cheap way to imitate payment functionality, but "compatible" with classic credit cards.
Magnetic stripes are a data storage method used by devices such as credit cards and key cards to hold and transfer smalls amounts of information like key codes. Usually cellphones don't have them as they utilize more robust and protected ways to store and transmit data (such as NFC). The magnetic stripe shown would likely be unusable with current magnetic stripe readers due to the phone's thickness, in contrast to that of regular cards, thus breaking all imagined 'compatibility' arguments.
It would also be very annoying as it seems to block part of the screen.
|-
|'''2 AA batteries (not included)'''
| A phrase usually shown on small low powered electronic devices like remote controllers, and not on cellphones; which use lithium ion batteries and need to be constantly recharged for continuous use.
The apparent thin-ness of the phone (according to the scale as judged by the wristband) would also preclude inserting AA-batteries, unless a protruding battery compartment is hidden out of view on the back of the phone (not discountable), or the batteries were physically deformed or ground up (a practice warned against due to risk of explosions, heavy-metal poisoning and environmental damage)
|-
|'''Boneless'''
| Reference to meat or fish products being boneless, i.e. having all the bones removed, making it convenient to cook or eat. Unclear why a phone would be boneless since it is mostly inedible, perhaps a reference to the person trapped inside having their bones removed to make them easier to fit inside, or stating that the phone is flexible. (A possible reference to the iPhone 6's reported problems with its chassis, where it {{w|IPhone 6#Chassis bending|could bend under pressure}})
|}

The phrase "We made another one®©™" is a reference to how phone companies release new phones very often, and the trademarks that surround the phone itself.

The title text is a joke on guarantees and customer service. Usually the advertisement says that if the customer is not satisfied with the product, they'll refund the money and take the product back at no additional cost. In this case they guarantee the customer they'll send him/her home without charge; implying they won't fix or refund anything.

==Transcript==
:Ear screen
:Heartbeat accelerator
:MobilePay money clip
:Siri, or whoever it was w put in here
:Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through
:theknot.con partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding ceremonies and does so at random
:Fingerprint randomizer
:USB E (hotswappable)
:waterproof, but can drown
:Foretold by prophecy
:Runs Natively
:Wristband
:Wireless discharging
:Magnetic stripe
:2 AA batteries (not included)
:boneless

:Introducing
:The XKCD phone 3
:we made another one®©™

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Smartphones]]

1549: xkcd Phone 3

2015-07-10T12:18:51Z

GuB:

{{comic
| number = 1549
| date = July 10, 2015
| title = XKCD Phone 3
| image = xkcd_phone_3.png
| titletext = If you're not completely satisfied with the phone after 30 days, we will return you to your home at no cost.
}}

{{Incomplete|First draft}}

==Explanation==
This is a follow up to [[1363: xkcd Phone]] and [[1465: xkcd Phone 2]]. It parodies common smartphone specs by attributing absurd or useless features to a fictional phone.

{| class="wikitable"
!Feature
!Explanation
|-
|'''Ear screen'''
| An overcomplicated term for a speaker, connecting a screen which emits light to send visual information, and the portion of a speaker which vibrates to send auditory information. Comparing the two makes a speaker a screen for the ear.
|-
|'''Heartbeat accelerator'''
| A mashup of heartbeat sensor and accelerometer. May be some sort of external pacemaker. If that's the case, it's worrying that it only accelerates, potentially causing a positive feedback (heart attack). It may also be the result of the phone being so exciting or frustrating that it increases its user heart rate.
|-
|'''MobilePay money clip'''
| While mobile pay is a form of payment involving electronic transfers via cellphone, this model includes a money clip; a way of holding physical bills together, which defeats the purpose of electronic payment. Whether this is a clip that transfers money digitally or the phrase mobile pay is just a marketing tag is unknown.
|-
|'''Siri, or whoever it was we put in here'''
| A joke on intelligent personal assistants. It also jokes that Siri and the like are actual people, trapped inside of phones.
|-
|'''Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through'''
| A reference to surface screens. Possible reference to smartphones with screen display wrapping one or more edges, like Samsung Galaxy Note Edge or Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, or dual-screen smartphones with screen on the back (usually e-ink) like YotaPhone 2, or smartphones with minimal bezel like e.g. Sharp AQUOS Crystal.

Screen going ''all the way through'' would leave no place for innards of smartphone: processor, battery etc.
|-
|'''theknot.com partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding ceremonies and does so at random'''
| [https://www.theknot.com/ theknot.com] is a website that assists in all stages of wedding planning. Due to this partnering, the phone has apparently obtained legal status as a {{w|Justice of the peace}} capable of performing legally valid marriages. It exerts this capability randomly however, so the phone's owner (or potentially any other unsuspecting bystander) could suddenly find themselves with a new spouse without their knowledge, generally an undesired effect. Whether this would result in unintentional {{w|bigamy}} or if the phone enacts divorce first if necessary is left unclear.
|-
|'''Fingerprint randomizer'''
| Presumably randomises the user's finger print, which may or may not be inconvenient depending on the intent of the user. It is not clear whether the device will change the person's fingerprint into a human-like fingerprint that is randomly selected from all possibilities, or if it completely mangles the fingerprint of the user
|-
|'''USB E (hotswappable)'''
| A USB cable that presumably charges the phone and allows to transfer files like normal, but this kind lets you perform {{w|Hot swapping}} (replacing computer system components without turning the system off) with it, which would be pointless because the USB will not affect the phone if you took the components out, so you can keep it in away. May be a reference to the eSATAp (Power over eSATA) hybrid port that is functioning as a USB and eSATA port at the same time. The Serial ATA bus interface has standardised hot swapping support.
Furthermore, hot swapping of usb-cables has also been a primary design goal of the USB standard since its first inception, and is therefore not worth mentioning separately other than for marketing reasons. Hot-swapping of the ''connector itself'' would be novel, but useless.
The most recently released version of the USB standard was {{w|USB-C}}. A hypothetical next version would likely use "D" first, so the "E" is just suggesting being "more advanced" without any substantiation.
|-
|'''waterproof, but can drown'''
| Perhaps a reference to Siri or the person trapped in the phone drowning, but the phone itself staying functional. This is another human-like function, which the first 2 XKCD Phone comics had.
|-
|'''Foretold by prophecy'''
| Likely mocking people on the internet who attempt to predict when Apple will release their next device.
|-
|'''Runs Natively'''
| Usually a description given to software, this statement doesn't make any sense when referring to hardware. When software writers would like to run their apps on multiple platforms, they usually have two choices: use a framework that allows them to write the code once and run it on multiple systems, or re-write the bulk of the code for each target system. The latter strategy takes more time and developers, but the end result is usually software that loads quicker, runs faster and makes better use of all the platform's features. Such software is referred to as "running natively", because the code doesn't need to be translated on the device into instructions that the device understands.
| In this case, it may be that the phone has legs and can litteraly run.
|-
|'''Wristband'''
| Probably mocking trending smart watches
|-
|'''Wireless discharging'''
| Many modern cellphones feature wireless charging, which uses electromagnetic induction to charge the battery of the device. This model, apparently uses the same technology to discharge the battery; which, of course is something undesired, as one needs the battery's energy to run the phone. May also refer to the standard behaviour of the phone's antenna, which communicates wirelessly via EM radio waves, but discharges the battery in doing so.
|-
|'''Magnetic stripe'''
| Likely a dig at the NFC (near-field communication) wireless radio modules in many modern phones. NFC allows, among others functions, mobile payment. This magnetic stripe could be a cheap way to imitate payment functionality, but "compatible" with classic credit cards.
Magnetic stripes are a data storage method used by devices such as credit cards and key cards to hold and transfer smalls amounts of information like key codes. Usually cellphones don't have them as they utilize more robust and protected ways to store and transmit data (such as NFC). The magnetic stripe shown would likely be unusable with current magnetic stripe readers due to the phone's thickness, in contrast to that of regular cards, thus breaking all imagined 'compatibility' arguments.
It would also be very annoying as it seems to block part of the screen.
|-
|'''2 AA batteries (not included)'''
| A phrase usually shown on small low powered electronic devices like remote controllers, and not on cellphones; which use lithium ion batteries and need to be constantly recharged for continuous use.
The apparent thin-ness of the phone (according to the scale as judged by the wristband) would also preclude inserting AA-batteries, unless a protruding battery compartment is hidden out of view on the back of the phone (not discountable), or the batteries were physically deformed or ground up (a practice warned against due to risk of explosions, heavy-metal poisoning and environmental damage)
|-
|'''Boneless'''
| Reference to meat or fish products being boneless, i.e. having all the bones removed, making it convenient to cook or eat. Unclear why a phone would be boneless since it is mostly inedible, perhaps a reference to the person trapped inside having their bones removed to make them easier to fit inside, or stating that the phone is flexible. (A possible reference to the iPhone 6's reported problems with its chassis, where it {{w|IPhone 6#Chassis bending|could bend under pressure}})
|}

The phrase "We made another one®©™" is a reference to how phone companies release new phones very often, and the trademarks that surround the phone itself.

The title text is a joke on guarantees and customer service. Usually the advertisement says that if the customer is not satisfied with the product, they'll refund the money and take the product back at no additional cost. In this case they guarantee the customer they'll send him/her home without charge; implying they won't fix or refund anything.

==Transcript==
:Ear screen
:Heartbeat accelerator
:MobilePay money clip
:Siri, or whoever it was w put in here
:Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through
:theknot.con partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding ceremonies and does so at random
:Fingerprint randomizer
:USB E (hotswappable)
:waterproof, but can drown
:Foretold by prophecy
:Runs Natively
:Wristband
:Wireless discharging
:Magnetic stripe
:2 AA batteries (not included)
:boneless

:Introducing
:The XKCD phone 3
:we made another one®©™

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Smartphones]]

1549: xkcd Phone 3

2015-07-10T12:07:55Z

GuB:

{{comic
| number = 1549
| date = July 10, 2015
| title = XKCD Phone 3
| image = xkcd_phone_3.png
| titletext = If you're not completely satisfied with the phone after 30 days, we will return you to your home at no cost.
}}

{{Incomplete|First draft}}

==Explanation==
This is a follow up to [[1363: xkcd Phone]] and [[1465: xkcd Phone 2]]. It parodies common smartphone specs by attributing absurd or useless features to a fictional phone.

{| class="wikitable"
!Feature
!Explanation
|-
|'''Ear screen'''
| An overcomplicated term for a speaker, connecting a screen which emits light to send visual information, and the portion of a speaker which vibrates to send auditory information. Comparing the two makes a speaker a screen for the ear.
|-
|'''Heartbeat accelerator'''
| A mashup of heartbeat sensor and accelerometer. May be some sort of external pacemaker. If that's the case, it's worrying that it only accelerates, potentially causing a positive feedback (heart attack). It may also be the result of the phone being so exciting or frustrating that it increases its user heart rate.
|-
|'''MobilePay money clip'''
| While mobile pay is a form of payment involving electronic transfers via cellphone, this model includes a money clip; a way of holding physical bills together, which defeats the purpose of electronic payment. Whether this is a clip that transfers money digitally or the phrase mobile pay is just a marketing tag is unknown.
|-
|'''Siri, or whoever it was we put in here'''
| A joke on intelligent personal assistants. It also jokes that Siri and the like are actual people, trapped inside of phones.
|-
|'''Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through'''
| A reference to surface screens. Possible reference to smartphones with screen display wrapping one or more edges, like Samsung Galaxy Note Edge or Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, or dual-screen smartphones with screen on the back (usually e-ink) like YotaPhone 2, or smartphones with minimal bezel like e.g. Sharp AQUOS Crystal.

Screen going ''all the way through'' would leave no place for innards of smartphone: processor, battery etc.
|-
|'''theknot.com partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding ceremonies and does so at random'''
| [https://www.theknot.com/ theknot.com] is a website that assists in all stages of wedding planning. Due to this partnering, the phone has apparently obtained legal status as a {{w|Justice of the peace}} capable of performing legally valid marriages. It exerts this capability randomly however, so the phone's owner (or potentially any other unsuspecting bystander) could suddenly find themselves with a new spouse without their knowledge, generally an undesired effect. Whether this would result in unintentional {{w|bigamy}} or if the phone enacts divorce first if necessary is left unclear.
|-
|'''Fingerprint randomizer'''
| Presumably randomises the user's finger print, which may or may not be inconvenient depending on the intent of the user. It is not clear whether the device will change the person's fingerprint into a human-like fingerprint that is randomly selected from all possibilities, or if it completely mangles the fingerprint of the user
|-
|'''USB E (hotswappable)'''
| A USB cable that presumably charges the phone and allows to transfer files like normal, but this kind lets you perform {{w|Hot swapping}} (replacing computer system components without turning the system off) with it, which would be pointless because the USB will not affect the phone if you took the components out, so you can keep it in away. May be a reference to the eSATAp (Power over eSATA) hybrid port that is functioning as a USB and eSATA port at the same time. The Serial ATA bus interface has standardised hot swapping support.
Furthermore, hot swapping of usb-cables has also been a primary design goal of the USB standard since its first inception, and is therefore not worth mentioning separately other than for marketing reasons. Hot-swapping of the ''connector itself'' would be novel, but useless.
The most recently released version of the USB standard was {{w|USB-C}}. A hypothetical next version would likely use "D" first, so the "E" is just suggesting being "more advanced" without any substantiation.
|-
|'''waterproof, but can drown'''
| Perhaps a reference to Siri or the person trapped in the phone drowning, but the phone itself staying functional. This is another human-like function, which the first 2 XKCD Phone comics had.
|-
|'''Foretold by prophecy'''
| Likely mocking people on the internet who attempt to predict when Apple will release their next device.
|-
|'''Runs Natively'''
| Usually a description given to software, this statement doesn't make any sense when referring to hardware. When software writers would like to run their apps on multiple platforms, they usually have two choices: use a framework that allows them to write the code once and run it on multiple systems, or re-write the bulk of the code for each target system. The latter strategy takes more time and developers, but the end result is usually software that loads quicker, runs faster and makes better use of all the platform's features. Such software is referred to as "running natively", because the code doesn't need to be translated on the device into instructions that the device understands.
|-
|'''Wristband'''
| Probably mocking trending smart watches
|-
|'''Wireless discharging'''
| Many modern cellphones feature wireless charging, which uses electromagnetic induction to charge the battery of the device. This model, apparently uses the same technology to discharge the battery; which, of course is something undesired, as one needs the battery's energy to run the phone. May also refer to the standard behaviour of the phone's antenna, which communicates wirelessly via EM radio waves, but discharges the battery in doing so.
|-
|'''Magnetic stripe'''
| Likely a dig at the NFC (near-field communication) wireless radio modules in many modern phones. NFC allows, among others functions, mobile payment. This magnetic stripe could be a cheap way to imitate payment functionality, but "compatible" with classic credit cards.
Magnetic stripes are a data storage method used by devices such as credit cards and key cards to hold and transfer smalls amounts of information like key codes. Usually cellphones don't have them as they utilize more robust and protected ways to store and transmit data (such as NFC). The magnetic stripe shown would likely be unusable with current magnetic stripe readers due to the phone's thickness, in contrast to that of regular cards, thus breaking all imagined 'compatibility' arguments.
It would also be very annoying as it seems to block part of the screen.
|-
|'''2 AA batteries (not included)'''
| A phrase usually shown on small low powered electronic devices like remote controllers, and not on cellphones; which use lithium ion batteries and need to be constantly recharged for continuous use.
The apparent thin-ness of the phone (according to the scale as judged by the wristband) would also preclude inserting AA-batteries, unless a protruding battery compartment is hidden out of view on the back of the phone (not discountable), or the batteries were physically deformed or ground up (a practice warned against due to risk of explosions, heavy-metal poisoning and environmental damage)
|-
|'''Boneless'''
| Reference to meat or fish products being boneless, i.e. having all the bones removed, making it convenient to cook or eat. Unclear why a phone would be boneless since it is mostly inedible, perhaps a reference to the person trapped inside having their bones removed to make them easier to fit inside, or stating that the phone is flexible. (A possible reference to the iPhone 6's reported problems with it's chassis, where it {{w|IPhone 6#Chassis bending|could bend under pressure}})
|}

The phrase "We made another one®©™" is a reference to how phone companies release new phones very often, and the trademarks that surround the phone itself.

The title text is a joke on guarantees and customer service. Usually the advertisement says that if the customer is not satisfied with the product, they'll refund the money and take the product back at no additional cost. In this case they guarantee the customer they'll send him/her home without charge; implying they won't fix or refund anything.

==Transcript==
:Ear screen
:Heartbeat accelerator
:MobilePay money clip
:Siri, or whoever it was w put in here
:Instead of being on surface only, screen goes all the way through
:theknot.con partnership: Phone licensed to perform wedding ceremonies and does so at random
:Fingerprint randomizer
:USB E (hotswappable)
:waterproof, but can drown
:Foretold by prophecy
:Runs Natively
:Wristband
:Wireless discharging
:Magnetic stripe
:2 AA batteries (not included)
:boneless

:Introducing
:The XKCD phone 3
:we made another one®©™

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Smartphones]]