explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2061: Tectonics Game

2018-10-19T19:49:04Z

JChrisCompton: Gave corn's about 90-day growth as a more concrete example than wheat (whose growth was listed as "weeks or months"). Actual growth of corn varies by variety and its environment (hence "about" 90-days)

{{comic
| number = 2061
| date = October 19, 2018
| title = Tectonics Game
| image = tectonics_game.png
| titletext = They're limiting the playtesters to type A3 V stars, so the games will all end before the Sun consumes the Earth.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Written by a Tectonics Developer. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is to show similarity to many simulation games, which have various niche popularity. Similar to Maxis' {{w|Spore_(2008_video_game)|Spore}}, the game in question allows you to to terraform entire worlds. However, in a typical Randall twist, unlike most simulation games, you could not speed up the progress of time to make world changing endeavors occur in a matter of seconds. The game operates in real time, which means most of the user time-frame will be spend idly watching nearly non-moving continents, drifting at the real speed of continental drift, a couple of inches a year, which makes for very slow gameplay. Thus several millennia of play time is needed to reach a game {{w|Achievement (video gaming)|achievement}} of forming a kilometer high mountain.

Many {{w|computer games}} {{w|simulate}} to one degree or another real items and tasks, but often simplify them to fit into a game format -- to make them more exciting, to make them quicker, to advance a particular plot line or quest, etc. For example, a game about farming might allow you to grow corn, but whereas in real life corn takes about 90 days to germinate from seed and grow to maturity, in a game the growth might be instantaneous or measured by minutes, rather than by days/weeks/months.

In this game, especially, one would expect such shortcuts, given the extreme time frames required for {{w|geological}} events to be manifested. The joke is that this game is so realistic that it's played in "real-time", which means for every second or hour or eon something would take in real life, in the game it would take the same second or hour or eon to happen. Playing such a game where the events take longer than the person would be alive would likely be unsatisfying{{Citation_needed}}.

This comic's number and content regarding simulations in real time may also be a reference to {{w|Arthur_C._Clarke|Arthur C. Clarke}}'s {{w|2061:_Odyssey_Three|2061: Odyssey_Three}}, the third book in the {{w|Space_Odyssey|Space Odyssey}} series, in which {{w|Monolith_(Space_Odyssey)|monoliths}} are left throughout the solar system, manipulating environments to encourage the evolution of intelligent life.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}
:[Cueball is standing behind Ponytail, who is sitting on the floor playing a video game on a TV which displays a diagram of tectonic plates.]
:Cueball: What game is that?
:Ponytail: ''Tectonics''!
:Ponytail: You steer chunks of crust around, rifting, subducting, and building and eroding mountains.

:[A view of the game screen is shown. It includes a large cross-section of the Earth with smaller charts around it.]
:Ponytail: You try to keep your climate stable and your biosphere rich. Avoid making large igneous provinces! They're the ''worst''.

:[Cueball holds his hand out.]
:Cueball: Cool!
:Cueball: Can I try?
:Ponytail: Sure!

:[Cueball plays the game.]
:Cueball: ...How do I unpause?
:Ponytail: It's not paused.
:Cueball: ...
:Ponytail: Continents can only move a few inches per year.

:[Cueball holds the controller in one hand, now uninterested in the game. The screen shows an achievement page with nothing completed.]
:Cueball: It's ''real-time''?
:Ponytail: Just 400 millennia to go until your first mountain achievement!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Video games]]

1723: Meteorite Identification

2016-08-24T13:42:53Z

JChrisCompton: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1723
| date = August 22, 2016
| title = Meteorite Identification
| image = meteorite_identification.png
| titletext = Click for an actual flowchart for identifying a meteorite. My favorite part is how 'Did someone see it fall? -> Yes' points to 'NOT A METEORITE.' This is not a mistake.
}}

'''Note:''' Clicking on the image on xkcd (click the date above the comic to go to the comic on xkcd) takes you to the ''[http://meteorites.wustl.edu/check-list.htm Meteorite or meteorwrong? Self-Test Check list]'' flow chart at the [http://eps.wustl.edu/ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences] at {{w|Washington University in St. Louis}}.

==Explanation==
{{w|Meteorite|Meteorites}} form when a {{w|meteoroid}} survives entrance through the Earth's atmosphere as a {{w|Meteoroid#Meteors|meteor}}. Thus, they are very rare rocks that come from space, and can stem from broken {{w|asteroids}}, the {{w|Moon}}, and sometimes (very rarely) even from {{w|Mars}}.

The {{w|flowchart}}, though facetious, would actually work the vast majority of the time a person picks up a rock and believes it to be a meteorite, since, given any single rock one finds on the surface of the earth, it is almost definitely not a meteorite.

Flowcharts are often used ([[:Category:Flowcharts|in xkcd]]) to give the inexperienced a step-by-step process to follow (see a guide to flowcharts here: [[518: Flow Charts]]). Meteorite identification, however, is very difficult, so the brevity of this flowchart in a way pokes fun at the need for a flowchart to identify meteorites, since laypeople are not experienced enough to confirm that a rock is indeed a meteorite. A similar short flowchart as this has been used recently in [[1691: Optimization]], and another only two box chart was used in [[1195: Flowchart]].

In the title text [[Randall]] mentions that the comic image is a link to the more detailed ''[http://meteorites.wustl.edu/check-list.htm Meteorite or meteorwrong? Self-Test Check list]'' flowchart at the [http://eps.wustl.edu/ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences] at {{w|Washington University in St. Louis}}. (Note that, likely due to this comic pointing to it, that server may be overloaded and the page may not come up for you right away. Since it has no ads, here is a [http://imgur.com/a/RNYQ7 mirror] you can use if it won't load.)

The authors of those resources notes that they have received many rock samples and photos (or even personal visits) from people claiming to have discovered meteorites and thus they would likely benefit from just providing people the shortcut flowchart from Randall, as a way of saying, "leave meteorite identification to the professionals."

Randall also mentions in the title text that his favorite part of this real flowchart, which is the part where if anyone saw the "meteor" fall then it is 'NOT A METEORITE.' What he most likes about it is that this is not a mistake.

First of all the chance of actually being near a falling meteorite is exceedingly small. From the flowchart is a link to a [http://meteorites.wustl.edu/realities.htm 64 point long checklist], which basically all ends in "..., then it's not a meteorite." In point 3 is noted the following:
:Since 1900, the numbers of recognized meteorite "falls" is about 690 for the whole Earth. That's 6.3 per year. Only 98 of those occurred in the US. That's less than 1 per year. Even when a meteorite is observed to fall, experienced meteorite hunters may find only a few stones when hunting dawn to dusk for a week.

Second, meteors that can be seen falling almost definitely cannot be found on the ground immediately after. Any meteor big enough to glow and be visible while falling all the way to the ground will leave a large impact crater, rather than simply sit on the ground as a rock. Smaller meteors do not fall fast enough to glow all the way to the ground. Either they will burn up completely (not leaving any meteorite) or they will be slowed down before they burn all the way up (but typically end up much smaller than the original meteoroid). After that they will stop glowing and will brake even further until they reach a {{w|terminal velocity}} due to air resistance. Their small size, and lack of glow, make them practically impossible to follow with the naked eye even in daylight. If a person stands close by the impact location of a meteor it may be possible to hear a swish and a thunk, from when it passes by and then hit the ground. It will then be possible to locate the meteorite, but such a falling stone could also have been dropped from an airplane or by a storm. But in some few cases people have actually heard a real meteor falling and found it afterwards. This is what happened with the 690 events mentioned above. All this is described on [http://www.meteoritemarket.com/metid2.htm How to Identify a Meteorite] from [http://www.meteoritemarket.com/ The Meteorite Market] which is linked in point 48 in the table from Washington University. But they did not see it fall!

What Randall finds so funny about this part of the flowchart is that there are three arrows leading to the question "Did someone see it fall?", but from there only a "Yes" option is possible, and then this gives the result "Not a meteorite." This indicates that if you have found a rock that has no dark crust or [http://meteorites.wustl.edu/id/regmaglypts.htm regmaglypts] (the options that by saying no takes the user to the question about seeing it fall), then it is not a meteorite, and then the only reason people might still believe it to be a meteorite must be because someone saw it fall. Since seeing it fall rules out that it could be a meteorite there only need to be this single option left.

If the rock actually has those thumbprint like impressions on the surface (that scientists call {{w|Glossary_of_meteoritics#Regmaglypts|regmaglypts}}) then the creator of the flowchart actually asks to see the rock (photo or sample). The other features that are interesting is if it has a dark thin crust (from the melting during entry), but only if it also has either regmaglypts or if it has a lighter color inside than the outer crust.

See also [[1405: Meteor]] about how people mistake the words meteorite with meteor. The many misspellings of meteorite is mentioned in point 63 in the table.

==Transcript==
:[A caption is above a flowchart with only two boxes. The first box is a diamond shaped box with an arrow down to the next rectangular box below. Each box has a text.]
:How to identify a possible meteorite:
:Start
:No, it's not a meteorite.

==Trivia==
*In December 2012 (almost four years before this comic) a flowchart was posted under the title ''[http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,11,279733,279733#msg-279733 Meteorite identification flowchart]'' on [http://www.mindat.org/ mindat.org] a page dedicated to sharing information about minerals. (Check the attached gif file).
**The user(s) posting this earlier flowchart ([http://www.mindat.org/user-1.html Jolyon & Katya Ralph]) seems to have posted a note in the [[Talk:1723:_Meteorite_Identification|discussion]] on this page about the fact that Randall has "borrowed" their idea.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Flowcharts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]

1544: Margaret

2015-07-08T16:29:49Z

JChrisCompton: /* Trivia */

{{comic
| number = 1544
| date = June 29, 2015
| title = Margaret
| image = margaret.png
| titletext = Otherwise known as Margaret the Destroyer, I will bring pain to the the Great One. Then again, maybe I won't.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic uses the starting lines of an innocent children's book and creates irony by delivering a dark message.

In the book ''{{w|Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.}}'' by {{w|Judy Blume}}, the opening lines are "Are you still there, God? It's me, Margaret. I know you're there, God. I know you wouldn't have missed this for anything! Thank you, God. Thanks an awful lot..." These lines describe a prayer, in which [[Margaret]] privately speaks to God, expressing gratitude and seeking guidance.

Margaret asks God if they are scared, and states that they should be. This is similar to threats delivered in super violent action movies, such as Taken, in which the protagonist or antagonist speaks directly to their opponent, issuing threats and indicating that they are coming after their opponent. The final panel is a shot of Margaret standing imposingly in a dark landscape, and a caption over the top of the image says "Margaret is coming for you", making this comic reminiscent of an action movie trailer. The irony is that "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." is a very innocent book, especially when compared to this type of action movie.

The title text is a mashup of three of Blume's other books: ''{{w|Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great}}'', ''{{w|The Pain and the Great One}}'', and ''{{w|Then Again, Maybe I Won't}}'', and likely the inspiration for the dark lines in the comic.

*I know you're listening" may refer to an earlier xkcd comic, [[525: I Know You're Listening]].
*The idea of turning an innocent children's book into a violent movie was previously touched in [[633: Blockbuster Mining]].
*Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret was previously referenced in the title text of [[1354: Heartbleed Explanation]].

==Transcript==
:[Margaret, shown in full body, is alone. She is talking while looking out towards the reader.]
:Margaret: Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
:Margaret: I know you're listening.

:[Zoom in on her face and torso.]
:Margaret: Are you scared, God?
:Margaret: Are you?

:[Zooming so far in that not even her whole face is visible.]
:Margaret: You should be.

:[Zooming far out showing her in a white silhouette against a black sky, standing on the white earth.]
:Margaret: ''Margaret is coming for you''.

==Trivia==
*There seems to be a typo in the title text with double the:
**''I will bring pain to '''the the''' Great One''
**It could however also be a reference to the book ''The Pain and the Great One'', so this is the "The Great One"
**Maybe it was supposed to be thee "The Great One".

*There doesn't seem to be a typo if you pause after the first the. '''thee the''' would have been better. Realizing that God is "the Great One" may be the reason for the last part of the title text (Then again, maybe I won't.)

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Margaret]]

1544: Margaret

2015-07-08T16:28:05Z

JChrisCompton: /* Trivia */

{{comic
| number = 1544
| date = June 29, 2015
| title = Margaret
| image = margaret.png
| titletext = Otherwise known as Margaret the Destroyer, I will bring pain to the the Great One. Then again, maybe I won't.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic uses the starting lines of an innocent children's book and creates irony by delivering a dark message.

In the book ''{{w|Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.}}'' by {{w|Judy Blume}}, the opening lines are "Are you still there, God? It's me, Margaret. I know you're there, God. I know you wouldn't have missed this for anything! Thank you, God. Thanks an awful lot..." These lines describe a prayer, in which [[Margaret]] privately speaks to God, expressing gratitude and seeking guidance.

Margaret asks God if they are scared, and states that they should be. This is similar to threats delivered in super violent action movies, such as Taken, in which the protagonist or antagonist speaks directly to their opponent, issuing threats and indicating that they are coming after their opponent. The final panel is a shot of Margaret standing imposingly in a dark landscape, and a caption over the top of the image says "Margaret is coming for you", making this comic reminiscent of an action movie trailer. The irony is that "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret." is a very innocent book, especially when compared to this type of action movie.

The title text is a mashup of three of Blume's other books: ''{{w|Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great}}'', ''{{w|The Pain and the Great One}}'', and ''{{w|Then Again, Maybe I Won't}}'', and likely the inspiration for the dark lines in the comic.

*I know you're listening" may refer to an earlier xkcd comic, [[525: I Know You're Listening]].
*The idea of turning an innocent children's book into a violent movie was previously touched in [[633: Blockbuster Mining]].
*Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret was previously referenced in the title text of [[1354: Heartbleed Explanation]].

==Transcript==
:[Margaret, shown in full body, is alone. She is talking while looking out towards the reader.]
:Margaret: Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
:Margaret: I know you're listening.

:[Zoom in on her face and torso.]
:Margaret: Are you scared, God?
:Margaret: Are you?

:[Zooming so far in that not even her whole face is visible.]
:Margaret: You should be.

:[Zooming far out showing her in a white silhouette against a black sky, standing on the white earth.]
:Margaret: ''Margaret is coming for you''.

==Trivia==
*There seems to be a typo in the title text with double the:
**''I will bring pain to '''the the''' Great One''
**It could however also be a reference to the book ''The Pain and the Great One'', so this is the "The Great One"
**Maybe it was supposed to be thee "The Great One".

*There doesn't seem to be a typo if you pause after the first the. '''thee the''' would have been better. Realizing that God is "the Great One" may be the reason for the 'or maybe not' in the caption.
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Margaret]]

1307: Buzzfeed Christmas

2014-10-07T21:48:19Z

JChrisCompton: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1307
| date = December 22, 2013
| title = Buzzfeed Christmas
| image = buzzfeed christmas.png
| titletext = The 6 Weirdest Objects The Buzzfeed Writers Are Throwing Out Their Windows At Us
}}

==Explanation==
Christmas caroling is a tradition in which groups of singers travel from house to house, singing {{w|Christmas carol|carols}}.

These carolers are in front of the [http://www.buzzfeed.com/ BuzzFeed] offices singing the {{w|The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)|The Twelve Days of Christmas}}, which ''usually'' contains:

:On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me.
:12 Drummers drumming
:11 Pipers piping
:10 Lords a-leaping
:9 Ladies dancing
:8 Maids a-milking
:7 Swans a-swimming
:6 Geese a-laying
:5 Golden rings
:4 Calling birds
:3 French hens
:2 Turtle doves
:And a partridge in a pear tree.

The carolers changed the lyrics to match the syle of headlines of the topics published by BuzzFeed, which usually contain a number and a superlative; for example, ''13 Worst Plane Crashes of the Decade'' or ''8 Otters Who Are So Cute We Can't Even Handle It''.

This method of writing headlines, referred to as clickbait, is used by several other news sites, because it is known to generate a lot of visits and ad revenue. [[Randall]] has touched on this subject before in [[1283: Headlines]].

Carolers are usually rewarded with a gift, but the BuzzFeed writers probably didn't appreciate the song, because they threw weird stuff at them which the carolers used in their 6th verse.

==Transcript==
:[Carolers singing.]
::12 Best drummers of ''all time''
::11 Pipers whose jaw-dropping good piping will make you cry
::You won't ''believe'' what these 10 lords leap over
:Carolers outside the Buzzfeed offices perform "12 Weird things I ''actually got'' for Christmas"

==Trivia==
*The Buzzfeed YouTube Channel uploaded a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v92edGrMbY video] called ''The 12 Days of Internet Christmas'', which is similar to ''The Twelve Days of Christmas'' song. But the video contains a number of strange objects and images, to name a few, a naked Ryan Gosling and four men with curly beard. Because of its absurd content, according to the like-dislike ratio, the video's quality is rather controversial.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Christmas]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

Talk:1303: Profile Info

2013-12-13T16:42:07Z

JChrisCompton:

You think no company would use that name? Seriously? The point of using name like this is that companies harvesting profiles will not be checking the profiles manually, they would have automatic software doing that, and unlike human, this software would not be able to recognize anything weird on name like this. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:18, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
+1 informative [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.8|108.162.250.8]] 11:21, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that it generally goes that the automatic name-searcher things (or whatever the hell it is they're called) have some sort of rudimentary filtering system to avoid picking up spam accounts and the like, but I wouldn't know that much. Besides, if these ads are going to be designed by humans (we haven't made ad-designing robots yet, I hope), then there's going to be at least one person in the loop to check this sort of stuff.[[User:CrizBN|CrizBN]] ([[User talk:CrizBN|talk]]) 12:02, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
: A human would design the advertisement and leave a place for the software to put the elements (name/picture/etc). The software would later present the add putting in account info either at random or of people believed to be connected to the viewer. The human designing the ad would likely run through a number of test cases, but in a large data set may never notice 'poisoned' credentials. HTH. See comment below from Spongebog. [[User:JChrisCompton|JChrisCompton]] ([[User talk:JChrisCompton|talk]]) 16:42, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

To be honest, you technically can opt out of YouTube real names by linking to a Google+ Page, which does not require a legal name. However, the G+ link UI is intentionally designed to make this option difficult to find. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.216|108.162.219.216]] 13:58, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Interestingly Enough, there's been a court case about this kind of Thing, Lane v. Facebook Resulted in the Termination of Facebook's "Beacon" program, which was similair. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.7|108.162.237.7]] 14:43, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Havesting and using Peoples information -- whether names, emails content, email addresses or viewing habits is entirely automated, and hence very clever software is needed to filter out "commentary names" -- no advertiser are reviewing the actual content used gained from these harvesting processes. [[User:Spongebog|Spongebog]] ([[User talk:Spongebog|talk]])

I'm absolutely positive this would work, because I've done it. I entered "Fake Guy" as my name on some website (I can no longer remember which one) and now I regularly get spam e-mail exhortations addressed to Fake. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.33|108.162.221.33]] 15:36, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:1296: Git Commit

2013-12-05T19:41:32Z

JChrisCompton: Comment about whether VBScript should be counted as coding (coding. bit. Git it?)

Note that in most (all?) graphical history viewers for Git time flows from bottom up, i.e. newest commits are on top, not on bottom as in this comics --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 07:21, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I can relate. While I start with reasonable commit messages every day, working on one feature often results in
:(good description of feature)
:bugfixes for (description of feature)
:another bugfix
:damn
:should work now
:grrr
:typo
:I hate (some used library)
when I either need commit to deploy or I'm so sure it will work I don't test it deeply enough. If I would be using git, these could be merged, but I'm not. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

What does the line graphic in the left-most column represent? [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 13:03, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
: This is the Git commit graph, in various ways of looking at a commit history git draws a graph like that to show branching and merging. {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.229}}

Nice explanation folks. Makes the comic understandable/humorous to a non-coder. (unless you count VBScript) --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 13:16, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
: Nothing wrong with VBScript, though "coder" could be stretching the definition by a bit. (''git'' it?) [[User:JChrisCompton|JChrisCompton]] ([[User talk:JChrisCompton|talk]]) 19:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

[http://lightswitch05.github.io/commit-cloud/ Commit Cloud] is a relevant tool to read commit messages from Github and build a word cloud from the most-used words. {{unsigned ip|108.162.214.41}}

I'm very glad I'm not the only person this happens to. --[[User:Okofish|Okofish]] ([[User talk:Okofish|talk]]) 15:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "although he seems to have avoided the ; key for some reason": A likely reason is that messages are passed on the command line with -m and without surrounding quotes to save time, and the ; ends the command line. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.54|108.162.221.54]] 06:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)