explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1683: Digital Data

2016-05-23T11:28:48Z

MerlinMM:

Ewww, Verizon? **** them [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 04:58, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Ironically, the title text on explainxkcd is different from the one on xkcd.com, demonstrating the reinterpretation of text encoded in UTF-8 as if it were encoded in ISO 8859-1. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.85.231|162.158.85.231]] 05:45, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

-Exactly; this nicely proves Randall's point. On my computer, different characters appear in different browsers, but of course in one browser the characters are reproducible.--[[User:Jkrstrt|Jkrstrt]] ([[User talk:Jkrstrt|talk]]) 07:26, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Here is the decoded title text:
“If you can read this, congratulations–the archive youʼre you're using still knows about the mouseover text”!
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.16|108.162.229.16]] 07:51, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

:Grungy details:
:*â€œ -> ''convert to hex'' -> E2-80-9C -> ''UTF8 decode'' -> 0010-000000-011100 -> [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/201C/index.htm U-201C "LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK"]
:*â€” -> ''convert to hex'' -> E2-80-94 -> ''UTF8 decode'' -> 0010-000000-010100 -> [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2014/index.htm U-2014 "EM DASH"]
:*â€™ -> ''convert to hex'' -> E2-80-99 -> ''UTF8 decode'' -> 0010-000000-011001 -> [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2019/index.htm U-2019 "RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK"]
:*â€! -> ''convert to hex'' -> E2-80-9D -> ''UTF8 decode'' -> 0010-000000-011101 -> [http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/201d/index.htm U-201D "RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK"]
:[[User:Odysseus654|Odysseus654]] ([[User talk:Odysseus654|talk]]) 17:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

::The ''convert to hex'' step is really ''encode with Windows-1252''. Also, in the last sequence, the "!" is not part of the encoded quotation mark. The third byte of the quotation mark comes from an unprintable U-009D between the "â€" and the "!". U-009D isn't a valid Windows-1252 character, so either the encoding is actually a superset of Windows-1252 that includes U-009D, or the encoding process just allowed it.
:: [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.103|162.158.255.103]] 17:26, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

He's written you're twice, but one is with a curly apostrophe, often favoured by americans (and maybe brits?), possible because of their keyboard. The simple apostrophe is “just” html-formatted, whereas the curly one has been molested by a UTF-8 / ISO-8859-1 misreading.
--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.16|108.162.229.16]] 07:51, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
: I'm British, and I don't have the curly apostrophe anywhere on my keyboard. [[User:Enchantedsleeper|Enchantedsleeper]] ([[User talk:Enchantedsleeper|talk]]) 11:01, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

: I'm American, and I also don't have the curly apostrophe anywhere on my keyboard, but word processing programs (like MS-Word) are configured by default to automatically replace an ASCII apostrophe in a conjunction with the fancy right-single-quote mark. Also when using quotation marks around text those programs automatically replace the repeated single ASCII quotation marks with the fancy left and right quotation marks (single if using single quotes, double if using double quotes). Most people don't care enough to disable that "feature"... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.252.143|162.158.252.143]] 15:13, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

:: Ok. I've never experienced that from any text processor (incl. MS Word), so maybe it's dependant on the system locale or another mysterious factor. I've just noticed a prevalence in english language texts online, but an absence in other european languages. Not even french, which has as many or more contractions. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.16|108.162.229.16]] 08:11 21 May 2016 (UTC)

This is a phenomenon that has always both fascinated me and frustrated me. I find it fascinating how, even today, data degrades as more and more people copy it (remember the old days when people used to copy VHS tapes, and the further you were from the original tape the more copying artefacts your copy had in it?). It also frustrates me, though, when I'm trying to find an original, undegraded image or video and it seems impossible to find. It's also annoying because it's actually pretty easy to copy something without causing any quality loss, yet practically every copied image on the internet has been degraded in some way or another. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.130|141.101.98.130]] 07:08, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

:If you haven't yet, you should check out this guy who ripped and reuploaded his own Youtube video 1000 times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEIzS_27Vt0 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.150|162.158.222.150]] 08:28, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

::...and after 100 iterations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6GMvihskBQ ...and the summary of all of them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icruGcSsPp0 [[User:Odysseus654|Odysseus654]] ([[User talk:Odysseus654|talk]]) 16:50, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

:It can be frustrating to try to convince new people drawing schematics on the computer to not use 4-way junctions because they don't expect digital images to degrade over multiple generations of copying. This xkcd demonstrates the way multiple generations can degrade even digital images, potentially making it difficult to differentiate two crossing (but electrically separate) signal lines from a 4-way junction on a schematic. Sorry, I'll get off my soap box now. ;-) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.252.143|162.158.252.143]] 15:13, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

It's also funny because just a few moments ago I was trying to compress some video to send to someone. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.130|141.101.98.130]] 07:12, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=274fcf46426f2da31b057f1652ae5269cfdbd70a.190103 this page highlights the encoding blocks so that the degration of quality can be seen better. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.91.205|141.101.91.205]] 09:42, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

:Nice example. Their picture is already a bad copy. While it's still a PNG, it's already reduced in size (600x228 instead of 720x282, 131381 byte instead of 190103). Btw. the file used in this wiki is also slightly different from what I see on xkcd. It's just 3 minutes older and 308 bytes larger. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.83.48|162.158.83.48]] 01:28, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

The phenomenon that Randall is making fun of in this comic is actually called a "shitpic" http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/the-triumphant-rise-of-the-shitpic The explanation should probably make reference to that. [[User:Enchantedsleeper|Enchantedsleeper]] ([[User talk:Enchantedsleeper|talk]]) 10:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I think the watermarks on the last frame are from an unregistered screenshot tool, not "9gag" or similar. The references to shit pics are interesting, but aren't you over interpreting the whole thing? {{unsigned ip|162.158.83.174}}

There's a 9gag thing in the image, clean your glasses and look again. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.46|173.245.54.46]] 12:15, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Both screenshots from iOS definitely. Safari browser and… anybody knows? Some kind of other web browser? Maybe Chrome or Opera? <Need to finally create account> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.152|162.158.202.152]] 15:32, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Apparently Russians have been getting this a lot, as they (up to the point of the existence of UNICODE) have had to deal a lot with people using bad codepages. Example of their post office dealing with a physical package addressed with a bad codepage: http://worldlanguages.wikia.com/wiki/Mojibake?file=Letter_to_Russia_with_krokozyabry.jpg [[User:Odysseus654|Odysseus654]] ([[User talk:Odysseus654|talk]]) 16:54, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Here is the progression as I see it:
*Frame 1 - The original PNG
*Frame 2 - The PNG converted to a JPEG
*Frame 3 - The JPEG as viewed on a mobile browser (Safari on iOS in this case)
*Frame 4 - A screen-shot of the mobile browser uploaded to Tumblr and then stolen by 9GAG
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.62|173.245.52.62]] 19:37, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Note that while the term "digital" is new, first digital format of information appeared long ago, with the development of standard alphabet. Images hand-drawn on paper can't be copied without loss, but if you write letters in fixed alphabet, it can be copied without errors forever (not counting errors caused by some letters getting out of use through history). Egyptian literature is probably lost due to us not knowing the (very big) full set of hieroglyphs, but [https://el.wikisource.org/wiki/%CE%9F%CE%B4%CF%8D%CF%83%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%B1/%CE%B1 Odyssey] could (and hopefully even was) be stored exactly how it was written. Wouldn't help read it, of course, language changed since then and it would need to be translated which, again, can lose some meaning ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 16:16, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

There's a much much older example. RNA and subsequently DNA are digital representations of the protein structures (also digital representations of 3-D molecular shapes). Degradation through copying is 1 source of variation which evolution selects over.[[User:MerlinMM|MerlinMM]] ([[User talk:MerlinMM|talk]]) 11:28, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:15:57Z

MerlinMM: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1545
| date = July 1, 2015
| title = Strengths and Weaknesses
| image = strengths_and_weaknesses.png
| titletext = Do you need me to do a quicksort on the whiteboard or produce a generation of offspring or something? It might take me a bit, but I can do it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
Here the character is in a job interview and is being asked the prototypical job interview questions, "What is your greatest weakness?", "What is your greatest strength?" and "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

The character answers that he is essentially a living organism that could die easily. This is a reference the fact that biological system are "messy" and are not always optimal in design or operation. For example cancer is a disease where the cellular machinery that governs cell replications breaks down and prolific cell division happens, endangering the organism (tumors). While this is true weakness it is also a weakness of all humans and is not likely to help the interview determine if the candidate is right for the job.

For the second question the character answers that he is likely to be the ancestors to all living humans. As time progresses a human alive today is likely to have three conditions related to the future populations:
1) The have no descendants (the did not reproduce or all their descendants eventually did not reproduce.
2) The have some descendants (the likely outcome)
3) People people alive are their descendant (very unlikely)

As you go farther and farther into the future the ratio of people alive will either go to 0% or 100% of the descendants of the character. The last time humans had an universal common ancestor was ~15,000 years ago. For it to happen again would require a very, very long time and for the character's genes to be far superior and eventually permeate the entire population after generations and generations. While this feat would definitely be considered a great achievement in the biological imperative sense this answer likely does not help the interview determine what his great job strength is.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is shown sitting on a swivel chair, to the left of a desk.]
:Ponytail: What would you say is your biggest weakness?

:[The view expands to show Cueball sitting on another swivel chair, on the opposite side of the desk.]
:Cueball: Probably that I'm a giant tangle of parts that don't always work right, so I can die easily.

:Ponytail: Biggest strength?
:Cueball: There will come a day when I'm either an ancestor to ''all'' living humans, or to ''none'' of them.

:Ponytail: Where do you see yourself in five years?
:Cueball: Probably not the ancestor of all living humans yet. But you never know!

:Title text: Do you need me to do a quicksort on the whiteboard or produce a generation of offspring or something? It might take me a bit, but I can do it.

{{comic discussion}}

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:13:49Z

MerlinMM: /* Transcript */

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:13:07Z

MerlinMM: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1545
| date = July 1, 2015
| title = Strengths and Weaknesses
| image = strengths_and_weaknesses.png
| titletext = Do you need me to do a quicksort on the whiteboard or produce a generation of offspring or something? It might take me a bit, but I can do it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page.}}
Here the character is in a job interview and is being asked the prototypical job interview questions, "What is your greatest weakness?", "What is your greatest strength?" and "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

The character answers that he is essentially a living organism that could die easily. This is a reference the fact that biological system are "messy" and are not always optimal in design or operation. For example cancer is a disease where the cellular machinery that governs cell replications breaks down and prolific cell division happens, endangering the organism (tumors). While this is true weakness it is also a weakness of all humans and is not likely to help the interview determine if the candidate is right for the job.

For the second question the character answers that he is likely to be the ancestors to all living humans. As time progresses a human alive today is likely to have three conditions related to the future populations:
1) The have no descendants (the did not reproduce or all their descendants eventually did not reproduce.
2) The have some descendants (the likely outcome)
3) People people alive are their descendant (very unlikely)

As you go farther and farther into the future the ratio of people alive will either go to 0% or 100% of the descendants of the character. The last time humans had an universal common ancestor was ~15,000 years ago. For it to happen again would require a very, very long time and for the character's genes to be far superior and eventually permeate the entire population after generations and generations. While this feat would definitely be considered a great achievement in the biological imperative sense this answer likely does not help the interview determine what his great job strength is.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is shown sitting on a swivel chair, to the left of a desk.]
:Ponytail: What would you say is your biggest weakness?

:[The view expands to show Cueball sitting on another swivel chair, on the opposite side of the desk.]
:Cueball: Probably that I'm a giant tangle of parts that don't always work right, so I can die easily.

:Ponytail: Biggest strength?
:Cueball: There will come a day when I'm either an ancestor to ''all'' living humans, or to ''none'' of them.

:Ponytail: Where do you see yourself in five years?
:Cueball: Probably not the ancestor of all living humans yet. But you never know!

:Title text: Do you need me to do a quicksort or produce a generation of offspring or something?

{{comic discussion}}

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:08:09Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:07:37Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:05:27Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:02:37Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T15:01:19Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T14:58:01Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T14:56:18Z

MerlinMM:

1545: Strengths and Weaknesses

2015-07-01T14:54:18Z

MerlinMM: