2608: Family Reunion

2022-04-21T20:17:36Z

XkcdIsGood: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2608
| date = April 18, 2022
| title = Family Reunion
| image = family_reunion.png
| titletext = Grandma says that because of differences in primate and feline lifespans, the cat is actually my 17,000,000th cousin 14,000,000 times removed.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE PERSON WHO'S RELATIVE IS A CAT AND A HUMAN(WHOOPS) - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Because all humans are descended from a {{w|Mitochondrial Eve|common ancestor}}, every human is, at some point, related to every other human, albeit distantly. Similarly, all life forms on Earth are presumed (with good reasons) to be descended from a single {{w|Most recent common ancestor|even more distant relative}} whose ultimate lineage {{w|Last universal common ancestor|became more relevant}} than any from its own 'cousins' at the time, and thus ''all'' life forms are distantly related. This makes every interaction with another life-form, technically, a family reunion, if not in the traditional sense.

The general English definition of a {{w|cousin}}, which is a person sharing an ancestor who is not a direct parent of either party, can be qualified by two numbers. There is the ''n''th-ness of the relationship (the fewest generations you need to go beyond one's parentage, "a first cousin" implies that a grandparent is the key link) - for example, [[Cueball|this Cueball's]] relation to [[White Hat]] is via a great-grandparent, whilst that with [[Hairbun]] is through a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent. A "removed" number is any difference in this number between the two individuals, such that a child of a direct cousin invokes a "once removed" relationship between the two (without individually qualifying who is the 'senior' generation, from whom the 'nth' count is determined). You would normally only qualify "first cousin" if this fact is considered important, and "zero times removed" would also be considered implicit.

As pointed out in the title text, cat lifespans (or, more importantly, inter-generational breeding cycles) are somewhat different from those of humans. Although they would have still been very similar immediately after the divergence from the appropriate MRCA, the differences will have built up to a generational-count displacement of a similarly extreme nature. i.e. that while the shared ancestor is Cueball's 17-million-or-so-Great Grandparent, the cat is in turn the 31-million-or-so-Great Grandchild. Exactly how accurate, or even precise, Randall considers these numbers is unknown, but it is the kind of fact that we know he likes to research and use expert opinion for.

According to [https://www.quora.com/How-many-generations-of-human-beings-recognizably-the-same-as-us-have-there-been this Quora page], there have been about 13,000 generations of modern humans, so the people at this party would be quite closely related, all things considered.

[https://www.evogeneao.com/en/learn/tree-of-life The Evogeneao Tree of Life diagram] indicates that humans and cats diverged around 90 million years ago and humans and plants diverged around 1.8 billion years ago.

If we presume that generations of humans (including proto-humans, pre-humans, etc) since the divergence from cathood (including proto-cats, pre-cats, and the rest, back to the common ancestral form) have averaged around 5 years, then a 17 millionth cousin may be about right. Many of our (and cats') early ancestors will have necessarily been small burrowing mammals — to have been amongst the ones who survived the asteroid around 66 million years ago that killed off most of the dinosaurs — with contemporary equivalents having breeding cycles in terms of a year at the most. But we currently have a large feasible range of generational cycle (15-50 years, ''very'' roughly, with or without technical/social help or hinderances), that may have started to drag our long-term average upwards since at least the age of the early hominids, if not the age of our primate forebears or earlier.

To get a 50 billionth cousin from the potted plant, then the generations of (eventually) humans since we were of the same form as that time's ancestral plants (or vice-versa) would need to average two weeks. This is possible, but difficult to be precise about due to the lack of much of the required evidence in the known fossilized remains.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon. Like seriously, don't}}

:[Megan, White Hat, Cueball, Hairy, Danish, a cat, Hairbun, a chair, and a potted plant on a cabinet are "standing" in a line. White Hat is holding a cup and Hairy has his hands to the side. There are arrows pointing to each of the living creatures.]

:14th cousin [Megan]
:2nd cousin [White Hat]
:Me [Cueball]
:12th cousin [Hairy]
:35th cousin [Danish]
:17,000,000th cousin [cat]
:9th cousin [Hairbun]
:50,000,000,000th cousin [potted plant]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Really, ''every'' gathering is a family reunion.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Cats]]
[[Category:Biology]]

Talk:1200: Authorization

2022-03-20T16:47:07Z

XkcdIsGood:

I find it funny at first because I thought Randall hates his brother, so he set it to switch to his brothers to let other people hack randall's BROTHER's account instead of his. [[User:XkcdIsGood|XkcdIsGood]] ([[User talk:XkcdIsGood|talk]]) 16:47, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

This is the reason that I set sudo to not prompt for a password. I just make sure my computer locks itself aggressively. [[Special:Contributions/130.18.105.246|130.18.105.246]] 06:59, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The admin account should still be guarded EXACTLY for the ability to install drivers. The driver you don't want to have installed is keylogger stealing your passwords. I mean, you don't have your bank password remembered in browser, do you? Still, auto-logout or auto-lock is important feature. You should also set-up and use separate account for high-risk activities (like opening emails from unknown persons promising naked celebrities ... ok, you actually shouldn't be opening such emails at all, but if you are really curious ...). -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 09:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

:Even if you can log into your bank account, you could not transfer money without authorizing transactions. [[User:BKA|BKA]] ([[User talk:BKA|talk]]) 11:23, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
::My bank account website logs me out if I'm inactive for 10 minutes. It doesn't even leave the page up, it switches to a login screen. [[Special:Contributions/24.77.229.71|24.77.229.71]] 14:35, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
:I wonder how useful a keylogger would be if you never typed a username or e-mail to go with the password. Every important account I have has that remembered, and I just type the password. It sounds like it would be zero context. [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 15:09, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
::Except usernames tend to be reasonably easy to figure. E-mails certainly are what with folks tending to broadcast their e-mail addresses to everyone. So passwords, although also often not overly difficult to crack (http://xkcd.com/936/), remain the part not generally known. Not worrying about a keylogger picking up a password, even "out of context" would be a mistake. [[Special:Contributions/67.51.59.66|67.51.59.66]] 17:11, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
:::Also, modern keyloggers (despite still being called keyloggers) also capture screen and mouse movement. They are perfectly able to record a password entered by clicking on keyboard on screen and many other ideas tried to complicate keylogging. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 22:48, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, for many years popular operating systems such as MS Windows did *not* have separate security for system administration, which made it very popular for the propagation of viruses and other malware. And once it was introduced, it wasn't enforced for many years. Only relatively recently this is happening, and still viruses, trojan horses and botnets thrive, because it is slightly inconvenient for the user to act safe(r). [[Special:Contributions/213.84.74.36|213.84.74.36]] 13:13, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

Not agree with Randall on this one. Laptop stealing is very physical, there are way to keep people from physically able to use our active login session, such as make sure the laptop is physically secured when possible, make sure the screen locked out when we are away (we can automate that using bluetooth detection), etc. Root password protect another kind of attack, generally more clandestine one, such as trojan and rootkit installations, which can be more dangerous as we may not be aware it is there. [[User:Arifsaha|Arifsaha]] ([[User talk:Arifsaha|talk]]) 17:06, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Not going to agree. I use lastpass for passwords, have every (important) site protected with 2fac, and firefox wipe all my userdata everytime I close it, so even if a keylogger is installed, or they have physical access to my device, they can't get to my personal information. So that covers Facebook, Gmail, Paypal, and the Bank. Everything else is encrypted

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2608: Family Reunion

Talk:1200: Authorization