https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=141.101.77.232&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-19T09:57:07ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1085:_ContextBot&diff=2195211085: ContextBot2021-10-20T11:50:20Z<p>141.101.77.232: /* Explanation */ nobody said it was a full stack</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1085<br />
| date = July 23, 2012<br />
| title = ContextBot<br />
| image = contextbot.png<br />
| titletext = If you read all vaguebooking/vaguetweeting with the assumption that they're saying everything they can without revealing classified military information, the internet gets way more exciting.<br />
}}<br />
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==Explanation==<br />
This comic is a commentary on the practice of [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vaguebooking "vaguebooking"] or [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vaguetweeting "vaguetweeting"], which is posting a short message of sadness or frustration without context. This is frustrating and emotionally trying to readers because it implies something serious has happened that requires friends to provide emotional support, but may also be something trivial, and with no context it is impossible to determine whether one should worry or not. <br />
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Google has been criticized more than a few times for keeping rather extensive data records on its users, who by this point constitute most of the internet, enough to cause serious damage if Google wasn't historically altruistic (as altruistic as a for-profit company can be). In the comic, ContextBot is a fictitious Google invention which puts context for these statuses, presumably based on all that personal data which Google has collected:<br />
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*The first response is pretty self-explanatory: the original poster wants to use the Internet while on the toilet, but can't get a {{w|wi-fi}} signal there.<br />
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*The second response is about a bad {{w|torrent file}} the original poster downloaded. A ''torrent'' is a way to download files from a lot of different sources at the same time, thereby speeding up the process; it is typically used for large downloads such as movies, games, or Linux software distributions. Fake torrents exist, which usually contain an encrypted {{w|.rar}} file which requires a password to open. To get the password, you usually need to go through a survey via the link supplied in the torrent; in some situations, you even need to pay in order to get the password. Even after that, it's quite likely that the .rar file just contains trash files, instead of the download you wanted.<br />
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*The third response is about an xkcd favorite, ''{{w|Minecraft}}'', which has been [[:Category:Minecraft|referenced multiple times]] in xkcd comics. Diamonds are a very valuable resource in the game, and lava destroys most item dropped into it- including diamonds. A "stack" of diamond can be up to 64 individual diamonds, because most items (including diamonds) can only be stacked to a maximum of 64 in vanilla minecraft (some items can only be stacked to 16, or even can't be stacked at all). The 64 diamonds would likely represent the fruit of several hours (or days) mining. Alt+Tab is the default keybinding on most OSes to switch to a different program, while the default keybinding to drop an item in Minecraft is the Q key, which is immediately next to the Tab key on QWERTY-style keyboards. Thus, it would be easy to accidentally drop an item while meaning to switch windows using the keyboard.<br />
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*The fourth response is about how the original poster mistook the grapes as being seedless. Grape seeds taste really bitter and are uncomfortable when swallowed; this is even more annoying when the seeds are unexpected.<br />
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As noted by the subtitle, ContextBot is considered a great good by everyone who was sick of vaguebooking. This also redeems Google's practice of all those data records in the public's eye.<br />
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In the ContextBot's avatar image, three people can be seen together hanging out. But the image is about to be cropped, leaving out the third person and therefore giving the impression that the two people in the cropped image are there without that person. This demonstrates how ''context'' is important to understanding a situation.<br />
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The title text refers to the cryptic ways in which someone with sensitive information must communicate. While most vaguebooking/vaguetweeting is about things of little importance, the title text implies that the things not mentioned impact national/global security. This implies that many tweets may actually be related to high-clearance military and or national security information, but must be vague in order to keep it secret, and if you take that as the context, then the internet suddenly becomes much more exciting.<br />
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==Transcript==<br />
:[A social network feed with four status updates from four different people with profile picture. Each status has an arrow going down and right to a reply underneath them, all from the same account, which is called ContextBot. It also has a profile picture with three people standing behind a see-through material with a hole in it. The person on the left is not behind the part with hole and is thus completely greyed out. The other two only have their legs covered, the rest is thus not greyed out because it is behind the hole. The left is a Cueball, the middle may have glasses, and the right has hair. Below them is a black band in which the name ContextBot is written in white.]<br />
:Close-up face with hair and glasses: The things I put up with...<br />
:ContextBot: (His building's WiFi doesn't reach the bathroom.)<br />
:Cueball and Megan holding each other: You'd think by now I'd have learned never to trust anyone.<br />
:ContextBot: (She downloaded a torrent that turned out to be an encrypted .rar and a link to a survey.)<br />
:Blondie: I officially give up.<br />
:ContextBot: (She hit alt-tab to hide Minecraft at work and accidentally dropped a stack of diamond into lava.)<br />
:Hairy: Sighhhh<br />
:ContextBot: (He thought these grapes were seedless.)<br />
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:[Caption below the panel]<br />
:Everyone stopped complaining about Google's data-gathering when they launched ContextBot, a system which replies to vague, enigmatic social network posts with context from the poster's life.<br />
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{{comic discussion}}<br />
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[[Category:Social networking]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Minecraft]]</div>141.101.77.232https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1834:_Lunch_Order&diff=219428Talk:1834: Lunch Order2021-10-18T18:21:43Z<p>141.101.77.232: </p>
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<div>First! Hee Hee... Anyways... I've been waiting for the site to come back up to find out about "the time autocorrect stopped a nuclear war"... I was sure any such potential war would have been years ago (which this description confirmed), so any such saving would technically be a typo or a mere misspelling and not autocorrect, but I figured that's what this meant. Seeing the explanation now, is this situation just a hypothetical from Randall? The comic is just portraying that? (I didn't make the launch/lunch connection until now, I can only see the title text on this site, which was down) :) - NiceGuy1 [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.16|108.162.219.16]] 21:31, 12 May 2017 (UTC) I finally signed up! This comment is mine. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:51, 13 June 2017 (UTC)<br />
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It might be a long shot, according to wikipedia WarGames the movie released on May 7th 1983. 34 years and a day before this comic was posted (IMDB state May 19th 1983 as the release date). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.72|141.101.105.72]]<br />
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The premise could have originated with this short-lived Saturday-morning TV program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Out_Space_Nuts [[User:Elsbree|Elsbree]] ([[User talk:Elsbree|talk]]) 16:10, 16 May 2017 (UTC)<br />
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A chem professor I know once gave a presentation on "Monomers, ''dinners'' and polymers". [[User:Nialpxe|Nialpxe]] ([[User talk:Nialpxe|talk]]) 14:23, 19 May 2017 (UTC)<br />
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This is obviously referring to a russian submarine in the cold war. America had litarally blocked cuba off using boats and russia was coming to help cuba. Russian submarines were allowed to launch torpedos when hit. One submarine was reported to have heard a loud noise but did decide not to shoot. In the end russia couldnt take the pressure anymore and had to admit america had more balls. The fact the submarine didnt shoot prevented a WWIII<br />
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Okay....here's a comment added weeks later...."Go for covfefe. Repeat. Go for covfefe!"<br />
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In Russian, similar missle-related pun will be "приказ пукать" as replacement for "приказ пускать". oke is, "пукать" is the infinitve of verb whih means "to fart". Приступите к пуку, повторяю, приступите к пуку<br />
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pedantic: you could also have a 'Launch (the product) order' (esp. when word gets out that a competitor product's time table has been sped up. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.232|141.101.77.232]] 18:21, 18 October 2021 (UTC)</div>141.101.77.232https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:702:_Snow_Tracking&diff=218963Talk:702: Snow Tracking2021-10-07T17:31:21Z<p>141.101.77.232: </p>
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<div>The title-text could also be a reference to Bugs Bunny, many episodes had such play-on-words as title.<br />
("A witch's tangled hare", "A Feather in his Hare", "Compressed Hare", many more...) {{unsigned|Gegueure}}<br />
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It could be mentioned that the Higgs signature shown is probably a Higgs->top anti-top/bottom anti-bottom->jet-jet signature, and most certainly not the clearest observed channel right now of Higgs->gamma gamma (as there is no neutral signature, which would be a track appearing some from the center, and there are clearly two jets to be seen). This is a difficult channel to observe, and is much more important in higher Higgs mass regions than the now observed, where b-bbar is present, but gamma gamma is much easyer to observe.[[Special:Contributions/85.164.251.29|85.164.251.29]] 13:11, 24 August 2013 (UTC)<br />
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Velociraptors are suspiciously missing from this comic... [[User:SuperSupermario24|<span style="color: #c21aff;">Just some random derp</span>]] 19:18, 27 June 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I first thought of the Beverly Cleary mouse books too, but Ralph S. Mouse rode a motorcycle, not a bicycle. {{unsigned ip|162.158.74.106}}<br />
: Could it be a reference to Biker Mice From Mars? --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.31|141.101.105.31]] 08:05, 9 December 2016 (UTC)<br />
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I don't understand the knight tracks. They appear to move the same distance forward as they do to the side. Knights can't move like that.<br />
:The knight didn't have much to orientate with, so his mental checkerboard could easily have overspun.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.232|141.101.77.232]] 17:31, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
The Knight Tracks panel represents a series of knight hops, rather than a single move.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.121|162.158.107.121]] 21:29, 17 December 2020 (UTC)<br />
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The Higgs Boson frame is significantly different from all the others because it represents an image from a cloud chamber not tracks in snow. [[User:Brenda|Brenda]] ([[User talk:Brenda|talk]]) 09:15, 16 June 2018 (UTC)<br />
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Which was is the bicycle going? There is a way to figure it out. Someone help 23:27, 3 December 2018 (UTC)<br />
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The Prius isn't a reference to dodgy pedals, but the drivers being horrible themselves. As you can see here, the car VEERS off the road. It does not brake, nor speed up.</div>141.101.77.232https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2525:_Air_Travel_Packing_List&diff=218942Talk:2525: Air Travel Packing List2021-10-07T13:13:53Z<p>141.101.77.232: </p>
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<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
I'll work on this one, so I don't get edit conflicted. {{User:PoolloverNathan/Signature}} 23:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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A lot of these items that are listed as needed during a crash are not that related to crashing but some things that paranoid potential passengers feel they should have anyway. [[User:Nutster|Nutster]] ([[User talk:Nutster|talk]]) 02:04, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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I had a teacher that was a retired engineer. He complained about working on an airplane and he wanted to design a lightweight floor, but the heel of high heeled shoes would pierce through so he had to make it heaver than he wanted. One can imagine an alternate world where the lighter floors were chosen, where airplane shoes would be some kind of pressure distributing shoe.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.42.125|172.69.42.125]] 02:32, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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I think that the Flag for international flights is referring to a national flag not to a flag used for signaling messages. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.187.208|162.158.187.208]] 03:20, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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Pedantry corner: parachutes don't keep you from falling out of the sky - they help you land safer when you do. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.95|162.158.159.95]] 08:21, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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The mouthpiece may be a COVID-19 slur, referring to the requirement to cover your mouth -- [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.83|162.158.90.83]] 09:02, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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"so you can attract birds, and use THEM to fly the plane in case of crash" - What does that even mean? [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 11:01, 7 October 2021 (UTC)<br />
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Some of those items could be from the computer game "Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zak_McKracken_and_the_Alien_Mindbenders<br />
Seat Cushion, Birdseed, Parachute.<br />
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My first interpretation of the mouthpiece and trumpet was an early style telephone that had a separate mouthpiece and trumpet style earpiece.</div>141.101.77.232