https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=162.158.83.156&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T17:53:19ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1696:_AI_Research&diff=125111Talk:1696: AI Research2016-08-12T12:58:37Z<p>162.158.83.156: add note about lambda calculus</p>
<hr />
<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~--><br />
I'm Australian an I don't know about the "updog" Thing, just sayin' [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.139|162.158.2.139]] 05:15, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:"What's up, Doc?" made me think of Bugs Bunny cartoons. [[User:Ehusmark|EHusmark]] ([[User talk:Ehusmark|talk]]) 07:19, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I'm British and I haven't heard of "updog" either. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.18|141.101.98.18]] 08:29, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Never heard of that in the two years that I lived in England and South Wales. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.93.49|141.101.93.49]] 09:06, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Saw "updoc" (same joke) on an episode of Scrubs once. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.137|141.101.98.137]] 11:34, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I think we've pretty much confirmed that "updog" and similar is not well known in most English-speaking countries. Yay! I was correct after all. (I wrote the first draft for this explanation, which included the question of whether it was or not.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.59|108.162.219.59]] 07:01, 22 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Ok. Added a note about how developed AI tech. is nowadays. That one needs a citation. Also I believe a paragraph about the difference between AI and how computers generally work is called for. AI is built on neural networks to mimic the way human brains work. Computers have a more simplistic design, although it works wonders for number crunching and following programs. This contrasted with AI, which can figure out things on its own (learn) and not having to be told everything. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 17:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Those stupid chatbots that have existed for decades now are *not real* AI. But you could train those to respond in certain ways. It is quite possible this comic makes fun of this. It is also perceivable that an actual AI without sufficient higher-order reasoning would also easily be fooled, although by trial-and-error learning (that is characteristic for AI) it ought to *eventually* figure out that you are bullshitting it, and adjust its behaviour accordingly. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 18:00, 20 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:I thought it might be a reference to teaching the Urban Dictionary to IBM's Watson {{unsigned ip|108.162.250.158}}<br />
<br />
:Oh gods — please don't even mention the Urban Dictionary. A classic example of a good idea gone bad because of little or no moderation. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 09:03, 21 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Part of the joke is that 6 year olds are actually really smart compared to computers. Perhaps it would be easier to pass the Turing test as an adult-like AI then as a child-like AI.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.83.180|162.158.83.180]] 09:20, 21 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Another similar joke was used in the cartoon feature movie "South Park: bigger, longer and uncut", with the word "buttfor". "What's the butt for?" - "For pooping, silly". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.244.73|108.162.244.73]] 05:29, 22 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Is it unimaginable that Randall is hoping for people (who don't know about the joke) to google "What is updog?"? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.139|141.101.104.139]] 12:11, 22 June 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I don’t really like the lambda calculus example. Usually you don’t grant yourself the luxury of natural numbers (you use {{w|Church encoding|Church numbers}} instead), let alone a square operator. Introducing them contradicts the previous point about Lambda calculus’ simplicity. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.83.156|162.158.83.156]] 12:58, 12 August 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.83.156https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1667:_Algorithms&diff=1177121667: Algorithms2016-04-13T10:56:03Z<p>162.158.83.156: Added categories</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1667<br />
| date = April 13, 2016<br />
| title = Algorithms<br />
| image = algorithms.png<br />
| titletext = There was a schism in 2007, when a sect advocating OpenOffice created a fork of Sunday.xlsx and maintained it independently for several months. The efforts to reconcile the conflicting schedules led to the reinvention, within the cells of the spreadsheet, of modern version control.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Still need an explanation of the title text, and perhaps some expanded definitions of the listed algorithms.}}<br />
An algorithm is a basic set of instructions for performing a task, usually on a computer. This comic lists some algorithms in increasing order of complexity.<br />
<br />
At the simplest end is '''left-pad''', or adding filler characters on the left end of a string to make it a particular length. In many programming languages, this is one line of code. This is a reference to a [http://www.haneycodes.net/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how-to-program/ recent incident] when {{w|Npm (software)|NodeJS Package Manager}} [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160324/17160034007/namespaces-intellectual-property-dependencies-big-giant-mess.shtml angered a developer] in its handling of a trademark claim. The developer unpublished all of his modules from NPM, including a package implementing left-pad. A huge number of programs depended on this third-party library instead of programming it on their own, and they immediately ceased to function.<br />
<br />
Next is '''{{w|Quicksort}}''', a classic way to sort a list of items.<br />
<br />
'''{{w|Git (software)|Git}}''' is a version control program, i.e. software that allows multiple people to work on the same files at the same time. When someone finalizes ("commits") their changes, the version control program needs to figure out how to join the new content with the existing content. This process is called '''{{w|Merge (version control)|merging}}''', and the algorithm for it is anything but simple.<br />
<br />
'''{{w|Self-driving car}}''' is what it says on the tin: an automobile with sensors and software built into it so that it can maneuver in traffic autonomously, i.e. without a human controller. Various companies have been working on such vehicles for many years now, and while they're further along now than would have been imaginable even a couple of years ago, we're still far away from the dream of hopping in a driverless taxi and sitting back as the car itself navigates to where we want to be.<br />
<br />
The '''{{w|Google Search}} backend''' is what enables you to type "the heck is a leftpad algorithm" into your browser and have Mr. Google return a list of relevant results, including correcting "leftpad" to "left-pad", ignoring the "what the heck" part, and sometimes even summarizing the findings into a box at the top of the results. Behind all that magic is a way to remember what pages the internet contains, which is just a mind-bogglingly large quantity of data, and an even more mind-numbingly complex set of algorithms for processing that data.<br />
<br />
The last item is the punchline: a sprawling {{w|Microsoft Excel|Excel}} {{w|spreadsheet}} built up over 20 years by a church group in Nebraska to coordinate their scheduling. Spreadsheets are a general {{w|end-user development}} programming technique, and therefore people use Excel for all sorts of purposes that have nothing to do with accounting (its original purpose), including one guy who made a [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/how-an-accountant-created-an-entire-rpg-inside-an-excel-spreadsheet/ role-playing game that runs in Excel]; but even that doesn't approach the complexity that develops when multiple people of varying levels of experience use a spreadsheet over many years for the purpose of coordinating the schedule of several coordinated groups. <br />
<br />
The scheduling of tasks over a group of resources (a.k.a. the ''{{w|nurse scheduling problem}}''), while respecting the constraints set by each person, is a {{w|NP-hardness|highly complex}} problem requiring stochastic or heuristic methods for its resolution. Here, the algorithm would be further complicated by being solved by inexpert users over a spreadsheet model without using engineering practices. The hyperbole here is in thinking that such combination of circumstances would produce complexity far over that required to drive a car or sort the public contents of the internet. A church always meets on Sunday morning, so there's no actual complexity in organizing that service, however, with different members involved in a wide variety of activities within and without the church, and the classrooms available to the church on Sunday itself, (just scheduling the choir practice times to coordinate with every ones work schedules is very possibly impossible, especially if two people share the same occupation, and one is the relief for the other,) can indeed be daunting.<br />
<br />
In the title text, part of the spreadsheet's complexity is described as originating from different versions of the file for different programs. The words used like schism and sect are normally used in context of religions splitting into groups about differences in believe questions. This refers on one hand to the church group handling the spreadsheet. But in this case the group split up over the use of open source software and not believe questions. On the other hand discussions on open source software are sometimes led like religious debates.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
'''Algorithms'''<br>By Complexity<br />
{|<br />
|colspan="6" style="text-align:left;border-bottom:1px solid;"|More complex &rarr;<br />
|- style="vertical-align:top;"<br />
|style="padding-right:2em;"|Leftpad<br />
|style="padding-right:2em;"|Quicksort<br />
|style="padding-right:2em;"|GIT<br>Merge<br />
|style="padding-right:2em;"|Self-<br>driving<br>car<br />
|style="padding-right:8em;"|Google<br>Search<br>backend<br />
|Sprawling Excel spreadsheet<br>built up over 20 years by a<br>church group in Nebraska to<br>coordinate their scheduling<br />
|}<br />
<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
<!-- Include any categories below this line. --><br />
[[Category:Charts]]<br />
[[Category:Google Search]]<br />
[[Category:Programming]]</div>162.158.83.156https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1663:_Garden&diff=116354Talk:1663: Garden2016-04-04T23:15:24Z<p>162.158.83.156: /* Linux */</p>
<hr />
<div>===Finally Garden is up on xkcd===<br />
It is here the comic we have been waiting for, and it seems it is a April fool comic although it first came out past midnight in all of the US except Hawaii...<br />
:I do not know when it will be on this page but for those impatient... <br />
:[[File:Garden Loading screen shot.png]]<br />
:It says to Relax, while it loads, but it will eventually get to a barren land with a growth lamp that can be moved:<br />
:[[File:Garden Lamp screen shot.png]]<br />
:The lamp can be moved and change color.<br />
:[[File:Garden Red Lamp screen shot.png]]<br />
:It may be there will be something growing if we wait long enough?<br />
:And there will be more lamps and new items:<br />
:[[File:Garden Three Lamp screen shot.png]]<br />
:Yes he is messing with us for sure but at least not by not making a comic :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:46, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
::I succeeded to get a small plant, but I'm not sure how. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.167|162.158.86.167]] 10:16, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
:::Try not to cover everything with every light wavelength. I'm sure you get different plants with different wavelengths: <br />
:::[[File:aprilfool-2016-xorg.png]]<br />
:::Also, I've noticed a constant cpu usage, indicating some kind of number crunching. The script's name "linden" reminded me of linden dollars and crowdsourcing bitcoin mining with javascript, but afair linden dollars were never mined nor based on cryptography. -- [[User:Xorg|Xorg]] ([[User talk:Xorg|talk]]) 10:30, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
::::"Linden" is probably a reference to the Linden trees, a genus (Latin name Tilia). It would make more sense than a reference to dollars, at least. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.135.57|162.158.135.57]] 12:14, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
:::::My first thought were {{w|Lindenmayer system}}s --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.240|198.41.242.240]] 16:29, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
:::Ok, it's *moving*. The leaves wobble in the wind. That explains the cpu usage. So far I have seen the following images: <code>asdfx2=""; for (asdfx in garden.linden.imgCache.imgs) { asdfx2 += asdfx+" "; } asdfx2<br />
<br />
"http://xkcd.com/1663/art/background.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/talltrunk-2.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/shrub-8.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/wavyplant-3.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/turtle-1.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/shrub-6.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/birdbath.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/cactus-2.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/trunk-6.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/branch-11.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/branch-18.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/woman-1a.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/branch-21.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/rover.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/leaves-7.png http://xkcd.com/1663/art/leaves-6.png "<br />
</code> -- [[User:Xorg|Xorg]] ([[User talk:Xorg|talk]]) 12:10, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
For those who are in https (with firefox for example) and don't see the "comic", there is mixed content. Click on the padlock on the up-left corner, then on the arrow, then "disable the protection against not secure elements" (or something like that). [[User:Seipas|Seipas]] ([[User talk:Seipas|talk]]) 11:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The comic is finally here! ... but it won't load on my computer. Does anybody know what the problem might be or how I can fix it? [[User:Soad Kraken|Soad Kraken]] ([[User talk:Soad Kraken|talk]]) 12:45, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Does not load (continually Loading...) on IE/FF/Chrome for me (in UK, non-https, ad-blockers turned off) any ideas? {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.114}}<br />
<br />
Loads for me in Chrome, but then every time it refreshes, it resets the lamps to the default (one lamp in center). Removes the ones I added. Does this happen to anyone else? [[User:Vixy|Vixy]] ([[User talk:Vixy|talk]]) 16:51, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Did someone try the debugmode?<br />
:http://xkcd.com/1663/?debug#YourCode<br />
<br />
It also logs data in the console<br />
[[User:Magno|Magno]] ([[User talk:Magno|talk]]) 12:51, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Post new images here: [[1663: Garden/Images]]. Anyone know what happens to the site, it looks really weird and it is difficult to use the site now. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 13:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== April Fools? ==<br />
<br />
What's the evidence that this is an April Fools comic? I think that the April Fools joke this year was the absence of a comic, and all the silly excuses about it when it was never coming. [[User:JoDu987|JoDu987]] ([[User talk:JoDu987|talk]]) 15:48, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
:It's interactive. April Fools comics are always interactive. Normal comics rarely are. [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 16:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
::I would rather say that it is also an april fool's comic because it came late. But first of all it has the pointless but time consuming concept of user input resulting in a comic that has no joke in it self, or at least only user made. Second the comic is rather complex and doesn't seem to work on all browsers. I cannot make it work on my explorer at home, but it did work at my office. It seems likely that he has worked very hard t make this work. When he then had problems with it Friday, he may have taken the chance of using April 1st to make excuses that people could read as being an April fool's joke. But neither way, he tells in the status updates that we are awaiting a complex comic, and in the end he said that the Friday comic (from April 1st) would come Sunday evening, and it did, so this is Fridays comic and thus also April the 1st's comic. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Mobile ==<br />
<br />
Like many of the dynamic comics, Garden doesn't interact well with mobile devices, but I have found a workaround for this one. On my Android tablet, going to m.xkcd.com/1663 gives me a page where I can manipulate the lights - tap once on a light to reveal the handles, tap in whitespace to hide them - but the landscape and growth are not rendered.<br />
<br />
But, as I manipulate the lights, a string is appended to the URL; if I replace the initial '''m''' with '''www''' while preserving this string, I get a page where the landscape and growth are displayed. But from this page, I cannot manipulate the lights. But it does appear that the string includes enough information to prevent "losing progress", as several iterations of swapping between the mobile and desktop URLs retained all existing growth. Therefore, some level of timestamp information may also be included in the composition of this string. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.73|108.162.216.73]] 14:18, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:Actually, it doesn't look like the URL changes when I move the lights after all. So now instead I'm guessing it's more of a unique identifier or something. If two people both use the same string, will one person's act of moving a light be reflected by the other user refreshing their browser? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.73|108.162.216.73]] 14:33, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Resets ==<br />
<br />
Resets occur sporadically, because they are actually happenning when there was a connection_error event in the WebWorker. The "game" is continually contacting the server (linden.xkcd.com) and is resetting the page on the connection errors. The fact that this resets the progress is probably a bug. --[[User:DukeBG|DukeBG]] ([[User talk:DukeBG|talk]]) 16:52, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Linux ==<br />
<br />
Anyone else NOT able to get it to work on Linux. Tried Chrome, and FF, both with all extensions disabled. Linux Mint (like Ubuntu). Constantly says "Loading..."<br />
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.217|162.158.214.217]] 17:23, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
You're not the only one. Running Unbuntu 12.04. Opera displays "Loading ..." for over 30 minutes. Firefox finishes loading and I can add and tweak lamps, but nothing grows.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.59|108.162.218.59]] 19:32, 4 April 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Works fine with chromium on gentoo.<br />
<br />
== Available "plants" ==<br />
<br />
<strike>I've got a Megan so far. Are we going to try to compile a list of what things will grow in the garden? --[[User:KingStarscream|KingStarscream]] ([[User talk:KingStarscream|talk]]) 19:06, 4 April 2016 (UTC)</strike><br />
: Oversight on my part. Apologies. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.64|173.245.52.64]] 19:18, 4 April 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.83.156https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1663:_Garden&diff=1162681663: Garden2016-04-04T12:36:54Z<p>162.158.83.156: /* Explanation */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1663<br />
| date = April 4, 2016<br />
| title = Garden<br />
| image = aprilfool-2016-xorg.png<br />
| titletext = Relax.<br />
}}<br />
<!-- | image = garden.png --><br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
If you leave the lights on and wait (or relax) then the trees start to grow slowly.<br />
Every amount of time the image will refresh.<br />
You can change the amount of lights, position, direction, beam width of each and the frequency from red to purple.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[There is a web applet with up to three adjustable lights over a patch of dirt. Two buttons in the top right corner let you add another light, or remove objects. If you wait, something (a plant, an animal, ...) will grow.]<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Dynamic comics]]<br />
[[Category:April fools' comics]]</div>162.158.83.156