https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=162.158.89.193&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T14:21:14ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2317:_Pinouts&diff=193104Talk:2317: Pinouts2020-06-09T08:22:15Z<p>162.158.89.193: </p>
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Can we add this one to a new category, "Comics that Randall makes just to screw with xkcd wiki contributors"? I can think of plenty of candidates for this category! [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 21:42, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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The claim that a coax has only one conductive part is incorrect. It has two. The pin is the inner conductor. The shield is the outer conductor. Without both it wouldn't work.<br />
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I'd also say that the claim at the top that a pin can have only one bit or one voltage of power at a time is incorrect. Power over Ethernet is a perfect example of power and data at the same time. There are also plenty of types of signals which transmit multiple bits at once. A simple example would be a signal using four voltage levels to transmit two bits simultaneously, but there are many more fancy analog encodings that use phase and frequency and other characteristics to transmit data. Plus, you can often included two signals on the same conductors. For example, ADSL combined a normal phone signal and a higher frequency data signal on the same lines. Also cable TV combined many signals on one set of conductors.<br />
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So, anyway, I'd remove the claim.<br />
[[User:Mootstrap|Mootstrap]] ([[User talk:Mootstrap|talk]]) 23:00, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
:Just because it’s interesting: DCC with RailCom+ allows some cool stuff. It allows many-to-many high-power power transmission, robust many-to-many bidirectional data transmission, hot-swap with automatic configuration and collision resolution, physical position tracking of the connected devices, some way of short-circuit resolution with continued communication, mixing with other protocols, and all with only two pins, which may be arbitrarily interchanged at any time. Admittedly it has a much lower data rate than Power over Ethernet and terrible EMI, but potentially ''much'' higher power. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.193|162.158.89.193]] 08:22, 9 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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For that matter, the RF cable connecting a regular TV antenna, or the wire in a car that connects the radio antenna, carries the signals of all the channels.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.65|172.69.33.65]] 02:20, 9 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I think "Pin Roulette" is a pun on [[wikipedia:Penn Jillette|Penn Jillette]], the talkative half of the [[wikipedia:Penn & Teller|Penn & Teller]] magic act, and maybe also a reference to [[wikipedia:chatroulette|chatroulette]]. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:10, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
:Possible, but I'd stick with the simple explanation - that the "Pin Roulette" pin selects a random function when the connector's plugged in. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.64|108.162.245.64]] 23:18, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
::Modern conectors additionally tend to have multi-purpose pins, which might be dangerous if you guess the current meaning of the pin wrong.[[User:Gunterkoenigsmann|Gunterkoenigsmann]] ([[User talk:Gunterkoenigsmann|talk]]) 06:15, 9 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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In addition to pins being able to carry both data and power, or to carry multiple bits at a time, some pins function as clock signal pins that indicate bit boundaries rather than themselves carrying data; therefore I also think the claim should be either omitted or changed entirely.<br />
[[User:Vaedez|Vaedez]] ([[User talk:Vaedez|talk]]) 23:33, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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Firstly, no [[1293|Soup]]? Secondly, [https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/GNDN GNDN] might easily have been referenced. Thirdly, would a pin made of solder melt, as pins connected to wires/boards ''by'' solder do not melt the solder (under proper range of use). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.158|141.101.107.158]] 23:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
:i think the implication is that it ''could'' melt, which is a trap--[[User:Vaedez|Vaedez]] ([[User talk:Vaedez|talk]]) 23:48, 8 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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Perhaps we should add the actual usage of the pins to help those who actually want to know? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.245|162.158.62.245]] 00:08, 9 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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Wouldn't 3.3eV/C be a tiny fraction of 3.3V, since a columb is a much greater value of charge than that of the electron?--[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.203|172.69.63.203]] 00:24, 9 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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Depending on how you read it, the third pin from the top might match the 120V AC. This would make it a different kind of "tribute" to FireWire... [[User:Ehusmark|EHusmark]] ([[User talk:Ehusmark|talk]]) 07:52, 9 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
:AFAIK FireWire allows many-to-many communication, while USB never did. The FireWire tribute pin could be a way to establish many-to-many communication. Alternatively, FireWire allows daisy-chaining, while USB supports only a tree network trough hubs. The FireWire pin could be somehow physically strange, so a second USB-C cable could be connected to it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.193|162.158.89.193]] 08:22, 9 June 2020 (UTC)</div>162.158.89.193https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2313:_Wrong_Times_Table&diff=192720Talk:2313: Wrong Times Table2020-06-01T16:27:41Z<p>162.158.89.193: </p>
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Such an illogical table. Smaller numbers multiply to larger answers than larger numbers? Even numbers multiply to odd numbers?! How?!?! What sort of illiterate alien declared this to be the multiplication table?! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.101|108.162.221.101]] 20:54, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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This is easily one of the worst XKCD comics, period. Not funny, nor clever. Just seems like noise. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.183|172.69.68.183]] 20:57, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
:I suspect Randall may have just been feeling random, perhaps after several months of mostly Coronavirus-related comics. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 21:13, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
::That's fair, I'm being a bit harsh, but this just comes across as exceptionally meaningless and contrived, so much so that I felt the need to come here and comment immediately for the first time ever [[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.56|172.69.71.56]] 21:18, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
:I relate to certain mathematical facts not sounding right, like how 54 intuitively feels like it's divisible by 4. Nonsensical, but makes sense anyway. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.233|162.158.62.233]] 21:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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This seems like the multiplication equivalent of looking at a word and thinking it is spelled incorrectly. Sometimes I look at a simple word like "fish" and think: "That can't be right." Sometimes multiplication can feel that way, particularly 7's because those were tricky for some reason. The alt text confirms fishiness with 7's [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.173|108.162.246.173]] 21:09, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
:Is it weird that I ''don't'' get this? I have this sense of "that is obviously wrong" when it comes to multiplication of small numbers like these, even with sevens and eights. If I read that 7 * 8 = 54, my brain screams "NOOOOOOOOO IT IS 56 YOU IDIOT!". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.101|108.162.221.101]] 21:14, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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Well, 2,2 that's actually 2^3=8. 2,3 is addition instead of multiplication. 1,2 is division instead of multiplication. 1,1 is subtraction. 10,10 seems to be a visual gag, though most of the 10s row is either multiplication by 11 or 12... There's some logic to some of these, but it's different for each row, column, or cell. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.167|162.158.74.167]] 21:13, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
:Yeah, there is something going on. It looks like a lot of it is remembering the correct answer to a different problem. By my count 55 squares are the correct answer to a square next to it and 31 have a correct answer for somewhere else on the grid. Also, 2*2, 4*4 and 5*5 are double the correct answer.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.76|108.162.245.76]] 21:41, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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It's almost disappointing that he didn't hide one or two asymmetries in there just to throw us off! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.114|108.162.216.114]] 22:04, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I get the idea that this is the sort of table you'd get if you tried to train an Adversarial AI from scratch to determine x*y purely by stocastic guessing and comparing to a co-evolving 'scorer' that also starts off naively but supports each answer according to the 'rightness' it thinks it has ''except'' for the real answer which is always hard-coded to be down-scored. (Also noting that DA reportedly came by his choice of 42 by asking people which numbers were 'funnier' than others, which can be said to be a similar kind of process but without the arrayed "original multiplication" element.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.179|162.158.158.179]] 22:13, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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As someone who often confuses 7*8 as 54, I found the alt text very humorous. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.118|172.69.34.118]] 22:29, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I'm disappointed to see that 6*9 isn't equal to 42. [[User:Probably not Douglas Hofstadter|Probably not Douglas Hofstadter]] ([[User talk:Probably not Douglas Hofstadter|talk]]) 23:01, 29 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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This is just a collection of equations with the wrong answers. I'm not sure who finds this funny. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.96|108.162.219.96]] 00:33, 30 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1210:_I%27m_So_Random[[User:Overlord of oddities|Overlord of oddities]] ([[User talk:Overlord of oddities|talk]]) 01:16, 30 May 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I have asked [https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/205425/67157 a Code Golf Stack Exchange question] with the goal of producing the shortest program that computes this function. [[User:Aaron Rotenberg|Aaron Rotenberg]] ([[User talk:Aaron Rotenberg|talk]]) 02:29, 30 May 2020 (UTC) @Aaron I had a similar thought, but was going to settle for the generator function for the main diagonal. If we can come up with one, we should submit it to https://oeis.org/ [[User:Cellocgw|Cellocgw]] ([[User talk:Cellocgw|talk]]) 13:30, 1 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I'm disappointed that 17 does not show up in any product cell, seeing as I've known since at least 1970 that 17 is the world's most random number. <-- a fact proved for a limited case here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JPSJL7Kvus [[User:Cellocgw|Cellocgw]] ([[User talk:Cellocgw|talk]]) 13:35, 1 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I too was unimpressed with this... unitl I got to the alt text. I'm in my sixties now, and for some reason, 8*7 has ALWAYS been difficult for me. I find myself always doube-checking to make sure I did it right. And 6*7 gave me problems too, but I got over that a few decades ago. I wonder what it is about those that gave us trouble. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.75|162.158.62.75]] 14:35, 1 June 2020 (UTC)<br />
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I do not believe that the table was constructed rationally, but intuitively by Randall. He took the two factors (in both permutations) and thought, which resulting number he felt best about. It is more like a psychological experiment than a table constructed with a system or code in mind. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.193|162.158.89.193]] 16:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)</div>162.158.89.193