Editing 3074: Push Notifications

{{comic
| number    = 3074
| date      = April 9, 2025
| title     = Push Notifications
| image     = push_notifications_2x.png
| imagesize = 277x347px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = NOTIFICATION: Now dismissing a head of the Notification Hydra… NOTIFICATION: Success! You have dismissed a head of the Notification Hydra!<br><br><span style="color:grey">Different title text:</span> :3
}}
To experience the interactivity of the game, visit the {{xkcd|3074|original comic}}.

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Please write a better overall explanation and explain the other functions of the comic. If you see any comic images that haven't been uploaded yet, please download and add them! Also, a table might not be the most space-efficient way to display the different comic images; a gallery of imges might be better.}}
This interactive comic is the 15th [[:Category:April fools' comics|April Fools' Day]] comic released by Randall, just over a week late. It uses {{w|push notifications}} to change the comic image over time and make other statements. A table of notifications can be seen at [[3074: Push Notifications/Table of Notifications]].

After viewing the comic for the first time, there is a sequence of notifications rendered over the comic itself. After clicking through these, you are provided with two buttons: one labeled "Emergency Stop" which will halt all notifications, and one labeled "Silence notifications at a cost" which will silence notifications at the cost of notifying two random people.

If you press silence notifications too much the laptop blows up. This happens because the POST request that is sent to the server is returned by a 500 Internal Server Error. This is a real error.

Up to 7 clickable cats periodically spawn (nonrandomly) all over the comic, including one on the edge of the Emergency Stop button.

Notification types include:
* One asking you to select a word, with further notifications to be sent whenever someone chooses the same word as you. Following this up changes the comic pane to a comic-style input dialogue with a space for the word and a submit button.
** Upon providing a word, a notification informs you that you will then receive notifications (of the form "Someone else has selected the word <Your Word>!"), and that your choice is permanent and cannot be changed.
** It is entirely possible to (mis-)submit a blank word, and to receive "Someone else has selected the word !" notifications.<!-- As an early mis-clicker (should have been putting focus on the text input, but missed), Incan confirm that I have received four of these, three before I quit for the night. Presumably others may have happened whilst offline. -->
* A few starter notifications about this comic, the successful sending of a notification of this comic, and the lack of another comic.
* An announcement that an old comic was posted, specifying a comic and its publication date.
* A "streak" notification counting the number of times you've clicked it. The message changes every 10 clicks, and after 50 clicks there is an offer to make future clicks count twice, making this a simple version of {{w|Cookie Clicker}}. If you chooses to accept the offer by clicking on it, it will reset your clicks back to zero but makes all future clicks count double of the current click rate; you can also reject the offer by continuing to click on the click counter message. There are occasionally notifications encouraging you to keep clicking and "extend your streak," tempting you with "a free click to keep you going". After 400 clicks it will reset your clicks back to zero but makes all future clicks count four times. There will be new messages up to a total of at least 1000 clicks.
** Early notifications encourage further clicking.
** Approaching a hundred, the messages grow more concerned and later start warning that the server will crash or has crashed.
** Above 750: "Are you just doing this to annoy me?"
** 1000-2000: "Are you just doing this to annoy you?"
** Above 2000: "I guess it worked"
* A "have you seen my cat?" notification which causes all the cats to spawn when clicked. 
* Cat fact notifications that appear when a cat is clicked, in reference to [https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/241/756/e6e.png this exchange].
* Various "erroneous errors" with a warning triangle, some with just flavor text, some corresponding to changes in the comic image.
** A "gravity malfunction" indicating a change to the floating image.
** An "Error 40¾" HTTP malfunction (with {{w|Zalgo text}} on the error code) indicating a change to the tentacle image.
** "I forgot whether I'm the server or the client."
** An error for not enough errors.
** An error for too many errors.
** A Kernel Panic indicating the Kernel can't remember what number comes after 38
** A notification claiming that your computer ballast needs emptying, along with the computer room being flooded
** "Your computer has encountered an error" indicating a change to the fire image.
** Error 418: {{w|Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol#Commands and replies|I'm a teapot}}.
** An error with the "computer size limiter", indicating the enlarged laptop image.
* "Zoom notifications" including numeric coordinates, sometimes prefixed with "oh look!"; plotting these coordinates creates an image that appears to be a turtle, apparently a reference to [[1416: Pixels]].
* "Constant reminders" stating what some constant will be "at the tone". (This is in reference to time-of-day phone services, largely obsolete since the popularization of the internet, which you could call to hear the exact time at a given tone.) There are also joke constants such as "your favorite number will be equal to 14," and some definitions are tautological or not related to the actual value of the constant. Constants include
** The silver ratio (1 + the square root of 2)
** The golden ratio (half of 1 + the square root of 5)
** Pi (the ratio between a circle's circumference and radius, and half of Tau)
** Zero (a real number)
** Your favorite number (14)
** The luminosity of the sun (L☉)
** {{w|Euler's constant}}
** "We are currently experiencing 3600±1 seconds per hour. Changes to this rate will be announced six months in advance." - Referencing {{w|Leap second#Procedure|standard Leap Second procedure}}
* A notification that offers to provide weather alerts for your location, which leads into a series of notifications asking whether you live in a named city. If none of the cities that it knows are selected, your location is set to the summit of {{w|Mount Washington}}.
* A reminder that the Earth spins at 1 rpd (rotation per day).
* A statement near an hour or half-hour time that the current time is five-o-clock somewhere.
* An invitation to subscribe to the "What if?" YouTube channel
* A notification with the heading "System Log" that reads (INFO): A user has paused notifications
* A reminder to comment and subscribe, leading to one of various Wikipedia pages, including: {{w|Talk:Mathematics}}, {{w|Talk:Romance}}, {{w|Talk:Language}}, (presumably, as the fourth of the stated topics [[xkcd]] is about)<!-- remove if you experience it! --> {{w|Talk:Sarcasm}}, {{w|Talk:Alarm_fatigue}}, {{w|Talk:Boneless}}, {{w|Talk:Sitting}}, {{w|Category talk:Unix text editors}}, {{w|Talk:Robot}}, {{w|Talk:Jamming avoidance response}}, {{w|Talk:Squircle}}, {{w|Talk:Like}}, {{w|Talk:Drafting linen}}, {{w|Talk:Hot dog}}, {{w|Talk:Goomba}}, {{w|Talk:Tidal locking}}, {{w|Talk:Multiple unit}}, {{w|Talk:Flag semaphore}}, {{w|Talk:Stoating}}, {{w|Talk:Roseate_spoonbill}}, {{w|Talk:Teleportation}}.
* A "{{w|Carriage return|Carriage Return}} Line Feed", referencing the Windows standard of storing line returns as a carriage return character followed by a line feed (newline) character. However, the xkcd Carriage Return Line Feed is instead a news feed concerning the next stop on a supposed "Carriage Return Line" of a train system. The announcements are all<!-- all my examples, and those logged on the appropriate subpage, so probably not geolocated with different systems' stops for different users --> related to stations on the {{w|London Underground}}, including the use of the phrase "{{w|Mind the gap}}".

The title text references the {{w|Lernaean Hydra}}, a multi-headed serpent-like monster from Greek mythology. In many stories, such as {{w|Labours_of_Hercules#Second:_Lernaean_Hydra|the second labour of Hercules}}, when one of its heads was cut off, two heads would grow in its place, resulting in more heads than before. Something similar has happened in the title text itself: there was a notification that was requested to be dismissed, and it created two more notifications notifying the user of the status of the dismissal.

The subdirectory where the images and scripts for this comic are stored is titled 'marconi,' which is likely a reference to the Italian engineer and inventor of the same name, {{w|Guglielmo Marconi}}, who is credited with inventing the radio, and did much work in the field of early communication systems.

Clicking the "Emergency Stop" button allows you to either restart the full game or to subscribe just to notifications for new comics.

===Gallery of comic images===
<gallery class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" widths=100px>
File:3074_normal.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, with his laptop.
File:3074_big_laptop.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, with a very large laptop.
File:3074_plant_small.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, with a small potted plant.
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, with a squirrel in the pot.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, with a much larger plant that has clearly outgrown the pot, at least vertically.
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Two images with the larger plant that also have cats in the leaves.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, with a cat in the foreground near the point of view.
File:3074_cat_chair.png|Cueball sitting at his desk, his chair replaced with a large cat.
File:3074_computer_fire.png|Cueball sitting farther back from his desk, with the laptop on the desk on fire.
File:3074_float.png|Cueball, the desk, and the laptop floating in the air.
File:3074_spin.png|Cueball spinning in his chair.
File:3074_desk_sit.png|Cueball sitting on the desk, facing the laptop on the chair.
File:3074_gameover.png|The desk vacant with "Game Over" displayed if you use the emergency stop.
File:3074_sword.png|Cueball, the desk, and the laptop floating in the air.
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball and Ponytail swordfighting while the computer has an hourglass icon, referencing [[303: Compiling]].<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|The room flooded 2/3 of the way up the desk. Cueball is still sitting with his laptop.
File:3074_sailboat.png|The same flooding, with a miniature sailboat behind Cueball.
File:gallery_placeholder.png|The same flooding, with a cat face behind Cueball.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|The same flooding, with a shark fin on the far side of the desk, facing toward Cueball.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball kneeling on the chair, which is raised up higher than the desk, and leaning over to use the laptop
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball sitting at the desk, which has been extended behind his laptop like a long meeting table.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|No Cueball, only the chair, desk, and laptop.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball using the laptop on his lap, with no desk.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball with a squirrel on his head.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|A squirrel sitting at the desk, seemingly using the laptop.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball standing on top of the laptop keyboard.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:gallery_placeholder.png|Cueball sitting at the desk, wearing a wizard hat.<!-- Someone confirm, only found this in code -->
File:3074_floor.png|Cueball sitting on the floor behind the desk.
File:3074_tentacles.png|Cueball sitting in his chair, shielding his face from a tentacle coming from the computer screen.
File:3074_cat.png|The cat that appears after returning to the comic window after leaving it idle for long period of time. It has a unique title text of ":3".
</gallery>

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball sits at a desk in an office chair. He is typing on a computer.]
:[Gray message boxes with a small circled “x” at the top right corner are shown:]
:Happy April 1st (observed)! 
:To celebrate, we were excited to introduce a new xkcd.com feature: push notifications for new comics! 
:Unfortunately, this feature has gone horribly wrong. 
:Until further notice, we are asking people ''NOT'' to sign up for new comic notifications. 
:Frankly, we recommend not even clicking on any notifications to learn more.
:<span style="color:gray">''Click this notification to learn more!''</span> (a circled arrow is shown)

:“Push notifications for new comics” sounds like a simple feature, right? 
:There’s a nice API for browser notifications. xkcd updates three times a week. 
:So you just send a notification for each update, right? 
:That’s what we thought, too. 
:<span style="color:gray">''Click to continue!''</span> (a circled arrow is shown)

:[To the side of the comic frame is a big, horizontal hexagonal stop sign]
:Sign: Emergency STOP
:Below the sign: <span style="color:red">''Halt ALL notifications and forget everything''</span>
:The good news is that we did build a button to stop xkcd new comic notifications. 
:You can press this button at any time and the system will stop sending you notifications. 
:The nightmare will be over and the server will forget you ever existed. 
:This part definitely works. 
:<span style="color:gray">''The rest of the system does <u>NOT</u> work.''</span> (a circled arrow is shown)

:We’re sorry. 
:We don’t know how things went so wrong. 
:The system is sending more than three notifications a week. A <b><u>LOT</u></b> more.
:We cannot recommend signing up for xkcd new comic notifications at this time. 
:<span style="color:gray">''Click here to ignore the warnings.''</span> (a circled arrow is shown)

:No, really. 
:Our notification system may send a large number of very real system notifications. 
:These may flood your browser, displace other notifications, and cause problems. 
:<big>⚠️<b>DO NOT ENABLE XKCD NEW COMIC NOTIFICATIONS</b>⚠️</big>
:<span style="color:gray">''Yeah, I get it, but I definitely want to enable xkcd new comic notifications.''</span> (a circled arrow is shown)

:Are you sure? 
:<span style="color:gray">''Yes!''</span> (a circled arrow is shown) 
:Absolutely sure? 
:<span style="color:gray">''YES!!''</span> (a circled arrow is shown) 
:To enable push notifications on mobile you need to add xkcd.com to your home screen.

:<span style="background-color:#FFD3D3;color:#8B0000">''Click here to subscribe to xkcd notifications''</span>


:[Initial static image shows Cueball sat on an office chair at a desk using a laptop computer. A notification 'window' is speech-bubbled above the computer]
:[Grey notification box, header:] April 1<sup>st</sup> (Observed)
:[Notification box, further text:] Open xkcd.com to view.
:Laptop: [Warning sign.]

:[When viewed live, various xkcd-style popover notifications appear, each can be dismissed or (usually the last on every page) invited to press an 'onwards'-style button.]

:[First page of messages]
:Happy April 1<sup>st</sup>! To celebrate, we were excited to introduce a new xkcd.com feature: Push Notifications for new comics!
:Unfortunately, this feature has gone horribly wrong.
:Until further notice, we are asking people NOT to sign up for new comic notifications.
:Frankly, we recommend not even clicking on any notifications to learn more.
:[Notification with 'onwards button':] ''Click on this notification to learn more''

:[Upon choosing to continue, further messages appear, replacing any prior ones left open]
:"Push Notifications for new comics" sounds like a simple feature, right?
:There's a nice API for browser notifications, xkcd updates three times a week.
:So you just send a notification for each upafte, right?
:That's what we thought, too.
:[Notification with 'onwards button':] ''Click on this notification to continue''

:[Next set of popover messages]
:The good news is that we did build a button to STOP xkcd new comic notifications.
:You can press this button at any time and the system will stop sending you notifications.
:The nightmare will be over and the server will forget you ever existed.
:This part definitely works.
:[Notification with 'onwards':] ''The rest of the system does <u>not</u> work.''
:[To the right of the comic frame, a red, octagonal button has white text upon it:]Emergency Stop
:[Below the button is red text:] Halt all notifications and forget everything

:[Next set of popovers, "stop" button remains permanently so long as you continue]
:We're sorry.
:We didn't know how things went so wrong.
:The system is sending more than three notifications at this time.
:['Onwards' notification:] ''Click here to ignore the warnings''

:[Next set.]
:No, really.
:Our notification system may send a large amount of very real system notifications.
:These may flood your browser, displace other notifications, and cause problems.
:[Text bookended by warning triangles:] Do not enable xkcd new comic notifications
:['Onwards':] Yeah, I get it, but I definitely want to enable xkcd new comic notifications

:[Just two popovers, initially]
:Are you sure?
:['Onwards':] Yes
:[On clicking onwards, two more appear below]
:Absolutely sure?
:['Onwards':] Yes!!
:[On clicking, a further popover]
:[Red-tinted 'onwards'-style popover with warnings:] Click here to subscribe to xkcd notifications.

:[...something appeared then dissappeared...]
:[Genuine(?) browser dialogue activated:] xkcd.com wants to send you notifications. Block / Allow

:[If allowed, one more popover in the original style]
:Success!!
:[Below the Emergency Stop button, an oval gray button appears labeled in white:] Silence notifications at a cost
:[Below that, in grey text:]Temporarily pause your notifications at the cost of notifying two random people.

:[Further changes include the contents of the pane, whether Cueball is sat at the laptop, whether the laptop is larger, or a pot-plant, whether there are cats in the frame, outside the frame, sat on the Stop buttons, whether Cueball is sat on a large cat instead of an office chair...]
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Interactive comics]]
[[Category:April fools' comics]]