Disappearing Sunday Update

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Disappearing Sunday Update

Title text: This comic won't exist in the archives. NOTHING IS REAL.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by UNUSUAL MEANS. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

The comic claims to be a special Disappearing comic that will disappear Monday August 5th, and is an advertisement for the upcoming book "How To". This includes a drawing of the cover, on set of pages, and a sampling of the table of contents of the book. The second part of the comic apologizes for various bots that automatically catalog xkcd comics that might break because of this special comic. This website is one example assigning the comic a number of 2185 despite the comic not having a designated number. The comic even broke the xkcd site itself as the previous comic (2184) has a next button that links to comic 2185 (which does not exist) and displays a 404 error (but this was later fixed). One of the bot methods mentioned may be in reference to 2180 : Spreadsheets where Cueball debates making a real program to do a task, or to use a spreadsheet instead.

Methods suggested (many still need explanations):

Apps

The Android app easyxkcd was broken by this comic, as reported here.

Custom screen-scraping systems

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping#Screen_scraping

Google Reader clones

Google Reader was an RSS/Atom aggregator that Google discontinued in 2013

Twitter bots

Automated posting to Twitter

BASH scripts

A popular Un*x shell; one might, say, write a script in it to run on one's personal Un*x machine, checking for a new xkcd comic and displaying it somewhere

Gopher portals

Gopher was a method of surfing the Internet that predated the Web (by about five months) and was vastly more popular (for about three years)

Lynx-based ASCII art browsers

Lynx is a text-based Web browser. It can launch external programs to view images, but Randall is suggesting that instead a Lynx variant might convert images to ASCII art, which renders images using the 94 visible ASCII keyboard characters

Third-party Second Life feeds

Second Life is a virtual world that is apparently still a thing

RFC 2549

An RFC is a proposal for how to run the Internet. This one is about transmitting data using carrier pigeons.

Massive Google docs sheets

See #2180.

Another unusual method is UNIXkcd, which was reported here to have broken, but was later working.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

~SPECIAL DISAPPEARING SUNDAY COMIC~

I'm posting this ephemeral sunday update to let you know that I wrote a book! It's a guide to solving everyday problems in terrible ways using science.

It comes out next month, and it's available for preorder now.

[Arrow to image of book] The cover looks like this

[Arrow to image of sample pages of the book] and the inside looks like this.

Chapters include: How to charge your phone How to throw a pool party How to move How to build a lava moat How to ski

[Another image of sample pages]

You can learn more and preorder it at xkcd.com/how-to

and read an excerpt at blog.xkcd.com

If you read xkcd through unusual means, including apps, custom screen-scraping systems, google reader clones, twitter bots, bash scripts, gopher portals, lynx-based ascii art browsers, third-party sceond life feeds, rfc 2549, or massive google docs sheets full of =IMPORTHTML() and =IMAGE() formulas, I hope this ephemeral ghost comic doesn't break them too badly.

It will disappear with the normal monday update.

(At least, I think it will. I've never tried this before. So I'm honestly not sure what the server will do.)

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Discussion

This comic isn't a numbered comic. The ephemeral ghost comic has broken explainxkcd! 162.158.34.64 22:23, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

Fair point. Probably the page should be renamed to 2184.5 or something. 172.68.133.12 08:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, it broke the xkcd client I use. (Easy xkcd, Android) Just crashes on start. I hope it will fix itself when the normal one comes out. I also hope that this comic will remain here when it is taken down. Fghsgh (talk) 22:43, 4 August 2019 (UTC) fghsgh

Previous then Next on xkcd.com 404's... Trivia! 141.101.104.83 22:59, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

It's not rendering for me on the uni.xkcd.com portal, could anyone else verify? I'm excited in seeing what else this comic will break. Kirdneh (talk) 23:11, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

This works for me now. —TobyBartels (talk) 08:59, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I wonder what will happen tomorrow! Oh the antici- pation! 172.69.68.153 00:01, 5 August 2019 (UTC) Sam

Others had the same idea I did, this comic has been archived to https://web.archive.org/web/20190805000153/https://xkcd.com/ For posterity(?) 162.158.74.57 02:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I only noticed this on Monday morning, so was surprised to find that there isn't more detail about the various things the comic mentions possibly breaking. It got me wondering how many people on the site (especially the younger ones) aren't even aware of IP over Avian Carriers, Gopherspace, or lynx. This is one of those comics that could easily be a forest of links to interesting things you might never have thought to look for. -- Angel (talk) 07:47, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I added a list; you should add more explanation to it. —TobyBartels (talk) 08:59, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Has the comic been changed since it was posted, to stop breaking things? Because it's appearing as #2185 for me and the link to that number from #2184 works. (Also, I love that--Internet Archive notwithstanding--we're almost certainly going to keep a well-explained copy of this comic alive for posterity. What will we number it, though? Has Randall broken explain xkcd too?) -- Peregrine (talk) 08:52, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Seems so. It now has 2185 on the xkcd website and it is to be found in the archive at the current moment, before the Monday comic comes out. Probably Randall found out it would give too much trouble not numbering it. Wonder if he really deletes it... It will still be here and in the web-archive forever. But of course if he does delete it and names the next comic 2185 then this comic will have to be moved to a special page like his Radiation sheet etc. I have taken some screen dumps that I will post in a trivia here. To show that it is now currently a normal comic with number 2185. --Kynde (talk) 09:02, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

It's also possible that Randall could use the whatever mechanism was used for http://xkcd.com/404/ for this comic. --Xuth

It's Monday

It's Monday, and the comic is still on the front page of xkcd.com. WhiteDragon (talk) 13:48, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Nothing strange about this. It is not unusual for Randall to post a comic later in the day. And for this day he may even have reason to do so. Anyway this is a advertisement stunt, and by breaking the different viewers he has gotten more focus on his page than usual. Maybe this comic will just stay until Wednesday and not disappear at all. I would not be surprised. Also removing it will probably make trouble for Randall's own page now... But interesting if it disappears when the next comic arrives. Until it does, he has promised this comic would stay, so it being here on Monday is not against his promise that it should go away... --Kynde (talk) 15:16, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Monday afternoon (eastern USA time)-I use the RSS link from XKCD, and the "Feed" page of pipedot.org, a convenient way to organize a dozen or so sites I watch. As of this morning, there were still two RSS links to "Disappearing Sunday Update", then the newer RSS link pointed to Cumulonimbus (2185), and eventually the RSS text updated to also say "Cumulonimbus". The original RSS link to "Disappearing Sunday Update" is still there and now points to https://xkcd.com/how-to/ -- a different book advert.162.158.75.118 22:57, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Ascii-art comics

When my computer was still too slow for doing real work in graphics mode (and my monitor didn't like any decent graphics mode my Ruby VGA card could produce) I actually had configured my lynx to show images using aview. For comics that method is too low-res. But when you stand back from your monitor for about 3 meters you get fairly good approximations of most images without having to switch to graphics mode.Gunterkoenigsmann (talk) 15:13, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Now there's https://xkcd.com/2185/ followed by https://xkcd.com/2185/# . . . when will it end? 162.158.214.136 15:32, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

2185 is now here http://xkcd.com/2185. It looks like this one really disappeared.

The comic's page may be gone, but its image is still accessible: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/disappearing_sunday_update.png 172.69.63.61 20:33, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

This means that the "permanent link" was, in fact, not permanent. 172.68.142.245 23:31, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

I have added this comic to the Category:Extra comics, and made links to it from the two comics released around its release. Also I have moved the page so this page name does not refer to 2185. I have also updated the explanation to past. since it is no longer an xkcd comic, but only an archived memory. And updated the explanation where references to guessing about what happened after Monday release was not yet corrected to facts. --Kynde (talk) 12:56, 6 August 2019 (UTC)