1138: Heatmap

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Heatmap

Title text: There are also a lot of global versions of this map showing traffic to English-language websites which are indistinguishable from maps of the location of internet users who are native English speakers.

Explanation

In the comic, by looking at population concentration alone, Cueball comes to the conclusion that the unnamed site should begin catering to Martha Stewart and furry porn fans.

Transcript

[Three near-identical charts of America are shown with heatmaps depicting population density. The first chart is labelled "Our site's users," the second chart is labelled "Subscribers to Martha Stewart Living," and the third chart is labelled "Consumers of furry pornography." Cueball is standing with a stick pointing at the charts.]

Cueball: I think the business implications are clear.

Pet peeve #208:

Geographic profile maps which are basically just population maps..

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Discussion

So does this mean... that all the subscribers to Martha Stweart Living are secretly furries? *gasp* 129.97.124.23 23:00, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

No. It means that to people who give motivational talks to people who want to sell you things, all the people included in such maps are called prospects or prospective customers. It is a good explanation for spam. I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 07:13, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Clearly it means that the furries are, in general, Martha Stewart fans, not the reverse. Are you mad? -- 174.125.142.147 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It's a subtle hint that xkcd will be transitioning into Martha Stewart furry porn.76.20.159.250 05:05, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I thought that it was implied that if they switched to furry advertising/content, they could be as successful as Marth Stewart... not that they should combine marth stewart and furry content into their site. -- 109.65.32.63 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I was expecting some reference to George Lucas' THX 1138 for this comics.

But then, it is not George Lucas who's editing Xkcd...

Paulo Sedrez 139.82.111.111 18:39, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

There is an additional pun, and I do not know if it was intended. One adult furry publication is called Heat. A map of where furry porn is appreciated would therefore also be a Heat map. -- Godel Fishbreath (talk) 15:14, 17 May 2013‎ (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I'm a little weirded out by the fact that our resident expert on the titles of adult furry publications has the name of "Fishbreath." Makes one wonder where his mouth has been. 173.245.55.210 17:24, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Godel Fishbreath. Obviously the answer to your question is undecidable. 173.245.52.163 01:41, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

It's remarkable the places I sometimes see your messages, Godel Fishbreath. Best of wishes mate. Thisfox (talk) 06:51, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

The 'incomplete' tag refers to the title text. I'm not sure if this refers to the actual title text (which has been explained in the comic), or the title "Heatmap" (which I just added an explanation for). Either way, I think it's covered; I intend to remove the incomplete tag in a few days, if nobody objects. Cosmogoblin (talk) 22:54, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Could someone please do some photoshop magic and show the actual difference between the 3 maps please? I would, but I don't know how to use Photoshop. SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 10:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

In what way show the difference? Overlaying is easy enough (for two maps cut rectangles, paste as new layers moved atop the third (use transparency as a guide), then either twiddle the transparencies to make it look informative whilst static or make them all backbto opaque but use layers as animated .gif frames, suggesting 1000ms rate or thereabouts), or at least it is in GIMP - not used Photoshop for years... Maybe a decade, but I bet it's almost the same.

Alternately, slightly more complicated is to translate the white-to-red colours to some monochrome shade (white-as-#000, red as #FFF, which can probably be done by isolating a given RGB component; but preserve/extract the black lines as a separate overlay for later) and then use them to govern R, B and G channels (again, easy in GIMP), combining them together to give greyshades where equal or colours where the intermediate levels 'disagree' either in one (vs the other two) or even across all three.

Would try either, myself, but I don't have upload ability and it also needs me to be on my desktop instead of this tablet. So I'm giving you (anyone) my likely methods. 172.71.178.65 13:53, 2 January 2023 (UTC)