1395: Power Cord

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Power Cord

Title text: In this situation, gzip /dev/inside to deflate, then pipe the compressed air to /dev/input to clean your keyboard. Avert your eyes when you do.

Explanation

In this comic, we see Beret Guy walking in from the left, as Cueball is sitting in a couch, typing on a laptop on his lap, with its power cord unplugged. Instead of connecting it to the wall socket, he continues to blow air into the loose end of the power plug that he discovers.

The comic is a build-up to a couple of tech puns, one being deflation vs DEFLATE, a basic data compression algorithm also used by *zip, the other being “piping”, the act of joining an output of one expression with the input of another.

The final piece of advice refers to 237: Keyboards are Disgusting.

Transcript

[Beret Guy enters to find Cueball typing on a laptop. Cueball's power cord is unplugged from the wall.]

(Laptop SFX): "TYPE TYPE"

[Beret Guy picks up the power cord.]

(Laptop SFX): "TYPE TYPE"

Beret Guy (blowing into plug end of cord): "PBBBBT"

(Laptop SFX): "FOOOMP"

[Beret Guy walks away, leaving Cueball to retrieve his laptop, which is floating away.]

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Discussion

Is there any reason why you would have to avert your eyes... i would think that it may create a dust cloud from the keyboard... but it is a fictional situations, so there may be other reasons...108.162.249.218 06:02, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Has anyone noticed Beret's uncanny ability with power cords? Thendenster (talk) 06:29, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

What a stupid unrealistic comic. Things that are blown up with air don't float! >:-C --108.162.254.97 07:26, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

They do if you start off underwater, or start off in your living room, and then dunk the balloon in crazy glue (to give the balloon shell some rigidity), and then take the inflated balloon underwater, or into a caisson, or a hyperbaric chamber - both 'easily' found at underwater worksites.

Or if you're blowing a balloon using a straw that has a one way valve, which goes from your mouth, through your space-suit, and to a balloon which is outside your spacesuit, when you're on the Venusian surface.

They can do so, even on Earth, if the air coming out of your mouth is filtered such that the only bits let through are the components of air that are lighter than the natural mixture of air. (For example, a power line that's been highly charged, could ionise Oxygen atoms much more preferentially than ionising Nitrogen atoms as the flow past the sharp edges of the prongs. The ionised oxygen would react with surrounding bits, and be fixed into a solid state... leaving only the Nitrogen to continue flowing). Nitrogen is lighter than Air. Do this for long enough (a big enough balloon) and it will start floating. If you want to do it faster, and with a smaller balloon - pass the exhaled air over some chemical that absorbs and reacts with carbon-di-oxide (Alkali[ne] hydroxides), absorbs and reacts with water vapour (dessicant), absorbs and reacts with oxygen (bacteria), and absorbs and reacts with nitrogen (nitrogen fixing bacteria). 108.162.208.169 17:39, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

That's the point of Beret Guy. He's the reality-bender. The SCP-001 among these SCP-999s (or 682, in Black Hat's case). 172.68.71.90 (talk) 21:35, 5 September 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

You obviously don't know how gross a keyboard can be... Also, if you think this is unrealistic, you obviously haven't read enough XKCD. 108.162.249.220 07:41, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes and as can be seen someone has already added a link to the previous comic on gross keyboards so... Kynde (talk) 07:45, 16 July 2014 (UTC) And who says that it is not blown up with helium or the like. First of all we would never see if a stick character was inflated - so Beret guy could be big and filled with helium. Or it is just his crazy ability that makes his blow into the socket turn the "air" into helium in the PC - or something much lighter since the shown inflation would never be enough to carry a laptop. In the end the whole comic is just an excuse to make three crazy puns (like them or not, that is up to the reader) and refeer back to 237 Kynde (talk) 07:45, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

I think 108.162.254.97 is being sarcastic. Pointing out the fact that things filled with air don't float instead of the obvious impossibility of blowing air through an electric wire. 108.162.216.88 14:46, 16 July 2014 (UTC)BK

An object filled with air wont go up, but may still bounce out of hand and foat. In this case the sudden increase in volume have ejected the inflated laptop. Since an object almost-as-light-as-air is really sensitive to move of air, the laptop could (in the unlikely case of it happening) behave that way.141.101.70.103 09:11, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Given that Beret Guy often does crazy correctitive things when he perceives something is amiss in his (surreal) visions of the world, I'm wondering if that's a specific protest against having the power chord plugged into the laptop but not the wall (during normal operation, I presume, rather than deliberately depleting the battery of testing the reduced-power settings, or temporarily while other powered devices require the power sockets with more urgency). I don't know whether I personally find this set-up more or less disturbing than a power-chord plugged into the wall but not plugged into the intended laptop. Although (apart from the risk of leaving residue across the pins), the comic's version is at least safer than the opening text of the explanation would suggest. 141.101.99.192 12:11, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

...inflation in an xkcd comic? Cue the inflatophobes... Greyson (talk) 13:34, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Beret Guy is obviously exhaling a lighter-than-air gas, either by just taking a large breath of helium beforehand or by a very special cellular breathing process. Moreover, it should be noted that one averts one's eyes before something holy. 108.162.220.41 11:02, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

You also avert your eyes when you know something is going to be propelled at your head from a compressed air keyboard... -Pennpenn 162.158.2.221 02:49, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Transcript accuracy: is Cueball actually looking up in panel 2? He's still typing after all. (Also, [power chords?]) --108.162.221.87 00:48, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

why are all the ips from cloudfare servers? sockpuppets?173.245.53.121 09:08, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

explainxkcd is hosted through Cloudflare's cdn and all of us connect through Cloudflare. --172.68.141.146 17:05, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

My mother once blown a lighter than air balloon, our best guess was that it was hot air from some fever or something. 108.162.210.233 19:56, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

That would only work for as long as the air in the balloon is warmer than the air surrounding it. I doubt that the balloon is that good as an isulator to have this occur for long. --Lupo (talk) 11:13, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

We can see his screen a bit in panel 3. Can anyone tell what he's doing? 172.69.62.203 22:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Reading xkcd, it looks like. Good catch. Nitpicking (talk) 16:25, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks more like a newsletter(/paper), to me. A traditional printed-style (but PDFed, scanned or HTML+CSSed, obviously) two-column split of various paragraphs and images (no obvious headlines). The obvious image looks less than stick-figure... could be a boxer in action, but the residual resolution (and the method of interpolation needed to 'read between the dots') leaves that a very open issue and maybe flavoured by the eye of this particular beholder, unable to unsee what the vague first imrpession was. But it looks like it was doodled as more than a stick-figure (within the limitations of the pixelation), and doesn't have that basic Comic-like look of XKCD (or even a What-If). Though maybe one of the more Infographic ones, extending well off page? 172.70.162.147 21:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

i did a manual quality upscale. its at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vznnh7ZkSJXei9brI4sNE9cVM8-QmXOc/view?usp=sharing plushie fan (talk) 00:26, 20 November 2023 (UTC)