Editing 1493: Meeting
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*"Just wanna touch bases." Often business professions will contact a customer to "touch base," meaning to check in for a status update. The use of the plural "bases" suggests Beret Guy does not know what this means. This could also be a word play on the expression "Cover some bases". | *"Just wanna touch bases." Often business professions will contact a customer to "touch base," meaning to check in for a status update. The use of the plural "bases" suggests Beret Guy does not know what this means. This could also be a word play on the expression "Cover some bases". | ||
| β | *"Self-driving car project" Google has been working on {{w|self-driving cars}}, which usually shouldn't be lost track of and found by the police. The fact that it was launched "by accident" is concerning. It could mean the car was turned on by mistake and then left unattended, or perhaps that a driver of one of their cars fell asleep or otherwise stopped controlling the vehicle, but it is not clear because the accidental launch may refer to the project itself rather than the car. The involvement of the police may imply that the car crashed or otherwise obstructed traffic. That said, 90 miles before crashing | + | *"Self-driving car project" Google has been working on {{w|self-driving cars}}, which usually shouldn't be lost track of and found by the police. The fact that it was launched "by accident" is concerning. It could mean the car was turned on by mistake and then left unattended, or perhaps that a driver of one of their cars fell asleep or otherwise stopped controlling the vehicle, but it is not clear because the accidental launch may refer to the project itself rather than the car. The involvement of the police may imply that the car crashed or otherwise obstructed traffic. That said, 90 miles before crashing is a good result for a self-driving car, especially when you didn't even know you built a self-driving car. What's especially ironic is the implication that the employees were carpooling (sharing a single vehicle for their commute, for reasons of efficiency/economy) in the self-driving car, and yet this carpool activity ended with the car setting off with nobody in it at all. These types of cars were the topic of the later comic [[1559: Driving]], maybe misusing one of Beret Guy's cars. Self-driving cars are a [[:Category: Self-driving cars|recurring topic]] on xkcd. |
*"Sales, any luck figuring out who our customers are?" In the real world, when companies want to find out "who [their] customers are", they are talking about learning more about their existing customers (e.g. age groups, interests, genders) in order to more closely match these customers' needs, and to discover ways to attract more of them. Here, Beret Guy and [[Ponytail]] apparently use the phrase literally - they have no records of making any sales. A normal enterprise struggles to sell its products/services in order to get money. Getting cash from an unknown source would lead to serious troubles - failure to comply with tax code, suspicion of money laundering - but overall, most enterprises suffer the opposite problem: they try as hard as they can but don't get enough cash to be profitable (despite keeping precise information about where cash comes from). Note, that the accidental launching of a project would suggest a theme, that large cash infusions for unknown or {{w| Money laundering|unscrupulous}} reasons could imply anonymous {{w|Venture capital|VC}} investors, perhaps amateurs or acting in an overheated market. | *"Sales, any luck figuring out who our customers are?" In the real world, when companies want to find out "who [their] customers are", they are talking about learning more about their existing customers (e.g. age groups, interests, genders) in order to more closely match these customers' needs, and to discover ways to attract more of them. Here, Beret Guy and [[Ponytail]] apparently use the phrase literally - they have no records of making any sales. A normal enterprise struggles to sell its products/services in order to get money. Getting cash from an unknown source would lead to serious troubles - failure to comply with tax code, suspicion of money laundering - but overall, most enterprises suffer the opposite problem: they try as hard as they can but don't get enough cash to be profitable (despite keeping precise information about where cash comes from). Note, that the accidental launching of a project would suggest a theme, that large cash infusions for unknown or {{w| Money laundering|unscrupulous}} reasons could imply anonymous {{w|Venture capital|VC}} investors, perhaps amateurs or acting in an overheated market. | ||
