Difference between revisions of "Talk:1683: Digital Data"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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The phenomenon that Randall is making fun of in this comic is actually called a "shitpic" http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/the-triumphant-rise-of-the-shitpic The explanation should probably make reference to that. [[User:Enchantedsleeper|Enchantedsleeper]] ([[User talk:Enchantedsleeper|talk]]) 10:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
 
The phenomenon that Randall is making fun of in this comic is actually called a "shitpic" http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/the-triumphant-rise-of-the-shitpic The explanation should probably make reference to that. [[User:Enchantedsleeper|Enchantedsleeper]] ([[User talk:Enchantedsleeper|talk]]) 10:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
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I think the watermarks on the last frame are from an unregistered screenshot tool, not "9gag" or similar. The references to shit pics are interesting, but aren't you over interpreting the whole thing?

Revision as of 11:07, 20 May 2016

Ewww, Verizon? **** them International Space Station (talk) 04:58, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Ironically, the title text on explainxkcd is different from the one on xkcd.com, demonstrating the reinterpretation of text encoded in UTF-8 as if it were encoded in ISO 8859-1. 162.158.85.231 05:45, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

-Exactly; this nicely proves Randall's point. On my computer, different characters appear in different browsers, but of course in one browser the characters are reproducible.--Jkrstrt (talk) 07:26, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Here is the decoded title text:

   “If you can read this, congratulations–the archive youʼre you're using still knows about the mouseover text”!

He's written you're twice, but one is with a curly apostrophe, often favoured by americans (and maybe brits?), possible because of their keyboard. The simple apostrophe is “just” html-formatted, whereas the curly one has been molested by a UTF-8 / ISO-8859-1 misreading. --108.162.229.16 07:51, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm British, and I don't have the curly apostrophe anywhere on my keyboard. Enchantedsleeper (talk) 11:01, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

This is a phenomenon that has always both fascinated me and frustrated me. I find it fascinating how, even today, data degrades as more and more people copy it (remember the old days when people used to copy VHS tapes, and the further you were from the original tape the more copying artefacts your copy had in it?). It also frustrates me, though, when I'm trying to find an original, undegraded image or video and it seems impossible to find. It's also annoying because it's actually pretty easy to copy something without causing any quality loss, yet practically every copied image on the internet has been degraded in some way or another. 141.101.98.130 07:08, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

If you haven't yet, you should check out this guy who ripped and reuploaded his own Youtube video 1000 times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEIzS_27Vt0 162.158.222.150 08:28, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

It's also funny because just a few moments ago I was trying to compress some video to send to someone. 141.101.98.130 07:12, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

http://fotoforensics.com/analysis.php?id=274fcf46426f2da31b057f1652ae5269cfdbd70a.190103 this page highlights the encoding blocks so that the degration of quality can be seen better. 141.101.91.205 09:42, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

The phenomenon that Randall is making fun of in this comic is actually called a "shitpic" http://www.theawl.com/2014/12/the-triumphant-rise-of-the-shitpic The explanation should probably make reference to that. Enchantedsleeper (talk) 10:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I think the watermarks on the last frame are from an unregistered screenshot tool, not "9gag" or similar. The references to shit pics are interesting, but aren't you over interpreting the whole thing?