Talk:1913: A ?

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 21:09, 9 November 2017 by 162.158.74.33 (talk)
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"no update can never" is logically equivalent to "any update can". Not sure if this is intentional. 162.158.106.60 16:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Isn't it logically equivalent to "any update can sometimes"? Linguistically, of course, it can be equivalent either to this, or to "no update can".141.101.105.198 16:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
I think it's actually equivalent to "ALL updates can" (because if even a single update could not, the statement would be false). Jedi.jesse (talk) 05:28, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
But "all updates can" could imply that only applying all updates would take it away. It also doesn't deal with the temporality - "no update can never" only implies that for each update there is a point in time when it could take it away, not necessarily that any update can always take it away, nor that there is any time at which all updates could take it away. Or to summarise, trying to reduce language to terms of logic is a fool's errand. ;o)141.101.105.198 09:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
Or did Randall mean to type "no update can ever take this away" which makes more sense to me? 172.68.54.76 19:08, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
Due to the linked Wikipedia article "some dialects of English are examples of negative-concord languages", i.e. double negatives intensifies eauch other. From my experience, it isn't only some dialects but most (of American English). Same Wikipedia article also states that negative-concord are more common. (we need more mathematicians in the world.) Imho, the relevant sentence on the comic page should be deleted or strongly modified, since it's common usage. Derda17 (talk) 07:05, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Is this a comment on all those moral panics about 'the youth of today can't read or write because they're only learning to speak in emojis'? And/or about developers using 'undocumented features' in their applications, so that when they're fixed it breaks those applications?141.101.105.198 16:55, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

More like on how Randall appears to have strange habits. 172.68.141.52 16:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Hopefully somebody will make a full tutorial on how to accomplish the title text thing. 162.158.89.241 19:03, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I could do this easily on the computer with AutoHotKey (which might be overkill), but I'm not sure about iPhones, which are likely the target for the idea. iPhones have built-in text replacement, but I think you have to follow the word to be replaced with a space for it to work, rather than it working instantly (as "mapping a key on your keyboard" implies). 172.68.26.41 19:15, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

The correct url for this comic would be something like 1913:_A_%EF%BF%BD, but that is an invalid title. It would still probably be better to change it to "A ?" with a note instead of "A_%C3%AF%C2%BF%C2%BD". —Artyer (talk|ctb) 21:03, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I suggest using ⍰ (U+2370) instead, as it better approximates the original iOS display. --172.68.54.52 21:25, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Interesting to note that the name of the posted image is i.png, which I guess DOES match the name of the comic? Alanbbent (talk) 22:35, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps, change the strange symbol to its HTML entity, � 108.162.249.154 23:00, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

A lowercase i represents the square root of negative one, so let's just say that this comic is imaginary and resolve the problem that way :-)162.158.59.238 05:46, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

It is not possible to make a wiki page with � in the name so I have changed to title to "A ?" and moved both the explanation and the comment here. --Kynde (talk) 10:20, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Strange that I was the first to comment on the fact that it was I not i that was changed in the comic, which acording to the current explanation is what happens with the Apple bug... --Kynde (talk) 10:28, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

The expected autocorrection on typing "i" would be replacing it by "I". So usually there's no need to type "I", it should be enough to type "i" (saves you one click). --YMS (talk) 16:18, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
OK. But what about the other i in the text. Would they not trigger the error because it is inside a word? --Kynde (talk) 18:59, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
No they wouldn't, because the autocorrect is triggered by hitting space. If you use "i" in the middle of a word, the next button is a letter, not the space button, and it recognizes the rest of the word. (I don't know what it would do if you found a word ending with "i".) 162.158.74.33 21:09, 9 November 2017 (UTC)