Talk:1416: Pixels

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Firefox users with HTTPS Everywhere may have trouble seeing the comic, and Chrome users may experience lag (for lack of a better word) when zooming in. 141.101.99.168 06:11, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

The combination of "turtle" and "pixel" reminded me of how to code graphics in the older days with for instance turbo pascal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_graphics) - Stian

Would it be possible to have a "gallery" of all the zoom-in images? 199.27.128.209 06:29, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Since the Zoom-in images have at lest one story line in them (I read one about a book launch, the book was launched to space in a rocket), I think a gallery or some such is needed for them. 108.162.250.218 06:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I got to a white panel and there was nothing. Everything was white and zooming in or out didn't change it. Not sure if it was a bug or intended. -- Irino (talk) 07:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

That happens to me when I click on the image in Chrome. Not sure why. Jimmy C (talk) 21:35, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Yet another comic that doesn't work well on mobile. I'll probably compile a list of comics that are broken in some way for mobile... Er. Soon-ish. -RTR 108.162.246.232 07:45, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I have acquired a list of images with what they zoom into, and am working on turning that into something presentable. There's a lot of images though, so it may take a day. As for the white panel, yes, there does seem to be one broken link (out of nearly 500). I'm not sure how I would go about reporting it to get it fixed. Tahg (talk) 07:57, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

There are 79 different images. I have them isolated and am uploading them now. Omixorp (talk) 08:16, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Cool - the images are here - if you click on the broken links they can be seen. But why are they not visible? They take up a lot of space, so I have moved them to a separate gallery page as has been done with 1350: Lorenz. Kynde (talk) 11:44, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
I think there's a problem with all thumbnails across this site - even old thumbnails don't seem to be working right now. Omixorp (talk) 10:31, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
They work on Lorenz that I have linked to in my comment above. Kynde (talk) 11:44, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Doesn't work at all (blank) on my Firefox and IE11. I just installed Opera and it works but it's VERY laggy. Also, I have to scroll UP to zoom in, not down. --141.101.97.206 08:25, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Neither on Firefox 31.0. Zooming until the first level of pictures, I see them appearing. But when they are larger than ~20 pixels they start to disappear. They only reappear intermittently when I pan or zoom. When I zoom in further, only images on the left side appear intermittently. This shows the grid is built from left to right, then top to bottom, and it just stops randomly. --Zom-B (talk) 20:32, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
I'm having different problems with both Firefox 31.0 and 32.0 on Windows. When zooming in, all pixels (including white parts of the image) resolve to images with black background, so I never see the "white" ones (except for the initial "turtles" one). Anyone having the same problem? IE11 works for me. 141.101.99.186 21:52, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
I also have this issue, using Firefox 31.0 on Windows 7. It's also very slow/laggy doing the fade transitions between pixels and the images. 141.101.98.191 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This date of this comic (Sept 3rd 2014) coincided with the date of Randall's book, What-If. This book is shown or referenced in a number of the frames.--Pudder (talk) 09:57, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

But the site says the book was out September 2nd... 108.162.237.161 11:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
You're right, 108.162.237.161. I changed it and provided proof. As far as I could find, though, it's only launched in the US as of today. NealCruco (talk) 19:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Also just isolated the images. I described the procedure on my blog: http://azttm.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/xkcd-com-1416-pixels/ Azt (Azt) 09:58, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I zoom in when I scroll up. I also like turtles. 103.22.201.120 09:15, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I think this comic might be a reference to D. Hofstadter's celebrated book Gödel, Escher, Bach, what with the 'holism', 'reductionism' and 'Mu' coming out at some point (there is the very same construction in one of the dialogs from that book). Plus, generally speaking, GEB is all about "strange loops" and infinite recursions. --108.162.254.30 09:50, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I have uploaded a graph showing the layout of the entire storyline, with thumbnails of the individual images, at Media:1416_Pixels_layout.png. --Mnw21cam (talk) 12:20, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Has any attempt been made to find "extra" panels that may occur as a part of a logical series? For example, there is "chess-b" and "chess-w", are there "chess-a", "chess-c", "chess-d", etc? Jarod997 (talk) 13:56, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

It never occurred to you that those letters stand for Black/White? --Zom-B (talk) 20:25, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
Huh, wha? No, that's got to be way too simple. There MUST be more images! :P Actually I was hoping/wondering if there was a sequence of 20-ish chess panels which depicted a game, with a Randall type ending to it. *sigh* Way to burst my bubble. lol Jarod997 (talk) 12:37, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Any Kerbal Space Program players on here who can shed any light on the origins of 'Need Moar Struts'? Is it a well known meme amongst the player base as I have guessed?--Pudder (talk) 14:27, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

In an infinite series of turtles, at least 4 of them have to be youthful, genetically modified, and skilled in martial arts. Has anyone found them? DivePeak (talk) 21:30, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I am on Chrome, and I cannot see any of the images in the Explain XKCD gallery even though the actual strip works fine. Anyone know what's wrong? Jimmy C (talk) 21:35, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't know why the article says that the comic doesn't work in Safari on Mac OS X. It's working just fine here on Safari 7.0.6. I think if someone is going to make such claims, they should be careful to note which version of the software they're working with so others can compare appropriately. Yaztromo (talk) 23:33, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Works for me on Safari 8.0 on my Mac--108.162.216.192 19:35, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

How do you get all these 'interesting' panels? No matter how much I scroll and pan I only get the space objects (including the Earth with 'BOOK LAUNCH' inscription), atoms and the MU panel (but never got either HOLISM or REDUCTIONISM). Firefox 26. 108.162.254.29 07:43, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

That's the same bug as I described above (141.101.99.186). I couldn't get the comic to work properly with Firefox, so you'll probably have to try another browser... hope Randall will get these bugs fixed. 141.101.99.239 17:55, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
Adjacency list for the graph

I've created a quick hack to show what each image can contain here. Might be helpful in finishing off this page. Uber5001 (talk) 22:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Mandelbrot?

Is the way the images are repeated being based on some math pattern, like the Mandelbrot set? Osias (talk) 02:38, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Quarks and strings?

Once when zooming I have found something that looked roughly like quark model of nucleon (below MU), then a loop - perhaps a string from the string theory --JakubNarebski (talk) 10:53, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The image certainly looks like a loop or a string but Randall has a very low opinion of string theory.

09:57, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Interactive graph

Hello, I've uploaded an interactive version of the graph here Raphv (talk) 15:16, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Hey has anyone seen the panel with black hat? He's standing next to a fire fighter and a burning vehicle saying, "to be fair, what else do you expect to come out of a "fire hydrant"?" I found it in one if the bird panels, next to a turtle panel. 103.22.201.207 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)


"scroll to zoom" is wrong and misleading

This may be nitpicking, but Randall's words "scroll to zoom" are misleading.

  • When I visited http://xkcd.com/1416/ first on my smartphone, I scrolled the page and nothing zoomed.
  • Next, when I visited http://xkcd.com/1416/ on my PC, I scrolled the page and nothing zoomed.
  • Only when on the PC I use the mouse wheel, nothing scrolled but the image zoomed.

The text should really be "Use mouse wheel to zoom".

When someone posts a comic, I can't pay attention to the content if the words are misleading.

What do you think ? --MGitsfullofsheep (talk) 11:08, 6 September 2014 (UTC)


Has not worked since day 2

Whichever browser I try, the lower levels do not load and the first image just fades to white. They did load on launch day, but not anymore.141.101.98.240 14:47, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


Is the Mario scene referring to the Carl Sagan line about how "a still more glorious dawn awaits," as well as Super Mario Galaxy? - 173.245.54.186 21:37, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Mikemk added "The plate on the turtle is Greek mythology, far before the 18th century". I can't actually find anything about a World Turtle from Greek mythology (Chelone was just an ordinary-sized turtle who did not support the world), but I've added a mention of other ancient myths. I propose to remove Mikemk's addition to the "Incomplete" tag in a few days, if nobody objects. Cosmogoblin (talk) 12:31, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

In my ongoing war against the "Incomplete" tag, I've added a great deal of detailed explanation to various panels. I think it's fine now, but it could really do with a review by somebody else! In particular, it would be great if somebody more familiar than myself with the terms could check through what I've written for Mu, Holism and Reductionism. Cosmogoblin (talk) 18:28, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Isn't the last panel of the "Needs More Struts" series showing the Earth and Moon, not the Earth and the rocket? -- Comment Police (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I've got a book called "Turtles All The Way Down". Klyxm (talk) 06:48, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

So, I've been trying to scroll on a Mac (I don't have a mouse available), but it just zooms in a bit, then stops. How am I supposed to get this to work?108.162.216.150 18:05, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Two things: One, it sometimes works now, and two, I fixed the comment (it was unsigned).108.162.216.150 18:05, 20 November 2019 (UTC)