596: Latitude

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Latitude

Title text: The G1, especially with the new Android upgrade, is way better than I originally thought.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Title text just described - there are no explanation of why someone likes the G1. Has it anything to do with the features of Black Hat's app, can it close the Latitude app or keep it open. Is it Randall or Black Hat that says this? If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Black Hat shows his friend Cueball that he has made a mobile phone application to log and find addresses and business names for the locations of his "friends" using data from Google Latitude which was a location-aware feature of Google Maps that allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location.

The reason it is worth doing so for him, is that most of those that use Google Latitude, haven't learned the habit to turn it off when engaging in "discreet" activities. And then Black Hat can access their whereabout which he then uses in his app.

The second panel shows the screen of Black Hat's smartphone with the logs for his two friend in table form showing activity for Megan and Robert, the latter log is partially cut off.

Robert's log is fairly innocuous: home at 12:30 PM, school at 2:00 PM and in a Subway restaurant at 3:30 PM. This log shows that "Robert" did nothing interesting for Black Hat.

Given that Black Hat has often interacted with the Cueball called Rob, it seems likely that the Cueball in this comic is actually Rob (for Robert), and it turns out that he has also forgotten to turn of his Google Latitude, but to his luck there where no interesting events. Maybe this is why Black Hat shows it to him, so he can share Megan's event log which is much more interesting. That Rob has been at a school could mean he was a teacher or for some other reason needed to go there. It is such a short time span in the afternoon that it does not seem like something a school kid would do. Some has suggested that this Robert is actually Little Bobby Tables. But Black Hat has never interacted with the Roberts family so this seems unlikely. Given that it is unclear if it is either Rob nor Bobby neither should be credited as part of this comic.

Megan's log appears to prove Black Hat's point: home at 11:00 AM, a sex toy store at 12:30 PM, home at 1:30 PM, another sex toy store at 2:00 PM, home at 2:30 PM, Fry's Electronics at 3:00 PM, a power tool store at 3:30 PM, home at 4:00 PM and a hospital burn ward at 4:10 PM. This suggests that Megan first tried the sex toy(s) from the first store, found them insufficiently satisfying, purchased additional sex toys from another store, was still unsatisfied, and then purchased some electronic devices and power tools (either to improve the performance of her sex toys or to apply directly for additional stimulation). The results were apparently more painful than pleasurable, necessitating a quick visit to the hospital burn ward. Overall, Megan has had a rather bad day, and would almost certainly not be pleased to learn that Black Hat has been tracking her whereabouts.

This is one of the handful of times that the name Megan has been used in xkcd, in this case without actually showing Megan, so there is actually no indication in this comic how she looks.

The reason Black Hat states that this is a narrow window of time that people forget to turn it off, is because people like him will make other people who forgets miserable, and then everyone will soon learn to turn the feature off.

The title text shows that Randall liked the T-Mobile G1, also known as the HTC Dream, especially with the new Android upgrade, more than he previously thought.

Transcript

[Black Hat is holding a phone up to Cueball.]

Black Hat: We're in a narrow window in which people are using Google Latitude, but haven't learned the habit of turning it off when they're doing something discreetly.

Black Hat: I wrote an app to log friends' locations and work out addresses and business names.

[A timetable is visible. The first column gives the time and splits the day in the half hour intervals starting at 11:00 AM. The next two columns represents two persons activities. For the second column the last letter shown in the comic is partly cut off. For each entry the last letter partly shown is noted normally. Above the table, over the two names, there is a caption:]

Locations

Time	Megan	Rober
11:00 AM	Home
12:30 PM	Eastview Adult Toy Store	Home
1:30 PM	Home
2:00 PM	Laketown Sex Toy Shop	Schoo
2:30 PM	Home
3:00 PM	Fry's Electronics
3:30 PM	Ed's Power Tool Emporium	Subwa
4:00 PM	Home
4:10 PM	Hospital Burn Ward

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Discussion

I thought the sex toy shops were unrelated to the last two shops - that she just did something re-e-e-eally stupid with the gizmos and power tools that landed her in the burn ward. Also, who's to say Robert didn't turn off Latitude? His schedule has some pretty big blanks. Anonymous 06:51, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

If Megan was buying a drill so she could put up shelves, that kind of destroys the joke. Why should she need to be discreet about that?

Also, I think that Robert's simple schedule of home / school / subway is a small joke about reversed expectations. A usual joke about how men spend their time (while on the internet, for example) might show a preponderance of sexually-related activity. Here, Randall has attributed the sexual experimentation to Megan instead. 108.162.219.223 00:48, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

My take on this is that Megan went to the two last stores to improve her toys, as several xkcd comics deal with DIY stuff. 108.162.254.163 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I was thinking that as well: she was trying to "Tim Taylor" her sex toys, and got about the same results he would. --Aaron of Mpls (talk) 10:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the title text is a reference to the previous comic about the android girlfriend?173.245.50.84 21:29, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Fortunately for him, Black Hat knows how to avoid SQL injection, so he didn't lose his database when he added Little Bobby Table ;-)

--Lou Crazy (talk) 09:39, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Probably this did not happen because there is no real reason to assume it is Bobby, rather Cueball and Robert in this comic is the same and thus making Cueball here = Rob. But that is also just guess work. Have corrected explanation and removed Bobby category. (But not added Rob) --Kynde (talk) 16:26, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

According to the explanation (and logical spelling), Robert's schedule is clearly "Home, School, Subway". So why does the explanation say "Home, Schoo, Subwa"? --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 17:48, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

And yes, before you say it, I know that's where it ends in the comic, but still. Oversight, I guess? --JayRulesXKCD (talk) 17:50, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you mean in the transcript, because in that only what is actually written should be there. The full words are used above in the explanation, but should still be cut off as they are in the transcript. --Kynde (talk) 13:16, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I added this comic to Category:Comics featuring Rob because it mentioned Robert in the app. Undo this if it should not be. 625571b7-aa66-4f98-ac5c-92464cfb4ed8 (talk) 22:41, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Why is it assumed he was at a Subway Sandwich shop and not an actual subway, which would also give reason why the time after is blank for a longer time as especially back then signals in underground Subways were non existent, not that they are any better now especially for GPS. Even the transcript on the original xkcd.com page does not specify which it is. 108.162.216.166 12:01, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Malapropism alert: Do you mean "inconspicuous places" or do you mean "innocuous places"? --172.70.86.11 14:25, 18 November 2022 (UTC)