Talk:1193: Externalities

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Any chance we can convince Randall to let other universities in: the Canadian ones only work if they have a .edu, so uwaterloo.ca and sfu.ca are out.

As are [schools].ac.in
I can't get my university (PUC-Rio, in Brazil) too... =/ 139.82.240.51 18:28, 1 April 2013 (UTC) etandel

--137.147.40.248 13:53, 1 April 2013 (UTC) For an easier time spotting the changes, go to [1] and open your web console

199.48.226.89 10:18, 1 April 2013 (UTC) I put in "caltech.edu" and hashed a lot of words, and "Twilight Sparkle is best pony." was the best result I managed, only off by 496 tits.

I noticed when looking at the list of scores that a large number of universities have a best score at 420. According to my calculations, the amount of universities with this score is 2516 out of the 2824 universities listed. Is there any reason that so many universities have the exact same score? --LRFLEW (talk) 03:38, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

+1! A few hours ago this wasn't the case... What's up with all the 420's?? 108.218.230.91 03:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
People keep posting hash values on the internet. Those universities are dirty cheaters, and they're all just entering the 420 hash in for their university without actually calculating it. Davidy²²[talk] 04:05, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

All I see is a blank white 780x969 image. Nothing appears when I hover over stuff. 109.65.100.208 09:04, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Sometimes it does that. It takes a while to generate, and it doesn't always render correctly. Try updating your browser or refreshing. Davidy²²[talk] 09:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The person who provided the shopped image either isn't using a modern browser or is using IE. The font is supposed to be "xkcd-Regular", which I assume is a font that gets downloaded from XKCD's server. Loading the same page in IE 9 gave me that Times New Roman-esque font instead (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera use the special font, although it's rendered a little fuzzy in Firefox). 129.21.119.153 09:25, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The dog part now shows "[email protected]" underneath the sliders for me. --Gefrierbrand (talk) 09:50, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I think it matches the company in the first panel? (Currently CAREERS@XLINX INC for me.) --81.138.95.57 10:53, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The page where the company name is supposed to be fetched from is "Sith" now, but I checked and the company is not there. I think this will take some time to decipher ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 11:12, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

.... uh, remember few pages ago where we JOKED about being used as distributted computer? Now we ARE used to crack the provided hash ... -- Hkmaly (talk) 11:15, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
It's April 1st. Maybe the idea that the company is sourced from a Wikipedia page is not true. That would explain the link to the Wikipedia fund raising page as an apology for the fact that there will be many XKCD readers vandalising the Sith page Jeremyp (talk) 11:38, 1 April 2013 (UTC).
... AND it's [wikipedia:Jean-Luc_Picard|Jean Luc Picard] now. AND there is actually Apple linked from it. While the Google is company doing recruiting now ... hmmm ... but Google actually IS mentioned in one of previous version of page ... damn vandals. -- Hkmaly (talk) 12:35, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
WAIT. Randal now mentioned "... Final Fantasy Tactics. But link on Jean Luc Picard could beat it". So either it's something like "taken from last edited page" or he is doing it manually. -- Hkmaly (talk) 12:42, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
"Microsoft Corporation is the first NASDAQ-100 company mentioned on the wikipedia page 'IBM'. But a link on 'Oprah' could beat it." -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
... AND wikipedia editors started observing the comics to edit-protect wikipedia entries BEFORE the vandals strike, as shown here. -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:49, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The top of the page for the comic now mentions this: "You can change the company in this comic. Mouse over its name in the first panel. The schools are selected by a hash breaking competition." Don't think that was there before. More interesting is the first sentence. Do we have a list of wikipedia pages that he's tracking for the first company mentioned in the page? 220.224.246.97 17:52, 1 April 2013 (UTC)


Ignorant question: What is this hash finding competition? Was it announced somewhere? 129.67.199.117 11:56, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Click that panel: http://almamater.xkcd.com/ Jeremy1026 (talk) 12:05, 1 April 2013 (UTC).
Looking in the externalities file, another usefull link is "... full standings at http://almamater.xkcd.com/best.csv" -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:24, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The sad thing is that people are probably only donating to a good cause to see the dog-drawing get bigger. 76.106.251.87 14:11, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

In that case it's good Randal used GOOD cause. -- Hkmaly (talk) 14:24, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Actually, the sad thing is taht people are vandalizing Wikipedia. --189.61.0.28 19:26, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone explain what, if anything, the name/email/education values (fifth panel) refer to? 108.36.128.122 19:34, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks like one random string and one random pair of strings. 178.238.159.109 20:12, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Has anyone been able to reproduce the 1024-tit Skein hash values that he is generating at http://almamater.xkcd.com/? The hashes that he shows don't match the ones I'm getting from my Skein hash calculator (using 1024 tit output and 1024 tit internal state size). I tried feeding the same string into the hash function both with and without a trailing null character and neither matches. For example, if I type abc into the form, he shows 35a599...1f1f (edited for brevity), but I calculate that a hash of the 3-byte message "abc" should be 10a866...035c.Theodric (talk) 22:03, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

I'm getting completely different values also. 173.22.172.7 22:57, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
I have the same problem as you. I'm thinking that Xkcd is using an older standard of the encryption. I'm currently trying out the php versions of the code to see if I can get it to work. --LRFLEW (talk) 23:16, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Nope. Tried all I could and still couldn't figure it out. My guess is that he's using a secret salt. --LRFLEW (talk) 23:37, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
Solved! :) I was originally using version 1.2 of the Skein hash function. Version 1.3 uses different constants and yields different results. The almamater page seems to be using version 1.3 -- my calculator now matches Randall's hashes.--Theodric (talk) 03:34, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Where are you getting the implementation? I can't seem to get it to work even with v1.3. --LRFLEW (talk) 04:42, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

"Wikipedia article on Template:hint: The perpetrators of the largest extinction in Earth's history" Would this be humans? I'm afraid to get in on the Wikipedia editing since I'm already in so-so standing due to some childishness in 2006... 76.106.251.87 21:54, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

The opening line of the first panel has changed. It's now "Ahoy, Carnegie Melonites!" (for the current school) rather than "Hey, [university] students!" (as listed in all the current entries for the changing first panel text). The question and response seem to be the same as before. And the fifth panel now has "if they're clever with their applications" instead of "provided any of them manage to fill out the application correctly". So showing the text as static in the comic image is no longer accurate. --50.0.108.18 23:00, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

If I visit http://xkcd.com/1193/ then the font is xkcd-Regular, whereas if I visit http://www.xkcd.com/1193/ then the font is the default serif font… (Iceweasel with NoScript) 178.238.159.109 02:44, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Someone, please explain what hash breaking is. Jackdavinci (talk) 04:00, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Is it over now that it's after midnight? When I moused over the school name, it didn't give me a pop-up showing the next hint. 76.106.251.87 06:06, 2 April 2013 (UTC)