explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3024: METAR

2024-12-14T01:35:56Z

141.101.98.229: Undo revision 359426 by 172.71.159.45 (talk) Not sure that all that information needed removing. Could do with slight editing down, but not carving out most of the interesting info.

{{comic
| number = 3024
| date = December 13, 2024
| title = METAR
| image = metar_2x.png
| imagesize = 640x360px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = In the aviation world, they don't use AM/PM times. Instead, all times are assumed to be AM unless they're labeled NOTAM.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an A380 - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In aviation, the {{w|METAR}} (Meteorological Aerodrome Report) is used to give pilots a brief overview of the current meteorological conditions at the airport.
The METAR follows a specific structure and makes heavy usage of abbreviations, which makes it hard to read for anyone not familiar with it.
The comic makes fun of that by assuming meaning of the words based on what non-aviation people might think the different elements of the METAR report may represent.
The METAR in the comic is fairly alarming, describing gale-force winds, a possible tornado, freezing volcanic ash (in New York), lightning, and impossibly high atmospheric pressure.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Code !! Real Meaning !! According to the comic
|-
| METAR
| Type: Meteorological Aerodrome Report
| The comic assumes that this is just a spelling error and it should be "meter"
|-
| KNYC
| Station ID: 4 character identifier; for an airport, this would be the ICAO code. In this instance the identifier represents the automated weather station at Belvedere Castle in Central Park, NYC. Airport, weather, and radio station call signs share a common heritage.
| "Station ID", which is actually correct, although most people unfamiliar with METAR-reporting stations may presume this is a TV or Radio broadcaster's registered identification.
|-
| 251600Z
| Time of observation: 25th day of the month at 4 PM UTC. Z is not part of the time, but simply shorthand for GMT or "Zulu" time.
| Misreading the "Z" as a 2, resulting in a nonsensical time. Hours greater than 24 are sometimes used to indicate a time after midnight, e.g., in Japan 17~25h means from 5 P.M. to 1 A.M. the following day. A normal METAR does not use more than 24 hours, instead incrementing the day, so 25 hours further adds to the nonsensical nature of the interpretation.
|-
| 18035G45KT
| Wind direction and speed: Wind direction: 180° (directly from the south, degrees based on 0°=magnetic north), speed: 35 knots, gusting to 45 knots
| Instead of interpreting the first 5 digits as direction and speed, it is assumed that it is one big number and the G45 stands for the time span in which this was observed with "G" standing for "good". 18,035 knots is an unrealistically high wind speed, faster than orbital velocity; the {{w|jet stream}} typically contains the highest winds on Earth, and may reach about 250 knots.
|-
| 6SM
| In weather reports related to aviation, "6SM" stands for 6 statute miles, meaning that objects can be seen clearly up to 6 miles away.<ref>https://weather.cod.edu/notes/metar.html#:~:text=6SM%2DVisibility,SM)%20up%20to%2010%20SM.</ref> This indicates clear enough weather to fly without instruments; the value has a max range of 10SM.
| The comic interprets "6SM" to humorously mean a "Size '''6 Sm'''all".
|-
| VCFCFZVA
| In the vicinity (VC): funnel cloud (FC) and freezing (FZ) volcanic ash (VA).
| A riff on the repeated letters which give off the impression the string is constructed by randomly keypresses on the keyboard, as exemplified by a [[1689: My Friend Catherine|cat on the keyboard]]. There is a long history of this problem, as well as [http://bitboost.com/pawsense/ attempted solutions].
This string may or may not actually look like the pattern of characters that a walking cat could produce (and be reliably detected). All the letters are in a cluster at the lower left of the (QWERTY) keyboard, with some adjacently paired characters perhaps indicative of stepping on multiple keys and other neighbouring keys having been stepped over, not uncommon of an oblivious feline wandering across your desk. But the repeated cluster of "CFCF", and other implied paw-press events, seem less likely to emerge even from a rapid quadrupedal gait. A more casual stroll would likely also create single-character duplications, unless the keyboard repeat delay was set unnaturally high.
|-
| +BLUP
| Heavy (+) blowing (BL) unknown precipitation (UP)
| Riffing on the fact that it looks like an onomatopoetic word
|-
| NOSIG
| No significant change is expected to the reported conditions within the next 2 hours
| The comic assumes that the transmitter of the METAR report wants the receivers to know that they do not have a significant other, which the comic finds sad. The observer could be trying to abuse the METAR report as a dating platform.
|-
| LTG OHD
| Lightning overhead
| OHD is interpreted as "overheard" instead of "overhead", indicating that they did not observe it themselves and instead just overheard people talking about it.
|-
| A3808
| Altimeter setting: (calculated) air pressure at {{w|Mean_sea_level|mean sea level}} at the airport is 38.08. The value of 38.08 inHg is extremely high. The standard atmospheric pressure used in aviation is 29.92 inHg, the highest recorded surface pressure on Earth was 32.01 {{w|Inch_of_mercury|inches of mercury (inHg)}}<ref>https://learn.weatherstem.com/modules/learn/lessons/125/18.html</ref> ("A" for inHg, used primarily in USA, Canada and Japan, "Q" would indicate a value in hPa). This is used to adjust the altimeter in the aircraft to the local air pressure, instead of using the standard setting used in higher air spaces.
| The comic says that the observer saw an {{w|Airbus_A380|Airbus A380-800}}. Note: The {{w|List_of_ICAO_aircraft_type_designators|ICAO aircraft type code}} for the Airbus A380-800 is A388 and not A3808.
|-
| RMK
| Beginning of the section with remarks
| Remarkable. Might be a comment about the A380.
|-
| AO2
| The weather station is automated (A) and has a precipitation discriminator (O2)
| Reference to the {{w|fan fiction|fanfic}} site [https://archiveofourown.org/ Archive of Our Own], often abbreviated as AO3
|-
| SLP130=
| {{w|Sea_level_pressure|Sea-level pressure}} is 1013.0 hPa (approx. 29.91 inHg). The equal sign signifies the end of the METAR.
| "SLP" interpreted as abbreviation for sleepy, the numbers as a time, and the = sign as "around" (maybe confused with ≈)
|-
| NOTAM (title text)
| Not part of a METAR report, but instead another aviation abbreviation. It stands for {{w|NOTAM|Notice to Air Missions}} (previously Notice to Airmen).
| Parsed as "not A.M.", indicating that a given time is to be interpreted as P.M. While AM and PM are indeed not used in aviation, as the comic says, they use a 24-hour clock system, not an "A.M.-by-default" 12-hour clock system.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Decoding a METAR Report:

[A METAR report is shown with annotations. The report is:]

<code>
METAR KNYC 251600Z 18035G45KT 6SM VCFCFZVA +BLUP NOSIG LTG OHD A3808 RMK A02 SPL130=
</code>

[The annotations are:]

* <code>METAR</code> "METER" (Usually misspelled)
* <code>KNYC</code> Station ID
* <code>251600Z</code> Time (25:16:002)
* <code>18035G45KT</code> Wind speed has been 18,035 knots for a good 45 minutes now
* <code>6SM</code> Observer is a size 6 small
* <code>VCFCFZVA</code> Sorry, the station cat walked on the keyboard
* <code>+BLUP</code> Weird noise the sky made earlier
* <code>NOSIG</code> Observer has no significant other :(
* <code>LTG OHD</code> We overheard someone saying there was lightning
* <code>A3808</code> Hey look, an Airbus A380-800!
* <code>RMK</code> Remarkable!
* <code>A02</code> Fanfic Archive equipped with a precipitation sensor
* <code>SPL130=</code> Observer got sleepy around 1:30

==References==
{{reflist}}
[https://e6bx.com/metar-decoder/ Metar Decoder]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Aviation]]

2865: The Wrong Stuff

2023-12-09T09:28:12Z

141.101.98.229:

{{comic
| number = 2865
| date = December 8, 2023
| title = The Wrong Stuff
| image = the_wrong_stuff_2x.png
| imagesize = 351x513px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The phantom found Edward Everett Hale a century too early; by the time we invented satellites, the specifics of his 'brick moon' proposal were dismissed as science fiction.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a TRAIN MADE OF 1977 SOVIET URANIUM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Multiple times in history, there have been incidents where companies, governments, and engineers have proposed or developed plans for large vehicles composed of unconventional materials. One example is {{w|Project Habakkuk}} (mentioned in the comic), an aircraft carrier which was to be composed of pykrete, a mixture of wood pulp and ice. The comic imagines that all of these proposals are linked together by a single "Material Phantom," a ghost which haunts engineers and convinces them to design giant vehicles made of the impractical materials.

The three "wrong material vehicles" mentioned in the comic are:

*{{w|The Spruce Goose}} - An actual {{w|flying boat}} made, in spite of its name, almost entirely out of {{w|birch}} wood. Most modern planes are constructed out of aluminum, some other metal/alloy or (partially) out of carbon / glass fibre composites (CFRC / GFRC). Notably, despite being built out of the "wrong" material (due to wartime restrictions on aluminum usage, the use of birch wood was the next best option) the plane did make a single 26-second flight in 1947 before production halted due to the end of the war. The plane is currently on display at the {{w|Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum}} in {{w|McMinnville, Oregon}}, {{w|United States}}.
*{{w|Project Habakkuk}} - A proposed aircraft carrier composed of pykrete, a mixture of wood pulp and ice. Modern aircraft carriers are built from steel.
*{{w|Trojan Horse}} - A mythological, giant wooden horse, supposedly used by {{w|Ancient Greece|the Greeks}} to invade the city of {{w|Troy}}. Actual horses are composed, like any other animal, out of meat, bone, and other tissues and bodily fluids.{{citation needed}} In addition, the interior of the Trojan Horse was composed of Greek warriors rather than horse innards.

The title text references {{w|Edward Everett Hale|Edward Everett Hale's}} science fiction novella ''{{w|The Brick Moon}},'' the first known depiction of an artificial satellite in fiction. The novella is, of course, just a sci-fi story, but the title text states that Hale was actually approached by the Material Phantom, and the novella was a serious proposal for a moon made out of bricks. Apparently, it was only retroactively perceived as science-fiction.

The title "the Wrong Stuff" is a play on {{w|The Right Stuff}}, a book/movie/TV series about the astronauts of {{w|Project Gemini}}. In that title, "the right stuff" refers to the figurative material that these men were made of which gave them the bravery to embark on these missions.

==Trivia==
This comic was uploaded with the "the" in "the Wrong Stuff" being entirely lowercase, breaking the normal title case used for XKCD comic titles. Possibly another word was initially intended to come before "the", in which case lowercasing "the" would be correct. xkcd displays lowercase letters in titles with {{w|small caps}}, making the lowercase "the" less obvious than it is in the true lowercase used on explainxkcd.

However, it's worth noting that the comic title has since been changed to "The Wrong Stuff," with "the" capitalized as per standard title case.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A ghost is approaching Cueball in a workshop. They are surrounded by shop equipment, such as a table with a press on it, and a small pile of what appears to be lumber. Cueball is backing away from the ghost, holding his hands up defensively.]
:Ghost: oooOOOOOOoooo Build a spaceship out of bricks! oooooOOOOOOOOoo
:Cueball: No! Go away!
:[There is a caption underneath the panel]
:The Spruce Goose, the Project Habakkuk Ice Ship, and the Trojan Horse were all work of the Material Phantom, a ghost that wanders the Earth convincing engineers to make giant vehicles out of the wrong stuff.
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Engineering]]

2863: Space Typography

2023-12-09T09:26:05Z

141.101.98.229:

{{comic
| number = 2863
| date = December 4, 2023
| title = Space Typography
| image = space_typography_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x239px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = And over heeee[...]eeeere (i)s Saturn.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an OPTIMISTIC ALIEN OVER THEEEE[...]EEEERE (o)N... CYGNUS X-1 - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Randall has created a sentence with the property wherein when printed in {{w|Times New Roman}} font, the distances of the "i" letters from the first letter are proportional to the radii of the orbits of the innermost five planets in the {{w|Solar System}}. These are the only letters in the sentence that have a dot over the letter (there are no "j"s in the sentence) or elsewhere (there are no periods, colons, semicolons, or other dot-containing symbols). He suggests that if you get lost travelling among these planets, you can use the dots as a map.

This won't be a very useful map. When travelling between planets, it's not enough to know where the planet's orbit is, you also need to know where it is along the orbit. Additionally, if you are truly lost then you likely do not know where ''you'' actually are, and which 'way' you are heading, though you can probably at least locate the sun if you are indeed within our inner solar system.

The sentence is self-referential since it talks about using typography to measure distances in space, and this makes it a useful mnemonic. The "optimistic" in the sentence could indicate that the aliens in question are highly optimistic that this kind of "map" would be useful for navigating a star system where planets orbit in ellipses, rather than being in static positions along a line (as is so often depicted in line-ups of the Solar System's planets).

The title text appends the sentence with a section for identifying Saturn. It contains an ellipsis in brackets, which normally signifies that an indeterminate number of 'e's has been omitted from the sentence, seemingly to represent Saturn's large orbital radius as the next "i" in "is". The trick is appending the sentence, brackets and all, after the original sentence (so that we get "Optimistic aliens measure space typographically. And over here, [...]eeeere (i)s Saturn.") puts the dot on the last "i" at Saturn's orbit. The extra dots and periods besides the six 'i's only serve as punctuation and spacing; the parentheses, besides spacing, call attention to the 'i' in the title text, where the black emphasis of the comic is not available. They're also reminiscent of {{w|Saturn's rings}}, although they are much too large and off-centre.

Similar sentences with varying numbers of "e"s could be used to continue out to any planet or other body which does not contain the letter "i" – which is all of the remaining planets and minor planets, except Eris. However, the strings of "e"s would get longer and longer, to the point that it might be necessary to write down how many of them are to be used – about 59 "e"s for Saturn, starting from the Sun – which might as well just be replaced with a table of orbital ephemerides.

==Accuracy==
[[File:2863OrbitComparison.png|thumb|Comparison between orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter to the dots in the comic]]
Measuring the distances based on the provided image results in these approximate distances:

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|-
! Planet !! Pixel offset !! Relative Distance in Comic !! Actual Distance in AU<ref>https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/pdfs/scaless_reference.pdf</ref>
|-
| Mercury || 93 || 0.3907 || 0.39
|-
| Venus || 169 || 0.7101 || 0.72
|-
| Earth || 238 || 1 || 1
|-
| Mars || 362 || 1.5210 || 1.52
|-
| Jupiter || 1229 || 5.1639 || 5.2
|}

Saturn is 9.54 astronomical units from the sun, for which 13 middle 'e's would be required in "here" to make the title text work.

The picture also contains a standard representation of Times New Roman, with no changes to kerning or tracking.

Continuing the idea would look like this:

"Optimistic aliens measure space typographically. And over heeeeeeeeeeeeere (i)s Saturn. And over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere is Uranus. And over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere is Neptune. And over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere (o)n Cygnus X-1"

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|-
! Planet !! Number of 'e's needed in "here"
|-
| Saturn || 13
|-
| Uranus || 49
|-
| Neptune || 58
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A grayed-out sentence in the Times New Roman font reads "Optimistic aliens measure space typographically". The "O" in "Optimistic" is dark black and indicated as representing the Sun (not to scale). The dots of the letters "i" in the sentence are similarly dark black. The dot in the first "i" in "Optimistic" is indicated as representing Mercury; the dot in the second "i" represents Venus; the dot in the third "i" represents Earth. The dot in the "i" in "aliens" is indicated as representing Mars. The dot in the "i" in "typographically" is indicated as representing Jupiter. A measurement bar indicates that the distance between the "O" and the third "i" in "Optimistic" (representing Earth) is equivalent to 1 AU (astronomical unit).]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Space tip: if you're ever lost in the inner Solar System, you can just type out the phrase "Optimistic aliens measure space typographically" in Times New Roman and use the dots as a map.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Tips]]

377: Journal 2

2023-12-08T17:11:48Z

141.101.98.229: Makes no sense. He is neither napping (sleeping), napping (treating certain fabrics) or even knapping (creating flint tools). And what's with the bold all-caps and the odd turn of phrase with "jaws of surprise"?

{{comic
| number = 377
| date = January 30, 2008
| title = Journal 2
| image = journal_2.png
| titletext = That's my hat! You took my hat!
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a direct sequel to [[374: Journal]], where [[Black Hat]] discusses his plan exactly as [[Danish]] describes it here, that is, he intends to display signs of interest in order to flatter a stranger only to hurt her by rejecting her when she responds. In this case, the plan ricochets when Danish recognizes his plan before he has a chance to implement it.
Black Hat's tendency to act in enigmatic, and at times sociopathic, ways serves to give him a sense of superiority while at the same time keeping others distant enough that they can't hurt him. Danish not only recognizes that, she also calls him out on it. She recognizes his secret longing for connection to another, a connection that she could give should she choose to do so. Instead, she uses a more disingenuous version of his own ploy by laying bare his intentions and his desires before stripping him of his hat and confidence and it and herself from his life.

Danish proves she is equal to — or possibly even better than — Black Hat. His hat is an adumbration of his sociopathy and possibly a realization that, in the completely hypothetical situation that Black Hat is just a character in a webcomic, no one would recognize him without his black hat.

The shocked Black Hat can bring his vast intellectual powers to say nothing more to an already-decamped Danish than “That’s my hat! You took my hat!”

The whole "[[:Category:Journal|Journal]]" story is:
*[[374: Journal]]
*[[377: Journal 2]]
*[[405: Journal 3]]
*[[432: Journal 4]]
*[[433: Journal 5]]

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat and Danish are sitting in a train across from each other. Black Hat is writing in a journal.]
:Black Hat: ''blush''

:Danish: I see what you did there.

:[Danish stands up.]
:Danish: You were trying to open me up so you could hurt my feelings.
:Danish: You like to hurt people.

:[Danish walks closer.]
:Danish: Well, I like to hurt people too. And you know what?

:[Danish is in Black Hat's face.]
:Danish: *whispering* ''I'm better at it than you.''

:Danish: I'm about to hurt you more than you could ever hurt me.
:Danish: See, I just saw right through you.
:Danish: Alone of all the people you'll ever meet, I understand you-

:[Danish strikes Black Hat's hat so it falls off.]

:[Black Hat is surprised.]
:[Danish catches Black Hat's hat and self-dons it]

:Danish: -and you'll never see me again.

:[Danish exits frame left.]

:[Black Hat sits alone on the train and puts his arms down.]

==Trivia==
* This is the first xkcd comic featuring [[Danish]].
* After this comic was posted, Black Hat would not appear in another comic until [[Journal 3]], implying Black Hat stopped his usual antics whilst trying to track down Danish and get his hat back.
* This comic used to be [https://web.archive.org/web/20220125023401/https://store.xkcd.com/products/signed-prints available as a signed print] in the xkcd store before it was [[Store|shut down]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Journal|02]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Journal]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]

Talk:930: Days of the Week

2016-12-04T03:57:40Z

141.101.98.229: Anyone notice the Transcript misses Wednesday?

I *might* buy the print of this, but it looks like the kind of thing that varies quickly, and I want a poster that I can refer to easily and won't become outdated after a year. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|purple|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 09:17, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Just think, If I hadn't got this far in my pilgrimage, I would never have heard of Rebecca Black. So duhh! how did a computer hack?

[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 16:43, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Randall missed a real opportunity to go full meta and put a ring that said "Gotta go read the new xkcd" ''{{Color|#555555|-Yh}}'' 1:09, 24 January 2016 (US Central) {{unsigned|Yhsanave}}

Anyone notice the Transcript misses Wednesday? --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.229|141.101.98.229]] 03:57, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

802: Online Communities 2

2013-12-09T17:28:20Z

141.101.98.229: Removed claim that MySpace was popular on the 1990s; it was actually founded in 2003.

{{comic
| number = 802
| date = October 6, 2010
| title = Online Communities 2
| image = online_communities_2.png
| titletext = Best trivia I learned while working on this: 'Man, Farmville is so huge! Do you realize it's the second-biggest browser-based social-networking-centered farming game in the WORLD?' Then you wait for the listener to do a double-take.
}}
A larger version of this picture can be found here: [http://xkcd.com/802_large/ http://xkcd.com/802_large/].
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Not all of the regions are fully explained.}}
This comic shows a map of internet communities where the size of each region roughly corresponds to its size, and its proximity to other regions indicates similarities.

This is the successor of [[256: Online Communities]]. It differs in that it is updated, and furthermore, instead of using the ''membership'' of whichever service to determine its size on the map, it uses its "daily social activity."

The map actually has two super−maps: the online community map is surrounded by the "countries" of E−Mail and SMS ("Instant Messaging"). These, in turn, are surrounded by the "Spoken Language" country (which is odd, considering that e−mail, SMS, and the Internet in general are based on ''written'' language) with its own sub−country, "cell phones" (which ''do'' involve e−mail and the Internet while being the mean medium of SMS's).

At the title text [[Randall]] explains that, using his definition of "most activity per day", Farmville is actually the ''second'' most popular "Facebook farming game". This will strike many as odd, because Farmville is by far the most famous, leading one to wonder how the most famous could not be the most played. The phrase "browser-based social-networking-centered farming game" is an example of [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OverlyNarrowSuperlative an overly-narrow superlative].

==Facebook Region==
The Facebook region deals with social networks, that is, websites oriented towards having people meet.

'''{{w|Facebook}}''' is a social networking site that allows people to meet old real−life friends and make new friends that share similar interests. One of its most notable features is that a member can update a "status" or make normal posts about the happenings of the member's life, complete with pictures, other members "liking" these posts. The size of the Facebook region is not exaggerated; most websites seem to allow "liking" their content or allow/require logging in the website with a Facebook account. There even are cell phones with a "Facebook" button!

'''Farmville''', '''Happy Farm''', and '''Farm Town''' are all Facebook games. The "Unethical Bay" refers to how these games tend to addict players into constantly buying virtual items of questionable value.

The '''People You Can't Unfriend''' refer to people whom, due to real-life expectations and relationships, unfriending them is difficult, no matter how you really feel about them.

The '''Data Mines''' refer to the data mining that Facebook does with the interests of its members. This fuels the profitable advertising business at the expense of customer trust.

The '''Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions''' refer to how interactions with family members on Facebook suddenly become more awkward because everyone on Facebook (and sometimes ''off'' Facebook, given that you do not necessarily need to log in if you want to see someone's Facebook account) if you are discussing with your family through post comments.

'''"Old Facebook" Resistance''' refers to Facebook's earlier users, who have often resisted (and resented) changes made to Facebook as it became more popular.

While Facebook is the largest "country" of the Facebook Region, there are a lot of smaller "countries" that represent smaller social networks.

* Below Facebook (and "'Old Facebook' Resistance") is '''{{w|Diaspora (social network)|Diaspora}}''', a fully open-source, decentralized, privacy-respecting-and-expecting alternative to Facebook. From what this map tells, Diaspora is little-known, even if Facebook is taken out of the context.
* '''{{w|Taringa!}}''' is a Spanish-speaking social network that is based on a forums. Copyrighted material is frequently found there.
* '''{{w|Classmates.com}}''' is a services in which the user can meet fellow classmates that came from the same high school. The website is probably best-known by its memetic advertisement that said [http://dudemanphat.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-am-i-supposed-to-care-about-nick.html "She married him??!! And they've got 7 kids??"] (Incidentally, [http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2003325519_adcouple27.html there is more to the coupled picture than what the advertisement says.])
* '''{{w|MySpace}}''' is a social networking website that is a kind of proto-Facebook: users could customize their one-page websites with whatever they wanted, make their interests and daily lives public, and interact with other users. Back in the mid 2000's, MySpace was the largest social network, many people using the website; however, the surprisingly-less-customizable Facebook ended up taking the place of MySpace. The "bands" country of MySpace refers to how a lot of bands in the day advertised and interacted using the website. Indeed, the latest incarnation of MySpace (in terms of 2013) is more oriented towards band members.
* '''{{w|LinkedIn}}''' is a social network aimed towards people in the workplace.
* '''{{w|Orkut}}''' is one of Google's first social networks before Google made [https://plus.google.com/ Google+].
* '''{{w|Hi5}}''' is a social network that is very popular among people in Latin America.
* '''{{w|Renren}}''' ('''「人人」''', "people" in Chinese) is "a Chinese copy of Facebook."

Other areas of note are the '''Niche Market Mountains''', where social networks aimed towards more niche markets are located. Similar to how mountains tend to be isolated from mainland, niche social networks tend to be just that: niche, without much interaction with the general populace. Above the Niche Market Mountains are the '''Charred Wasteland of Abandoned Social Networks'''. Given the popularity of MySpace and Facebook, there would be no doubt tons of websites wanting to take advantage of the success of these websites or even wanting to compete or even overpower with them. Even so, these websites tend to not have the userbase or even the expertise towards the long-term, hence they become wastelands: environments devoid of life, except the few life forms that are from these wastelands (in this case, the ones who are loyal to the website or which are sadly few).

Also visible are the '''Duckface Mountains''' and the '''Red Cup Mountains'''. "Duckface" refers to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/duck-face this incredibly obnoxious facial expression], and "red cup pictures" are any pictures containing party-goers holding disposable red plastic beverage cups. Facebook is absolutely flooded with both types of pictures.

==MMO Isle==
MMO's (short form of "MMORPG", short form of "Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Player Game") are websites that host online games where multiple people take the role of a character and play in a setting hosted by the website. These types of games tend to be fantastical in setting. Frequently, missions are added to the game, giving current player more incentive towards playing more.

* '''[https://www.habbo.com/ Habbo Hotel]''' is a website where someone creates a human avatar an interacts in a virtual world that is not that different from the one in real life.
* '''[http://www.clubpenguin.com/ Club Penguin]''' is [http://disney.com/ Disney's] MMO where someone creates a penguin avatar and interacts with other in a more polar, cartoony setting. Club Penguin is aimed towards children.
* '''[http://maplestory.nexon.net/ Maple Story]''' is an MMO that has a more natural setting. The most distinguishing feature of Maple Story is its cartoony pixel art.
* '''[http://www.gamefaqs.com/ GameFAQs]''', while not an MMO, is a website that has the largest repository of walkthoughs, that is, guides that help someone beat a game. GameFAQs is notable for not only its large repository of walkthroughs of games that are across an extreme variety of consoles, handhelds, and even computers (not all of them MMOs), but also the drama that is rumoured to happen in the GameFAQs forums.
* '''[http://www.ign.com/ IGN]''' (full: '''Imagine Games Network'''), while also not an MMO, is the largest website that gives news on video games in general, not just MMOs. Each of the games mentioned in the site have pages that have summaries, reviews, screenshots, other art, videos, and links to news related to its games.
* '''[http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml FFXI]''' (full: '''Final Fantasy XI''') is an MMO from SquareEnix, being the first MMO of the popular ''Final Fantasy'' series.
* '''[http://www.runescape.com/community Runescape]''' is an older MMO.
* '''[http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/ Starcraft II]''' is a realtime strategy game with a science fiction setting that heavily involves space travel. While technically not an MMO, it has a significant online multiplayer component.
* '''[http://us.battle.net/wow/en/ WoW]''' (full: '''World of Warcraft''') is the definitive MMO, being not only the most popular and one of the longest-running but also the most expansive (having its own spinoff games, comic books, novels, and even figurines), WOW giving the idea of how an MMO should be. A player can choose from a variety of races, each with its own heavy history.
* '''[http://secondlife.com/ Second Life]''' is similar to Habbo, albeit with a bigger suspension of disbelief (one example being that the player does not need to be a human) and in a 3D setting.
* '''[http://www.nationstates.net/ NationStates]''' is a text-based political simulation game. Notably, some of its traffic comes not from the actual game (which is optional), but the extensive set of political, roleplaying, and general forums attached.
* '''[http://www.eveonline.com/ Eve Online]''' is a science fiction MMO which is notable because of its virtual economy.
* '''[http://www.gaiaonline.com/ Gaia]''' (full: '''Gaia Online'''), while not an MMO, is a forums oriented towards pop culture, including video games and Japanese media. Its most notable feature is the heavy customization possible of a member's pixel-art avatar. Its members tend to roleplay a lot, albeit in a more written, story-based form. Gaia has gained a revaination of its members stealing art and causing drama.

Other notable regions include:
* The '''Mountains of Steam''', referring to the game distribution service [http://store.steampowered.com/ Steam] where people could buy and download video games in general, not just MMOs.
* '''River Grind''' refers to "grinding." In most MMOs, the character is a fighter of some sorts, yet starts at a level 1, signifying the character's aptitude level in combat. The character can level up and gain more aptitude levels through earning experience, of which the most reliable and otherwise common way is the process of "grinding," that is, repeatedly fighting opposing monsters (sometimes of a level notably lower that your character's), gaining experience points from winning these battles until your character gains a level, that is, "levels up". While a practical necessity in strengthening the character, this process can be tiresome, hence the expression "grinding."
* '''Spawn Camp''' refers to "spawn points", the places in combat-oriented MMO's tend to produce ("spawn") random AI-powered creatures, and the act of "spawn camping", in which the player character simply stands behind or around the spawn points to fight the enemy creatures as soon as they appear.
* '''Gulf of Lag''' refers to how the MMO can be slowed down a considerable amount doe to the large amount of players simultaneously using the same server, this congestion bogging down the server and frustrating the users.
* '''[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/final-boss-of-the-internet End Guy for the Internet]''' refers to "end bosses", the last -- and usually hardest to defeat -- "bad guy" in a game (or a section of a game).

==YouTube Region==
The YouTube region refers to websites that are based on user-created content.

'''[https://www.youtube.com/ YouTube]''' is the definitive video website where people can upload videos with the purpose of public viewing, ranging from home movies through official music videos through Let's Plays of people playing video games to questionably-legal uploads of cartoons and films. Google had purchased YouTube.

Many of the sites on the map are just references to {{w|viral video}}s at {{w|YouTube}}:
* '''Viral Shores''' refers to how viral videos (whether they be viral marketing or simply memes) tend to proliferate on YouTube.
* '''Britney''' likely refers to pop singer {{w|Britney Spears}} and the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc‎ "Leave Britney Alone" guy].
* '''Maru Gulf''' refers to Maru the Cat, a YouTube celebrity [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/676:_Abstraction also mentioned in xkcd].
* '''Prairie Dog Habitat''' likely refers to the viral video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw Dramatic Chipmunk] (which is actually a Prairie Dog).
* '''Rick Rolling Hills''' references, well, {{w|Rickrolling}}. More information [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ here]. The "deserted" note likely refers to how Rick Astley himself is tired of the meme, or again, how people tend to leave the video upon getting "Rick Roll'd," never actually going to the video with the express purpose of viewing the video.
* '''Lunar Landing Soundstage''' is, of course, a reference to the {{w|Moon landing conspiracy theories}}, which Randall has railed on before.
* '''{{w|OK Go}} Bay''' refers to the band "OK Go" who have multiple viral music videos on YouTube, most famously [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA "Here it goes again"] featuring treadmills.

The '''HTML5 swamp''' refers to the spotty support of HTML 5 (an update on HTML that is frequently touting its media capabilities, making HTML 5 a viable alternative to Flash) YouTube has. (Of course, by the time the comic was written, HTML 5 was still in its infancy.)
The Music Video Bay refers to the amount of music videos (official or otherwise) are present in YouTube.

Other counties of the YouTube region include:
* '''[https://secure.flickr.com/ Flickr]''', a website where people can upload and share photographs they took.
* '''[http://fotolog.com Fotolog]''', a photo website very popular in South America in 2004-2008, which was used as a social network.
* '''[https://vimeo.com/ vimeo]''', a website where people tend to showcase artistic content that they made on their own, notably independent studios.
* '''[http://www.last.fm/ Last.fm]''', a music website that is notable of its "scrobbling" feature.
* '''[https://www.newgrounds.com/ Newgrounds]''', a website that hosts art, (Flash-based) videos, audio, and (Flash-based) games to which other users can comment and rate. Even so, content from Newgrounds tends to be obscene, though there is a filtering system if a viewer does not wish to see obscene content.
* '''[http://www.deviantart.com/ deviantArt]''', the largest art website, where people can upload, sell, and buy not only art itself, but also video, audio, Flash-work, and even skins (the original purpose of deviantArt). While many big-name/professional people and organizations have their works in deviantArt, the site is more infamous for the large amount of people who upload low-quality fan-art and fan-characters, most notably of media from Japan. Another point of infamy is the large amount of drama that can happen in the website.
* '''[http://www.chatroulette.com/ Chatroulette]''' is a website where people are randomly paired up with each other and video/text chat.
* '''[https://tumblr.com/ Tumblr]''', where people could make a blog and post text, pictures, video, audio, quotes, and links. The most distinguishing feature is the ability to "reblog" these posts from other's people's blogs into the user's own blog. Notable features of Tumblr include sketchblogs (where people upload their sketches), Ask blogs (where people answer questions other users ask, the moderators of these blogs usually pretending to be a character from a form of media), and the large amount of "social justice" (where people fight against racism, sexism, and other forms of negative discrimination). (See also [[1043: Ablogalypse]].)

The '''Isle of teenagers who just discovered macroeconomics''' is a joke about how teenagers tend to think that the world and the economy are a lot simpler than they actually are. Combined with the typical internet mindset, this leads to a lot of teenagers posting blogs and videos and comments on blogs and videos describing how idiotic the government and other red-tape-related adults are.
The '''Snob Sound''' could refer to the large amount of people who look down on others in the surrounding websites (one example being an original artist looking down on people who draw mainly fan-art).

==Twitter Region==
* '''Bieber Bay''' is a reference to {{w|Justin Bieber}} a pop singer who became very popular on Twitter and other social media.
* '''{{w|Google Buzz}}''' is a former social network attempted by Google. It has since been shut down.
* '''Bit.Ly Mountains''' is a reference to the URL shortening service {{w|bit.ly}}.
* '''Kayne's Isle of Sadness''' is a reference to the musician {{w|Kayne West}}.
* '''Sarah Palin USA''' is the twitter handle of former politician {{w|Sarah Palin}}.
* '''Clueless Politician Coast''' is a reference to the number of politicians on Twitter and other social networks who repeatedly share clueless updates that more often create an uproar than help their election chances.
* '''Desert of Food Updates''' is a reference to the number of pictures of food that are shared on social media (especially Twitter).
* '''Journalists Trying to Find the Cutting Edge''' is referencing journalists on Twitter trying to keep up with the way that news is gathered and delivered now, despite usually working for a newspaper that publishes once a day.
* '''{{w|SHAQ}}''' is a reference to the former NBA basketball player, {{w|Shaq}}.
* '''{{w|identi.ca}}''' is an open source social networking and micro-blogging service.
* ''' Breaking! Waves''' is a pun on the fact that so many people used the word "Breaking" at the beginning of tweets that do not warrant that tag that the word has lost most of its meaning and become a joke. It is a pun because waves "break" on the shore.

==Geotagged Bay==

==Troll Bay==

==Skype Region==
The Skype Region refers to different IM, or Instant Messaging services, that enable almost-real-time text chatting between multiple people. These often allow services like voice chat and even video calls.

* '''[http://xkcd.com/ xkcd]''' is "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." The comics are stick figures that talk about technological things, bigger philosophies, or simply events in the author's life. More information about the webcomic can be found [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/xkcd here].
*'''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype Skype]''' is, according to Randall, the most popular of these among the internet. It has many features to allow peer-to-peer voice chats, as well as allowing calls to be made (at a price) to actual phones.

==Blogosphere==

==Blogosphere (Core Region)==

==QQ Region==
*'''Baidu Baike''' (「百度百科」, "Baidu Encyclopedia") is a Chinese search engine.
* The '''Ma Le Ge Bi''' and the '''Grass Mud Horse Bay''' could refer to the {{w|Baidu 10 Mythical Creatures}}.
*'''{{w|Tencent QQ}}''' is a Chinese instant messaging program.

(Incidentally, in English-speaking communities "QQ" has several more common definitions:
** An {{w|emoticon}}, representing a face with two large, crying eyes.
** A synonym for "rage quit", in which a video game player quits the game out of sheer frustration. It originated in ''Warcraft II'' multiplayer, where pressing Ctrl+Q+Q would quit the game, and became more widely known in ''World of Warcraft''.
** These definitions are commonly combined, usually to mock the "rage quitter".)

The Gulf of China refers to how sites in the region are based in People's Republic of China ("Red China"). The '''Great Firewall''' refers to {{w|The Great Firewall of China}}, a pun on {{w|The Great Wall of China}}. Similar to how The Great Wall of China was meant to keep intruding nations out of the then-capital of the city, The Great Firewall of China is meant to keep visitors from visiting censored websites. However, either a VPN or remote access to a computer in a "freer" country can circumvent the Firewall.

==Forums Islands==
Forums are websites where one person post a topic to which other people can discuss.

While the map has a zoomed in version, this article shall discuss the two bigger islands, first.

* '''[http://www.2ch.net 2channel]''' is a Japanese imageboard that was actually the original inspiration for 4chan.
* '''[http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites Craigslist]]''' is a classified advertisement website with sections devoted to just about everything... which formerly included prostitution services, hence the '''The Former Site of Adult Services'''.

In the zoomeed-in map, there is...
* '''420chan''' and '''7chan''', other imageboards in the style of 4chan. Their relative lack of popularity and derivative nature leads a lot of 4chan users to mock them (hence, their position on Randall's map suggests that they're mere wads of semen).
* '''[http://ohinternet.com/ Encyclopedia Dramatica]''', labeled '''ED''' on the map , is a wiki site dedicated to chronicling internet memes and other noteworthy sites, events, people, and anything else that catches their attention in an incredibly arbitrary and vulgar manner. The site is ''heavily'' steeped in the attitude of veteran, vulgar 4chan users. People who have articles in the website tend to react with despair, given not only the cruelty in which the articles talk about the person in question, but the presence of the article means that the person is now an eternal target from the trolls. The user can not retaliate, since the userbase of Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan tneds to overpower the victim easily...
...usually. Due to the founder's talk against the Australian Aborignals (The founder is Australian.), legal action has gone against the founder to the point of the founder having to shut down Encyclopedia Dramatica, founding the far tamer Oh, Internet! website, instead. Trolls responded by not only uploading their own mirror of the website but also vilifying the former founder forever.
(Please note that, due to the malicious nature of the pop-up advertisements of Encyclopedia Dramatica, the link above points to its safe-for-work successor, Oh, Internet!)
* '''[https://www.4chan.org/ 4chan.org]''' is an {{w|imageboard}} in which people can upload pictures while others comment on them. The website is infamous for its loose/often non-existent rules, incredibly vulgar userbase, source of new memes, and spawning of trolls. 4chan's random board, known internally as '''/b/''', is almost constantly flooded with porn and image macros. This is why Randall's incarnation of 4chan is shaped like a penis.
* '''Tunnel to Habbo''' is a reference to [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pools-closed the 2006 Habbo Hotel Raids], in which hundreds of 4chan Anons simultaneously logged onto Habbo Hotel and proceeded to be as obnoxious as possible, standing in formations of swastikas and penises or body-blocking the swimming pools.
* '''{{w|Catbus}} Route''' is likely a reference to {{w|Lolcat}}s in general.
* '''[http://www.ebaumsworld.com/ eBaum's World]''' is a media-hosting website founded by Eric Bauman. The site has lost a lot of traffic after (quite valid) accusations of stolen content.
* The gulf labelled '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group) Anonymous]''' is a reference to the trolls that label themselves "Anonymous" who recently had gained national acknowledgement because of the group's real-life tirades, including cracking attacks against the Church of Scientology and the founding of WikiLeaks (a website that leaks confidential material related to governments).
* [http://www.somethingawful.com/ SomethingAwful] is a website that is meant to showcase all things "awful". SomethingAwful also has a large trollbase, but they tend to be more honorable than the ones from Encyclopedia Dramatica and 4chan. One example is there being a spotty holding of the no-furries rule in the forums. The forums themselves are famous because of the holding of the Let's Plays of [http://lparchive.org/Dangan-Ronpa/ Dangan Ronpa] and [http://danganronpa2mirror.tumblr.com/ Super Dangan Ronpa 2], which had cooked up public interest to the point of there being an English-language release of the games.
Please note that, due to these Let's Plays being in a forums that frequently hides behind a "paywall" that requires a paid account before accessing, the links provided go to their mirrors.

==Transcript==
:'''Map of Online Communities'''
:Size on map represents volume of Daily Social activity (posts, chat, etc). Based on data gathered over the Spring and Summer of 2010.

:[Two insets on the upper left-hand corner shows that this map is a tiny portion of the huge continent of Spoken Language, encompassing portions of the Internet, Email, and Cell Phones (SMS).]

:[The largest landmass on the map by far, which takes up nearly the entire northern half of the map is "Facebook" - with large states in the south-east of the country labeled 'Farmville' and 'Happy Farm'. There is a much smaller state to the west of these called 'Farm Town'. To the north of these states is a large swath of unremarkable land entitled 'Northern Wasteland of Unread Updates.' This is directly north of the large Dopamine Sea.

:A peninsula on the south-west, just below the Plains of Awkwardly Public Family Interactions, houses many tiny states, such as MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, Bebo, & Hi5. It is bordered on the south by Buzzword Bay, which contains several islands of varying sizes. Among these are YouTube and Twitter (the largest), which are separated by the Social Media Consultant Channel. To the south-east of Twitter, across the Sea of Protocol Confusion, is another, equally large island. Most of it is Skype, with the north having two largish states called AIM and Windows Live Messenger. On the south-west part of the island are two smaller states called GG and Yahoo Messenger.

:The Island of Skype is extremely close to, but separated by the Great Firewall (a dashed line), the large landmass of QQ. It's north shore is the Gulf of China and Grass Mud Horse Bay. Outside of these bays, over the Great Firewall are two islands called Craigslist and 2Channel.

:In the Dopamine Sea, off the southern shores of Farmville and Happy Farm, is MMO Isle. Its largest state is WoW, with Runescape, Lineage, Maple Story, Habbo, and the Mountains of Steam among its notable landmarks. To the southeast of the island is the Gulf of Lag, in which sits the CDC Games island, with Eve Online.

:To the east of Twitter is Troll Bay, with such islands as Reddit and Reddit, Digg, Stumbleupon, Delicio.us, and Wikipedia Talk Pages. To their south are the IRC isles, of which one is the tiny island of #xkcd.

:East of these islands, and north of Skype island, is the Sea of Memes. In this sea, to the north of Craigslist and 2Channel, is an archipelago of tiny islands. There is an inset, labeled 'Forums.' (See below.)

:To the southwest if Twitter island, in the Sea of Opinions, are the blog islands. These lie south of the islands in Buzzword Bay, as well. The northernmost islands in this group are centered around the Bay of Drama, on which can be found Diary Blogs, Gossip Blogs, and Livejournal. Gossip Blogs share an island with Political, Music, and Tech Blogs. To the north of this island is a smaller island called Photo Blogs. South of Diary Blogs, and off the southwest coast of Music blogs is a smaller island called Fandom Blogs. South of Tech Blogs, off of which sprouts the small peninsula of Business Blogs, is the Spamblog Straits. On the other side of the straits is a large island made up of Miscellaneous Blogs, with two states demarcated as Religious Blogs and Blog Blogs. Southwest of the Blog Islands is the Sea of Zero (0) Comments.]

:[An inset of a group of islands in the sea of memes located on the lower right corner of the map, labeled 'Forums'. The largest by far is 4chan and /b/. Also found here are D2JSP, JLA Frums, Fan Forum, Something Awful, and many smaller ones, too numerous to list here.]

:[The northeastern third of Gossip/Political/Tech Blogs island is another inset labeled 'Blogosphere (Core)'. This can be found on the lower left corner of the map. Two peninsulas in Political Blogs bookend the Bay of Flame -- these are Liberal Blogs and Conservative Blogs. Between them lie several tiny islands such as Politics Daily, CNN Politcal Ticker, and Mediaite. Off the coast of Liberal Blogs lies the island of NYTimes, off the coast of Conservative Blogs is Libertarian Isle. Between the two lies The Talk. The northern peninsula of Tech Blogs contains places such as Gizmodo, Engadget, Joystiq, and Kotaku.]

:[Text found between the two insets, which are directly below the main map.]
:ABOUT THIS MAP
:Communities rise and fall, and total membership numbers are no longer a good measure of a community's current size and health. This updated map uses size to represent total social activity in a community -- that is, how much talking, playing, sharing, or other socializing happens there. This meant some comparing of apples and oranges, but I did my best and tried to be consistent.

:Estimates are based on the numbers I could find, but involved a great deal of guesswork, statistical inference, random sampling, nonrandom sampling, a 20,000-cell spreadsheet, emailing, cajoling, tea-leaf reading, goat sacrifices, and gut instinct (i.e. making things up).

:Sources of data include Google and Bing, Wikipedia, Alexa, Big-Boards.com, StumbleUpon, Wordpress, Akismet, every website statistics page I could find, press releases, news articles, and individual site employees. Thanks in particular to folks at Last.fm, LiveJournal, Reddit, and the New York Times, as well as sysadmins at a number of sites who shared statistics on condition of anonymity.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Internet]]

Talk:1296: Git Commit

2013-11-27T16:43:55Z

141.101.98.229:

Note that in most (all?) graphical history viewers for Git time flows from bottom up, i.e. newest commits are on top, not on bottom as in this comics --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 07:21, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I can relate. While I start with reasonable commit messages every day, working on one feature often results in
:(good description of feature)
:bugfixes for (description of feature)
:another bugfix
:damn
:should work now
:grrr
:typo
:I hate (some used library)
when I either need commit to deploy or I'm so sure it will work I don't test it deeply enough. If I would be using git, these could be merged, but I'm not. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

What does the line graphic in the left-most column represent? [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 13:03, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
: This is the Git commit graph, in various ways of looking at a commit history git draws a graph like that to show branching and merging.

Nice explanation folks. Makes the comic understandable/humorous to a non-coder. (unless you count VBScript) --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 13:16, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

[http://lightswitch05.github.io/commit-cloud/ Commit Cloud] is a relevant tool to read commit messages from Github and build a word cloud from the most-used words.

I'm very glad I'm not the only person this happens to. --[[User:Okofish|Okofish]] ([[User talk:Okofish|talk]]) 15:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Talk:216: Romantic Drama Equation

2013-11-15T13:08:03Z

141.101.98.229:

This can't be right, even at 50/50, the number of gay pairings far outnumbers the number of straight pairings.[[Special:Contributions/80.235.105.134|80.235.105.134]] 20:10, 28 February 2013 (UTC) Moved from article page
:Not quite. Consider a cast of 4 with 2 male (A, B) and 2 female (C, D). Possible gay pairings - 2 (A-B and C-D). Possible straight pairings - 4 (A-C, A-D, B-C, B-D){{unsigned ip|122.200.61.203}}

:He says for large casts. For 2000 cast members, with 1000 of each gender, the gay couplings comes out at 999,000 and straight at 1,000,000. Presumably this is the small cross over the diagram alludes to. If you substitute x = n/2 into the equations, then you get (n^2-2n)/4 for the gay combinations and n^2/4 for the straight combinations, so for gender balanced cast size of n, the straight combinations outnumber the gay by n/2

Talk:1285: Third Way

2013-11-01T16:11:45Z

141.101.98.229: Nice, my IP is not 141.101.98.229

ONE SPACE AFTER A PERIOD. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 04:38, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Writing plaintext, I always do two spaces after a sentence ending period.
This is probably because I did in fact start typing on a real typewriter.
In an environment where automatic formatting will take place, like a web page or wiki text, I use the newline.
I have had people in this wiki collapse my multiple line forms to one of the others.
(I was disappointed.)
--[[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 04:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I prefer double spacing, but I used single spacing in writing the explanation, just to make people happy. Perhaps I should have used new lines. [[User:Concomitant|Concomitant]] ([[User talk:Concomitant|talk]]) 05:10, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The 'third way' is a little underappreciated here: it divides the text into self contained logical units, and makes text processing tools (grep, diff etc.) much more usable.
Proper text rendering engines (TeX, HTML, etc.) already make this assumption and group sentences accordingly.
If only I realized this earlier, it would have made my thesis revisions much more easier.
In fact, up to this moment, I thought I was that lone guy in the comic.
EDIT: this comment in xkcd forums makes my point clear: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=106217#p3489055
--[[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.11|141.101.96.11]] 05:42, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

:As a programmer, I find nothing weird in adapting your style to language. Writing two spaces in HTML or TeX is useless, as they won't render as two spaces anyway. (While using for this purpose nonbreakable spaces, which would render, is a crime.) -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
::It would also render incorrectly if the period was close to the end of a line. If the markup is [last word of sentence][period][nbsp][space][next sentence], the last word of the first sentence could end up on the next line unnecessarily. But if it's [last word of sentence][period][space][nbsp][next sentence], the next line of text would start with a space, which is much worse.--[[User:Rael|Rael]] ([[User talk:Rael|talk]]) 15:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I always just find and replace double space with single space. If formatting suffers, someone did a bad job.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.228|108.162.231.228]] 06:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC) Synthetica

So, why did double spacing after a period ever exist? It doesn't seem necessary. [[User:PheagleAdler|PheagleAdler]] ([[User talk:PheagleAdler|talk]]) 07:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

even though i learned typing on a typewriter, to this day i had never heard of the double space thing. maybe it's a US only thing, like the stupid french with spaces BEFORE punctuation marks. [[User:Peter|Peter]] ([[User talk:Peter|talk]]) 07:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a german typographer I have to say I’m ''shocked''! ''Two'' spaces per period? A space ''before'' punctuation?! My scientific opinion: you all are completely crazy ;-) (Just kidding, but seriously, two spaces? In Germany, the first possibility to do that safely is your last will …) [[User:Quoti|Quoti]] ([[User talk:Quoti|talk]]) 10:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The doubled spaces appear in my browser's tooltips. (Maybe someone should add some non breaking spaces to the quotation of the tooltip text?) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.236|141.101.98.236]] 10:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a(n automatic) two-spacer person (just you watch, I'll use 'em here, despite it obviously not being rendered), it's just what I learnt, back in the '70s, here in the UK. I've no idea ''why'' I learnt it. However, it may stem from the same root as the 'rule' in handwriting (not biros, but nibbed pens dipped in ink... wow, I feel old, but it ''was'' at primary school) that we use a gap as big as our our (very little) little-fingers to separate sentences. I imagine differentiating full-stops (US: periods) from commas in the messy medium of ink might be a valuable visual indicator as to what a given smudge might ''actually'' be. So, anyway, double-spacing. On the other hand I should report that, "I've dropped the habit it of appropriate punctuation prior to quotes," I say, "despite being the way I learnt it." And instead I will drop "<- Commas from that sort of position," you see, "even through I'll keep the ones that are semantic pauses." You see how my standards are slipping? Anyway, good comic. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programme.  [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.214|141.101.98.214]] 14:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

The "third way" is used for articles on the [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news BBC News] website :-) --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.233|141.101.99.233]] 14:52, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:Actually, they put each sentence into a paragraph of its own, which is yet different. (In HTML: <code>... .</code> vs. <code>... . </code>) --[[User:Das-g|Das-g]] ([[User talk:Das-g|talk]]) 16:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
:That's what I came here to say, that the Third Way is common-place on the web today, it is the tabloid style. This headline article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24775846 off the BBC right now only has full-stops (periods in en-US) before paragraph breaks, apart from quotations (ie what the BBC did not write). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.229|141.101.98.229]] 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)