explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2509: Useful Geometry Formulas

2021-08-31T12:49:40Z

162.158.111.170: /* Transcript */ Came to correct the semi-major/diameter confusion (edit conflict on that issue, re: Kynde, will check what I may have squashed), but also added more for benefit of those needing text-description of the either/or nature of the figures.

{{comic
| number = 2509
| date = August 30, 2021
| title = Useful Geometry Formulas
| image = useful_geometry_formulas.png
| titletext = Geometry textbooks always try to trick you by adding decorative stripes and dotted lines.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a DECEITFUL TEXTBOOK ILLUSTRATOR. Explain the formulas for each of the areas, and also the correct formula for the 3D object they seems to represent. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic showcases area formulae for four two-dimensional geometric shapes which each have extra dotted and/or solid lines making them look like illustrations for 3-dimensional objects - the first, a simple equation for a circle, the second an equation for a triangle with an elliptical base, the third an equation for a rectangle with an elliptical base and top, and the fourth a hexagon consisting of two opposing right angled corners and two parallel diagonal lines connecting their sides. In each case, only the outlines of each shape have any practical meaning.

Such illustrations are commonly found in geometry textbooks, which need to depict three-dimensional figures on a two-dimensional page. They use slanted lines to indicate edges receding into the distance, and dashed lines to indicate an edge occluded by nearer parts of the solid. The joke is that the formulae given here are for the area of each two-dimensional shape as drawn, not for the surface area or volume of the illustrated 3D object (as would be shown in the geometry textbook). And that the textbooks just add the "decorative" stripes and dotted lines within a 2D shape to trick the reader, as stated in the title text.

The illustrations depict the following plane or solid figures, depending on the interpretation.

Top left.&emsp;A circle (illustrating a sphere) with radius r. The equation for the area of a circle is A = πr2 as is given below the figure. The surface area of a sphere is 4πr2 , which is what we would have expected from the figure. The volume of a sphere is 4/3 πr3.

Top right.&emsp;An isosceles triangle of height h combined with a semi-ellipse with semiaxes a and b (illustrating a right elliptic cone). The area of the triangle is bh, and the area of the semi-ellipse is π/2 ab. he equation for this area is A = 1/2 πab + bh as is given below the figure. However, if this was in a text book then a=b even if drawn like this, thus the cone has a circular base, in the 3D drawing. Such a "normal" cone has an area A = πb^2 + πbl. (a=b). That cones volume would be πr^2*h/3. Taking the 3D drawing literal with a≠b then the lateral surface area of a right elliptic cone is 2a√(b2 + h2) ∫01 √(a²h²(t²-1) - b²(a²+h²t²)/a²(t²-1)(b²+h²)) dt. The volume is π/3 abh.

Bottom left.&emsp;A rectangle of width d and height h between two semi-ellipses of semi-minor axis r (illustrating a right elliptic cylinder). The area of the rectangle is dh and the area of the two half-ellipses equals the area of one full ellipse, π/2 dr. The equation for this area is A = d(πr/2 + h) as is given below the figure. For a 3D representation the cylinder has circular base so d = 2r, (not elliptical as indicated in the 2D drawing). Such a cylinder has a surface area of 2πr^2 + πdh. The volume of such a cylinder is πr^2h. Taking the 3D drawing literal with d≠2r then the lateral surface area of the right elliptic cylinder is 4h ∫01 √(1 - t²(1-4r²/d²)/1 - t²) dt. The volume is π/2 rdh.

Bottom right.&emsp;A convex hexagon with three pairs of parallel sides and two right angles at opposite vertices (illustrating a rectangular prism). The area of the rectangle representing the front face of the prism is bh. The area of the upper parallelogram is db sin θ. The area of the right parallelogram is dh cos θ. The equation for this area is A = bh + d(b sinθ + h cosθ) as is given below the figure. The surface area of the prism would be 2bh + 2db + 2dh. The volume is bdh.

In the history of the development of computer-generated 3D graphics, calculations of the apparent visual area taken up by the projection of a volume may have been useful in occlusion-like optimizations, where each drawn pixel may be passed through many fragment shaders.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Four figures in two rows of two, each depicts a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object, with solid lines in front and dotted lines behind. Each figure has some labeled dimensions represented with arrows and a formula underneath indicating its area. Above the four figures is a header:]
:Useful geometry formulas

:[Top left; a 'sphere', or a circle with a concentrict half-dotted ellipse sharing its major axis, with the shared semi-major radius labeled 'r']
:A = πr²

:[Top right; a 'cone', or a triangle with the base replaced by a half-dotted ellipse. The triangular/conic height is 'h'. The ellipse in place of the base has semi-minor axis 'a' and major axis 'b']
:A = 1/2 πab + bh

:[Bottom left; a 'cylinder', or a pair of ellipses connected by verticals. The vertical side/edge is shon as height 'h'. The ellipses have semi-minor axis r, in the lower half-dotted ellipse, and major axis d, across the upper ellipse]
:A = d(πr/2 + h)

:[Bottom right; a 'rhomboid-based prism', or a semi-regular hexagon with identical pairs of vertical, horizontal and diagonal sides, plus three more congruent pairs (one of each dotted) all linking inwards from their own vertex to meet at one of two complimentary points within. The representative horizontal line is marked 'b', a vertical is 'h', a diagonal as 'd'. Between the base horizontal and the lower internal diagonal is a non-'rightangled' angle 'θ']
:A = bh + d(b sinθ + h cosθ)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Math]]

1790: Sad

2021-08-30T17:15:26Z

162.158.111.170: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1790
| date = January 25, 2017
| title = Sad
| image = sad.png
| titletext = With the right 90-degree rotation, any effect is a side effect.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic is about [[Cueball]] confronting [[Ponytail]] over her recent behavior and poor emotional state over the past few months. While Ponytail doesn't give any details on what's causing it, it can be inferred that she is referring to the {{w|United States presidential election, 2016|recent election of Donald Trump as President of the United States}}, which happened about 2 months prior to the publication of this comic. This is a common reaction in the United States whenever a new president is elected, as the voters who did not vote for the new/upcoming President will be feeling unpleasant emotions that their chosen candidate did not win, and will want to express these emotions to the wider world. With the advent of the internet, and more recently social media, the expressions of these emotions have grown more common and often more hyperbolic, regardless of the quality of the candidate.

Ponytail has retreated to video games for solace to the point that her real life projects are suffering.
''{{w|Stardew Valley}}'' is a video game in which a player creates and manages a virtual farm. And when Cueball mentions that her projects have stagnated, she retorts that her farm in the game is doing great. A comic with the name of that game was releases only two weeks later, [[1797: Stardew Valley]], indicating that it is indeed Randall who has played this game excessively.

Cueball's statement about not being able to hide from everything is a common one to give to insecure people or to those trying to run away from their problems. Ponytail's reply is in the form of a {{w|PolitiFact.com|PolitiFact}} reply, claiming (possibly quite truly) that such assertions are ''mostly false'', one of the six options, but it is far from being the worst, thus acknowledging that you can't hide from everything, just mostly. Politifact.com was also the subject of an earlier comic, [[1712: Politifact]].

In computer programming, ''{{w|Comment (computer programming)|comments}}'' are pieces of non-functional, descriptive text that programmers include in their code. Typically, they are used as a form of documentation, to make the code easier for other developers to understand. This is why Cueball is glad that Ponytail is at least writing more comments; documentation is something that's often neglected by developers, despite its usefulness. Unfortunately, the comments that Ponytail is puitting in her code are not actually about the code at all; she is, presumably, commenting more generally on whatever is troubling her as a way of venting her issues.

Ponytail's reply to "write what you know" is a common piece of advice given to amateur fiction writers - it means that writers tend to write best when they are writing about something they personally know well, since they will have plenty of interesting and useful experience to draw from. However, since Ponytail's comments are full of obscenities, she is sarcastically suggesting that obscenity is all she currently knows.

''{{w|Subroutine|Functions}}'' are reusable pieces of code which developers create to avoid repetition and make the code more organized. For example, if the code often has to calculate the distance between two points, it makes sense to place that calculation logic into a "calculateDistance" function, which can then just be called whenever it is needed. More generally, a function accepts inputs (eg. the coordinates of two points) and may ''return'' an output (eg. the distance between the two points).

Cueball notes, however, that all of the functions Ponytail has written are not actually doing anything with their inputs; they are just returning them straight back again and demanding that the calling code should deal with the problem itself. This makes the functions practically useless. Ponytail sardonically tries to justify this as a functional programming technique by saying that she is "avoiding side effects". A {{w|Side effect (computer science)|side effect}} is a situation in programming in which an isolated piece of code changes something about the global state of the program - this can be problematic, as there could be other parts of the code that were not expecting the change, and might behave differently as a result. Their different behavior is a ''side effect''. Sometimes side effects are intentional, but when they are not, they can be tricky to debug and fix.

{{w|Functional programming}} is a programming paradigm in which most or all computation is performed within the scope of self-contained functions, thus avoiding stateful behavior entirely. This removes the possibility of any side effects, since each function only knows what it is told via its inputs, and does not need to be concerned with anything happening outside of itself. Technically, Ponytail ''is'' adhering to this paradigm, but only in the sense that her functions are not doing anything ''at all'', and so cannot have side effects.

Cueball fairly makes this point by noting she is avoiding ''all'' effects, to which Ponytail [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090605/quotes?item=qt2959706 quotes] part of a famous quote from {{w|Ellen Ripley|Ripley}} in {{w|Aliens (film)|Aliens}}: ''I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the '''only way to be sure'''.'' By replying that it's the "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q only way to be sure]" she is thus indirectly saying better safe than sorry, but in reality she just doesn't care about her programming anymore because of her sad state of mind.

The title text is a pun, interpreting the phrase "side effect" literally. If you turn an object 90 degrees along the right axis you will place it on its side, so thus making it a effect of putting something on its side, or a "side effect." You can also turn 90 degrees (along another axis), facing what was previously your side.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is walking up to Ponytail who sits at her desk in an office chair typing on her computer.]
:Cueball: How are you doing?
:Ponytail: Hah.
:Cueball: You seem distant lately. For the past few months.
:Ponytail: Can't '''''imagine''''' why.

:[Cueball talks to Ponytail at her desk from off-panel.]
:Cueball (off-panel): Your projects have stagnated.
:Ponytail: But my Stardew Valley farm is doing '''''great'''''.
:Cueball (off-panel): You can't just hide from everything.
:Ponytail: '''''Fact check''''': Mostly false.

:[In a frame-less panel Cueball is seen standing behind Ponytail at her desk.]
:Cueball: I'm glad you're including more comments in your code, but it would be nice if they were comments '''''about''''' your code.
:Cueball: Or at least a bit less obscenity-filled.
:Ponytail: Look, they say to write what you know.

:[Cueball leans forward towards Ponytail at her desk (who has looked on the screen in the same position through the entire comic).]
:Cueball: All the functions you've written take everything passed to them and return it unchanged with the comment "No, '''''you''''' deal with this."
:Ponytail: It's a functional programming thing. Avoiding side effects.
:Cueball: You avoid '''''all''''' effects.
:Ponytail: Only way to be sure.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Sarcasm]]

2506: Projecting

2021-08-24T09:07:56Z

162.158.111.170: /* Explanation */ Minor changes, plus a switched rewording that actually makes the old concluding sentence implicit and - for once - I'm not just making the explanation yet more verbose (like everybody else always does!)

{{comic
| number = 2506
| date = August 23, 2021
| title = Projecting
| image = projecting.png
| titletext = This is something we all need to work on, but especially you all.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SOMEONE ALMOST AS BAD AS MAKING EXPLANATIONS AS YOU ARE! - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|psychological projection}}. Projection is taking qualities of the self and attributing these qualities to others.

[[Cueball]] actually admits he has a ''real'' problem with projecting, but while doing so, he is seemingly oblivious to the fact, that he is stating this in a way that projects his self-identified difficulty upon his friends: [[Ponytail]], [[Megan]] and [[White Hat]]. Of course this could also just be a joke made by Cueball, as it is the joke in the comic. On the other hand Cueball and [[Randall]] has serious issues with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and this could just be another example of such a problem.

In the title text Cueball continues his projections, stating that ''this is something we all need to work on''. So he continues to believe that all the others have the same problem, not just a lot of them as in his original statement, that left the possibility that not all of them had this issue. In the end he also tops it by saying ''but especially you all'' indicating that he imagines his own case is a less serious issue of projection than that he actually projects the others as having.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are standing. Cueball is talking, with arms outstretched, palms up, while the other three are looking at him.]
:Cueball: Like a lot of you, I have a real problem with projection.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]

Talk:2504: Fissile Raspberry Isotopes

2021-08-20T17:34:04Z

162.158.111.170: I hate on-screen keyboards. No innate haptic feedback to help indicate key-misses. Anyway, hopefully all corrected, or enough of them.

This joke is like a visual pun, a raspberry fruit looks sorta like a nuclear model, and so it behaves the same (ie can go supercritical). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.72|172.69.35.72]] 20:38, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
:Along with an actual pun: pi in "pi meson" sounds like pie in "raspberry pie". [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:43, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
::If it isn't also an intentional tertiary reference to the Raspberry Pi computer board, I'll eat my [https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-hats hat]! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.109|141.101.98.109]] 21:22, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
:::I'd say you would have to eat it. Cannot see what this comic has to do with a computer board, just because it is named after a raspberry pie. This joke is obviously about the berries looking like nuclear cores, and pie mesons. Not about anything with a computer. So take some salt an eat (or swallow one the hats in your link, along with a camel :p ) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:21, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
::::I interpreted 'tertiary' to mean that randall was [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology) 'primed'] to talk about raspberry pies due to his exposure to the board, and similarly for readers finding it interesting and humorous. [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 08:28, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Though raspberries resemble the common ''depiction'' of nuclei, perhaps we need to explain that in reality, nuclei are rather different..? [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 03:41, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
:I think anyone reading xkcd and this page, will figure it out via the links ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:21, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
::I tend to forget that nuclei aren't little raspberries made of nucleons, even though I used to be a fusion researcher. In fact I'm sure I was only ever half-aware they weren't (I didn't study the actual nuclear physics, ok!)... so +1 from me in favour of adding a bit about the 'real' nature of nuclei, that would be interesting. --[[User:192·168·0·1|192·168·0·1]] ([[User talk:192·168·0·1|talk]]) 09:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
I would suggest referring to the raspberry parts as 'drupelets' rather than 'ovaries'.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.173|172.70.114.173]] 12:58, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
:I love eating the juiciest and sweetest of fruit ovaries, raspberries and strawberries are my favorite but I also enjoy apples and grapes --[[User:Lackadaisical|Lackadaisical]] ([[User talk:Lackadaisical|talk]]) 17:29, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
::I looked this up briefly and I _think_ that the ovaries are what develop into the drupelets, here, not certain, judging by phrasing on wikipedia. So I changed it. Don't eat the ovaries, eat the part that's designed for eating. [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 08:37, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
:::Fine but you forgot the transcript. I have changed it there so drupelet is the word used. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:57, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

The page says "Of course, in real life raspberries don't do that.[citation needed]" - where is one supposed to find a useful citation to state that fields of raspberries ''don't'' explode? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.101|108.162.229.101]] 22:18, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
:That’s the point! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.45|108.162.215.45]] 02:55, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
::It's a joke, and you are free to remove it if you so judge. Others may disagree. Sometimes raspberry farms have some pretty hard to describe explosive activity when their parts combine in rare chain reactions. [[User:Baffo32|Baffo32]] ([[User talk:Baffo32|talk]]) 08:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
:::It's a reference to [https://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/285:_Wikipedian_Protester 'xkcd 285'], a long running joke in the xkcd community, What If? and Randal's other books, and the xkcd merch shop {{unsigned ip|172.69.42.63}}
::::And severely overused. Imho it should only be used when we are actually looking for a citation for someting stated without proof in the explanation. So I generally feel free to remove them as I did here. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:54, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
:::::I agree there ''can'' (and has been) overuse, but by your criteria there would be absolutely no 285-backrefetencing at all. In use on The Original Wiki and all the rest there other cite-markers requesting an edit to clarify, expand, use better units, add comic issue and page, etc, and th9se exist (or can be made to exist) here.
::::::I wouldn't suggest every clause of every sentence of every paragraph of every comic's explanation be in-joked, but (with exceptions on a very few rare occasions that will doubtlessly be edited down by a future editor like you, or me, anyway) I see no harm in so labelling up to ''one'' axiomatic statement this way per article (the absolutely most obvious and inarguable and, by editors' aggregate concensus without resorting to an edit-war, humorous-to-so-label statement).
::::::By dint of the humour-decay so described, results in one permanent example fit to tickle the funnybone of all but the most curmudgeonly every 2, 3 or 4 comics, on a rolling average. In every case being absolutely obvious to pretty much everyone that it is there for amusement value (especially amidst dry, technical detail) even to those only just arrived upon these particular digital shores...
::::::IMO, of course, having no authority or desire for authority here. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.69|141.101.77.69]] 17:30, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

1104: Feathers

2021-08-19T10:51:04Z

162.158.111.170: /* Explanation */ Changed video link to start at the point where the bird is using its wings for stability.

{{comic
| number = 1104
| date = September 05, 2012
| title = Feathers
| image = feathers.png
| titletext = Click to see a video of a modern bird using stability flapping during predatory behavior. It all fits! Also, apparently Microraptor had *four* wings? The past keeps getting cooler! (And there's more of it every day!)
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Dinosaur}}s have been a fascinating topic in popular science and have captivated children's interest since the first fossils were discovered in modern times, around the 1700s; prior discoveries in China and elsewhere were thought to be the bones of dragons or other mythical creatures. The success of the ''{{w|Jurassic Park (film)|Jurassic Park}}'' movies perpetuated an erroneous understanding of the physical characteristics of dinosaurs. Since the first movie of that series, scientific evidence has emerged suggesting that {{w|Dromaeosauridae}}, or "[[:Category:Velociraptors|raptors]]", the main antagonists of that movie, looked quite different from their animatronic and CGI versions. In particular, they are now known to have been much smaller, and are believed to have had feathers and even wings, as evidenced by quill nobs observed on the arms of raptors.

[http://denverfowler.com/ Denver W. Fowler] is among the scientists who support this hypothesis. (incidentally, a "{{w|Fowler}}" is a hunter of wildfowl/birds) The comic refers to [http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0028964 a publication by him and his colleagues] ("{{Wiktionary|et al.}}"), in the ''{{w|PLoS ONE}}'', an online scientific journal ("PLoS" stands for "Public Library of Science").

[[Megan]] believes this new model of the appearance of raptors makes them much less cool, but the way in which [[Science Girl]] reformulates the facts to make them seem like even more vicious predators re-ignites her interest and makes the new raptors seem like at least as good a candidate for a good action thriller movie like the original version, if not better. Thus the phrase "the past keeps getting cooler". (Or that Megan, like Randall, has an irrational fear of raptors and is updating here knowledge of them.)

Clicking on the original cartoon links to [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJKBPyavWlI&t=87s a YouTube video] of a bird of prey (in this case a {{w|Secretarybird}}) using its wings for stability while standing on top of a struggling prey, from which one can easily envision instead a raptor upon its prey—especially in case of some kind of "raptorphobia", as for [[Randall]] (see [[87: Velociraptors]] and [[135: Substitute]]). {{w|Microraptor}} was a small raptor with four wings, which lets you imagine even scarier scenes.

The same idea is later explored from a different perspective in [[1527: Humans]].

==Transcript==
:[Megan is walking up to Science Girl with a bow in her hair bun. Science Girl has a stack of three books in front of her, is reading another book and a fifth book lies behind her on the floor.]
:Megan: What are you reading about?
:Science Girl: Dinosaurs!
:Megan: Oh, yeah.

:[Zoom out of the same scene, with Megan standing and Science Girl looking up at her.]
:Megan: They've gotten all weird since when I was a kid.
:Megan: They used to be awesome, but now they all have dorky feathers, right?
:Science Girl: Yup!

:[Same scene in a frame-less panel. Science Girl looks down and below the two characters there is a footnote.]
:Science Girl: This says they now think raptors used their wings for stability, flapping to stay on top of their prey while hanging on with their hooked claws and eating it alive.
:*Fowler et. al., PLoS ONE 6(12), 2011

:[Zoom in on the same scene, the book on the floor is outside the panel. Megan just stands staring at Science Girl who reads on. Beat panel.]

:[Megan is now on the floor next to Science Girl flipping through the top book she has taken from the pile.]

==Trivia==
*In the comic it says "et. al." instead of the correct "et al.", this is a common mistake.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Science Girl]]
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Animals]]

Talk:2503: Memo Spike Connector

2021-08-18T02:23:32Z

162.158.111.170:

Just made my first ever wiki edit! There was no text yet so I filled in some basic info. I guarantee what I wrote will be removed though :( . Oh well, I tried! [[User:Zman350x|Zman350x]] ([[User talk:Zman350x|talk]]) 15:20, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
:Your first edit inspired me to my own first edit. Maybe at the end there will be a good article made entirely by noobs. :) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.115|172.68.110.115]] 16:33, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
::Seems like some parts of your edits have survived, to what seems close to a final version now. Any start on an explanation is difficult so cool that you are now on the editing team ;-) I make a lot of edits, but is not typically the one that makes the actual explanation, more keeping the format and making small improvements --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
:: :o --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.229|172.69.22.229]] 10:55, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

In restaurants these are not used for orders for the kitchen. Those are usually put on an order wheel or ticket holder, which have clips that the order can easily pulled out of. The spike is at the checkout counter, and it's used after the bill is paid. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:57, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Do we want to mention the vampire taps in both the article and trivia? Cause that's how it currently is. [[User:Zman350x|Zman350x]] ([[User talk:Zman350x|talk]]) 21:27, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
:No. Have removed trivia. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

My first comment too! Where it says... "The implication is that any cable can be connected to any other cable as a form of universal adapter/splitter/combiner"... That's not the title text joke. It's that a device like an iPad could also be impaled on the spike, making electrical connection to its innards. It says nothing about cable to cable connections. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.18|108.162.246.18]] 21:47, 16 August 2021 (UTC)
:Didn't see this comment until I intervened, under the same impression, but I totally agree. Looked like an orphan comment intended for the pre-titletext 'explanation'. Still valid, and rather than move it I expanded it to fit better where it is. Doubt it'll be the 'final' version, though. (Anecdotal explanation of my thinking: If I put my tablet down on my opened laptop, it'll sometimes 'agitate' the laptop trackpad. Technically I could probably get the tablet to control this inbuilt mouse deliberately through whatever ¿field-effect? is interacting with the ¿capacitative? finger-sensor. I am imagining something like this (only more puncturing!) is what is 'promised' if I impale two otherwise incompatible devices on the same spike. But also lets one connect otherwise incompatible cables to further cables/devices. Like I don't have an ethernet dongle that works with the tablet, but spike them both and I'd be laughing.... Right?) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.54.202|172.69.54.202]] 03:14, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
::The title text is also about old types of cables and not just smartphones and tablet. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

This explanation does not answer the one question I came here to find the answer to, namely why it is named “memo spike.” [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.79|108.162.219.79]] 03:19, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
:Some (not me, but that's because I've never used one in anger, maybe) seem to call the non-connector thing that the connector is based around a "memo spike". Apparently one can impale successive memos (in a memo-heavy administration job?) upon the spike and then later thread a chord (or treasury tag?) through the holes to perpetuate their 'spiked collection' status. It's possible there are other names (like: thumb-tack <=> drawing pin), but this is how Randall identifies it. Better than "that thing you spike paper onto - but now with ''power!!!111oneoneone''", etc... 'Though YMMV. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.253|141.101.76.253]] 03:56, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

The detail on the free cable end is more clearly visible in the [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/memo_spike_connector_2x.png double-sized image version], suggesting that it isn't just a coax. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 04:28, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
:It is actually the x2 version that is now showed per default on the xkcd page, and thus it is that one that should be used here on xkcd.. ie. the one you are presented with on xkcd. Have uploaded that version to explain now. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
::"It is actually the x2 version that is now showed per default on the xkcd page" - you're wrong about that. The x2 is an optional image if the markup-linked code decides it wants to make it the embedded image. Maybe that becomes default in your case, but don't assume it's true for everyone, all the time. (You can break the explainxkcd page rendering for people, like me, if you force a typical x2 image into here, even when xkcs original is sane ''and'' allows deliberate zooming.)
::My suggestion in this case/similar is to clip the detail from the x2 to highlight the feature and embed this exact bit in the explanation, if you want to make sure everyone sees the high-res version of that bit in particular. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.137|141.101.105.137]] 13:41, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
::I have added an imagesize parameter, so it renders with the 'standard' size while keeping the detail from the 2x version when viewing the file's page. [[User:Theusaf|theusaf]] ([[User talk:Theusaf|talk]]) 16:32, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Possibly a reference to the 1987 movie RoboCop; the titular character had a similar looking data spike used to interface with OCP computers. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.225|172.70.130.225]] 19:16, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
:Similar looking? It's a spike, which is action-relevent at another point in the movie (or maybe franchise, if I'm thinking of some sequel/requel scene). But not (if I'm not missing anything by my dotty memory) a thing with a round base that acts to vampire-tap cables. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.170|162.158.111.170]] 02:23, 18 August 2021 (UTC)