explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2297: Use or Discard By

2020-04-28T08:57:43Z

162.158.88.206: Upon reconsideration, I think the previous editor is right. I take my edit back. - Undo revision 191324 by 162.158.91.125 (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2297
| date = April 22, 2020
| title = Use or Discard By
| image = use_or_discard_by.png
| titletext = One of the things of bear spray says that, and I'm not one to disobey safety instructions, but there are no bears around here. Guess it's time for a camping trip where we leave lots of food out!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT WITH A USE BY DATE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Many products carry a "Use By", "{{w|Expiration date}}", "Discard by" or similar date. The date shows the latest date by which the product has been verified to provide its expected use. For example, a foodstuff will have a "consume by" date, showing the date after which the food may be unsuitable for eating. For most products, this is a conservative estimate, especially if a product is kept sealed and stored in a cool, dark place. A few products become dangerous to use after that point, some simply become stale and less palatable (as in the case of foods) or lose potency. For most consumer items, there's no immediate imperative to discard a product as soon as it expires; you simply take the risk of a decline in quality or reliability.

One of the issues around expiration dates is that the language used tends to be arbitrary and ambiguous. Some have explicit instructions to the consumer, such as "use by:", others have instructions to the seller, such as "sell by:", still others say things such as "best by:" or "freshest before:". This can make it confusing how important it is to get rid of a given product on that date.

In this comic, two similar emergency {{w|flare gun}}s, an item typically used to send out distress {{w|flare}}s, have slightly different expiry instructions. One has an instruction to "use by or discard by" a specific date (in this case, three days after the date of publishing). The other has an instruction to "use by" this date. These two phrases almost certainly have the same intent. There would be no reason to actually fire the flare. Even the instructions to discard the flare gun really just mean that the manufacturer cannot guarantee that it will work past the printed date, and so do not advise counting on it in an emergency situation.

Despite this implication, [[Megan]] seems to take the latter instruction literally, as an order to actually fire the flare gun prior to the expiration date, whether or not it's necessary. It may be taken that she wants the experience of firing a flare, and takes that instruction as an excuse to do so. [[Cueball]] immediately objects to this line of reasoning. Firing a flare unnecessarily is generally a bad idea. It could summon emergency responders to a non-emergency situation, diverting emergency resources that may be needed elsewhere. Even worse, if a flare is fired improperly, or in an unsafe direction, it could cause a fire and/or injuries, ironically creating an emergency situation, rather than signalling one.

The title text similarly indicates that Megan intends to follow the same instructions with a can of {{w|bear spray}}. Since there are no bears present, she will go camping and leave her food out to attract their attention, so that she may use the bear spray to repel bears before it "goes bad". This would involve approaching bears (close enough to spray them) and irritating them, potentially causing them to attack if the spray is ineffective or misapplied (perhaps it only works if they smell it, but Megan might spray another part of the bear), when it would be much safer to simply discard the bear spray and not get close to bears.

Expiration dates (for food) have also been mentioned in [[737: Yogurt]], [[1109: Refrigerator]], and [[2178: Expiration Date High Score]].

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

:[Megan stands in the middle of the panel, holding two flare guns, one in each hand.]
:Megan: These emergency flare guns are about to expire.
:Cueball [off-panel]: I forgot we had those.

:[Cueball sitting at a desk, working on a computer.]
:Megan [off-panel]: This one says "Use or discard by Apr 25 2020."
:Cueball: Okay...

:[Megan holds up one of the flare guns looking at it. She holds the other flare gun by her side.]
:Megan: But '''''this''''' one just says "Use by" ...
:Cueball [off-panel]: '''''No.'''''

== Trivia ==
* Twenty-seven years ago exactly ([https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/04/22 April 22, 1993]), ''Calvin and Hobbes'' made a similar joke about expiration dates on milk. Obviously the humor has a very long shelf-life.
* This comic shares some similarities with [[1821: Incinerator]], particularly in the last panel.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

what if?

2018-05-21T16:59:09Z

162.158.88.206: /* Articles */ consistency

<noinclude>:''Not to be confused with [[17: What If]].''</noinclude>
[[File:whatifbanner.jpg]]

'''''[http://what-if.xkcd.com/ what if?]''''' is a blog hosted on the [[xkcd]].com domain and written by [[Randall Munroe]] with entries posted [http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/once-in-a-blue-moon.html occasionally]. Before publishing the what if? book, articles were posted weekly.

On the blog, Randall uses his degree in physics and strong scientific background to discuss hypothetical physics questions apparently submitted by readers.
Since 2014, there's also a book of the blog.

Unlike other sites which answer readers' questions, ''what if?'' typically takes the question beyond the original scope likely intended by the reader and takes it to some extreme for humorous effect. For example, in {{what if|1|the first article}}, he discusses what would happen if a baseball were pitched at 90% of the speed of light. After effectively describing what would occur as a nuclear explosion, leveling the stadium and the surrounding mile radius, he concludes with the note ''"A careful reading of official Major League Baseball Rule 6.08(b) suggests that in this situation, the batter would be considered 'hit by pitch', and would be eligible to advance to first base."''

The questions Randall tackles range from realistic possibilities (e.g. the probability of achieving a {{what if|2|perfect SAT score by guessing}}) to completely fictional questions (e.g. {{what if|3|How much Force power}} can {{w|Yoda}} output?). In his explanations, Randall, often uses diagrams in an ''xkcd'' style. Regardless of the context, Randall tends to take the questions extremely literally and responds seriously to them, even if they are whimsical (such as the Yoda question). This is clear from his response to the question of what would happen if everybody on Earth stood together and {{what if|8|jumped at the same time}}. After acknowledging that the question has been answered elsewhere, he recaps the result, but then focuses more intently on the unasked resulting issue of the aftermath of everyone on Earth being magically transported to one location as they all try to return home.

This site is not under [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License] like [[xkcd]] is.

==The book==
Randall announced his ''what if?'' book on 12 March 2014 in [http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/03/12/what-if-i-wrote-a-book/ the blag]. It was published on September 2, 2014, and the UK edition of the book was published on September 4, 2014. It is the 2nd book published by Randall.
[[Image:What_If?.jpeg|frame| The general cover of the book]]
[[Image:whatifcover.jpg|frame| The alternate cover of the book]]
It is just like 'xkcd:volume 0' a compilation of some questions from the website, but half of them are new.

In the UK edition of the book, Randall included a preface about his thoughts on the units used in the UK. (The Metric System)

====Summary====
'''The summary on the back of the book reads:'''

''Randall Munroe left NASA in 2005 to start up his hugely popular site XKCD 'a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language' which offers a witty take on the world of science and geeks. It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. 'My friend and I were arguing about what would happen if a bullet got struck by lightning, and we agreed that you should resolve it . . . ' He liked these questions so much that he started up What If.

*If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive?
*How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm?
*If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce?
*What if everyone only had one soulmate?
*When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire?
*How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?
*What would happen if the moon went away?

''In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read.''

'''The summary on the back of the UK edition of the book reads:'''

''Hey! Thanks for looking at my book. If you're thinking about buying it, here are some things you might want to know:''

Humans can't digest the cellulose in paper, but if we could, eating this book would give you about 2,300 calories (including the cover).

This book can't stop most bullets; if you want to use it for armour, you may want a lot more than one copy.

If you have a good arm, you could probably throw this book about 45 feet. With practice, it's possible to throw a book every 800 milliseconds, which means that if human attackers are sprinting towards you, you'll have three or four chances to hit them before they reach you. If, on the other hand, you're being attacked by a coyote, it's higher top speed means you'll have only one chance to hit it. Aim carefully.

''HIDDEN FEATURE: The inside of this book has words and pictures, plus a special UK foreword.'' It answers many important questions, including whether you could jump from a plane with a helium tank and inflate balloons fast enough to slow your fall and survive (yes) and whether you could hide from a supersonic windstorm in Finland (yes, but it won't help).

==Trivia==
*There is an easy way to link to a given what if? story by using [[Template:what if|a template]]. For instance, write the following:
**<nowiki>See the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}''.</nowiki>
*Copy paste the above text and correct the number and the title to get this result:
**See the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}''.
*There used to be an article called ''Peptides'' but it disappeared, leaving ''Hide the Atmosphere'' in its place.

===Release schedule===
*The two first articles were released on the same day, Tuesday July 10, 2012, probably to get the blog going, and let users of xkcd see that there was going to be more.
**After that they were released weekly for almost three years, with just a few times with two (and once three) weeks between releases, up until article 136 was released on April 12, 2015 (2 years and 40 weeks).
**First after 25 releases was there a two week Christmas break before article 26 was released on December 31, 2012.
**After that there were five more two weeks break, one three week break (before December 11, 2014) and two releases in a row (133-134 towards the end of this period of 136 articles), where the release dates where shifted so the two came out over three weeks' time with about 1.5 weeks between them.
**The second break came a year after the first and was also a Christmas break before article 77 was released on December 31, 2013
**Then from August 2014 there came several two week breaks, one in August, one in September and two in November, the last lasting three weeks into December, and on top of that the normal two weeks Christmas break.
**After this less orderly period there came a period of 10 weeks in a row with 10 releases starting on January 1, 2015.
*The release day was fixed to once a week on a given weekday, except for a few articles that were delayed a day (or two) in one week, but then next week's article would again be released on the normal day.
**To begin with the release day was '''Tuesdays''', and the third article was released a week after the first two on Tuesday July 17, 2012.
**The release day shifted to '''Wednesday''' from article 100 released on Wednesday June 11, 2014.
**The release day shifted once more to '''Thursday''' from article 117 released on Thursday October 23, 2014.
**The final six articles in this period were released on four different week days, only two of them with one week apart.
*The result of the above is that over the first 144 weeks 136 articles where released with never more than 3 weeks between releases. As the first two were released on week 1, this means that there were 134 articles released over the next 143 weeks, meaning there were only 9 weeks without an article.
*After article 136 was released on April 12, 2015, Randal took a '''13 week break''' from updates until July 14, 2015.
**At the time Randall wrote a note stating "What If updates are temporarily on hold, and will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT."
**This was the date and time that the {{w|New Horizons}} probe achieved its closest approach to {{w|Pluto}}.
**The article 137 from July 14, 2015 was about the New Horizons probe.
*After the break only three articles were released, two more were released after article 137 over three weeks, the last article 139 released on August 4, 2015.
**But then there were '''two more breaks''', so only one more article was released in 2015, with article 150 released after more than 6 weeks on September 18, 2015.
*First after 17 more weeks releases began again with article 141 on Tuesday January 16, 2016.
**After that articles began coming out regularly with a total of 9 releases out before the end of March 2016, mainly on Tuesdays to begin with, then one on a Friday before the last two came on Saturdays with two weeks breaks before each, the last being article 149 on March 26, 2016.
*Since then only three more articles were released in 2016, the first two with about 8 weeks between them and then more than 12 weeks.
**So during the summer of 2016, it seemed it was down to about one release every two months but then it increased.
*The what if? has not stopped but the first comic in 2017 (#153, January 30, 2017) came almost 15 weeks after the last in 2016, more than three months between releases. This was so far the second longest break.
**But the next one (#154) was indeed released only a bit more than week after the one with 15 weeks break, and then less than 3 weeks after followed yet an article on February 28 2017.
**It was almost a year ago that two comics had been released with less than two full weeks between them (that was #147 released February 26, 2016). In the year following that release only 8 articles where released including both #147 and #154.
**Interesting to see if they will begin appearing regularly again during the spring of 2017, as seems possible with three comics in less than a month and #156 was again released with less than two weeks between it and #155.
*See more details for breaks in the releases in the table with a list of all the [[#Articles|articles]] down below.
**At the moment it seems impossible to guess when a new post is released so:
**'''It would be nice if anyone noticing a new post, that they made a note in the discussion of the next comic released.'''

==Articles==
*Below is a list of the articles released in the what if? blog.
**This list can also be found in the [https://what-if.xkcd.com/archive/ acrhive section] on the what if? blog.
**But here more data can be added...
{| class="wikitable " |
! No.
! Title
! Release date
! Weeks since last release
! Question(s) answered / Topic
! Comment/Short note on subject
|-
| 1 || {{what if|1|Relativistic Baseball}} || July 10, 2012 || || What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light? || The very first what if? The result would be some kind of nuclear explosion.
|-
| 2 || {{what if|2|SAT Guessing}} || July 10, 2012 || 0.0 || What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be? || This second article was released on the same day as the first, probably to get the blog going, and let users of xkcd see that there was going to be more. No one would get a perfect score
|-
| 3 || {{what if|3|Yoda}} || July 17, 2012 || 1.0 || How much Force power can Yoda output? || First regular release. From here on standard release day was Tuesday.
|-
| 4 || {{what if|4|A Mole of Moles}} || July 24, 2012 || 1.0 || What would happen if you were to gather a mole (unit of measurement) of moles (the small furry critter) in one place? || As a mole is such a high number this would be tricky.
|-
| 5 || {{what if|5|Robot Apocalypse}} || July 31, 2012 || 1.0 || What if there was a robot apocalypse? How long would humanity last? || Humanity would survive if the robots cared about keeping themselves alive as well. If not, then we all die.
|-
| 6 || {{what if|6|Glass Half Empty}} || August 7, 2012 || 1.0 || What if a glass of water was, all of a sudden, literally half empty? || As in a vacuum? It would explode.
|-
| 7 || {{what if|7|Everybody Out}} || August 14, 2012 || 1.0 || Is there enough energy to move the entire current human population off-planet? || No, at least not without starving to death quickly and leaving our pets, belongings and everything else behind.
|-
| 8 || {{what if|8|Everybody Jump}} || August 21, 2012 || 1.0 || What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? || Earth would be unaffected but the human race would be wiped out due to everyone trying to get home at the same time.
|-
| 9 || {{what if|9|Soul Mates}} || August 28, 2012 || 1.0 || What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? || Almost nobody would find their soul mate.
|-
| 10 || {{what if|10|Cassini}} || September 4, 2012 || 1.0 || What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees? || Mass biosphere collapse.
|-
| 11 || {{what if|11|Droppings}} || September 11, 2012 || 1.0 || If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it? || 195 years. Assuming you are in a area with a reasonable amount of birds. But why would you ''want'' to catch bird poop in your mouth?
|-
| 12 || {{what if|12|Raindrop}} || September 18, 2012 || 1.0 || What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop? || The surrounding area would be obliterated and there would be mass panic for many following years.
|-
| 13 || {{what if|13|Laser Pointer}} || September 25, 2012 || 1.0 || If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color? || Not with regular lasers, but with more power, you could destroy the world.
|-
| 14 || {{what if|14|Short Answer Section}} || October 2, 2012 || 1.0 ||
* How long would the Sun last if a giant water hose were focused upon it? My sixth grade brother, Adam, asked me this.
* What if you shined a flashlight (or a laser) into a sphere made of one-way mirror glass?
* If Michael Phelps could hold his breath indefinitely, how long would it take for him to reach the lowest point in the ocean and back if he swam straight down and then straight back up?
* In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. This somehow turns back time [... ] How much energy would someone flying around the Earth have to exert in order to reverse the Earth's rotation?
* How fast would you have to go in your car to run a red light claiming that it appeared green to you due to the Doppler Effect?
* What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. 8000+ feet)?
* When my wife and I started dating she invited me over for dinner at one time. Her kitchen had something called Bauhaus chairs, which are full of holes, approx 5-6 millimeters in diameter in both back and seat. During this lovely dinner I was forced to liberate a small portion of wind and was relieved that I managed to do so very discretely. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. We were both (luckily) amazed and surprised and I have often wondered what the odds are for something like that happening. We kept the chairs for five years but despite laborious attempts it couldn't be reproduced.
||
|-
| 15 || {{what if|15|Mariana Trench Explosion}} || October 9, 2012 || 1.0 || What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench? || It would warm a small patch of the ocean and not do much. With a bigger bomb, it could destroy the world. Again.
|-
| 16 || {{what if|16|Today's topic: Lightning}} || October 16, 2012 || 1.0 ||
* How dangerous is it, really, to be in a pool during a thunderstorm?
* What would happen if you were taking a shower when you were struck by lightning? Or standing under a waterfall?
* What would happen if you were in a boat or a plane that got hit by lightning? Or a submarine?
* What if you were changing the light at the top of a radio tower and lightning struck? Or what if you were doing a backflip? Or standing in a graphite field? Or looking straight up at the bolt?
* What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair?
* What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning?
||
|-
| 17 || {{what if|17|Green Cows}} || October 23, 2012 || 1.0 || If cows could photosynthesize, how much less food would they need? || 4% less. There just isn't enough area.
|-
| 18 || {{what if|18|BB Gun}} || October 30, 2012 || 1.0 || In Armageddon, a NASA guy comments that a plan to shoot a laser at the asteroid is like “shooting a b.b. gun at a freight train.” What would it take to stop an out-of-control freight train using only b.b. guns? || 40000 people and some magic. Stopping an asteroid with a laser on the other hand is a lot easier.
|-
| 19 || {{what if|19|Tie Vote}} || November 6, 2012 || 1.0 || What if there's LITERALLY a tie? || The release date in the archive is the wrong year 2013.
|-
| 20 || {{what if|20|Diamond}} || November 13, 2012 || 1.0 || If a meteor made out of diamond and 100 feet in diameter was traveling at the speed of light and hit the earth, what would happen to it? ||
|-
| 21 || {{what if|21|Machine Gun Jetpack}} || November 20, 2012 || 1.0 || Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward firing machine guns? || Yes, but you need to talk to the Russians to do it right.
|-
| 22 || {{what if|22|Cost of Pennies}} || November 27, 2012 || 1.0 || If you carry a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas? || Never.
|-
| 23 || {{what if|23|Short Answer Section II}} || December 4, 2012 || 1.0 ||
* If my printer could literally print out money, would it have that big an effect on the world?
* What would happen if you exploded a nuclear bomb in the eye of a hurricane? Would the storm cell be immediately vaporized?
* If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? Would we ever generate enough power to offset the cost of the generators?
* Using only pronounceable letter combinations, how long would names have to be to give each star in the universe a unique one word name?
* I bike to class sometimes. It's annoying biking in the wintertime, because it's so cold. How fast would I have to bike for my skin to warm up the way a spacecraft heats up during reentry?
* How much physical space does the internet take up?
* What if you strapped C4 to a boomerang? Could this be an effective weapon, or would it be as stupid as it sounds?
||
|-
| 24 || {{what if|24|Model Rockets}} || December 11, 2012 || 1.0 || How many model rocket engines would it take to launch a real rocket into space? || About 65,000, give or take a few.
|-
| 25 || {{what if|25|Three Wise Men}} || December 18, 2012 || 1.0 || The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle? || No, but it does make some really cool patterns.
|-
| 26 || {{what if|26|Leap Seconds}} || December 31, 2012 || 1.9 || Every now and then we have to insert a leap second because the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. Could we speed up Earth’s rotation, so that we do not need Leap Seconds? || The first two weeks Christmas break
|-
| 27 || {{what if|27|Death Rates}} || January 8, 2013 || 1.1 || If one randomly chosen extra person were to die each second somewhere on Earth, what impact would it have on the world population? || Not much. The world just has too many people.
|-
| 28 || {{what if|28|Steak Drop}} || January 15, 2013 || 1.0 || From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground? || From the very edge of the atmosphere and even then it might not be fully cooked.
|-
| 29 || {{what if|29|Spent Fuel Pool}} || January 22, 2013 || 1.0 || What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface? || As long as you don't touch strange things and you don't swim too close to the fuel rods, it would be just like a regular pool.
|-
| 30 || {{what if|30|Interplanetary Cessna}} || January 29, 2013 || 1.0 || What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different Solar System bodies? || :(
|-
| 31 || {{what if|31|FedEx Bandwidth}} || February 5, 2013 || 1.0 || When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx? || NEVER!!!
|-
| 32 || {{what if|32|Hubble}} || February 12, 2013 || 1.0 || If the Hubble telescope were aimed at the Earth, how detailed would the images be? || A smudge of colour.
|-
| 33 || {{what if|33|Ships}} || February 19, 2013 || 1.0 || How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? || Less than a human hair's width.
|-
| 34 || {{what if|34|Twitter}} || February 26, 2013 || 1.0 || How many unique English tweets are possible? How long would it take for the population of the world to read them all out loud? || Forever, literally.
|-
| 35 || {{what if|35|Hair Dryer}} || March 5, 2013 || 1.0 || What would happen if a hair dryer with continuous power was turned on and put in an airtight 1x1x1 meter box? ||
|-
| 36 || {{what if|36|Cornstarch}} || March 12, 2013 || 1.0 || How much cornstarch can I rinse down the drain before unpleasant things start to happen? ||
|-
| 37 || {{what if|37|Supersonic Stereo}} || March 19, 2013 || 1.0 || What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by? || Assuming the stereo is indestructible then yes.
|-
| 38 || {{what if|38|Voyager}} || March 26, 2013 || 1.0 || With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? || We could possibly spend a ton of money and resources to get a probe to Voyager. Getting it back is another story.
|-
| 39 || {{what if|39|Hockey Puck}} || April 2, 2013 || 1.0 || How hard would a puck have to be shot to be able to knock the goalie himself backwards into the net? || This is another impossible senario.
|-
| 40 || {{what if|40|Pressure Cooker}} || April 9, 2013 || 1.0 || Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? What's the worst thing that can happen if you misuse a pressure cooker in an ordinary kitchen? || The worst thing? Science.
|-
| 41 || {{what if|41|Go West}} || April 16, 2013 || 1.0 || If everybody in the US drove west, could we temporarily halt continental drift? || Not even by a bit.
|-
| 42 || {{what if|42|Longest Sunset}} || April 23, 2013 || 1.0 || What is the longest possible sunset you can experience while driving, assuming we are obeying the speed limit and driving on paved roads? || 95 minutes at the right place at the right time.
|-
| 43 || {{what if|43|Train Loop}} || April 30, 2013 || 1.0 || Could a high-speed train run through a vertical loop, like a rollercoaster, with the passengers staying comfortable? || No, not even if we change the requirements to just the passengers staying alive.
|-
| 44 || {{what if|44|High Throw}} || May 7, 2013 || 1.0 || How high can a human throw something? || 16 giraffes.
|-
| 45 || {{what if|45|ISS Music Video}} || May 14, 2013 || 1.0 || Is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo this] the most expensive music video ever? || No. Just no.
|-
| 46 || {{what if|46|Bowling Ball}} || May 21, 2013 || 1.0 || I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth? || The finger holes would collapse and then not much would happen.
|-
| 47 || {{what if|47|Alien Astronomers}} || May 28, 2013 || 1.0 || Let's assume there's life on the the nearest habitable exoplanet and that they have technology comparable to ours. If they looked at our star right now, what would they see? || This ----->
|-
| 48 || {{what if|48|Sunset on the British Empire}} || June 4, 2013 || 1.0 || When (if ever) did the Sun finally set on the British Empire? || It hasn't set and it won't for thousands of years.
|-
| 49 || {{what if|49|Sunless Earth}} || June 11, 2013 || 1.0 || What would happen to the Earth if the Sun suddenly switched off? || We would see a variety of benefits across our lives but we would also freeze and die.
|-
| 50 || {{what if|50|Extreme Boating}} || June 18, 2013 || 1.0 || What would it be like to navigate a rowboat through a lake of mercury? What about bromine? Liquid gallium? Liquid tungsten? Liquid nitrogen? Liquid helium? || As with a lot of these answers, just don't
|-
| 51 || {{what if|51|Free Fall}} || June 25, 2013 || 1.0 || What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? What about using a squirrel suit? || Mount Thor would allow the longest fall an-AAAAAAAAAAA...
|-
| 52 || {{what if|52|Bouncy Balls}} || July 2, 2013 || 1.0 || What if one were to drop 3,000 bouncy balls from a seven story parking structure onto a person walking on the sidewalk below? Should the person survive, what would be the number of bouncy balls needed to kill them? What injuries would occur and what would the associated crimes be? || The release date in the archive is the wrong month June.
|-
| 53 || {{what if|53|Drain the Oceans}} || July 9, 2013 || 1.0 || How quickly would the ocean's drain if a circular portal 10 meters in radius leading into space was created at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean? How would the Earth change as the water is being drained? || NETHERLANDS RULE!!! P.S., everyone dies.
|-
| 54 || {{what if|54|Drain the Oceans: Part II}} || July 16, 2013 || 1.0 || Supposing you did {{what if|53|Drain the Oceans}}, and dumped the water on top of the Curiosity rover, how would Mars change as the water accumulated? || it would split into many islands and the Netherlands will take over.
|-
| 55 || {{what if|55|Random Sneeze Call}} || July 23, 2013 || 1.0 || If you call a random phone number and say “God bless you”, what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed? On average, not just in spring or fall. || 1 in 40000
|-
| 56 || {{what if|56|Restraining an Airplane}} || July 30, 2013 || 1.0 || If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of? || whale hair.
|-
| 57 || {{what if|57|Dropping a Mountain}} || August 6, 2013 || 1.0 || What if a huge mountain—Denali, say—had the bottom inch of its base disappear? What would happen from the impact of the mountain falling 1 inch? What about 1 foot? What if the mountain's base were raised to the present height of the summit, and then the whole thing were allowed to drop to the earth? || The first scenarios are pretty boring. the last is devastating.
|-
| 58 || {{what if|58|Orbital Speed}} || August 12, 2013 || 0.9 ||
* What if a spacecraft slowed down on re-entry to just a few miles per hour using rocket boosters like the Mars-sky-crane? Would it negate the need for a heat shield?
* Is it possible for a spacecraft to control its reentry in such a way that it avoids the atmospheric compression and thus would not require the expensive (and relatively fragile) heat shield on the outside?
* Could a (small) rocket (with payload) be lifted to a high point in the atmosphere where it would only need a small rocket to get to escape velocity?
||
|-
| 59 || {{what if|59|Updating a Printed Wikipedia}} || August 20, 2013 || 1.1 || If you had a printed version of the whole of (say, the English) Wikipedia, how many printers would you need in order to keep up with the changes made to the live version? || 6, but they would cost much more than you could afford.
|-
| 60 || {{what if|60|Signs of Life}} || August 27, 2013 || 1.0 || If you could teleport to a random place of the surface of the Earth, what are the odds that you'll see signs of intelligent life? || 70% of the time you would end up in the ocean.
|-
| 61 || {{what if|61|Speed Bump}} || September 3, 2013 || 1.0 || How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? || Surprisingly fast, but beware destroying the city, and fines.
|-
| 62 || {{what if|62|Falling With Helium}} || September 10, 2013 || 1.0 || What if I jumped out of an airplane with a couple of tanks of helium and one huge, un-inflated balloon? Then, while falling, I release the helium and fill the balloon. How long of a fall would I need in order for the balloon to slow me enough that I could land safely? || 2500 cubic feet.
|-
| 63 || {{what if|63|Google's Datacenters on Punch Cards}} || September 17, 2013 || 1.0 || If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google's data warehouse be? || big enough to bury the world many times.
|-
| 64 || {{what if|64|Rising Steadily}} || September 24, 2013 || 1.0 || If you suddenly began rising steadily at one foot per second, how exactly would you die? Would you freeze or suffocate first? Or something else? || Assuming you had a good coat, you would survive to the death zone and die.
|-
| 65 || {{what if|65|Twitter Timeline Height}} || October 1, 2013 || 1.0 || If our Twitter timelines (tweets by the people we follow) actually extended off the screen in both directions, how tall would they be? || Very tall.
|-
| 66 || {{what if|66|500 MPH}} || October 8, 2013 || 1.0 || If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human? || Absolutely! But first worry about what caused the 500 MPH winds...
|-
| 67 || {{what if|67|Expanding Earth}} || October 15, 2013 || 1.0 || How long would it take for people to notice their weight gain if the mean radius of the world expanded by 1cm every second? (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.) || 10 years, give or take.
|-
| 68 || {{what if|68|Little Planet}} || October 22, 2013 || 1.0 || If an asteroid was very small but supermassive, could you really live on it like the Little Prince? || yes, but it would be very inconvenient.
|-
| 69 || {{what if|69|Facebook of the Dead}} || October 29, 2013 || 1.0 || When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones? || A decade or a century, depending if Facebook would still be popular.
|-
| 70 || {{what if|70|The Constant Groundskeeper}} || November 5, 2013 || 1.0 || How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown? || Very big, bigger if you're a cougar.
|-
| 71 || {{what if|71|Stirring Tea}} || November 12, 2013 || 1.0 || I was absentmindedly stirring a cup of hot tea, when I got to thinking, "aren't I actually adding kinetic energy into this cup?" I know that stirring does help to cool down the tea, but what if I were to stir it faster? Would I be able to boil a cup of water by stirring? || No, and don't even try.
|-
| 72 || {{what if|72|Loneliest Human}} || November 19, 2013 || 1.0 || What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely? || Possibly the Apollo Astronauts but they definitely weren't lonely.
|-
| 73 || {{what if|73|Lethal Neutrinos}} || November 26, 2013 || 1.0 || How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a lethal dose of neutrino radiation? || About 2.3 AU
|-
| 74 || {{what if|74|Soda Planet}} || December 3, 2013 || 1.0 || How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its history? || 0.0000005%.
|-
| 75 || {{what if|75|Phone Keypad}} || December 10, 2013 || 1.0 || I use one of those old phones where you type with numbers—for example, to type "Y", you press 9 three times. Some words have consecutive letters on the same number. When they do, you have to pause between letters, making those words annoying to type. What English word has the most consecutive letters on the same key? ||nonmonogamous
|-
| 76 || {{what if|76|Reading Every Book}} || December 17, 2013 || 1.0 || At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime? || Depends, as many were burned.
|-
| 77 || {{what if|77|Growth Rate}} || December 31, 2013 || 2.0 || What height would humans reach if we kept growing through our whole development period (i.e. till late teens/early twenties) at the same pace as we do during our first month? || The second two weeks Christmas break
|-
| 78 || {{what if|78|T-rex Calories}} || January 7, 2014 || 1.0 || If a T-rex were released in New York City, how many humans/day would it need to consume to get its needed calorie intake? || One large sized one per day.
|-
| 79 || {{what if|79|Lake Tea}} || January 14, 2014 || 1.0 || What if we were to dump all the tea in the world into the Great Lakes? How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be? || Not strong enough to make a difference.
|-
| 80 || {{what if|80|Pile of Viruses}} || January 21, 2014 || 1.0 || What if every virus in the world were collected into one area? How much volume would they take up and what would they look like? || It would be like a Super Bowl of puss.
|-
| 81 || {{what if|81|Catch!}} || January 28, 2014 || 1.0 || Is there any way to fire a gun so that the bullet flies through the air and can then be safely caught by hand? e.g. shooter is at sea level and catcher is up a mountain at the extreme range of the gun. || It is possible, but beware the police.
|-
| 82 || {{what if|82|Hitting a comet}} || February 5, 2014 || 1.1 || Astrophysicists are always saying things like "This mission to this comet is equivalent to throwing a baseball from New York and hitting a particular window in San Francisco." Are they really equivalent? || The baseball is much harder.
|-
| 83 || {{what if|83|Star Sand}} || February 11, 2014 || 0.9 || If you made a beach using grains the proportionate size of the stars in the Milky Way, what would that beach look like? || It would be a bunch of boulders with some patches of sand.
|-
| 84 || {{what if|84|Paint the Earth}} || February 18, 2014 || 1.0 || Has humanity produced enough paint to cover the entire land area of the Earth? || So close!!!
|-
| 85 || {{what if|85|Rocket Golf}} || February 25, 2014 || 1.0 || Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? If so, how many golf balls would be required to reach the Moon? || If you cheat, a bag a little smaller than the Moon.
|-
| 86 || {{what if|86|Far-Traveling Objects}} || March 4, 2014 || 1.0 || In terms of human-made objects, has Voyager 1 travelled the farthest distance? It's certainly the farthest from Earth we know about. But what about the edge of ultracentrifuges, or generator turbines that have been running for years, for example? || The Mariner 1 has traveled much farther than Voyager 1.
|-
| 87 || {{what if|87|Enforced by Radar}} || March 11, 2014 || 1.0 || I've occasionally seen "radar enforced" on speed limit signs, and I can't help but ask: How intense would radio waves have to be to stop a car from going over the speed limit, and what would happen if this were attempted? || Intense enough to cause a medium sized nuclear explosion. Better to just carry a sign.
|-
| 88 || {{what if|88|Soda Sequestration}} || March 18, 2014 || 1.0 || How much CO2 is contained in the world's stock of bottled fizzy drinks? How much soda would be needed to bring atmospheric CO2 back to preindustrial levels? || Enough soda to cover Earth with ten layers of cans.
|-
| 89 || {{what if|89|Tungsten Countertop}} || March 25, 2014 || 1.0 || How far would a tungsten countertop descend if I dropped it into the Sun? || It would be vapourized before it got close to the Sun.
|-
| 90 || {{what if|90|Great Tree, Great Axe}} || April 3, 2014 || 1.3 ||
''If all the seas were one sea, 
''What a great sea that would be! 
''If all the trees were one tree, 
''What a great tree that would be! 
''If all the men were one man, 
''What a great man that would be! 
''If all the axes were one axe, 
''What a great axe that would be! 
''And if the great man took the great axe, 
''And cut down the great tree, 
''And let if fall into the great sea, 
''What a great splish-splash that would be!'' 
... How great would all of these things be?
|| The tree and splash would be great. The others not so much.
|-
| 91 || {{what if|91|Faucet Power}} || April 8, 2014 || 0.7 || I just moved into a new apartment. It includes hot water but I have to pay the electric bill. So being a person on a budget ... what's the best way to use my free faucet to generate electricity? || Just give it to make drinking water.
|-
| 92 || {{what if|92|One-Second Day}} || April 15, 2014 || 1.0 || What would happen if the Earth's rotation were sped up until a day only lasted one second? || KA-BLOOSH!!!!!
|-
| 93 || {{what if|93|Windshield Raindrops}} || April 22, 2014 || 1.0 || At what speed would you have to drive for rain to shatter your windshield? || Fast enough so you would need a speedometer in scientific notation.
|-
| 94 || {{what if|94|Billion-Story Building}} || April 29, 2014 || 1.0 || My daughter — age 4.5 — maintains she wants a billion-story building. It turns out not only is that hard to help her appreciate this size, I am not at all able to explain all of the other difficulties you'd have to overcome. || First of all, it would bot stand under it's own weight. Also, it would be many times the distance the Earth is from the Moon.
|-
| 95 || {{what if|95|Pyramid Energy}} || May 6, 2014 || 1.0 || What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? If we could convert the energy to build the Great Pyramid, would it be enough to send a rocket to the Moon and back? || No
|-
| 96 || {{what if|96|$2 Undecillion Lawsuit}} || May 14, 2014 || 1.1 || What if Au Bon Pain lost [http://loweringthebar.net/2014/05/2-undecillion-dollar-demand.html this lawsuit] and had to pay the plaintiff $2 undecillion? || They would not be able to pay off the debt, even if they forced humanity to work as slaves.
|-
| 97 || {{what if|97|Burning Pollen}} || May 20, 2014 || 0.9 || What if you were to somehow ignite the pollen that floats around in the air in spring? Other than being a really bad idea, what effect would it have? || It would just warm up the air by a bit.
|-
| 98 || {{what if|98|Blood Alcohol}} || May 27, 2014 || 1.0 || Could you get drunk from drinking a drunk person's blood? || Not before other nasty things happened.
|-
| 99 || {{what if|99|Starlings}} || June 3, 2014 || 1.0 || I was watching [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY this video] and was wondering: How many birds there would need to be for gravity to take over and force them into a gargantuan ball of birds? || Enough to make a black hole
|-
| 100 || {{what if|100|WWII Films}} || June 11, 2014 || 1.1 || Did WWII last longer than the total length of movies about WWII? For that matter, which war has the highest movie time:war time ratio? || From here on standard release day was Wednesday.
|-
| 101 || {{what if|101|Plastic Dinosaurs}} || June 18, 2014 || 1.0 || As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur? || Not much
|-
| 102 || {{what if|102|Keyboard Power}} || June 25, 2014 || 1.0 || As a writer, I'm wondering what would be the cumulative energy of the hundreds of thousands of keystrokes required to write a novel. || less than enough energy to microwave a burrito.
|-
| 103 || {{what if|103|Vanishing Water}} || July 2, 2014 || 1.0 || What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared? || like with most of the other scenarios, everyone dies.
|-
| 104 || {{what if|104|Global Snow}} || July 9, 2014 || 1.0 || From my seven-year-old son: How many snowflakes would it take to cover the entire world in six feet of snow? (I don't know why six feet...but that's what he asked.) || Too much.
|-
| 105 || {{what if|105|Cannibalism}} || July 16, 2014 || 1.0 || How long could the human race survive on only cannibalism? || ................................
|-
| 106 || {{what if|106|Ink Molecules}} || July 23, 2014 || 1.0 || Suppose you were to print, in 12 point text, the numeral 1 using a common cheap ink-jet printer. How many molecules of the ink would be used? At what numerical value would the number printed approximately equal the number of ink molecules used? || An 18 digit number.
|-
| 107 || {{what if|107|Letter to Mom}} || July 30, 2014 || 1.0 || What’s the fastest way to get a hand-written letter from my place in Chicago to my mother in New Jersey? || Missiles, obviously.
|-
| 108 || {{what if|108|Expensive Shoebox}} || August 13, 2014 || 2.0 || What would be the most expensive way to fill a size 11 shoebox (e.g. with 64 GB MicroSD cards all full of legally purchased music)? || The third two weeks break.
|-
| 109 || {{what if|109|Into the Blue}} || August 20, 2014 || 1.0 || If I shot an infinitely strong laser beam into the sky at a random point, how much damage would it do? || Most of the time it would not hit anyhing.
|-
| 110 || {{what if|110|Walking New York}} || August 27, 2014 || 1.0 || Could a person walk the entire city of NY in their lifetime? (including inside apartments) || 30 years to walk, much longer for the sentence.
|-
| 111 || {{what if|111|All the Money}} || September 2, 2014 || 0.9 || People sometimes say "If I had all the money in the world ..." in order to discuss what they would do if they had no financial constraints. I'm curious, though, what would happen if one person had all of the world's money? || the only thing to do would be to make a swimming pool.
|-
| 112 || {{what if|112|Balloon Car}} || September 17, 2014 || 2.1 || My 12-year-old daughter is proposing an interesting project. She is planning to attach a number of helium balloons to a chair, which in turn would be tethered by means of a rope to a Ferrari. Her 13-year-old friend would then drive the Ferrari around, while she sits in the chair enjoying uninterrupted views of the countryside. Leaving aside the legal and insurance difficulties, my daughter is keen to know the maximum speed that she could expect to attain, and how many helium balloons would be required. || The fourth two weeks break.
|-
| 113 || {{what if|113|Visit Every State}} || September 24, 2014 || 1.0 || How fast could you visit all 50 states? || in 5 sattilite orbits!
|-
| 114 || {{what if|114|Antimatter}} || October 1, 2014 || 1.0 || What if everything was antimatter, EXCEPT Earth? || Earth go boom!!!
|-
| 115 || {{what if|115|Into the Sun}} || October 8, 2014 || 1.0 || When I was about 8 years old, shoveling snow on a freezing day in Colorado, I wished that I could be instantly transported to the surface of the Sun, just for a nanosecond, then instantly transported back. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. What would actually happen? || you would not be warmed if you went to the surface. The core on the other hand, would vapourize you.
|-
| 116 || {{what if|116|No-Rules NASCAR}} || October 15, 2014 || 1.0 || If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? Let's say the racer has to survive. || Hard to do while surviving
|-
| 117 || {{what if|117|Distant Death}} || October 23, 2014 || 1.1 || What is the farthest from Earth that any Earth thing has died? || From here on standard release day was Thursday.
|-
| 118 || {{what if|118|Physical Salary}} || October 30, 2014 || 1.0 || What if people's incomes appeared around them as cash in real time? How much would you need to make to be in real trouble? || A normal person would not get buried. A CEO on the other hand, would be in trouble.
|-
| 119 || {{what if|119|Laser Umbrella}} || November 13, 2014 || 2.0 || Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. What if you tried to stop rain with a laser that targeted and vaporized each incoming droplet before it could come within ten feet of the ground? || The fifth two weeks break.
|-
| 120 || {{what if|120|Alternate Universe What Ifs}} || November 20, 2014 || 1.0 || Dispatches from a horrifying alternate universe ||
|-
| 121 || {{what if|121|Frozen Rivers}} || December 11, 2014 || 3.0 || What would happen if all of the rivers in the US were instantly frozen in the middle of the summer? || The only tree weeks break, the sixth break in total.
|-
| 122 || {{what if|122|Lava Lamp}} || December 18, 2014 || 1.0 || What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? What could I use as a clear medium? How close could I stand to watch it? || It would be too bright to watch and it would turn into rock quickly.
|-
| 123 || {{what if|123|Fairy Demographics}} || January 1, 2015 || 2.0 || How many fairies would fly around, if each fairy is born from the first laugh of a child and fairies were immortal? || The third two weeks Christmas break, the seventh break in total
|-
| 124 || {{what if|124|Lunar Swimming}} || January 8, 2015 || 1.0 || What if there was a lake on the Moon? What would it be like to swim in it? Presuming that it is sheltered in a regular atmosphere, in some giant dome or something. || that would be ''so'' cool!!!
|-
| 125 || {{what if|125|Bowling Ball}} || January 15, 2015 || 1.0 || You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. If you drop a 7kg bowling ball over the side, how long would it take to hit the bottom? || Never.
|-
| 126 || {{what if|126|Stairs}} || January 22, 2015 || 1.0 || If you made an elevator that would go to space (like the one you mentioned in the billion-story building) and built a staircase up (assuming regulated air pressure) about how long would it take to climb to the top? || A week or two.
|-
| 127 || {{what if|127|Tug of War}} || January 28, 2015 || 0.9 || Would it be possible for two teams in a tug-o-war to overcome the ultimate tensile strength of an iron rod and pull it apart? How big would the teams have to be? || Not too big.
|-
| 128 || {{what if|128|Zippo Phone}} || February 5, 2015 || 1.1 || What in my pocket actually contains more energy, my Zippo or my smartphone? What would be the best way of getting the energy from one to the other? And since I am already feeling like Bilbo in this one, is there anything else in my pocket that would have unexpected amounts of stored energy? || The Zippo.
|-
| 129 || {{what if|129|Black Hole Moon}} || February 12, 2015 || 1.0 || What would happen if the Moon were replaced with an equivalently-massed black hole? If it's possible, what would a lunar ("holar"?) eclipse look like? || It would not have a big impact unless it happened during the space age.
|-
| 130 || {{what if|130|Snow Removal}} || February 19, 2015 || 1.0 || I've long thought about putting a flamethrower on the front of a car to melt snow and ice before you drive across it. Now I've realized that a flamethrower is impractical, but what about a high-powered microwave emitter? ||
|-
| 131 || {{what if|131|Microwaves}} || February 27, 2015 || 1.1 || I have had a particular problem for as long as I can remember. Any time I attempt to heat left over Chinese food in a microwave, it fails to heat completely through somewhere. Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. It's baffling and has made me automatically adjust heating times to over 2 minutes. In most cases this tends to heat the bowl or plate more than the food. So I suppose the question is what is the optimal time to heat left over Chinese food in the microwave, how about an 800 watt microwave? || The release date in the archive is the wrong year 2014. From here on there seems to no longer be a standard release day for some time.
|-
| 132 || {{what if|132|Hotter than Average}} || March 7, 2015 || 1.1 || I saw a sign at a hot springs tub saying "Caution: Water is hotter than average" with water at about 39°C. Although they were presumably trying to say "hotter than the average swimming pool," this got me wondering: What is the average temperature of all water on the Earth’s surface, and how does that temperature compare to 39°C? || There is a water average. Give the signmakers some credit.
|-
| 133 || {{what if|133|Flagpole}} || March 17, 2015 || 1.4 || So, you're falling from a height above the tallest building in your town, and you don't have a parachute. But wait! Partway down the side of that skyscraper there's a flagpole sticking out, sans flag! You angle your descent and grab the pole just long enough to swing around so that when you let go you're now heading back up toward the sky. As gravity slows you and brings you to a halt, you reach the top of the skyscraper, where you reach out and pull yourself to safety. What's the likelihood this could happen? || The first of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total.
|-
| 134 || {{what if|134|Space Burial}} || March 28, 2015 || 1.6 || I've often joked I'd like to have my remains put into orbit. Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. Honestly, my main motivation is to baffle someone in the distant future, but it's an interesting scientific question: what would happen to my body in orbit over the course of years, decades or centuries? || The second of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total.
|-
| 135 || {{what if|135|Digging Downward}} || April 5, 2015 || 1.1 || What would happen if I dug straight down, at a speed of 1 foot per second? What would kill me first? || Magic, because science just works like that.
|-
| 136 || {{what if|136|Spiders vs. the Sun}} || April 12, 2015 || 1.0 || Which has a greater gravitational pull on me: the Sun, or spiders? Granted, the Sun is much bigger, but it is also much further away, and as I learned in high school physics, the gravitational force is proportional to the square of the distance. || The Sun. But spiders are a lot more scary.
|-
| 137 || {{what if|137|New Horizons}} || July 14, 2015 || 13.3 || What if New Horizons hits my car? || The second longest break up til summer 2016, the only one to have been announced. The ninth break in total.
|-
| 138 || {{what if|138|Jupiter Submarine}} || July 28, 2015 || 2.0 || What if you released a submarine into Jupiter's atmosphere? Would it eventually reach a point where it would float? Could it navigate? || The sixth two weeks break, tenth break in total. Answer: NO!!!!!
|-
| 139 || {{what if|139|Jupiter Descending}} || August 4, 2015 || 1.0 || If you did {{what if|138|fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine}}, what would it actually look like? What would you see before you melted or burned up? || You would see...brown.
|-
| 140 || {{what if|140|Proton Earth, Electron Moon}} || September 18, 2015 || 6.4 || What if the Earth were made entirely of protons, and the Moon were made entirely of electrons? || First and shortest of two long breaks in a row, the 11th break in total. For the answer, the universe would be destroyed.
|-
| 141 || {{what if|141|Sunbeam}} || January 12, 2016 || 16.6 || What if all of the sun's output of visible light were bundled up into a laser-like beam that had a diameter of around 1m once it reaches Earth? || Second and longest break so far of two long breaks in a row, the 12th break in total. From here on standard release day was again Tuesday. Answer: A literal Death Star.
|-
| 142 || {{what if|142|Space Jetta}} || January 20, 2016 || 1.1 || What if I tried to re-enter the atmosphere in my car? (a 2000 VW Jetta TDI). Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing? || Actually, it would be more clean than it is currently!
|-
| 143 || {{what if|143|Europa Water Siphon}} || January 26, 2016 || 0.9 || What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? Would it flow once it's set up? (We have an idea for selling bottled Europa water.) || No, at least not with a siphon.
|-
| 144 || {{what if|144|Saliva Pool}} || February 2, 2016 || 1.0 || How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva? || 8345 years.
|-
| 145 || {{what if|145|Fire From Moonlight}} || February 9, 2016 || 1.0 || Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire? || NO!!!!!!
|-
| 146 || {{what if|146|Stop Jupiter}} || February 16, 2016 || 1.0 || I understand that the New Horizons craft used gravity assist from Jupiter to increase its speed on the way to Pluto. I also understand that by doing this, Jupiter slowed down very slightly. How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely? || This can never happen, even if we were to throw Earth at Jupiter.
|-
| 147 || {{what if|147|Niagara Straw}} || February 26, 2016 || 1.4 || What would happen if one tried to funnel Niagara Falls through a straw? || From here on there is no longer any standard release days. Answer: The International Niagara Committee, the International Niagara Board of Control, the International Joint Commission, the International Niagara Board Working Committee, and probably the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River Adaptive Management Committee would be angry. Also, the Earth would be destroyed.
|-
| 148 || {{what if|148|Eat the Sun}} || March 12, 2016 || 2.1 || What percentage of the Sun's heat (per day) does the population of Earth eat in calories per year? What changes could be made to our diets for the amount of calories to equal the energy of the Sun? || The seventh two weeks break, 13th break in total.
|-
| 149 || {{what if|149|Pizza Bird}} || March 26, 2016 || 2.0 || My boyfriend recently took a flight on a plane with wifi, and while he was up there, wistfully asked if I could send him a pizza. I jokingly sent him a photo of a parrot holding a pizza slice in its beak. Obviously, my boyfriend had to go without pizza until he landed at JFK. But this raised the question: could a bird deliver a standard 20" New York-style cheese pizza in a box? And if so, what kind of bird would it take? || The eight two weeks break, 14th break in total.
|-
| 150 || {{what if|150|Tatooine Rainbow}} || May 23, 2016 || 8.3 || Since rainbows are caused by the refraction of the sunlight by tiny droplets of rainwater, what would rainbow look like on Earth if we had two suns like Tatooine? || First two months break of at least two in a row, the 15th break in total.
|-
| 151 || {{what if|151|Sun Bug}} || July 21, 2016 || 8.4 || How many fireflies would it take to match the brightness of the Sun? || Second two months break of at least two in a row, the 16th break in total. The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. It was released [http://web.archive.org/web/20160718014924/http://what-if.xkcd.com/ between 18-20 July], as the link here was posted on the 20th. But on the [http://web.archive.org/web/20160724210016/https://what-if.xkcd.com/archive/ archive page] is says it was released on June 21, which should probably have been July 21.
|-
| 152 || {{what if|152|Flood Death Valley}} || October 18, 2016 || 12.6 || Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water? || After two 8 weeks breaks this one waited almost three months. Regarding the question it could be done, but why did the guy asking the question whish to do such a horrible thing Randall ends up asking back. Most of the what if? goes with citing temperature records and other trivia actually naming a Jeopardy master. At least two comics coming out right after this was referencing this article. [[1748: Future Archaeology]] and [[1750: Life Goals]].
|-
| 153 || {{what if|153|Hide the Atmosphere}} || January 30, 2017 || 14.9 || Earth’s atmosphere is really thin compared to the radius of the Earth. How big a hole do I need to dig before people suffocate? || With close to 15 weeks this was the second longest break between articles so far. The hole needs to be Very big it turns out, but under the right circumstances a five mile hole over the entire state of Texas might suffice... But beware of messing with the Texans.
|-
| 154 || {{what if|154|Coast-to-Coast Coasting}} || February 8, 2017 || 1.3 || What if the entire continental US was on a decreasing slope from West to East. How steep would the slope have to be to sustain the momentum needed to ride a bicycle the entire distance without pedaling? || The article is about the slope needed to be able to coast on a bike, without using the pedals, across mainland USA. It turns out the ramp would need to be five miles high (8 km) to make this possible, and that would be at a speed slower than walking. Also you would need oxygen the first third of the way down... Unlike the last article, out after almost a 15 weeks break, this one was released only a bit more than week after that. It is almost a year ago that two comics have been released with less than two full weeks between them (that was #147 released February 26, 2016). In that year (assuming no more comics before February 26 2017), only 8 articles where released including both 147 and this one. Interesting to see it they will begin appearing regularly again during the spring of 2017.
|-
| 155 || {{what if|155|Toaster vs. Freezer}} || February 28, 2017 || 2.9 || Would a toaster still work in a freezer?|| With less than 3 weeks between releases, releases seems to have become more regular in the beginning of 2017. The question is not asked of Randall this time, but rather one he has found discussed on [http://www.maximumfun.org/my-brother-my-brother-and-me/mbmbam-343-sauce-doctors-blessing Episode 343] of the {{w|My Brother, My Brother and Me|advice podcast}} ''[http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/my-brother-my-brother-and-me My Brother, My Brother and Me]'' (links are those given in the article) where the three brothers McElroy are discussing a {{w|Yahoo! Answers}} question. They did not answer the question but Randall does and it is quite easy so he puts it a the top: The Toaster wins! Since it heats with 1000+ watts of heat production where a freezer only cools with 100-150 watts. Although the freezer may be up to three times as effective, it is no match for the toaster, which also heats the bread locally inside it self. A nice way to explain this, is that to a toaster any human environment feels cool, so a freezer at 258 K (-15 °C) compared to room temperature of typically 293 K (20 °C), seems like a small difference compared to the temperature of the toasters heating element of about 900 K (over 600 °C). So it makes no real difference to the toaster where it is. But please don't try this at home, and also not outside in {{w|Winnipeg}}, Canada to avoid getting eaten by wolves.
If the question is "would a toaster still toast bread in a freezer?" the answer requires no maths at all; since toasters work by radiating heat (effecting a chemical change and increased temperature), and freezers work by convecting heat away (reducing the temperature), then no matter how powerful the freezer and how wussy the toaster, the chemical change would still occur (though your toast might be very cold).
|-
| 156 || {{what if|156|Electrofishing for Whales}} || March 9, 2017 || 1.3 || I used to work on a fisheries crew where we would use an electro-fisher backpack to momentarily stun small fish (30 - 100 mm length) so we could scoop them up with nets to identify and measure them. The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. Could you electrofish for a blue whale? At what voltage would you have have to set the e-fisher? || Second time with less than two weeks between release in 2017. The answer focuses more on the bad side effects of electrofising, both long term effect on fish and also mentions killing of Dolphins. So it seems more of an protect the animal article than an answer. But the fact is that larger animals (and especially mammals) is likely to die rather than just get stunned. But it is also harder to get any effect in saltwater, which explains why electrofishing is mainly done in rivers and lakes. The higher conductivity of saltwater makes to current prefer to avoid the less salt whale rather than go through it. This is less of an issue in fresh water. So basically it just won't work on blue whales.
|-
| 157 || {{what if|157|Earth-Moon Fire Pole}} || May 21, 2018 || 62 || My son (5y) asked me today: If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth? || After a discussion of the extreme challenges that this set-up would face (an extreme form of the challenges of a space elevator), Randall details the different domains of the new slowest extreme sport: climbing out of the Moon's gravity, accelerating through the middle transfer phase, and then decelerating to your supersonic arrival on earth. Fun.
|}



[[Category:Meta]]

1889: xkcd Phone 6

2017-09-17T19:48:17Z

162.158.88.206:

{{comic
| number = 1889
| date = September 13, 2017
| title = xkcd Phone 6
| image = xkcd_phone_6.png
| titletext = We understand your privacy concerns; be assured that our phones will never store or transmit images of your face.
}}

==Explanation==

This is the sixth entry in the ongoing [[:Category:xkcd Phones|xkcd Phone series]], released the day after Apple announced their new {{w|iPhone 8}} and the higher-end {{w|iPhone X}} (pronounced iPhone 10) with facial recognition features.

===List of features (clockwise from center/top)===

; Front camera (centered for eye contact during video chat)
: Front camera is a common feature of smartphones. The camera lens is located on the same side of the phone's case as the main screen and therefore it is possible to capture the image of the user's face looking at the screen and display the interlocutor's face on the screen simultaneously, enabling video chat. However, as the camera is usually located above the screen, a user looking at the displayed image of the other person directs his or her eyes at the center of the screen and not at the camera's lens. This is very visible on the other end of the chat as if the person talking was looking down and not in the interlocutor's face which is an uncomfortable situation for most people. For this reason, professionals involved in movie or TV-making, like actors or reporters, are trained to look straight into the camera's lens while talking, which creates impression of looking straight at the viewer's face. During a video chat, however, looking into the lens of an above-screen camera does not allow one to see the interlocutor's face clearly because it is then in the peripheral field of vision.

: To solve this conundrum, Randall proposes locating the camera lens right in the middle of the screen. Therefore the user looking at the screen to see the other person's face would be also looking at the lens, creating an impression of a straight look on the other end of the chat. This is absurd since the lens would then take place of some of the center pixels of the screen, not allowing the display the center part of the captured image of the other person's face (like eyes and/or lips) which is most important for nonverbal communication. Such location of the camera lens would also likely interfere with touch-screen function. It will make other applications on the phone difficult to use, since virtually no user interface is designed to accommodate for a blind spot in the center.

; Full-width rear camera
: Phone cameras tend to have lenses which are quite small and round or square -- same width as height. Full-width makes it sound like the camera lens is really wide, as in a long oval or rectangle shape. This could allow the camera to gather a lot more light, potentially working in low light situations. However the lens would be more vulnerable to damage and dirt. Unless a very large sensor was used, focusing the image could be a problem, since cell phones are typically not very deep.

; CDC partnership - phone automatically administers seasonal flu vaccine to cheek every year
: U.S. {{w|Centers for Disease Control and Prevention}} is a government agency tasked with addressing public health concerns such as infectious diseases, including seasonal flu. A common way of limiting spread of an infectious disease is {{w|Vaccine|vaccination}}, which most often involves administering a specially prepared medicine via an {{w|intramuscular injection}}. Researchers have investigated other delivery systems, including aerosol, or microneedle injection. This features implies that the phone would automatically perform some form of injection once a year, administering vaccine via a small aperture while the user is holding the phone to his or her cheek during a call.

; 12-function
: Most smartphones can be used for more than 12 different things{{Citation needed}}. However, this may refer to the 12 basic functions of algebra (identity, squaring, cubing, square root, logarithm, exponential, reciprocal, sine, cosine, greatest integer, absolute value, and logistic), or the twelve function keys on a modern keyboard (more than the ten on the original IBM PC keyboard). Alternatively it may be a reference to calculators: basic models are sometimes referred to as four function calculators (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), and complex scientific calculators may advertise 250 or more functions.

; Dishwasher safe
: Usually a feature of plastic containers or fancy dishes. Unlikely to appear on a smartphone, though potentially useful if you need to clean your screen.

; GPS transmitter
: Many smartphones have a receiver for the Global Positioning System, which allows a phone to compute its position based on signals from the constellation(s) of GPS satellites. However, a device with a "GPS transmitter" would broadcast signals that would interfere with the GPS receivers of all devices nearby. This might be used in some form of differential GPS, broadcasting signals from a known location to allow more precise determination of other locations. Or such a system might be used to confuse or control devices, such as drones, which navigate using GPS.

; 3-G acceleration
: This may be a mixing of 3-D acceleration, which refers to graphics, and 3g, referring to communications systems. {{w|Graphics processing unit|Three-d acceleration hardware}} speeds up handling of spatial data, such as generating pictures of a simulated environment. Usually, a phone is {{w|3G|3g compatible}} if it uses a certain standard ("third generation") for data communication. However, 3-G acceleration implies the phone can accelerate at a rate of 3 times the acceleration of gravity, or approximately 30 m/s². An untrained human experiencing 3g for extensive periods of time can suffer injuries as a result.

; Portable, solar-heated
: Portability is pretty much the entire point of using a ''mobile'' phone, so advertising portability is rather pointless. Solar ''power'' charging could be a very useful feature on a phone, but solar ''heating'' usually applies to plumbing, where a water tank is heated by the sun and used to supply hot water to taps. Technically, as the sun heats up everything it shines on, the phone is in fact solar heated.

;Pore-cleaning strip
: Presumably this would be part of the ''Shroud of Turin-style facial transfer unlock'', where the phone would use the dirt and oils collected from the user's face being pressed against the phone to to verify their identity. Something sticky on that location would be very annoying for clean-shaven people and extremely painful for anyone with facial hair. See also [[777: Pore Strips]]

; Maximum strength
: Medicines are often sold as "Maximum strength", as in the highest dose allowed by law or allowed without a prescription. For phones, there are sometimes "hardened" or "ruggedized" versions which are designed to survive harsher environmental conditions such as surviving drops and collisions, excessive water, dust, etc. So Maximum strength could indicate a "ruggedized" phone, though a screen that extended past the edges would likely have the opposite effect.

; Never needs sharpening
: Phones do not need to be sharpened in the first place{{Citation needed}}. This is a feature more likely to be found in a knife advertisement (especially for a knife that cannot be sharpened, like a serrated or ceramic blade), or on a mechanical pencil

; Can survive up to 30 minutes out of water
: This is a play on the common IP-rating of water resistance, which is typically rated for submersion to a rated depth for 30 minutes. A phone which could only be used or carried for 30 minutes and then needed to be immersed in water would be rather inconvenient, especially if it was still susceptible to short-circuiting as most electronic devices do when submerged. On the other hand, perhaps this phone's target market are whales and dolphins. This would be a useful feature for them.

; Exclusive Audubon Society app identifies birds and lets you control their flight
: {{w|National Audubon Society}} is a non-profit organization dedicated to conservation of nature, mainly of birds, also organizing open {{w|birdwatching}} events. An app that identifies bird species, as for example from a photo of a bird made by the smartphone itself, would be cool. An app allowing you to control the bird's flight would be way cooler, but it is not possible with current technology - and it would fly in the face of the Audubon Society core activity. This is a reference to {{w|Unmanned_aerial_vehicle|drones}} (artificial "birds") which are often controlled by a smartphone app. This may also be a reference to [[1425: Tasks]], in which an app that can recognize if a bird is on camera is proposed.

; Extra screen
:Possibly because of the center camera, an additional section of screen was added. Some phones also advertise having extra screen, although this refers to having a larger screen in general, rather than a small rectangle added to the bottom.

; Wireless charging port
:A rather pointless feature; because wireless charging has no wires, it needs no port. (Unless it is required for fuel for a fuel cell. See clean coal, below.) This may be a play on Apple's removal of headphone port from their previous phones.

; Safe for ages 6-8 months, 10 months, 18 months-3 years, and 12 years and older
:Usually an item is deemed safe for a particular age or older, or (in the case of toys) is recommended for a particular age range. This is unusual in that it's a hodge-podge of age ranges with no apparent reason why some ages are safe and others are not. It may be a parody of drug commercials that list several age ranges for which the drug had to be separately approved.

; Screen goes past the edge
:A parody of the trend of "edge to edge" displays in recent generations of smartphones, or phones whose screens curve partway around the edge of the phone.

; High thread count CPU
:A CPU thread is a task the CPU performs. Several threads may share memory making them a process. Threads are meant to run in parallel and the operating system distributes the workload on the available hardware execution units. These execution units are sometimes called hardware threads, especially when there is more than one per processing unit (or core). For example, the Intel Core i7 7700 is considered a 4-core, 8-thread CPU. The vague "high thread count" statement could make sense in this context, however, it is most likely a joke about bedding, where it is an actual selling point. High thread count is a marketing term for linens, where it signifies the density of threads in a textile.

; Shroud of Turin-style facial transfer unlock
:The {{w|Shroud of Turin}} contains an image of a face, ostensibly of {{w|Jesus Christ}}. Presumably, to unlock this phone, the user would have to physically {{w|facepalm|press their face}} against the phone, the way Jesus Christ's image was allegedly transferred to the shroud. This is likely a reference to the iPhone X's FaceID unlock, which uses a ''photograph'' of your face augmented with spatial information to unlock it and which had attracted [https://www.wired.com/story/iphone-x-faceid-security/ significant criticism] immediately before this comic came out.

; Fonts developed by NASA
: Between 1975 and 1992 NASA used the {{w|NASA insignia|"worm" logotype}} in its insignia. It was a special font omitting the horizontal bar in the capitalized letter A. May be a reference to many advertisements that claim their product uses technology developed by NASA. This seems impressive, as NASA technology does tend to be quite strong and advanced, as they claim at their [https://spinoff.nasa.gov/ spin off] website. However, it would not be as impressive due to fonts having very little to do with NASA's core operations.

; Includes applicator
: What tampon packages, cosmetics, paints, and other products often say. An applicator for a phone would be absurd since the phone cannot be applied, spread, inserted, or attached to something else. This may be referring back to the aforementioned yearly vaccine.

; Burns clean coal
: There is marketing, trying to appear to be using clean energy, due to pollution concerns. Coal burning power plants are usually quite large, so a traditional coal fired thermal-electric plant in a cell phone would be absurd. However, {{w|Fuel cell|fuel cells}}, which produce electricity by oxidizing some fuel can be small enough to fit in a cell phone, however they do not typically burn coal. Clean coal would be coal that is burned so that it does not give off as much soot, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, or other pollutants. (The cordless charging port might be receptacle for refueling the phone, using liquid, or using a fuel cartridge.)

; Pre-seasoned
:Pre-seasoned typically refers to cast iron cookware which is ready to use out of the box, as opposed to needing to season it with oil and heat. It can also refer to packaged meats which are ready to cook without needing to be seasoned with herbs and spices, or timber that has been dried and is ready for use.

; Broad-spectrum SPF 30
:The xkcd phone somehow gives a sun protection factor (SPF) 30 level of protection for the skin from sun light.

; College-ruled
:College-ruled is a style of notebook paper having narrower lines in order to fit more text per page. That the phone is college-ruled suggests that there are lines permanently displayed on the screen, which would obscure any images on the screen, along with any text that doesn't line up with the lines. Defective screens can show similar patterns. For example, the iPhone 6 "touch disease" cause regularly spaced vertical lines to appear on top of the screen. Here, it is possible that the manufacturer tries to pass off screen defects as features.

; Sterile packaging
:Useful for medical supplies, less so in a phone.

; Radium backlight
:The discovery of the radioactive element radium sparked a brief fad in which some watch makers painted watch faces or hands with a paint containing radium and a radioluminescent substance, such as zinc sulfide, which converted the radiation from the radium into visible light. This allowed the time to be read at night without an external power source for the light. However, it was eventually realized that regular exposure to radium could result in radiation poisoning, particularly for the workers assembling and painting the watches. A radium-based backlight would therefore be both potentially dangerous (especially for an object carried on one's person much of the time) but also largely useless, as the radioluminescent light is rather dim compared to conventional phone back lights.

; 4K pixels (50×80)
:This refers to having 4,000 pixels in the screen in total, rather than a screen width of ~4000 pixels. TV's advertised as "4K" are typically up to 4096 × 2160 pixels, or 8.8 million pixels. That would be outstanding for a cell phone whereas 4,000 pixels total would be horrendous. As a comparison, the old Commodore VIC-20 with a resolution of 176 × 184 would have over 8 times the pixels of this phone. It is however quite close to the screen resolution of the sturdy Nokia 3310, boasting a total of 4032 pixels positioned 84 × 48.

In the caption below the phone [[Randall]] presents many different version numbers:
*The number 6 is in correct order of all the xkcd phones
*The {{w|Roman numerals|roman number}} VIII refers to the newly announced {{w|iPhone 8}} and jokes about the roman number X below
*Version number 10 is the current version of Microsoft Windows after omitting the number 9
*The {{w|iPhone X}} was announced together with the iPhone 8 by Apple on September 12, 2017, a day before this comic was released. Apple clarified X must be read as the roman number 10, so for additional absurdity two xkcd phones share the same number, using different numeral
*The number 26 refers to...
*In the year 1876 {{w|Alexander Graham Bell}} received the U.S. Patent No. 174465 for the {{w|invention of the telephone}}, but there is still a {{w|Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell telephone controversy|controversy}} whether {{w|Elisha Gray}} was the first who presented a working telephone.
Below these numbers Randall states that xkcd isn't responsible for this ''nonconsecutive version number war'', but, as it can be seen here above, he attempts to win. By counting parallel version numbers xkcd defeated Apple 6:2. The "nonconsecutive version number war" refers to several recent phones released consecutively with nonconsecutive version numbers, including:
*The iPhone X (or Ten) which will be released shortly after the iPhone 8
*The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was released after the Note 5
*The Oneplus 5 was released after the OnePlus 3T

The symbols at the end are ™ for trademark, ® for registered trademark, and © for a copyright protection. The degree symbol ° after the letter C could be a play with degree Celsius. The use of all four symbols after the phrase is ridiculous, as ™ and ® indicate trademarks with opposite registration statuses, slogans can't be copyrighted, and the degree symbol usually has no meaning when applied to text.

In the title text Randall attributes privacy concerns about the facial recognition feature. A picture of a face will only be used for facial recognition, but never stored on the device nor transmitted to internet. A ''small'' side effect may be that the famous selfie pictures aren't possible anymore, as well as video calls.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A smartphone is shown, the screen is slightly wider than the case, in the middle is a photo lens, and at the right bottom a small extra part is added to the screen.]
:[On top a bracket ranges nearly over the entire width of the case. The text reads:]
:Full-width rear camera
:[The label at the photo lens is:]
:Front camera (centered for eye contact during video chat)
:[The label on the extra part says:]
:Extra screen
:[At the bottom below the case a label reads:]
:Wireless charging port

:[The labels left to the phone are:]
:4k pixels (50x80)
:Radium backlight
:Sterile packaging
:College-ruled
:Broad spectrum SPF 30
:Pre-seasoned
:Burns clean coal
:Includes applicator
:Fonts developed by NASA
:Shroud of turn-style facial transfer unlock
:High thread count CPU
:Screen goes past the edge
:Safe for ages 6-8 months, 10 months, 18 months-3 years, and 12 years and older

:[The labels right to the phone are:]
:CDC partnership: Phone automatically administers seasonal flu vaccine to cheek every year
:12-function
:Dishwasher safe
:GPS transmitter
:3-G acceleration
:Portable, solar-heated
:Pore-cleaning strip
:Maximum strength
:Never needs sharpening
:Can survive up to 30 minutes out of water
:Exclusive Audubon Society app identifies birds and lets you control their flight

:[Text below the phone:]
:Introducing
:'''The XKCD PHONE 6, VIII, 10, X, 26, and 1876'''
:''We didn't start this nonconsecutive version number war, but we will not lose it.''™®©°
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:xkcd Phones]]

1302: Year in Review

2017-08-24T07:32:07Z

162.158.88.206: +Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017 (title text)

{{comic
| number = 1302
| date = December 11, 2013
| title = Year in Review
| image = year_in_review.png
| titletext = All in all, I give this year a C-. There were no aurora visible from my house and that comet evaporated. They'd better not cancel the 2017 eclipse.
}}

==Explanation==
Many news organizations will recap the major stories of the past calendar year in late December (typically before the year has actually ended). This includes specialized news outlets such as sports stations which recap major sports stories or best plays of the year. Here, [[Cueball]], as a [[:Category:News anchor|news anchor]], expects [[Megan]] to talk about major news stories of 2013 such as the roll-out of {{w|Obamacare}}, the {{w|Papal conclave, 2013|election}} of {{w|Pope Francis}} or the {{w|Death of Nelson Mandela|death}} of {{w|Nelson Mandela}}, to give a few examples.

Instead, Megan only recaps one thing which was important to her: She did not see the {{w|aurora borealis}} (i.e. northern lights) in 2013, the dazzling natural geomagnetic light display caused by the {{w|solar wind}}. In 2013 a solar maximum was expected at its {{w|solar cycle}}, but the activity of the sun wasn't as heavy as before. So, a ''northern light'' had been very rare in this year. Megan has never seen the northern lights, and she is frustrated that it did not happen for her in 2013, thus overshadowing all other events. She even leaves in the middle of the review when she notices the sky clearing up, as she wishes to check if there are any northern light this evening. This may very well be [[Randall|Randall's]] own frustration which is displayed here.

It turns out in the title text that Megan is actually reviewing the astronomical year, only considering astronomical events. She even rates it much like a movie review, although she seems to use the {{w|Academic grading in the United States|A-F grade scale}}. She only gives the year a C- (C minus), which would usually be the lowest passable grade, so she just lets the year pass in spite of the two failing events mentioned in the title text.

In the title text, Megan specifically complains about not being able to see aurorae from her house. If Megan actually represents Randall's frustration, then to expect to see it from a house in Massachusetts would be a lot to ask for. Usually, people who wish to see Northern lights will travel to an arctic area and stay away from light pollution from cities. But in years with heavy solar activity, northern light may be visible even south of Massachusetts.

The title text also refers to {{w|Comet ISON}}. In February, a rough estimate of the comet's behavior predicted that it would become brighter than the full moon, a prediction that was widely reported by the media even though it was based on limited data and astronomers knew that it would not reach this brightness. In the end, although it was visible to the naked eye, it was never as bright as anybody hoped and apparently disintegrated on November 28, 2013, at its close approach to the sun.

The title text also refers to the {{w|2017 total eclipse}}, which will be visible as a partial eclipse for a few hours throughout North America on August 21 Monday, including a 100-mile band across the United States where it will be a total {{w|eclipse}} for a couple of minutes in the early afternoon. Although the weather may be cloudy so the sun will be blocked during totality, the eclipse will happen anyway as there are completely predictable. So Megan is being extremely pessimistic to even suggest that it might get canceled. That she also states it like someone might decide to cancel the eclipse like it was a concert that could be canceled by the organizer is funny. Seems like Megan thinks "they" are the same that caused the comet to disintegrate and the solar activity to stay low. Anyone with the kind of power to stop a solar eclipse from happening would be God-like compared to humanity. Next time the eclipse was mentioned was in the New Year comic for 2017: [[1779: 2017]]. The subject of the title text of that comic is the likelihood that the eclipse will indeed happen as planed.

All in all, the comic suggests that the only events of significance to Megan (and Randall) are astronomical ones; the actions of humanity pale in comparison.

The joke of Megan answering a question in an interview in an unexpected manner has been used before in [[1111: Premiere]].

Interestingly in [[1037: Umwelt]] there is an [[1037#Aurora|aurora story line]] where Megan stays inside at her computer even though it can be seen from her own state, letting her friend go out alone. (So not the same Megan for sure).

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is a news anchor sitting with his arms on a desk looking at Megan, a reporter shown in a feed on a screen to his right. There is a title below the feed.]
:Cueball: We go live to our ''2013: Year in Review!''
:Megan: Thanks!
:Megan: In 2013, I didn't see an aurora.
:Cueball: I- what?
:Title: Year in Review

:[Zoom to the top part of the screen with Megan. Her text is written above the screen without a frame around this segment of the comic.]
:Megan: The northern lights. I thought this would finally be the year.
:Megan: But it didn't happen.

:[Back to the original view but Cueball has turned more towards Megan, with only one arm on the desk.]
:Cueball: Oh. Uh... What about the rest of the year?
:Megan: What do you mean?
:Cueball: Any big news stories?
:Megan: Oh yeah, tons.
:Title: Year in Review

:[Same setting but Megan turns away from Cueball, who has taken both hands of the table. Megan is looking to her left at something off screen. Beat panel.]
:Title: Year in Review

:[Cueball turns back to face the viewers, both hands back on the desk, as Megan is leaving the screen, walking out to the right, her face already hidden by the frame of the feed.]
:Cueball: ...Well, that was ''2013: Year in Review.''
:Megan: The sky's clearing up. I'll be outside.
:Title: Year in Review

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:News anchor]]
[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017]]

1779: 2017

2017-08-24T07:25:03Z

162.158.88.206: +Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017

{{comic
| number = 1779
| date = December 30, 2016
| title = 2017
| image = 2017.png
| titletext = Things are looking good for the eclipse--Nate Silver says Earth will almost definitely still have a moon in August.
}}

==Explanation==
In this [[:Category:New Year|New Year comic]], [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] share some of their (or [[Randall|Randall's]]) thoughts about the ending 2016 and the new year 2017 (hence the title). 2016 was a year which many people eagerly awaited the end of because of its increased turmoil (terrorist attacks, controversial political events in numerous countries including the election of {{w|Donald Trump}} for president in the United States and Britain voting for {{w|Brexit}}) as well as the deaths of an unusually large number of well-known and beloved celebrities (several of these died in the first few days after Christmas).

Instead of simply condemning 2016 as a terrible year and expecting 2017 to be significantly better, Megan observes that much of what made 2016 bad is the effect that it will have upon future years rather than the actual events themselves (for instance, a divisive {{w|United States presidential election, 2016|U.S. presidential election}} has caused significant controversy in 2016, but President Donald Trump actually took office and began to affect the world as President in 2017). Megan specifically states that ''2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.'' As it is known that Randall is a {{w|Hillary Clinton}} supporter (as shown in the [[1756: I'm With Her]] comic), an additional reading of that line could be that we are headed into 2017 "without" a Hillary Clinton presidency. It can also refer to the many {{w|2016#Deaths|dead celebrities}} passing in 2016, (at least three famous musicians/actors so recent that they died after Christmas Eve), as we would be without all of them in 2017.

Cueball claims that they should still have hope for the future, but Megan states that people had claimed that many of the bad things that did happen in 2016, could not happen (for instance Trump and Brexit). And as these things did happen, she foresees even worse events occurring in 2017, that we did not even think would be possible.

However, Randall also offers a glimpse of hope in the last few panels when Cueball observes that, just as all of the bad things in 2016 were unexpected, good things in 2017 that are unexpected could also happen, which should make us less sure what good may come of 2017. As such, he argues that we should hold on to our hope even though things seem difficult right now.

As the conversation unfolds, Megan and Cueball encounter an uprooted tree and cross it like a balance beam. This is a visual metaphor; the dead tree represents the end of the old year, while the crossing represents the transition into the new year. This is similar to the magical toboggan from {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} that serves as a metaphor for their conversations, mentioned in [[529: Sledding Discussion]] and [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]].

In the last panel Cueball mentioned that 2017 will also have a cool {{w|solar eclipse|eclipse}}, going through the central parts of North America. This may also serve as a reminder that the Earth continues to spin on despite all of the human turmoil going on on its surface. This is literally true, as the eclipse Randall is excited about is caused by the orbits of three celestial bodies lining up just right (the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon).

Cueball then also notes that 2017 is a {{w|prime number}} and states that prime-numbered years (prime years) have always been good to him. He thus illustrates the positive attitude that people can choose to take in order to see all that which is good and to spread a little bit more cheerfulness, and Megan is ready to take this positive view, although she may not totally buy in to it. This could also be a pun referencing the saying "being in his prime years".

If Cueball represents Randall (born 1984) he has lived through the following prime years: 1987, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2003 and 2011. If they have all been good years for Cueball it seems unlikely that he represents Randall, since Randall's wife was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011. Of course they were also married that year, but it would not seem likely that he would consider it a good year. First during the just ending year 2016 could she have been declared free of cancer, as it takes a five year follow up after end of treatment before the disease is declared defeated. Of course, we do not know how old Cueball really is, how much thought he/Randall actually put into his seemingly off-the-cuff remark, or whether those years were actually good for Cueball. But Randall does like math and would likely always know when a year is a prime number.

The title text is a reference to {{w|Nate Silver}} who is well-known (in the United States) as an election polling analyst on {{w|FiveThirtyEight}}. His model allowed for a higher chance that Donald Trump would win the presidency compared to other similar models — though the fact that he still favored a Clinton win may be contributing to getting humor from the idea that he may be "wrong" again, and the Moon could possibly vanish in 2017, making the year definitely worse than 2016. (Earth and Moon are so close in the space order of things, that any event affecting Moon orbit seriously will almost certainly end our civilization too.) This is accentuated by the qualifier "almost definitely", which is of humorously low confidence for presenting a fact as certain as the Moon not somehow disappearing within the next year.

In the background of the first few panels of this comic, we see a fallen down tree, but a sapling growing in it's place. This may be a subtle message by Randall that there is still hope, and that things will be alright in the end.

Randall previously mentioned his excitement for the {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|2017 eclipse}} exactly three years earlier in [[1302: Year in Review]], where Megan complains about not having seen an aurora during 2013, and she really hopes they don't cancel the 2017 eclipse. So this comic is the second time Randall has expressed concern that he will miss the eclipse. Closer to the eclipse Randall released two more comics on the subject: [[1868: Eclipse Flights]] and [[1876: Eclipse Searches]].

There have been three previous New Year's comics with only the year used as the title: [[998: 2012]] in 2012, [[1311: 2014]] in 2014 and [[1624: 2016]] in 2016. This is the first odd-numbered years (and thus of course the first prime year) using only the new year as the title.

It is also the first New Year comic (in general) that has such a depressive mood. This thus follows the trend of [[1756:_I'm_With_Her#Sad_comics|several sad comics]] that all seemed related to the election of Donald Trump.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking outdoors]
:Cueball: Can't wait for this stupid year to be over.

:[The two approach a fallen tree]
:Megan: I can. This year made the future scarier. So much of why 2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.

:[Megan has hopped up onto the tree trunk and begins to walk along it]
:Cueball: You gotta have hope, though.
:Megan: You say that, but you also said all this awful stuff couldn't happen, and it did. You're as clueless as the rest of us.

:[Cueball also walks along the tree trunk as Megan stops and turns to look at him]
:Cueball: Well, if we're wrong about which bad things can happen, it's got to make us at least a ''little'' less sure about which good things can't.

:[Closeup of Megan hopping down from the tree]
:Megan: I guess.

:[A distant shot of Megan and Cueball walking along again]
:Cueball: Plus, 2017 has a cool eclipse in it.
:Megan: Ooh, yeah!
:Cueball: And it's prime. Prime years have always been good for me.
:Megan: Sure, I'll take it.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nate Silver]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|2017]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017]]

Talk:1873: Email Reply

2017-08-08T07:18:28Z

162.158.88.206: inline reply

This is me! :) Though I tend to alternate between overly apologetic replies to just deleting anything older than two years. [[User:RoyT|RoyT]] ([[User talk:RoyT|talk]]) 14:47, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Probably doesn't belong in the comic explanation, but this from the "Reply All" podcast needs to be here: https://emaildebtforgiveness.me/[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 15:07, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
:Thanks for that link! And great that I can put off all that stuff almost yet another 9 months! --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.206|162.158.88.206]] 07:18, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Isn't this a reprise of an earlier comic? I know I've seen kxcd cover this topic before....[[Special:Contributions/172.68.150.70|172.68.150.70]] 18:21, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
: - Yes, I see it now, https://www.xkcd.com/1783/ 'Emails' {{unsigned ip|172.68.150.70}}

;Possible joke?
So, I don't know if Randall did this on purpose, or if it was just my computer, but I could not access the comic in the morning. Maybe he did this on purpose, since the comic is about being late to respond to emails?[[User:Dretler|Dretler]] ([[User talk:Dretler|talk]]) 19:04, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
:The comic was released between 14:30 and 14:32 UTC today. Unless you are living in Alaska this shouldn't be ''morning''. Most comics are released at these times; sometimes even later. Only a few comics were available a 00:00 Randall home time (04:00 UTC). --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:29, 7 August 2017 (UTC)
::Actually, I'm in the Eastern time zone, which I think is the same as Randall, and I often go out on Tuesday and Thursday nights, where I check xkcd, and I frequently see Wednesday and Friday night comics as of midnight. (I recently changed Tuesday night to Monday night, so I guess I'll only see comics early on Thursdays now). :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:52, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

;Possible joke?
In form the message bears a resemblance to Eminem's response to Stan in the song "Stan" - it could easily be coincidence, as it's also a fairly standard format for a late response. {{unsigned ip|141.101.107.174}}

;Play on comic id's?
As was mentioned earlier https://www.xkcd.com/1783/ also is about email so is it by design or coincidence that 1783 and 1873 are about emails? [[User:Roo|Roo]] ([[User talk:Roo|talk]])
:I feel no doubt that this is related to 1783. Whether it's on purpose because of the numbers - I can't remember if he's ever referenced the numbers before, except I think 1000 - I find possible, but debatable. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:52, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

;Typical LinkedIn Email:
<pre>
[LinkedIn Logo]

[Name] would like to connect on LinkedIn. How would you like to respond?

[Photo][Name]
[Job Title] at [Company]

Confirm you know [Name]

You received an invitation to connect. LinkedIn will use your email address to make suggestions to our members in features like People You May Know. Unsubscribe
This email was sent to [your email address].
If you need assistance or have questions, please contact LinkedIn Customer Service.

© 2017 LinkedIn Corporation, 1000 West Maude Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94085. LinkedIn and the LinkedIn logo are registered trademarks of LinkedIn.
</pre>
This email is repeated with reminders and is probably sent automatically by scanning email address books or even past emails.

Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.100|172.68.110.100]] 00:17, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

I find this concept is still very "me", though I tend to be not THAT bad with real emails. However, I'm certain I have unread emails going back 8, 9, maybe 10 or more years. :) (though I almost never get real emails anymore, mostly just automated things. Not sure if this is a cause-and-effect vicious circle or that people don't email much anymore). :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:52, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

Talk:1870: Emoji Movie Reviews

2017-08-02T11:08:09Z

162.158.88.206:

There are many ways that a movie can be bad. It could have uninteresting characters, a bad plot, stupid dialogue, poor filming etc. Very likely the Emoji movie suffers from all of these problems. I should add that Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars fame was widely hated by anyone over 8 years old but my 5-year-old loved him. Could the same thing be true for Emojis? [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 18:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
:So, similar to the minions movie series? 20:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.125|141.101.104.125]]
::The minions and the "prequel" (I don't know the english title) are not only watched and enjoyed by children - at least in Germany - but also by young adults. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.5|198.41.242.5]]
:::Es gibt kein Prequel zu den Minions. Die Minions sind das Prequel zu "Ich, einfach unverbesserlich", also "Despicable Me".[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.206|162.158.88.206]] 11:08, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
:::I can see how happy pills would be popular among the Germanic depressives. :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.100|162.158.75.100]] 20:37, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

:::Of the Star Wars prequels, the one which had the most of Jar Jar Binks was the first one, whose English name was Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. And you should note that Rtanenbaum wasn't talking about the whole movie, but specifically the character of Jar Jar Binks (the clutz alien with long floppy ears). Plus, I think most adults (or "anyone over 8 years old") hated him for how he spoke, so other language adaptations might have made him better, LOL! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:03, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
:::: Well, at least not in Germany XD [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 06:24, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, does anyone genuinely believe that the writers would not actually know about the eggplant? Out of dozens, nay hundreds of useless icons, this one would have been unconsciously selected by random chance? {{unsigned ip|162.158.2.160}}
:Cueball even asks, "was that on purpose?". {{unsigned ip|162.158.146.22}}

Possible title text explanation: The idea doesn't survive in the real world because (A) people typically don't express emotion by turning their head upside down, and (B) it's rare that you run into a person who is thinking (a very jaded, cynical view of humanity popular among internet users). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.22|172.68.54.22]] 14:43, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
:I think probably the title text is more trying to emphasize the fact that emoji can be used in ambiguous/nuanced ways, as much or more than other methods of communication. [[User:Berets|Berets]] ([[User talk:Berets|talk]]) 22:33, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Considering the last comic also happens to be about reviews, is it possible Randall made a subtle comment about the Emoji Movie in 1869? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.254.108|172.68.254.108]] 17:43, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

1860: Communicating

2017-07-08T09:11:11Z

162.158.88.206:

{{comic
| number = 1860
| date = July 7, 2017
| title = Communicating
| image = communicating.png
| titletext = You're saying that the responsibility for avoiding miscommunication lies entirely with the listener, not the speaker, which explains why you haven't been able to convince anyone to help you down from that wall.
}}

==Explanation==
''There's glory for you.''

In Lewis Carroll's "{{w|Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There}}", {{w|Alice_(Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland)|Alice}} meets {{w|Humpty Dumpty}} (the egg-shaped character from the children's verse). Humpty Dumpty is a Looking Glass creature, and the Looking Glass creatures all feature some form of inversion. For Humpty Dumpty the inversion is in meanings. He berates Alice for having a name that doesn't mean anything (contrasted with his name which means his shape).

But Humpty declares to Alice "There's glory for you". Alice doesn't understand what Humpty means by "glory". Humpty explains that he can make words mean whatever he chooses to mean. By "glory" he meant "a nice knock-down argument". And he adds: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more nor less." ([https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass,_and_What_Alice_Found_There/Chapter_VI#124])

In the comic Humpty is explaining to "Alice" (portrayed by [[Science Girl]]) that he can choose meanings for his words. "Alice" wonders what meaning should be given to that utterance, and decides it means "Please take all my belongings". Humpty realizes he has been caught in a trap, but now Alice is choosing meanings, and even his protests are taken to mean "take my car too".

While it seems that Alice chooses these specific meanings of words to educate Humpty Dumpty about the mistake in his way of thinking, she could as well inform him about planned theft with random, meaningless words or not at all. After all, she got "permission". Also, even though Humpty Dumpty decides about the meanings of words by himself, he "accidentally" chooses the normal meanings of all of Alice's words, because otherwise he wouldn't be informed about the planned theft and wouldn't be able to react to this with "What!? No!".

Humpty Dumpty is known from the nursery rhyme or riddle:
:''Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
:''Humpy Dumpty had a great fall.
:''All the King's horses and all the King's men,
:''Couldn't put Humpty together again.''

Carroll's Humpty Dumpty is a parody of people who use technical language without defining their terms, and expect others to understand. The title text continues this. By Humpty insisting that he is not responsible for others understanding him he is unable to get help getting down from the wall, which will lead to his inevitable demise. This two-sided nature of communication is also shown in the title text of [[1028: Communication]].

==Transcript==
:[Egg-shaped character Humpty Dumpty, drawn with an angry face, is sitting on a brick wall and facing Alice.]
:Humpty Dumpty: When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean. Neither more nor less.
:Alice: I wonder what all those words you just said meant. Maybe you're telling me I can have all your stuff!
:Humpty Dumpty: What!? No!
:Alice: Your car, too? Gosh, thanks!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Science Girl]]

Talk:1857: Emoji Movie

2017-07-01T07:11:09Z

162.158.88.206:

I think I'd rather watch the Wingding movie. The Emoji movie looks absolutely horrible and already worthy of being on the next season of MST3K. [[User:OldCorps|OldCorps]] ([[User talk:OldCorps|talk]]) 18:17, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

This comic is published one day before unicode (ver 2018) emoji submission deadline. Is it worth being noticed in the explaination? [[User:Gleeee|Gleeee]] ([[User talk:Gleeee|talk]]) 02:48, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm wondering whether there is a newer version, but for Unicode 6.0 a move does exist already: https://vimeo.com/48858289 --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.206|162.158.88.206]] 07:11, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Talk:1179: ISO 8601

2017-01-10T23:05:35Z

162.158.88.206:

Apparently there are some mistakes in the Roman numerals in the comic, the year MMXII is 2012. Also LVII/CCLXV = 57/265, whereas February 27th is the 58th day of the year (which has 365 days). --[[User:Ulm|ulm]] ([[User talk:Ulm|talk]]) 07:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:Just guessing, but could this have something to do with the divergence of various Roman calendars, e.g. Julian vs. Gregorian? [[Special:Contributions/98.122.166.235|98.122.166.235]] 13:55, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:Another error: Obviously 1330300800 is intended to be Unix time, but it corresponds to 2012-02-27 00:00:00 UTC. --[[User:Ulm|ulm]] ([[User talk:Ulm|talk]]) 08:10, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:The day part "57" is not wrong: Since Feb 27 is the 58th day of the year, at the beginning of that day, 57 days have gone by since the year started. (At the end of the day, 58 days have gone by) Since we associate days with their beginning (like we do with e.g. hours and minutes), 57 is the correct number (or else Dec 31 would be 2013+365/365 = 2014, and therefore in the wrong year) -- [[User:Xorg|Xorg]] ([[User talk:Xorg|talk]]) 13:53, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::The day part is ambiguous. It could be as Xorg suggests, the fraction of the year past at the start of the day. On the other hand it could be interpreted as "day 57 or 365," as with pieces in a shipment or page numbers. In the latter case it should be 58/265. But then, that (ambiguity) is the point, isn't it? [[User:Jqavins|Jqavins]] ([[User talk:Jqavins|talk]]) 17:40, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::Meanwhile the comic was replaced, with CCLXV corrected to CCCLXV. --[[User:Ulm|ulm]] ([[User talk:Ulm|talk]]) Prima vigilia, XVI Kal. Mar. MMDCCLXVI
::I was just about to publish my theory of how "2012" in the Roman numerals in just the same vein might be intended to indeed represent the year we denote "2013", but by counting only the finished years. This would also connect with the confusion over {{w|year zero}}, another thing that ISO 8601 tried to straighten out. (They placed it before year 1.) Everything fit so well. Then there was an edit conflict, following Randalls correction to "2013". I guess you can't always be right. –[[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 23:03, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Can anyone explain 01237 (last interpretation before the cat)? Thanks [[Special:Contributions/68.230.38.154|68.230.38.154]] 08:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:The small numbers above and below the larger ones show which digit is used where. For example, the 2nd and 5th digit is a 0, the 3rd digit is a 1 etc. [[Special:Contributions/82.115.151.1|82.115.151.1]] 08:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:01237 are the digits used in the date, and the numbers above and below them reflect the order in which they are written; 0 is the second and fifth digit, 1 is the third digit, 2 is the first, sixth and seventh digit, 3 is the fourth digit, and 7 is the eighth digit: 20130227 [[User:Bdemirci|Bdemirci]] ([[User talk:Bdemirci|talk]]) 08:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Someone can explain me what means: ((3+3)×(111+1)-1)×3/3-1/33? {{unsigned|95.23.147.48}}
:Read the comic explanation. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 10:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Many of these format mirror how the dates are spoken in languages. For example, Americans will say "February 27, 2013" and write "2/27/2013", whereas the French will say "27 février 2013" and write "27-02-2013". As a scientist, I was encouraged to write "27 II 2013" (which is apparently standard in Hungary, according to the explanation above) in my lab notebook to avoid ambiguity. --[[User:Prooffreader|Prooffreader]] ([[User talk:Prooffreader|talk]]) 13:16, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

A strange thing is that he forgot the form mostly used in Europe: 27.01.2013. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 12:44, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:: That form is mostly used in Germany. Belgium and France use 27/01/2013 more, Netherlands use 27-01-2013. No idea what the UK prefers although I could imagine 01.27.2013.[[Special:Contributions/62.159.14.62|62.159.14.62]] 12:58, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::: The UK prefers 27/02/2013 --[[User:H|H]] ([[User talk:H|talk]]) 13:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::: That form (27.02.2013) is also common in all of Scandinavia. --[[User:Buggz|Buggz]] ([[User talk:Buggz|talk]]) 14:15, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::::It's also widely used in Poland, alongside with 27 II 2013, mentioned above, and also in the comic (though we use space as separator in this format, rather than dot) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.206|162.158.88.206]] 23:05, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

The image text has a subtle twist as "12/01/04" offers no contextual clues to it meaning at all, can be read three different ways : "December 1st 2004", "January 12, 2004" or "January 4th, 2012" (as opposed to, for example, "01/15/98" which could only be interrupted as "January 15th, 1998") [[User:JamesCurran|JamesCurran]] ([[User talk:JamesCurran|talk]]) 14:29, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
: Technically speaking, it could also be interpreted as April 1st 2012 or April 12th 2001, though that would be the least likely interpretation. I personally like spelling out 3 letters of the month and using an apostrophe before the year, such as 27 Feb '13. --[[User:Joehammer79|Joehammer79]] ([[User talk:Joehammer79|talk]]) 15:07, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:: And of course December, 4th 2001 Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/178.26.118.249|178.26.118.249]] 19:54, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Is there any way to convert the time-stamp placed on these comments to the YYYY-MM-DD format? --16:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
: If you're logged in, you can set your [[Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-datetime|date and time preferences]]. I doubt it will affect the timestamps on this page, though, since those appear to be saved as plain text. --[[User:Aaron of Mpls|Aaron of Mpls]] ([[User talk:Aaron of Mpls|talk]]) 23:01, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I feel like the cat thing is a reference to something, but I'm not sure what... is it something? A quick google image search pulls up nothing. --[[User:Jeff|Jeff]] ([[User talk:Jeff|talk]]) 17:26, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
: Seems to me that Randall missed an opportunity: Why a cat? Why not a '''bob'''cat? It still could be some other reference that I'm missing too.
:: Black cats are considered unlucky. I don't see any reference beyond that. [[User:Mattflaschen|Mattflaschen]] ([[User talk:Mattflaschen|talk]]) 17:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
::: It's taking the last two digits from 2013 and emphasizing triskaidekaphobia. Doing a web image search on "Cat 13" will pull up similar artwork of hissing black cats combined with the number 13, including both flyers for Friday 13th drink specials at bars, and combat airplane noseart. Apparently combining the unlucky "13" with an unlucky black cat emphasized that they were bad luck for the enemy. [[User:Columbus Admission|Columbus Admission]] ([[User talk:Columbus Admission|talk]]) 19:20, 27 February 2013 (UTC)
:::: "You're a Kitty!" http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=231
::::: The cat's "Hissss" could be a reference to timestamp formats in PHP web programming, where the desired date format is generally followed by "H:i:s", the standard 24-hour time format. That would explain the specifically lowercase "i" in the cat's hiss.[[Special:Contributions/208.87.234.180|208.87.234.180]] 13:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Cool, this is my birthday. [[User:Mattflaschen|Mattflaschen]] ([[User talk:Mattflaschen|talk]]) 17:59, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

"However the list then starts listing formats ranging from uncommon to absurd, such as writing the date partly in Roman numerals [...] " -
My math teacher uses a very similar format (in reverse order, d/m/yy, with m being in Roman numerals, because this is Germany (see above)), so I wouldn't call it absurd. She is the only person I know who uses it though. [[Special:Contributions/87.189.150.212|87.189.150.212]] 19:36, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

The image and explanation needs to be updated for the corrections. I could do the explanation part, but I have no idea how to do the image part. And one without the other would be confusing for the readers, so I'll leave that to wiki-magic. [[Special:Contributions/76.106.251.87|76.106.251.87]] 21:09, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

: I updated the image as well as the explanation (and transcript). There is still the error on the Unix timestamp though (will this comic be fixed a third time?...). - [[User:Cos|Cos]] ([[User talk:Cos|talk]]) 21:57, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Sweden uses the ISO 8601 format. (If only food producers could understand this as well..)
[[Special:Contributions/46.59.16.141|46.59.16.141]] 21:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

- What can we learn from this? - I've learned that no matter the system we use today to communicate with others, it's probably seems silly for someone else. It's great to document what we do and propose it as an option to others, but it will be next to impossible to force them to adopt. When someone will develop a time reference that makes sense to everyone, it will be adopted all over the world without much effort. - e-inspired [[Special:Contributions/24.51.197.187|24.51.197.187]] 19:07, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps the cat (because of the vagueness of the system) was referring to not the 27th of February 2013. but instead referring to the 13th of February in 1327 which would make it Friday the 13th. {{unsigned|66.35.1.98}}

Just so you know, Explainxkcd wiki uses the ISO certified date standard for its "All Comics" page. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 01:57, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally I've always preferred to use Year-Month-Day my personal stuff. I like it because the format is written the way we write any other number: Most significant to left, least significant to right. I didn't know this was a standardized method and I've always wondered why it wasn't used. Nice to know it is![[Special:Contributions/172.191.224.64|172.191.224.64]] 04:09, 28 February 2013 (UTC)ExternalMonologue

Personally, I like yyyy-mm-dd because it sorts correctly. I really hate running into a list of dates sorted by month name, or worse, day of the week. I suspect this was part of why ISO chose this format. I've never been able to remember the american vs european ordering... My only other options is: February 27, 2013. [[User:Divad27182|Divad27182]] ([[User talk:Divad27182|talk]]) 12:11, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

: I'm not sure what standard the Canadian Military officially uses, but as soldiers we were all taught to use a "7 Feb 2013" format when writing dates. Seems the most clear and concise to me. {{unsigned|24.85.225.143}}

:: Most of the dates I've seen used by the Canadian Military have been of that format but have only used 2-digit years - e.g. 27 Feb 13 (they didn't learn from Y2K!) {{unsigned|64.140.113.219}}

- What can we learn from this? - I've learned that keeping our time relative to earth rotation is outdated, we keep having to add seconds here and there just to keep time. And as an engineer don't get me started on complexity of mktime function. I personally think of time as oscillation of a flawed crystal in my circuits that I constantly need to keep accounting for through endless calibrations, and keep wishing that better time references would be cheaper (to me good is never good enough) - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 15:05, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Ha ha E-inspired you should read the "falsehoods programmers believe about times" http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time http://infiniteundo.com/post/25509354022/more-falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time-wisdom [[Special:Contributions/75.103.23.206|75.103.23.206]] 20:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

:Dude, you've just made my DAY! I forgot the last time I've laughed as hard. Why didn't I know about this site before? - [[User:E-inspired|E-inspired]] ([[User talk:E-inspired|talk]]) 20:43, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Why is the date of this comic written as "February 27, 2013" and not "2013-02-27"? [[Special:Contributions/93.73.186.104|93.73.186.104]] 08:46, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

The hover hint says "ISO 8601 was published on 06/05/88 and most recently amended on 12/01/04." which must be a joke - because it is impossible to know whether these days are 6 May 1988 and 12 January 2004 or 5 June 1988 and 1 December 2004. Why make a comic about ISO 8601 then use ambiguous dates in the hint? {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.95}}
:I had always assumed that the title text was poking fun at ISO for not complying with their own standard. Looking at the ISO website today, I'm disappointed to find that this is, in fact, not the case. Perhaps three years ago it was. [[User:Zeusfaber|Zeusfaber]] ([[User talk:Zeusfaber|talk]]) 17:07, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Amateurs, you don't put periods in format with roman month number. So it's 27 II 2012 [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.209|141.101.89.209]] 12:48, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

The chief advantage of the American system is that placing the year last makes it easy to simply drop the year in casual conversation, given how slowly years change. While it might technically follow just as logically to have the day precede the month, in practice the sequence means less for the first two numbers. The 31 days or fewer between month changes are relatively frequent, while the 365.25 days between year changes can easily go "out of sight, out of mind" except when approaching a transition. In either case, placing the nigh-irrelevant year number first in the text string causes the reader to pay attention to that number first, and have to "skip ahead" to discover the month and day, when in truth the day is the most salient datapoint. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.52|173.245.54.52]] 20:58, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
: Hmm... The comic's point is about '''writing''' dates as '''numbers'''... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.215|162.158.180.215]] 09:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
: Don't write "America" when you mean "USA". In most of America (and most of the rest of the world) the traditional order is D/M/Y, which makes it even simpler to drop more significant parts in casual conversation. E.g. "it's the 27th of February 2013" becomes "it's the 27th of February" when the year is known and just "it's the 27th" when also the month is known. In my country we traditionally had D/M/Y but we are approaching ISO inch by inch. Personally I've used ISO and four digit year since around 1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country /David A [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.33|141.101.80.33]] 22:01, 23 September 2016 (UTC)