explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2831: xkcd Phone Flip

2025-03-24T09:55:44Z

172.70.160.253: Undo revision 369948 by Bb777 (talk) Not relevent here, described elsewhere.

{{comic
| number = 2831
| date = September 20, 2023
| title = xkcd Phone Flip
| image = xkcd_phone_flip_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x458px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Theranos partnership: Sorry, we know, but we signed the contract back before all the stuff and the lawyers say we can't back out, so just try to keep your finger away from the bottom of the phone.
}}

==Explanation==
This is the 9th in the ongoing [[:Category:xkcd Phones|xkcd Phone]] series in which Randall explains his new joke phone designs with many strange and useless features. It is a reference to the somewhat recent {{w|Galaxy Z}} series, but instead of folding in half, it folds into the more complex and much less usable shape of a typical {{w|paper fortune teller}}. (A traditional paper fortune teller requires a square-shaped piece of material; to make this phone with a ~2:1 ratio rectangular shape into a fortune teller, it would first need to be folded in half lengthwise.)

The product's slogan suggests that this was not an intended feature, which would be incredibly difficult to create accidentally without causing the phone to become nonfunctional. It's therefore possible that this phone was designed by [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|Beret Guy's company]], which has in the past [[1493: Meeting|trademarked seemingly normal phrases]] and [[1293: Job Interview|done impossible things with electronics]].

The name Phone Flip is a play on the term {{w|Flip Phone}}, which has referred to older cellphones with a {{w|Clamshell design|basic hinged construction}}, but {{w|Samsung}}, in particular, has released a line of {{w|smartphones}} under the Galaxy Z range given the name 'Flip' (or 'Fold') which use a flexible display across the hinge, with {{w|Motorola Razr|other manufacturers}} producing similar technology by other names. Randall's version takes this complexity up a notch with a currently impractical varifolded origami design.

===Left column features===

; Exfoliating screen
: A term commonly found on lotions and facial products, "exfoliating" means removing dead skin cells from the surface of the skin, in order to improve its appearance. This could mean that it will exfoliate the user's skin when pressed to it. However, this would probably require a mildly abrasive and/or adhesive screen texture or coating, which are usually not desirable qualities of a touchscreen. A different reading is that the screen itself exfoliates, i.e. slowly disintegrates. Unless the phone is an organism able to regrow exfoliated surfaces, this will eventually lead to the screen's disappearance, not an improvement of its appearance.

; Orthotic shape for arch support
: {{w|Orthotics}} are devices used to reduce stress on the body. "Arch support" is a specific term referring to padded inserts designed to fit to the contour of a person's foot and provide support for the arch of the foot, a raised area between the ball in front and the heel in back. Fitting this space requires either a curved shape or one that's thicker in the center, which would usually make a phone less straightforward ([[No Pun Intended|pun not intended]]) to use. (This assumes, of course, that the foot is shaped like a "normal" human foot.) Additionally, the materials used in a phone are not typically suitable for orthotic usage and doing so could worsen any issues and damage the phone from the stress of the person's weight upon it. However, it's possible that in this context, the phone is ergonomically shaped to fit the way that the typical hand arches around it. In the context of a smartphone, "Arch support" may also mean support for installing {{w|Arch Linux}}.

; Single big pixel
: A joke about how phones advertise how many pixels they have, not how few. Typical phone displays use many small {{w|pixels}}, each with relatively few display states. For instance, each pixel can show a uniform color. It would be difficult to make a useful display with a single pixel of this sort. Some displays use smaller numbers of more complicated picture elements (e.g., each element could show a letter, like a {{w|split-flap display}}, or a {{w|nixie tube}}). To make a useful display with one pixel means that element needs a different display state for every image the phone can show (like a {{w|carousel slide projector}}, {{w|movie projector}}, or {{w|gobo (lighting)|gobo}}). This may also be a joke on "{{w|Megapixel}}".

; Ready to eat
: A typical sales pitch for {{w|convenience foods}} denoting that no time must be spent preparing the product for safe consumption, in contrast to other such meals where ingredients would need to be combined and/or cooked in some fashion. It is unknown how a phone could be produced in such a way as to be edible (perhaps the display could use {{w|sugar glass}}), but in any case, it seems likely that eating it would limit its future usefulness as a phone.{{Citation needed}} An alternative interpretation is that the phone is alive and all ready to begin consuming its prey, whatever that may be.

; Hypoimmunogenic
: Meaning less able to produce an immune response - so perhaps useful in that people do not want their phone to cause an immune response in their body, although cell phones typically cause no immune response. This is probably related to items that are marketed as hypoallergenic, less likely to cause an allergic reaction. It may also be a reference to persistent unsubstantiated claims that radio waves from mobile phones cause cancer and other disorders.

; Up to 50% more
: A play on the words "Up to 50% more <product>". Although considering that there is no mention of what product there could possibly be 50% more of (or 0% extra, as that is ''also'' less than or equal to 50%), this statement is useless. See [[870: Advertising]].

; Full-spectrum backlight optimized for plant growth
: {{w|Full-spectrum light}}s and backlights are typically used to increase {{w|color rendering}} accuracy, especially important in photography, art, and printing. It typically refers to the part of the spectrum people can see. Plants respond to some wavelengths outside our visual spectrum (e.g., UVA), and are less influenced by some portions of the visual spectrum (e.g. green, hence mostly reflecting such light). A backlight optimized for plant growth would not provide a very natural appearance to our eyes and typically appear pink. The screen backlight is unlikely to be used for growing plants. One scenario in which this would be an advantage is at the end of the phone's useful life; instead of being recycled, it could be repurposed as a light in a greenhouse.

; Long-lasting main sequence battery
: Perhaps referring to a "{{w|main sequence}}" star (Dwarf stars, like the {{w|Sun}}, where main energy generation is hydrogen fusion). Such stars spend a long time in this phase of evolution. This might also explain SPF 15 and full-spectrum backlight. Stars do last a long time compared to most cell phone batteries.{{Citation needed}} This feature might be a reference to [[1422: My Phone is Dying]].

; Break glass to access apps
: A play on how emergency paraphernalia such as fire alarms and extinguishers are protected by glass casings in most places. The idea of this is to discourage removal of these items except in an emergency situation. It would not be helpful in the case of smartphone apps, which are frequently used. Presumably you would have to replace the glass each time you use an app, which is likely to prove tedious and expensive. Unusual things behind glass is also mentioned in [[1634: In Case of Emergency]]. Could also refer to the process of Jailbreaking a smartphone, such as an iPhone, to allow the install of 3rd party apps from an alternate app store.

===Right column features===

; Buy one get one
: A play on typical retail sales advertised as "Buy one get one ____", where one buys one item at full price and gets another of that item either for free or at a reduced price. Since no discount has been mentioned, it would imply either (1) that you can get two at full price or perhaps (2) simply that if you buy a phone, you receive the phone; this is expected upon almost all purchases and is {{w|Tautology (logic)|tautological}} in nature.

; Bending phone activates chemical flashlight
: This feature parallels a {{w|glow stick}}, which is also activated by bending the stick; this breaks an inner capsule causing chemicals to mix and produce light. However, doing this with a phone is likely to cause physical or chemical damage and additionally only works once, which is not very useful for a phone flashlight that one typically uses as a tool throughout the phone's lifetime. It might be fun at a rave though.

; SPF 15 coating protects your face from websites
: Sun protection factor (SPF) is a rating used to compare the protection provided by sun screens. Some people find some web sites excessively bright, colorful or garish, making them hard to read, or causing eye strain. This extends that to imply that some sites are so bright that they might cause {{w|sunburn}}. In reality, some sites, browsers, or plugins provide a {{w|night mode}}, for those who have problems with excess brightness. (See also full spectrum, and main sequence battery.)
: Alternatively, SPF in this context might be a novel term for, for example, ''site'' protection factor, or ''socials'' protection factor, and be a method for protecting you from viewing potentially harmful content encountered on the internet.

; Iatrogenic construction
: 'Iatrogenic' means 'physician caused', and usually refers to illnesses which are caused or worsened by medical malpractice. This may imply that the phone was made ''by'' doctors, which may align with the statement given in the title text.

; All-vinyl data storage for maximum fidelity
: This is a reference to the hipster maxim that vinyl records provide high fidelity music. And while {{w|vinyl data}} storage does exist, it's profoundly outdated and was never widely adopted. The relevant formats had several issues, including (relevantly) wear issues that lead to fidelity problems after repeated reads. It is also unlikely that vinyl storage could be engineered to provide sufficient storage density to meet the requirements of a modern smartphone.

; Locks in moisture
: Good for cosmetics perhaps, to combat 'dry skin' (which is really more to do with substances other than water), but generally bad for a cell phone, where ingress (let alone retention) of liquids tends not to help the electronics. Most modern phones cite their ability to lock ''out'' moisture.

; National Weather Service partnership - phone is afraid of thunder
: Probably a reference to the development of various public service systems which generate an alert to phone users to warn of likely dangerous events, such as storms, earthquakes, etc. In this case, though, rather than generate fear in the user, the phone itself becomes afraid. This may be further referencing the fact that, thanks to humanized personal assistant functions, some people have developed pseudo-human relationships with their devices, whereby they attribute emotions and other human characteristics to them. In reality, phones do not have emotions (yet), but even if they did, it's not clear how this would be a useful feature. How this fear manifests is also unexplained. It may turn off, or it may scream like the original xkcd phone did when in free fall. A number of the previous xkcd phones have had unexplained, inexplicable, or incomprehensible partnerships.

; One-click ''ruina montium''
: ''{{w|Ruina montium}}'' ('mountain destroyer') was a now-lost mining technique used by the ancient Romans, thought to involve a form of hydrostatic drilling. It is not clear how this could be applied by a smartphone, let alone as a one-click operation. This may be a reference to the mobile phone industry's reliance on often unsustainable mining practices to supply the precious metals, rare earths, and other minerals required to make their devices work.

; Free refills
: Good for restaurant drinks, not typical for cell phones. Realistic meanings include providing complementary...
# "top ups" of cell phone plan minutes or data
# refueling (e.g., {{w|fuel cell}} power)
# recharging or {{w|battery swapping}}
# replacing the glass each time you use an app.

===Title text===
The title text references the failed company {{w|Theranos}} that notably could not live up to its promise to diagnose many health issues from a single drop of blood, and was charged with fraud for claiming it could do so. Due to legal agreements, and subsequent design choices already built in, the bottom of the phone ''will'' still collect a drop of your blood (unless you're particularly careful).

==Transcript==
:[A rectangular phone with a touch screen. There is a small dark camera section at the top of the screen and a charging/connecting port may be shown on the lower casing edge. Lines on the left side of the phone lead from the general area of the image to feature descriptions down the leftmost edge of the frame.]
:Exfoliating screen
:Orthotic shape for arch support
:Single big pixel
:Ready to eat
:Hypoimmunogenic
:Up to 50% more
:Full-spectrum backlight optimized for plant growth
:Long-lasting main sequence battery
:Break glass to access apps

:[Two phones folded in the shape of a 'paper fortune teller' are depicted on the right, set one above the other with other general feature lines leading off from the nearest folded phone illustration towards further listed items down the right-hand side of the frame.]
:Buy one get one
:Bending phone activates chemical flashlight
:SPF 15 coating protects your face from websites
:Iatrogenic construction
:All-vinyl data storage for maximum fidelity
:Locks in moisture
:National Weather Service partnership: phone is afraid of thunder
:One-click ''ruina montium''
:Free refills

:[Text below the phone:]
:Introducing
:'''The xkcd Phone Flip'''
:''We actually didn't mean for it to do this''™

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:xkcd Phones]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|xkcd Phones]]

Talk:3058: Tall Structures

2025-03-04T12:20:04Z

172.70.160.253:

:''This is not actually possible, since a knit garment is not made from one long thread of yarn, but many interwoven threads.''
This is actually wrong; knitting is a technique for entangling a single yarn with itself in such a way that it forms a fabric. (It's not to be confused with ''weaving'', which does indeed use many, shorter threads.) In practice, a large, complex item like a sweater is made from multiple pieces sewn together, but it would have something like a single digit number of separate yarns.
<br/>Incidentally, a sweater contains on the order of a kilometer of yarn, which is also about the minimum safe distance for skydiving, so this scenario passes the Fermi estimate sniff test. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.100|162.158.159.100]] 00:55, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

:Wouldn't the yarn snap at some point from acceleration due to gravity and the tightness of the weave pattern? [[User:TomtheBuilder|TomtheBuilder]] ([[User talk:TomtheBuilder|talk]]) 01:56, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

:Usually, the plane you are skydiving from won't remain circling above you ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 03:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

This is kinda random, but does this wiki have a page for xkcd.com/no and xkcd.com/yes?? I didn't see any and I think they at least deserve a page {{unsigned ip|172.69.23.94|04:32, 4 March 2025}}
:Huh that's cool, didn't know those pages existed. Do you know anything about why they exist? (also please sign your posts with <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>) [[User:TheTrainsKid|TheTrainsKid]] ([[User talk:TheTrainsKid|talk]]) 05:50, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
::Weird. Here with active links: [https://xkcd.com/yes/ yes] and [https://xkcd.com/no/ no]. Not sure where to put this, maybe under the explanation of xckd or the structure of the page? Hmmm --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Nice to see the UK officially represented, there, but it's not even the {{w|Emley Moor transmitting station|tallest tower in the UK}} (and that's not counting the seven or eight latticework masts that range from merely taller than The Shard to even taller than EMTS). I suspect similar absences feature in the rest of the list, which I note yet features other freestanding towers-but-not-buildings (plus the 'joker' neither-tower-nor-building that is the aerostat). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.142|172.70.163.142]] 07:06, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

Should we delete the mention of a tall structure left out or make a list? Moved it to a trivia section and removed the personal "On the woeful lack of Ostankino TV tower" section heading. But I feel it should be left out and the one making that change should have posted it in this discussion page in stead. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:30, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
:I'm sure there's a definitive list of "tallest artificial structures (not shown in the comic)", which we can decide the full criteria for (a number of additional broadcasting masts, self-supporting alone ''or'' guy-roped, plus maybe various oil-platforms that are sufficiently tall if you measure from the subsurface base). The (now-Triviaed) Ostankino intormation should not really sit there alone, ''without'' various other absences noted (see just above your comment, in this Talk/Discussion section).
:If we were to add other examples, though, we could do without a lot of the extra information, just keep it no more complicated than the table with the comic-depicted structures. (One option is, indeed, to open up the comic's table to off-comic examples, those lines being given a light grey cell background to distinguish any which aren't on the comic, and distinguish masts, towers, buildings, rigs(?) and (the lone example of) tethered aerostat.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.253|172.70.160.253]] 12:20, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

411: Techno

2025-02-13T18:53:19Z

172.70.160.253: remove link to "harddrive" track. the linked track is just called "harddrive". i don't think it actually contains hard drive sounds

{{comic
| number = 411
| date = April 16, 2008
| title = Techno
| image = techno.png
| titletext = I don't know what's worse - that there exists broken-hard-drive-sound techno, or that it's not half bad.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] points out that due to the repetitive nature of {{w|Techno|techno music}}, the iTunes 15 second sample can be used to recreate the entire song. This is for the many repetitions in techno music, usually repeating it 4 (or other powers of two) times.

The title text refers to the clicking and grinding noises of a dying hard drive, a sound similar to some techno songs. The title text suggests that this actually exists.

Techno music is also mentioned in [[586: Mission to Culture]] and [[740: The Tell-Tale Beat]]. Sampling and looping sounds that aren't necessarily musical is mentioned in [[2427: Perseverance Microphones]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball looking over Megan's shoulder while she is clicking her mouse with her other hand on her chin.]
:Cueball: Wait, you're buying techno on iTunes?
:Megan: Yeah. So?
:Cueball: Couldn't you just loop the 15-second free sample 20 times and get basically the same thing?

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

3040: Chemical Formulas

2025-01-21T05:56:18Z

172.70.160.253: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 3040
| date = January 20, 2025
| title = Chemical Formulas
| image = chemical_formulas_2x.png
| imagesize = 275x335px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Can you pass the nackle?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BORON-OXYGEN-TANTALUM-URANIUM-TITANIUM-MOLYBDENUM-TITANIUM-CARBON-ALUMINUM-LITHIUM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is another comic on [[:Category:How to annoy|How to annoy]] people, in this case chemists.

In this comic, Cueball humorously mispronounces the chemical names of {{w|carboxylic acid}}s. Instead of pronouncing "HCOOH" (for what is technically methanoic acid, or named {{w|formic acid}} from its association with {{w|Formicinae#Identification|ants}}) and "CH3COOH" (ethanoic acid, also known as {{w|acetic acid}}, most often encountered in vinegar) according to their standard chemical names, he says them phonetically as "hakoo" and "chuckoo," which Randall describes in the caption as "How to annoy chemists".

The title text continues this trend to the humor by referencing the phrase "Can you pass the salt?" but, instead of referring to the commonly understood "salt", Cueball uses "nackle". This is an apparent attempt to pronounce "NaCl", the chemical formula for {{w|sodium chloride}} (the primary constituent of ordinary {{w|table salt}}, as well as {{w|rock salt}}). As well as being an actual request for the {{w|condiment}}, which is not entirely in context with the comic (though may be linked to the prior interest with vinegar) the request may also be used to rhetorically reinforce a previous statement (having metalhorically 'put it on a plate', one is now fully prepared to 'dine' on it). Alternatively, it could be an expression of ''someone else's'' incredulity, as a variation upon "taking <some dubious detail> with {{w|a grain of salt}}".

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

[Cueball is gesturing towards a whiteboard that show the chemical formulas: HCOOH, CH₃COOH]

Cueball: The two simplest carboxylic acids are hakoo and chuckoo.

Off-Panel Voice: No!!

Caption: How to annoy chemists

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:How to annoy]]