explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3036: Chess Zoo

2025-01-11T03:46:24Z

Doctormo: Add reference to chester zoo

For the transcript, I’m thinking of saying that “there are alternating white and grey squares, with smaller black squares imposed on them. The pattern of squares goes ''[something like GWBWGWBWGBW]''“. Would that work? Or is it too confusing? '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 19:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:Re: "GWBWGWBWGBW", knowing who we are here, I presume people might want to distinguish black-on-white from black-on-gray. We'd probably have to have a full markup system for background (gray/white) and foreground (empty, human, barrier, white pawn, gray pawn...). Maybe something like {[gE][wE][gB][wQg]}... Hrm... Because, of course, it has to be as complicated and precise as possible. :) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.135|172.70.46.135]] 19:15, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
::I don’t really like the current transcript because I believe that it’s more confusing to read than my version. Anyone have thoughts? '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 23:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:::Although I do have a suggestion for the transcript: instead of having “H” as a representation of a human, we can have C for [[Cueball]], H for [[Hairy]], P for [[Ponytail]], W for [[White Hat]], D for [[Danish]], M for [[Megan]], and K for [[Knit Cap]]. We could also have Unicode black squares instead of the “#” and color the pieces with span. Thoughts? '''[[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]][[User talk:42.book.addict|Talk to me!]]''' 00:14, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't think it's safe to allow people to go into the bishop enclosure, especially with high aggression in that area since both colors are able to look at each other there but not capture. One of those bishops is eventually going to take it out on someone. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.210|162.158.90.210]] 19:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:I don't know how dangerous they are to visitors in general, but I wouldn't leave children with them unattended. Maybe the enclosures with the knights would be good petting zoos. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:49, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:Thank you for reporting the bishop feeding gate being open, as this was the fifteenth time the one responsible failed to close it after feeding, he has been summarily fired.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.47.106|172.70.47.106]] 20:02, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
The zoo seems to be missing an area for knights and bishops to interact. (It has a knight/queen area, a knight/rook area, and a rook/bishop area. It can't have queen/rook or queen/bishop areas if it wants to have areas for rooks or bishops that exclude queens, because nothing blocks queens without blocking rooks and bishops. But it could have a knight/bishop mingling area, accessible to knights via wall-jump and to bishops via a diagonal corridor, and it doesn't.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.187.84|162.158.187.84]] 20:07, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:Similarly, couldn't the pawn promoting zones be more centrally located each side, and have passages respectively for queens/rooks and for knights? Of course then those could enter and interact with promoting pawns, but why would that be deemed a problem? --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.222.164|172.69.222.164]] 20:41, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:I believe a knight-knight interaction zone of opposing colors is also possible if correctly designed (such as a 2xn corridor with a particular entrance [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.52|162.158.154.52]] 03:11, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't have permissions to upload an image to this wiki, but if anyone who does would like to copy it over, I illustrated each piece's range of movement here[https://pasteboard.co/64VsBMA5af8l.png]. [[User:D5xtgr|D5xtgr]] ([[User talk:D5xtgr|talk]]) 20:09, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
:You can't have same-coloured knights also enter into an opposites-of-bishop shared space, because for all the wish to have shared (overlapping but not congruent) spaces for pieces of the same colour but different limitations, the presence of the anti-bishops would mean contention with the pro-knights.
:The fact tht the pawn-enclosures are totally without any same-set pieces (well, apart from the knight, but that was from a promotion) ''does'' seem to suggest there's a lack of possible mixing going on, I know. But, the way I read it, if heterochromic pieces can be 'mixed', then they can (which effectively is just the two different ecclesiastical compliments), with homochomic ones then also being allowed to mix if they can do so in a way such that they have ''all'' of an "A and B" area, an "A-only" area and a "B-only" area (it's a bit more complicated than that with the kings and queens, as they can traverse all of the same areas as each other, plus the lobe of knight-area which overlaps, but you have "knight+royal", "royal-only" and "knight-only").
:Though I ''can'' think of one such sharing-situation I would mark down as missed: i.e. a pawn sharing a space with bishops and/or knights with a bishop-/knight-proof corridor 'directly forward' (and, of course, no sideways movement allowed by the pawn), giving the pawn both its unique space and shared space and only-the-other-piece spaces off to the sides. Though, the whole promotion prospects means that just about anything could 'suddenly' be in the pawn-only space, thus sending potential knights/bishops into that 'by proxy'.
:...or maybe I've not extrapolated Randall's precise methodology here, but I believe I've accounted the general limitations he seems to have worked to. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.215|162.158.33.215]] 00:57, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

The plan of the zoo looks like opposing Lewis Chess Men! [[User:Nicholasbailey87|Nicholasbailey87]] ([[User talk:Nicholasbailey87|talk]]) 23:28, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

the transcript needs to be descriptive rather than a text-based diagram so it's screenreader accessible. if someone thinks it's necessary they can move the ascii art to the description. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.71.101|172.68.71.101]] 23:40, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
A knight recently escaped. When asked for comment, the director of the zoo said "!?" [[Special:Contributions/172.68.70.134|172.68.70.134]] 01:07, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

This is actually a sokoban chess puzzle, where the pieces can push the blocks. White to move and mate in 47.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.205|172.70.214.205]] 02:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)NickM

In the UK there is a famous zoo called "Chester Zoo", comic readers from the UK will think there is a pun.--[[User:Doctormo|Doctormo]] ([[User talk:Doctormo|talk]]) 03:46, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

2732: Bursa of Fabricius

2023-02-02T23:01:30Z

Doctormo: Small trivia addition

{{comic
| number = 2732
| date = February 1, 2023
| title = Bursa of Fabricius
| image = bursa_of_fabricius_2x.png
| imagesize = 298x399px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If an anatomical structure is named for a person, it means they were the only person to have it. Pierre Paul Broca had a special area of his brain that created powerful magnetic fields, enabling him to do 19th century fMRI research.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by FLYING BIRD SCIENTISTS WITH TRANSPLANTED AVIAN LYMPHATIC ORGANS - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The {{w|Bursa of Fabricius}} is an organ found in birds that is necessary for the development of their immune systems.

This comic claims that the 16th century anatomist {{w|Hieronymus Fabricius}} (for whom the organ was named) was able to fly because he also had that organ. However, this organ does not in fact contribute directly to flight (despite being of avian orgin). Also given that it only exist in birds, then it is doubtful that Fabricius also independently had this same anatomical feature.

Many scientific and mathematical discoveries, including anatomical structures, are named after the people who discovered or described them. Rare diseases are often named for the first or most famous (possibly even the only) person known to have had the disease. For instance {{w|ALS}} is commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease in the US because of baseball player {{w|Lou Gehrig}} having notably developed the condition. Outside of the US, it may be more known just as "amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" (alternatively "motor neurone disease") or, for simplicity, the initials ALS (or MND). In other cases, a person who identifies the specifics involved either attempts to set their own name to it, for posterity, or is later honoured in this manner by those who recognise their vital contribution to the field, such as with {{w|Parkinson's disease#History|Parkinson's disease}}.

The title text continues with the idea from the comic claiming that anatomical structures solely possessed by the human for which they are named, in another similar example. {{w|Pierre Paul Broca}}, a French physician, anatomist and anthropologist, was known for his research on what is now known as {{w|Broca's area}}, a region of the brain used for speech and language processing. The premise being that, having this feature, he was uniquely gifted with the special ability to created powerful magnetic fields, enabling him to do {{w|fMRI}} research in the 19th century.

Broca did not do fMRI research, a powerful method of non-intrusively imaging and analysing the internal structures of the living human body (amongst other things), as it was not invented in his lifetime. Nor is it likely that this ability could be 'naturally' possessed by any individual, such as he. He did, however, physically study brains of known speech-impaired patients who had then subsequently died, determining what damage (in the area of the brain which was then to be named for him) was directly related to their specific group of ailments. Today, we can safely view this area in living people, using fMRI, and directly connect what we see with the current condition of patients. This increases our knowledge of the brain, as with the mythical abilities Randall gave Broca, but also possibly even allows us to help those currently under the effects of any observed damage (not necessarily possible by any 19th century physician, even with this superpowered form of vision to assist them).

In reality, if Broca was the only person to have ever possessed Broca's area then this might have meant that only he had ever had the power of speech (as we understand it), which would indeed give him a very special ability; but one begging a number of other vital questions, if only anybody else could have asked them...

This may also be a nod to the Discworld character "Bursar"[https://wiki.lspace.org/Bursar], a wizard at Unseen University who can fly because he once hallucinated that he could, and so now he can.

==Transcript==
:[An almost bald man with hair around the neck and a full beard, is shown flying in the top right part of the image, swooping down from the sky with arms outstretched in front of him while yelling. Three dotted lines behind him indicate his path. Two people look up at him from the bottom left corner, a man with a wide-brimmed hat and a black haired woman with a scarf over her hair, which is hanging down behind her. She is holding both her hands up to her mouth. At the top of the panel there is text:]
:The '''''bursa of Fabricius''''' is a lymphoid organ found only in birds and in 16th century anatomist Hieronymus Fabricius, to whom it conferred the power of flight.
:Hieronymus Fabricius: ''Wheee''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Characters with hats]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1889: xkcd Phone 6

2017-09-14T03:35:54Z

Doctormo: Add Pareidolia

{{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==
{{incomplete|All features need an explanation, the version number war and title text as well. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

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}} 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 generally would not accomplish anything worthwhile, unless it allowed you to take one-shot panorama photos.

; 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}}. This features implies that the phone would automatically perform such an injection once a year, by shooting a needle out of 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. However, this may refer to the 12 basic functions of calculus (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).

; 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 of GPS satellites. However, a device with a "GPS transmitter" would broadcast signals that would interfere with the GPS receivers of all devices nearby.

; 3-G acceleration
: Usually, a phone is 3g compatible if it uses a certain standard ("third generation") for data transmission. However, 3-G acceleration implies the phone can accelerate at a rate or 3 times the acceleration of gravity, or approximately 30 m/s².

; 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 on Earth, the phone is in fact solar heated.

;Pore-cleaning strip
: Something sticky on that location would be very annoying for people trying to use their beards to make a call. See also [[777: Pore Strips]]

; Maximum strength
:Medicines are often sold a "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 and 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).

; 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.

; 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 at the current state of 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
:Because of the center camera, an additional section of screen was added. This is similar to the new iPhone, which also has a few extra pixels up there.

; Wireless charging port
:An oxymoron; because wireless charging has no wires, it needs no port.

; 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

; High thread count CPU
:A CPU thread is a task the CPU performs. Several threads may share memory making them a process. A operating system distributes the CPU's time over all active threads. CPU's don't generally have a limit on the number of threads (some operating systems do), however with a certain number the amount of cycles per thread becomes too low to be of much practical use. This seems to be a joke about bedding, where high thread count is actually a reasonably advertizable statistic.

; Shroud of Turin-style facial transfer unlock
:The {{w|Shroud of Turin}} is a {{w|Pareidolia}} facial image of the face of {{w|Jesus Christ}}. Presumably, to unlock this phone, anything that looks even slightly like a face can be used. This is likely a reference to the iPhone X's FaceID unlock, which uses a ''photograph'' of your face 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 it's 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.

; Burns clean coal
: There is a push for clean energy production as a result of increased awareness of global warming. While it may be useful for a phone to be able to produce its own energy, coal is by definition not a clean energy source because it produces carbon dioxide. The phone is not stated to have a vent for the CO2 to escape, which would technically make the coal "clean" as it is not entering the atmosphere. However, the gas is instead trapped inside the phone, which will quickly ruin it through a combination of heat and pressure.

; 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.

; Broad-spectrum SPF 30
:The xkcd phone somehow gives an SPF 30 level of skin protection from the sun.

; College-ruled
:College-ruled is a style of notebook paper having narrower lines in order to fit more text per page.

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

; Radium backlight
:The discovery of the phosphorescent element radium sparked a brief fad in which some watch makers painted watch faces or hands with the substance so the time could be read at night. 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 phosphorescence of radium 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
*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 of this 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. And by counting parallel version numbers xkcd defeated Apple 6:2. 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.

In the title text Randall attributes privacy concerns about the facial recognition feature. A picture of a face will only be used for this new feature 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.

==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]]