https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=MvGexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2026-05-20T09:14:39ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1683:_Digital_Data&diff=1205101683: Digital Data2016-05-20T08:57:58Z<p>MvG: /* Explanation */ More details on the re-encoding artifacts, and different interpretation</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1683<br />
| date = May 20, 2016<br />
| title = Digital Data<br />
| image = digital_data.png<br />
| titletext = &acirc;&euro;&oelig;If you can read this, congratulations&acirc;&euro;&rdquo;the archive you&acirc;&euro;&trade;re you're using still knows about the mouseover text&acirc;&euro;!<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Initial draft.}}<br />
Digital information, strictly speaking, does not degrade. While physical media themselves (such as books, or hard drives) may degrade as the universe continues, information, by itself, does not decay over time, and can be copied indefinitely with no changes. [This could be phrased much better.]<br />
<br />
However, in this comic, Randall points out that while information itself doesn't degrade, things that are on the internet are often degraded through copying, because the copy is not 1:1. In addition, as technology advances the method to save or call the information changes and the medium to view it changes, occasionally causing misinterpreted information. (This is also demonstrated with the title text.) As the frames continue, they gain the appearance of images which have been screenshotted repeatedly, with a resulting loss of quality due to compression of the original resolution and jpeg artifacting. In the last frame, this is taken to an extreme, as the frame appears to have been very sloppily screenshotted off of a smartphone or two, and covered in watermarks from various websites and programs. <br />
<br />
"9gag" is a humor website often accused of rehosting other sites' funny content without attribution and adding their own watermark to the image or video.<br />
<br />
<!--[9Gag is well known, maybe also provide the example of iFunny. Talk about things like "unregistered HyperCam" and the phenomenon in more detail.]<br />
[You can also see the word tumblr in the last panel. Additionally, the phone frame on the top of panel 4 would not have come from the same device as the bottom of panel 3.]<br />
--><br />
The title text contains seemingly garbage characters, which typically result from data being interpreted according to a character encoding different from the one used to encode it. In this case, the characters are the result of encoding the string <tt>“If you can read this, congratulations—the archive you’re you're using still knows about the mouseover text”!</tt> using UTF-8, then interpreting the resulting bytes as Windows-1252, both of which are quite commonly used. This shows that degradation of digital data through conversions isn't restricted to images.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
<br />
[Cueball and a White Hat are walking.]<br />
<br />
Cueball: The great thing about digital data is that it never degrades.<br />
<br />
[The next panel is slightly pixelated]<br />
<br />
Cueball: Hard drives fail, of course, but their bits can be copied forever without loss.<br />
<br />
[The third panel is more pixelated, the white is slightly discolored, and it contains part of the interface of some program]<br />
<br />
Cueball: Film degrades, paint cracks, but a copy of a century-old data file is identical to the original.<br />
<br />
[The fourth panel is even more pixelated and discolored, and contains watermarks and more 'frame' elements]<br />
<br />
Cueball: If humanity has a permanent record, we are the first generation in it.<br />
<br />
White Hat: Amazing.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Computers]]<br />
[[Category:Self-reference]]</div>MvG