Talk:395: Morning

I always thought she was seeing airplanes, satellites, planets, or stars. --67.243.62.50 03:01, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

"Seeing dead pixels in the sky" seems like a rehash of an important quote in some work. Any ideas on what that work is? 24.104.10.45 06:16, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

It's like that quote from CJ in the first season of West Wing: We can all be better teachers.

It sounds so deep you think they must have borrowed it from somewhere. But no, it's original. Kudos to Randall. 108.162.219.223 21:37, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

It's reminiscent of the opening sentence of Neuromancer: The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. 173.245.55.174 04:28, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Btw, if anyone is curious, life's resolution is approximately 1.572×10^33 DPI 108.162.212.213 16:29, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

And its framerate is, ignoring relativistic effects, roughly 1.8549×10^43 FPS. 162.158.106.10 17:19, 5 July 2020 (UTC)

I wonder how big the GPU is 172.69.208.136 16:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

The memory would be your real constraint, along with network latency if it's a distributed computing system. (Hey, what if that's the cause of relativistic effects? A node having more data than usual to process, so it slowly lags behind other nodes...) As for the speed of the system, as long as it's turing complete and has sufficient storage for the data, it doesn't matter how fast each frame is processed from the viewpoint of the simulation's Users, the people inside the sim would still experience time as normal. Just ask a Dwarf Fortress player if their dwarves ever perceive the effects of FPS Death. 108.162.246.194 12:28, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Do you think it's a good idea for us all start rolling loads of dice to increase the latency of the simulation? It'd be nice to screw with whatever's running the thing. But would macroscopic "randomness" even affect a system that powerful? It's something to think about. Lyricalcarpenter (talk) 04:15, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

IMO, the unspoken big picture is that during a prairie winter you can get "white out" conditions when an overcast sky matches the color of snow cover. This eliminates all shadows and you can walk face first into a snow drift without seeing it. The whole world looks like dead pixels. 108.162.216.87 (talk) 04:06, 4 November 2014 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"It is likely what she is seeing is a star or other stellar object." I'm not sure this bit fits the context of the image. It is supposed to be dead pixels, and stellar objects don't often pop out of no where (unless an infinite improbability drive is involved). Kirdneh (talk) 21:08, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It may just be me, but I thought the dead pixels she is seeing form the words "And seeing dead pixels in the sky.", making the comic self-referential in a typical xkcd way. Does anyone agree with me? Richmond tudor (talk) 06:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Has nobody else noticed the several square pixels depicted in the sky? Zoom in, Gramps! 199.27.129.11 02:41, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Am I the only one that doesn't actually think the pixels are there just to annoy the reader like it says in the explanation? It seems like they're there because the text says so. 108.162.216.51 17:46, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't notice the red and green dots until this page "explained" it. Until then, I conjectured that the "dead pixels" were snowflakes that had fallen from the sky to the ground. The trees look like evergreens, which made me think of winter. 162.158.63.6 21:24, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Is this a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference? 162.158.146.40 (talk) 16:45, 8 March 2023 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Hardly. The comic itself alludes directly, and unambiguously, to it being a Matrix thing. (I'm as much a duoquadragintiphile as anyone, but it really doesn't always boil down to that.) Now maybe there's a twisted path of inspiration between H2G2 and the world of Neo, but hardly so simple and surely nothing to concern us here. For one thing, when Deep Thought designed the Earth computer, he/it didn't make it a virtual illusion to its inhabitants. 172.71.178.64 17:06, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

This is crazy OnOv -- OniroxOverload (talk) 12:02, 19 August 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

What resolution is life? I've started a new paragraph about the question in the first panel. I'm interpreting the question to mean "In what resolution do we experience life?" and not "What is the resolution of organic chemicals?". 158.173.67.2 19:47, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Pixel Close-Up Could someone include a close-up of the three colored pixels? They may be difficult for some viewers to see in the strip. I definitely need to clean my screen. 158.173.67.2 19:51, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Open image in new tab, and then enlarge it. Once I had done that I discovered where the pixels were, and was then able to see them at standard size. 87.75.44.78 11:03, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Understood. I figured it out. However, I thought newer readers might want a close-up panel, maybe with a box highlighting the pixels. I'll warm up GIMP and see what I can do. ... Five Minutes Later ... Done. However, am I clear to upload a close-up of the comic? I noticed the following pronouncement: "This is my own work [.] I confirm that I am uploading this file following the terms of service and licensing policies on explain xkcd." 158.173.67.235 14:37, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Are you asking if a few pixels are copyrightable?

Yes, you are cleared. If you are unable to upload it, paste a link to an image hosting site here and i'll do it for you. FaviFake (talk) 15:54, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Me again, with a temp account. I can't upload the image because I don't have permission to create a new page. I didn't mean to ask whether pixels were copyrightable, but whether a close-up of an existing strip constitutes "my own work" enough to be compliant with policy. Temp.thisisme (talk) 17:37, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

As long as it's relevant, which a derivative demonstrative version of xkcd will be, there's no problem with explainxkcd taking your copy. And it would also be fair use as far as the usual xkcd license.html stipulations. (The gods know that I've done a fair few acknowledged derivatives myself, some even found their way onto here!)

Because you are a new user/were not even a named user originally, the suggestion already given above probably is your next step. Upload it to some image hosting service of your choice, then give us the URL for that and someone who can upload images will do so for you (attributing the contribution to you accordingly, I expect). 78.151.45.228 18:49, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Ok, so it's been 'sorted' already, but the kind of thing I meant (to avoid fuzzy pixels) is this type of thing. That one's at 4x scaling.

And it probably doesn't help to have a larger image and then downscale it again. But you do what you want to do. 78.151.45.228 21:29, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Nice! I uploaded it, it'll take a bit of time to update. FaviFake (talk) 00:37, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

It's displaying stretched out vertically for me, so that instead of pixels there are streaks in the sky (and a very skinny tree). 82.13.184.33 09:45, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Yup, that's what i meant. Wait a few days and it will fix itself. FaviFake (talk) 21:56, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

> Mention that OLED screens are much more popular nowadays. Do they also suffer from dead pixels?

This seems unnecessary. Could we remove this?

> Could the dead pixels that Megan sees actually be simple stars visible during the day?

Probably not. Stars aren't even green, and the comic makes it very clear that those are dead pixels and that the joke is definitely not about stars. Morpheus (talk) 03:49, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Makes sense, I removed them. keep in mind they're only suggestions, anyone can edit or remove them. FaviFake (talk) 09:07, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Though I agree with the judgement on this, see, for example: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/green-stars-observe-night-sky 78.151.45.228 19:38, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Have we considered that the dead pixels could be floaters in Megan's eyes and this is actually a comic about getting old? 79.116.236.171 08:54, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

Great point, please feel free to add that! You have one day until This Week's Explanation for Improvement changes. FaviFake (talk) 19:04, 19 September 2026 (UTC)