...and change the Web pages as you view them. Some make pages easier to read, some remove ads (the third extension is [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta
...And Chair" or {{w|PEBKAC}}, which means that the problem is caused by the user, not by any failure of the computer. However, due to the substitution, it i
6 KB (923 words) - 20:26, 19 May 2023
...ce. This is another reference to the Schrödinger's cat concept, where the user can't determine if the title text exists until they hover the mouse over it
...owing two distinct states (decayed, undecayed) that change over time until some "observation" forced the wave-function into one state or another (called "c
5 KB (920 words) - 12:58, 31 August 2023
...er, this would also prove the false nature of these advertisements, as the user is unlikely to have not noticed any hot young singles currently sharing his
4 KB (649 words) - 01:54, 19 March 2024
| titletext = The typical internet user (who wants to share) has an IQ of 147 and a 9-inch penis. Better than the r
...row contains four graphs. The far left is the breast size of the Internet user. (This presumably refers to female users, since male breasts are not typica
10 KB (1,736 words) - 22:46, 7 July 2023
...ja this roleplay chat transcript] (NSFW), which became an Internet meme. A user named bloodninja would roleplay as a wizard during {{w|cybersex}} (saying "
13 KB (1,972 words) - 07:21, 12 April 2024
| 5 Stars || [Has Only One Review] || No product is so perfect that every user will give it five stars - as soon as one person gives it less than five, th
...ers it's impossible to please all of them (or they did please them all and some are posting bad reviews as a cruel prank). However, 4.5 stars means almost
3 KB (550 words) - 23:26, 4 April 2024
...hers, and sadly for that user, the TornadoGuard app failed in alerting the user to an upcoming tornado. Tornadoes are a [[:Category:Tornadoes|recurring sub
:User Reviews:
4 KB (553 words) - 20:36, 21 December 2023
...e hosting server will typically generate a "404 Not Found" web page when a user attempts to follow a broken or dead link; hence the 404 error is one of the
3 KB (532 words) - 04:57, 14 March 2024
...er degree of consistency in making the right decision, and reduced risk of user error make the computer objectively better than the human opponent in nearl
...eby the winner is determined by the ranks and combinations of their cards, some of which remain hidden until the end of the game. It is also, however, a ga
16 KB (2,680 words) - 12:39, 14 March 2024
...olutionize" not only a particular product or service, but every facet of a user's life. One of the cliché phrases used in presentations is "Welcome to the
7 KB (1,112 words) - 06:20, 2 June 2022
...er-friendly as possible. [[Randall]] mentions that he has heard that this "user-friendly" ''Zealous Autoconfig'' option has already been installed in the l
4 KB (677 words) - 17:45, 8 July 2022
...rue, but plausible-sounding claim to an article in Wikipedia. A writer for some publication sees the information on Wikipedia and adds it to an article, wi
...hilipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. An anonymous user added one more ("Wilhelm") to the German Wikipedia, just the evening before
8 KB (1,184 words) - 16:11, 7 February 2024
...ite, but then serve the front page of the mobile site and not the page the user had requested. In quite a few sites, there would be no 1-to-1 correspondenc
...rs send out ARP packets to see what other machines are on the network, but some machines send them out every 5 minutes, which can be extremely annoying for
4 KB (739 words) - 12:12, 29 March 2024
| title = Linux User at Best Buy
...ac|Macs}} or {{w|Personal computer|other PCs}}, usually pre-installed with some variant of the {{w|Mac OS X}} or {{w|Windows NT}} operating system families
6 KB (898 words) - 14:17, 14 June 2023
#REDIRECT [[272: Linux User at Best Buy]]
42 bytes (6 words) - 10:17, 9 September 2012
#REDIRECT [[272: Linux User at Best Buy]]
41 bytes (6 words) - 10:18, 9 September 2012
...|Linux}}-ism. In GNU/Linux (and all Unix derivatives), ~ is a symbol for a user's home directory (usually <code>/home/<username></code>). Presumably, "noma
10 KB (1,639 words) - 10:35, 13 May 2024
...yesterday. It seems that he is still a kid, even though it must have been some years since the young Elaine left and grew up. However, she may still be a
...le of free software; an operating system with no restriction, allowing the user to modify and customize anything they want about the computer. Stallman lik
16 KB (2,729 words) - 21:42, 29 August 2023
...t hardware). Even if a man page existed, it is unreasonable to require the user of a toaster to read the manual simply to avoid being stabbed in the face.{
...on unless you actually experience a problem. The second part suggests that some people actually die because they didn't RTFM!
2 KB (345 words) - 02:01, 27 February 2024
...r accounts for all referenced handles (that may not have already existed). Some of the handles continue their interactions with each other in later tweets.
...to become a [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything meme]. The user's Twitter handle is a reference to {{w|Pauly Shore}}, a comedian who was br
10 KB (1,855 words) - 21:31, 21 April 2024
...al-language editors of source code. The issue is that, while Emacs is more user-friendly and customizable, vim is more lightweight while needing few keystr
5 KB (841 words) - 03:07, 11 May 2023
| titletext = I hear in some places, you need to fill one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it
...hasn't made an error. Some forms even go the extra step of preventing the user from copy-pasting into the second field, which would render it useless as a
3 KB (555 words) - 16:02, 11 January 2024
...twork)| Diaspora*}}, an open-source alternative to Facebook which puts the user in control of how their information is used. Of course, this sort of use of
6 KB (905 words) - 16:42, 28 August 2023
...used in {{w|Unix}} systems to perform an action as an administrator/super user. This forces Randall to agree. This is a reference to the very popular comi
* Henry Reich is the creator of the web video series [http://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics MinutePhysics], and studied physics and mathematics at Grinne
7 KB (1,087 words) - 21:17, 4 May 2022
...c of 2018, the title is similar to this one, in that it gives away how the user should begin to interact with the comic. It is though nothing like this com
...there is a tall tree with no leaves on it and a broken limb. Below him are some rocks and grass. This is the initial view of the world, that can be clicked
59 KB (9,706 words) - 11:22, 26 December 2023
..., a character who has had a romantic relationship end will be shown taking some act to remove a sign of their partner's presence in their life, e.g. removi
.... The final panel shows him using the Unix command 'userdel' to delete her user account from his computer. The joke here is that he considers this to be a
2 KB (411 words) - 20:02, 26 May 2022
xkcd's password generation scheme requires the user to have a list of 2048 common words (log<sub>2</sub>(2048) = 11). For any a
...method "obsolete", despite the comic ''assuming'' perfect knowledge of the user's dictionary from the get-go. He advocates his own low-entropy "first lett
14 KB (2,046 words) - 00:12, 29 January 2024
...r software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and rich input device capability for networked computers.
...(especially manually) is much less necessary than it used to be. In fact, some distributions do not even come with an xorg.conf file, because everything n
6 KB (1,052 words) - 15:02, 7 December 2023
...can look at practically any part of anything manmade around you and think "some engineer was frustrated while designing this." It's a little human connecti
...at appears to be badly made or have no purpose other than to frustrate the user (in this case, a traffic light that seems unreasonably, inexplicably long).
3 KB (537 words) - 18:02, 2 June 2022
The third entry is a reference to networking. UDP stands for {{w|User Datagram Protocol}}. UDP packets don't use handshaking to verify they have
8 KB (1,331 words) - 23:14, 4 May 2024
...the weakest part of computer security is usually not the computer, but the user.
...cannot prove that encrypted information exists at all, or that allows the user to provide a password that reveals one (innocuous, or embarrassing but not
3 KB (499 words) - 06:18, 14 April 2023
...top screen either from the weight of its lower body or the pressure of the user's fingers on the LCD screen is enough to make him squirm in discomfort. The
3 KB (570 words) - 16:57, 26 February 2023
...by comic [[149: Sandwich]]. Before allowing administrator access (as root user), it asks for a password. The field is blank because, in most UNIX systems,
3 KB (510 words) - 18:18, 29 April 2023
[[Cueball]] is buying some new speakers for his television, and asks [[Megan]] if they have the right
...] (post #28, "We gathered up a 5 [sic] of our audio buddies...."), where a user did a blind audio test using Monster cable and coat hangers with soldered o
4 KB (579 words) - 19:59, 4 March 2024
...grow tired of Facebook, its arcane policies, its cavalier attitude toward user privacy and/or its general disdain for end users, and people want to leave
2 KB (358 words) - 22:08, 20 October 2023
...is prompts the onlookers to assume either that the buried person died from some bizarre font-related accident, or, even more worryingly, that Cueball got s
3 KB (518 words) - 09:09, 28 August 2023
...nces, producing playlists that the user should find enjoyable based on the user's taste in music. In other words, Pandora plays music you will probably lik
...it's playing the Enchanted soundtrack, after a short period of silence the user quietly begins singing along to the song "{{w|That's How You Know (Disney s
3 KB (389 words) - 18:44, 23 May 2022
...or)|Vim}} are both text editors still in relatively wide use, with complex user interfaces and a range of features. While useful, neither is particularly e
...ter}}, not a computer screen at all. It does not even display the file the user is editing!
9 KB (1,440 words) - 21:16, 12 May 2023
...ajority of users would partake. The song would interrupt whatever else the user was doing, such as listening to music, watching a video, or simply browsing
...rofiles. Thus, the auto-playing music became a compounding problem, as the user could experience it several times per browsing session.
3 KB (499 words) - 04:30, 7 February 2024
...tirely too brief, mainly telling what the program does, then directing the user to invoke a GNU-specific information system ({{w|Info (Unix)|GNU Info}}). G
...comic's title, suggesting that rather than typing "man(ual) override", the user/pilot should type "info override" to search GNU Info instead.
3 KB (457 words) - 10:46, 20 November 2022
...me across, resulting in crop devastation (some consider this a plague). In some parts of the world they are also considered a delicacy. [[Cueball]] probabl
...tall/remove APT packages. Every package contains several scripts (although some of them may be empty) that are run on various events related to that packag
5 KB (814 words) - 18:57, 29 September 2023
...ces and overcrowding, and propose various solutions, most of which involve some form of eugenics. 7 billion is a landmark number because it is a multiple o
...the end of the world. Amongst other things, this included the film '2012'. Some people took this rather more seriously, and actually believed that the worl
51 KB (7,042 words) - 20:12, 1 February 2024
...was to receive "handy" stimulation (or possibly that the [[Black Hat|last user of the lamp]] wished for that to happen to the next owner).
2 KB (340 words) - 18:34, 24 February 2024
In some companies, programmers can find themselves under-employed. This may be beca
...1: Well]]), QWERTY was and is the standard. This means that every keyboard user has to learn QWERTY anyway, and there is insufficient benefit in spending t
6 KB (1,036 words) - 19:36, 24 March 2024
...rchitecture (one for which no other tools yet exist), and is still used in some other situations (as it allows the code to be optimized more closely for th
...hat has to run the script and perhaps some additional knowledge by the end-user.
5 KB (881 words) - 13:28, 4 May 2024
...(likely an inability to start a graphical environment, something a novice user would depend on).
..., so that it would not be considered much of a leap for a competent Ubuntu user to switch. {{w|Gentoo Linux|Gentoo}}, on the other hand, is a very advance
9 KB (1,514 words) - 09:10, 27 January 2023
...e?" or "What's your secondary school?" and are intended to be easy for the user to answer but hard for anyone else to answer.
2 KB (387 words) - 13:34, 19 February 2024
...stagram.com/about/legal/terms/ terms of use], allowing the network to sell user-uploaded images, without profit to the content generators. This infuriated
...ption, so it can come as a shock when Instagram uses the data in a way the user hadn't anticipated.
4 KB (754 words) - 16:48, 28 March 2024
...our immortal soul to a company]. In the context of this panel, perhaps the user agreed to be executed at random.
...used in text to denote an action), presumably setting off an explosive of some kind.
6 KB (980 words) - 03:12, 15 October 2023
..., when first the iPhone and then Google's Android platform had popularized user-installable third-party apps for smartphones. Previously third-party smartp
3 KB (495 words) - 20:25, 16 September 2023
...but people do not usually read. Agreement to an E.U.L.A. is assumed when a user uses the software or service that the E.U.L.A. is attached to, which has le
4 KB (611 words) - 20:01, 26 May 2022
...ulnerabilities, and when the library is updated on live installations, the user also takes on the risk that the library might become unavailable or otherwi
*On the day this comic came out a Google search on Wheel would in some cases have a bicycle wheel at the top:
8 KB (1,247 words) - 22:21, 20 October 2023
...e delivered to the 100,000,000th visitor to his company's website. But the user did not react to the notice on the page about the prize, '''even though it
3 KB (447 words) - 17:42, 26 May 2022
...ptical disc drive}} of a desktop computer. When the tray is opened and the user is reaching for the disc, a process or task on the computer can, at that ex
This results in a sort of "tug of war" between the user who is trying to remove the disc and the CD drive trying to retract, and it
2 KB (368 words) - 19:52, 26 May 2022
...ate software, {{w|Adobe Flash Player}}, to render a video requested by the user.
...r wanted to watch a funny cat Flash video on the Internet; which makes the user feel like he is a god.
3 KB (450 words) - 01:06, 1 March 2024
| titletext = And every day it gets harder to fight the urge to su to the user and freak people out.
...lling to reboot a machine that has still running processes from a deceased user named "sam".
2 KB (405 words) - 03:51, 29 December 2023
...of asking a person to prove that they are human before registering them as user and allowing them to post on sites or forum topics. That is done by using p
4 KB (613 words) - 19:19, 23 December 2022
...omputer. Facebook sidebar messages appear on the top of each panel, with a user photo of Susie (looking like Megan leaning forward so her hair hangs down t
2 KB (384 words) - 17:52, 9 November 2023
...5542349 like this] (rounded off in a friendly way, with the posting of {{w|User:Frungi/Star Trek Into Darkness capitalization|a summary of the arguments}},
...g/wiki/~*~_StAr_TrEk_InTo_DaRkNeSs_~*~ was a valid redirect link for quite some time, having not been deleted when {{w|Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/L
6 KB (886 words) - 18:35, 26 March 2024
...tive effect with the blowing only giving comfort/satisfaction value to the user if not introducing potentially harmful moisture as well.
3 KB (526 words) - 15:19, 20 November 2023
...when extracted, dumps a load of files into the current directory that the user has to clean up. And although the bomb looks more like {{w|Fat Man}}, the t
4 KB (661 words) - 22:22, 20 October 2023
...ld neither run Vista fully nor smoothly. On top of that, the typical Linux user would not be very enthusiastic about Windows at all; someone who runs Linux
:Patient: Just wire it up to some nerves.
2 KB (349 words) - 18:44, 23 May 2022
In this comic, Cueball is chatting with a user named 'BSLSK05' ('basilisk05' with the vowels removed) and learns much to h
2 KB (372 words) - 09:45, 24 July 2023
...g satellite and aerial imagery for free. Using the {{w|scroll wheel}}, the user can zoom out to see a larger area. The {{w|Lena River}} is a river in north
...ecessitates the user making their way from the middle of the wilderness to some manner of civilization, exactly as in the comic.
2 KB (350 words) - 03:01, 27 April 2024
..., which may be a reference to Gentoo's notorious difficulty to manage. Any user who is capable of understanding it might have a large ego, and therefore be
::Gives root access if user says Elvish word for “friend”
5 KB (804 words) - 05:28, 6 May 2023
...ing an interface, imagine that your program is all that stands between the user and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets-fingertips-digging-into-the-back sex.
3 KB (517 words) - 21:55, 16 May 2024
...nvolve alterations of the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1770 user interface].
...Emacs, and since it's hard to reach, users often remap it to Caps Lock or some other key. LongtimeUser4 fixed the problem very clumsily ("horrifying," as
3 KB (537 words) - 15:12, 9 June 2023
...ch was a location-aware feature of Google Maps that allowed a mobile phone user to allow certain people to view their current location. The reason it is wo
...nal sex toys from another store, was still unsatisfied, and then purchased some electronic devices and power tools (either to improve the performance of he
6 KB (978 words) - 22:27, 20 October 2023
Both AIM and LiveJournal were known for their teenage user base, as shown by the title text's fictional AIM screen name.
2 KB (284 words) - 04:06, 26 June 2023
''Hooray! I have some bitcoins now.|[[Randall Munroe]]|[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5
...because I would prefer to experiment with Bitcoin as a regular, anonymous user. I put up an address here because someone on IRC asked, but I don't want an
7 KB (1,109 words) - 10:21, 24 July 2023
...ground, etc.). Of course there is no clear separation and there is always some overlap between the two scenarios, so the diagram is not meant to be taken
"Defragging" is short for {{w|disk defragmentation}}, an easy, user-friendly action that PC users can undertake to supposedly make their comput
3 KB (407 words) - 14:48, 20 November 2023
...e}} videos are insipid and poorly informed, being pointless arguments over some minor topic or factually incorrect position ({{rw|conspiracy}}). At the tim
* The user ''SimplePlan2009'' is likely mocking the other commenters. While the conspi
5 KB (836 words) - 21:00, 15 November 2023
...ading an encrypted message would require the recipient to already be a PGP user. In fact, the use of PGP even to sign email messages is so rare that most p
3 KB (428 words) - 04:51, 6 December 2022
:Black Hat (narrating): Use the list and some proxies to try automated logins to the 20 or 30 most popular sites, plus ba
:Labels on paper: Email User Pass
9 KB (1,640 words) - 19:27, 31 August 2023
...ar Hero (video game)|Guitar Hero}}'', which make a clicking sound when the user strums, with those of ''Rock Band'', which do not click.
1 KB (218 words) - 16:28, 20 July 2022
...hing like "First post!" or some variation thereof). In this variation, the user has misspelt "post" in the rush to have the first post. This was later ment
..." This comic contains many such jokes where the word sphere is replaced by some other object. A {{w|Tesseract|tesseract}} is a four-dimensional analog of t
19 KB (3,079 words) - 23:15, 23 February 2024
...of "It's Complicated"''' refers to one of Facebook's options as to what a user's relationship status currently is. A Jungle-Bay Mountain is a complicated
*'''{{w|Classmates.com}}''' is a service in which the user can meet classmates that came from the same high school. The website is pro
51 KB (8,448 words) - 04:26, 27 February 2024
...many sharp glass pieces but would also cover the hands of the unfortunate user with a mixture of mild but not harmless chemicals. Also, depending on this
7 KB (1,244 words) - 13:16, 11 May 2023
...l remove all contents of the specified directories and will not prompt the user beforehand. Under the guise of "{{w|Software portability|portability}}", th
6 KB (1,027 words) - 01:19, 21 September 2023
...shown in the comic, however, is "deep cleaning", and rips out not only the user's pore gunk, but also his entire skull. However, the skull looks extremely
2 KB (259 words) - 12:48, 13 May 2023
...parties where the packet comes from and where it should go (together with some other details). The payload is the data to be transmitted.
...ould require encouraging or discouraging women to have children (or as one user pointed out, either conceiving children himself, or causing abortions or mi
3 KB (440 words) - 10:01, 19 December 2023
...east in the beginning, only a few top-level domains were accepted.) If the user entered an acceptable domain (by xkcd's rules, which apparently changed dur
In some cases, Megan's reply seems to correspond to the company.
21 KB (3,467 words) - 11:29, 15 December 2023
...in fact, sites that use this branding in their advertisements and/or their user interface which is likely what inspired [[Randall]] to write this comic. Cu
...t was limiting posts to 140 characters, it was still popular enough to get some attention and make someone think about going to the site. Sending messages
4 KB (690 words) - 08:55, 13 March 2024
| titletext = ALERT: Some pending mandatory software updates require version 21.1.2 of the Oracle/Sun
...atically by default, but the operating system might install them only if a user allows it to. The frequency of software changes (and changes in the way Ado
3 KB (519 words) - 23:57, 3 October 2023
...the {{w|File Explorer|Windows Explorer}}, a dialog box opens to inform the user of how many of the files being moved have been moved with an estimate of ho
...lemented and that the person who did so actually talks like that. He tells some friends on the phone how long it will take for him to arrive at their meeti
3 KB (537 words) - 11:20, 24 August 2023
...ame suggests, these systems are meant to be used by multiple people or {{w|User (computing)|users}}, sometimes at the same time. To prevent malicious or ac
...operating systems' administrator accounts. It makes the argument that the user's data is more valuable than the integrity of the system. This is arguably
4 KB (647 words) - 23:17, 17 September 2023
...ees Celsius, you'd be quite comfortable outside dressed for the beach) but some of the benchmarks are humorous and/or completely useless as can be seen bel
Some people argue for switching to metric units in the US, and these people beca
20 KB (3,322 words) - 16:54, 13 March 2024
...’t see each other’s faces or properly identify that they’re human in some way.
In the first two panels, [[Cueball]] is exchanging some possibly profane insults with the other [[Cueball]]. [[Megan]] takes hold o
2 KB (311 words) - 15:50, 13 December 2023
...rification system to stop automatic submissions to web forms by asking the user to do something a computer program could not do, such as type a distorted w
Another reason why a CAPTCHA like this won't be very practical is that some humans haven't necessarily seen the movie in the question and would be unab
2 KB (398 words) - 23:26, 17 April 2024
...ill allow users to find all songs that contain a particular tag; so when a user searches for "Country breakup music," they will receive a list of {{w|Count
6 KB (995 words) - 22:37, 4 May 2022
...less lover, lacking that experience, might fumble with the clasp for quite some time. In the heat of the moment, a lover may feel frustrated if they feel t
...impediment. A normal bra clasp can be tricky enough for the inexperienced user, but the addition of the Rubik's Cube element is going too far. Not to ment
2 KB (401 words) - 19:18, 27 February 2024
...uggests that if you have synesthesia as well as {{w|colorblindness}}, then some of the colors might appear identical and so one number would not be visible
...no one set of color-number associations seen by all synesthetes. So while some synesthete might see '2' as green and '0' as red (so a red-green color-blin
7 KB (1,257 words) - 21:10, 4 May 2022
This is Randall's first map of online communities, with a successor (showing some zoomed-in highlights of the map) at [[802: Online Communities 2]]. As Randa
...ut with small letters making it spell "Noob," slang for a "Newbie" or "New user" — a person less experienced with the internet, as many of the sites to t
25 KB (4,083 words) - 16:11, 17 March 2024
{{w|Slashdot}} is a venerable techie site. On many sites, the user base can vote comments "up" or "down," but at Slashdot, only moderators (th
2 KB (394 words) - 21:10, 4 May 2022
...ho took their internet access seriously would have preferred that at least some of the phone wiring and phone jacks in their residences were {{w|Ethernet}}
The title text, which is a reference to foonetic user relsqui, was changed to correct their name to "Finn" after they came out as
3 KB (445 words) - 10:48, 20 November 2022
...ng these dots outwards towards the edge of the screen before disappearing. Some of the "stars" appear to pass closer to the viewing point than others, resu
...rtainment System}} game {{w|Duck Hunt}}, originally published in 1984. The user would point the Zapper at the connected television screen while playing Duc
3 KB (458 words) - 20:04, 2 April 2023
...uld prove to be very influential in the development of personal computing. Some of the technologies demonstrated found success in the following decades, wh
...nown today as "cut, copy and paste". On some early text-based systems, the user moved the cursor to the beginning of the text to be copied, typed <CTRL>+K+
7 KB (1,153 words) - 23:16, 3 January 2024
:How to freak out a mobile app user.
2 KB (390 words) - 02:18, 2 May 2024
...quito. Although rather innocuous, these ringtones can get very annoying to some people, which is what this comic is getting at.
4 KB (723 words) - 20:03, 23 February 2024
Many computer systems that let the user write in a number only work with certain numbers (such as positive numbers)
...The service Amazon Prime is provided by {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}}, where the user pays a flat annual fee and in exchange they get access a number of "enhance
4 KB (732 words) - 16:19, 14 November 2023
