Editing Talk:1912: Thermostat

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Maybe the the last sentence is about moses parting the sea so he can walk through it.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.221|162.158.91.221]] 05:55, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
: I interpreted it that way. In computing, partitioning separates parts of a drive that are to be used for different purposes, so parallels might be drawn there. - [[User:Emmia|Emmia]] ([[User talk:Emmia|talk]]) 07:24, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
: Not so sure about that. It's possible, I guess, but it's not obviously funny. I think it's more related to the title text about the helpline operative being afraid to upset whatever god of technology has cursed him with this unfathomable tech problem, and suggesting to him that the situation is so dire he may as well just end it all. (Obviously overreacting, as the failure of an IoT-enabled thermostat is definitely a First World Problem and not the horrendous event the characters are considering it to be.) 09:57, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
:: I disagree. In isolated regions with cold weather, the failure of a heating system, whether induced by the failure of the furnace itself or the thermostat controlling it, is a significant concern. [[User:Justice210|Justice210]] ([[User talk:Justice210|talk]]) 20:31, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
:I also thought about the "parting the sea" idea...consider that in the Old Testament, the gods of other cultures were spoken of as alive, and the Israelite God as directly challenging and defeating them (see the challenge issued to the Egyptian deities in Exodus).  Perhaps, rather than helping Cueball himself, Hairy thinks that by invoking the Most High, Cueball might be able to defeat whatever technology god he has angered.  Hence, Hairy suggests that Cueball try to play the role of Moses. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.76|172.68.34.76]] 16:11, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
:No, just talking about abandoning hope and that Cueball should escape life. This use of walking into the sea is a commonly used result of giving up at life, a reaction to not wanting to deal with people, reality, etc. any more. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:37, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
: I read it more as a comment along the lines of "if we've got to the point where we're making something as trivial as a thermostat this complicated then there's no hope for us and we may as well just end it all".[[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.32|162.158.155.32]] 17:31, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

I think there's additional humor to the extent of his boot problems. Monthly Energy Report (1).doc would be a normal document a smart thermostat may create. But if it became a boot volume it'd brick the device.


: Maybe "Monthly Energy Report (1).doc" was meant to resemble a malware-laden email attachment. The "(1)" could indicate a name-collision-avoidance suffix of a downloaded file. [[User:Bob Stein - VisiBone|Bob Stein - VisiBone]] ([[User talk:Bob Stein - VisiBone|talk]]) 11:48, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

:'Monthly Energy Report.doc' might be a normal document a smart energy device might produce (can't see why it would be producing energy reports if all it is is a thermostat), but the '(1)' on the end suggests it's been unable to overwrite a previous report. or for some reason produced a copy of the original document.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.32|162.158.155.32]] 17:23, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

:When generating a report with a static filename every month, instead of using report names which include a variable such as 'Monthly report November 2017.doc', the generation will cause a naming collision the second time a report is run. 
Why there would be a process to guard against overwriting the previous report, or what the significance would be to know the device is 2 months old, I do not know.

I guess, in real life, this could happen when the thermostat has this guard against filename collisions in place and characters such as ( are not properly escaped in the script used to update the bootloader. 
Possibly a reference to xkcd 327? Though it feels like a stretch.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.247|162.158.111.247]] 22:46, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I believe Cueball has accidentally discovered that the thermostat—supposedly simple device—is actually doing surveillance on the house (and is poorly coded). Now the tech support guy is astounded by the fact that somebody has found out, but then promptly suggests suicide in a non-direct manner to clean up evidence, covering this is with religious explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.244.24|172.68.244.24]] 06:37, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
:I'm not sure about the surveillance. It seems to me that the .doc is somehow a record of power usage of the thermostat. However, it remains to be determined a. why it is running Android b. why it is mounting and booting a .doc c. how it got there [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.12|162.158.106.12]] 07:11, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
:: The .doc file is the trojan that was installed on the device. It was supposed to look innocent, but actually contains an encoded sysroot with the real spyware. It's just also terribly written. Very genuinely Russian.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.202.106|162.158.202.106]] 21:46, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I took it as a variation on this joke in HHG:
: "Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a  big mistake  in  coming  down  from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move,  and  that  no one should ever have left the oceans."
...Which in the BBC TV series was accompanied by visuals of Douglas Adams himself walking into the ocean. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.86.58|172.68.86.58]] 07:27, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Might be a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nest_learning_thermostat Nest Thermostat], which like Android is an Alphabet thing.  While Nest doesn't run Android, its OS is Linux-based like Android.  [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.89|108.162.246.89]] 08:07, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

While reading the title text my first thought was http://americangods.wikia.com/wiki/Technical_Boy [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:16, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Not sure if "Android error screen" deserves emphasis in the explanation, as lately many very simple devices have Android, it shouldn't be surprising to find a thermostat running it. [[User:Fvalves|Fvalves]] ([[User talk:Fvalves|talk]]) 10:12, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

https://xkcd.com/349/ also mentions tech issues and the sea. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.78|141.101.107.78]] 10:36, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

As a (former) network engineer for the largest IoT deployment at a major ISP, I can say with complete certainty that this is nothing. A hard reset (typically, holding the power and some other button down for 5+ seconds) will skip the attempt at local boot and go directly to a BOOTP wipe from the mothership, which should have that thermostat up and running the Russian military/mob's firmware in ten minutes tops. Soon your thermostat will be mining bitcoin and staging attacks on your local vital infrastructure like all the other thermostats, don't you worry. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.196|141.101.98.196]] 11:14, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Should we make a category for this? It's becoming a recurring theme on xkcd. [[User:RamenChef|RamenChef]] ([[User talk:RamenChef|talk]]) 15:49, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

: Sounds like this may be referrng to recent news where some Google Pixel 2 owners received phones [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/11/2/16599938/google-pixel-2-xl-operating-system-shipping-quality-control-issues without any operating system].  [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 16:59, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Refer to https://xkcd.com/801/ on using a complex OS for single purpose Hardware [[Special:Contributions/172.68.46.101|172.68.46.101]]

Perhaps it's referring to the story of Jonah. In an effort to get Jonah to go back to where he was supposed to go, God sent a terrible storm that devastated the ship that Jonah was escaping on. In order to appease God, the crew had to throw Jonah into the sea, where he was subsequently swallowed up by a giant fish.

"the extension .docx has been the default from Microsoft Office 2007 onwards and is generally favored over the preceding .doc extension."... No, not "favored", just that it's the default, and the default default, and most people don't know to change it, or how, or that they should. :) I've found docx more unstable, more buggy, and less readable (seeing as people who have the sense not to blindly downgrade through 2007 and 2010 and 365 won't natively be able to open it, and may have trouble with the file support extension). Actually, Randall's use of .doc here suggests to me he's one of us who are wise enough to stick with Office 2003, or at least stick with using .doc. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:37, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
:Moreover, the adding of "(1)" to a filename, when asked to avoid overwriting with conflicts, is itself only a more modern implementation within the Windows family (possibly Vista onwards, but Win8 onwards more certainly), for what used to be a purely overwrite/do not overwrite decision of sorts, although it does also mirror one of many possible user-based method of versioning/forking that wouldn't be unknown...
:(My reading of the comic, BTW, is that someone in the household has opened up the device to a very insecure remote access to grab data to convert into a personal record - and, for some reason, this was being done in .doc rather than .xls or something more usefully statistical - the document for this somehow then written onto the raw partition,perhaps having deleted everythibg else (i.e. the virtual boot partition file the device normally goes to, as part of the bootstrap) leaving that document there for the bootloader to go "well, this is the only file,it must be the partition!" in an overly flexible/helpful but ultimately misguided firmware-led booting  process. But there's ''so'' much wrong with even this scenario that I'm with the tech support guy in dispair that it ever happened.)[[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.130|141.101.76.130]] 22:35, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
:: Actually, the first I saw "(1)" was way back with Windows 95, sorry. Windows has been doing that for ages. Try right-clicking in Windows Explorer and creating a new file or folder in that way, then not changing the default name, then do it again. The second one's default name will have it. :) Whenever I copy files these days, if the same name exists in the destination, I get the option to Overwrite, Not Copy, or Copy But Keep Both Files, which results in the "(1)" method (I generally use Windows 7 at the moment).
:: As for interpreting the comic, I've wavered between what you said, an attempt to capture a log has gone awry, and the conspiracy-theory-friendly part of my mind (despite not being much of a conspiracy kind of guy) thinking that this is an indication that someone has been trying to spy on Cueball through data from his thermometer, but they accidentally messed it up and revealed themselves. However, the prevailing theory for me is that this is simply another entry in the theme of "Cueball gets the weirdest tech problems", extending beyond the usual computer and programming problems, and extending beyond Megan (Ponytail? I forget...) having to deal with them. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:45, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

:I strongly agree with the previous. My work in tech support has teched me that the worst clients are the ones who have "just a little bit adjusted" something causing the failure but when they contact the tech support they act as the failure had occured by itself and deny ever touching anything. This .doc file is clearly created by the caller who has downloaded data from the thermostat and then accidentally saved it to the thermostat. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.47.48|172.68.47.48]] 18:41, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

::It could also mean that the battery is at the end of its lifespan, being charged enough to prevent the low-battery safeties from tripping, but not providing enough voltage for proper bit-on/off separation (which can cause all sorts of messes normally prevented by aforementioned safeties). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.224|162.158.111.224]] 11:26, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
I can't figure out if it's just a typo or if there's some meaning that "Have you tried walking into the sea." ends with a "." rather than a "?". The author isn't one to make grammatical errors, but I can't think of a clear interpretation - perhaps this is because, while worded as a question, it really only makes sense as a command - if Cueball had already tried walking into the sea, then he probably wouldn't be calling tech support now. That made me realize that we're hearing this from Cueball's perspective, so homonyms could be at play - for example, rather than referencing the "sea" Harry could be referring to the lower level programming language "C" (a predecessor to C++), which could be part of a larger explanation. [TH] [[Special:Contributions/172.68.47.48|172.68.47.48]] 18:41, 11 November 2017 (UTC)


I took this to mean Cueball had been trying to hack his traditional thermostat, and poorly. He says the **little** LCD is giving him this **Android** recovery error. Almost no thermostats run Android and if they do they don't have little LCDs. So now tech support has to deal with his utter incompetence and tampering that's bricked his thermostat. Hence the telling him to go walk into the sea. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.72|162.158.186.72]] 22:22, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
: It's Android because that makes the problem extra weird. I feel certain that this is just the latest in the ongoing theme of "Cueball gets the WEIRDEST tech problems". :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:45, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

I've deleted the trivia section, in both [[349: Success]] and [[1350: Lorenz]], the shark attack was caused by BSD. [[User:Herobrine|Herobrine]] ([[User talk:Herobrine|talk]]) 04:01, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Why does the question have no question mark? To me it seems unnatural. {{unsigned ip|172.69.79.223}}
:Why does the comment have no signature? And is this a rhetorical question? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.209|172.69.79.209]] 21:50, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

:: I forgot to add one. No, this is not rhetorical, and this grammar issue is getting really on my nerves. Is this really a grammar issue of just a new addition to english. (?) --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.223|172.69.79.223]] 10:22, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
:::It should have a question mark, but it's Randall's error. A Trivia section could be added that mentions the mistake--lots of articles in this wiki do mention the creator's errors. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 03:32, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
::::I don't interpret it as an error - it reads as natural to me, as Harry asking a rhetorical question. [https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/12760/should-rhetorical-questions-end-with-a-period A quick google search] shows that ending rhetorical questions with periods is done sometimes, if not often. Whether or not it's "correct" grammar isn't really important, imho. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.125|162.158.166.125]] 05:55, 3 September 2022 (UTC)