Thighs

Explanation:
In each panel, Cueball sings a verse from a different song where he replaces the word "eye" with the word "thigh." First it is Survivor's " Eye of the Tiger ," then Dean Martin's " That's Amore ," and finally Van Morrison's " Brown Eyed Girl ."
The comic shows how vastly different each song's meaning becomes when "eye" is replaced with "thigh." In the last panel, Cueball's version makes Megan go "eww," and she asks him if he doesn't have a job he should be doing instead. The eww refers to the fact that the brown-eyed girl turns into a brown-thighed girl, and such colored thighs could be eminently possible via an act of poor defecation on oneself, hence the disgust reaction from Megan.
In the title text, it seems that Cueball continues with a reference to the first line of The Battle Hymn of the Republic , adding to the humorous effect, since typically thighs cannot see. But mainly it is a sexual joke playing on the double meaning of " coming ".
In 1814: Color Pattern , Randall makes his own version of "That's Amore," this time letting Megan sing it to Cueball.
[Cueball is singing into a microphone he is holding while Megan sit in her office chair typing on her computer. Musical notes fly around Cueball.] Cueball: It's the thigh of the tiger
[Cueball continues to sing, titling his head upwards.] Cueball: When the moon hits your thigh like a big pizza pie, that's amore.
[Cueball sings on now holding the microphone in both hands.] Cueball: She's my brown-thighed girl. Megan: Don't you have a job or something? Megan: Also, Eww.


Pix Plz

Explanation:
Though this comic predates it, there is an Internet meme best stated as "there are no girls on the Internet." It is also known as Rule 16 or Rule 30 of the Internet , not to be confused with Wolfram's cellular automata . This comes partly from a supposition that girls aren't smart enough to go on the Internet or even use technology, and more directly from the idea that they are afraid of interacting in such a male-dominated subculture, so anyone claiming to be female on the Internet must be a male pretending to be one for the purposes of active or passive trolling. Thankfully for humanity at large, the meme is now the opposite of true (just look at the female-dominated Facebook), but still lives on as a joke, albeit not always a pleasant one. For many users, the puerile nature of the Internet creates a repulsive force because of exactly what Cueball is doing. As soon as anyone claims to be a female online, there will invariably be a slew of " tits or gtfo " replies.
Randall projects this stereotypical Internet douchebaggery onto Cueball , who behaves this way out of misogyny thinly disguised as a joke. This barely-a-joke, found in certain areas of the Internet (especially IRC and 4chan), holds the view that women are only "good for" sex and porn. By making such a huge deal out of her being a girl, he directs unwanted sexual attention at any female who joins.
Black Hat , while usually a destructive force and self-proclaimed classhole , here switches positions with Cueball, standing up for women everywhere. (This makes sense when you consider that Black Hat tends to pursue Randall's thoughts in a more controversial way, see 86: Digital Rights Management ). However, he still keeps some of his destructive tendencies and knocks down Cueball's door. He enlists the help of a Ponytail character named Joanna to ban Cueball from the Internet. (More than 9 years later, Joanna is hired to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 United States presidential election in 1756: I'm With Her , released the day before that election. She is also shown in the 1000: 1000 Comics , where she is seen at number 653 .)
IRC is the acronym for Internet Relay Chat. It is a protocol that eventually evolved into the instant messengers , chat rooms , and XMPP (formerly Jabber) servers around today. With the advent of live-streaming video online, IRC channels are making a come-back as a way for hosts and audiences to communicate with each other in real-time.
An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse that will disrupt electronics from functioning normally. An EMP is a short burst of electromagnetic energy. Small EMPs will disrupt electricity momentarily, while larger EMPs are capable of burning out circuitry and erasing hard drives.
At the title text, Cueball tries to defend his misogyny by claiming that one of his IRC chat system acquaintances is a female, as if to imply that that makes his words no longer misogynist (this is similar to the defense "I'm not racist! Some of my best friends are black!").
[Black Hat stands in the entrance to a room. The door has been broken down. A surprised Cueball has turned away from his computer to face the remains of the door.] Black Hat: Hi. I'm here about the girl who visited your IRC channel last night looking for Java help. Cueball: What did you do to my door?
Black Hat: When someone with a feminine username joins your community and you say "OMG a woman on the Internet" and 'jokingly' ask for naked pics, you are being an asshole. You are not being ironic. You are not cracking everybody up. You are the number one reason women are so rare on the Internet. Black Hat: At least, the parts of it you frequent.
[Joanna enters the room, holding some sort of device.] Black Hat: As someone who likes nerdy girls, I do not appreciate this. I'm here to ban you from the Internet. The gal behind me with the EMP cannon is Joanna - she'll be assigned to you for the next year. Try to go online and she'll melt your PC. Cueball: Dude, she's hot. Is she single? Black Hat: Joanna, fire.


Ballmer Peak

Explanation:
This comic is about alcohol and programming ability. Programmers sometimes have a reputation for drinking habits, and programmer gatherings (such as hackfests ) tend to offer copious amounts of alcohol. More generally, intoxicated programmers can get the impression that , by being a little disconnected from physical reality, they become more efficient at their programming. The comic is a take on this belief, with two references:
The curve in the comic suggests that, while generally decreasing with alcohol intoxication, at just the right level, the skill of a programmer gets terrific indeed. Randall named the peak after Steve Ballmer, as if discovered by him; this references the analogously named Balmer peaks (with one 'L'), and the idea that Steve Ballmer makes for an easy association of programming and alcohol. The peak of the curve occurs at a BAC of 0.1337%, which is a reference to leet . (See this interview with Randall ).
The end of the comic turns the whole idea into a sideways jab at Windows ME , a version of Microsoft Windows often criticized for being buggy, slow, and unstable: it suggests that ME was developed by programmers completely drunk, because their managers wanted to exploit this "Ballmer peak," but did so without any precaution. That idea fit the result of a buggy and unstable product well.
On the contrary, the title text claims that Apple uses this effect with careful calibration, by delivering precise quantities of alcohol ( schnapps ) to its programmers via intravenous therapy (IV).
An actual research paper published in March 2012 showed that the situation described in this comic is not far from reality. Researchers found that intoxicated participants performed better than sober participants on a test that evaluates creative problem solving skills, and were also more likely to evaluate their own solutions as insightful. However, the study only tested a B.A.C. of 0.075%, not between 0.129% and 0.138% as displayed in the comic.
[A graph with "programming skill" on the Y-axis and "blood alcohol concentration" on the X-axis. The Y-axis slowly goes down, but spikes at 0.1337%.] [Cueball is making a presentation with the graph.] Cueball: Called the Ballmer Peak, it was discovered by Microsoft in the 80's. The cause is unknown but somehow a B.A.C between 0.129% and 0.138% confers superhuman programming ability. Cueball: However, it's a delicate effect requiring careful calibration – you can't just give a team of coders a year's supply of whiskey and tell them to get cracking. Spectator: ...Has that ever happened? Cueball: Remember Windows ME? Spectator: I knew it!
In the above-mentioned speech at Google, Randall Munroe explained that he tried to experiment on himself about the relationship between alcohol intoxication and intellectual skills, by solving a Rubik's Cube repeatedly while getting more and more drunk. He eventually found that he could get deeply drunk without degrading very much his performance at solving the puzzle (contrary to, for instance, finding and picking up the Cube which became something of a problem towards the end). He suggested that the Rubik's Cube wasn't a good test to study this relationship, the cube probably being solved with muscle memory rather than real intellectual skills.


Tapping

Explanation:
In the first panel, Cueball makes the chance observation that tapping different points on a desk's surface results in different pitches being produced, a consequence of the desk's different resonant frequencies at these points. He soon learns that by using the pitches produced, he can replicate the well-known theme music to the film Jurassic Park . The third panel depicts that, given a lack of other entertaining stimuli, Cueball soon becomes engrossed in his newly discovered musical instrument, and his music grows in complexity.
This is a fun observation about part of human nature, to which many people can relate. Sadly, Cueball doesn't feel like telling Megan what he did, and instead, he just gives her an empty answer. Cueball perhaps feels, as Randall suggests in the title text, that he could not explain why the tapping activity was fun in its own right and not just a consequence of boredom, so he avoids having to explain in the first instance.
Other comics have shown the idea of feeling embarrassed by what one likes, to the point of refusing to admit that one likes it.  Examples are 245: Floor Tiles and the title text of 1103: Nine .
[Cueball is sitting at a desk, tapping various parts of it.] Cueball: Hey, I can get different pitches by tapping on different parts of the desk. Tap Tap Tap Tap
[Cueball starts tapping faster, with both hands.] Cueball: Sweet, I can do the Jurassic park theme! Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap
[Cueball tap the desk very rapidly, legs crossed.] Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap Tap
[Later, elsewhere.] Megan: So, what did you do all afternoon? Cueball: Hung out.


A-Minus-Minus

Explanation:
Black Hat is trying to make the world a weirder place by shipping bobcats to his eBay buyers. Ordinarily, negative feedback is used to warn future buyers about sellers who ship broken products or post misleading listings. In this case, the unfortunate buyer is leaving feedback warning future buyers that Black Hat ships bobcats instead of the actual products, though "would not buy again" seems to be a rather feeble response to the replacement. This appears to have been a continuing project, as Cueball receives random packages a year and a half later ( 576: Packages ). Four years later, it is shown that you can blackmail Black Hat into not sending you a bobcat ( 837: Coupon Code ). This comic is also referenced in a popular Amazon review for Randall Munroe's book, What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.
The weak "would not buy again" comment is a play on the stock "would buy again" comment often found in positive eBay feedback; the title "A-Minus-Minus" is a play on the frequent comment "A++."  That in turn, sometimes with varying numbers of pluses, seems to be an easy way people use to pad the end of an eBay comment field to the maximum 80 characters. It's also a reference to jokes in which exceptionally good schoolwork is graded with extra pluses after an A+ (and exceptionally bad work is graded with large numbers of minuses after an F).
The title text is about a flaw in eBay's feedback system: You can intentionally do nasty things to your buyers and get very bad reviews, but still have overall high feedback scores as long as you don't do it too often. (See also 937: TornadoGuard , which shows a different flaw in the concept of averaging reviews — namely that five-star reviews for aesthetic qualities are weighted equally to one-star reviews for major functional deficits — and 1098: Star Ratings , which addresses the topic as well.) These reviews would be disregarded by future customers as well for their weirdness.
[Black Hat is packing a bobcat into a box; Megan stands beside him.]
Megan: What are you doing? Black Hat: Making the world a weirder place.
Bobcat: mrrowlll [Black Hat has finished taping the package for shipping.] Black Hat: Starting with my eBay feedback page.
[Bandaged person at a computer with assorted debris around the floor.] Screen: comments: Bandaged person typing: Instead of office chair package contained bobcat. Bandaged person typing: Would not buy again.


Effect an Effect

Explanation:
"Affect" and "effect" can each both be a noun and a verb, share the sense of influence , and they are often confused with each other. (See the usage note under "Affect.")
In careful speech, both words (as verbs) are similar but not identical. "Affect" is /əˈfɛkt/ (or uh- fekt ) and "effect" is /ɪˈfɛkt/ (or ih- fekt ). However, for some people, these words are homophones — it's also explained here: homophones affect vs effect .
"Effect" is usually a noun, meaning a result , and "affect" usually a verb, meaning to act upon . "Effect" as a verb has the slightly different meaning to bring about . Cueball says that the foreign policy causes the situation, not, as the "grammar nazi" thinks, that it changes the situation.
The title of the comic translates to cause or bring about a result , which is just what Cueball does! It can also be seen as a play on words, being similar to the phrase "cause and effect."
The title text refers to the Victory marking practice common among fighter pilots in a war zone. Fighter pilots who score a "kill" on an opposing aircraft will have a silhouette of the downed plane painted on the side of their plane as a way of keeping track of kills. In this sense, Cueball "shot down," figuratively speaking, an online (grammar) nazi, and would mark it by painting a silhouette on the side of his computer.
See also 1429: Data .
My Hobby: Using the more obscure meanings of "affect" and "effect" to try to trip up amateur grammar Nazis. Cueball: I think that our foreign policy effects the situation. Computer: You mean "affects." Cueball: tee hee hee


Exploits of a Mom

Explanation:
Mrs. Roberts receives a call from her son 's school. The caller, likely one of the school's administrators, asks if she really named her son Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;-- , a rather unusual name. Perhaps surprisingly, Mrs. Roberts responds in the affirmative, claiming that she uses the nickname "Little Bobby Tables." As the full name is read into the school's system's databases without data sanitization , it causes the "Students" table in the database to be dropped, meaning it gets deleted.
The title of this comic is a pun. Exploit can mean an accomplishment or heroic deed, but in computer science, the term refers to a program or technique that takes advantage of a vulnerability in other software. In fact, one could say that her exploit is to exploit an exploit (her achievement is to make use of a vulnerability). The title can also refer to her choice of name for her son, which is rather extraordinary.
In SQL , a database programming language, commands are separated by semicolons ; , and strings of text are often delimited using single quotes ' . Parts of commands may also be enclosed in parentheses ( and ) .  Data entries are stored as "rows" within named "tables" of similar items (e.g., Students ). The command to delete an entire table (and thus every row of data in that table) is DROP TABLE , as in DROP TABLE Students; .
The exploited vulnerability here is that the single quote in the name input was not correctly "escaped" by the software. That is, if a student's name did indeed contain a quote mark, it should have been read as one of the characters making up the text string and not as the marker to close the string, which it erroneously was. Lack of careful parsing is a common SQL vulnerability; this type of exploit is referred to as SQL injection . Mrs. Roberts thus reminds the school to make sure that they have added data filtering code to prevent code injection exploits in the future.
For example, to add information about Elaine to a data table called 'Students', the SQL query could be: INSERT INTO Students (firstname) VALUES ('Elaine');
However, using the odd name Robert');DROP TABLE Students;-- where we used "Elaine" above, the SQL query becomes: INSERT INTO Students (firstname) VALUES ('Robert');DROP TABLE Students;-- ');
By insertion of the two semi-colons in the odd name, this is now three well-formed SQL commands: INSERT INTO Students (firstname) VALUES ('Robert');
DROP TABLE Students;
-- ');
The first line is valid SQL code that will legitimately insert data about a student named Robert.
The second line is valid injected SQL code that will delete the whole Student data table from the database.
The third line is a valid code comment ( -- denotes a comment), which will cause the rest of the line to be ignored by the SQL server.
For this to work, it helps to know the structure of the database. But it's quite a good guess that a school's student management database might have a table named Students .
Of course, in real life, most exploits of this kind would be performed not by engineering a person's name such that it would eventually be entered into a school database query, but rather by accessing some kind of input system (such as a website's login screen or search interface) and guessing various combinations by trial and error until something works, perhaps by first trying to inject the SHOW TABLES; command to see how the database is structured.
To correctly and harmlessly include the odd name in the Students table in the school database the correct SQL is: INSERT INTO Students (firstname) VALUES ('Robert'');DROP TABLE Students;-- ');
Note that the single quote after Robert is now sanitized by doubling it, which changes it from malicious code to harmless data, and the full first 'name' of the student Robert';DROP TABLE Students;-- is now stored correctly.
It should be noted that while data sanitization can mitigate the risks of SQL injection, the proper prevention technique is to use Prepared statements .
Noting the difference between the "actual" name using the word TABLE and the child's nickname being Bobby Tables, one could argue that there's an implied reference to one of the most argued topics of database naming conventions - should table names be singular or plural.
The title text references that Mrs. Roberts' daughter is named "Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory". This is a play on how if someone is stuck and forced to work in a manufacturing factory/plant, then they will write on the product "Help I am trapped in a ____ factory" in order to tell people on the outside. Having this name would cause any police officer who pulls her over to show some concern. And getting the license in the first place would likely be difficult. The idea of inserting a help message like this was already used in 10: Pi Equals .
[Mrs. Roberts receives a call from her son's school on her wireless phone. She is standing with a cup of hot coffee or tea (shown with a small line above the cup) facing a small round three-legged table to the right. The voice of the caller is indicated to come from the phone with a zigzag line.] Voice over the phone: Hi, This is your son's school. We're having some computer trouble.
[In this frame-less panel Mrs. Roberts has put the cup down on the table turned facing out.] Mrs. Roberts: Oh, dear – did he break something? Voice over the phone: In a way –
[Mrs. Roberts is now drinking from the cup again looking right. The table is not shown.] Voice over the phone: Did you really name your son Robert'); DROP TABLE Students;-- ? Mrs. Roberts: Oh, yes. Little Bobby Tables, we call him.
[Mrs. Roberts holds the cup down.] Voice over the phone: Well, we've lost this year's student records. I hope you're happy. Mrs. Roberts: And I hope you've learned to sanitize your database inputs.
This comic has become rather famous, spawning a site at http://bobby-tables.com about preventing SQL injection and also at the official Python SQLite documentation . Noted security expert Bruce Schneier (who often quotes xkcd) mentioned a similar attack that happened in the 2010 Swedish general elections, and several people tried it on Randall's color survey .
In 1253: Exoplanet Names , someone (presumably Mrs. Roberts) attempts to perform a similar trick, submitting the name e'); DROP TABLE PLANETS;-- to the IAU.
It is later revealed in 342: 1337: Part 2 that the daughter's middle name is Elaine (full name: Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory Elaine Roberts ). This is thus the first time Elaine is mentioned. This comic was, presumably, a setup for the " 1337 " series where both of the hacker mom's kids are shown for the first time.
This comic is available as a signed print in the xkcd store .
In 2020 this happened in real life: Company made to change name that could be used for website hacks .


Eggs

Explanation:
At a bar, Cueball uses what appears to be a common cheesy pick-up line: "So, how do you like your eggs in the morning?" — implying that he will be the one cooking them, because they will still be together in the morning, after they spent the night having sex.
For women who do not appreciate such paltry attempts at soliciting sexual intercourse, a sardonic counter-response to the pick-up line is "unfertilized," which switches the meaning of "eggs" from chicken eggs to female gametes , expressing the sentiment that they do not wish to have sex. However, in this scenario, it turns out Cueball is not actually trying to solicit sex from Megan at all, but is just interested in setting up jokes. Megan's desire for actual casual sex therefore subverts his plan for comedy. He politely declines her offer and tries instead with a different joke using the classic snowclone priest and rabbi setup.
The title text continues the conversation, where Megan reveals that the bar is actually a "casual sex bar" and further suggests that priests and rabbis do in fact come to the bar frequently. This is in contrast to real life, where women in bars are generally not interested in casual sex, [ citation needed ] and such bars would probably not be frequented by religious leaders.
[Megan sits at a bar; Beret Guy cleans a glass from behind the counter. Cueball approaches.] Cueball: So, how do you like your eggs in the morning? Megan: Ooh, sunny side up. Cueball: Oh. Huh. Megan: Is that a problem? Cueball: Well, it's just that I was trying to set you up for the "unfertilized" line. Megan: Ah. Bad timing; I'm actually looking for casual sex. ...interested? Cueball: I'd love to, but I've got like 20 more jokes to set up tonight. Hey, have you seen a priest and a rabbi?


Turing Test

Explanation:
In brief, a Turing test is a test for assessing whether a machine/program demonstrates "intelligent" behaviour. Suggested by Alan Turing , the test involves a human examiner talking through a computer terminal to either a human or a computer — which it is, is not known to the examiner. If the machine/program's responses convince the examiner that he/she is talking to a human, the machine/program is said to be passing the test. This comic suggests that extra credit should be awarded if the machine/program is capable of "counter-convincing" the examiner that he's actually a computer.
The most common implementation of a Turing test Internet users may see is the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Program to Tell Computers and Humans Apart), which is often found on web site registration pages and usually involves trying to identify letters/numbers in an image. The text in the image is often distorted and/or in different colors or sizes or fonts, or may be very blurry as if from a very bad photocopy. This is to deter an automated OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program from easily identifying the characters. The idea is that humans can process and decipher things from highly distorted pictures much easier than (current) computer algorithms can.
The caption makes a play on words, in that extra credit (optional additional work to perform) is sometimes offered on curricular examinations ("tests") to allow the taker to increase their total score by demonstrating a heightened understanding of the subject, but the Turing test is not such a test. (This misapplication of vernacular associated with academic testing to a non-academic procedure that also bears the name test is a common vehicle of humor, as in "what if I take a blood test, and don't pass?" One may pass or fail an academic exam, but a blood test only identifies blood type, and the concept of passing or failing is not applicable.)
Similarly, the title text makes a play on words with "test-ees" vs testes suggesting that such extra credit would be an ironic twist to Turing test. (Hitting or kicking an adversary in the testes is considered dirty fighting.) This play on words is actually itself a form of aural CAPTCHA; humans can processes and recognize puns for what they are, but machines generally run afoul of the ambiguity. (Unless Randall trained them for it as in 1696: AI Research .)
A person with an appreciation for macabre humor will note that actually hitting Alan Turing in the testes would be rendered somewhat ineffectual by the fact that the British government chemically castrated him after he was convicted of "gross indecency" (Victorian-era code for homosexual acts between men) under the Labouchere Amendment in 1952. Whether or not this was intended by Randall is uncertain.
[Cueball typing at a desk with two computers; there is a caption above him.] Turing test extra credit: Convince the examiner that he's a computer. Cueball: You know, you make some really good points. Cueball: I'm... not even sure who I am anymore.


Indecision

Explanation:
These two friends (both presumably male, since female characters in xkcd are depicted with hair) are surprisingly cavalier in taking the suggestion to engage in sexual experimentation to alleviate boredom. Even if both men are gay, the fact that they're friends (as the rule in the book describes them) suggests that they are not currently having sex on a regular basis. In this case - and even more so if the friends are heterosexual - most people would not take the book's suggestion, and it may even make them feel embarrassed and awkward. [ citation needed ]
The book that one of the Cueballs grabs appears to be some sort of all-encompassing rule book, its reach including the social sphere. Obviously this book is fictional, but the line "I think there's a rule about this" sounds like a reference to folk "rules" or guidelines like the " five-second rule ."
Crisco is a brand of shortening, a fat that is solid at room temperature and frequently used in baking, though is also sometimes used as a sexual lubricant. In this instance, it's implied that it will be used as a sexual lubricant. Crisco was referenced again in a sexual context in the title text of 414: Mistranslations and later as a part of a weird dream also in the title text of 557: Students .
The title text could be spoken by either one of the characters or Randall . It attempts to preempt any awkwardness or judgment the reader may have about this situation by transferring responsibility to the rule book.
[Cueball is lying on the floor with his friend.] Cueball: So what do you want to do? Friend: Still no ideas. Cueball: Wait, I think there's a rule about this. [Cueball goes to bookshelf and removes a book called "Rules".] [The book of rules is opened to the following: RULE social.b.99.1 If friends spend more than 60 minutes deciding what to do, they must default to sexual experimentation. [Cueball is standing, holding the book. The friend is in the process of standing up.] Cueball: Huh. Friend: I did not know that rule. Cueball: Me neither. Friend: I'll go get the Crisco.
A book suggesting a more or less unrelated solution that is accepted anyway is also pulled from a shelf in 1024 .


Photoshops

Explanation:
This whole comic, including the title text, are a play on the then-popular internet meme " This Looks Shopped ." It may also be making fun of how everything and anything you find on the internet has someone insisting that it's 'fake' or 'photoshopped', regardless of whether it's true in actuality.
Adobe Photoshop is a popular image manipulation tool . It is used to manipulate photographic images and for drawing. Of course, Photoshop and similar tools like Paint Shop Pro can only be used for imagery, not for real life objects.
The title text contains the second part of the internet meme, the complete text of which is: "THIS LOOKS SHOPPED / I CAN TELL FROM SOME OF THE PIXELS AND FROM SEEING QUITE A FEW SHOPS IN MY TIME."
Quite a few interesting images have been uncovered as "shopped" using various techniques. Some examples: shadows are in the wrong direction, extra hands appear, movie stars are made thinner, wrinkles or spots are removed, and objects are added or removed. This of course triggered the start of the meme.
JPEG is an image compression algorithm that works by finding frequencies in blocks of 8x8 pixels and saving that instead of the original pixels. This works remarkably well, but sometimes leaves artifacts that can be seen when zooming in enough. The iris of an eye contains all kinds of odd colored spots - and there's not a JPEG algorithm in sight.
This is another strip in the My Hobby series.
[Megan holds a sword while Cueball looks on.] My hobby: Insisting that real-life objects are photoshopped. Megan: This sabre is a 19th-century family heirloom. Cueball: It looks photoshopped. Megan: Huh? Cueball: Yeah, the reflections are all wrong. Definitely photoshopped.


Gyroscopes

Explanation:
Cueball is playing with a gyroscope . Even though he has studied them and intellectually understands their behaviour, they still seem somewhat mysterious. At the end of the comic, the gyroscope is revealed to have the power of levitation and to apparently be a sentient lifeform (it talks to him).
In the title text, Randall is mocking the Moon landing conspiracy theories and refers to the lunar precession in process. Gyroscopes and the lunar orbit both exhibit precession, a physical concept that non-scientists can find hard to grasp. Thus, it is a perfect subject for a lunar conspiracy theory. He goes on to claim that gyroscopes (which form part of the navigation system of every commercial airplane) were directly responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
[Cueball sits at a desk with a gyroscope in his hands. Text on top of the frame:] Despite years of studying physics, I still find gyroscopes a little freaky. [Cueball starts the gyroscope.] Gyroscope: zzzzip
[The gyroscope spins.] Gyroscope: zzzzzz
[Frameless panel, the gyroscope lifts into the air.]
[The gyroscope moves away from Cueball, still spinning.] Gyroscope: G R E E T I N G S, H U M A N.


Getting Out of Hand

Explanation:
Given how Wikipedia has an ever-expanding variety of topics, the grand majority of them in great detail, there is a possibility (even a temptation) of relying on Wikipedia to learn from every topic that leaves you confused... even foreplay . ('Bedtime' and 'us time' are not necessarily 'computer time'.)
This comic may also be a reference to how people can get addicted to reading Wikipedia pages, because there are many interesting links on each page that people haven't read yet, and there are links on that page that they click on, etc.
The title text refers to the fact that many rely on Wikipedia instead of remembering/learning stuff. Reliance on Wikipedia was later directly addressed as the subject of 903: Extended Mind .
[A couple is in bed in the dark, and Cueball reaches out from under the covers to do a Wikipedia search about Foreplay.]


Wasteland

Explanation:
At the beginning of the comic, Cueball is wandering around in a barren area, supposedly a desert, thinking about his ex-partner, in which he, at first, appears to be fondly remembering him/her, but the last two boxes explain that he is trying to take a long walk to forget him/her, and is obviously not very good at it.
The title text implies that his ex-partner had easily forgotten him, and he wishes that he could forget more easily. It's also possible that he means that it's so hard to forget him/her that forgetting anything else is simple in comparison to it.
There is a similar twist in comics 71: In the Trees and 1042: Never .
Note: When Cueball mentions walking 1000 miles, he may be exaggerating, as, due to his lack of hiking/traveling gear, most likely has only walked a hundred or so, either that, or the story is similar in nature, or even in the same universe, as comic 505 . Though this might also be a nod to a What If question about how long it would take for two immortal people to find each other on a barren planet.
[Cueball is walking through a wasteland talking to himself.] Cueball: I am alone in this wasteland, a thousand miles from you. Cueball: But I haven't forgotten the feel of your skin, your mischievous smile. Cueball: You'd think a thousand miles would be enough. Cueball: I guess I'll keep walking.


Mattress

Explanation:
A commonly cited problem with cuddling is that whatever arms you and your partner are lying on tend to fall asleep from your and/or your partner's weight, and are in any case not very comfortable to be lying upon. Here Cueball and Megan have invented a mattress with a slot in it to solve that problem. To provide an activity for their lower arms when they are comfortably placed in that slot, they have installed a game of " Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots " underneath the bed.
The humour arises from the juxtaposition of a sedate activity like cuddling with a boisterous activity like "Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots" with the implication that Megan and Cueball are doing both at once.
The title text refers to a series of commercials for Tempur-Pedic mattresses where the presenter would place a wine glass on the mattress and then jump up and down somewhere else on the mattress. The fact that the wine did not spill was meant to indicate that one partner's motions would not disturb the other. It is implied that he did that test on this mattress and fell into the slot, breaking his ankle in the process.
[Megan and Cueball are cuddling.] Cuddling face-to-face is nice, but we can never figure out where to put our lower arms. Our solution: the Cuddle Mattress! Your lower arms fit in the convenient gap. [There is a diagram of a mattress with a notch cut through it at shoulder level. The gap is indicated with an arrow.] [The same couple is shown again, cuddling snugly on the mattress.]
[Cueball and Megan are giving a presentation to another person. Cueball has a pointer and a clicker for the slides that are projected on the screen next to him.] Listener: Oh man, that's ALWAYS bothered me. Listener: I want one.
Listener: Although... so the lower arms just sort of dangle? Listener: What do you do with them?
Cueball: It was a bit awkward. Clicker: click Megan: Then we had a second breakthrough.
[The couple is shown again on the cuddle mattress, this time in more detail and facing the tops of their heads. Their lower arms are sticking through the gap in the mattress and playing a conveniently located game of Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots.] Cueball: click click Blue Robot: punch Red Robot: punch Megan: click click


Priorities

Explanation:
In this comic, Cueball is a student, who apparently didn't turn in his homework assignment repeatedly, for which he gets a warning from his Cueball-like teacher.
In some schools in the United States, a student's grades are determined mainly using letters for quick reference. In most schools, the letter grades are given as follows:
A — 100%–90% B — 89%–80% C — 79%–70% D — 69%–60% F — 59%–0%
Traditionally, these schools send ' report cards ' in which the student's current grading of the semester or even the entirety of the class the student is taking is denoted using these letters, for example:
English — A Mathematics — D Science — B Social Studies — B World Building — C
The student may have noted that, if he aims for certain scoring (for example: altering the quality of his homework or even sending out his homework only at the times needed for his grades to reach a certain level), he could make the report card spell every letter grade in alphabetical order. Deriving from the previous example, the student would aim for the following report card:
English — A Mathematics — B Science — C Social Studies — D World Building — F
Interestingly, since in some schools even a 0% grade would produce the required 'F' grade, the student does not need to work at all (not even turn in any school assignments) to get the required 'F' grade, this leading to the situation presented in the comic above. Rather than a letter upon a continuum (as it might be assumed if 'E' were not skipped) it is generally accepted that 'F' actually stands for 'Failed' and covers any situation where insufficient credit was gained to obtain any other letter-grade. There are some schools, though, where turning in nothing would result in the class being marked "incomplete" or "inc" instead of having a grade shown at all.
The title text references that, not only can the grades in the report card inadvertently spell out certain words (for example: 'CAB' or 'FAD'), but also that the letter grade system denoted omits the letter 'E' in standard letter grading. The reason for the missing "E" is complex and explained in this Slate article . However, this is not universal in the United States: Ohio State University, for example, uses 'E' for failing.
[A teacher is talking to a student, sitting at a desk.] Teacher: If you don't turn in at least one homework assignment, you'll fail this class. [The student holds up his report card.] Student: Yeah. But if I can fail this class, the grades on my report card will be in alphabetical order!


Post Office Showdown

Explanation:
Action movies, such as " Kill Bill " by Quentin Tarantino , often feature elaborate fight scenes in mundane environments.
Cueball , here wearing earphones connected to his iPod, is often imagining himself in such a situation, for instance as in this comic, while at the post office. This makes the comic related to the My Hobby series.
First, Cueball imagines that the old man (an old version of White Hat with a cane) pulls out a crossbow and how he would react to that. But then, he continues to imagine that Hairbun has a katana samurai sword in the box. So this could be a long fight, so he decides to be ready for it by setting his iPod to play the "Kill Bill" fight theme. In Kill Bill, there is a long fight scene with samurai swords.
The title text refers to two songs: " Battle Without Honor or Humanity " from the soundtrack of "Kill Bill," and " Ride of the Valkyries " by Richard Wagner , the latter being associated with fighting scenes because of a famous sequence in the movie " Apocalypse Now " by Francis Ford Coppola . He notes that these two songs will absolutely improve any activity, not only fight scenes.
[Cueball is in a post office wearing earphones connected to his iPod. There are several other people, including an old version of White Hat at the counter with a cane and Hairbun with a long narrow box entering the office by the door. Behind the counter, Ponytail stands together with a Cueball-like guy. Another person is obscured by the lowest of the three connected thought bubbles emanating from Cueball to the left. A fourth thought bubble is below Cueball to the right. Above all this is a caption:] I spend a lot of time mentally choreographing elaborate fight scenes with strangers around me. Cueball's thoughts: Okay - if that old man pulls a crossbow, Cueball's thoughts: I'll throw the postal scale at him and dive backward behind the stamps machine. Cueball's thoughts: But what if the lady by the door has a katana in that box? Cueball's thoughts: Better set my iPod to the "Kill Bill" fight theme, just in case.


Future

Explanation:
Cueball is in the last panel (the future) but somehow manages to get his message into the first panel (the past). Megan answers in the first panel, but somehow her message gets to Cueball in the last panel.
This comic can be interpreted in several ways. First, it is not clear if Cueball's question is intended for Megan alone, for Hairy alone, for both Megan and Hairy , or at the past world in general. If the question is intended for several people, the comic is just about how one could sometimes desire to know the future without waiting for it; however, time flows at its usual rate, and there's no way around this.
If the question is intended only for Megan, it likely means Cueball is asking Megan to become his girlfriend. She answers she can't, maybe because, as before, time runs at its usual rate and she can't go faster; or maybe because she's already with Hairy (they're shown holding hands), and she's not leaving Hairy for Cueball.
Finally, the Cueball in the future could just be the very same person as the Hairy in the past, having become bald as he gets older. In this scenario, Cueball is just missing Megan, who was with him in the past but no longer is, maybe even because she has died in between.
In the title text, Cueball seems to be considering going back to the past, but he rejects doing so because, having seen the future, now the past doesn't look attractive.
[The comic has three panels. In the first panel, Hairy and Megan are holding hands. There is a voice bubble originating from Cueball standing in the third panel.] Cueball: Come explore the future with me! [Megan says something, which goes to the third panel.] [The two voice bubbles cross in the middle of the second panel.] [Megan's voice bubble:] Megan: I can't.


Classic

Explanation:
Cueball listens to the song " Stairway to Heaven " performed by Led Zeppelin using an old phonograph . Led Zeppelin was active during the 1970s, with Stairway To Heaven being released in 1971; as such, the music belongs to the Baby Boomer generation . After the song fades out to the end, he expresses how much it's affected him by stating that the baby boomers are winning over his own generation at music. The way in which the lyrics are written evokes the sound of this particular song as it finishes and fades out.
The title text likely refers to Lim Jeong-hyun , the guitarist in the YouTube video guitar that went viral in 2006-2007, in which he performed a cover of "Canon Rock," a rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon . Alternatively, it may refer to JerryC , the original composer of "Canon Rock," who also performed the song in a YouTube video , though his video did not gain as much popularity as Lim's.
The Classical era was a period in music history (1750 - 1820) that produced many musical compositions still remembered hundreds of years afterward, and the word 'classic' is now used to describe something that remains popular long after its time. The "Baby Boomer generation" is known for having created many musicians still well-loved today, including:
[Cueball is sitting in front of a turntable, listening to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. A guitarist (possibly meant to be Jimmy Page) can be seen in an inset in the top left corner of the first two panels.] Song: And as we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our soul
Song: When all is one and one is all, to be a rock and not to rooooll
Song [fading away]: And she's buying a stairway to Heaven
Cueball: Man. The Baby Boomers are kicking our ASSES . Cueball: We need to get it together, guys.


Fight

Explanation:
The boot sector of a hard drive is where the information for operating systems is stored. It tells the computer to load a program; in most cases, this is an operating system. If this sector is overwritten, an operating system stored on the drive can't be booted into.  (Fortunately, repairing a blanked or corrupted boot sector is surprisingly easy, although doing so usually requires the system to be booted from the installation media for the operating system on the drive.)
The first two panels indicate that Megan is still mad at Cueball from a fight from the night before, and the third panel shows promise of her forgiving him through an overly affectionate love note. However, the last panel reveals that she used the love note to overwrite the boot sector of Cueball 's computer out of anger.
The .conf files of Linux - and Unix -based systems are text based files where all the settings for various applications are stored. Since all the configurations were replaced with "sweet nothings" - whispered lovers' talk, or literal nothings (blank space or meaningless jumbles of characters) - none of the programs work as they should. X is the X Window System , the most common GUI framework used on modern Linux and Unix systems. Once upon a time, it was notoriously hard to configure correctly, even when starting from a known good configuration, let alone a destroyed one.  (More recent versions of X configure themselves correctly for most users without a .conf file.)
We had a fight last night. [Cueball is sitting in a sofa, head in both hands, feeling upset.] I guess she's still mad. [Megan is standing with arms crossed in front of her chest, with the same mood.] I woke up to find she'd written a sappy love note [Cueball is standing in front of a computer, with a cup in his hand.] to my boot sector. [The cup now lies on the floor, Cueball is looking at the computer with disbelief.] Computer: Operating system not found


1337 Part 1

Explanation:
This is the first part of five in the " 1337 " series. The title 1337 is "L-eet," or "elite," using the Leet alphabet, a coding system used primarily on the internet (and on early text messaging system), meant to provide a bit of obfuscation to plain text both to make it harder to read, and to show off in a creative way using in-group jargon.
All comics in the series:
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday, probably because he wanted to release comic 404 on april fools' day) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
If a wireless network (Wi-Fi) is unsecured, it is usually a sign that the owner of the access point is not technically skilled enough to go into the admin panel and enable encryption. Obviously, someone in the area who wants to get on the net, but doesn't have a mobile data connection, will simply use this open access point. However, it is also common practice to leave open an access point to be able to claim that infringement of copyright may not have been the homeowner, but that anybody could have connected to the access point and started downloading files.
Another fun trick, for administrators of open APs, is to intercept pages and edit their contents . The only way to stop this is to create a secure connection, or tunnel, to a server to stop the admin from playing man-in-the-middle . Of course, as the title text says, Mrs. Roberts is so cool, she can edit the TCP stream live, without the help of programs, but then there is help to get with tools like the Upside-Down-Ternet , if you wish to play games with people misusing your Wi-Fi.
Not only is Mrs. Roberts awesome enough to manually edit the live TCP stream, she's also manually ending individual VPN and SSH connections as Cueball's Cueball-like friend makes them - while wearing oven mitts and baking cookies at the same time. He has been pwned (i.e. owned) by Mrs. Roberts.
The question "How does she type with oven mitts?" is likely a reference to the old web video site Homestar Runner and its character of Strong Bad , who answered emails while wearing boxing gloves. "How does he type with boxing gloves?" was the most common question he received. Another unanswered question is how Cueball's friend knew she was typing with gloves on; however, the answer is probably that since they were neighbors, they could see her through the window.
[Cueball talks to his Cueball-like friend who is lying down on the floor, using his laptop. Cueball is pointing at the laptop.] Cueball: You're not on the neighbor's WiFi, are you? Friend: Yeah, why? Cueball: The admin... plays games. Friend: No problem. I'll just hop on a secure VPN.
[Cueball's friend now sits on his knees in front of his laptop frantically typing. A message from the laptop comes out with a zig-zag line.] Friend: Whoa, my connections are dying as soon as I start to tunnel anything! Message on laptop: A VPN? How cute! And stop trying to SSH. Friend: Holy shit! Someone's inserting notes into the pages I request! Editing the TCP stream live! Friend: Nobody's that fast. Who is this admin?
[In a frameless panel, Mrs. Roberts with a hot bun tray in one hand (indicated with five wiggly lines above the buns), with oven mitts on both hands, typing on her desktop computer on a table.] Mrs. Roberts: My goodness. Neighborhood scamps on the wireless. Taptaptaptap
[Cueball is standing with a hand toward his now standing friend, the laptop lies between them.] Cueball: I should have warned you about Mrs. Roberts. Friend: How does she type with oven mitts!? Cueball: You've been pwned pretty hard, man. You might want to sit down.


1337 Part 2

Explanation:
This is the second part of five in the " 1337 " series. The title 1337 is "L-eet," or "elite," using the Leet alphabet, a coding system used primarily on the internet (and on early text messaging system), meant to provide a bit of obfuscation to plain text both to make it harder to read and to show off in a creative way using in-group jargon.
All comics in the series:
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday, probably because he wanted to release comic 404 on april fools' day) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
"Like a ring in a bell" appears to be a reference to the Chuck Berry song Johnny B. Goode , in which Berry describes a young boy (like himself) who becomes a guitar-playing prodigy. The original lyric was "just like a-ringing a bell." Apparently, Elaine learned to program as quickly, easily, and skillfully as Johnny (and Chuck) learned to play rock 'n' roll. Donald Knuth is a computer science Professor Emeritus at Stanford University who is famous for writing The Art of Computer Programming and developing the T e X computerized typesetting system. He may not have a mountain hideaway (a reference to Kill Bill , by the way as is the whole training sequence), but he would be one of the best mentors a budding hacker could have.
The A* search algorithm and Dijkstra's algorithm are graph search algorithms . And what study of algorithms would be complete without a healthy study about finding complexities? Time complexity is the amount of time an algorithm takes to execute. Upper and lower bounds for complexity is written in Big O notation . Best possible execution of an algorithm is constant time, or O(1), said in words, for any given data set, no matter how large, the algorithm will always return the answer in the same time. However, constant time is extremely difficult to achieve; linear time (O(n)) is also very good. For more complex algorithms, O( n*log(n) ) is good, but O( n*log(log(n)) ) is better. (Note that logarithms in different bases are proportional to each other. So this would hold true for any base >1.)
From the evidence that Mrs. Roberts has two children, a daughter named Elaine , and a younger son named Bobby (presumably Little Bobby Tables aka "Robert'); DROP TABLE students;--"), we can assume that she is the same mother from 327: Exploits of a Mom . Of course, the title text here explains that Elaine is only her middle name (assuming canonicity of title-text). In the title text to 327: Exploits of a Mom , we learned that her first name is "Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory". Mrs. Roberts appears to have had fun naming her children.
[Cueball standing an looking down at his Cueball-like friend, who is sitting on the floor near an armchair holding a cloth to his face.] Friend: So the greatest hacker of our era is a cookie-baking mom? Cueball: Second-greatest. Friend: Oh?
[The next panel is only half height as Cueball's narration is written as a caption above the panel without a frame around it. In the panel to the left lies a young Elaine with a ponytail on the floor typing at a keyboard while looking at a screen connected to a computer behind it with lots of wires and open case. The computer appears to have been pieced together and there is a screwdriver lying next to her and an open box lies behind her. Little Bobby Tables (a kid version of Cueball) is painting with a broad brush at an easel to the left. There is a clear drawing with two parts going up and one down, but it's not easy to see what it should look like. He is holding his other hand up in the air, like he is enjoying the painting.] Cueball (narrating): Mrs. Roberts had two children. Her son, Bobby, was never much for computers, but her daughter Elaine took to them like a ring in a bell.
[The front of a car is in frame with side mirror and steering wheel visible. Mrs. Roberts is waving goodbye to her daughter who is wearing a backpack and is holding a walking stick. She is about to begin climbing a staircase built into a rocky mountain side. The first 11 step are visible. Behind the two and the stair are two distant mountain peaks, and above them two clouds. Cueball continues to narrate, this time inside the panel:] Cueball (narrating): When Elaine turned 11, her mother sent her to train under Donald Knuth in his mountain hideaway.
[Donald Knuth, drawn with hair only around his neck, is standing with a pointing stick at a chalk board with graph traversal patterns on it and two blocks of unreadable text the top may be a matrix. This small panel is also lower than the next panel, with Cueballs narration above:] Cueball (narrating): For four years she studied algorithms. Donald Knuth: Child—
[Donald Knuth whips around from the board slashing the stick like a sword. Elaine jumps, making a somersault (indicated with a line curving on it self from floor to sword) and lands on the stick balancing with her arms out.] Donald Knuth: Why is A* search wrong in this situation? Stick: swish Elaine: Memory usage! Donald Knuth: What would you use? Elaine: Dijkstra's algorithm!
[Donald Knuth and Elaine are outside, seen from behind while they are both writing on a chalkboard with a thick line down the middle to separate their work. On both sides their writing can be seen but it is unreadable. Where there is only text visible on Donald Knuth's side there is also what appears to be a drawing or matrix at the top of Elaine's. But a similar thing could be behind Donald Knuth's head. Elaine is no longer wearing her hair in a ponytail but have long straight white hair like her mom Mrs. Roberts. To the left there is a stump from a tree, some grass and maybe a puddle of water. Further back there is a small jagged hill and a flat horizon. To the right there are four mountain peaks and a flat high plateau towards the horizon. The frame of the panel does not include the top and bottom corner, but cuts a rectangular section of both places. In these two sections outside the panel is the last two paragraphs of Cueball's narrating:] Cueball (narrating): Until one day she bested her master Donald Knuth: So our lower bound here is O(n log n) Elaine: Nope. Got it in O(n log (log n)) Cueball (narrating): And left.


1337 Part 3

Explanation:
This is the third part of five in the " 1337 " series. The title 1337 is "L-eet," or "elite," using the Leet alphabet, a coding system used primarily on the internet (and on early text messaging system), meant to provide a bit of obfuscation to plain text both to make it harder to read and to show off in a creative way using in-group jargon.
All comics in the series:
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
The comic is narrated by Cueball as seen in the previous comic, but that Cueball is not shown here, where the man drawn as Cueball is a real person:
Adrian Lamo is a hacker known for being a threat analyst and has penetrated many corporate networks. As far as we know, he has not penetrated any government networks, so helping Elaine physically break into the NSA would probably inspire second thoughts. The use of a rug to cross the barbed wire fence is likely a reference to a scene in Fight Club , where the same method is used to break into a liposuction clinic.
RSA (the algorithm) is an encryption algorithm that allows decryption using public keys . No efficient method to break RSA is known. [ citation needed ] But if the NSA knew any such method, it would be unlikely for them to admit that.
However, the NSA have paid RSA (the company) to put a backdoor into one of their encryption schemes.
Lawrence Lessig is a political activist focusing on copyright law and intellectual property, as well as a founding board member of Creative Commons .
Steve Jobs was the two-time CEO of Apple Inc. In partnership with Steve Wozniak , he founded Apple. He oversaw Apple's return from near bankruptcy, the introduction of the original Macintosh, the iPod , the iPhone , and the iPad . But in the '90s, most of this had not happened yet. The comic is implying that it was Elaine, in fact, who planted those ideas in Jobs' mind (while perching on his bedpost, a nearly-impossible physical task for even a relatively small and light human being - such a stance is often depicted for gargoyles or fictional vampires, the latter of which are associated with nocturnal bedroom-invasions like this). Furthermore, Steve's reactions indicate that he was abruptly woken up by Elaine after she broke into his home and started a one-sided conversation with him.
The final panel is a pun on the Riot grrrls - Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk rock movement. This metamorphosizes in the hands of Randall into Riot Prrl - who presumably prefer to code in Perl . The real Riot Prrl is from Northampton and is into guerilla knitting .
The title text may refer to the urban legend that leads petty criminals to ask each other "Are you a cop?" . The bottom line is that anyone who is capable of lying about breaking the RSA encryption algorithm, possibly including the "NSA guy," would be equally capable of lying about whether or not he is lying.
[Outside, Adrian Lamo is helping Elaine Roberts over a barbed wire fence.] It was the late 90's. Elaine crisscrossed the country with Adrian Lamo, the 'Homeless Hacker', learning to gain entry into systems both virtual and physical. Adrian Lamo: So you just throw a rug over the fence and... say, what is this place anyway? Roberts: Nowhere special. Lamo: ...Elaine, is this NSA Headquarters? Roberts: ...Look, I just want to see if they've broken RSA.
[Inside, Lawrence Lessig is sitting at a table, Roberts is standing across the table swinging a knife.] She learned, from Lawrence Lessig, about the monstrosity that is U.S. Copyright Law. Roberts: So, how do we fix the system? Stab bad guys? Lessig: I'm starting something called "Creative Commons" Shink Elaine Roberts: I think we should stab bad guys...
[Steve Jobs is lying up in his bed, Roberts is balancing while crouched on the foot of Jobs's bed.] She met with Steve Jobs to discuss the future of Apple. Roberts: Compression and bandwidth are changing everything. Jobs: Who are you? It's 3:00AM! Roberts: Apple should make a portable music player. Jobs: I'm calling the police. Roberts: Hey, idea — integrate it with a cell phone!
[Scene has two of Elaine's activities. In one she is drumming, in the other she has an electric guitar on her shoulders, one hand on the frets. The other hand is holding a laptop by the touchpad.] She even, for a time, took up drumming, and helped start a movement among teen girls, a culture of self-taught female programmers and musicians, coding by day and rocking out by night— Roberts: Riot Prrl.


1337 Part 4

Explanation:
This is the fourth part of five in the " 1337 " series. The title 1337 is "L-eet," or "elite," using the Leet alphabet, a coding system used primarily on the internet (and on early text messaging system), meant to provide a bit of obfuscation to plain text both to make it harder to read and to show off in a creative way using in-group jargon.
All comics in the series:
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday, probably because he wanted to release comic 404 on april fools' day) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
The comic is narrated by Cueball as seen in part 2, but that Cueball is not shown here, but still he is part of this comic series, and thus also this comic.
In this part, Elaine Roberts returns to the second best hacker in the world (she being the best according to part 2): her mom Mrs. Roberts . Together, they are an unstoppable force, and they help out a guy called Jon with a CSS decryptor ( Content Scramble System , not to be confused with Cascading Style Sheets).
This implies that Jon Lech Johansen 's DeCSS was written by Elaine. Jon Lech Johansen, also known as DVD Jon, is famous for DeCSS , a DVD decryption program that removes the copy protection from commercial DVDs. The Motion Picture Association of America , also known as the MPAA, was not amused.
Both the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act , shortened to DMCA, as a kind of brute club to silence "infringements" on their copyright. In a perfect world, the DMCA provides safe harbor protection to websites and consumers to make fair use of copyrighted content, while also affording copyright owners the ability to protect their works from being pirated. In this world, this means that any content protection system, no matter how weak and poorly executed, cannot be circumvented, and discussion of circumvention is illegal as well.
This is not a perfect world, and in the end, the Roberts team is noticed. Two men with black bowler hats and briefcases with the abbreviations MPAA and RIAA show up at their house to arrest them. The two men look very much like Thomson and Thompson from The Adventures of Tintin , who are (bumbling) policemen/detectives who do not usually attempt violence or wield weapons more dangerous than a standard furled umbrella, but here it more likely depicts the Evil Organization Nebulous Evil Organization 's corporate variation upon the Men In Black.
While Elaine is not ready to let them arrest her, she draws her knife, and they draw their katana swords out of their (way too short) briefcases. Mrs. Roberts says to her daughter that she should calm down, because it is illegal to slice people up in their own houses.
However, the two men disagree and refer to the DMCA Title IV, Section 408: Authorization of Deadly Force. (There is actually no Title IV, Section 408 of the DMCA; Title IV ends with Section 407.) So now the two women are in lethal danger.
But of course, Richard Stallman , founder of the GNU Project and stalwart defender of freedom and copyleft , cannot stand for this kind of repression of freedom. (In the real world, Stallman is not a swordsman, but he is always depicted with two katana swords in xkcd, first time was in 225: Open Source .) In keeping with the " Kill Bill " themes from earlier in the series, Randall imagines the conflict between Elaine/Stallman/Mrs. Roberts vs MPAA/RIAA agents as an action-packed katana battle, rather than the legal battle it would likely have been in real life.
The title text is talking about a Linux -ism. In Linux (and all Unix derivatives), ~ is a symbol for a user's home directory (usually /home/<username> ). Presumably, "nomad" is Elaine's username. find is an application that recursively walks a filesystem, listing all files, and xargs shred takes those files and securely erases each one with pseudo-random data. This is different from simply deleting a file, which merely removes the pointer in the filesystem's record tables to the file's location on the hard disk. The latter can usually be recovered from. Secure delete, however, requires physically taking apart a disk and reading individual bits for remaining magnetic charge to attempt to reconstruct what was there. This means she was trying to permanently delete her and Elaine's files, presumably so the agents wouldn't have any proof of their hacking.
Proprietary hardware is hardware (the electronics part rather than the software) created and used only by that company, as opposed to open hardware, which uses parts or chips common to everyone. Proprietary hardware used to be found in most gaming consoles and Apple/Mac devices, but that isn't as common now, since the cost of designing your own hardware is too expensive compared to using common chips.
[Elaine is sitting under tree on a grassy meadow typing on her laptop. Two trees are in the background where rolling hills goes to the horizon with a single cloud over the trees. Above the frame is text narrated by the Cueball from the first panel in the 2nd comic in the series:] Cueball (narrating): As time passed, Elaine intensified her hacking work, anonymously publishing exploit after exploit.
[Elaine, wearing a backpack, is walking up to a door where her mom Mrs. Roberts is greeting her in the open door at the top of two steps. Above this very low panel's frame, there is more of Cueball's narration:] Cueball (narrating): To crack open proprietary hardware, she teamed up with one of the top experts in signal processing and data transferring protocols. Elaine: Hi, mom. Mrs. Roberts: Hello, dear. Did you have fun?
[Elaine is lying on the floor with her laptop in front of her facing left with a charger on the floor further left. Mrs. Roberts is sitting to the right facing right on a chair working on her computer at a table. Cueball is still narrating above the frame:] Cueball (narrating): They were an unstoppable team. Elaine: I finished the CSS decryptor. Mrs. Roberts: Good, dear. I'll send it along to Jon.
[Pan to the right where two men in black bowler hats arrive. Both hold briefcases - the first guy's reads RIAA, and the other guy's reads MPAA. Cueball's last narration in the comic is above the frame:] Cueball (narrating): And were eventually noticed. RIAA man: Game's over. MPAA man: You're coming with us. Briefcase 1: RIAA Briefcase 2: MPAA
[Pan back left to the women. Mrs. Roberts stays in her chair sitting at her computer still typing, the screen emitting light, but Elaine has moved around to the right of the table and pulls out her folding knife and swings it open.] Elaine: Oh, are we? Mrs. Roberts: Now now, Elaine- Knife: Shink
[Pan back right to the two men who simultaneously pull katana swords out of each of their briefcase, while still holding onto the handle with the other hand. When when opened like this, it causes two pieces of paper to fly out of the RIAA man's briefcase and a notebook to fly out of the MPAA man's briefcase.] Katanas: Shing
[Pan back to the women. Mrs. Roberts continues to type on the laptop, a line going up from the keyboard indicating activity. Elaine still holds her open folding knife out, so the tip now touches the right frame of the panel.] Mrs. Roberts: Don't let them provoke you, dear. Man (off-panel): We don't want to hurt you, Ma'am. Mrs. Roberts: Don't by silly. Record company employees can't just go into houses and slice people up.
[Pan back right to the two men who hold up the katana swords having left their briefcases closed on the floor. The closest RIAA man is holding a hand up, the other MPAA man is holding his sword in two hands and pointing it threateningly forward.] RIAA Man: Ah, so you haven't read the DMCA. MPAA Man: Title IV, Section 408: Authorization of Deadly Force.
[A wide panel showing the whole scene with even Mrs. Robert now standing having just pushed her chair back, the computer inert. Elaine is bending in the knees, knife at the ready. Both bowler hat men, still holding their swords as before, but no hands up, have turned to look right back over their shoulder to see who speaks, as a voice comes from off-panel right.] Richard Stallman (off-panel): Hark!

[The scene pans further right, so the two women are no longer in the panel, but Richard Stallman can now be seen with his wild beard and long hair and holding two katana swords, one in front of him and one over his head also pointing towards the two bowler hat med. They are standing normally, looking back at Stallman. The MPAA man nearest him holds a hand to his mouth as he speaks.] Richard Stallman: Cease this affront to freedom Richard Stallman: Or stand and defend yourselves! MPAA Man: Stallman!


1337 Part 5

Explanation:
This is the fifth and last part of five in the " 1337 " series. The title 1337 is "L-eet," or "elite," using the Leet alphabet, a coding system used primarily on the internet (and on other early text messaging systems), meant to provide a bit of obfuscation to plain text both to make it harder to read (and potentially 'grep' for incriminating terms) and to show off in a creative way using in-group jargon.
All comics in the series:
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday, probably because he wanted to release comic 404 on april fools' day) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
The comic is narrated by Cueball as seen in part 2 comic, but that Cueball is not shown here, but still he is part of this comic series, and thus also this comic, as he narrates the epilogue.
Richard Stallman is the ardent defender of freedom and believer in copyleft ; he also founded the GNU Project . (He is not really a sword fighter but is always depicted with swords when featured in xkcd , which is in this series and in 225: Open Source ).
In the previous part, he came to the rescue of Mrs. Roberts and her Daughter Elaine Roberts . Stallman and Elaine quickly overpower the two enemies with black bowler hats who represent the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), use the Digital Millenium Copyright Act who had found out about the Roberts hacking.
Just when the two men have been defeated, Elaine asks how Stallman knew they where in trouble, and he tells it was his friend who told him about it. Climbing down a rope from the sky, the friend enters with a red cape and goggles. It turns out it is Cory Doctorow , a blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing . He is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization. He does not really travel around in a balloon or (usually) wear a red cape, but Randall introduced this idea in 239: Blagofaire and has continued it in later comics featuring Cory Doctorow . So he is climbing down from his balloon.
He uses the balloon to construct the Blogosphere , which is a name used to refer to all blogs on the Internet, many of which frequently link to and refer to other blogs. Here, the Stallman character talks about it as though Cory Doctorow actually constructs it, as if it were a portion of the atmosphere 20 km up over the tag clouds.
Blogs often label posts with keywords, known as tags. A tag cloud is a way of displaying the tags on a site where the more common tags appear in larger type than less-common ones. It has no relationship to actual water vapor clouds in the sky, but in the comic, the Doctorow character suggests that tag clouds are actually in the air, below the new blogosphere.
At this point we see that Mrs. Roberts is still programming while this fight and discussion take place. Her son Little Bobby Tables comes and tells her he is hungry, but she tells him that she does not have time when she is coding, and that he ate 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 very young adult, in which case her little brother could still be shorter than his mom (we see in Part 2 that, from age 11, she studied with Donald Knuth for four years, making her 15 when she left. However, it is not clear how long she was away from home after that).
Stallman gives Elaine a proposal to join GNU as a coder. GNU is supposed to be the pinnacle of free software; an operating system with no restriction, allowing the user to modify and customize anything they want about the computer. Stallman likely wants Elaine for her coding abilities, similar devotion to free software, and use her reputation as a hacker and open source pioneer to spread the word and further his project. This may also be a reference to the infamous "Free Software Song", [1] sung by Stallman in which he exhorts hackers to "join us now and share the software." But she is not ready yet, as she wished to take down the industry of MPAA and RIAA as Music doesn't need these assholes. In the meantime, Cory Doctorow throws the bowler hat guys out and orders them never to "darken our comment threads again."
Stallman is against her idea of going for straight war with the industry, and suggests that she help encourage sharing in the public mind. And then Doctorow chimes in with a suggestion that she has the ability to build better P2P systems, to which she asks if they mean straight up piracy. And this leads up to the punch line of the series, when Doctorow says she (i.e. "[Ms] Roberts"), would make a wonderful Dread Pirate!
Peer-to-peer, often abbreviated P2P, is a network system where tasks are partitioned between participants with equal privileges, in contrast with the client-server model, where the client makes requests and the server provides service. A common example of a peer-to-peer system is the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, which is often (mis)used for distribution of pirated software and media.
The Dread Pirate Roberts is a fictional character from the book and movie The Princess Bride . Roberts is the most feared pirate on the seas. But, "Dread Pirate Roberts" is merely a title that has been passed down as previous "Roberts" have gained enough money (from piracy) to retire comfortably. Westley, one of the main characters from The Princess Bride, becomes the Dread Pirate after being taken prisoner by the preceding Pirate Roberts. It is anyone's guess whether the entire 5-comic story, starting from the choice of Mrs. Roberts' name, began as just a lead-up to this one joke. At the end of the movie, Inigo Montoya has won the vengeance he has sought all his life, and expresses to Westley that he doesn't know what to do next. Westley suggests Montoya succeed him as Roberts, saying, "Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts." Cory Doctorow's line in the comic therefore mimics that line from the movie.
Silk Road was an online black market designed to allow criminals to trade in drugs, guns, and other illegal items, run by a person also using the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. However, this black market did not exist until four years after this comic was published.
In the epilogue, several items of interest are revealed about the Roberts’ later lives.
Elaine shared her ideas with Bram Cohen , who went on from that to found BitTorrent , a distributed method of downloading files. People can and do use BitTorrent both for lawful file downloads and also for sharing media files unlawfully. Its distributed nature, where someone does not download a file from just one other computer but rather in many pieces from many other computers with the same file, makes it more difficult for record and movie industry groups to police, and therefore a person with Elaine's motivations might be interested in helping design such a system.
Mrs. Roberts developed for Ubuntu , which is probably the most well known distribution of GNU/ Linux . A GNU/Linux distribution (often referred to simply as "Linux") is any operating system that is based on GNU software and the Linux kernel .
She also went after any website (defacing them) that made Your mom jokes about her daughter. To deface a website is like putting up graffiti or tearing down signs; she likely replaces the URL's content from the original site to another image, text box, or other message as revenge. This is a recurring theme on xkcd. Defacing websites is generally considered a low-level hacking activity, generally carried out by script kiddies using pre-packaged exploits rather than by highly skilled hackers like Elaine.
Finally a bit more info is given on how Elaine continues her fight: she joins random communities, helps with code, and mysteriously moves on. Sometimes she streams her music live on an IP address, and if you happen to find one of these with a streaming audio player, you can hear her rock out (a reference to her music career mentioned at the end of the third part).
The final phrase "Happy Hacking" often accompanies an autograph from Richard Stallman.
The title text is likely referring to the argument over Digital Rights Management , or DRM-locked content. These so-called 'DRM wars' are concerned about how DRM restricts the freedoms of people who buy them legitimately, and how it restricts creativity and innovation on the Internet. A large part of the debate is digital music, or music you would buy and download on the Internet through sites like Amazon or iTunes. The title text states that the DRM wars will end in the next decade or so, and we are living through very exciting times as we can see these wars unfold and eventually end.
In 2009, iTunes did remove DRM from any music they sold, which was a huge milestone at the time. Due to the rise in music streaming services (all of which use DRM to keep clients from downloading their songs) in the mid- to late 2010s, this achievement has been made void again.
[The two men in black bowler hats (RIAA and MPAA agents as known from the previous comic) with their katanas are attacked by Elaine Roberts with her folding knife and Richard Stallman with his own two katanas. Elaine kicks the RIAA man to the left in the back of his leg, while Stallman jumps over the MPAA man to the right, flying high over him from right to left in a flying maneuver hitting his sword while hanging parallel to the ground above the man.] Elaine: Thanks, Stallman! Richard Stallman: 'Tis my pleasure.
[Elaine stands to the left with her knife in one hand having folded it down again. Richard Stallman stands between the two men with bowler hats who are now lying on the floor on either side of him, each with one of Stallman's swords pointing at their throat. Stallman has both arms fully stretched towards them as he looks straight out of the panel. The left (RIAA) man lies flat on his back, his hat and katana lying behind him. The right (MPAA) man is sitting on his knee leaning as far back as he can, since the sword is almost touching the skin on his throat. He wears his hat, but the sword lies behind him, out of reach, even though he is leaning back on one hand close to it. To the far right, a rope comes down from the top of the panel, falling down on the ground so a section of it stretches even farther right in the picture. Down this rope comes a man with googles and a red cape, which is black on the inside. This is Cory Doctorow. He holds onto the rope with two hands, one over one just under his head.] Elaine: So, wait - how did you know we were in trouble? Richard Stallman: My friend here was tracking these thugs from his balloon. Richard Stallman: He called me and I thought I'd stop by. Cory Doctorow: -Hi! Cory Doctorow: Cory Doctorow - It's a pleasure to meet you.
[Elaine has shifted the knife to the other hand. Richard Stallman has moved to the left of the RIAA man, so both bowler hat men are between him and Cory Doctorow. Stallman still points his sword in their direction, but they are lowered. The RIAA man closest to him has picked up his hat in one hand and reaches for his sword with the other hand. The MPAA man now lies on his back, one arm up, leaning on the other. His sword is gone. It does not seem like Doctorow could have taken it. Behind him, Doctorow has reached the ground, the rope hanging behind him. He points left.] Elaine: Balloon? Richard Stallman: Aye. They're up there constructing something called a "Blogosphere." Cory Doctorow: Yup! It's twenty kilometers up, just above the tag clouds.
[The scene is contracted, so to the left, Mrs. Roberts at her desk with her chair and laptop becomes visible (from the previous comic). This without the other people has moved closer. She still types as her son Little Bobby Tables enters and lifts a hand in his mother's direction. He is drawn as a child version of Cueball. Elaine has put the knife away and looks at Richard Stallman, who now stands straight looking at her with the swords crossed in front of his legs. Behind him, just right of the rope hanging down, Cory Doctorow lifts one of the agents up by the throat while looking right and talking to him. The other agent has left the panel. The one he holds has his hat but no sword.] Little Bobby Tables: Mom, I'm hungry. Mrs. Roberts: Hush, I'm coding. You ate yesterday. Richard Stallman: You know, Roberts, GNU could use a good coder like you. Ever thought of joining us? Elaine: Maybe someday. Right now I've got an industry to take down. Elaine: Music doesn't need these assholes. Cory Doctorow: Begone, And never darken our comment threads again!
[Zoom in on Elaine, Richard Stallman, and Cory Doctorow. She stand straight looking at Stallman, who faces towards her swords now on his back crossed. Doctorow is also facing her and holds out both arms towards her. The rope is now outside the panel, as are both bowler hat men.] Richard Stallman: Well, you won't fix the industry with random exploits. You need to encourage sharing in the public mind. Doctorow: Hey; With your music and coding backgrounds, you should get into building better P2P systems.
[The final panel is only a third of the length of the previous panel. The three are still in the panel, but they have moved and are also drawn somewhat smaller. Elaine still faces them right, but now Cory Doctorow is in front of Richard Stallman's swords as before. All have their arms down.] Elaine: What? Straight-up piracy? Cory Doctorow: Sure - have you ever considered it? You'd make a wonderful dread pirate, Roberts.
[To the right of the final panel is a two-column epilogue narrated by Cueball as seen in part 2. It is split into three paragraphs and a "signature." The caption above is centered over the two columns.] E pilogu e Cueball (narrating): Elaine shared her ideas with Bram Cohen, who went on to develop BitTorrent. Mrs. Roberts spends her time developing for Ubuntu, and defacing the websites of people who make "your mom" jokes to her daughter. Elaine still stalks the net. She joins communities, contributes code or comments, and moves on. And if, late at night, you point a streaming audio player at the right IP at the right time - you can hear her rock out. ~Happy Hacking.~


Diet Coke+Mentos

Explanation:
This comic's premise is a reference to the phenomenon of dropping Mentos into a bottle of a carbonate beverage to create a geyser of said beverage . During 2007, a large number of videos depicting this phenomenon floated around the Internet.
Cueball wants to show this phenomenon to his friend, because it's "the coolest thing". However, instead of achieving the standard result, a geyser of Diet Coke, the friend's father magically appears (presumably from the dead or from abandonment).
An alternative interpretation is that the friend's father is resurrected/returned in an event unrelated to the geyser, undermining the geyser's coolness.
The title text shows that Randall considers (or at least then considered) this trick to be as cool as mixing corn starch and water to make a non-Newtonian fluid that reacts wildly with vibrations and impact.
[Cueball and his friend are sitting on the ground, with a bottle of Diet Coke between them, and Cueball appears to be putting mentos into the bottle.] Cueball: This is the coolest thing. You just drop the Mentos in the Diet Coke... Friend: Uh huh.
[Diet Coke starts to fizzle.] Cueball: Give it a moment...
[Someone teleports into frame in a magic puff. Cueball's arms are raised, with a package of Mentos in one hand.] POOF
Friend: D-Dad? Dad: I'm back, son. We can be a family again.


Brick Archway

Explanation:
Breakout is a video game first created in 1976, and since then it has gained much popularity and has been recreated in many different versions. In the game, the player controls a horizontal 'bat' at the bottom of the screen to make it move left or right. Above it are several layers of bricks that are destroyed when hit by the ball. The ball is not affected by gravity and will float around, bouncing off the walls, bricks, and the bat. The aim of the game is to keep the ball from touching the bottom of the screen (by deflecting it with the bat) long enough for the ball to hit and destroy all of the bricks.
Cueball 's approach to the game is to actually stand underneath a brick archway and throw a tennis ball at the structure above him in an attempt to destroy the bricks. Naturally, the physics in the game don't work in real life, [ citation needed ] and the aftermath of Cueball's actions is that one of the bricks in the archway comes loose and falls onto Cueball's head, causing possibly fatal damage.
The sentence at the bottom of the comic points out the illogical nature of the game when compared to real life.
The title text relates to a programmable calculator from the late 1990s that could have a Breakout -like game easily programmed into. This calculator, and others like it, were a requirement in many high school advanced math classes in the United States after the early 1990s, despite costing over $100. Randall speculates that, given the amount of distraction this simple game provided him back then, he would not be able to focus on study at all with modern technical instruments like laptops using wireless LANs .
[An inset panel to the left shows Cueball getting ready to throw a tennis ball upward.] [Cueball lies on the ground, underneath the titular brick archway, next to two halves of a brick. A pool of blood is coming from his head. Dust falls from the place in the archway where the he knocked the brick from with the tennis ball. The ball, meanwhile, has rolled about a meter away.] "Breakout" is a stupid game.


Close to You

Explanation:
This is Randall's version of the popular Carpenters song, " (They Long to Be) Close to You ." The actual first verse goes like this:
Why do birds suddenly appear Every time you are near? Just like me, they long to be Close to you
In this parody, the reason birds suddenly appear whenever the girl is near is because the girl is a zombie, and those are turkey vultures , carrion birds that prey on the flesh of dead bodies.
The title text is joking about couples not discussing their relationship before their wedding, as is seen here .
[Cueball is singing to Megan, who has wiggly lines and unkempt hair. Musical notes appear around Cueball's words.] Cueball: Why do birds suddenly appear
[Still singing.] Cueball: Every tiiiime you are neeear
[Cueball stops singing. He looks up.] Cueball: Wait, are those turkey vultures?
[Cueball turns to Megan.] Cueball: Okay, listen, are you a zombie? Megan: Hurrghhh...


Success

Explanation:
This comic refers to a common experience in which attempts to improve or change something can get you into even worse trouble, and where just getting back to the state at which you started becomes an arduous or even impossible task. Here, this idea is taken to a ridiculously (and amusingly) extreme level, where the attempt to install an operating system snowballs into ever more complicated problems, resulting in Cueball and Megan somehow literally getting themselves in deep water.
The OS they are trying to install is OpenBSD , an open source Unix operating system that, like some other Unix variants, is notoriously difficult to install and configure correctly, especially on home desktops with less common hardware profiles, and especially compared with the more popular Windows operating system.
The title text is a reference to OpenBSD's premium on security. For a time, their slogan was "Five years without a remote [security] hole in the default install!" This was eventually changed to "Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!" That their only standing security issue would be shark attacks is effectively an acknowledgement that any attempts to install the OS will only lead to getting stranded in the middle of the ocean.
This comic was referenced later in 1350: Lorenz . Trying to install BSD was also referenced in 518: Flow Charts . The last panel in 1912: Thermostat may explain how this comic ended. Later, another possible reason to ending up in the ocean was given in 2083: Laptop Issues .
This comic follows a similar storyline to 530: I'm An Idiot and 1518: Typical Morning Routine , as Cueball and Hairy encounter an issue and attempt proceedingly more absurd solutions to the issue.
[Four full-width panels arranged vertically, each with a label for number of hours elapsed, with a title above the stack of panels.]
Title: As a project wears on, standards for success slip lower and lower.
[Megan is standing behind Cueball, watching him as he sits at a desk working on a desktop computer on the desk.] Label: 0 hours Cueball: Okay, I should be able to dual-boot BSD soon.
[Cueball is on the floor fiddling with the open tower in front of him.  Megan is not shown in the panel, but may be off-panel unless Cueball is talking to himself.] Label: 6 hours Cueball: I'll be happy if I can get the system working like it was when I started.
[Cueball is standing in front of the computer, which now has a laptop plugged into the tower.  Megan is still not shown in the panel, but may be off-panel again.] Label: 10 hours Cueball: Well, the desktop's a lost cause, but I think I can fix the problems the laptop's developed.
[Cueball and Megan are swimming in the sea; an island and a beach can be seen in the distance.] Label: 24 hours Cueball: If we're lucky, the sharks will stay away until we reach shallow water. Megan: If we make it back alive, you're never upgrading anything again.


Network

Explanation:
Cueball shows off his virtual fishtank of virus-infected virtual Windows machines to Megan . The machines nominally have mail trojans , Warhol worms , all sorts of polymorphic viruses , and explicitly Blaster and w32.welchia . Cueball relates to the viruses as though they are fish, and hopes that they are all getting along together nicely. This is because part of welchia's payload was to remove the Blaster Worm , effectively destroying it.
A computer network or data network is a telecommunications network that allows computers to exchange data. In computer networks, networked computing devices exchange data with each other using a data link. The connections between nodes are established using either cable media or wireless media. The best-known computer network is the Internet.
Network computer devices that originate, route, and terminate the data are called network nodes. Nodes can include hosts such as personal computers, phones, and servers as well as networking hardware. Two such devices can be said to be networked together when one device is able to exchange information with the other device, whether or not they have a direct connection to each other.
Computer networks differ in the transmission medium used to carry their signals, the communications protocols to organize network traffic, the network's size, topology, and organizational intent.
It would be possible to set up a virtual fish tank as described.  The main issue would be to make sure that you don't accidentally let anything escape from the fish tank.  Consider it like a smallpox lab.  Also, some viruses are quite malicious [ citation needed ] and will prevent a computer from running normally, or at all.  An aquarium of dead computers would not be very interesting to watch. [ citation needed ]
The first part of the title text refers to the difficulty viruses have in the common doomsday threat of "disabling the internet" as a whole, although SQL Slammer had some brief success. The second part of the title text indicates that Randall believes A) that Linux and Mac OS X are inherently less vulnerable to virus attacks than Windows, and B) that Windows will become less important and disappear, so the virus writers had better get their act together soon.
It is not certain how justified this opinion is.  Fifteen years after this comic was written, Windows still dominates the desktop, and Linux and OS X are not that much harder to attack with viruses. A side issue is the wild growth in 'smart devices' connected to the internet, powered by non-traditional operating systems such as iOS and Android. Desktop operating systems such as Windows, Linux, and OS X are all becoming less relevant (although note that Android is based on the Linux kernel and iOS is based on OS X), so both the operating system war and the struggle against computer viruses are still "anyone's game."
A similar system to the one described by this comic was available online at http://wecan.hasthe.technology .  It was last reported to be available online on June 29, 2014, but is no longer available.
Instead of executing email attachments, the 7 VMs ran files uploaded via the site by the public, making it more of a public playground aquarium than a private fish tank. Instead of wiping machines at random, each VM runs a virus scanner every 24 hours.
[Megan looking at a large screen with many green and red squares. The squares have writing in them and lines connecting them.] [Side view. The screen is a huge LCD connected to a wireless router.] Cueball: Pretty, isn't it? Megan: What is it? Cueball: I've got a bunch of virtual Windows machines networked together, hooked up to an incoming pipe from the net. They execute email attachments, share files, and have no security patches. Cueball: Between them they have practically every virus. Cueball: There are mail trojans, warhol worms, and all sorts of exotic polymorphics. A monitoring system adds and wipes machines at random. The display shows the viruses as they move through the network. Growing and struggling. [Cueball walks past the girl and touches the monitor.] Megan: You know, normal people just have aquariums. Cueball: Good morning, Blaster. Are you and W32.Welchia getting along? Cueball: Who's a good virus? You are! Yes, you are!


Trolling

Explanation:
The term Trolling is used to describe provocative, destructive, or annoying behavior on the Internet . Especially common are Internet pranks of the bait-and-switch type, an example of which is Rickrolling . It involves placing a link that is supposed to contain interesting or funny material, but instead directs to the music video of the 1987 Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up . The prank first occurred in May 2007 on the popular imageboard 4chan and has since become a widespread internet meme .
The comic has Black Hat and Cueball digging into the ground and splicing Black Hat's computer into the TV cables of Rick Astley 's house. They are feeding the video of Never Gonna Give You Up into Astley's TV signal, who can be seen sitting in his living room and wondering why CNN has been replaced by his own video. The act of Rickrolling Rick Astley himself is declared to be a "great moment in trolling".
The title text mentions Goatse.cx (pronounced goat sex ), a former shock website that was used in a similar prank. People clicking on the feigned link would instead see the disturbing picture of a practitioner of anal stretching. The title text suggests that Black Hat and Cueball somehow made the (unknown) founder of the site click on an even more shocking link, or possibly put him in the personal presence of anal stretching.
Also note that the comic image itself is itself a Rickroll. Anyone curious enough as to why their mouse pointer became the selection icon to click on the comic (on the original xkcd page ) would find themselves watching "Never Gonna Give You Up."
Rick Astley was actually Rickrolled on reddit ( at r/pics ) on June 17th, 2020.
[Black Hat and Cueball are in Rick Astley's yard, hacking into his cable TV connection and replacing the signal. Rick Astley is sitting in a chair in his house, watching TV.] TV: CNN has obtained this exclusive footage of the riot-torn-- *CZZZHT* ♫ Never gonna give you up... ♪ Rick Astley: What the hell?
[Caption below the frame:] GREAT MOMENTS in TROLLING: Rick Astley is successfully Rickrolled


Far Away

Explanation:
Cueball and Megan are in a long-distance relationship ; in order to overcome the distance that separates them, they're keeping in touch with an instant messenger. Because their contact is limited to text, they have to write out the actions they wish to enact. Cueball is frustrated with the limitations of these place-holding phrases and longs for physical contact, going so far as to imagine himself hugging Megan in the messenger window.
In the title text, Cueball suggests that, sometimes, the only way to end his frustration is to travel across the country and see her face-to-face.
[Cueball hugging Megan in the messenger window of an early Microsoft Windows version.] Cueball: Meh. Cueball: Some nights, typing "*hug*" just doesn't cut it.