Phone Numbers

Explanation:
Cueball , who again represents Randall as given from the caption below the comic, has several phone numbers stored for White Hat under his contact entry on his phone and asks him which number he should generally use.
Often, people who have known each other for a long time may have old information recorded for each other, which may no longer be accurate. For instance, if they know each other from when cell phones were still rather new, they would have had a home phone number also. More and more people have discontinued their land lines and now only keep the cell phone number.
Cueball has five numbers for White Hat, listed here as #1 to #5 as they are numbered in the comic (and not the order he mentions them):
White Hat does say that Cueball should use #2, the Google Voice number. This is a telephone service that provides call forwarding and voicemail services, voice and text messaging for Google customers. Google is updating Google Voice so that is probably the reason for the comic as the update came out rather late on the day when Google made the announcement of the update.
However, he then makes it clear that this will only work when he is online with his laptop on a WiFi connection. This could be his way of saying that he only wishes to talk to Cueball when he is in such a position.
However, he also explains the other numbers more or less making it clear how he could be reached. And all in all it seems like his cell phone is still the best way to reach him.
Today on smartphones it could be possible in your contact list to save such tedious details about each number (such as "should always work but doesn't accept texts.") But who wishes to do so? Also not all cell phones do have this option, and maybe at best you can only label the numbers as "work", "home" or "cell" but not to the detail that White Hat provides.
In the caption below Randall explains that this kind of trouble with getting the correct number for people he wish to contact is one (another) of more (several?) reasons he never calls people. Today there are so many other methods of getting into contact, also even if texting is out of the questions as well. Skype, messenger, other social networking platforms like Facebook and of course the old way of sending a letter or talking in person...
White Hat's answer reveals a complicated history of communication practices. This cobbled-together personal technology is a common theme for Randall, see 1254: Preferred Chat System for another example, where Voicemail, text and Google Voice is also mentioned (and mixed in with written letter if not real mail).
The title text must refer to one of the five numbers saying that texting works for one of the numbers. This should then not be #3. It could be the number he says Cueball should use #2, but it seems more likely that it is an amendment to the last I think for #4. Maybe he realizes that this is the number he used to receive text on, when his #3 number was all he had and since that could not receive text he got the number which is now #4.
In either case the number he talks about can in fact receive text - but if #4 it can probably not receive phone calls. And then it gets weird because if the text gets too long then the message goes to voicemail . This is of course nonsense as a text message cannot just turn in to a spoken message. (Though of course there are text-to-speech programs, but as this takes up more space than text on a server, it would make no sense).
To cap it up, just in case it did turn into a voicemail, it would not make any difference because White Hat has been locked out of his voicemail.
It is not uncommon that young people never use voicemail and expect people to text them rather than leave a message. This could be a problem for them if "old" people call to let them know of a job they have been offered etc. So it is likely that Randall also jokes about this by letting White Hat be indifferent to having been locked out of his voicemail.
[White Hat is looking at a smartphone held out by Cueball.] Cueball: I have five phone numbers for you. Which one should I use? White Hat: That first one is my cell - you should use the Google Voice one, since it will forward to my laptop if I'm on WiFi. #5 is my work number, which just forwards to #1. #3 should always work but can't do texts. White Hat: You can delete #4. I think.
[Caption below the frame:] Another reason I never call people.


Sad

Explanation:
The comic is about Cueball confronting Ponytail over her recent behavior and poor emotional state over the past few months. While Ponytail doesn't give any details on what's causing it, it can be inferred that she is referring to the recent election of Donald Trump as President of the United States , which happened about 2 months prior to the publication of this comic. This is a common reaction in the United States whenever a new president is elected, as the voters who did not vote for the new/upcoming President will be feeling unpleasant emotions that their chosen candidate did not win, and will want to express these emotions to the wider world. With the advent of the internet, and more recently social media, the expressions of these emotions have grown more common and often more hyperbolic, regardless of the quality of the candidate.
Ponytail has retreated to video games for solace to the point that her real life projects are suffering. Stardew Valley is a video game in which a player creates and manages a virtual farm. And when Cueball mentions that her projects have stagnated, she retorts that her farm in the game is doing great. A comic with the name of that game was releases only two weeks later, 1797: Stardew Valley , indicating that it is indeed Randall who has played this game excessively.
Cueball's statement about not being able to hide from everything is a common one to give to insecure people or to those trying to run away from their problems. Ponytail's reply is in the form of a PolitiFact reply, claiming (possibly quite truly) that such assertions are mostly false , one of the six options, but it is far from being the worst, thus acknowledging that you can't hide from everything, just mostly. Politifact.com was also the subject of an earlier comic, 1712: Politifact .
In computer programming, comments are pieces of non-functional, descriptive text that programmers include in their code. Typically, they are used as a form of documentation, to make the code easier for other developers to understand. This is why Cueball is glad that Ponytail is at least writing more comments; documentation is something that's often neglected by developers, despite its usefulness. Unfortunately, the comments that Ponytail is putting in her code are not actually about the code at all; she is, presumably, commenting more generally on whatever is troubling her as a way of venting her issues.
Ponytail's reply to "write what you know" is a common piece of advice given to amateur fiction writers - it means that writers tend to write best when they are writing about something they personally know well, since they will have plenty of interesting and useful experience to draw from. However, since Ponytail's comments are full of obscenities, she is sarcastically suggesting that obscenity is all she currently knows.
Functions are reusable pieces of code which developers create to avoid repetition and make the code more organized. For example, if the code often has to calculate the distance between two points, it makes sense to place that calculation logic into a "calculateDistance" function, which can then just be called whenever it is needed. More generally, a function accepts inputs (eg. the coordinates of two points) and may return an output (eg. the distance between the two points).
Cueball notes, however, that all of the functions Ponytail has written are not actually doing anything with their inputs; they are just returning them straight back again and demanding that the calling code should deal with the problem itself. This makes the functions practically useless. Ponytail sardonically tries to justify this as a functional programming technique by saying that she is "avoiding side effects". A side effect is a situation in programming in which an isolated piece of code changes something about the global state of the program - this can be problematic, as there could be other parts of the code that were not expecting the change, and might behave differently as a result. Their different behavior is a side effect . Sometimes side effects are intentional, but when they are not, they can be tricky to debug and fix.
Functional programming is a programming paradigm in which most or all computation is performed within the scope of self-contained functions, thus avoiding stateful behavior entirely. This removes the possibility of any side effects, since each function only knows what it is told via its inputs, and does not need to be concerned with anything happening outside of itself. Technically, Ponytail is adhering to this paradigm, but only in the sense that her functions are not doing anything at all , and so cannot have side effects.
Cueball fairly makes this point by noting she is avoiding all effects, to which Ponytail quotes part of a famous quote from Ripley in Aliens : I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure . By replying that it's the " only way to be sure " she is thus indirectly saying better safe than sorry, but in reality she just doesn't care about her programming anymore because of her sad state of mind.
The title text is a pun, interpreting the phrase "side effect" literally. If you turn an object 90 degrees along the right axis you will place it on its side, so thus making it a effect of putting something on its side, or a "side effect." You can also turn 90 degrees (along another axis), facing what was previously your side.
Sadness could come from many causes (breaking up, family member dying etc). However, the notion that this comic is political is supported by the fact check in the second panel, and also that this was only the second comic released after Donald Trump 's inauguration . This comic gave rise to this page: Sad comics . It was the fourth very sad/negative comic in a bit more than two months after the election and the page describes the relations of these comics and others which relates to election or politics related to Donald Trumps presidency.
[Cueball is walking up to Ponytail who sits at her desk in an office chair typing on her computer.] Cueball: How are you doing? Ponytail: Hah. Cueball: You seem distant lately. For the past few months. Ponytail: Can't imagine why.
[Cueball talks to Ponytail at her desk from off-panel.] Cueball (off-panel): Your projects have stagnated. Ponytail: But my Stardew Valley farm is doing great . Cueball (off-panel): You can't just hide from everything. Ponytail: Fact check : Mostly false.
[In a frame-less panel Cueball is seen standing behind Ponytail at her desk.] Cueball: I'm glad you're including more comments in your code, but it would be nice if they were comments about your code. Cueball: Or at least a bit less obscenity-filled. Ponytail: Look, they say to write what you know.
[Cueball leans forward towards Ponytail at her desk (who has looked on the screen in the same position through the entire comic).] Cueball: All the functions you've written take everything passed to them and return it unchanged with the comment "No, you deal with this." Ponytail: It's a functional programming thing. Avoiding side effects. Cueball: You avoid all effects. Ponytail: Only way to be sure.


Telescopes Refractor vs Reflector

Explanation:
This comic compares two major types of optical telescopes : The refracting telescope and the reflecting telescope . A refracting telescope produces an image with a series of lenses. A reflecting telescope uses mirrors. (A third type, the catadioptric system telescope, uses both mirrors and lenses. It is not shown here.)
It first looks like the comic is simply trying to show that refracting has many flaws, such as expense, size and visibility (see more details below ). However, the punchline invalidates these complaints with the (apparently major) flaw listed with the reflecting telescope: It can't see space vampires .
The unstated reason for this is that vampires , according to some cultures , cannot be seen in a mirror. As Space Vampires (like earth vampires) are widely believed to be made up and thus unlikely to interest most stargazers , [ citation needed ] this complaint is superfluous, and the reflecting telescope effectively has no flaws in comparison to the refracting telescope. There are other problems, though, with reflecting telescopes see details below . (Also there was a big problem in the original version of this comic ).
Frequently, however, the right-angle transition at the base of the refractor telescope is done with a prism (an "image erector"). This uses the optical principle of total internal reflection. If mirror-non-appearance of vampires is due to the interaction of evil with silver, a refractor using a prism could still see vampires. On this theory, however, the reflector could too, since modern astronomical mirrors are coated with aluminum, not silver.
The title text expands on the seeing of supernatural beings, as another negative point is added to the refracting telescope; it apparently can't see Shadow People or the Slavic god Chernabog (sometimes spelled Chernobog), both of which are important although clearly not as important to the telescope's merit as seeing vampires since the fact is only mentioned in the title text. So of course the refracting telescope is still the best. Of course also neither the shadow people nor the god exists [ citation needed ] so this would likewise be a moot point.
In reality, "shadow people" are a psychological phenomenon wherein humans ascribe human shapes and movements to shadows in dark spaces. Chernobog is a 12th century Slavic deity, whose name translates to black god . His most famous appearance in modern media was in the 1940 Disney movie Fantasia (and Disney merchandise is also almost the only place that his name is spelled as Randall spelled it, with an "a" in the middle). Because shadows are dark and the god is also dark, they cannot be seen by the refracting telescope due to the reduced light-gathering which has already been mentioned as a drawback in the main comic.
Telescopes have been the subject of many comics on xkcd. Recently one about space telescope was released 1730: Starshade and before that a large "private" telescope was shown in 1522: Astronomy .
The basic performance of a telescope is determined by its size: a wider telescope catches more light, making it easier to see faint objects, while a longer telescope is better for high magnification viewing. For looking at stars, the width is actually more important. No matter how much you zoom, a star is too far away to make bigger, but with a big aperture, you can see stars too faint for the naked eye. Planets benefit more from magnification, and distant galaxies need both.
In both respects, it's much easier to make a big reflector telescope than a big refractor one. Since a lens can only be held in place by its edge, the center of a large lens sags due to gravity, distorting the images it produces. This means most refractor telescopes make do with narrow apertures only a couple of inches across. Reflector telescopes are sometimes called "light buckets" because they can have extremely big openings that can catch light from even very faint stars. In addition, because it has a mirror at one end, the reflector telescope is, in effect, twice as long as it appears - a refractor just cannot compete.
Refracting telescopes were only gradually overtaken by reflecting telescopes, however. In the age of great refractors , the largest telescopes in the world were refractors. Reflectors at the time had mirrors surfaced in speculum metal that began to tarnish only months after application, negatively affecting telescope performance. This problem was resolved when it became possible to surface a mirror in silver, but the problems with refractive lenses persist. Because of this, the largest optical telescopes ever built are reflectors, rather than refractors. In addition, a liquid mirror telescope uses a very cheap, but potentially very large mirror - with the drawback that the telescope can only look straight upwards.
Randall's points:
Other problems not mentioned by Randall:
It is worth noting that (apart from the vampire problem) a reflecting telescope also has disadvantages compared to a refracting telescope:
Despite this disadvantage, reflecting telescopes are used almost exclusively in modern astronomy because of practical limitations in making large refracting telescopes. Very few amateur astronomers use refracting telescopes - nowadays, they mostly exist to con people looking for Christmas presents in department stores (just because a telescope promises 100x zoom doesn't mean the image quality is any good!)
On the other hand, reflecting telescopes help astronomers gaze at Beige Gorgons (mentioned in comic 2360: Common Star Types ).
[A one panel comic showing two different telescope designs next to each other with labels above them and a bullet list of points below them. The left drawing will be described first then the right.]
[Left:] Refractor
[A slim telescope design is shown. At the top the light enters shown in a light yellow shade between two thin parallel light gray lines that just fits inside the opening of the telescope which is slightly wider at the top than at the lens sitting a short way into the opening. The lens causes the light to focus just where the telescope again changes dimensions, and the light enters a small opening at the bottom of the long pipe of the telescope. Here the yellow light is a point as the two gray lines cross each other at that point. The light then broadens slightly again and the thin yellow light cone hits a mirror at the bottom of the telescope and is reflected to the left and out through the eyepiece. Below are the following points:] More expensive Less compact Chromatic aberration Reduced light-gathering
[Right:] Reflector
[A much broader (more than 150% of the first) but also much shorter (66%) telescope design is shown. At the top the light enters shown in a light yellow shade between two thin parallel light gray lines that still just fits inside the opening of the telescope. On it's way down to the bottom of the telescope the light passes by a small mirror turned down towards the bottom. When the hits the curved bottom mirror light is focus on it's way back back and a small light cone hits the small mirror mentioned before sitting almost at the top of the telescope. This mirror reflects the light to the left into an even thinner light cone that goes out through the eyepiece located near the top of the telescope. Below is the following point:] Can't see space vampires
In an earlier version of this comic, the eyepiece of the refracting telescope included a mirror, often used with refractors to give an upright image and more comfortable access for the observer. This would of course invalidate the only advantage it has (vampire-visibility) over reflecting telescopes.
Randall later corrected this so the current/final version shows the light going straight out of the end.
An amici roof prism is sometimes used instead of a mirror with refractors, because it does not only deliver an upright image, but also one that is not a mirror image. In a prism, there is only total reflection, which, as opposed to a metal mirror, would probably work on vampires.


Bird/Plane/Superman

Explanation:
This comic is a logical comparison of observations to resolve the classic Superman catchphrase of comic book bystanders: "Look, up in the sky... It's a bird !... It's a plane !... It's Superman !", hence the title. Superman, a character originally created for comic books in the 1930s, is an alien with superpowers, including the power of unaided flight; hence the catchphrase exclaiming peoples' amazement.
At the correct distance both birds, planes and the fictional Superman could be mistaken for each other. So this comic aims to help people identify the airborne object by listing on which properties they are alike and on which they are different. This problem was also mentioned in the title text of 1633: Possible Undiscovered Planets , putting Superman near the bird/plane boundary explaining why all this confusion has arisen.
The observations compared range from the mundane to the bizarre and they are listed and explained below in the table . Here some highlights are mentioned, but for all these there are much more detail below.
Some of the mundane observations are that birds don't fly around with people, while Superman can do it, and planes are meant for it;  and that the latter two are new "inventions", whereas birds have flown around for millions of years.
Interestingly enough there are actually two observations that have check mark for all three; the first being that there are enthusiasts for all three different flying objects. And these will obsess over small color details in otherwise similar looking objects. The other common thing is that they all may have sex in midair. The possibility of that happening for the all three are discussed in the table.
Three observations only counts for birds, where all those that do not count for birds do count for both planes and superman. Two of these relates to the fact that birds are eaten by cats and humans, the last is that birds flap their wings to fly, the others have other means of flight. There are observations that rules out only planes or only superman, but none that rules out only one of them at the same time as birds are ruled out.
There are also three direct jokes towards the bottom. The first is that David Attenborough may also have observed Superman's mating habits just like he has with birds in the documentary series The Life of Birds . The second is that not only birds poop in flight, but that Superman could and would also do so. And the third (and also final observation) is that not only birds chase insects to eat them, but Superman also chases them... though only when he is bored. These last three observations have that in common that the planes are left out of all of them, and the joke is always on Superman. As it has been before in 1384: Krypton and 1394: Superm*n (released just ten comics apart).
The title text refers to black stickers (decals) in the shape of an easily recognizable predatory bird, like falcons to enhance the visibility of clear glass windows or doors and scare smaller birds away before they crash into the window. This may actually not work very well according to this article: Why Birds Hit Windows , where a falcon decal is also shown. But they are meant to warn birds away and according to this comic they could also prevent Superman from flying through your window (and thus also stop him from possibly just continuing through the building). They are not known to affect the risk of airplanes flying into the building. [ citation needed ]


Soda Sugar Comparisons

Explanation:
This comic is one of the rare incidences where the title is actually written at the top of the comic. It is also a rare example where an old comic, 1035: Cadbury Eggs , is directly referenced, and even at such a prominent place, albeit in a faded down gray font.
In the comic, Randall compares soda's sugar content to different types of sugary food (see trivia ).
The first two panels compare the sugar content of a 20 oz bottle of soda (i.e. 591 mL, thus almost like a half liter bottle) to three Cadbury eggs or one Snickers bar if it had the length of the bottle (9 inches or about 23 cm; most actual Snickers bars are only 4 inches or 10 cm, though the company does manufacture various "king" sizes).
In the next row, Randall compares one bottle of soda each day of a week (seven bottles) to a bottle of cake frosting .
Continuing the estimations in the third row, Randall states that one soda a day for six months will provide the same amount of sugar as four gallons of Skittles (15.1 liters).
Finally, Randall compares three years' worth of daily sodas contains as much sugar as a convenience store's 20-foot (6.1 m) long candy counter .
The reference to Cadbury Eggs is of course the topic of the referenced comic 1035: Cadbury Eggs , which has the same comparison between soda's sugar content and Cadbury Eggs, as well as comparing a number of other substances to the eggs. So that comic goes the other way around.
In the title text, it is stated that the key is portion control, which sounds normal until it is revealed that the portion control is actually for frosting instead of soda. Eating frosting out of cans is also referenced in the title text of 418: Stove Ownership .
Of interest in this case is that the American Heart Association recommends less than 20-36 grams per day for a sedentary lifestyle (7.5 to 9 MJ per day).
[Above the four rows of two panels with captions above them are the following title and note:] Soda Sugar Comparisons See also xkcd.com/1035
[Above the two columns of panels are the following captions for the left and right column:] In terms of sugar, drinking this much soda... ...is equivalent to eating this:
[In the first rows left panel there is a drawing of a bottle with a screw cap and label. The content in the bottle is gray, as is the cap. The air above the liquid in the bottle beneath the cap as well as the label are light gray and the label is empty of text. The following text is written on three lines left of the bottle next to the label:] One 20 oz soda bottle ( e.g. Coca Cola )
[In the opposite first row right panel there are two drawings. First three gray eggs are placed in a small pyramid. A thin line goes down the lang axis of the eggs. Text on two lines is below the eggs. Next to the eggs is a long gray bar standing up. It has wiggly lines for giving its surface features along its entire length. Two lines at the top and bottom are used to measured the length with two arrows pointing to either line, which are then going to the text next to the bar which are thus in between the arrows, taking up five lines.] 3 Cadbury eggs... ...Or a Snickers bar the length of the bottle.
[In the second rows left panel seven soda bottles are drawn like the one in the first panel (as are all later bottles). They are standing close to each other. Along the bottom of all the bottles is the following text:] One soda per day for a week
[In the opposite second row right panel there is a drawing of a bottle with light gray content being poured out of the open bottle down in to a small pile next to the screw cap lying below the open bottle. The content is obviously not liquid but rather oozing frosting being dumped out of the bottle not ending up in a puddle but in a taller structure with jagged edges. A bit of the oozing material hangs far out of the bottle without dropping. Also the light gray content in the bottle is uneven with darker and brighter patches. Below and left of the screw cap and pile of goo there are two lines of text:] One bottle of cake frosting
[In the thirds rows left panel a soda bottle is drawn next to two rows of three full month calendar pages, which takes up the same height as the bottle. A text below the pages takes up two lines.]|| One soda per day for six months
[In the opposite third row right panel there drawings of four large transparent plastic milk jugs filled to the to the brim with something that is a mixture between gray and white in small clumps. Two of the jugs are in front of the other two, and covers all but the top of the one between them and half of the last which extends right of the other two. Leaning up against the rightmost jug is a dark gray pack of candy with the candy name written in white on the open pack, and more unreadable white text is at the top of the pack. Next to the pack lies five candy pieces, three in front and two to the right. These candy pieces are dark gray (three) or light gray (two). There is a line of text beneath the jugs:] Label: Skittles Four gallons of Skittles
[In the fourth and final rows left panel one soda bottles is next to three rectangles on top of each other with a year given in each. Beneath the drawing there is a text over two lines:] 2017 2018 2019 One soda per day for three years
[In the opposite fourth row right panel there is a drawings of a convenience store counter with three cashiers behind it at their cash register with payment terminal close by each of them as well. From left to right they are Ponytail, Cueball and  Megan. the cash registers are to the left for all of them, with terminal next to it for Ponytail and on the other side for the other two. Between the two outer and the middle cashier, there are two signs on high poles with unreadable text. One is close to Ponytail the other is in the middle of the other two. Beside Cueball there is an additional flat thing which could be a candy weight. To Megan's right there is a square thing on top of which something sticks up in several layers. It could be a box of Kleenex. On four rows of shelves under the disc various items are closely stacked, so they cannot be separate from one another. It in though possible from white rows with prices to see that there are four rows. Underneath this drawing there is a text in two lines:] A convenience store's entire 20-foot candy counter


Fire

Explanation:
In the United States and Canada, the term multiple-alarm fire is used to categorize the level of response to fires by local authorities, for instance how many units responded to the alarm. The range typically only goes through a small number of levels: typically a one-alarm fire, two-alarm fire, and three-alarm fire, perhaps up to five or six alarms in some cities, though a ten-alarm fire did occur near where Randall lives two months before the comic.
In the comic, a newspaper front page is shown with its cover story reporting a "50,000-alarm" fire, with a picture of a factory on fire. The humor lies in the unusual use of the term.  Instead of indicating the severity of the fire, the number merely indicates the number of alarms being manufactured or stored in the factory at the time of the fire. As indicated by the sound waves, or agitrons, shown in the image, at least some of those alarms appear to have been set off. It is unclear what the causal relationship between the alarms and the fire is.  The presence of fire might have activated those alarms (e.g. if they are smoke detectors), the sounding of alarms might have caused the fire to start (e.g. due to workers' attention being diverted from other critical operations), or they might be unrelated events that happened at the same time.
The title text mentions the musician Billy Joel being detained briefly as a suspect for the fire. But he was quickly released, likely because he didn't start the fire , which is a reference to his song " We Didn't Start the Fire ". In other words, Billy Joel's claim that he is not responsible for the fire at the alarm factory has been taken seriously enough for him to be released. Also, the reference is humorous because it compares the literal fire depicted in the factory to the metaphorical fire in people's hearts, in the song. (Or just ignores the fact that the song's fire was metaphorical, for the sake of the joke.)
The incident where Billy Joel got arrested for arson was earlier shown on a similar folded newspaper with only one line of text visible next to an image. This was in comic #4 of 821: Five-Minute Comics: Part 3 .
This all fits together as the cover of the single is also a newspaper page with a picture of Billy Joel beneath a headline which is the title of the song. The column of text to the right of the picture is readable here. It is not easy to read it through as some of the text continues outside the image. (The text is a section of the lyrics for the song starting from "Richard Nixon" after the fourth chorus continuing in to the next chorus).
The lyrics of the song is also mentioned in 1775: Things You Learn .
That Billy Joel was released is also obvious since he has also sung the song An Innocent Man , where he sings I am an innocent man, Oh yes I am .
[The comic shows the top part of the front page of a folded newspaper. The main headline is the only readable with a photo covering half of the pages below. In the photo a factory is on fire, with sound waves emanating to all sides. There are several sections with unreadable text.] 50,000-Alarm Fire at Alarm Factory


All You Can Eat

Explanation:
An all-you-can-eat buffet is when a restaurant will charge you once for entry and then continuously serve you more food at no additional cost until you have eaten all-you-can-eat. Part of the " My Hobby " series, this comic shows Randall wishes to pre-pend "all-you-can-eat" to random stores.
With the exception of the pet store, which sells pet food, these stores do not sell food, so the very idea of eating their product would be ridiculous for most humans. However, this is what Randall's stunt makes the stores he defaces seem to advertise. Most people would not seriously consider eating the products these stores sell [ citation needed ] even with the signs suggesting they should, as they sell tires , hair cuts , lumber and flooring and pets .
The "all-you-can-eat" signs obscured the top line for three of the four shops signs. It is not really possible to read the obscured part of the first two signs, although it is likely that the first and last letters in the first sign are A and K. And also since the A is taller than the white sign, this first letter must be larger than the others which do not show above the white sign. There could be room for anything from 8 to many more letters hidden as it can be seen in the second line below that the I's take up much less space than the other letters. But from the letters below it seems likely there were 9 (maybe including a space) if no I's were used resulting in a word or two like this "A _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ K". All letters in the comic seems to be capital, but Randall sometimes use small caps, where the first capital letter is larger than the others. This would fit with this sign.
The third sign is fully visible, and it makes sense as it is not a name in the top line but part of the description of what the store provides.
The last sign is though clearly readable even though the white sign covers the name at the top, and it says "Kevin's Pet Store". There actually exists a web page with the name "Kevin's Pet Shop" , supposedly located in Texas, but there is very limited information on the page. See more about the use of Kevin in xkcd in the trivia below.
In the title text, Randall seems to have fallen for his own prank. After he puts the "all-you-can-eat" sign onto the signmakers' place, he proceeds to heed his own sign literally and eat the posterboards that he is supposed to make signs from. To remind himself not to make the same mistake again, he tells himself to "do the sign-making place last."
It should also be noted that sometimes "all-you-can-eat" is used to mean "unlimited usage". An all-you-can-eat data plan, for example, is another way to say unlimited data. If this definition of the word were used, all-you-can-eat would mean "unlimited copies of our product for a one time fee". A kapsalon can, arguably, also be called an all-you-can-eat hair salon.
Note that some pets are considered food in some cultures; rabbits are commonly kept as pets as well as served as food, dogs are consumed in some areas in eastern Asia, guinea pigs in South America and Africa, and some fictional characters are known for eating cat. Even more normally, a cat owner that wants to buy an "all you can eat" bird feast for their cat would be happy with this last store.
Aside from pets, pet stores also sell pet food, and while frowned upon by some, it is common practice to give human nutrition supplements to pets and vice versa. Some animal snacks are considered very tasty by many people, and there even exist several brands of snacks designed to be eaten both by people and their pets so that the owners could feel somehow closer to their beloved companion. Premium pet foods are made to standards that are no worse than standards for human food, so eating them poses no health risks in the short term - long term, most pet diets would fail to deliver the right balance of nutrients needed by humans.
[The comic shows the facades of four stores next to each other on a street, with the sidewalk shown in front of them. To the top of each store's name there has been appended white signs. Three of the white signs partially cover the name part of the sign above three of the stores, but the fourth sign is placed entirely above the text of the third store. Thus that white sign's top is higher up than the building's.]
[First store from the left. The top line of two on the store's sign is obscured by the white sign:] White sign: All-you-can-eat Store sign: Discount Tires
[Second store from the left. The top line of two on the store's sign is obscured by the white sign:] White sign: All-you-can-eat Store sign: Hair Salon
[Third store from the left. The white sign on this store is slightly tilted, and most of it is above the top of the store completely above the store sign:] White sign: All-you-can-eat Store sign: Lumber and Store sign: Flooring Depot
[Fourth store from the left. The top line of two on the store's sign is obscured by the white sign. However, the name can still be deduced, and the top line says "Kevin's".] White sign: All-you-can-eat Store sign: Pet Store
[Caption below the frame:] My hobby: Going out at night and adding "all-you-can-eat" to every store's sign


Focus Knob

Explanation:
The comic is a pun. Normally, a rotary control knob is used for adjusting parameters in instruments, and the parameter "focus" is used to adjust the focal length on microscopes, telescopes, and other lens-based equipment. Here, however, the "focus knob" is used for Randall's personal sense of focus -- that is, how focused he is on his work and productivity, with the extremes of focus being towards Detail-Oriented (small details) and the Big Picture respectively. (A similar knob was used in 1620: Christmas Settings ).
The healthy balance, Randall suggests, is focusing mostly towards the Big Picture (two thirds of the way towards the Big Picture between ticks 24 and 25 out of 37), while keeping an eye on the details by still staying one third Detail-Oriented . Focusing too much on the big picture can ensure nothing gets done, leading to panic and existential paralysis . Unfortunately, the range of healthy balance appears to be vanishingly small and difficult to reach; additionally, if we assume the knob can only stop at the little ticks marked along the outside and that the boundaries are not inclusive, there is no way to set it in the window of Healthy Focus .
While performing any task (including your daily life as well as editing explainxkcd), it is easy to get so lost in the details that you forget the big picture. It is also equally easy to think too much about the big picture and make vague plans while missing out on the details.
It is clear that at the moment Randall is mainly focusing on the small details fiddling with his e-mail settings as the knob is set to the 13th tick only just past one third away from Detail-Oriented . He thus seems to try to avoid seeing the big picture right now, since it is his personal knob to set as he wishes.
Existential paralysis stemming from Randall getting worried about realizing how serious the state of the world is today (at the time of the comics release) are a common punchline in xkcd. With all the crises going on around the world, people get bombarded with these negative stories if they follow the news, either on TV, in news papers of on any social media (See 1773: Negativity ), especially on Facebook (see 1761: Blame ). It can thus become very overwhelming, if people do not focus more on their e-mail settings! This goes especially in a time like this, where many panics on Facebook due to for instance wars and conflicts around the world (like in Syria ), talk about climate change , or all the executive orders currently being signed by the recently inaugurated President Donald Trump , who took office less than three weeks before this comic's release. See more about these issues and other recently released sad comics here .
Getting too deep into all this could cause the kind of panic attacks that could lead to the existential paralysis mentioned on the right side of the knob. It is these that Randall may be trying to avoid by keeping his focus firmly in the realm of e-mail settings rather than anywhere near the big picture.
The joke in the title text relates to Randall's use of an old fashioned analog control, probably a potentiometer , in the graphic versus a more electronically modern and efficient switching system.  Randall imagines a replacement control using pulse-width modulation (PWM), which is a technique often used to control the regulation in electronic power supplies or the speed of electric motors with far greater power efficiency than simpler analog controllers. This technique consists of shifting between fully on and fully off states so that the average is the expected output, but no power is wasted by holding the control mechanism "partially on". For example switching back and forth between 0 and 1, spending half the time in each position will lead to a mean value of 0.5. To code 0.67 (the healthy balance ), Randall would have to spend more time in the extreme big picture position (67% of the time) than in the detail-oriented position.  In the real world of course, a person switching so radically and completely between attention states might get diagnosed with some sort of mania . But the knob might just be switched between the dividers bordering the healthy zone, creating the perfect balance.
[Caption above the drawing:] Personal Focus
[A gray rotary control knob with the range of options divided by small ticks on a black semi. The knob has a black line that indicates that the knob's setting. At the bottom left and right where the semi circle begins and ends there are two labels in normal black text:] Left: Detail-Oriented Right: Big Picture
[Above and all along the black semi circle with the range, another semi circle is drawn in light gray. This has been divided into three sections, with two large sections left and right forming the actual semi circle with double arrow lines. There is a short section with no tick inside it between the two other sections. There are three labels for each of these section, with a line from the label down to the small section. All described here are drawn light gray color. Note that Randall has misspelled "existential".] Left section: Fiddling with email settings Right section: Panic and existental paralysis Small section: Healthy balance


Stardew Valley

Explanation:
Stardew Valley is an indie farming simulation role-playing video game published by Chucklefish Games . Just as in similar games like Farmville and Harvest Moon , the player takes the role of a farmer who establishes their own farm and performs everyday tasks such as watering plants , growing food, and tending to animals. Pelican Town , referenced in the title text, is a fictional village in this game.
In this comic, Cueball begins his morning routine in a Stardew Valley session by waking up and watering some of his farm's plants.  However, he then walks up to a sleeping cat, pauses for a moment, then pours water on it, startling it awake.  He says "Dammit!" to this, likely indicating this isn't the first time he's made this mistake.
In the game, watering plants is an essential chore, which requires the player to "equip" a watering can.  The player moves their character up to a plant and simply presses an action button (or key) to perform the watering action.  The same action button is used to interact in different ways with other things, animals and people (e.g. to talk to them), so accidentally leaving the watering can equipped while trying to talk to someone can cause the player to "water" them instead.  The comic illustrates how easy it is to do this in the game, as well as the comedic value of seeing this happen from the point of view of the player's character.
The title text reinforces this humor by indicating that Randall has used the watering can, probably unintentionally, on nearly every person and object in the game.  It's amusing to think that he may curse each time he realizes he's still holding the can when he tries to talk to someone.  (His use of the word "Dammit" in this comic also calls to mind a brief discussion on the word in 559: No Pun Intended .)
The use of the word "virtually" in the title text plays with the word's double meaning. It is used here in the sense of "almost", however when swapping the words "virtually" and "waters", the word assumes its alternate meaning, but the title text still makes sense: Since the game is only a simulation, the player "virtually waters" his plants.
Stardew Valley was also mentioned only two weeks prior to this comic in 1790: Sad ; this comic explains why.
Interestingly, this comic is drawn in a slightly unusual style for xkcd .  Of note is the border around the caption ("Stardew Valley Morning Routine"), the thicker-than-normal penmanship, and the use of drawn borders around the watering sound effects, Cueball's yawn, and the cat's sleeping word balloon.  The cat's balloon in particular follows the visual style of the game (in which certain objects and animals may show their current emotional states with word balloons) - more generally, actions that normally occur in the game, such as the yawn and the watering action, appear to be shown in balloons while Cueball's "Dammit!" is written in the style of other xkcd comics.  This likely suggests that Cueball's epithet here represents the player (Randall) actually saying this in response to the incorrect action of his character in the game.
[Inside a slim frame at the top of the comic there is a caption:] Stardew Valley morning routine
[Below this frame there are two rows each consisting of three small panels taking up the same width as the caption panel above:]
[Cueball wakes and rises up from his pillow sitting beneath his blanket in his four poster bed with round knobs. He yawns with a hand to his mouth. Above him floats a large sound bubble:] Cueball: Yawn
[Cueball walks to the right with a small watering can held in front of him.]
[Cueball pours water from the can over the three small plants. A line goes from the water to another bubble:] Water: Splish
[Cueball walks back to the left with the watering can.]
[Cueball stops with the can right next to a sleeping cat, which has a speech bubble pointing to its head.] Cat: Z
[Cueball proceeds to pour water on the cat which immediately jumps up away from him trying to escape as water cascades on it. Again there is a line from the water to a speech bubble, but both the cats angry sound and Cueball's comment is written without bubbles.] Water: Splish Cat: Mrowl!! Cueball: –Dammit.


Box Plot

Explanation:
This comic shows three vertical box plots in the first panel, hence the title.
In descriptive statistics , a box plot is a convenient way of graphically depicting groups of numerical data through their quartiles . The second quartile is the median and it is not indicated in this comic, as it should be a line through the box (see the definitions of quartiles ). But the top and bottom of the box is the first and third quartile, which splits the lowest/highest 25% off data of from the highest/lowest 75%, respectively.
Box plots may also have lines extending vertically from the boxes (whiskers) indicating variability outside the upper and lower quartiles, (that is, the highest and lowest values in the data,) hence the terms box-and-whisker plot. These can be used to indicate the interquartile range , a measure of statistical dispersion . These have been included on the three boxes in the plot.
The joke in the comic arises, because it turns out that the box plot is actually three real world objects and Cueball walks into the plot in the second panel, climbs up on the lower first box and on to the highest middle box. When the boxes are depicted in the orientation shown, the boxes can look like they are pumps, where the middle part, the box, can be pumped up. And Cueball does just that in the fourth panel, by pushing the top whisker down and when he leaves in the fifth and last panel, this box stays inflated, with the whisker visibly lower than in the first three panels, although higher than when he pushed it down in the fourth panel. (Inflating things that cannot be inflated was also the joke in 1395: Power Cord . But as opposed to inflating the meaning of data, which many researchers sadly do in the real world, what Beret Guy does in that comic, is strictly supernatural .)
It could be said that the "data" in this comic was "inflated" and thus Cueball has been trying to show a smaller interquartile range than there actually is, thus inflating the possible conclusions that could be drawn from the data.
The title text refers to how dynamite , an explosive, often used to have detonator boxes (aka. blasting machines ) which also looked similar to the top part of the box (without the lower whisker). These detonators were most commonly used for mining, with long wires leading to the explosives. Modern blasting machines are operated by push buttons and key switches, but the old push-handle design still resonates in the public consciousness today, due to its exposure in classic slapstick cartoon shorts like Looney Tunes , especially often used by Wile E. Coyote against the Road Runner. See this compilation for examples.
The title text also refers to so-called dynamite plots . This type of plot used to be very common in scientific publications, but since it hides most details about one's actual data, it is now frowned upon. The recommended alternative is the box plot.
The title text thus warns against this kind of data inflation, since sometimes it can go awry and lead to explosions. Randall has often made comics about presenting data as more important that they are, in one way or another, and this comics clearly falls into that category. See for example 882: Significant , 1132: Frequentists vs. Bayesians , 1478: P-Values and 1574: Trouble for Science , and this one for manipulating the way data is presented: 558: 1000 Times .
A box plot was also used in 539: Boyfriend , maybe the only other time in xkcd. There are many other types of data carts that have their own subcategories, but not this type.
[A box plot with three vertical data points is shown. Each point consists of a shaded rectangular box, and a T-shaped whisker on each end.]
[Cueball walks in; revealing that the box plot is a physical object which he looks up on.]
[Cueball climbs on top of the diagram, holding onto the top whisker of the leftmost data point.]
[Cueball, now standing upright on top of the box plot, bends over, grips the whisker of the center data point and starts pumping. The shaded box of the data point bulges. Cueball's movements are accompanied by sounds:] Pump Pump Pump
[The box has been inflated so much that it almost touches the left and right data points. Cueball walks away.]


Bad Map Projection Time Zones

Explanation:
This is the second comic in the series of Bad Map Projections and presents Bad map projection #79: Time Zones. It was first with this comic that it became a series. The series began a month earlier with 1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize (#107). It was followed almost three years later with 2256: Bad Map Projection: South America (#358).
This comic shows a map projection in which countries are placed according to the time zones that they fall under. It seems that Randall , being Randall, runs with the idea as he has made yet another map projection that is not only inaccurate, but utterly unusable, though less so than the previous one.
The first "Liquid Resize" was #107, while this comic features #79. Since the liquid resize was purely aesthetic, whereas this one at least conveys some meaningful information it makes sense that this projection is ranked higher.
Conceptually, the series is a comment on the fact that there is no perfect way to draw a map of the world on a flat piece of paper. Each one will introduce a different type of distortion, and the best projection for a given situation is sometimes very disputed. Randall previously explored 12 different projections in 977: Map Projections , and expressed his disdain for some types he sees as less efficient but whose users feel superior. None of them are really good as any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality, and a map projection that is useful for one aspect (like navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) will not be so for all the others. Local maps of smaller areas can be quite accurate, but the idea of both these map projection comics is to map the entire globe on a flat surface.
Time zones are based on the way the Sun shines on the Earth, so these time zones, which are based on the sun's position in the sky, would best be divided by roughly longitudinal (North-to-South Pole) lines. However, this is not the case in practice, as the defined time zones tend to have very jagged boundaries, and furthermore some countries use a completely different time than the zones they are in, at least for some parts (see China ). Since Randall knows he cannot fix the boundaries of the time zones, he instead "fixes" the world by making a map appear to match up with the time zone system, as shown in this map , also posted in the trivia . This results in bizarre distortions such as the large, gum-like strands of Greenland (these are the towns of Danmarkshavn (UTC) and Ittoqqortoormiit (UTC-1), which use different time zones to the rest of the island) and three enormous gulfs in Russia (some time zones in Russia are only used in southern areas, leaving two-hour differences between some adjacent areas on the country's northern border).  See also this map with a time zone map overlayed the comic .
The effect of this map is to "punish" large countries with a single time zone - for instance, China, which uses UTC+8 across the whole country - and countries that share large time zones - for instance, almost all of Europe is packed into the Central European UTC+1 zone - by shrinking these down. Conversely, countries that use multiple time zones without filling them out are stretched out - for example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Mongolia , as pointed out in the title text - as are slim countries that do not fill out the full width of their time zones but where their neighbors use different timezones so they have to fill the entire width of their time zone. For instance Finland (also mentioned in the title text) and the Baltic countries , who look huge because their western and eastern neighbors do not use the UTC+2 Eastern Europe time, and thus have to fill out the distance between the countries that are pushed to the zones on their east/west borders.
Other map projections distort countries this way as well, but based on their actual physical location as opposed to their position on imaginary time zones. The Mercator projection is infamous for distorting Greenland in this way, to the point that it appears to be larger than Africa despite being nowhere near the same size.
See the table below for lots more information on the comic, but here are some further details.
The map is imperfect for several reasons:
Randall attempts to preserve adjacency where possible - for instance, Chad and Sudan are neighbors even though Chad uses West Africa Time (UTC+1) and Sudan uses East Africa Time (UTC+3). Randall draws an extremely thin strand connecting the countries through Central/South Africa Time (UTC+2), even though no part of Chad or Sudan uses this time. Similarly, a thin strand of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan is shown projecting into the UTC+4 time zone in order to separate Russia and Iran, which do not really share a border. Worst of all is China, which has to have borders to several countries that do not share the single eastern time zone of east China, which the whole China is forced to use. A thin strand, resembling the Yangtze river, is shown passing through time zones that China does not use. This is the most complicated preservation of adjacency shown in the map.
There is no mention of daylight saving time - all countries shown are given the base winter time. Depending on the time of year, countries will shift around - around June, many northern hemisphere countries will move east, while some southern hemisphere countries will move east around December.
The map doesn't allow for half-hour time zones. (India, for instance, is on UTC+5.5) Instead, countries that use fractional time zones are shifted so they straddle the two time zones, and are then marked with an asterisk (*). This is also true of regions within countries, including the island of Newfoundland in Canada and a section in the center of Australia.
The only extra detail mentioned in the map is also for Australia. It is the UTC+8:45 time zone that is used only by 5 roadhouses covering a population of only a few hundred people.
There are several errors in the map, see below .
This sortable table includes all countries shown in the map, not just those are labeled, as well as the continents and some other regions are mentioned.
The countries or continents are mentioned approximately in reading order. If a country is not labeled with full name the abbreviation is in brackets behind the name. If the country is not labeled, labeled wrong or not even shown in the comic, there is a note after the name. Countries labeled with a footnote by an asterisk (*) are shown together with that asterisk at the name.
If a country has more than one time zone all are listed.
Bad map projection #79: Time Zones Where each country should be, based on its time zone( s )
[A world map is shown divided and colored by political boundaries. There are many distortions, and especially Russia looks weird. Many countries have their name listed in a gray font and at the bottom below Australia there are two specialties mentioned for time zones which are not divided in full hours. One of these is a footnote used by other countries as well.]
[The labels are listed here in order of the "continents" as they come from top left to down right. Similarly within each continent's list the countries which are usually said to belong to a given continent (at least politically or partially, e.g. Greenland and Turkey in Europe) are listed in a similar reading order as accurately as possible.]
[North America. (Newfoundland, the most easterly part of Canada, is labeled with a star *):] Canada, *, United States, Mexico, Gua., Hon., Nic., C.R., Pan., Cuba, Haiti, Jam., D.R.
[South America:] Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, F.G., Suriname, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Par., Chile, Argentina, Uruguay
[Europe. (Russia is as the only country mentioned twice, the other place is over the central part in the Asia section):] Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, UK, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bel., Russia, Ger., Pol., Ukraine, France, It., Romania, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey
[Africa:] W.S., Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Mauritania, Sen., Mali, Niger, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Gb., Guin., B.F., S.L., Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Chad, Cam., C.A.R., S.S., Ethiopia, Somalia, E.G., Gabon, R. of Congo, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, Kenya, Angola, Zambia, Tanzania, Namibia, Bots., Zimb., Mozambique, Madagascar, South Africa
[Asia. (Russia is the only country mentioned twice, the other label is within the European border. The text written over Bhutan is unreadable in the image and marked with a question mark in this list):] Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran*, Oman, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan*, Taj., Pakistan, India*, Nepal*, ?, China, N.K.*, S.K., Japan, Ban., Bur.*, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines
[Oceania/Australia. (In Australia there is a star * in the middle of it above the name):] Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, *, Australia, New Zealand
[Below Australia there is an arrow pointing to the south coast and below that a footnote for the stars * used above:] UTC+8:45 (One small area)
*=Half-hour offset

Some countries and territories are missing from the map. Most of these omissions are undoubtedly deliberate, but some are likely mistakes.


Chess Notation

Explanation:
Cueball begins a conversation with White Hat with the declaration that he will be scoring his conversations using chess notation (hence the title). White Hat is not interested, so the conversation dies out, with both Cueball and White Hat saying "Fine".
And just as promised, Cueball has scored this particular conversation, giving it a ½-½ , as he believes that this is a drawn conversation . The reasons for the draw may be due to agreement (both parties walk away afterwards), a stalemate (the conversation isn't going anywhere), draw by repetition (both players have played the same moves over and over again, and cannot improve their position - probably if "Fine" had been repeated more times), 50-move rule (the conversation has been going on fruitlessly for too long - unlikely here since it is only 4 dialogues long) or something else. There could be some similarities between chess games and conversations . In general, see more under the trivia section.
The title text contains the same assertion that Cueball is scoring all his conversations in chess notation, followed by a (??). In chess notation, (??) means the move in question was a very bad, or losing, move - a blunder. Cueball scores this part of the conversation as a blunder, which is understandable as it immediately turned the conversation against him. It can also be considered a losing move not just in the conversation but in general, being a confusing and pointless decision with no apparent gain. If Cueball is treating his conversation itself like a chess game (memorizing openings, using tactics, and evaluating various possible things to say), then he will avoid ever opening a conversation with this statement again. If he was scoring his idea to score his conversations as a blunder, then that itself may yet be another blunder.  Either way, quite a ?? indeed!!
The (??) may also be interpreted not as chess notation, but as regular interpunction, in which case it would denote a confused reaction by someone who doesn't know what chess notation is (like White Hat in the comic). This makes it a double entendre, covering both the case when either the conversation party or the reader doesn't understand what chess notation is (and thus reacts with confusion to Cueball's announcement), and the case when chess notation is understood, and actually used to comment on the soundness of Cueball's move as being a blunder.
[Cueball and White Hat facing each other.] Cueball: I've decided to score all my conversations using chess win-loss notation. White Hat: I don't know or care what that means. Cueball: Fine. White Hat: Fine.
[Caption below the frame:] ½–½
The following points are debated:
Chess players and critics use certain notations to write down chess games in a very short fashion (for example the Forsyth–Edwards Notation , which is both computer- and human-readable). In addition, chess annotation symbols like ! and !? help to comment certain moves in a similarly short fashion. That way it is possible to print or discuss a chess game (or a chess opening) in a limited space, for example in printed reference manuals.
A short synopsis about common chess annotation symbols:
!! – brilliant move: Very strong and counter-intuitive move. A sound sacrifice. ! – good move: A surprisingly good move. !? – interesting move: Risky, or worthy of attention and analysis. ?! – dubious move: Designates a move that may be bad, but it is hard to explain why. ? – mistake: Poor move that should not be played. ?? – blunder : Exceptionally bad move, usually designates a move that turns a winning position into a draw, or a draw into a losing position.
The score of the "white" player is always given first, followed by the score of the "black" player. Possible notations for the game outcome are:
1-0 – a win (for white) 0-1 – a loss (for white) ½-½ – a draw
Because every chess game begins by moving a white piece, the following can be observed: When Cueball ends a conversation with 1-0,
A chess game can be won (and lost for the other party) or drawn . It should be noted that draws most commonly occur by agreement , or very rarely by stalemate . A stalemate is a situation where the opponent's king is not in check, but none of the opponent's pieces can be moved in a legal way. In a human conversation, what amounts to a draw, and what amounts to a stalemate?
If agreed draws should be allowed (and under which circumstances) is a matter of some discussion among chess players, thus adding another point to Randall's comic. For example, some tournament rules (e.g. the so-called " Sofia Rules ") do not allow a draw to be offered directly - any player has first to announce the intention of drawing to the arbiter (referee), who then decides if the position should be played out further or not.
The official chess rules offer some ways the concept of a "draw" could be applied to a human conversation. According to the World Chess Federation (FIDE) rules, a draw can occur:
Similarities
Differences


Decision Paralysis

Explanation:
This comic illustrates a common problem in the internet era where, with the wealth of knowledge available to us at all times, one puts undue weight on otherwise arbitrary decisions.
This is taken to a comedic extreme by showing how Cueball is unable to make a critical, time-sensitive choice without putting hours of research in to justify it. Any benefit to researching the imminent decision of "which car will get us to our destination fastest" will be more than offset by the time it takes to make that decision. [ citation needed ] The inability to make a snap judgment in this case will prove very destructive as the bomb mentioned by Megan will now likely detonate before they get to the base. The difference in time/effort needed to steal either car is likely presumed to be insignificant to this scenario.
In the caption below the comic Randall gives the reader one of his recurring protips . In the tip, he reveals a weakness for his potential opponents to exploit. Randall admits to having the same problems with decision-making as Cueball, and suggests that if he were placed in an equally urgent situation testing his (in)ability to choose, he would fail just as spectacularly, as long as he had free access to the internet. As the old saying goes, "give 'em enough rope, and they'll hang themselves"; in this case, give Randall enough internet access, and he'll get caught in an indefinite research loop.
The title text continues this absurdity by bringing a third option to the table, the choice of inaction (which by wasting his time on calculations and research, Cueball has taken), a choice here that seems unacceptable, but the time spent mentioning (and researching it) simply adds to that already spent researching the two cars. Of course this option ensures that they are not killed when the bomb explodes, because they will not be anywhere close to the base. That might make it the only reasonable choice left after wasting so much time pondering which car to steal.
That not making a choice is also a choice has often been mentioned in literature and other places, like when the band Rush in their song Freewill sings "If you choose not to decide - You still have made a choice".
Supposing both of them know how to drive (and steal) a car and defuse the bomb, the best option in this situation is to leave the phone in the pocket and steal both cars, and see who gets there first to defuse the bomb. This would both ensure one of them reaches the base as quick as possible and at the same time resolve the problem of which car would be best for the problem. Of course that would also have defused the joke, No Pun Intended ...
[Megan and Cueball are standing near two sport cars. Megan points excitedly at the cars while Cueball looks at his smartphone.] Megan: There! If we steal one of those cars, we can get to the base and defuse the bomb! Cueball: Hmm, the one on the left accelerates faster but has a lower top speed. Cueball: Ooh, the right one has good traction control. Are the roads wet?
[Caption below the frame:] Protip: If you ever need to defeat me, just give me two very similar options and unlimited internet access.
"A discrete decision based upon an input having a continuous range of values cannot be made within a bounded length of time."


Phone

Explanation:
When someone asks you if you want to go for a walk they often expect to have a conversation, while enjoying both the exercise, the fresh air and the company. Thus any disturbance not related to the walk is not welcome. Going for a walk is often seen as a way to relax from all the daily stress, as it takes the walkers away from work and chores.
Cueball agrees to go for a walk, but not to all the associated expectations. His first instinct is to bring along his smartphone , though rather than call it such, he opts for a lengthy description detailing all the functions he intends to use. He describes the phone as a device that gives him a continuous ( 24/7 ) stream of information, much of which is often out of context. The stream contains people's opinions, context-free but scary news, and other random stimuli. Conspicuously, long-distance communication (ostensibly the primary function of a smartphone) is not listed. This may be a sign that Cueball is addicted to his phone .
The stream of opinions mentioned could be from news or bloggers but it could also just be from his friends on social media platforms. News stories that are shared on social media are often scary, which becomes even worse because news outlets are likely to use a title that exaggerates the topic to create a fear reaction. The random emotional stimuli could be from many things such as text messages/emails and pictures of kittens and babies on social network, and shared internet memes or viral videos. All things that could cause a quick shift in emotions.
As if all this was not enough, Cueball even says he will also take his spare battery, so he won't risk that his constant feed could be interrupted, because he will not be able to recharge his phone during the walk. All in all, his choice and constant need for staying updated and being online violates all the usual expectations, that his friend could have expected from asking him out for a walk. Randall's fear of running out of power on his smartphone was earlier mentioned in 1373: Screenshot , where a low battery charge stresses him too much to realize it is someone else's screenshot, rather than his own phone that has a low charge. Since then he has made other references to his issue with low batteries in 1872: Backup Batteries and 1965: Background Apps .
The title text shows it would be possible to take an action to avoid this feed. In the first bracket a person (could be Cueball or Randall ) disables all his social networking accounts . Most of his news feed will thus disappear. But this leads to the next bracket which states that such a choice would lead to increased social isolation , since he will no longer be in contact with any of his online friends. In fact, today many people also get into contact with their "real" local friends through social media, so one might thus miss out on events like parties or get-togethers.  In addition, his friends, not sharing his dislike for social media, may not understand his decision. All of this leads to the final sentence Wait, why does this ALSO feel bad?
[Someone off-panel asks Cueball a question which he answers while walking to a small table with some items laying on it.] Off-panel voice: Wanna go for a walk? Cueball: Sure, just need to grab my device that feeds me a 24/7 stream of opinions, context-free scary world news, and random emotional stimuli. Cueball: Plus a spare battery so the feed won't be interrupted.


Location Reviews

Explanation:
Many online advertising services and social media networks (like Google and Yelp , both mentioned in the title text, and for instance Facebook ) allow users to leave reviews of stores, businesses and locations. For various reasons these sites often find themselves with pages dedicated to, as Randall puts it, "places that really don't need reviews" such as municipal works installations, government property, and natural landmarks. This naturally attracts both clueless people and lots of self-styled comedians leaving less-than-helpful comments on such review pages.
Randall is just poking fun at this phenomenon by inventing possible reviews for the (fictional) location Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility , depicted with a Google Maps -styled map page along with a series of so-called reviews. (There does exist a Canyon River located in Ontario / Canada and one in Washington /USA (the latter is a significant tributary to the Satsop River ). Canada does not maintain nuclear weapons since 1984, so the launch site should be located in Washington).
See explanations for the 11 visible (out of 22) reviews in the table below . Of course those responsible for such a facility with nuclear missiles would not like the attention they would be getting in this way, especially not when one of the comments mentions a hole in the fence... Although this comic makes a joke about reviews it has chosen a very dangerous facility to joke about. See more about this under Politics below
In the title text Randall mentions that both Google and Yelp keep deleting his scathing reviews of several locations like the above. The questions is if they would have done it if they had not been so harsh... While Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility appears not to exist, the places/phenomena he lists in the title text certainly do, and are places that you either cannot or would not normally visit as destinations. Here below each "location" is explained. That the deletion of such reviews is real has been proven by this comic, as it also happened for those that (of course) posted these reviews on Google maps as a response to this comic.
Mariana Trench is the deepest area of the world's oceans, about 10,994 meters (36,070 ft) deep, located between Japan and Australia. The pressure in the Mariana Trench is about 1,086 bars, more than 1,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure of about 1 bar at sea level. Despite this enormous pressure some organisms live in the Mariana Trench . Humans can reach the ground only by special deep-sea submarines, like Jacques Piccard did in 1960 with the Bathyscaphe Trieste . See reviews for the Mariana Trench at Google Maps and Facebook .
The Chernobyl reactor core is the most dangerous part of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant . It is located in the North of Ukraine. In the reactor No. 4 there was a nuclear disaster that happened on 26 April 1986. It caused devastating damage and massive radioactive contamination. There is still a Chernobyl Exclusion Zone 30 kilometers around the power plant. See reviews for the Chernobyl power plant at Google Maps and Facebook .
Jet streams are a meteorologic phenomenon about 9 to 16 kilometers above the ground. A stream consists of air currents with speeds from 92 km/h (50 kn; 57 mph) to over 398 km/h (215 kn; 247 mph). Such jet streams are routinely used for reducing fuel usage for long distance plane travels. As it is a ribbon rather than a point, it could not have a single point on the map. Also, the jet stream fluctuates north and south; so even if it could be pinpointed, the location would be constantly changing.
The equator is, as with the jet streams, not a singular place but a circumference around the Earth. Reviewing the equator as a singular location is rather pointless, though there is a whole range of specific (and interesting) locations around the equator, with countries with tropical rainforest climate , which many people from European and North American countries struggle with. That said, most of the equator goes over water.
In the table the rating is given with the review. After that an explanation both of the rating and of the review is given. Notice that any or all of the reviews could be sarcastic or "trolling", as is fairly typical on the internet, especially for reviews given for such a location as this one. This table assumes all the reviews are played straight.
The decision to make a comic depicting a nuclear missile launch facility may not be entirely random, given Randall's mildly political mood lately. In particular, it could be due to the cold relationship between Russia and the United States at the time of this comics release. Two weeks prior to this comics release Russia Deploys Missile, Violating Treaty and Challenging Trump . This was less than a month after Donald Trump became president. Trump has been positive towards Vladimir Putin earlier, but after the violation USA condemned the new missile. That Randall was not in favor of Trump becoming president was made clear in 1756: I'm With Her . His predecessor Barack Obama even stated, before Trump was elected, that If Trump can't handle Twitter, then he can't handle nuclear codes . Randall has earlier mentioned the codes indirectly in 1242: Scary Names , where he mentions the Nuclear football , which is much more scary than the name... It is a year ago he finished a "series" of four comics in a short period about nuclear weapons with 1655: Doomsday Clock (see about the other comics at the bottom of that explanation). But it seems that recent events have made him think about it again, although he tries no to as made evident in 1796: Focus Knob .
[Inside the main panel there is a frame with a Google location map with the typical red pin stuck in the center of the map inside a large gray region of the map. A river goes from the north through the gray region and out to the west. East and south of the river some roads and other items are shown, several of them also outside the gray region. The red pin is stuck next to a corner in one of the roads.]
[Below the map is the name of the location at the red pin, and below that there are three lines of unreadable text:] Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility
[Below that there is broken line with text in the break, and below that follows 11 reviews with yellow stars to the left. The stars are either just outlines or colored completely, with the left one always being filled:] Reviews (22) [5 of 5 stars filled] Greatest country on earth [2 of 5 stars filled] Looks cool but you can't get in [1 of 5 stars filled] What is this store [4 of 5 stars filled] My cousin worked here [2 of 5 stars filled] Waitstaff heavily armed and very rude [1 of 5 stars filled] Stop doing chemtrails [1 of 5 stars filled] This place is a symptom of the military-industrial complex strangling our democracy and... (read full review-1184 words) [4 of 5 stars filled] Anyone else notice the hole in the west fence? [5 of 5 stars filled] Whoa, missiles! [3 of 5 stars filled] Good idea but confusing web site. How do I preorder? [1 of 5 stars filled] Please don't launch these
[Caption below the panel:] I love finding reviews of places that really don't need to have reviews.


Video Content

Explanation:
This comic is a commentary on the growing publishing industry and their successful attempts at regaining an audience.
News media has evolved dramatically as the world entered the information era . Newspapers , which were at one point the most widely distributed and consumed form of media, have rapidly been eclipsed by new technologies such as television , Internet , and streaming video .  Subscriptions to paper-based media have been drastically declining to the point where many publishers are on the verge of shutting down.  While publishers are making an effort to move their content to newer, more popular forms of media, in many cases they are still clearly behind the times.
The comic illustrates one such example with Cueball suggesting presenting news stories as videos rather than text. This is presented and received by Megan , Hairbun and Hairy as a clever new idea that would appeal to young people based on the fact that they like watching YouTube videos. However, apparently no one in the comic has realized that television news programs have been filling such a niche for decades and that young people are just as uninterested. In fact, online video based news is often considered annoying, especially if autoplaying or if there is no text based alternative. In reality, this idea is not at all original and likely to be doomed to fail from the start.  As with many similar attempts, the new "ideas" that publishers are trying to adopt are merely cramming news content into things young people like, without really understanding why they like it and without considering whether news would be a good fit.
In the caption, Randall suggests it would be pointless to argue with newspaper publishers about their ideas.  Presumably Randall believes publishers who fall for those ideas are already out of touch with the new generation, and would not be able to understand why those ideas lack merit.  Instead, he suggests taking the trend to a ridiculous extreme, by telling publishers that young people like making out .  Suppose publishers follow the same pattern and try to cram news into this as well, they would end up creating some form of news program centered around making out.  The results may turn out completely laughable or highly entertaining.  If the former, it could serve as a wake-up call to publishers that they need to reconsider their approach.  If the latter, then it could actually become a trend and unexpectedly reinvigorate the industry.
In the title text it seems like the news agency actually consider this idea, or is at least confused enough to ask. Their interpretation of combining "making out" with news is to make it sexy, but the next speaker says that this has been tried before and doesn't work. This is likely a reference to Naked News (no link due to NSFW -ness), a news program that does that: it features attractive women delivering the news while simultaneously disrobing. This concept has not, for some reason, spread to the mainstream.
According to the speaker, merely making the news sexy is not enough – the news content must be directly integrated into the making out; how this would be accomplished is as yet unclear.
The title text also dismisses the proposed name Mouth Content as possibly the title of a Neil Cicierega album, in reference to his recently-released Mouth Moods , as well as his prior albums Mouth Sounds and Mouth Silence .
[From left to right: Hairy, Cueball, Megan and Hairbun sit around a conference table.] Cueball: Research shows young people like YouTube, so we should present news stories as videos instead of text! Megan: Good idea! Hairbun: They'll love that!
[Caption below the panel:] Instead of arguing with newspapers about this, we should just tell them how much young people like making out and see what happens.


Unpublished Discoveries

Explanation:
Ponytail walks up to Megan , and makes the observation that when a scientific discovery is made, it then takes a while to publish it. She then goes on to note that there are probably research teams making "Nobel-Prize-worthy" discoveries that have simply not been published. She is obviously curious if Megan is working on something like this, and tries to see what Megan is working on, but Megan prevents her from seeing this by partly closing her laptop. Then Ponytail asks Megan what she is doing but Megan just tells her that she isn't the one working on a project like this and ask her to "Go bother someone else."
This is not the first time Ponytail asks Megan if she is working on some groundbreaking research project: Back in 1067: Pressures , Ponytail was probing Megan about her work, since, as hinted by the caption of that comic, Megan is a Swiss patent clerk just like Albert Einstein . Ponytail thus assumes she has the same potential to produce Nobel-Prize-worthy work as him. While there is no clear indication that this comic should be a continuation of that comic or that Megan is a patent clerk, Ponytail still assumes Megan is on her way to a Nobel Prize - but that Megan is just not yet ready to announce her discovery to the public for one reason or another.
In the first two panels, Ponytail is referring to the general issue that, to publish a discovery on a scientific topic, it can take a very long time, especially when the discovery is "Nobel-Prize-worthy". Obviously the first step is for the researcher to demonstrate rigor by more supporting experiments (see 397: Unscientific ), plus summarize the discovery into the format accepted by the journal the paper is submitted too. The latter can take considerable time by itself, especially if the first journal the paper is submitted to declines publication. Because other journals chosen afterwards may have a completely different layout (for instance in physics, the journal with the greatest impact factor is Nature , then followed by for instance Science and then Physical Review Letters . All three have very different layouts regarding format and figures etc.) Thus the paper may need to be submitted to various journals until one accepts, which may also take a few months, and even when accepted it can take anywhere from 25 days to 150+ days just for the paper to be processed through the publishing system due to various reasons , including the nature of the publishing process, assigning extra work as conditions for acceptance, or even formatting problems. This has prompted researchers to come up with some interesting work-arounds .
In the title text, Megan claims that she is actually just trying to convert an emailed tax form to a PDF. This could of course just be to ward off any further attempts by Ponytail to spy on her "real" Nobel-worthy work. Megan sarcastically states that her conversion of tax forms is in the running for a Nobel Prize, perhaps because she considers it an incredibly difficult task (even for these things that should not be hard - see 1349: Shouldn't Be Hard ). While this could be true, this task is in no way connected to any kind of scientific endeavor, and as a result could never be considered for any kind of Nobel Prize. That the task is so difficult is though officially acknowledged by the IRS as they themselves note that saving and printing their Online tax forms could be tricky. Quote:
Fill-In Tax Forms The IRS also offers Free Fillable Forms which allow you to save (and print) the information you’ve typed in online. The fill-in tax forms also require Adobe Acrobat Reader software. To save the data you’ve filled in, use the Adobe Reader’s “Save” function (not the web browser’s “Save” function). ...
The months and weeks before April 15th (this comic was released on March 1st), is the "tax season" in the US so Americans are in the process of completing their tax forms, which is why this comic is timely. Given the US tax code is complained by many to be too complex , it is possible for researchers to delay publication of their discoveries to deal with their tax returns first. This can cause people to "sit on their discovery" for a while, although hopefully not as long as the task of publishing itself.
A year after this comic, 1971: Personal Data became the second tax related comic to be released in March, close to the tax day, making it two years in a row. Also before these comics the trouble with tax returns was the joke in 1566: Board Game , but it was released in August.
[Ponytail walks up to Megan, who is sitting in an office chair at a desk using her laptop.] Ponytail: When you make a big scientific discovery, it takes a while to get it published. Ponytail: Right? Megan: Mm hmm.
[Zoom-in on Ponytail.] Ponytail: So there are probably several research teams out there who are sitting on Nobel-Prize-worthy discoveries, but haven't told the rest of us yet. Megan (off-panel): Makes sense.
[Ponytail leans over the desk, trying to see Megan's laptop screen from behind it.]
[Ponytail leans further. Megan pulls the screen down so Ponytail cannot see it.] Ponytail: Sooo... What are you working on? Megan: It isn't me! Ponytail: I promise I won't tell. Megan: Shoo! Go bother someone else.


Borrow Your Laptop

Explanation:
White Hat asks to borrow Cueball's laptop to view something (possibly a website). Cueball permits this, but immediately begins rattling off a list of very unusual key- and mouse-bindings that he has applied to the device. In the caption, Randall states that he himself tends to continually re-configure computers that he owns in weird ways, eventually rendering it unusable or at least unpleasant to use for others.
Of the three items in Cueball's list of customizations only the first and half of the second seems like a real and relevant changes.
At first he has programmed the computer so that hitting both shift keys simultaneously will change the keyboard back to QWERTY. The QWERTY keyboard is the standard in the US (as well as some other places using the roman alphabet). This implies that Cueball prefers a different keyboard layout, (most likely the Dvorak keyboard layout, see trivia ), but doesn't need the printed letters to match up with those of the laptop. Cueball would have to make a special customization to make pressing the two shift key trigger this shift (see trivia ). Presumably Cueball can later return to this favorite layout by pressing the shift keys again.
Cueball tells, in the first part of the second point on the list, that he has changed his keyboard layout so that capslock acts as the control key (Ctrl). Swapping capslock and control is a common thing to do in the world of enlightened users on Unix or for users of the Emacs editor . The "Caps Lock" key (immediately to the left of the "A" in a traditional layout) is much easier to reach for a touch typist than the more out-of-the-way "Ctrl", and the latter is often used more frequently, especially by programmers.
However, the second part where Cueball says he has then moved capslock so that it is activated when hitting the spacebar makes no sense. It is quite impractical, as the spacebar is the largest key and it will not gain anything from being used for anything other than spaces, especially not a rarely used key that locks into capital letter mode move when activated. It would make the common accidental application of capslock more likely. And what is worse he doesn't tell White Hat where he has put the space bar function, making it impossible to write a simple text, although he could try to see what the Ctrl keys does now...
Finally Cueball goes out on a limb with an impossible setting, which is that his laptop is setup so that scrolling moves through time instead of through "space" (as in up and down on the screen). This refers to spacetime , a common model in relativistic physics. The feature in only activated when using two-finger scroll , which is often used on touchpads /track pads for laptops as a gesture for scrolling. The title text may suggest that "moving through time" may pertain to undo/redo, or perhaps browser history.
Finally it becomes clear these three settings are not the only important changes, as Cueball's list continues with at least one other point which he doesn't get to finish in the comic. Thus the list may be much longer than four points.
In the title text Randall says that he would actually find a feature where the scroll wheel was mapped to send a stream of undo/redo commands would be kind of cool. (Notice he is no longer talking about the two-finger scroll from the comic). But only if used with software that could keep up with such a feature. He thus indirectly states that many programs would not be be able to keep up. For an example of what this might look like, many digital artists record timelapse footage of their art, which could be thought of as a continuous string of redo commands (occasionally broken up by undo commands whenever the artist needs to correct a mistake).
Outside of art programs, such continuous undo/redo action would produce unexpected and chaotic results. This could also indicate that this was a similar feature that Cueball was referring to when talking about moving through time with the two finger scroll in the main comic. So not as in the computer traveling through time, but rather scrolling through the previous actions performed on the computer, as in moving through the computers past.
People often have reasons to change their keyboard layouts on laptops, due to the reduced keyboard, which can leave vital keys out. Rather than change the keyboard layout all the time in order to access keys which are not accessible in one of the layouts, one can take advantage of text substitution and keyboard remapping programs to set shortcuts for keys they use often.
[White Hat walks toward Cueball's desk pointing at his laptop while looking back at Cueball standing behind him.] White Hat: Can I load it up on your laptop? Cueball: Sure! Cueball: Oh, just hit both shift keys to change over to QWERTY. Cueball: Caps lock is control. And spacebar is capslock. Cueball: And two-finger scroll moves through time instead of space. Cueball: And–
[Caption below the panel:] Once I've used a computer for a while, no one else will ever use it again.
Supporters claim that typing speed is faster on a Dvorak keyboard, although this is still contentious, and this is a reason Randall often makes jokes about it as can be seen in the category referenced above.
The same problem would arise if the computer is set to another language than the keyboard layout, which often happens in countries where more than one language is common.
Nevertheless by doing some registry hacking (Windows) or editing configuration text files (UNIX/Linux) it is possible to reach Cueball's approach. The simpler and operating system independent approach would be to use a programmable keyboard, such as a keyboard using QMK firmware [1] A typical classic configuration for the shift key in Windows is by pressing one of the shift keys five times in a row it turns on a Sticky Key notice, where the Ease of access center enables people with for instance only one hand to be able to reach Ctrl+Alt+Delete or other combinations on which two hands are needed.


Listening

Explanation:
This comic depicts Cueball and Ponytail welcoming Black Hat and Danish to their house. Black Hat immediately talks to Amazon Alexa to order two tons of creamed corn . This would be quite expensive (around $10,000), and the hosts would be charged because it was ordered on their Amazon Echo device. It would also be a serious inconvenience, as the purchase would be quite bulky and useless, seeing as an average person would have very little use for two tons of creamed corn. [ citation needed ]
The caption claims that this is an effort to find systems recording conversations, such as Alexa or Google Home , for the security of the guests , so they aren't being monitored by an always-on listening device without their consent (at least not without any consequences). However, because Black Hat is the one coming up with this it's more likely his motives are on the sadistic side, and it's more likely a warning for the hosts to turn off any voice-activated systems before having guests come over, so that the guests don't take advantage of them. (It should also be noted that such purchasing services encourage the user to set up a PIN code to stem off such exploits.)
A concerned "visitor" may also want to test for voice-activated systems when near any persons carrying an iPhone or Android mobile device, because these are also always-on listening devices. "Hey Siri" and "Ok Google" voice activation use the same technology as "Alexa" and "Echo" detection.
The title text says that this takes care of the "host gift thing", referring to the custom where house guests give a gift to the hosts. However, Black Hat is making the hosts pay for it, so it can be as expensive as he wants, thus making this yet another example of his being a classhole . For more examples of this, see the trivia below.
[Black Hat and Danish enter Cueball and Ponytail's house. They have hardly passed the door mat, with the door still open showing the road and another house outside.] Ponytail: Hello, welcome to our house! Black Hat: Thanks for inviting us! Black Hat: Alexa, order two tons of creamed corn. Black Hat: Alexa, confirm purchase.
[Caption below the frame:] When visiting a new house, it's good to check whether they have an always-on device transmitting your conversations somewhere.


Hacking

Explanation:
This comic is referencing an incident on the day before this comic was released, March 7, 2017, in which WikiLeaks exposed thousands of hacking exploits (thus the title) and programs from the CIA (see for instance this article: WikiLeaks Just Dumped a Mega-Trove of CIA Hacking Secrets ). Many of the tools that were in the leak were similar to publicly available tools, or not entirely unexpected, with several coming from sites such as StackOverflow and Reddit .
The main joke in this comic refers to the common practice of adding spaces between parts of an email address when publishing them on websites.  For example, " [email protected] " may be written as "john dot doe at example dot org".  The purported goal of doing this is to thwart page scraping bots from harvesting the correct email addresses and prevent them from becoming the target of spam or being sold as address lists for email marketers.
In this comic, Ponytail tells Cueball that the CIA has a tool which can delete such spaces. Such a tool can fix the space and most likely convert the words "dot" and "at" into their respective symbols. This will overcome the problems faced by harvesting tools, and make these email addresses more prone to receive spam.
Cueball appears shocked to hear this news, but given the caption below, stating that this was one of the less dramatic revelations from the CIA hacking dump, this is likely sarcasm by Cueball (and Randall ). In fact, it is quite simple to devise a program which detects and converts/removes such spaces; it's naive to believe that one can prevent e-mail addresses from being harvested just by writing the addresses with space or omitting @ etc. Some people might not realize that he's being sarcastic, though, and that misunderstanding might be part of the joke.
The title text lists three other undramatic (fictitious) hacking exploits which sound more interesting, but are still more or less useless, and certainly not dramatic news. They are:
[Ponytail is writing on her laptop at her desk while Cueball looks over her shoulder.] Ponytail: You know how sometimes people put a space in their email address to make it harder to harvest? Cueball: Yeah? Ponytail: They have a tool that can delete the space! Cueball: Oh my god.
[Caption below the panel:] Less-dramatic revelations from the CIA hacking dump