Posts Tagged ‘xkcd’
“In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous”*…
Your correspondent is headed off-line for a few days, so (R)D will be off until Monday, October 19, when (airline performance permitting) regular service should resume…
Billions of computers and phones run on code looked after by a handful of mostly-volunteer people. On his lovely site sheets.works, Akash Wadhwani introduces us to some of those generous souls…
People post [the comic above] whenever something breaks. The tower is labelled “all modern digital infrastructure” and it stands on one small block, “a project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003”.
We wanted to know how close to true it is. We downloaded the full history of 23 pieces of software that phones, browsers and servers depend on, and counted everyone who made ten or more changes to each one between October 2025 and October 2026. Then we listed what is actually installed on an Android phone, an iPhone and a Windows PC…
Wadhwani opens with the story of Paul Eggert…
Your alarm, a boarding pass, a meeting in another country, the day your salary lands: anything on your phone that shows a time has to know where you are. Underneath sit every Android phone, every iPhone and most of the servers on the internet.
They all get local time from one text file, the time zone database, which holds every clock rule a government has ever announced. Paul Eggert, a lecturer at UCLA, keeps that file up to date in his spare time [and has since 2012].
4,000,000,000 Android phones and iPhones use his file. We didn’t count servers, Macs or laptops, which would push the number higher.
On 29 September Paul put out version 2026e of the file. The first line of its notes says that Manitoba moves to permanent -05 on 31 October, which tells phones in Winnipeg not to set their clocks back on 1 November, and it was typed in by two volunteers a month ahead…
Read on for 22 other tales of extraordinary generosity: “The people holding up the internet.”
* Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America
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As we give thanks, we might spare a thought for a man who, if not un-sung, has been at least under-sung: Walter M. Elsasser; he died on this date in 1991. A physicist, he contributed to science across several disciplines. In atomic physics, he interpreted electron scattering. In geophysics, during the 1940’s, he provided insight into radiative heat transfer in the Earth’s atmosphere, and developed the currently-accepted dynamo theory to explain the origin and properties of the Earth’s magnetic field. And he pioneered study of the magnetic orientation of minerals in rocks to reveal the Earth’s history of its magnetic field.
The last fifty years of his life were in large measure spent on biology, more particularly on Systems Biology: Elsasser worked toward a theory of organisms (an effort to establish the distinction between living and inanimate matter). His thinking is still at play in both Complex Systems Biology and Relational Biology.
“A mouse never entrusts his life to only one hole”*…
… Well, our earth is riddled with them. And as our old friend Randall Munroe at xkcd reminds us, some of them are very deep…
“Holes”
Via Jason Kottke, who reminds us that “Explain xkcd has more info on each of the various holes, including the truly bonkers Cave of Crystals in Mexico” (and explanatory background on other xkcd posts as well…)
* Plautus
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As we spelunk, we might recall that it was on this date in 1962 that the U.S. military detonated Little Feller I, a tactical nuclear weapon at the Nevada Test Site as part of Operation Sunbeam. It was the last near-ground atmospheric nuclear detonation conducted by the United States. The high-altitude Fishbowl tests concluded in November of1962 with a detonation at around 69,000 feet altitude. Thereafter, in accordance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, tests were conducted underground… more holes.
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better”*…
Further, in a loose fashion, to yesterday’s post: The Most Observed Animals and Plants (as reported on iNaturalist), from Randall Munroe and his wonderful xkcd (@xkcd.com)
* (attributed to) Albert Einstein
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As we keep an eye out, we might recall that it was on this date in 1964 that US disc jockeys were sent boxes of animal crackers wrapped in promotional material touting The Animal’s second single, “The House of the Rising Sun,” which had just entered the UK charts. The gambit worked (though, of course, it didn’t hurt that the song was, as Cashbox described it, “a haunting, beat-ballad updating of the famed folk-blues opus that the group’s lead delivers in telling solo vocal fashion”); the tune reached #1 on U.S. pop charts.
“There is a limit to thinking about even a small piece of something monumental”*…
Still, we can try…
Via Jason Kottke, who is reminded…
of Ben Terrett’s calculation of how many helveticas from here to the Moon and my subsequent calculations about the point size of the Earth and the Moon (50.2 billion and 13.7 billion, respectively).
* Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation
As we size up scale, we might recall that it was on this date (the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene) in 1342, that Central Europe’s worst flood ever occurred. Following the passage of a Genoa low, the rivers Rhine, Moselle, Main, Danube, Weser, Werra, Unstrut, Elbe, Vltava, and their tributaries inundated large areas. Many towns such as Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt am Main, Würzburg, Regensburg, Passau, and Vienna were seriously damaged, with water levels exceeding those of the 2002 European floods. Even the river Eider north of Hamburg flooded the surrounding land; indeed, the affected area extended to Carinthia and northern Italy.
“Oh, I am fortune’s fool!”*…
Something on your mind? Ask the (interactive version of) xkcd’s oracle…
* Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
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As we plan accordingly, we might recall, with gratitude, that it was on this date in 1935 that Alan Lane released the first ten titles in the Penguin paperback book series. At the time a junior player at a publisher called Bodley Head, he was frustrated by the lack of affordable contemporary literature. He wanted to offer cheap, quality books through outlets like railway stations and newsagents as well as traditional bookshops– to make good books accessible. So his volumes were priced at 6 pence each, while the typical hardcover book sold for 7 and 8 shillings. The experiment was a huge success: within a year, Penguin had sold 3 million paperbacks; skeptics– there were many (an earlier experiments in paperbacks in Germany had fizzled)– had been proved wrong; and Lane launched Penguin as a standalone publisher.
The original Penguins are an eclectic mix – a biography of Shelley, a Hemingway classic, a novel set in a pub, a novel about an old lady, two mysteries, an autobiography, and three more rather romantic novels– by authors both still widely read (Hemingway, Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie) and not so well remembered (e.g., Mary Webb, E.H. Young, Susan Ertz).
Today, 80 years later, more than 600 million paperbacks are sold annually worldwide.
The First Ten Penguins, 1985 reprint box set
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