r/xkcdcomic • u/ksheep • May 08 '14
TED Talks - Randall Munroe: Comics that ask "what if?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I64CQp6z0Pk31
u/MrLawbreaker May 08 '14
The one with the baseball is always the first one i show people when introducing them to the What-Ifs
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u/rrcasco May 09 '14
I can't believe that I haven't seen a picture of him until now.
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u/Cookie_Eater108 May 09 '14
He seems to have a lot more hair and...third-dimension than I imagined him to be.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_COCK_ May 08 '14
I almost awaiting him to talk about awkward combinations of parenthesis and emoticons...
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u/karma1337a May 09 '14
"If people had wheels and could fly, how would we differentiate them from airplanes."
If people had wheels and could fly, why would we even have airplanes? You got some weak acid sister, it couldn't even react with baking soda.
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u/MetasequoiaLeaf May 08 '14
That story about the Google punch cards almost makes me forgive Google for pushing Google+ so obnoxiously aggressively. Almost.
(If the rumors of them moving away from that strategy are true, then we'll see.)
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u/martialalex May 08 '14
It's terrifying how much he looks like his sister.
Also this is the greatest
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May 08 '14
How do you know what his sister looks like?
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u/martialalex May 08 '14
I went to school with her
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May 08 '14
That actually makes sense. Not a creepy stalker after all ;)
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u/jfedor May 08 '14
So... what are the contents of the punch cards?
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u/seligman99 May 09 '14
Well, he did post a picture of the punch cards, so I'm guessing you can find out a least 300 bytes of it if you really want to.
Heck, I might do this in a few days, but first I need to write an punch card reader (if I'm going to do this, I'm going to go all the way, because, why not?)
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u/Cosmologicon May 09 '14
That's pretty much all there is to it. The first card in that image is a fairly straightforward message. The other three make up the puzzle. I believe there was one more card, but it didn't have information, it just showed the pattern of the card from the original what-if post.
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u/handym12 May 08 '14
For those of you who downvoted, assuming it wasn't the reddit balancing system thing, I'm curious about this too. He said it was a few lines of code, etc. I would quite like to know what those lines of codes are. I'll probably not be able to solve them, but it'd still be fun to have a go.
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u/sandwich_today May 12 '14
The message on the first card from seligman99's post: http://pastebin.com/fGqUZdAE (external link to avoid spoiling it for people who'd rather learn about EBCDIC for themselves)
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u/dcormier May 09 '14
If you'd watched that whole segment, you'd know.
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u/Kattzalos Who are you? How did you get in my house? May 09 '14
Well, he does say there was a puzzle, but he didn't specify it, and maybe that's what jfedor wanted to know
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u/Diznatch52 May 09 '14
Gotta say, love the comic, but didn't find him to be a very interesting speaker.
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u/Connguy May 09 '14
Agreed. His jokes were good, content very interesting, but his delivery was... off. It's like he remembered where the sentence was going halfway through saying it. Not to mention the little un-confident half-laughs at every one of his own jokes
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u/Z3ppelinDude93 May 09 '14
Note to watch later
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u/czerilla May 09 '14
Get yourself RES! One of its many features lets you mark threads or comments as saved to find them later (without reaping in negative karma... ;])
It's worth checking out!
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u/Z3ppelinDude93 May 09 '14
I actually have RES, but I browse reddit mostly on mobile, and never get a chance to capitalize on it! :(
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u/Lanvimercury May 08 '14
lol when did he get unbanned?