XKCD: It's more than a comic

It can be interesting to find routes on Google maps to cross long distances on foot.

I've explored rivers near my town with it. found a lake way up one.

I remember one time I asked how to go to Pryp'yat' it just said to take a plane.

Also, I thought the place that link sent me was kind of creepy because it look like skin with holes in it.

Sorry about that. It gives a random location every time, so there's not much in the way of warning people of what they might end up seeing.

I keep getting the same location (if that doesn't work here's the wikipedia page). Is it based on IP Address or something like that which will be different for everyone but doesn't change often?

edited 4th Feb '13 10:12:38 PM by thatother1dude

That's the same area I got as well. Or at least, that is after I check the wikipedia page since when I clicked your link it sent me to a location very close to but not actually at where I live now, which was kind of weird.

When - if ever - will the bandwidth of the Internet surpass that of FedEx?

Best quote as usual is at the end: "Of course, the virtually infinite bandwidth would come at the cost of 80,000,000-millisecond ping times."

The throughput of SneakerNet is also limited by how fast you can transfer data to and from all of those drives, not to mention having something worth putting on them. Or, for that matter, the fact that FedEx' bandwidth is also utilized to deliver stuff besides boxes full of hard drives or MicroSD cards.

As with the others, this What If? is a case of taking a real world question and stretching it out to absurdity.

wait, this is one of those comics that change? I've only seen the lena river from people.

The "What If" link provided by QM, above, leads to a separate project by the same author.

By the way, all of you who are interested in unusual terrain on Earth might enjoy this blog- it features photos from orbit by an astronaut currently up there.

edited 5th Feb '13 11:20:18 AM by DeMarquis

Wouldn't transferring information over the Internet have the advantage of being more secure than Fed Ex? I mean, Google has a lot of people's information, and I'm presuming they're competent enough to protect it from hackers. Whereas if they sent it by Fed Ex someone could figure out who was handling the delivery and steal the hard drives.

edited 5th Feb '13 1:41:32 PM by WarriorEowyn

Security is always an issue. I'm not sure what the theft rate is on FedEx shipments; I presume one could find out with some research, but how it compares with the rate of data intrusion into Google's servers (or any other servers) is something that you'd unquestionably have to take into consideration when you evaluate how you want to send your data.

However, I suspect that timeliness rather significantly trumps security in some respects. If you need the data to be there immediately, then mailing a hard drive isn't going to cut it.

Even if you're going over sneakernet, you can still encrypt the data. Not that much of a security concern.

The biggest issue with it is always going to be latency.

Even if you're going over sneakernet, you can still encrypt the data. Not that much of a security concern.

If the "bad guy" has physical access to the hardware and sufficient resources/desire to read what's stored on it, they'll most likely get it.

"If people knew how much security is lost when someone has physical access to their machine,they'd keep their computers locked inside a safe and wrapped with barbed wire."

edited 5th Feb '13 2:48:30 PM by Nohbody

You're not shipping a computer. You're shipping a hard drive. The difficulties in cracking encrypted data on a hard drive you stole from Fed Ex and cracking encrypted data going over a network you're eavesdropping on are pretty much identical.

The security implications of physical access largely assume unencrypted hard drives. Sure, if you get physical access to an unencrypted machine, you've got it cracked. If you've got full-disk encryption, it's much less an issue.

edited 5th Feb '13 3:00:04 PM by alethiophile

@the space blog: Wow. I had no idea the earth looked that freaking cool—or that our presence was that clearly visible. Those pics are amazing.

Yeah, the issue with physical access is that any keys in memory (which are kinda necessary for the computer to operate on the encrypted data) can be accessed, and furthermore any software security policy is kaput.

Bulk-shipped hard drives are computationally inert, and have no need for the key. Just send the key by secure internet link, which would take like 10 seconds (assuming you are using some ridiculously secure setup like 8192-bit RSA).

Map Crunch gave me a little french kid with a giant football.

#1170

This one makes a really good point. If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I would look around for a reason why they might be doing so. Like a fire, or a giant robot, or an oncoming out of control truck fleet, or something. Plus, I might be a bit concerned about them.

The proverb is about peer pressure. For example, if all your friends smoke that doesn't mean that it is a good thing to smoke. Of course, this being xkcd, things get exaggerated and explored from a wierd perspective. This makes it a case of Metaphorgotten.

Of course, jumping off a bridge kind of makes the argument into a strawman. If you wanted to dispute it logically, you might question whether they seriously think your friends are that kind of crazy.

Yes, the old problem with hyperbole is that it can take a reasonable moral lesson and turn it into a farce. "Mommmmm, of course I wouldn't jump off a bridge. That's stupid. But smoking is cool!"

New comic.

http://xkcd.com/1171/

Nothing scarier than a rapper who does PERL.

http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=100204

This quote from Ahammel, and the rest that follows, is fricking awesomesauce.

"The year is '94 and the code was raw

In the bug report queue is a motherfucking log

I got two choices y'all, patch it quick or

Wait for the next release and show the feature the door

Now I ain't trying to see no flame war with the users

And I got a few hours while IT fixes my computer

So I...branch the repo and pop open the code

And I see:"

edited 8th Feb '13 5:36:51 PM by TamH70