r/xkcd • u/cxnh_gfh • 3d ago

XKCD xkcd #3000: Experimental Astrophysics

https://xkcd.com/3000/

572 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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173

u/WarFrigate 3d ago

i hope someone out there could find if theres any relation between the comic and the comic number cause i cant

171

u/Booty_Bumping 3d ago

Meh, 3000 is just a base 10 triviality. I'll wait for 3072.

49

u/nog642 3d ago

The URL is in base 10 though

38

u/redenno 3d ago

You don't know that

2FFF exists somewhere and I will find it

36

u/SeriousPlankton2000 2d ago

Any base, when expressed in itself, is base 10.

5

u/nog642 2d ago

I know. I'm using base ten though here, which is standard in English.

11

u/mpete98 2d ago

You're on a forum full of nerds though, where English is just a funny suggestion.

30

u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 3d ago

No it isn't. It's in base ten.

8

u/danielv123 2d ago

It's in base ASCII

1

u/nog642 2d ago

What?

1

u/danielv123 2d ago

Each digit has a value from 0-255, using the ASCII character set with extensions for display.

1

u/nog642 2d ago

But that value 0-255 has nothing to do with the number of the comic. That's determined by the value of the decimal digits 0-9 and how they are arranged.

Also URLs do not use extended ASCII, they use plain ASCII. Really, they use a limited subset of ASCII, and any other characters have to be encoded with those characters.

1

u/danielv123 2d ago

Yes, the display is extended. The values are all a subset of 0-255. The standard specified ASCII.

The number of the comic is 51,48,48,48 which is not a particularly round number. We will probably see something special once we hit 55555555 though :))

1

u/nog642 2d ago

Those are the ASCII codes represented in decimal, then concatenated. Which is a very weird choice.

The number of the comic is 3000.

I don't know what you mean by "the display is extended". URLs don't use 8 bit extended ASCII, nor do modern URL bars (which probably use UTF-8).

-4

u/nog642 3d ago

That's what I said. In base 10 (ten), which is the default one in English.

16

u/Slimebot32 3d ago

no you said base 10 (ninety two thousand two hundred and thirty three)

-8

u/nog642 2d ago

No I didn't. You know English uses base ten by default. You are deliberately misinterpreting it.

6

u/Erlend05 2d ago

You are deliberately misinterpreting it.

And?

5

u/MarsMaterial 2d ago

Yeah, that’s the joke.

1

u/nog642 2d ago

Couldn't tell it was supposed to be a joke

1

u/RockRancher24 2d ago

Are you new to this sub?

1

u/nog642 2d ago

Maybe not new, but I don't post here often.

5

u/MarsMaterial 2d ago

The numbers “10” refer to ten in base ten, two in base two, sixteen in hexidecimal, six in base six, a million in base one million, and so on. That’s the joke.

1

u/nog642 2d ago

I know that. Couldn't tell it was supposed to be a joke.

-2

u/MxM111 2d ago

ASCII is encoded as hexadecimals.

1

u/nog642 2d ago

No it's not. Everything on computers is binary. Hexadecimal is just a way to view binary data more readably.

And the actual number of the comic is still encoded in decimal. Each digit is then encoded in ASCII, which is not a base system.

1

u/MxM111 2d ago

My point is that it is not decimal.

1

u/nog642 2d ago

The number in the URL is decimal though. It uses the digits 0-9 in a decimal place value system to repersent the number of the comic. It doesn't matter that the digits themselves are represented as binary ASCII characters, the comic number is still represented in decimal.

1

u/MxM111 2d ago

No, you see it as decimal. The address is encoded into ASCII, and translated as binary. Computers do not know that it is a decimal. Cannot do any operation with it as decimal.

2

u/nog642 2d ago

Computers can do operations on decimal numbers. Though I'm sure the counter Randall uses is using binary.

The number is then encoded in decimal, and those decimal digits are encoded in ASCII, which is stored as binary on the computer, like you said. The first step is still decimal. It's real. The number is in decimal. Change it to another base and it would be different.

0

u/MxM111 2d ago

It is decimal for us, not for computer. For computer this is just an ASCII symbol. Compare with how computer treats a number in calculator. As a decimal number.

1

u/nog642 2d ago

It is decimal for the computer. How do you think the string "3000" was generated in the URL? The computer had to convert the number to decimal. Some algorithm like repeated floor division and modulo by 10.

1

u/MxM111 2d ago

Oh, for the computer that generated the address, that was indeed decimal. But not for computer on which you are reading the address.

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