Security breach

Posted byRandall 178 Comments on Security breach

This blag has been hacked.  Sorry.

As those reading by RSS may have noticed, there are ads being inserted periodically into the bottom of xkcd blag posts.  They’re hidden from the web view.  This is due to a security hole in WordPress 2.7.x and 2.8 (and possibly others).  davean is watching packet flow and trying to figure out exactly how it happens, but in the meantime, sorry for the annoyance.  One way or another, it should be solved soon.

I just had extremely minor surgery this morning (removing a lipoma from my right arm).  I’m fine; it’s just a paranoid better-safe-than-sorry thing. But I’m writing this under the influence of the lingering anesthetics and my first-ever Vicodin.  No interesting side effects so far other than dizziness, a higher rate of typing errors, and the tendency to zoom images all the way in and stare at them for several minutes at a time.  Why *is* that cat in the ceiling, anyway?  Hello, internet.

178 replies on “Security breach”

  1. Re-captcha: No Thong

    And that’s why she’s gong to have hundreds of babies! *smirk*

    On “A negative number of husands”: I wonder if, since negative can’t mean have a husband, it would mean she needs one? And the day before she does, she doesn’t need one? Hm.

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  2. Randall, I suppose it is unlikely that you will take my post into consideration.
    However, I am one of the minority who were not thrilled by your Idiocracy comic.

    I understand that as an artist you want to take risks and try new things, but I felt that this comic did not turn out for the better.

    The man in the white hat is the voice of controversy. He brings up things that the geek culture is divided upon, and as a result, causes controversy in the forums (see the thread for the comic).

    I hope that you continue with your positive, largely accepted comics. However, the white hat man has to die, or I fear your reader base may suffer.

    Or at the very least, my own adoration with your comic.

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  4. @Mason
    There’s a word for a comic that avoids making people think or causing any controversy or debate in order to not lose any readers. Garfield. Though that Garfield – Garfield stuff is pretty deep….

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  7. @Where?What?When?

    Or calvin and hobbes, or questionable content, or the perry bible fellowship…

    I mean controversy among your readers, not among the average person.

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  8. controversy is controversy, man. don’t get too choosy.
    and i always thought of perry bible fellowship being not so much controversial as disturbed and sadistic..

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  9. No, it isn’t.

    If your material is dividing your fanbase, it is bad. You divide your fanbase, you damage your fans. The comics I listed earlier did not write about things that divided it’s fanbase.

    Even if you find that the perry bible fellowship isn’t controversial, then isn’t that one example proving that controversy isn’t necessary?

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  10. @Mason
    @Where?What?When?

    Perhaps I am somewhat naive. I couldn’t figure out what was controversial about the Idiocracy strip. I realize that some people like to complain for the sake of complaining and the attention it provides but if there is something really controversial about it I would be happy to be enlightened.

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  12. Greg House? Is that you, writing this post?

    (also those of us with Adblock don’t really notice ads any more, it seems a mentality just as much as a script.)

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  13. I don’t get the latest comic and how it’s combining doomsday scenarios. I mean, SkyNet becomes self-aware waaay before DEC 20, 2012.

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  15. 1) It’s 12-12-2020, there ej.
    2) Does nobody take day light savings into account?
    3) When the hell did people decide to believe a bunch of dead religious freaks?

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  17. I didn’t like the Idiocracy comic either, but who gives a damn? That’s one half-not-so-good comic out of over five hundred awesome ones. Grow up and stop taking the Internet so seriously, guys. You complain about controversy when in reality YOU’RE THE ONES CAUSING IT.

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  18. @mason,

    If you’re publishing stuff 3 times a week and you don’t upset anybody, then either nobody is reading you, or nobody understands you, or most likely you’re not saying anything worthwhile. People don’t like to be challenged, it upsets them. A good artist does it anyway.

    I say, good for Randall for drawing his complacent readers out of their comfort zone. What’s the point of an author who only says things his audience already agrees with? With just a few sentences, he’s started a huge debate about important issues. And you’re criticizing him for it?

    (To be honest though, I don’t see much that’s controversial here. All he really says is that bigotry is bad. *gasp!*)

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  20. Recently one of my RSS subscriptions started showing up as spam (the server is at a private institution) and curiosity led me to this:

    http://groups.google.com/group/google-reader-troubleshoot/browse_thread/thread/39a7eef288c65dd0.?pli=1

    I realize this is way late, but I had some fun last night learning about things like edoced_46esab, how script kiddies and paranoid PHP noobs obfuscate their code, and how decoding obfuscated PHP can be sort of fun… until it gets boring.

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  22. Re: TV Tropes

    After a while you get used to it.

    You always *can* spend all day browsing it, but, after a few months, you won’t feel like you have to.

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  23. It’s a good thing this blag allows comments, seeing how there is no forum in which one can discuss the comic. :

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  25. I’ve really enjoyed this comic, and frankly think you’re pretty brilliant.

    So I’m assuming the irony in the latest comic is intentional. You know, how these jerks just make a blanket assumption that they’re somehow above everyone else because they think differently, but secretly they’re all smugly self-satisfied. The irony comes in when you consider the fact that the comic author is also smugly self-satisfied about the fact that he doesn’t think like this… meaning, obviously, that he does.

    It took a true genius to pull off such subtle wit.

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  26. Sweetie_Pumpkin: I’m almost 100% certain he was just pointing out the irony of how people constantly think that they’re the only conscious person in the world. 0_o

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  29. Just found xkcd this week. I had seen the fourier transform of the cat before, but had no idea where it came from (might be a good idea to print xkcd.com or something similar visibly into the pngs to guide people to the sitze).
    I love the twisted sense of humor. Well, the family of science geeks….

    Daniel

    (Biophysicist and now PhD Student in Materials Engineering – say no more)

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  30. Thank you very much for the comics. They are appreciated, and brighten up every, monday, wednesday and friday.

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  32. this comic was fatured as a question on university challenge! 20/07/09!

    what webcomic is described as a webcomic of romance sarcasm math and language?

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  33. Actually, as these questions always do, it started with the more obscure and moved towards the obvious, allowing the more knowledgeable to get in first.

    “Launched in 2005 by Randall Monroe, a former NASA contractor, which Internet publication describes itself as ‘a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language’?”

    Obviously, I had it after the sixth word, and equally obviously it was the UCL Maths student who answered the question.

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  35. I really liked #613. Reminds me of the saying that classical physicists can’t solve the 3-body problem, general relativists can’t solve the 2-body problem, quantum field theorists can’t solve the 1-body problem, and string theorists can’t solve the vacuum.

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  36. haha vicodin is one of the world’s greatest inventions… especially when your friend overdoses on it, freaks out in Target then runs back to his car and passes out. yay opium!!!

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  37. Sorry to hear about the surgery — I’ve had a similar procedure done. If you’ve got non-cancerous fatty lipomas, I feel your pain.

    If you makes you feel any better, when mine was removed, I was working as a web editor for a local newspaper. I had just taken my ONE DAY off the entire year to get this lipoma removed for biopsy.

    What day was this? September 11, 2001.

    I ended up going to work right after the surgery with one arm in a sling. That was probably my craziest day of work, ever.

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  40. You used to be cool, now you are mainstream. You can’t escape that, but I can. So I wish you good luck. Bye.

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  41. Pingback: Il blog di Andrea Barbaglia − Vulnerabilità versione in uso di Wordpress

  42. Hey, just wanted to let you know that (for me at least) going to just http://www.xkcd.com brings up wednesday’s comic. I had to type in xkcd.com/614 to view fridays’s comic. Even clicking on the >| button still leaves up wednesday’s comic. Same thing happened wednesday, only monday’s comic was showing and I had to type in xkcd.com/613 to see wednesday’s. I dunno if its my internet or computer or whatever but I thought you should know.

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  43. This is totally off subject, and you probably won’t even read it, but I wanted to say that today is my birthday, and I wish someone would give me a power drill. 🙂

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  45. nice picture of removed lipoma on wikipedia….did you get to see yours? did ya keep it? definitely a reason to keep a jar of formaldehyde around the house.

    love the comic, especially cus i get a laugh out of explaining it to my friends (only this comic works). sorry bout the hack

    much love

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  47. …is it just me, or are you gradually moving every last one of your (mutually unidentifiable) characters into the same apartment block?

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  48. Ah, Vicodin. I was prescribed Vicodin once, but in the doses I was given it wasn’t strong enough to take the edge of the pain the antibiotics were causing me, let alone start on the pain it was prescribed for :-/

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