1446: "Landing"

rhomboidal · Postby **rhomboidal** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:04 am UTC

Title Text: ...

!!!

I can't wait until it discovers the "RoSETI Stone."

This deserves first post editing:

eidako wrote:Someone on Reddit made a viewer: defunct website, now malware, removed

and

Klear wrote:I made a gif:
http://i.imgur.com/UTdWEHK.gif

Here's a "real time" version with 5 minutes per frame, if anybody's interested:
http://i.imgur.com/WwMnazb.gif

cjmcjmcjmcjm · Postby **cjmcjmcjmcjm** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:09 am UTC

hrasdt · Postby **hrasdt** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:10 am UTC

How mysterious.

eidako · Postby **eidako** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:10 am UTC

Image is alternating between no image, imgs.xkcd.com/comics/%3F%3F%3F.png, and imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_nn-nn-nn_hash.png. Methinks he's either having difficulties uploading the comic or there's some nerd sniping going on.

steaxauce · Postby **steaxauce** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:13 am UTC

Lazy. That's all I have to say. :p

tastycake · Postby **tastycake** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:15 am UTC

Perhaps the image URL has a code in it or something?

r_00-10-00_fUWUYNkxwp.png

cryptologists, help

Inglonias · Postby **Inglonias** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:16 am UTC

steaxauce wrote:Lazy. That's all I have to say. :p

Yeah. Was kind of hoping for a joke or somethung...

tastycake · Postby **tastycake** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:17 am UTC

What's with the image URL?

r_00-10-00_fUWUYNkxwp

Is that a code or something? Normally the image URL would be the title of the comic or something.

nightpool · Postby **nightpool** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:18 am UTC

There seems to be some sort of server/client JS code here, as well some sort of delay. Staying on the page for some random-ish amount of time should trigger new images apparently?

EDIT: still not seeing a lot, except random image loading delays, but apparently there are multiple CDN servers set up to serve these requests? So whatever it is randall is expecting A) a lot of traffic and B) that the images may take some non-negligible amount of CPU power to generate or something? Just a shot in the dark, but its definitely something that looks more interactive then time was.

xokocodo · Postby **xokocodo** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:18 am UTC

Am I the only one who senses a "Time" like comic?

quolnok · Postby **quolnok** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:19 am UTC

First appearance of Ingmar the mute white stickman?

Frame 1 of "Time 2: Clockstoppers"?

Or simply an art page. Note the artist's absence of lines within the square, what does it mean? The box is larger than usual, but contains nothing. A homage to the idea that the noisiest person is often not the most interesting.

Dipperdap · Postby **Dipperdap** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:21 am UTC

I think the image changes every 5 minutes.

S F I R · Postby **S F I R** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:23 am UTC

xokocodo wrote:Am I the only one who senses a "Time" like comic?

I was getting that too! Guess it's time to check it every day, now.

MahekMody · Postby **MahekMody** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:23 am UTC

20 minutes I have been "inspecting elements".
Learned a lot about web design and java scripts, nothing about the comic.

May be it a webdesign education effort.

eidako · Postby **eidako** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:24 am UTC

Ptarr · Postby **Ptarr** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:26 am UTC

xokocodo wrote:Am I the only one who senses a "Time" like comic?

Well, the http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/landing/r_nn-nn-nn_hash.png does look like a timestamp, increasing every 5 minutes, so it has a certain "time" feel.

But I suspect that he's just trolling us.

Oh, and BTW, ~~the image is perfectly white with a perfectly black 1-pixel border right now - no hidden things.~~Edit: darn, how could I have missed that one #fefefe pixel. Shame on me.

nightpool · Postby **nightpool** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:26 am UTC

Someone on Reddit suggested that it might be linked to the Rosetta Comet landing.

Miike · Postby **Miike** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:30 am UTC

If I had to guess, I'd say that the end of the URL is some sort of code. "8MxxPSiNYx" for the first one, for example.

Previous comics seem to have images titled after the comic, so I feel like there's a reason for the seemingly random assignations here.

Of course, that reason could just be "I can't call all these images 'blank_white_comic.jpg'".

Sakana · Postby **Sakana** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:30 am UTC

Somebody with more ambition (and less need for sleep) than me should probably cobble something together to pull down each image just in case.
Or even just make a note of the URL, since they seem to be staying valid after they get phased out (for now, at least.)

Penetenziagite · Postby **Penetenziagite** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:31 am UTC

Not 100% sure but I sense this comic has a link with the Rosetta mission?
It's supposed to land on 11:00 Eastern time on Wednesday 12/11/14....

TimeV2 · Postby **TimeV2** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:33 am UTC

If you do a difference between consecutive images, there are two pixels that differ by a very small amount. They currently are appearing near the left side of the frame, about a third of a way down. The pixels that differ aren't the same pair between each pair of frames. They appear to be following some sort of path. When I wake I suspect there will be sites and religions dedicated to this.

zzyss · Postby **zzyss** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:34 am UTC

I'm going to go with innocent mistake/bug.

EDIT: damn.

eidako · Postby **eidako** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:35 am UTC

We have an image! Three hours to separation.

edit: And now it's blank again.

Baha · Postby **Baha** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:36 am UTC

There's actually one offwhite pixel in each image after the first, and it's moving to the right over time

Penetenziagite · Postby **Penetenziagite** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:36 am UTC

Called it

I mean.... no really.. it was there! I am not making this up... it really said three hou... guys... guys?

Morfos · Postby **Morfos** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:41 am UTC

...Is he getting divorced on California time?

rmuir · Postby **rmuir** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:43 am UTC

Note the first 6 images had a single off-white pixel moving from the left of the frame.

Djehutynakht · Postby **Djehutynakht** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:43 am UTC

At first I thought he was pulling his lazy comic (blank to screw with us) card, but apparently he's decided to be tricky instead.

Pfhorrest · Postby **Pfhorrest** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:44 am UTC

The good folks in the OTT are apparently already archiving the progression of images for this comic.

Link · Postby **Link** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:45 am UTC

*Looks at comic.*
*Looks at thread author.*

It's Time 2!

Did anyone notice the JavaScript?

modulusshift · Postby **modulusshift** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:47 am UTC

Guys, it's Rosetta. He's talking about the Rosetta lander launch in 3 hours or so.

moops · Postby **moops** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:47 am UTC

"HAS ANYONE EVER TRIED THIS BEFORE?"

image updates over time.

Eternal Density · Postby **Eternal Density** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:50 am UTC

Clearly it's a promo for the OTTer meetup.

Envelope Generator · Postby **Envelope Generator** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:51 am UTC

I left the blank image to go to the bathroom and two text boxes appeared in the meantime.

"Has anyone tried this before?"
"I don't think so."

balthasar_s · Postby **balthasar_s** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:55 am UTC

Repost from OTT: The bad thing is that it doesn't work without Javascript (which generates the image URL). That makes writing a bot for it (archiving images) very difficult. Maybe an browser-userscript-bot?

philth · Postby **philth** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:56 am UTC

Blank again

Edit: the dash! Missed it on this small phone!

rbos · Postby **rbos** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:57 am UTC

Intriguing.

dg61 · Postby **dg61** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:57 am UTC

And here I was going to make a smartass post about the history of all-white painting and monochrome in art.

eidako · Postby **eidako** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:58 am UTC

I'm linking all of the frames as they come, up above.

Djehutynakht · Postby **Djehutynakht** » Wed Nov 12, 2014 5:59 am UTC

philth wrote:Blank again

That's not blank.

Look! There's a thing.

A little black line thing.

Who is online