# ­xkcd thread **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comic-strips\ **Created:** [May 28, 2020, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574 "2020-05-28T00:57:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 91
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1803 "2022-11-19T01:34:34Z")
Aww, Bobby’s all grown up! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1804 "2022-11-19T13:57:32Z")
And now that I check up on it… “Exploits of a Mom” was published in October 2007. If Bobby had just been enrolled in school for the first time then, then he’d be 20 years old now. So he is, in fact, all grown up now. On the other hand, it’s also apparently canon that Bobby never really took to computers (unlike his sister Help I’m Trapped in a Drivers License Factory Elaine), so maybe this isn’t him after all. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1805 "2022-11-19T17:11:44Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > [xkcd: Account Problems](https://xkcd.com/2700) I had something similar happen on a Unix system back in the 90s. When inputting a new password, I mistyped a character, so I back-spaced and retyped. I made the same mistake on the repeat password input. Everything seemed fine. The next time I tried to login again, it failed. I carefully typed the password very correctly. Failed. I left to do something else, came back and it worked! I had made the same typo and corrected it. Yes, the backspaces were embedded in the password. The terminal was misconfigured, so the backspace key emitted an ASCII-8 instead of deleting the previous character. Fun times. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2022, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1806 "2022-11-19T22:46:03Z")
I often wondered if it was possible to do that. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1807 "2022-11-22T01:19:01Z")
> **[Change in Slope](https://xkcd.com/2701/)** > > Squinting at a graph is fine for getting a rough idea of the answer, but if you want to pretend to know it exactly, you need statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1808 "2022-11-22T01:30:03Z")
He’s not wrong. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1809 "2022-11-24T00:49:39Z")
> **[What If 2 Gift Guide](https://xkcd.com/2702/)** > > BABIES OR LITERATURE BUT NOT BOTH: Baby shoes ---
**Author:** ![Civil\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d78d45/32.png) [@Civil\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civil_Guy)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1810 "2022-11-24T18:00:59Z")
Seems to imply that ‘science enthusiasts’ are interested in just about anything… which sounds about right. Of course, he then missed many subjects. Medicine/psychology: Collection of research papers on developing more effective placebos. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1811 "2022-11-24T21:10:40Z")
That would be awesome to own the old kilogram prototype! Actually, just having a replica would be pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![Teuton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teuton/32/3864_2.png) [@Teuton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Teuton)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2022, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1812 "2022-11-24T21:13:49Z")
It would be worth $32000 just in material. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1813 "2022-11-25T16:52:37Z")
Well, new, yeah, but it’s pretty old by now. Surely it’s depreciated. Tell you what, I like you, I’ll be willing to give you fifty bucks for it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2022, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1814 "2022-11-25T19:41:04Z")
> **[Paper Title](https://xkcd.com/2703/)** > > CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT: The authors hope these results are correct because we all want to be cool people who are good at science. Just happened to stumble on a new post right as it came out. No one had even said anything ExplainXKCD yet. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1815 "2022-11-29T04:10:19Z")
> **[Faucet](https://xkcd.com/2704/)** > > It's okay, they can figure out which control positions produce scalding water via a trial-and-error feedback loop with a barely-perceptible 10-second lag. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1816 "2022-11-29T22:24:13Z")
And it’s not like it’d even be very hard. But instead we get monstrosities like “One knob, turn it to turn up the flow, and then turn it some more to change the temperature”. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1817 "2022-11-29T22:28:27Z")
My old shower knob solved the problem, as far as I was concerned. You lifted it up to adjust water pressure, and turned it to adjust temperature. Sure, the pressure control wasn’t high precision, and it did rotate a bit when you pushed it back down (so you couldn’t keep an exact water temperature to return to) but it worked. I always assumed the ubiquity of the design you mentioned was largely that people didn’t care about changing the water pressure in their showers. And that the lower pressure settings were for filling things up from the faucet (as that’s the only time you’d use cold). ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1818 "2022-11-29T22:28:56Z")
A consistent 10-second lag sounds like a luxury. My shower faucet has such features as hysteresis, where some final knob configuration does not uniquely determine the flow rate; as well as multi-modal behavior, where minor fluctuations in the input can permanently switch the output to a different state (freezing or burning). ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1819 "2022-11-29T22:53:16Z")
Yup, all you need is two knobs. With those, the hardest part is finding them. When I redid my bathroom I only found one set like that. I blame hotels. There must be some cost advantage to the single knob version ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1820 "2022-11-29T22:58:52Z")
Our showers all have a single knob, turn it to adjust the temperature but the pressure remains constant. It’s a flow control valve, so the water temperature stays constant when someone flushes the toilet, instead of someone getting scalded. We like it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1821 "2022-11-29T23:04:08Z")
> [@JohnGalt](#): > > Our showers all have a single knob, turn it to adjust the temperature but the pressure remains constant. So how do you turn the water off? ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2022, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/1822 "2022-11-29T23:08:31Z")
“Off” is no temperature, I guess you could say. I never thought about it; now I have something to ponder when taking a shower. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=90) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574.md?page=92)