xkcloud
xkcloud
[This transcript only transcribes what can be seen in the first picture shown at the top of the explanation here. For more see link below.]
[One large frame with a five part comic and a large red button at the bottom.] [Cueball sitting behind a desk.] Cueball: We've made a huge mistake. Desk: XKCD.COM
[Cueball stands and indicates a motley collection of computers and related equipment strewn around the desk.] Cueball: I figured starting a cloud services company would be easy. Cueball: After all, I've got tons of computers!
[A zoomed view on Cueballs head.] Cueball: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr— they all struggle to protect privacy and user data... Cueball: And we offered a solution. Cueball: I forget what it was, though.
[Cueball is standing with his arms up.] Cueball: Anyway, long story short, we screwed up immediately and lost tons of their data. Cueball: Also a bunch of stuff is literally on fire?
[Cueball standing behind a desk.] Cueball: We can fix this. Cueball: But we need your help. Desk: XKCD.COM
[Below the above is a large red rectangular clickable button, that will take the reader on to the interactive part of the comic. On the button it says in large white letters:] CLICK HERE To help us recover user data before Facebook & Co notice we lost it.
[The standard text for the next possible pages can be seen on the link to the continued transcript . Also here will be a list (which may not be possible to make complete) with possible text for the lost data.]

This was the sixth April fools' comic released by Randall . The previous fools comic was 1350: Lorenz from Tuesday April 1st 2014. The next was 1663: Garden scheduled for release Friday April 1st 2016, but in the end released on Monday April 4th 2016.
In this interactive April Fools' Day comic Cueball , presumably representing Randall , admits to the readers he built a flimsy cloud services company using spare computers and parts. Included in the cloud hardware are (from left to right) a Macintosh , several old laptops, an Alienware tower, a Nintendo VirtualBoy , an old desktop with the cover off, and an Atari Pong Console .
He named the company after xkcd, xkcloud being a portmanteau of " xkcd " and " cloud ", here pronounced XK-cloud. The portmanteau incidentally still contains all four xkcd letters in the correct order: xkcLOUd. This was later reused for the xkcd keyboard in 2150: XKeyboarCD , where the word Keyboard, has an X before the word and a C before the D with the xkcd letters capitalized.
After providing his services to various (very big) companies ( Facebook , Twitter and Tumblr ), that are very concerned with securing the users data, his setup failed (some portions may even have caught fire? He is not sure). This has caused him to lose the data he was required to preserve as part of his service. He thus requests the readers help to make up and re-imagine the lost data by pressing the large red button at the bottom of the comic. Preferably before Facebook & Co notice we lost it.
If you take him up on his request and push the button, you will be taken to a "survey" where you will get the chance to help by either trying to combine a posted picture with its lost text or, vice versa, by trying to combine a posted text with its lost picture. In either case you get a selection of texts/pictures to choose from but can also choose to write your own text or even draw the picture. After doing this you get to see this combination in the news feed together with several other posts (which other people have helped combine from other lost data). And then you can continue helping as long as you like.
The content of the "surveys" appear to come from reader submissions, and are different upon every click. This is thus both an interactive and a dynamic comic with only the first picture shown on top of this page. By inviting the xkcd readers to add content that will be displayed in the comic later, the result of all the interactions leads to the generation of crowd-sourced content .
It was not immediately clear if the reader-created drawings or captions are, in fact, being cycled into the surveys and feeds, or if the displayed items were all created by Randall and the reader-created content is simply discarded. With the huge amount of different comments and drawings that already appeared on the first day, and since especially the drawings look like they are created in the simple Paint app (i.e. not by Randall), there can be no doubt that most of the content is created by the users. However he must have made some pictures to get it all started, and at least one of these can be seen here .
This comic resembles last years April Fools' comic 1350: Lorenz where user input also generated a very complex crowd-sourced comic. In both comics it was possible to create a permalink to save a given version of the comic to share with others.
An earlier comic was also related to problems with cloud computing: 908: The Cloud .
Due to the very complex nature of this comic, there are lots of details that may need an explanation. This can be found in the sections below.
On every of the pages after the front page Cueball sits at his desk labeled XKCD.COM Below him are xkcloud's policy: Our policy regarding your personal data :
As can be seen he is getting desperate because people keep sending them more data. He has no place to store it. And he do not even know who the data belongs to. So now he hopes someone else recognize the data (what you are doing if you choose to help). In the end he simply pleads for people to stop and then shouts Help . If you click on the desk you are sent back to the front page of the comic. But below Help is their real contact detail Don't contact us :
We are open for anyone to chat here. Hey you! Come right over and say hello to us! ~ euphoria.io/room/xkcd
[This transcript only transcribes what can be seen in the first picture shown at the top of the explanation here. For more see link below.]
[One large frame with a five part comic and a large red button at the bottom.] [Cueball sitting behind a desk.] Cueball: We've made a huge mistake. Desk: XKCD.COM
[Cueball stands and indicates a motley collection of computers and related equipment strewn around the desk.] Cueball: I figured starting a cloud services company would be easy. Cueball: After all, I've got tons of computers!
[A zoomed view on Cueballs head.] Cueball: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr— they all struggle to protect privacy and user data... Cueball: And we offered a solution. Cueball: I forget what it was, though.
[Cueball is standing with his arms up.] Cueball: Anyway, long story short, we screwed up immediately and lost tons of their data. Cueball: Also a bunch of stuff is literally on fire?
[Cueball standing behind a desk.] Cueball: We can fix this. Cueball: But we need your help. Desk: XKCD.COM
[Below the above is a large red rectangular clickable button, that will take the reader on to the interactive part of the comic. On the button it says in large white letters:] CLICK HERE To help us recover user data before Facebook & Co notice we lost it.
[The standard text for the next possible pages can be seen on the link to the continued transcript . Also here will be a list (which may not be possible to make complete) with possible text for the lost data.]
