Top all-time · #217
Randall Munroe
Personal blog · blog.xkcd.comscienceculture
Randall Munroe writes xkcd, a personal blog at blog.xkcd.com about science and culture. Since 2009, 208 different Hacker News readers have linked it 235 times, most often “xkcd Color Survey Results (2010)”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Randall Munroe's blog mostly for the 2010 color survey results post, cited in color-name threads, plus its Robot9000 bot and distraction anecdotes.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called interesting, hilarious and entertaining (the color survey post); one commenter says he writes about gender very well.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The blag of the webcomic
Most-linked posts?
- xkcd Color Survey Results (2010)46 people · 50 mentions · first linked 2016-06-29
- Results of XKCD Color Survey22 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2010-05-04
- ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat (2008)10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2016-11-22
- Urinal protocol vulnerability8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2010-05-03
- Mirrorboard: A one-handed keyboard layout for the lazy (2007)8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-02-04
- ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat (2008)8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2010-09-24
- [Randall's Blog post about 'Time']6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-07-30
- /2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-extensio/6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-04-15
- Radiation Dosage Visualization6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2011-03-19
- Serena versus the Drones5 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2019-08-16
What Hacker News says?
See also https://www.xkcd.com/862/ 's alt text > After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those si…
Comment linking /2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-extensio/
on “I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Site I Visit”Submitted Results of XKCD Color Survey as a story · 60 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of xkcd's color survey map[1] and fun visualizations[2]. And a similar paper[3] with an interactive[4]. Note the variation between linguistic groups, and high variance among individuals. Might be interesting to compare the results of TFA. There's also work on using google image search to learn color from names.[5] I was sketching a kids app for "use phone camera to name and collect colors". [1] map http…
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Is My Blue Your Blue?”Submitted What if I wrote a book? as a story · 21 points
HN discussionSimilar: XKCD conducted a color survey back in 2010 [1]. The results are detailed and the writeup quite interesting. [1] https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Is My Blue Your Blue?”Submitted xkcd Color Survey Results (2010) as a story · 19 points
HN discussionYou might like the xkcd color survey: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Is My Blue Your Blue?”Submitted Major Flood Coming Down the Mississippi River as a story · 18 points
HN discussionIn this thread (unrelated) - nobody can spell fuchsia :) https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ (at the end of post)
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Patent” license”Submitted Radiation Dosage Visualization as a story · 18 points
HN discussionPrivate comments and automatically fold/collapse long/low-point threads and negative-comment scoring comments. Optionally mark your comments as private for grammar/spelling/technical errors, way off topic comments and personal requests. I think graying out works for comments scoring 0 or maybe -1, but beyond that, might as well fold/collapse them. I also think something like xkcd's Robot9000[0] would be useful to pr…
Comment linking /2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-attacking-noise-in-chat/
on “Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..”Submitted New book: Thing Explainer – xkcd as a story · 17 points
HN discussionFeature request: letting the user provide their own data and maybe offering some presets; e.g. I'd like to see the XKCD color survey [1] as the base. [1]: https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/ ; context: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ .
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Show HN: A color picker for named web colors”Submitted Dictionary of Numbers | xkcd as a story · 17 points
HN discussionIf only "Shibboleet" worked: http://xkcd.com/806/ Unpacking it... Haiku: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_%28operating_system%29 Penguin doll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux Bearded dude with swords: http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-r... which is a recursive reference to XKCD: http://xkcd.com/225/ Shibboleet: Shibboleth from Judges 12 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth combined wit…
Comment linking /2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-stallman/
on “Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened?”Submitted 4942 Munroe as a story · 15 points
HN discussionReminds me of Randall Munroe's hilarious report on his color survey, specifically the section on gender differences: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Words known better by males than females, and vice versa”Submitted XKCD considering leaving GoDaddy. Help suggest a good replacement as a story · 15 points
HN discussionAlong similar lines: names of colours, by gender: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Words known better by males than females, and vice versa”Submitted Dictionary of Numbers as a story · 14 points
HN discussionxkcd has a history of doing stuff like this. Take the "Dream Girl" comic, for instance. In one of its panels, it featured an innocuous set of coordinates and dates. As it turned out, they were a hidden invite for a meetup a few months into the future. Nothing about them was explained beforehand: it was up to the readers to figure it out. I've come to expect that every detail in an xkcd comic probably has some meanin…
Comment linking /2007/10/01/the-meetup/
on “Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Backstory of His Epic 3,990-Panel Comic”Submitted Serena versus the Drones as a story · 11 points
HN discussionAbout the timeframe of the comic's updates and a good bit longer. He wrote in his blog post [0.6983]: > Time was a bigger project than I planned. All told, I drew 3,099 panels. I animated a starfield, pored over maps and research papers, talked with biologists and botanists, and created a plausible future language for readers to try to decode. > I wrote the whole story before I drew the first frame, and had almost a…
Comment linking /2013/07/29/1190-time/
on “Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Backstory of His Epic 3,990-Panel Comic”Submitted Urinal protocol vulnerability as a story · 11 points
HN discussion[0] http://blog.xkcd.com/2013/07/29/1190-time/
Comment linking /2013/07/29/1190-time/
on “Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Backstory of His Epic 3,990-Panel Comic”Submitted Xkcd Color Survey Results (2010) as a story · 10 points
HN discussionNot op, but one idea: Ask for an articulate reason for downvoting. Increases the barrier of downvotes, and if people don't feel that it's articulate they could then downvote the downvote (with their reasons why). Frequently downvoted reasons could be added to a blacklist that requires additional elucidation before being able to submit the downvote. This has been an interesting thought experiment. I'd expect the resu…
Comment linking /2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-signal-attacking-noise-in-chat/
on “Why I Keep a Research Blog”Submitted [Randall's Blog post about 'Time'] as a story · 10 points
HN discussionRandall's done a lot more with color... https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Comment linking /2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
on “Color: From Hex codes to Eyeballs”Submitted Randall Munroe: Family Illness as a story · 10 points
HN discussion
