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Who watches the bird watchers —

Famous xkcd comic becomes reality with ai bird-identifying binoculars, swarovski ax visio, billed as first "smart binoculars," names species and tracks location..

Benj Edwards - Jan 15, 2024 6:04 pm UTC

Last week, Austria-based Swarovski Optik introduced the AX Visio 10x32 binoculars, which the company says can identify over 9,000 species of birds and mammals using image recognition technology. The company is calling the product the world's first "smart binoculars," and they come with a hefty price tag —$4,799.

"The AX Visio are the world’s first AI-supported binoculars," the company says in the product's press release. "At the touch of a button, they assist with the identification of birds and other creatures, allow discoveries to be shared, and offer a wide range of practical extra functions."

The binoculars, aimed mostly at bird watchers, gain their ability to identify birds from the Merlin Bird ID project, created by Cornell Lab of Ornithology. As confirmed by a hands-on demo conducted by The Verge , the user looks at an animal through the binoculars and presses a button. A red progress circle fills in while the binoculars process the image, then the identified animal name pops up on the built-in binocular HUD screen within about five seconds.

In 2014, a famous xkcd comic strip titled Tasks depicted someone asking a developer to create an app that, when a user takes a photo, will check whether the user is in a national park (deemed easy due to GPS) and check whether the photo is of a bird (to which the developer says, "I'll need a research team and five years"). The caption below reads, "In CS, it can be hard to explain the difference between the easy and the virtually impossible."

It's been just over nine years since the comic was published , and while identifying the presence of a bird in a photo was solved some time ago, these binoculars arguably go further by identifying the species of the bird in the photo (it also keeps track of location due to GPS). While apps to identify bird species already exist , this feature is now packed into a handheld pair of binoculars.

According to Swarovski, the development of the AX Visio took approximately five years, involving around 390 "hardware parts." The binoculars incorporate a neural processing unit (NPU) for object recognition processing. The company claims that the device will have a long product life cycle, with ongoing updates and improvements. The company also mentions "an open programming interface" in its press release, potentially allowing industrious users (or handy hackers) to expand the unit's features over time.

• The Swarovski Optik Visio binoculars. Swarovski Optik

The binoculars, which feature industrial design from Marc Newson, include built-in digital camera, compass, GPS, and discovery-sharing features that can "immediately show your companion where you have seen an animal." The Visio unit also wirelessly ties into the "SWAROVSKI OPTIK Outdoor App" that can run on a smartphone. The app manages sharing photos and videos captured through the binoculars. (As an aside, we've come a long way from computer-connected gadgets that required pesky serial cables in the late 1990s.)

Swarovski says the AX Visio will be available at select retailers and online starting February 1, 2024. While this tech is at a premium price right now, given the speed of tech progress and market competition, we may see similar image-recognizing features built into much cheaper models in the years ahead.

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He’s Glad You Asked

By Kenneth Chang

• Nov. 3, 2014

While giving a physics talk for high school students five years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Randall Munroe could tell that his audience was, in his words, “not totally with me.”

He was trying to explain potential energy and power — not complex concepts, but abstruse.

So, in the middle of his three-hour presentation, Mr. Munroe, who is best known as the creator of the Web comic xkcd , switched gears to “ Star Wars .”

“I thought about the scene in ‘ The Empire Strikes Back ’ when Yoda lifts the X-wing out of the swamp,” he said in an interview. “It occurred to me as I was lecturing.”

Instead of abstract definitions (an object lifted upward gains potential energy because it will accelerate if dropped; power is the rate of change in energy), Mr. Munroe asked a question: How much Force power can Yoda output?

“And so I did a rough version of the calculation on the fly in the classroom, looking up the craft dimensions and measuring things in the scene on the projector in front of them,” Mr. Munroe said. “They all perked up.”

For most people, physics is not interesting in itself. “The tools are only fun when the thing you’re using them on is interesting,” he said.

The students started asking other questions. “What about the end of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ when Sauron’s eye explodes ?” he recalled. “How much energy is that?”

The experience inspired Mr. Munroe to start soliciting similar questions from his xkcd readers .

Mr. Munroe has now collected that work, including a version of his Yoda calculations and new material, into a book, “What If?” which has been on the nonfiction best-seller list since it was published in September.

As its cover asserts, the book is full of “serious scientific answers to absurd hypothetical questions.”

“It exercises your imagination, and his dry wit is charming,” said William Sanford Nye, better known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” who shared the stage with Mr. Munroe last month at New York Comic Con. “He does, for lack of a better term, absurd scenarios, but they’re very instructive.”

Some examples: What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light? (“The answer turns out to be ‘a lot of things,' ” Mr. Munroe writes, “and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter [or the pitcher].”) If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the moon at the same time, would it change color? (“Not if we used regular laser pointers.”) How long could a nuclear submarine last in orbit? (“The submarine would be fine, but the crew would be in trouble.”)

The explanations are accompanied by the same stick-figure drawings and nerdy wit that made xkcd popular. (What does xkcd mean? It is meaningless. The comic’s website helpfully explains, “It’s just a word with no phonetic pronunciation.”)

What If You Had a Hypothetical Question That Needed Answering?

As a child, Mr. Munroe also asked questions. In the book’s introduction, he recounts wondering if there were more hard things or soft things in the world. The conversation made such an impression on his mother that she wrote it down and saved it.

The young Mr. Munroe, 5 years old, concluded the world contained about three billion soft things and five billion hard things.

“They say there are no stupid questions,” Mr. Munroe, now 30, writes. “That’s obviously wrong; I think my question about hard and soft things, for example, is pretty stupid.

“But it turns out that trying to thoroughly answer a stupid question can take you to some pretty interesting places.”

In the interview, he also remembered asking questions and sharing tidbits of knowledge with his fifth-grade teacher. “And he said, ‘O.K., you have a lot of stuff to tell me, and that’s good, but have you heard of the concept of quality over quantity?' ” Mr. Munroe said.

While a physics major at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, Mr. Munroe started working as an independent contractor on a robotics project at the nearby NASA Langley Research Center , and he continued after graduating. During that time, he started scanning his doodles and posting them on the web.

By mutual decision, the NASA contract ended in 2006. Mr. Munroe became a full-time cartoonist and moved to the Boston area, because, he said, he wanted a bigger city with geekier things to do. In 2012, he added the “What If?” feature to the website.

Now, he said, he receives thousands of questions a week. Many are obviously students looking for help with homework. Others can be answered simply: No.

“One of them was ‘Is there any commercial scuba diving equipment that would allow you to survive under molten lava?' ” Mr. Munroe said. “No, there’s not. There’s nothing complicated about the answer to that. It’s exactly what you think.”

Once he chooses a question worth answering, he spends a day or two immersing himself in research, mostly on the web, and then writing. He rarely consults experts, as he is often working at 4 a.m. and “there’s no point in trying to call someone.”

For the Yoda problem, he later refined the calculations. He watched the scene, timing the 3.5 seconds it took the front landing strut to rise out of the water. In the original “Star Wars,” a crew member squeezes past an X-wing strut. From that, he estimated the height at 1.4 meters.

Mr. Munroe could not find a published figure for the mass of an X-wing, but there is a published length — 12.5 meters . He then took the specifications of an Air Force F-22 fighter — 19 meters and 19,700 kilograms — and scaled them down to estimate the X-wing mass at 5,600 kilograms.

That gave an answer of peak power output of 19.2 kilowatts, which Mr. Munroe noted, can power a block of suburban homes.

(Or in the imperial units still used in American newspapers, that would be 12,300 pounds rising at a rate of 1.3 feet a second out of the swamp, producing a peak power of 14,200 foot-pounds a second.)

As for the exploding eye at the end of “Lord of the Rings,” Mr. Munroe says he does not remember the answer that he and the class arrived at, but he remembers looking up the air-pressure spike that would knock over a person and the explosive energy needed to produce a pressure spike that forceful at various distances. (A federal publication, “ The Effects of Nuclear Weapons ,” helpfully provides the data.) Then they approximated the distance between Sauron’s tower, where the eye hovered, and the Black Gate, knocked over by the blast.

One of his favorite replies, which ends the book, is to a question about earthquakes: “What if a Richter magnitude 15 earthquake were to hit America at, let’s say, New York City? What about a Richter 20? 25?”

The short answer is that a magnitude 15 earthquake would destroy the planet. “That’s not all that interesting,” Mr. Munroe said.

Then he flipped the question around. The scale, which is logarithmic, can also describe smaller rumblings of zero or negative magnitude. Each step downward just means the amount of energy released diminishes a factor by one thirty-second.

A quake of magnitude zero would release one thirty-second the energy of a magnitude 1 quake. Mr. Munroe calculated that it would be like the Dallas Cowboys’ running full tilt into the side of a garage.

And a magnitude of minus 15 would be a mote of dust landing on a table.

After so many questions involving mayhem, death and destruction, Mr. Munroe said, “It’s nice to leave the world alone for once and leave it quiet.”

Further Research is Needed

Further research is needed to fully understand how we managed to do such a good job.

2655: Asking Scientists Questions

Explanation [ edit ].

Answering the questions in Randall 's what if? blog and his books What If? and What If? 2 requires a wide variety of scientific expertise, much of which he is unfamiliar with. To make up for this deficiency, Randall (here represented by Cueball ) asks other scientists for help, in this comic represented by Hairbun .

Normal people (not from the scientific community) have certain expectations about scientists, as they would any group of people. In the case of scientists, they are often expected to be overly serious, "measuring the marigolds" rather than enjoying the simpler or more subjective things in life. This is reflected in the first panel, where Hairbun gets annoyed by Cueball's "frivolous scenario" and wants to work on formulas instead. This is the scenario one would have expected from the standard assumptions regarding scientists.

In reality, scientists are just like regular people in most respects (as has been represented before in xkcd) and this is why Randall, in reality, is more likely to experience something like what is shown in the second panel. Here Hairbun is quite pleased to get "something fun to think about" as part of their work, instead of filling out her grant applications.

Grants are donations of money from private or government organizations specifically aimed to fund scientific experiments and projects; in many fields, they are the most common source of funding, and the vast majority of scientists not directly employed by private industry rely on grants to support their work. These organizations require applicants to provide detailed information on the goal of the project, the methodology, the expected results, the specific uses to which the money will be put, and more. Applying for a grant is thus a lengthy, painstaking process that more often than not results in disappointment since most granting agencies have only enough money to approve a small percentage of applications. It also has little to do directly with the actual science the scientists want to perform. Thus most scientists find it a necessary but time-consuming and unpleasant part of their job, and the one here expresses relief at taking a break from this part of their work.

Hairbun then asks if Cueball would like to fill out grant applications, trying to bribe him with coauthor credit, powerful magnets, and plutonium. Co-authorship on scientific papers helps scientists advance in the " publish or perish " world of academic careers; such co-authorship might be above-board, if Cueball contributed scientific ideas while helping write grant applications, or it might not. Plutonium is used in making atomic bombs and is thus a tightly controlled substance, as well as being highly toxic due to both its radioactivity and its heavy metal poison effects. The scientist is so relieved to have found someone who might take over filling out grant applications that they are willing to give them access to such a dangerous material without even knowing their name.

The title text notes that not all responses were complaints about grant applications, noting two kinds of answers to the question "Does the substance feel weird to the touch?" which Randall claims are equally common. The first is the sort of response you would expect from a stereotypical scientist, just noting safety procedures that are common with such a substance and how they impede attempts to determine how weird a substance feels. The second is "Yeah, and it tastes AWFUL," implying that the scientist in question has not only touched the weird substance, but also tasted it. It could have been carelessness of some kind, perhaps having touched their mouth after handling a sample, but it might have been from deliberately licking it or even putting it in their mouth. Whatever the reason they tasted it, they are enthusiastically volunteering this elaboration without any actual prompting.

Eating a bizarre substance is likely a bad idea, [ citation needed ] as it could be poisonous. Less toxic minerals such as halite are sometimes evaluated based on taste as an informal test of their composition; nearly every mineral of low toxicity (and some otherwise) has been tasted for science. However, this is self-evidently a bad idea if you're not sure whether a mineral is a non-toxic one or a similar-looking toxic mineral; mineral taste-tests should only be performed by experts who know they're not eating arsenic or stibnite.

Transcript [ edit ]

I am of three minds. Part of me wants to write a basic explanation to get us started. Part of me is worried I'll lay a terrible foundation. And part of me doesn't want to get rid of "This is a comic about scientists. [ citation needed ] " without memorializing it first. GreatWyrmGold ( talk ) 22:12, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Considering "tastes awful", I'm a chemist and know an old recipe for amalgam-related stuff, quote, "...the reaction is over when the stuff doesn't taste metallic anymore". mode=Homer "Mmmmh, mercury!" 172.71.94.187 07:52, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

The first line of the explanation contains the word 'blag' in parenthesis. I don't know this word and the translations that dic.cc give are 'badly behaving child' and 'armed robbery' which don't make sense in this context. Can someone explain, please? Flukx ( talk ) 08:37, 6 August 2022 (UTC) "Blag" is an alternate spelling of "blog" to suggest that's it's not a mere blog, but something more special. 172.70.126.81 10:54, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Can we solve the science funding crisis by telling scientists about Fiverr? 172.70.210.183 ( talk ) 14:24, 6 August 2022 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This is an impressively lengthy explanation for a comic that is essentially self-explanatory - was someone in the middle of writing a grant application when it landed? 172.70.85.5 08:20, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

I can definitely speak to the grant application situation - I didn't realize most professors / researchers are struggling with funding related work year-round if not on daily basis, until I was actually involved in the process. Fair to say when I got lucky and got a grant for a 4-professor collaboration project, my PHD degree got a LOT smoother.

Why does "eating a bizarre substance is likely a bad idea" need a citation?

Am I the only one who noticed the implication that grant applications are one of the things that are fun?

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A Conversation With Randall Munroe, the Creator of XKCD

Q: What would happen if a beloved web comic created a series of ... physics explainers? 

Randall Munroe began his career in physics working with robots at NASA's Langley Research Center. He is famous, however, for engineering a creation of different kind: the iconic web comic that is  xkcd . Last week, Munroe won the web's wonder for approximately the thousandth time when he published comic #1110, " Click and Drag ," a soaring, spanning, surprising work that encouraged users to explore a fanciful world through their computer screens.

As Rev Dan Catt pointed out , if you printed the comic at 300dpi, the resulting image would be about 46 feet wide .

But Munroe, work-wise, is no longer dedicated exclusively to xkcd. He recently launched " What If? ," a collection of infographic essays that answers questions about physics. Published each Tuesday, the feature -- a blog extension of the xkcd site -- aims to analyze the kind of wonderful and fanciful hypotheticals that might arise when the nerdily inclined get together in bars: "What would happen if the Moon went away?" "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck ...?" Some of What If's recently explored questions include: " What if everyone actually had only one soul mate, a random person somewhere in the world? " and " If you went outside and lay down on your back with your mouth open, how long would you have to wait until a bird pooped in it? " and -- the most recent entry -- " If every person on Earth aimed a laser pointer at the Moon at the same time, would it change color? "

I recently spoke with Munroe about What If, xkcd, creativity, baseballs pitched at 90 percent of the speed of light ... and how, for him, The Lord of the Rings helped lead to it all. The conversation below is lightly edited and condensed.

First things first: Why did you create What If?

It actually started with a class. MIT has a weekend program where volunteers can teach classes to groups of high school students on any subject you want. I had a friend who was doing it, and it sounded really cool -- so I signed up to teach a class about energy, which I always thought was interesting, but which is a slippery idea to define. I was really getting into the nuts and bolts of what energy is, and it was a lot of fun -- but when I started to get into the normal lecture part of the class, it felt kind of dry, and I could tell the kids weren't super into it. And then we got to a part where I brought up an example -- I think it was Yoda in Star Wars . And they got really excited about that. And then they started throwing out more questions about different movies -- like, "When the Eye of Sauron exploded at the end of The Lord of the Rings , and knocked people over from this far away, can we tell how big a blast that was?" They got really excited about that -- and I had a lot more fun doing it than I did just teaching the regular material.

So I spent the second half of the class just solving problems like that in front of them. And then I was like, "That was really fun. I want to keep doing it."

So What If was basically a spin-off of the class?

That was where the idea came from. I actually wrote the first couple entries quite some time ago, based on questions students asked me in that class -- and then on another couple questions that my friends had asked. It was only recently that I finally managed to get around to starting it up as a blog.

The variety of the topics you tackle is incredibly broad. How do you figure out the best way to explain all these different, complicated subjects to people?

Part of what I'm doing is selectively looking for questions that I already know something interesting about. Or I've stumbled across a paper recently that was really cool, and now I'll keep an eye out for a question that will let me bring it up -- something I can use as a springboard. So in a conversation, someone might say, "Money doesn't grow on trees." Okay, well, what if money did grow on trees? Our economy would collapse. On the other hand, we would switch to a new currency. It's complicated.

What I like doing is finding the places in those questions where normal people -- or, people who have less spare time than I do -- think, "This is stupid," and stop. I think the really cool and compelling thing about math and physics is that it opens up entry to all these hypotheticals -- or at least, it gives you the language to talk about them. But at the same time, if a scenario is completely disconnected from reality, it's not all that interesting. So I like the questions that come back around to something in real life.

And the great thing with this is that once someone asks me something good, I can't not figure out the answer, you know? I get really serious, and I'll drop whatever I'm doing and work on that. One of the questions I recently answered was, "What if, when it rains, the rain came down in one drop?" And I was like, "Well, how big would that drop be?" I know a little bit about meteorology, and then, before I knew it, I had spent four hours working out the answer .

Why that need to answer? Is it because people are asking you -- because you want to help them out by answering the questions for them?

Oh, no, no, no, there's nothing altruistic about it! It's just like, once it gets in my brain, it keeps bugging me, and I don't know the answer, but I'm really curious. What really happens is: I have an idea for what the answer is, but then I want to figure out if I'm right or not. So I have to keep working to find out. And oftentimes, in the process of learning I'm wrong, I'll run into something even cooler. And then once I find that, I just want to tell everyone about it.

So I basically set up this blog to flatter all of my random impulses. And it's been a lot of fun so far.

And how do you decide which questions you ultimately commit to answering?

For the first few entires I wrote, I just wanted to make sure this format made sense. So I wrote a couple entries with questions just from my friends. And then when we put up the blog, we included an "Ask a Question" link. And since then, the volume of questions has been high enough that I don't think any set of two or three people could read them all. So I pretty much just sit down whenever I have a few spare hours and go through them and answer the questions that come in and try to see if there's anything that would make a good article.

Of the ones you've done, do you have a favorite so far?

The one that I recently put up : "What would happen if the land masses of the world were rotated 90 degrees?" I'm kind of a geography and map geek, so I started drawing out the maps for that, and I think that ended up being, by a large margin, my longest entry. And I kept on thinking, "Oh, what about this thing?" and "Oh, I should really go back and read more about trade winds and figure this out." So I had a lot of fun with that.

But I also really enjoyed the first one that I posted , and that's been one of a lot of people's favorites: the one about the baseball thrown at 90 percent of the speed of light.

That one I have a soft spot for because it was the first one I put up. And I heard from people who know a lot more about these things than I do -- I got email from a bunch of physicists at MIT saying, "Hey, I saw your relativist baseball scenario, and I simulated it out on our machine, and I've got some corrections for you." And I thought that was just the coolest thing. It showed there were some effects that I hadn't even thought about. I'm probably going to do a follow-up at some point using all the material they sent me.

I imagine, given all that, that the posts are incredibly labor-intensive. How long would an average one take you?

I'm still deciding how long to make them -- and part of that is just figuring out how long it takes to answer the average question. When I started out, I didn't really know what to expect from the questions, so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to answer them quickly or what. But I think, now, it's about a day of work in which I don't do much else.

That's it? I was figuring it'd take much longer!

Well, that's a day of solid work -- I mean, most people don't actually work through a whole day. I certainly don't. So in practice, it's a few days, because there's a lot of email checking, or having to go run an errand.

Makes sense. And, design-wise, I love how each article stands on its own -- a single product on a single page. Since that's the same structure you use for xkcd, I'm wondering: Why did you choose to repeat that format?

Especially because I was so delayed in actually getting the site up , I had a lot of time to think about how I wanted it to look. Did I want to have individual entries, or did I want to do more of a blog format, or did I want to have a bunch of questions answered as they came in? So we settled on the current format, and it seems to work pretty well.

One of the things I've learned with doing xkcd is that you sort of give people, "Here's the thing, and here's the button you can press to get another thing." Sometimes that can be more easy to digest than "here's a long page of things." You can read through it, and you get to the end and think, "Wow, I just read a whole bunch. Do I really want another page like this?"

I'm not a huge fan of some of the infinite scrolling things that are happening now. I think it's really annoying to want to read partway through, and then you navigate away, and can't get back.

xkcd led to sales of posters, books, and other items . Does What If, at this point, have a business model?

When I first started xkcd, it was all stuff I drew during classes -- because I wasn't paying attention to the lecture. And then when I started drawing them from home, I found that I'd have a lot of trouble coming up with ideas. And then I'd get a project and start working on that -- and I found that, instead of it taking up more of my time, I had more comic ideas per day and was drawing more of them. So they all reinforced each other.

The format would definitely make sense as a book. But for the moment, it's just been so much fun to write and answer. My experience of the Internet has been that if you make something really cool, the neatness speaks for itself. And that's much more important than trying to make something marketable -- trying to make something into a product. So I just found that if I'm steadily trying to make cool things and putting them up, some of them, in some way or another, have a business opportunity.

Is there a direct relationship between xkcd and What If? Do they inspire each other?

Mostly, I just think it's helped me because it's given me all this cool stuff to read through. I'll sometimes be researching a question and then be like, "I don't think I can turn that into a thing." But I did find this paper while I was doing it, which led me to this other paper, which led me to this blog, which led me to this comic.

And it probably made me annoying! I read this book once about this guy, A.J. Jacobs, who read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and wrote about the experience. He said he had the problem where someone would be like, "Pass the salt," and he'd be like, "Oh, did you know that salt was originally used in medicine for this kind of thing, and then we learned it causes this?" And people would be like, " Just pass the salt ."

I had something similar. When I was doing the money chart, someone would say, "Oh, I can't afford to move into a new apartment," and I'd say, "Oh, I know, a lot of people are in that situation because the income has changed like this, whereas the rents in this state have shifted more than in other states, because blahblahblahblahblah -- all these economics."

It was like, "Okay, wait. Pull back. This is not interesting."

I learned very early on in life that not everyone wants to hear every fact in the world, even if you want to tell them everything you've ever read. Which is why it's probably good that I have the comic schedule that I do -- because I would figure out something to say every 30 minutes if I were forced to by my schedule. But it would not be the most interesting.

How does the weekly schedule of xkcd and What If play into that? Is it a way of forcing yourself to create with regularity?

If there's one thing I've learned from drawing xkcd, it's that I need a strict schedule. Some people who publish comics will just write whenever they have a good idea and put things up, without a regular update schedule. If I did that, I would never post anything. I have to have that deadline pressure to make me pick something.

And that was part of why I hesitated with the question-answering site, and part of why I picked it out of all the things I could have done a blog about -- because I knew that the questions were going to make me want to answer them anyway.

What about your work environment? Where do you actually do your research and your drawing?

For a long time, I was working from home. Once I got married, I started working from an office. I found that having somewhere to go that isn't my house is mentally helpful: "This is the place where I answer email and write blog posts," and "over there is the place where I do the dishes." Because otherwise, if I'm sitting around, I can go, "You know, I haven't cleaned the floor of the bathroom for a while." If you ever come to my house and the bathroom is clean, it means that I have some project I'm supposed to be doing that I can't get started on.

There are a lot of people who have written books about creativity that I haven't read, so I'm not by any means an expert on it, but my impression is that being creative is just a combination of getting new stimulus, but also having periods where you're not getting any stimulus. I had to stop reading Reddit sometime a few years ago, because I found that whenever I'd bump into a problem that was going to take a little time to solve, I'd just switch over and refresh Reddit and distract myself. Depriving myself of that has definitely been an important part of actually getting anything done, ever.

But at the same time, if you're just staring at your room with no Internet or no connection, you just go crazy and don't have anything to give you any ideas at all. Comics, once they start touring, all their jokes are about airplanes. So that's something I try to remember: Don't do all of your jokes about running a website.

But the jokes -- not just visually, but in tone -- feel consistent at the same time. I was going to ask you how the comic has evolved, but I guess the better question is: Has it evolved? Or would you say it's kept a steadiness throughout the years?

I don't know. I try not to spend too much time interpreting my comics for people, because I try to put out there whatever I can, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want. And if they like something and laugh, it affects how I think about it -- and maybe I do more of those, and understand what sort of jokes make people laugh, and so on.

The one thing that I didn't anticipate at the beginning was how much fun I had doing infographics. I think the things I've had the most fun creating -- and that have been the most invigorating and rewarding -- have been things like the chart of the movement all the characters in Lord of the Rings . That was one of those things where I'd always thought, "You know, it'd be so cool if someone could make that and see what that looked like." And since I'd been doing xkcd, I realized, I had a platform where I could do it.

And last year, I did a chart of money and all these different amounts of money and all the different amounts of money in the world and how they compare to each other . It was about a month and a half of sixteen-hour days of research. I had easily ten times as many academic journal articles and sources on that one comic than on anything I did in the course of my physics degree. And the comic was so large, it wound up being a huge, sprawling grid. It was sort of disorganized -- I was going for this "Where's Waldo?" feel, where you could look through it, and find all this different stuff here and there. We printed up a version that was normal poster size, 24 x 36 inches, and then we got a billboard printer to make a double size version that was like six feet high, just so you could read all the little text.

That was a fun one. I don't really know about the "what is and what isn't a comic?" debate, but it's quite a stretch to call that a comic. I think it was comic #980 , which I know because we had to do a lot of custom work for that comic to make it so people could drag and scroll and zoom in on it -- because there was no way that we could fit the whole thing on one screen. So I remember the number from having to load it up and test features to it.

So it lives in your heart.

Yeah. A lot of people will refer to comics by number to me, and I'll realize they're expecting me to remember all the comics by number. And I can't even remember what I ate this morning, let alone which comic was #473! What will also happen is that I'll have a joke that I'll make to friends, and then eventually I'll think, "Hey, that could be good as a comic." But then the next time I go to make that joke, with a new person, they'll be like, "Why are you quoting your comic to me?"

"Nooo! I'm not being pretentious, just forgetful!"

Exactly. I'm just one of those people who can always tell the same story twice, forgetting that I've told it already.

So, given the challenges of creating fresh content -- and I know you get this all the time, but I have to ask -- how do you actually come up with new ideas? Especially over such a long stretch of time?

I think, if anything, it's noticing the things that make me laugh and grabbing onto them and figuring out how to write them down. There are definitely times -- and I think this is pretty common among cartoonists -- where you spend an entire day trying to think of an idea, and you're like, "I give up." And then you go and take a shower or run an errand, and halfway there you get an idea.

What xkcd tells us about dependencies and NIH syndrome

NIH. Not invented here. In software development, this means a preference for in-house code. People have strong feelings about this, but let’s try to ground ourselves in some actual analysis. When does it make sense?

A third-party dependency is code you don’t have to write, but it introduces risk. Some people say “if you can replace a dependency with an afternoon of coding, do it!”.

Is that right? Let’s ask xkcd.

Here is a favorite, often-cited graphic on automation from xkcd/1205 :

The table tells you how long you should spend to automate a task based on how often you do the task and how much time automation saves you.

This also works for thinking about code dependencies.

Assume that our time horizon is five years, like in xkcd. Except, we’ll make these changes:

• ‘how often you do the task’ → ‘how often will the dependency break?'
• ‘how much time you shave off’ →  ‘how long will it take to fix?'

Let’s assume a dependency breaks on you once a year . Let’s assume it takes half a day to write a workaround, test it, code review it, and deploy. Looking at the ‘yearly’ column and the ‘6 hours’ row, that tells us that we should spend at most one day writing a replacement.

Of course, this conclusion assumes you write perfect code that won’t need to be touched again for five years . ( Isn’t all your code like that? )

The real world can’t be so simple, right?

The alternative to taking an external dependency is to build your own replacement. There’s a cost to build it and because we don’t usually write perfect code, there’s a risk that it will break and an associated cost to that, just like with a dependency.

A replacement only makes (economic) sense if the cost of failures in the replacement is less than the cost of failures in the dependency .

If so, then there is ‘budget’ for writing the replacement.

Understanding the difference in failure costs – and thus the ‘budget’ for a replacement – requires comparing the dependency and replacement along two dimensions:

• How often do failures happen?
• How much does it cost when they do?

Most people jusifiably focus on the first as it’s the easiest to affect. If you can reduce the failure rate enough, then spending days on a replacement is easy to justify . But there are cases where failure cost matters, particularly if a replacement is faster to deploy.

Assessing risk of failures 🔗︎

First, we’re probably overestimating the risk of a dependency . And that might skew whether we think a replacement can do better.

Cognitive biases are mental heuristics to give rapid decisions in the face of uncertainty . They’re great for keeping humanity alive in a hostile world. They’re also known to introduce severe and systematic errors. Two are particularly relevant:

Availability bias – weighting recent or memorable experiences more heavily.

Confirmation bias – selectively considering evidence to support a preconception.

We remember most clearly the times that dependencies blew up on us , when they exasperated us, and they form the set of cases that we think about when we assess how likely a dependency is to fail.

Many projects of any size have dependencies and transitive dependencies in the dozens or hundreds. We forget how many dependencies just work and we discount them from our assessment of the likelihood of a dependency going bad on us.

That leads to considering a ‘portfolio’ effect. The more dependencies we have, the more likely that we’ll experience a problem with a dependency in any given period of time . In other words, the odds that some dependency will be a problem are much higher than the odds of any particular dependency being a problem.

So when we’re deciding on the risk of failure of a dependency – and whether we can do better – we need to be honest in our assessment of the risk of that particular dependency, not dependencies in general.

Next, we need to answer this question: what gives us any confidence that the code we’d write to avoid a dependency is any better than the dependency ? Or what would lead us to the opposite conclusion? Here are some factors worth considering:

• complexity of the business domain
• dependency project team and activity
• scope of use
• size and complexity of the codebase

Some domains are relatively simple and others are fiendishly complex. For example, string padding is simple. On the other side, we have topics like time-zone-aware date math, Unicode collation algorithms, SOAP, the 13 RFCs that define the rules for MIME, and so on.

The simpler the topic, the more confidence we might have that the replacement will be at least no worse than the dependency. The more complex the topic, the more skeptical we should be. We need to ask ourselves honestly whether we have specialized knowledge that’s better than the maintainers of the dependency .

ESR said in The Cathedral and the Bazaar that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. A popular, active dependency project, with many users and multiple contributors, should be more reliable than one with a single maintainer, few users, or a long list of unaddressed issues and open pull requests. Will the replacement have more eyeballs than the dependency? If a replacement will be used by a lot of internal teams, it’s going to have more eyes on it than if it’s used by just one team.

However, these questions might not have the same weight if we don’t need everything a dependency is offering us. If our scope is a tiny subset of the full feature set, then the complexity of reimplementing that subset might be less than the whole. How much of a dependency do we really need?

If we assume that bug density per line of code will be relatively comparable between a replacement and a dependency, then one way that a replacement might arrive at a lower failure rate is by having a lot less code . Less code usually means less complexity as well, making finding and fixing problems easier. Can the replacement be a lot smaller and simpler than the dependency it replaces?

To sum up, if want replacement reliability to be better than dependency reliability, we should look for cases where some or all of the following are true:

• The business domain is simple
• The dependency is not widely used or is poorly maintained
• The replacement can implement a subset of features with smaller, simpler code.

Assessing cost of failures 🔗︎

When comparing cost of failure, we need to focus on two things: the time to fix the failure and the time to deploy the fix.

Why just focus on time factors? Because the actual incident cost of the downtime, error, or whatever, is going to be the same for a dependency or a replacement. The only thing that differs is how long things take.

The time to fix a bug should be relatively similar for a dependency and a replacement . In both cases, a problem has to be replicated and diagnosed. In my experience, that’s the hard part of most bugs – the actual fixes are usually simpler.

That might not be true if the dependency is in a different language. If the dependency is a C library and the application isn’t C or C++, then a replacement in the project language might be faster to fix because of engineer fluency in the project language and tooling.

It’s easier to imagine a difference in deploy time between a dependency and a replacement. Can our dependency manager trivially swap in a local fork of deep dependency ? If so, then we’re insulated from a dependency maintainer that is slow to fix bugs, apply pull requests and release new versions. In a sense, it’s a free option to shift from a dependency to a replacement on demand.

If we can’t deploy an updated dependency or a local patch quickly, we’re in trouble if the ongong incident cost of failure is also high. Perhaps our dependency manager isn’t sufficient. Maybe we’re in a regulated environment where updates to dependency require a security review. These situations lean towards a replacement over a dependency.

Bringing it all together 🔗︎

Should you write a replacement or not?

Again, you need to have a good theory for why a replacement will have a lower failure rate than a dependency . It a simple thing? Will it have less code?

If you don’t see an advantage in failure rate, do you have a theory for better time to fix and deploy? If not, just stop. You’re done. Use the dependency.

Assuming the long-term economics favor a replacement solution, only then is it time to figure out the acceptable build cost. To approximate that, we can go back to an xkcd-style matrix. But we need to make two changes: a longer timeframe and a larger range of costs.

From thinking about risk assessment and the portfolio effect, we know that failure rate for any single dependency will be lower, so this chart goes out to five years.

For cost of a failure, we can reduce everything down to the number of engineer-days to fix and deploy. Make sure to consider the cost of the downtime until the fix is deployed! (An incident that costs $2,000 a day in lost revenue is comparable to the cost of an extra engineer to work the problem.)

Then we compare the position on the chart for the dependency and the replacement. If the time factors are comparable, then the cost factors are similar and you’ll be on one row of the chart. Find the column for the replacement and the column for the dependency, then the difference will be the number of engineer-days you can afford to build the replacement. If you can build your own in that time budget and deliver the decreased failure rate, then do it!

But we can generalize further from patterns in the chart since the accuracy of our estimates is probably poor anyway:

If the cost is small, it’s probably worth spending half-a-day to a day.

If the cost is big, it’s probably worth spending days to weeks.

But only if you’re sure you can reduce the failure rate!

[As I was writing this article, xkcd released a new comic called, appropriately, Dependency .]

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Unlocking Xkcd Productivity: Understanding Tools And Graphs

Did you know that 85% of people struggle with productivity on a daily basis? If you find yourself constantly battling distractions and struggling to stay focused, then it's time to unlock the power of XKCD productivity. In this article, we will explore how understanding tools and graphs can revolutionize your ability to get things done efficiently and effectively.

XKCD productivity is not just about working harder or longer hours; it's about working smarter. By utilizing various types of tools and graphs, you can gain valuable insights into your habits, identify areas for improvement, and optimize your workflow. From simple to-do lists to complex data visualizations, these tools and graphs provide a visual representation of your progress and help you prioritize tasks.

But understanding XKCD productivity is only the first step. To truly unlock its potential, you need to apply it to your daily life. We will provide practical tips and tricks for using XKCD productivity effectively, so you can maximize your output while minimizing stress.

Get ready to unleash your full potential with XKCD productivity – it's time to take control of your workday like never before!

Key Takeaways

The origins of xkcd productivity, exploring the different types of tools and graphs, applying xkcd productivity to your daily life, tips and tricks for using xkcd productivity effectively, unlocking your full potential with xkcd productivity.

• XKCD productivity principles can revolutionize productivity thinking by combining humor and science.
• Applying XKCD productivity principles in the workplace enhances efficiency and helps meet deadlines.
• Breaking down complex tasks into smaller steps and automating repetitive tasks can optimize workflow and free up time for more important work.
• Utilizing tools and graphs, such as task management apps and data visualization, can provide valuable insights, prioritize tasks, and track progress effectively.

The origins of XKCD productivity can be traced back to the creative genius of Randall Munroe, who combines humor and science in his webcomic. Through his unique blend of wit and knowledge, Munroe has revolutionized the way we think about productivity. The evolution of XKCD productivity is a testament to its impact on creative thinking. By presenting complex ideas through simple yet hilarious illustrations, Munroe engages readers in a way that traditional methods cannot. His use of tools and graphs allows for a deeper understanding of various concepts while keeping us entertained. As we delve into exploring the different types of tools and graphs, we will discover how these visual representations unlock our potential for greater productivity and creativity.

Explore the various types of tools and graphs available to you, and discover how they can enhance your productivity. Did you know that line graphs are the most commonly used type of graph, making up 40% of all graphs created? They are great for showing trends over time and comparing data sets. On the other hand, bar graphs are perfect for comparing different categories or groups. They provide a clear visual representation of data and are easy to interpret. When it comes to tools, there is a wide range to choose from. Some popular ones include task management apps, note-taking tools, and project management software. Each tool has its own benefits and drawbacks, so it's important to find the ones that work best for you. Now that you've explored the different types of tools and graphs, let's see how you can apply xkcd productivity principles to your daily life without feeling overwhelmed by too many steps.

Discover how you can effortlessly incorporate XKCD productivity principles into your daily routine, leaving you feeling motivated and accomplished. By applying XKCD productivity in the workplace, you can enhance your efficiency and meet deadlines more effectively. Use tools like time tracking apps or to-do lists to prioritize tasks and stay focused. Incorporating XKCD productivity into personal goals allows you to set clear objectives and track progress over time. To evoke an emotional response, consider this table:

With these practices in place, you'll be able to take control of your day and achieve more. Next, we will explore tips and tricks for using XKCD productivity effectively without feeling overwhelmed by the process.

Mastering the art of time management can be a game-changer when it comes to maximizing your productivity and achieving your goals. To help you improve your time management skills and maximize efficiency, here are some tips and tricks for using XKCD Productivity effectively:

• Prioritize tasks: Create a to-do list and rank tasks based on importance and urgency.
• Use time-blocking: Allocate specific blocks of time for different tasks to stay focused and avoid multitasking.
• Take breaks: Schedule short breaks between tasks to recharge and maintain productivity.
• Eliminate distractions: Minimize interruptions by turning off notifications or finding a quiet workspace.

By implementing these techniques, you can enhance your productivity and make the most of your time. Now let's explore how unlocking your full potential with XKCD Productivity can take you even further in achieving success without missing a beat.

To truly unleash your full potential, you need to tap into the incredible power of XKCD Productivity and how it can revolutionize your approach to time management. By applying XKCD principles, you can maximize efficiency and achieve more in less time. One key principle is simplification. XKCD Productivity encourages you to break down complex tasks into smaller, manageable steps. This helps you prioritize and focus on what truly matters. Another principle is automation. Use technology and tools to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable time for more important work. Additionally, XKCD Productivity emphasizes the importance of data visualization through graphs and charts. These visual representations help you understand patterns and make informed decisions about resource allocation and task prioritization. Unlocking your full potential with XKCD Productivity means mastering these principles and incorporating them into your daily routine for optimal productivity gains.

Frequently Asked Questions

Congratulations! You've now unlocked the power of XKCD productivity. By understanding the various tools and graphs, you can revolutionize your daily life and reach your full potential. Remember, just like Randall Munroe's brilliant comics, XKCD productivity is a tool that combines wit, humor, and intelligence to help you accomplish more in less time. So go forth and conquer the world with your newfound knowledge. It's time to unleash your inner genius and make every moment count.

Other Pages

Productivity.

• What is Productivity?
• What Is Time Management?