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xkcd | Randall Munroe | Talks at Google

Talks at Google

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  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd

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450K views18 years ago1 recommendation

Tools and practiceHistory and cultureThe tech industryHistory of computingPeople who shaped computing

Randall Munroe discusses his webcomic xkcd, his background, and answers questions from Donald Knuth and Guido van Rossum.

Randall Munroe is the creator of xkcd, a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Munroe on Munroe: "I'm just this guy, you know? I'm a CNU graduate with a degree in physics. Before starting xkcd, I worked on robots at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. As of June 2007 I live in Massachusetts. In my spare time I climb things, open strange doors, and go to goth clubs dressed as a frat guy so I can stand around and look terribly uncomfortable. At frat parties I do the same thing, but the other way around." This Authors@Google event took place December 7, 2007 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA. xkcd.com

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1 person recommends this

What people say. Highly recommended for the legendary Q&A session where Donald Knuth and Guido van Rossum ask Randall Munroe questions.

pjmorrison Hacker News • Recommends

On “Creator of xkcd Reveals Secret Backstory of His Epic 3,990-Panel Comic”

To me, one of the all-time great geek moments was when Munroe did a tech talk at Google, and Don Knuth gets up to ask him if he's thought about doing animated cartoons, and what is his favorite log log n sorting algorithm, about 21:30 in to this: link to this video
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antiformon Hacker News • Mentions

On “When Steve Jobs met Don Knuth”

Maybe Knuth was more of a rebel back in the day, but somehow I can't imagine him having that sort of response. In Randall Munroe's Authors@Google talk [video ], Don Knuth asks him a question at ~21:30 and at ~25:30 Randall asks Knuth about this very anecdote. Knuth's response is "I've been told this story a number of times...but I was impressed by him more than he was impressed by me."
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tomhowardon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Steve Jobs meets Don Knuth”

This story is the subject of a fascinating exchange between Knuth and Randall Munroe in Munroe's Authors@Google talk: link to this video Knuth neither confirms nor outright denies the story, but says "I've only met Jobs a couple of times and in each case I was impressed by him probably more than he was impressed by me".
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philfreoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Find apartments by commute times”

YES!!! I was literally searching everywhere for this only 1 week ago and determined that there was nothing good out there. Relevant: link to this video Now, if only there was a way to enter 2 addresses (for spouses/roommates) and have it give you the places with the best cumulative commute times. EDIT: Just saw Mapnificent does this! Would also love to see this fully integrated into link .
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tompkoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “What is your best programmer joke?”

There's a talk by Randall Munroe (xkcd) at google where this is debunked by Knuth himself. It also features him being asked questions about Python by Guido. link to this video
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nighthawk454on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Work Habits at Apple”

Google has some pretty good software for this, thought it might be internal. When they have their "Talks at Google" events, there's a screen off to the side that provides real-time translated subtitles. There's at least one talk where the speaker addresses this system, and tries to get it to transcribe funny stuff. Can't remember which one exactly, but it might be this one with Randall Munroe (xkcd). link to this video
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Permiton Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Yoda of Silicon Valley”

FWIW Knuth himself doesn't think this happened nor does he sound like the kind of person (to me) who would try to cut someone down like that: link to this video
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pjmorrison Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Yoda of Silicon Valley (2018)”

There are many more important things about Knuth and his work, but one of my favorite stories about him is that he showed up at Randall Munroe's Google tech talk 0, and, during Q&A, asked Munroe "Have you thought about animated cartoons?" and "What is your n log n algorithm for searching?" I have a special respect for people who are both brilliant and humble, and Knuth is my poster person for that. 0 link to this video
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lIl-IIIlon Hacker News • Mentions

On “More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com”

Randall wanted a unique short string associated with all his work. That way he could Google "xkcd" and find everything he ever did online. I believe he had a script that generated all possible 4-letter combinations and filtered out ones with any search results, and settled on "xkcd". But he became a victim of his own success when the comic became so popular and "xkcd" is now synonymous with the comic. Source: talk by Randall, might be this one but I'm not sure: link to this video .
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svaton Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Jeff Dean Facts”

FWIW the XKCD talk at Google is here (wow, 18 years ago! I remember watching this video when it was posted): link to this video (Knuth comes up to ask a question at 21:30) (Can't tell from the video where he was sitting otherwise, though there are definitely at least some people sitting on the floor.)
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