Ask HN: Does any one know what the deal is with today's XKCD

18 points·MattBearman··13 comments

XKCD Garden: http://xkcd.com/1663

Looks like it should be interactive, but I can't get it to do anything, any ideas?

Is it possible that http://explainxkcd.com/ being unavailable is down to the number of people confused by this

If you navigate to xkcd.com/?debug, you get a debug version that draws some colored lines on the canvas and logs to the console. Mine already started growing some plants (or whatever they are).

In Chrome on OSX I can create a couple more lights, move them about, and change their temperature. As it says 'relax' I imagine we're supposed to wait for something to grow.

I waited, and seemed to get a bird bath (in silhouette).

My child has an instance on another computer, and reports getting a plant.

I've grown what looks like a goat

The server's quite slow at the moment. Adding a new light just took it nearly 30 seconds, so I wonder if that's affecting the behaviour of the thing in general?

Yes, stuff does grow if you leave it long enough in the light. I have a couple mini cactuses and a grass thing under the yellow light

Umm, it's supposed to grow something?? I sat there for over an hour with 16 lamps and nothing happened...

And tomorrow XKCD presents how to increase average session duration on your webpage.

the title is "garden" and the alt text says "relax"

I have a hunch that if you leave the lights on and leave the page open, things will grow.

trying it now

Probably mining Bitcoin, while you wait ;)

I have grown an octopus with a purple light.

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