Category talk:A Smarter Planet

I'm not sure whether we want to keep this page or not, it *is* an xkcd comic, but it's also not linked anywhere and I don't know where the hell to put a link to this on the wiki. As a side note, a comic that stands outside the chronology of the regular xkcd comics violates a couple of the assumptions made by we who wrote the comic template, and I'll fix it in two weeks when I'm done with finals. Upload relevant comic images to the red links to make them show up. Davidy²²[talk] 21:47, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

This isn't really new, and it's not a real xkcd comic, but since Randall did mention it here xkcd.com/about it should be mentioned also at this wiki. Maybe a new entry "A Smarter Planet" at the left navigation panel. Nevertheless, the standard navigation at the top of this page must be removed. --Dgbrt (talk) 21:46, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I added substantially to the explanation, but I'm not quite sure it's complete yet. --Alex (talk) 23:04, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I'd say there's nothing more to add. The deforestation could use more of an explanation if a 5-year old was reading it. 173.245.55.60 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I feel like this should be moved to two separate pages, one for each comic, as with Radiation.--17jiangz1 (talk) 12:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Additional comics

There are actually two more "secret" comics: http://imgs.xkcd.com/ibm/ibm_hc_2.png and http://imgs.xkcd.com/ibm/ibm_hc_3.png

I don't know if these two were published anywhere, found them by experimenting with URLs (the "hc_1" is already described "Prescriptions" comic).Novotvor (talk) 13:18, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

WAIT WHAT? Two new comics, this is huge! I searched on Google Lens and found no visual matches. We have to add them to Prescriptions! Do you have any other information, such as if the titles are different (should we create different pages for each comic)? Does the filename usually reflect the title? Have you ever found other new comics like this? Is there a way to find more comics? Can we check how old these are, when they were created/posted? --FaviFake (talk) 18:37, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I guess we can bruteforce everything under http://imgs.xkcd.com/ibm/*.png and http://imgs.xkcd.com/*.png, I don't think there's a better way.

About titles: I think the titles were supposed to be "IBM Healthcare 2" and "IBM Healthcare 3". Note the phrasing in the Smarter Planet blogpost: "we asked Randall Munroe... to create a few just for our blog" -- I would guess he created three strips about smarter healthcare, but for some reason IBM decided to publish only the first one (and named it "Prescriptions" instead of "IBM Healthcare 1"). Novotvor (talk) 12:34, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't even think there's a category for unreleased yet not deleted comics! This is so cool! Also, another question, are the filenames of Prescriptions and Conservation similar?--FaviFake (talk) 18:46, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Sort of? The Conservation links to http://imgs.xkcd.com/ibm/conservation.png, note the common /ibm/ prefix in URL. The name itself is different though. Novotvor (talk) 12:34, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

One can view PNG metadata with https://exifmeta.com/. I get the same ProfileDateTime for all four of them: "1999:06:03 00:00:00", which looks like a "factory setting" of the software used to draw the comic. Novotvor (talk) 12:45, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the details. I'll have to figure out a way to create the pages, I think it's the first time we've found a comic which we don't know the name of! I might ask in the community portal. I don't have a lot of free time lately but hopefully I'll get to it. If you want to go ahead feel free to do so! --FaviFake (talk) 18:27, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

We'll also likely need to dig some more into the A Smarter Planet series, there might be some archived pages that we haven't found yet. Who knows! --FaviFake (talk) 18:29, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

I want to do this but I need to decide how we should name the pages. What do you think?

• To be as close as possible to the truth (we can't know with 100% certainty Randall didn't want to use capital letters or underscores): IBM HC 1 or IBM_HC_1 or ibm_hc_1
• To be close to the likely name (by extrapolating the meaning of "hc"): IBM Healthcare 1
• But, he likely wouldn't have included IBM in the name: Healthcare 1
• And he likely wouldn't have even used healthcare or the numbers, we cannot agree on something that can't be verified: Unreleased comic #1 or First unreleased comic --FaviFake (talk) 17:25, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Ok I decided to go with the first option. Here are some useful links: --FaviFake (talk) 18:24, 5 February 2025 (UTC)

Long time lurker here but about the names of the comics, classifying them as "Misc" or "Smarter Planet#2: ibm_hc_2" etc is fine... But also, can't we ASK Randall himself what to call them? This is enough of a rabbit hole to pique his interest and he's still rather active these days. 172.68.70.57 (talk) 21:01, 17 February 2025 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I have something regarding that that I've been wating to announce because I'm too busy, stay tuned! For now, we still need to explain them. --FaviFake (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

User:Novotvor has discovered 2 new A Smarter Planet comics. Explain everything (including the discovery) and use all the information you can find: ibm hc 2 ibm hc 3. Learn about the "A Smarter Planet" comic series: Category:A Smarter Planet Learn about the two released comics: Conservation and Prescriptions Use the Wayback Machine if necessary (Wayback: ibm hc 2) (Wayback: ibm hc 3). IBM's A Smarter Planet blog (now defunct, archive). The website now redirects to IBM's Think blog's homepage. Both comics used to be featured on xkcd.com/asmarterplanet (now defunct, archive) First blog posts: "Building a Smarter Planet… for Squirrels" (now defunct, archive) second blog post: "Smarter(?) Health Care" (now defunct, archive).

holy crud, two new comics! 42.book.addict^{Talk to me!} 18:25, 5 February 2025 (UTC)