Wow. It seems someone at YouTUBE took this comic seriously and decided to add an “Audio Preview” feature. Now you can hear your comments read aloud to you.
Of course, it’s an optional button using speech synth rather than a mandatory dramatic reading, so it’ll just be used for entertainment by people who haven’t played with a speech synthesizer before:
But then, after a little more browsing around, I see this:
So maybe there’s hope after all.
xkcd 
# Otto Says:
It’s amazing that Randal wields such awesome power! But… will he use it for good, or for evil?
I think neither — Randal is Chaotic Neutral, isn’t he?
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Have you seen this? http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Lib/antigravity.py?rev=66902&view=markup
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You must be so proud!
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Google rocks for implementing your suggestion and you are the king of all nerdy coolness.
My life is just like how you described yours to be at NASA except the drawing part. I hope to find my passion just like you.
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If you try to listen to the audio preview of an empty comment, the voice just says “nil”. It’s pretty awesome
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Ummm, I’ve never really played with a speech synthesizer, so I was and I still am one of those people who still does play with one of those! I made it say all the curse words, along with other curse words from the other four languages I know. It did a great job of pronouncing a few, but then some of the syllables were lacking correct pronunciation. But overall, I love it and its a great feature! 🙂
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is this using sitepal.com’s technology? u just type up http://vhost.oddcast.com/admin/sitepalV4.php?spec=1
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I love this feature!
If nothing else it’s an easy way to remind people to comment thoughtfully (to put it mildly).
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So — doesn’t this make it _easier_ to write the desired virus?
All it has to do is click the button and turn the volume up!
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i was so confused when i saw the audio preview on youtube after reading the comic. it was like a giant practical joke or somehting
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Perhaps a similar feature will be added to this blag?
We will see…
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@law: ouch. Low blow to the 10-year-old girls of the world.
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I saw the YouTube feature appear after you joked about it in your comic and was amused. It’s completely fun to use, too – it makes everyone sound stupid.
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xkcd rules!!!
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really, I love with your innovation
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Greatest.
I remember reading the comic and laughing, wishing that actually would happen. Then I heard from [adult swim] that someone implemented that feature and I started to freak.
That was the greatest day the internet has seen. Many thanks to you, sir Randall.
(Should I be alarmed that one of my re-captcha prompt words is “$60,000”?)
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Just putting this out there… At the rate xkcd is going, it should be another year or two before all the readers of xkcd have completely changed the face of the intarwebs as we know it. I think we should exercise our power by doing what YTMND did to ebaumsworld, a massive assault on the frontlines of the forums. We will rout the trolls from their fiery domain, the OT forums.
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Best ever! It’s like having Stephen Hawking read your diary out loud… 🙂
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This is brilliant! Now all we need is for it to read it out in the voice of Morgan Freeman!
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@ Matthew Lloyd
Dear god, I was thinking the exact same thing.
You know what else might be cool? If they get pronunciations right, you could use this to proofread your essays or speeches… and one day have it in the voice of Morgan Freeman!
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When I saw the audio preview function on YouTube, my first thoughts were:
1. Someone at YouTube reads XKCD? Sweet!
2. Maybe now YouTube will be a slightly more intelligent place!
Unfortunately, the second has yet to happen. But perhaps if we give it time…
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Funny?
Maybe, but it means that they had already a speech synthesizer made and tested. And right now it must be using about 20% of youtube’s servers’ capacity.
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it has some abbreviations
est -> estate
ave -> avenue
too bad for latinists XD
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I was pretty impressed — not only did I click on it without realizing it, because it’s on the left, but I actually edited my comment after hearing it. I’d say it works as designed. 🙂
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Audio preview? I can’t effin believe it.
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I just heard about this on Aljazeera. They did mention XKCD’s reasoning behind the feature, but didn’t mention XKCD.
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super chicken pockpockpockpock, super chicken poa-oaack
let *that*thing* read it. if you don’t like it you’ve never been a child (or just grew up or had enough fun of synthesizers already)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FKss2pBYQ6Y btw
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Audio preview?
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thanks
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thankss
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Practical, every day Social Engineering. If it was on helfbakery.com, I would have bunned it.
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s/helfbakery/halfbakery/
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thank u good
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I can’t effin believe it.
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Hey dude, speaking of how famous you are – Kevin Smith just mentioned your “Someone is wrong on the Internet” comic in his new A/V Club interview.
Page 2! Peep it out! He says:
I saw this cartoon that, if I worked in a cubicle, I would totally hang on my cubicle wall. It was a wife talking to her husband who’s at a computer, and the wife is like, “Aren’t you coming to bed?” And he says, “I can’t. Somebody’s wrong on the Internet.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s my fucking life.”
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A partir de ahora -veremos si lo mantienen- a través de la tecnología de Síntesis de Voz (TTS, Text-To-Speech) de Google y apretando el botón Audio Preview lo que escribas será convertido en sonido. El propio autor del comic ya lo comenta en su blog personal.
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vvvvvvvvvvvncv nc
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A webcomic inspired this feature?! Hilarious.
I actually clicked it by accident without knowing it was added and it scared the crap out of me!!
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