Brown; color is weird
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN repeatedly recommends it as a surprisingly magical explainer on color perception, often cited in color-space discussions.
What it is
Technology Connections explains why brown is not a spectral color but a context-dependent perception, essentially dark orange seen against brighter surroundings.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec abracadaniel · 2022-01 · on “Google Kills YouTube Originals”
I love how well that channel is doing. It's an endless rabbit hole of fascination. I will never look at the color brown the same way again: [this video]
Strong rec maximus-decimus · 2024-08 · on “If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention”
Or Technology Connections who made me watch a 20 minutes videos on the color brown and makes it feel like magic [this video]
Recommends jasode · 2020-09 · on “Impossible Colors”
Fyi on a semi-related topic I learned from a fascinating Youtube video... the color "brown" is a psychological construct[0]. But from an RGB perspective ... there's no such color as "brown"; it's actually just "orange" in a particular context: [this video] [0] pedantic alert: yes "every color" is ultimately a mental construct of the brain but hopefully you know what I mean
Recommends avianlyric · 2021-03 · on “Show HN: Sorted CSS Colors – Sort the named CSS colors in a nice way”
Worth watching the Technology Connection video on the colour Brown [1]. It's a strange colour that only really exists when placed in the context of other colours, not something that can really be produced by a pure RGB light source, which explains why the CSS Brown colour looks red. [1]: [this video]
Recommends avianlyric · 2021-03 · on “Show HN: Sorted CSS Colors – Sort the named CSS colors in a nice way”
Worth watching the Technology Connection video on the colour Brown [1]. It's a strange colour that only really exists when placed in the context of other colours, not something that can really be produced by a pure RGB light source, which explains why the CSS Brown colour looks red. [1]: [this video]
Recommends spiralx · 2021-12 · on “What Makes sRGB a Special Color Space?”
A great video demonstrating the strangeness of representing colours is this video on the colour brown: [this video] Colour theory can get pretty complicated, the video is however very understandable as well as interesting :)
Recommends shever73 · 2023-04 · on “Purkinje Effect”
It seems I learn something new every day about our visual system. Thanks for sharing. Last week, it was a link to Technology Connections' video on the colour brown[0]. I also really enjoyed reading Foone's older blog post, "The EYES Have It"[1]. [0] [this video] [1] [LINK]
Recommends lutrinus · 2023-11 · on “The Weird World in RGB (2019) [video]”
Ah, Technology Connections. Such a great channel! If you enjoyed this video, make sure to also watch his video about the color brown: [this video]