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The Weird World in RGB

55 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
1 HN user recommended this explainer1 month2020–2021 score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN points to it as an accessible explanation of how color and reflected light behave, especially under LED lighting.

Technology Connections explains how RGB light and color work, from hue and saturation to color vision and how objects appear under different lighting. It uses a studio setup with colored lights to demonstrate the effects.

“This video from Technology Connections helps explain” (HN, 2020)

1 recommendations · 2 citations · Explainers

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@lathiat Sep 2020 Recommends
on HN thread Short History of LED Lighting
This works for direct illumination (eg an LCD screen) but fails for reflected light (eg a light). This video from Technology Connections helps explain [this video]
Explains how reflected light and color work with RGB

Citations, criticism and jokes

@zinekeller Feb 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Perseverance Rover lands on Mars [video]
Short answer: No. We (the majority anyway, as some are colourblind) only perceive lightness, reddish, greenish, and bluish. The brain uses the info and effectively synthesises the image in our brains. Long answer: Colour is a very rabbithole topic but Captain Disillusion has a summary of it ( [link] ) and Technology Connections has a discussion ( [this video] ).
Discussion of how color works
@goblin89 Nov 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Japanese Philosophies That'll Help You Spend Money Consciously
Why would you do that I don't know, but for me personally the reason is that LEDs tend to strobe (sometimes noticeably to peripheral vision) and do not emit a smooth continuous spectrum—unlike incandescent bulbs, they produce a narrow, spiky spectrum[0] and objects in your room may look unnatural as they reflect it[1]; this may be especially bad with some RGB LEDs but fundamentally is a property of all LED lights because physics. [0] [link] [1] [this video]
Backs claim about how objects look under LED light

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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