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This is tech site. If you are see something you don't understand, you should just google it.

As a tech person I encounter things every day that I don't know about, and I google many of them.

Why should "non-tech" people be protected from the chore of googling ? Isn't that why people come here – to encounter things that they don't know about ?

Not trying to "protect" anyone. Thing is, even googling sudo doesn't give someone who has never sudo'ed the insight behind the comic. So, yep.

You're right that a tiny portion of the general population would know what sudo is, but surely among HN readers there is a huge base that would understand, or at least grok what it is after a quick search.

Not advocating that HN isn't for non-tech-people, just saying that neither the reference nor the xkcd were out of place for this audience.

There's a site dedicated to explaining various xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/149:_Sandwich

we shouldn't be explaining something using the xkcd which doesn't illuminate the topic at all and further needs to be explained.

Oh boy. Turtles all the way down.