I recently learned a neat trick from Marcus Buffett: xkcd has an undocumented way to get images of the cartoons at double their normal resolution.

The _2x trick

For example, xkcd #2582 “Data Trap” lists this URL as the direct link:

• https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/data_trap.png

That leads to this 275x275px image, quite small by today’s standards:

But there’s a trick! Add a _2x to the filename in the URL:

• https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/data_trap_2x.png

That gives you a version that’s 2x the original resolution, at 550x550px: