Yap: An ephemeral, Real-Time chat room with up to six participants | Hacker News Reader

Yap: An ephemeral, Real-Time chat room with up to six participants

yap.chat

200 pointsexolymph63 comments

>Within Elixir and Erlang programs, it’s common to have hundreds of thousands of processes running at any given time.

And limit it to just 6 participants? :D

I'm assuming hosting this isn't free.

"your messages appear and disappear as quickly as you type them, which means unless you pay attention to what everyone says (for once), you’ll miss it."

I think limit is based on human attention limit, not Elixir process limit.

The idea is cool but the execution is weird. Why can I not replace a speaker as a watcher when they leave the room? You just end up with dead rooms with a bunch of watchers. Or am I over thinking this?

It’s probably just the MVP. It’s how products are launched these days.

is it really an MVP if it isn't V?

Here's the blog post on how it was made: https://postlight.com/trackchanges/the-magic-elixir-behind-y...

While checking out the app I was thinking that Elixir&Phoenix is the perfect tool for this.

Yeah okay, another chat app.

I was going to ask questions but I think the below linked blog article about it would be better.

I like the UI. Big, basic and intuitive! Thats a plus!

Also 'kinda' like the domain itself! I imagine that was a quick early purchase.. As for the rest, I'm struggling to see something interesting.

Unless its serverless and p2p based rooms ? That would be kinda neet, done before of course, but nicer than not!

Do know of any good mobile websites with good e2e ephemeral chats?

We built https://safer.chat some time ago and I have been using it on my phone for a while, there are some glitches but in general it's been usable.

Riot.im

Resume padding, which is like half of "Show HN" entries

https://yap.chat/HKXIaedEvZ?invite=CQ1A4RFj9E

Let's talk about cali

Yeah, it's flawed. Six (the max) people left the room, I watch six empty seats.

Let's talk about Artificial Intelligence

https://yap.chat/4TB6xLs2nT?invite=QLSXwIEMCv

Edit: It seems more people can't join even if you kick out those who already left.

Yep, that's gotta be a bug surely? If somebody leaves and the room now has 5/6 people, somebody can only join as an audience member and the sixth slot is stuck on "x has left the room". Surely slots should be reusable?

Cool app, but I really love the style.

Is there a name for this kind of style? There’s a common theme here with sites like https://glitch.com. I love it, so it would be nice to put a name to it.

Also reminds me of https://sourcehut.org, but to a lesser degree. Big fan of that design too!

Another example: https://dev.to/

Kind of a user interface flavor of the Memphis Milano style that was popular in the 80s (including with 80s Apple).

Reminds me of Tass Times in Tonetown (Amiga version, not the CGA abomination.)

But I think that something along the lines of Warhol/Pop Art is probably more accurate.

Pop art? It reminds me a bit of Warhol's stuff.

The logo reminds me of Vim

Probably something like “offset printing retro” would work...

This is the correct answer, that’s how I know it as well.

+1 for the dope, minimalist design. +2 for the no shenanigans approach. Love it

Nothing about this actually is minimal. It's a highly stylized design that I guess "feels" minimal, but it utterly fails at actually being minimal.

Saying it "utterly fails" seems harsh, especially because you don't give any explanation. I don't think you can say it fails at all, the author never said it was an attempt at minimalism, or minimalism in the way you understand it.

The app has its own aesthetic. I think it's debatable whether it's minimalist or not. I don't think it's justifiable to say it "utterly fails" either way though.

    ?- yet_another_prolog('yap.chat').
    false.

    ?-

This reminded me of the Prolog of the same name (it's website seems to be in limbo).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAP_(Prolog)

Cool design, but the idea of messages disappearing after they're typed makes it practically pointless for general use. There would be a lot of other ways to accomplish similar functionality of keeping the most recently typed messages active, without removing them completely.

It seems really fascinating to me, all about being in the moment like conversations face to face.

It wont be though. People can record them. Might as well make it a feature.

Sure, but you can record face to face conversations too. But to do so requires more effort, and would only be done if you had a particular need for it.

The original intent and design still would apply to the vast majority of interactions on the chat room.

While I agree it's practically pointless for general use - that's basically the point, and I love the take they've chosen on it.

I definitely won't use it, but as a creative project and social experiment - I love it.

I feel like this is something Reddit would try to do as part of their April fool's experiments.

Anyone truly like Yap as I do? Really like the concept of ephemeral communication. Focus on the people at the moment, instead of doing 'public image engineering'.

I think it's supposed to be used by a team working / playing together. Not very useful for a bunch of strangers.

Added that to https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-loginless. The company behind it apparently specializes in making these loginless useful apps, they also have TinySheet.com and TinyMonth.com

So I tried putting a link in the box on the right and it just turned black. What is it supposed to look like?

Lets's yap! (NOW IN DARK MODE) https://yap.chat/x02xRdqrX_?invite=D_688_vp_L

Weird that watchers can't join the chat when someone leaves. Just kills off the whole room.

I'm back!

So, it's like IRC &channels with +l 6 CHANMODE? Nice, but the idea is literally decades old.

But you see, it's "webscale"!

I like the design. Any CSS frameworks that can produce similar look?

Why would you need a framework for this? Oh man this is so wrong...

welcome to modern web!

Because I want to save the time I have. I use Bulma for 100% of my projects because I want spending priceless minutes of my own free daily time for the application _core_ instead of flexboxing viewports and debugging compatibility for numerous clients (and proving my point here).

I understand this sentiment, I really do... but this layout/design is so simple to make I think a framework would be overkill and unnecessary bloat. This is coming from someone who does css for a living daily so your mileage may vary.

* { font-family: monospace !important; }

done!

I prefer tlk.io before, so any differences?

I like the sound effects.

Is nice, will keep an eye

This is pretty cool!

hangs :(

Not quite a copyright concern but wouldn't this get confused with the island[0]?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yap

Honestly, they should embrace it. Change the Yap logo to the outline of the island. Turn an abysmal oversight into a piece of marketing lore.

Not a chance, if Alphabet can call a molten salt power storage spinoff "Malta" (and really, really drive home the point that they were coming up with names by spitballing random "molten"-like sounds)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-19/gates-bez...

I think with context it will be pretty apparent whether you're talking about islands in the Pacific/Micronesia or a real time chat room.

i think not until they decide to add a Yap token with PoW based on stone chiseling.

I've literally never heard of this island until now.

Java is also a place name

I crack up every time I see the Java logo, a cup of coffee. I honestly doubt they knew it was an island with hundreds of millions of inhabitants when they picked that name.

Amazon is also a place name.

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