GitHub Audio (2016) | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Audio (2016)

github.audio

133 pointssamrohn33 comments

Very similar Brian Eno's Bloom app in both design and sound. Except the GitHub data backend.

Some of my most productive work was done while listening to that app (and a lot of Brian Eno's ambient output).

There's an interview where he talks about how Bloom will never repeat in our lifetimes (or Reflections, one of the two). He wanted to achieve that with music for airports 1, but was limited by available technology.

how do trademarks work for this kind of thing. It's cool and I enjoyed it but I did at first think it was an official GitHub project and my rudimentary understanding of trademark law is that it's meant to prevent just that.

I'm sure Github could make them change their domain name if they wanted to

If I remember correctly from previous posts about the use of 'Git', this also violates the Git trademark.

Edit: Okay, I decided to not be lazy and provide more information.

Official Git trademark policy: https://git-scm.com/about/trademark

Also, if the OP / creator wants to, they can ask for wriiten permission to use the name. Although, I've read instances of them simply saying no.

The relevant bit:

> In addition, you may not use any of the Marks as a syllable in a new word or as part of a portmanteau (e.g., "Gitalicious", "Gitpedia") used as a mark for a third-party product or service without Conservancy's written permission.

This is fascinating. Has GitHub received permission, or is their trademark in jeopardy? And, what about Gitlab, Gitea, and all?

The growth of git as a distributed service has suffered greatly at the hands of GitHub.. makes me wonder if the Git Conservancy would be inclined to push back.

Github was trademarked before git. The git trademark was only granted with a documented understanding they wouldn't conflict. Projects existing at that time got exceptions, and new ones are still sometimes granted.

EDIT: some more details: https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

Trademark law allows companiess to indicate the origin of products and services by giving rights for use, and/or registration, of words or images that indicate origin.

Use is not necessarily infringement.

I think here there is a genuine chance of confusion, so the disclaimer (in the website footer) is wise.

In domain names it's established precedent that there is always confusion unless the trademark is compounded - GitHubAudio.com might be fine - but if challenged then I think the github.audio domain would be handed over (by a EU or USA court).

Morally I find this domain causes obvious confusion and shouldn't be used: monitor github.audio, or something that isn't solely someone's else's RTM (for the same registered use) before the tld would be more clearly moral, IMO.

Naively optimistic part of me thought this was going to be some grand accessibility endeavour for sight impaired people, but this is cool too.

How does this website bypass blocked audio playback on Firefox? It doesn't even require click on webpage.

I think Web Audio playback is not restricted (yet) by the autoplay policy in FF, only HTML5 elements:

- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Media/Autoplay_...

- https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/11/web-audio-...

Interestingly, I can’t find a way for it to play audio whatsoever on Firefox for iOS.

On iOS Safari it started playing after I clicked on the page itself.

Firefox on iOS uses webkit rendering engine, so it has all the same privacy measures as Safari.

A bit disappointing, I thought it's going to be a GitHub for audio

For those wanting to try this, I'll note that it didn't play any audio in Safari so I had to switch to Chrome to experience it.

works in Firefox for me too, but not safari.

It works in Firefox for me for about 10 seconds, then stops producing audio unless I refresh. Running 79.0b3.

78.01 on Mac for me. ran fine for several minutes.

This was really so much cooler than expected! Might actually use it to replace brain.fm when working.

I’d love to see this applied as a general streaming API ingestor, or even used for live tailing log files and playing sounds that match particular events.

(This is where people will comment below with all sorts of examples I haven’t heard of, one of the reasons I love HN)

I love sites like these. I use to listen to https://www.bitlisten.com/

Bit Listen was a bit distracting though, because it has some really oversized transactions.

Lichess uses this same type of nice, pentatonic audio to notify when pieces move

Wow like the author says, it is nice to leave open in the background :)

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12635247

Any information on why are these sounds so pleasant? These are not random frequencies/durations for sure.

These sounds are likely chosen at random from a predefined list of sounds along a given musical scale; possibly the background drones also have a say in the matter.

You can read the source at https://github.audio/static/public/js/main.js and possibly infer some information from it/

R.I.P. laptop speakers.

Make sure you guys turn the volume down before clicking on anything.

Oh my gosh I so much want this for our own internal GitLab instance!!!!

This doesn’t seem to load in iOS Safari.

Loads for me on iPhone. Click into the page to enable audio. (Autoplay is not allowed without interaction with a site in most browsers.)

Flip the silence switch off, then tap the screen where the “notes” are playing.

doesn't work in Safari

I thought the volume slider was an Apple Watch for a minute.

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