Hacker News Reader

Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

> We need all the window views we can get. So, please send yours to qunaliaa@gmail.com. A 10-minute, horizontal HD video of your window and frame, with your name and location for credits. Horizontal, vertical, square, round or decorative, all kinds of windows are welcome!

Oh, I guess it makes sense now that I think about it, but I really thought the views were live at first. Watching what I thought were live feeds felt super cool. :(

View on HN

People keep saying it's disappointing, but give it one minute of thought. Being prerecorded is the only reason it's interesting and has any content.

Almost nobody is going to set up a dedicated webcam to constantly stream the interior of their window for some novelty website. And the few webcam streams you would see would be low quality, not capture anything interesting, accidentally capture the baby wailing, etc.

But a 10min iPhone recording to capture the top 10min of their window in a day? That's a decent idea.

It does make sense, it just felt cooler when I thought it was live.

I too thought it was live. Until I saw a sunset of a location one time zone away at 2 pm. And then one with rain in my current city with it being sunny presently.

Since it's not live, maybe submissions should trim the part where they are adjusting the camera in the correct direction (not to be too critical). While it would certainly reduce the number of submissions to be live, this is hacker news. I'm sure there would still be a handful of interesting locations.

You might be interested in https://www.earthcam.com/ - they host a large selection of live webcams from different locations around the world, many at a pretty decent HD resolution and frame rate.

Here's a live view of Midtown Manhattan for example: https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/midtown/skyline/?cam=mi...

Or the Seattle Space Needle: https://www.earthcam.com/usa/washington/seattle/?cam=seattle...

Love that site, still feels like the old days of the Web to look at the huge list of webcams

Huh. I recall coming across a Tor onion site with links to various security cam systems. Nothing exciting, just live video of lobbies, elevators, parking lots and garages, etc.

Back in the 90s a friend had modified his Realistic brand radio scanner to pick up cell phone frequencies. Nothing was encrypted back then. One of the calls we heard was of a computer generated voice repeating the phone number, the "internal temperature" and then a thirty second audio feed of what sounded like machinery. Every time I tried calling the number, it was the same thing though the temperature varied by a couple of degrees now and then. Never heard any voices or much variety in the machine noises. No idea what it was other than some local factory.

The condo building I lived in during the 2000s had its server with all of the video cameras hacked. Probably the most exciting thing anyone could see was the fitness room with people exercising. We had no idea if anyone actually bothered watching the feeds or if it was just part of a botnet.

Huh. Remote equipment maintenance?

Then there's this: https://gizmodo.com/these-secret-cold-war-radio-stations-are...

It's strange when you come across those.

Are you sure it wasn't just a plain old website? There was one posted here a few years ago (and I thought the site went down but it's actually still going):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272112

I'm pretty sure that it was an onion site.

But Insecam is amazing :)

I have recently scanned addresses within a radius of my town and there's still a lot of cameras with default credentials or with no password at all. It's getting better over the years, but not quite.

Quite a lot of Ultimaker 3D printers in there, that wasn't the case a couple of years ago. And factory floors/production lines in general. Remains fascinating, and awkward.

With the right search words you can find plenty of those on https://www.shodan.io/

edit: I found this one [1] just by searching for webcam. Seems to be from some factory.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/WevJodh.png

That’s a camera trained on a 3D printer, not from a factory. Quite popular with hobbyists to monitor the progress of prints.

If it was live it would just be a matter of time before a penis appeared on screen. :(

Yep, I felt like I was rolling the dice every time I hit next.

Your comment reminded me of Omegle

I'm quite disappointed too. Wish you didn't have to go to the submit a window page to know its not live. I was ready to give access to my nest!

I was quite relieved to realise they weren't live. That means you can watch it in peace knowing that the service won't be abused and someone has reviewed the footage.

Great idea, strangely calming.

Ah, I also thought it was live and couldn't understand why they stopped after a while :)

Some are much shorter than 10 minutes. I saw one in Shanghai (IIRC) that was 10-20 seconds.

Some of them are in locations that are easily identifiable by landmark buildings, which seems a bit scary/creepy.

All I get are static images. No videos at all.

Let's think this through. Imagine you are a super evil criminal, who is just looking for an opportunity to commit a crime. Now you see a video that allows you to identify the house from which it was recorded. So you know there is probably a person who visits HN and who recorded a video from his desk. Now what? How can you possibly use this information in a bad way?

I will bite, why would anyone send their name and location to a random webservice? Taking the time to record and upload a 10 min hd video as well. What is the benefit?

Enjoying the idea, trusting that it’s intended in good faith as an art project or similar, and wanting to participate.

You can also give a fake name and a very loose location

The name is for credit, I assume you can give a fake handle or no name at all. As for the location, again I assume you don't need to send your full address if you don't want to. City will probably suffice.

Oh damn, I thought so too... :(

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