Photos Always Pointing at the Pointer (2012)
pointerpointer.com
pointerpointer.com
You're probably not too far off.
This is apparently all the photos it uses: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/6937cf84ac6debcb2027cdba13.... I eyeballed it for a bit and all those that had timestamps were from 2004-2006. I also saw a Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign sign in the background of one.
HN thread from 2020 (68 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372356
After an image loads, you can resize your browser text (Ctrl + / Ctrl -) to instantly reveal a different image with each resize event. By sweeping through very small and very large zoom levels, you can make peoples' fingers trace out a diagonal line from top-left to bottom-right as the registered point moves with the underlying voronoi canvas as it scales up and down.
Side note: how hard would it be to reduce the time delay between identifying a point and displaying an image? Could this be made realtime by preloading all images? The flicker would be terrible but I'd want to try it at least briefly.
Easy, I expect. I assumed there were two reasons for the delay:
* Simply a transfer delay, though even for images not seen before I'm only seeing between 20ms and 80ms in total for that each time (though it does seem to request each twice).
* Debouncing, to avoid requesting many images needlessly while a user moves the mouse around the page.
* For show, to make it look like it is doing something more clever that requires noticeable processing time!
All but the transfer delay can be removed easily as I think they are put in deliberately, and the transfer+render delay is short enough not matter for what you describe wanting to try.
A very hacky way to remove it (I'm sure there are better ways!) is to redefine the setTimeout function to just ignore the delay and call the function directly. Open the console and type
setTimeout = (x => x())
But yes, the flicker is pretty bad. This is not handled very well (as expected), it would be nice if it tried to "stick" to one image for a few ms instead of flickering between the same two while moving.
Seriously though, I wonder where it pulls the images from... seems like a lot of parties and drinking.
It reuses pictures by zooming and moving the entire picture around until the point position and cursor position match.
https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/6937cf84ac6debcb2027cdba13...
"A magician I know talks about the three kinds of magic: sleight of hand, mechanical, and mathematical. The first requires a lot of skill and practice (e.g., palming coins, manipulating cards). The second requires a lot of preparation and engineering (e.g., sawing a person in half, floating person illusions). The third relies on the nature of reality (e.g., dividing sets of cards in a known pattern that forces a result, or manipulating numbers that force an unexpected result)."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning#Deep_learning_re...
Something that I did as a teenager and just tried again is take a sticky note, cut a small square in it and place it on your screen, you can "refind" pictures so it's not all random. Probably obvious to those more knowledgeable than I but nonetheless amusing.
I don't know why people seem to be so incredulous/outraged at my observation. Is it that hard to believe such pictures made it into the set? Am I supposed to be supporting the team here?
I think you are overreacting to a reaction that barely exists there. It looks like one person has responded (at the time I'm writing this) and while they didn't agree with your assessment, they stated so quite calmly rather than in a manner I would call outrage. Unless you have been inundated by personal messages that I can't see?
There was a lass in a bikini, but even that is safe for my work. If your work is pretty strict about images of these natures, I would suggest refraining from browsing non-work-related sites at all until you are at home or at least on a device that is not using the corporate network.
[edit: having had a scan through the images (someone posted a link to where they are all visible) there are a couple of people flipping the bird too, those might get a reaction if the bikini does]
HN itself is pretty much SFW (aside from some comments, but they get downvoted to oblivion or otherwise hidden pretty quickly) but IIRC makes no guarantee that anything linked from it will be likewise.
Perhaps you just weren’t aware that neither of those things are prerequisites to warning others about the high probability of seeing such images? You’re allowed to care about SFW/L beyond work contexts, and it’s helpful to alert others who might care.
It feels like an attempt at invalidation when you expect someone to not even be able to warn others about content simply because some people might not care about whether it’s in that category. Hence why it comes across to me as outrage: you have to feel pretty strongly to oppose a mere warning.
It’s kind of funny how common trigger warnings are, but when I mention the possibility of an image set being surprisingly unfiltered and having frequent NSFW/L content, I have to rehash the entire concept.
Also, I would say your work is unusually lax if you see nothing wrong with pulling up bikini images there. (Similarly unusual deficit of empathy, while we’re at it.)
My comment about you overreacting wasn't about the definition of what is/n't safe for work/life, but that you referred to one polite disagreement as “people being outraged”.
> Also, I would say your work is unusually lax if you see nothing wrong with pulling up bikini images there.
Deliberately pulling up such images, perhaps for the purposes of ogling them, would be inappropriate. Happening upon them while taking a break and looking as at random site would not, any more than there would be an issue with such an image coming up as you browse a newspaper that happens to have an image of that sort illustrating an article about the current heatwave, or some holiday offer, or a beech fashion event. Sensible rules have room for context.
> (Similarly unusual deficit of empathy, while we’re at it.)
I find your comment on empathy ironic, given the rest of this bit of thread!
If you're saying that people are wrong to not want a massive bloody finger or a drunken flashing photo on their screen, then yes, you are objecting to the warning, and you are showing an empathy deficit. Sorry, where was the irony you claimed to see? Because as far as I can tell, I have empathy for people who don't want those images on their screen, while you don't.
Generally speaking, I imagine there's a high threshold for objecting to a mere warning (the point about triggers you ignored), so I assumed if anyone were actually disputing that this merited a warning, they believed the wrongness of my comment met that threshold. But sure, I was wrong to assume anyone thinks that far ahead or tries to be consistent.
>I don't know why people seem to be so incredulous/outraged at my observation.
No one is incredulous or outraged by anything you said. You pointed out that you saw a lot of inappropriate pictures, some people seem to agree, some disagree, but no one is outraged.
If you’re downvoting a warning on the grounds no one could possibly need that warning, how do you explain that other than (something close enough to) outrage? Again, assuming you’re trying to be reflectively consistent, you wouldn’t downvote or object to a warning of shock images unless you felt that warning was really off-base. If you simply chalked it up to differing standards, you’d shrug and move on, not doggedly insist that nobody could possibly be bothered by the images.
That is what makes it feel like outrage.
> That is what makes it feel like outrage.
You need to clam down, and reflect on the concept of nuance. People can disagree and express alternate ideas without being outraged. Not being 100% behind something does not imply complete incredulity about it. Not every counterpoint in a discussion is a personal attack.
> “no one could possibly need that warning”
Unless someone has said that to you in a PM or other message we can't see, you are imagining the argument being put forward because it has not directly been said, nor intentionally implied, in the rest of the public thread thus far.
> If you’re downvoting
No downvotes from me, and there can't have been many from elsewhere as your posts colour did not go gray (it has now, several hours later, but not before the “why is _everyone_ so _angry_ at what I said” comment). Downvotes without explanation can be safely ignored IMO: I take them as meaning “someone is upset that I'm right and/or they lack the presence of mind to express their counter view as a valid discussion point”, and I move on.
It's the other way around; being incredulous means disagreeing, but disagreement by itself does not mean being incredulous.
>If you’re downvoting a warning on the grounds no one could possibly need that warning, how do you explain that other than (something close enough to) outrage?
You explained it yourself, you just shrug, downvote the comment for not being relevant, and move on. I assure you this happens quite frequently without any outrage or anger of any kind.
It's not much of a big deal and as HN etiquette goes, you should refrain from complaining about downvotes:
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
As I've said twice now, it should take an unusually high threshold to downvote a content warning. This is because there is disproportionate downside to the people that it's relevant to. So no, it's enough enough to say, "oh, gosh, I wasn't offended, so, let's make sure no one else sees a warning about possible offensive content". (Most forums put the NSFW/L warning on a separate track so it can't be voted on!)
I mean, really. Imagine doing that in any other context. "Oh, hey guys, this should have a rape trigger warning." And then you downvote because "oh, well, hm, doesn't really feel like rape to me, maybe they agreed in advance to do that as roleplay? So yeah, I don't really see the problem with that scene, maybe just, quit viewing this at work, ya know?". Such an attitude would be deeply confused -- and arguably hostile. I imagine you'd react just as I did to such a trivialization of the warning.
The only reason to downvote such a warning is if the warning is clearly false. Say, in the rape trigger example, if the scene contained no sex or violence at all. In that case, yes, I would such call a downvoter -- including myself -- outraged at the mislabeling. That was the (charitable!) model I had of those who elected to suppress the warning I gave. That they thought it was so out-of-line as to be ridiculous and insulting to the maker of the app.
But as I also noted, perhaps people don't think that far ahead. Even so, they lack empathy for not realizing the importance of such warnings. And you no longer have that excuse.
>It's not much of a big deal and as HN etiquette goes, you should refrain from complaining about downvotes:
What do you think the proper HN etiqutte is for shock images?
Maybe it should, but whether this is true or not has nothing to do with whether people are outraged or hostile or lack empathy or any of the ways you're trying to paint those who disagree with you.
Some people happen to have different standards than you do, they disagree with you, maybe they're wrong and you're right, great... either way the objection is not with your position, right or wrong, but rather with your perception of those who disagree with you.
The irony in this conversation is that you talk as if because I disagree with you then I have no empathy, I am confused, I am outraged, I am this, I am that... and yet I think if you were to objectively assess the tone of the posts made in this comment chain, it's actually you who is refusing to understand other peoples points of view (lack of empathy), it's you who is confused by not disassociating a disagreement from attributing intentions to those you disagree with, and it's you whose posts are written with quite a degree of outrage.
Disagreements are not a personal attack on you, no one knows you or is going to use any of this against you. Remain civilized and respectful with those you engage in discussion without presuming bad intentions and prejudicing them.
If you can't do that then so be it, but this advice is for your own personal well being. I don't really care at the end of the day what kind of unempathic outraged psychopath you've decided to construct in your mind about me, all I'm trying to let you know is that having those kinds of thoughts about people who disagree with you is inherently unhealthy and only results in you becoming a jaded and cynical person.
Choose what you wish to do with this advice and all the best to you buddy.
really cool!
Until there randomly was a finger seemingly with a crush injury along with a large pin shoved into it lengthwise.
WHY wasn't that vetted out?
This one, specifically https://i.imgur.com/JimNuUL.png (Showing the injury/pin, so dont click if you dont wanna see it)
That is actually a serious question, and it has nothing to do with the personal bias or motivations of the author.
I was once shown an algorithm for removing red-eye from photos, and noticed that every example they showed, was of drunk white Irish people (usually with light eyes). Turned, out, the library didn't do so well, for other skin tones.
[EDITED TO ADD] I actually enjoyed the heck out of it. Many of the comments, below, explain why it seems that way. Also, it may just be "the luck of the draw." I suspect that most images are from a common demographic, because that was who the photographers that supplied the images, came from. The tech, itself, seems to be quite basic, and is a fun idea.
So I think in this case it is because of personal bias of the author (regardless of how unintended it might be)
Also very curious on the source for these images. They seem like scraped Facebook photos from a very specific time range. Maybe early 2000s?
Anyway whatever this is its art and I love it and it should be at the MoMA.
What do we gain by forcing token inclusiveness into everything except making it feel artificial. What's wrong with the author just having mostly white friends to source pictures from?
This whole idea that you need people of your own skin color or gender or whatever because you can't identify with others is absurd.
Listen, sorry I asked. I originally asked, because I was under the impression that the photo selection was the result of an algorithm, and I actually shared an example, from my own life, that established a context for the question.
In my testing, I went through dozens of photos, and, in my testing, they all came up white, so it’s not surprising that I would have the idea that there was some … homogeneity … to the dataset.
I quickly found out, due to comments, that the selection was done manually, and that the dataset was not completely homogenous, rendering my question moot. In fact, I even added a comment, to that effect.
But by that time, it was too late. The torches and pitchforks were out. As it is standard practice, on the Internet, to jump to wild, cartoonish, hilariously wrong, conclusions about people, I set myself up for that.
Basically, I made the same mistake as you: an inaccurate assumption, based on insufficient data.
I won’t make this mistake again.
Have a great day.