[HN Gopher] Show HN: Website changes design each time you blink
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Show HN: Website changes design each time you blink
Author : monolesan
Score : 201 points
Date : 2021-07-23 10:50 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (realless.glitch.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (realless.glitch.me)
| somethingsome wrote:
| It's very fun if you blink only with one eye :)
| progforlyfe wrote:
| HN hug of death already
| fufite wrote:
| Not exactly, apparently the website committed suicide to avoid
| the HN hug of death.
| twox2 wrote:
| This thing gets pretty confused if you close one eye and have the
| other eye open :)
| mbfg wrote:
| hmmm. i don't get the joke.
| donatj wrote:
| I had to take my glasses off to get it to work, and then I
| couldn't read it. Boo.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Me too, but at least there's a lot of layout and color changes
| that don't require reading.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The site is dead. Hope they didn't miss the opportunity to
| reference Doctor Who's weeping angels
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Cool demo but I worry blink detection is going to get seriously
| abused by everyone from phishers to marketers to torturers. And
| no, the solution is not as simple as 'turn off your webcam' or
| 'wear shades'.
| simonw wrote:
| It's using https://www.npmjs.com/package/@tensorflow-models/face-
| landma...
|
| Here's a fun demo of that library that shows a wireframe of your
| face: https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs-models/demos/face-
| landma...
| shaneprrlt wrote:
| Try winking at it. Hold one eye open and one eye closed and it
| will cycle through all the changes.
| twox2 wrote:
| I just posted this, thought it was funny too. It also works if
| you hold your finger or an object over your eye.
| Bancakes wrote:
| Excellent QA
| dgb23 wrote:
| This is _hacker_ news after all!
| eplanit wrote:
| I'm curious and it seems cool, but no I'm no opening up my camera
| to some random website. As an option, it'd be nice if it offered
| a simple button to trigger the change instead of using the
| camera.
| lnyng wrote:
| I almost feel that the camera is blinking with this guy.
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| The trick didn't work with my glasses on but it's a cool setup.
| doovd wrote:
| Just keep changing the design on a 0.25s timer and you will
| satisfy the objective without fancy image processing :p
| dylan604 wrote:
| Who blinks four times a second?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| This would be useful on https://bikeshed.com , instead of having
| to manually refresh the page!
| jstanley wrote:
| Cool idea, but it seems to change just _after_ I blink, so it is
| very easy to spot the changes. I guess my system has too much
| delay in capturing the images.
|
| And if I keep my eyes closed longer, it seems to run through lots
| of different changes, and then do another change as soon as I
| open them. You can test this by only closing one eye - it seems
| to think you're blinking really rapidly.
|
| I don't know exactly how it works, but it seems to act something
| like: "for each frame of video, if we can see an eye that is
| closed, change something on the page". I think it should change
| to "if we can see an eye that is closed _and there wasn 't a
| closed eye in the previous frame_".
| mcherm wrote:
| I would suggest "if we can see two eyes that are closed and
| there wasn't a change made within the past 5 seconds".
| wellthisishn wrote:
| Why 5 seconds?
| purplecats wrote:
| I want to use this or google's module to build an app (ideally
| node.js) that can track whether im looking at the screen or not
| and do something about it.
|
| the use case is that I only really consume media (movies) etc
| when I'm eating so I can multitask. However I hate pausing and
| unpausing while grabbing my spoonfuls vs chewing and watching.
| user48a wrote:
| On one hand I wanted to try this but then I was not comfortable
| with giving some website access to my webcam. Maybe I am just old
| and paranoid... EDIT: I brought the age factor up because I am
| under the impression that people born after 2000 are so used to
| getting filmed and photographed everywhere that they don't have
| such reservations
| JackC wrote:
| > people born after 2000 are so used to getting filmed and
| photographed everywhere that they don't have such reservations
|
| It's more complicated than not having reservations -- younger
| people share more online but are also more likely to take steps
| to protect their privacy:
|
| https://www.vox.com/2016/11/2/13390458/young-millennials-ove...
|
| You can find what you want in the data, but my personal read is
| everyone does what they have to do. Older people have the
| option of just opting out without losing access to their
| community (how much social capital are you losing by not
| checking out that link?), while younger people have to engage
| in order to be part of their community, so they get more
| exposure to what can go wrong and take more risks but also more
| steps to protect themselves.
|
| If you're engaging with people of a different generation I'd
| strongly encourage taking this approach -- if I assume you're
| making smart choices about dealing with the social system
| you're in, rather than doing something dumb, what does that
| tell me about the situation you're facing and what kind of
| support you might need?
| rchaud wrote:
| That article is from November 2016. The conversations about
| privacy and personal information have evolved massively since
| then. Cambridge Analytica, Facebook's $5bn FTC fine, and
| TikTok's takeover of youth social media were all yet to
| happen.
|
| This quoted bit below says it all:
|
| "But when I poke through 10 years of Facebook, I see
| something else altogether. We're not an oversharing
| generation. We're a generation that's over sharing -- done,
| finished, kaput, through. ... All the chatty candor and
| hyperactive disclosure of our early years on Facebook now
| look like just another kind of youthful indulgence."
|
| All this means is that this person has 'aged out' of their FB
| phase. What about the hundreds of millions of younger people
| still on IG, Snap and TikTok?
| r-k-jo wrote:
| No worries, it seems like using tensorflow.js and running
| locally on your browser.
|
| https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs-models/tree/master/face-l...
|
| here is as a live demo from google
|
| https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs-models/demos/face-landma...
| tvirosi wrote:
| This is why I let so many cool eye tracking ideas left on the
| shelf. I can't imagine many people will be ok with using it -
| even though there's so many cool use cases - simply because
| they'll be paranoid. Not sure how to start to build all the
| cool futuristic apps for iris tracking now that it's a solved
| problem.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > EDIT: I brought the age factor up because I am under the
| impression that people born after 2000 are so used to getting
| filmed and photographed everywhere that they don't have such
| reservations
|
| If my daughters are anything to go by you seem to be right. I'm
| trying to make sure that at least the home network and devices
| used on it leak as little personal data as possible - router-
| based content blocking (ads etc.), DNS proxy which blackholes
| unwanted domains, search through Searx, Youtube proxied through
| Invidious, Twitter proxied through Nitter, Reddit proxied
| through libreddit, Nextcloud for "cloudy" things, Exim4 for
| mail, Pixelfed for photo sharing, Peertube for video, Airsonic
| for audio/books, etc - but they really don't seem to care one
| bit whether they're being tracked and profiled by the world and
| its dog. They don't seem to realise there is no need to allow
| those companies to leech them for all their data nor do they
| seem to realise the potential negatives in allowing the leeches
| to parasitize them. At least they are not on TikTok (which I
| block at the router), Facebook (the site, one of them uses
| Instagram and as such still remains within Zuck's clutches) or
| Twitter.
| oefnak wrote:
| If you ever find out how to explain it to them, let me know.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| I'm not exactly young, but I gave the site temporary access
| without thinking much about it; I know the tech and I'm
| confident my browser will revoke access as soon as I close the
| tab.
|
| I realize now, that I did not consider what the site might do
| _while it has access_. Maybe a video or pictures of me blinking
| are uploaded to some shady server somewhere now.
| user48a wrote:
| That was exactly my concern: Somehow I'm just not comfortable
| with the thought of them having these pictures of me... kind
| of silly but still...
| TchoBeer wrote:
| What are you afraid of them doing with that?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Security cameras and such record you all the time though
| out in public. I presume there are many random servers
| containing video where you are blinking.
| yreg wrote:
| I'm happy to send a gif of me blinking to any attacker who
| wants it.
| zepearl wrote:
| Same here (born in the 70') - I went as far as allowing
| temporary access by the page, but then concerning the browser
| itself (Opera on Android in my case) I had only the options to
| "Allow" or "Deny" access to the camera => I wanted to try this
| out, but in the end I just couldn't => had to decline :(
| stavros wrote:
| I once figured that you don't need light in your house if your
| eyes are closed, and I hooked up blink detection to my smart
| bulbs:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzcdopwq7ok
|
| It actually worked really well, I couldn't perceive the room
| being dark at all.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| Fun fact - when your eyes are performing a saccade (ie, moving
| around a scene) they discard a lot of detail in the visual
| input to avoid blurs ([0]).
|
| If you could detect saccades and dim/turn off the lights, I
| wonder what the perceptual experience would be!
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade#Saccadic_masking
| stavros wrote:
| Unfortunately I think the latency would be too great for
| that, but it's definitely an interesting notion.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| You're probably right. I wonder if you could get enough of
| a speed improvement using an FPGA for the image processing?
| stavros wrote:
| I think most of the latency was actually in acquiring the
| image from the camera and sending the on/off command over
| the network. Processing was pretty fast, IIRC.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Be careful with this one. If you see a house/apartment where
| lights are repeatedly being turned on/off that's generally
| considered a signal that they are in distress and you might get
| first responders dispatched to you curtesy of a neighbor who
| saw this and called 911.
|
| Also I honestly can't think of a worst way to try to save
| money, especially after you factor in the power it might take
| to do the facial recognition. There would be a good chance that
| you actually lose money unless you are in a hanger full of Na
| lights.
|
| Edit: 5 bulbs in a room that each consume 10 watts (fairly
| generous), people blink up to 20k times a day, an average blink
| is 100 ms. So that's 2000 seconds of blink time or just about
| 33 minutes. 33*5*10 is 28 Watt-hours saved per day or about
| 0.84 kWh per month. At the rate of $0.20 per kWh you just saved
| $0.16 a month.
|
| But wait you have latency to detect the blink so let's cut that
| figure by 15%. And since we don't know how long a blink will
| last (some are shorter) you also need to reduce the off time by
| one standard deviation of a blink so to be safe let's make the
| off period after detection last only 60 ms. So now we are at
| $0.096 per month. And now we also need to run multiple cameras
| and facial detection which has to run continuously. Unless you
| can do that under 28*0.6=16.8 Wh per day you are losing money.
| seszett wrote:
| > _If you see a house /apartment where lights are repeatedly
| being turned on/off that's generally considered a signal that
| they are in distress_
|
| I would assume that they just have kids.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I suspect it is more relevant for a time when you would
| have been more likely to have known your neighbours.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Unless I had established the blinking light code with my
| neighbors in advance, how would blinking lights inform me
| any more if I knew my neighbors or not? Unless they were
| blinking out S.O.S. it would not occur to me that it
| might be a sign of distress.
| robertakarobin wrote:
| > they are in distress
|
| > they just have kids
|
| Is there a difference?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I don't think this is a thing. When you have kids extended
| periods of flashing lights are very common.
| baby wrote:
| Uh, no
| srmarm wrote:
| I think it's intended as a joke / proof of concept!
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Yeah I get that. But knowing the HN crowd I think it's
| worth doing the math and pointing out how playing with this
| could result in unintended consequences.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think the simplest fix for that would be to also track
| the eyes (and view range) of everyone else within a
| reasonable distance. My cat could do that in Perl in 5
| minutes and 3 lines.
| vokep wrote:
| Where can I get a cat like that?
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| You don't get Perl Cat, Perl Cat gets you
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Be careful with this one. If you see a house/apartment where
| lights are repeatedly being turned on/off that's generally
| considered a signal that they are in distress
|
| because of the supernatural events taking place inside!
| xwdv wrote:
| Should you call 911 if you see a place with lights flash on
| and off repeatedly?
| IgorPartola wrote:
| You know, I was taught this as a kid and the answer was
| yes. But now I cannot find a reference to this anywhere.
| It's possible I am wrong.
| kube-system wrote:
| I heard this as a kid too.
|
| Thinking back, maybe I was just annoying my mom by
| playing with the light switch.
| voxic11 wrote:
| Maybe if they are doing it in a SOS pattern.
| jxy wrote:
| Cool, now you've found a real use for smart home lighting
| system.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Maybe you could generate power by harnessing the wind
| generated by moving your eyelashes? Mount tiny little nano-
| windmills on each of them, with accelerometers, so you don't
| even need to use computer vision. Every time you blink it
| would generate just enough power to send a signal to your
| lightbulb.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Just glue a momentary push button under your eyelashes and
| connect it to a headlamp. No need for all this
| overengineering.
| sgt wrote:
| Or knock down your roof so that the moonlight alone
| illuminates your area. In 20-30 generations you will
| evolve huge eyes perfectly adapted for this and save tons
| of generational wealth.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Just wear night vision goggles and don't even bother with
| lights.
| Moodles wrote:
| In what situation would you switch the lights on and off
| constantly to signal you need help? The only situation I can
| think of is that you're somehow too injured to make noise or
| move, but you're able to reach the light switch?
| cutemonster wrote:
| > too injured to make noise or move, but you're able to
| reach the light switch?
|
| Sounds more likely to me, than someone getting a webcam and
| writing a computer program that switches off the lights
| when eyelids closed because he he blinks! :-)
|
| Especially if follows the international SOS code
| crazygringo wrote:
| I tried Googling it and can't find anything anywhere,
| neither as some official police recommendation, or even
| anyone talking about it as a commonly understood signal.
|
| Only circumstance I can imagine is if someone is kidnapped
| and they flash lights in an SOS pattern? Seems pretty
| unlikely they'd be by a street-facing room in the first
| place though.
| Moodles wrote:
| Right. But then you're hoping the kidnapper doesn't
| notice you? Which means they're not there? Which means
| you could just shout. And how can you use the light
| switch if you're (presumably) tied up anyway? Alexa?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Think elderly people who might have a lamp beside them in
| bed or who are stuck on the floor near a lamp, but wouldn't
| carry around a cell phone.
|
| I haven't heard a lot about it, but anecdotally have heard
| of it outside of HN.
| Moodles wrote:
| Right. Even that's a lamp, not a room light. It seems a
| little farfetched to me these days to be honest.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I have heard of it in the context of domestic violence
| when a person locks themselves in a room without a phone
| and is trying to signal to the outside world that they
| are in trouble.
| Moodles wrote:
| Right. In the case they're locked in a room without their
| phone and the domestic abuser doesn't also notice them
| turning the light on and off, I guess it would be an ok
| strategy? But again, that seems pretty farfetched. I have
| heard of cases where they call 911 and "order a pizza"
| and the operator catches on though.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think if they're in a locked room being noticed by the
| domestic abuser isn't a huge concern of theirs since they
| have a locked door between them and the abuser.
| Moodles wrote:
| So why not make a lot of noise then?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You could also use computer vision to mute the speaker when you
| covered your ears, and mute the microphone when you covered
| your mouth! Zoom meetings would be so much easier.
| high_byte wrote:
| that is the definition of hacking. so sick!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| How did you even know that it worked??! ;)
|
| Can you invert it so the light only turns on when your eyes are
| closed?
| blakblakarak wrote:
| How can you be sure that all lights don't do this already ?
| pacifika wrote:
| Blink with one eye
| coopsmoss wrote:
| Impossible! That would be a wink.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You could use two oppositely polarized lights, and wear
| polarized glasses, so you could switch the lights in the
| room on and off individually for each eye.
| stavros wrote:
| I tried that but I couldn't tell if it was on :(
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| A very forever-alone project
| remirk wrote:
| > It actually worked really well, I couldn't perceive the room
| being dark at all.
|
| From the video, it seems there is quite a bit of latency
| between your blink and the lights blink. But it's an
| interesting project nonetheless!
| stavros wrote:
| It does, I think that's an artifact of the video. Or at least
| it felt very quick IRL.
| ffitch wrote:
| Hahah, well, a couple of guys out there have hundreds of
| billions of dollars, and far fever ideas worth competing with
| this one. Good luck!
| soheil wrote:
| Incredible idea. Can it be applied to compute heavy visual
| applications too? Like playing a game at 4k at 120hz, what if
| the game would stop rendering and the display would turn off
| for 100ms every time you blink but the game would proceed as
| normal?
| stavros wrote:
| Probably, but due to how game rendering works I don't think
| you'd gain anything other than battery life..
| mirkules wrote:
| Amazing. It reminds me of the car company that built rain
| detection in their car and turned on your wipers so you don't
| have to.
|
| I don't remember which manufacturer it was but their ad was
| hilarious "think of what you can do with that extra time you
| would have used to turn on your wipers"
| [deleted]
| rsyring wrote:
| I have a car that detects rain quantity and automatically
| increases or decreases wiper speed.
|
| I still have to turn the wipers on, but otherwise it's
| completely automatic.
|
| I never would have thought a feature like this mattered until
| I actually had it. Now I wouldn't want a car without it.
|
| FWIW, this feature in my BMW works great. The same feature on
| my Ford Expedition doesn't work nearly as well.
| [deleted]
| ninju wrote:
| Many cars now can start the wipers, in addition to adjust
| the wiper speed, when rain is sensed on the windshield
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-
| technology/rain-s...
|
| This tells the system to *activate the wipers*, as well as
| adjust wiper speed and frequency based on the intensity of
| the precipitation combined with the vehicle's speed.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _Many cars now can start the wipers_
|
| That's been around for quite a while. My car from 2006
| does it.
| lanstin wrote:
| My Tesla model 3 has it, but like so much else new
| advanced tech it isn't yet as good as the human thing it
| was replacing. But it is less work.
| mulmen wrote:
| My 10 year old BMW does this and it works perfectly. It's
| much nicer than fiddling with my wipers constantly. Tesla
| isn't blazing any trails here, they are just stubborn and
| won't buy an off the shelf system that already works.
| mirkules wrote:
| I'm really curious from those folks who have this feature
| if it is actually useful (and why), or if it's really
| just a novelty?
| glenngillen wrote:
| Yeah, I almost never touch my wipers. Only exceptions I
| can think of is if there's a very very suddenly change in
| the speed/volume of rain falling, I'm stopped for an
| extended period (the automatic speed adjustment works
| better when you're moving), or if a bug or something has
| hit the windscreen and I need to squirt to clean it. That
| sentence was a real effort to go down memory lane though,
| it's just not something I really have to think about
| anymore.
| mulmen wrote:
| I have it on my BMW. It works great. There is still a
| similar looking control as you would have with a
| conventional system but instead of wiper speed it is
| basically a "sensitivity" or a "desired dryness". Here in
| the PNW rain can be a light mist or proper raindrops and
| may change minute to minute. So I just turn it on, set it
| to something in the middle and the wipers wipe when
| necessary. I rarely have to touch it again after turning
| it on.
|
| Compare this to my old Toyota that just had low-med-high.
| Low was still moving constantly, the only intermittent
| was a manual "mist". This meant my wipers were running
| way too much even on low or I had to hit the mist every
| 10-20 seconds.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| How much electricity is conserved by turning off the light
| bulbs for 200ms every few seconds VS how much energy is
| expanded by running a webcam + CV program constantly? It's
| probably less energy efficient overall.
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Turning the bulb off for just 200ms might be increasing
| energy usage by itself. I know in older bulbs you had to
| leave them off for so many seconds/minutes before you gained
| any savings by turning them off. The amount of energy it
| takes to get them going far exceeds the amount needed to keep
| them running. There is also the problem of the bulb wearing
| out faster because of the constant switching on and off.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Minutes? I would like to see the math on that one.
| minitoar wrote:
| For a CFL, it's about 15 minutes.
| https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/save-electricity-and-
| fuel...
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Note that this has nothing to do with saving energy and
| everything to do with reducing wear on the bulb from
| on/off cycles.
|
| _> The operating life of CFLs is more affected by the
| number of times they are switched on and off. You can
| generally extend the life of a CFL bulb more by switching
| it on and off less frequently than if you simply use it
| less._
|
| _> In any case, the relatively higher "inrush" current
| required lasts for half a cycle, or 1/120th of a second.
| The amount of electricity consumed to supply the inrush
| current is equal to a few seconds or less of normal light
| operation. Turning off fluorescent lights for more than 5
| seconds will save more energy than will be consumed in
| turning them back on again._
|
| For this specific discussion about turning lights off
| while you blink, yes, you do actually burn more
| electricity in addition to wearing the bulb out if you're
| cycling it off for just 200ms.
|
| But for real world use by normal people, turning off for
| 5 seconds will save _energy_ , and turning it off for 15
| minutes will save _money_.
| minitoar wrote:
| In the real world most people care about saving money.
| Whether that's due to wear on the bulb or extra energy
| consumption is irrelevant.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| In the real world people don't care if their CFLs burn
| out and get replaced with LEDs because CFLs are
| comparatively terrible and you can get a higher quality
| LED bulb for about $5.
| minitoar wrote:
| True, I was just trying to explain this to my partner who
| didn't want to throw out still functional CFLs. In this
| case the value of the estimated remaining life of the CFL
| + cost of new LED is less than the expected power savings
| of the LED.
| Shikadi wrote:
| In the real world people care about both actually.
| minitoar wrote:
| I submit that there are vanishingly small number of
| individuals who would spend more on bulbs than what those
| bulbs would save in electric costs over their lifetime.
| kevincox wrote:
| IIRC for incandescent it was about 1/3s to break even. For
| fluorescents it is likely higher but don't have a source
| (it may not be an issue if the starter is smart enough to
| realize that it isn't needed or not needed as much).
| However there is going to be extra wear and tear on these
| bulbs which makes the savings offset by extra bulb
| replacement. For LED the cost of turning off should be very
| near to zero so this would likely actually save resources.
|
| Of course this idea is awful for other reasons. But it is
| very funny.
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| no the blink detector is not free and massively adds to
| the overheads compared to the LED output.
| londons_explore wrote:
| For a modern (led) bulb there is effectively zero wasted
| energy by turning it off and on, but it depends how you
| define waste. Does light emitted after the switch is turned
| off count as waste? (Most bulbs take a few hundred ms to
| turn off)
| [deleted]
| adrianN wrote:
| This is the first application of smart bulbs that makes me want
| them in my house. Congratulations.
| uyt wrote:
| It's fun and all but is it really practical? If you have more
| than two people in a room, it should turn off only when both
| are blinking at the same time, which should basically be
| never?
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| This is resume-driven-development, except with IoT rather
| than K8S, Terraform, and AI. Shard a DB w/ 1000 records,
| put your 3 page website in a Terraform config transpiling
| down to an Azure .yaml config defining K8S micro-services
| running in the Cloud - the machine spins up every time the
| lights blink out for 200MS!
| Santosh83 wrote:
| Not to mention it will kill the lifetime of the bulb.
| kenniskrag wrote:
| also with LED? I though you reduce the light by letting
| then blink really fast.
| pmx wrote:
| Variable brightness with an LED is achieved using pulse
| width modulation, turning it on and off REALLY fast. So
| no, this won't have any effect on the life of the LED :)
| zenexer wrote:
| Not for LED bulbs, as far as I know. That's certainly
| true for incandescent, but I don't think this experiment
| would work well with incandescent anyway.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Also: How much electricity is conserved by turning off the
| light bulbs for 200ms every few seconds VS how much energy
| is expanded by running a webcam + CV program constantly?
| It's probably less energy efficient overall.
| MR4D wrote:
| I suppose it will be for Facebook or any advertising firm
| that wants to push it to the next level of getting into
| your head.
| adrianN wrote:
| It's clearly not practical. I would assume that the "smart"
| overhead consumes a lot more electricity than you could
| save by turning them off for a couple of minutes a day. But
| it is really fun.
| mooman219 wrote:
| The average person blinks 28,800 times a day. 10% of your time
| awake is spent with your eyes closed [Source: Google I'm
| feeling lucky. YMMV]. Imagine saving 10% on your lighting bill.
| This is revolutionary. You really only need it to work for one
| person in a household as long as everyone gets on the same
| blinking schedule.
| stavros wrote:
| Did you know that, when people live together, their blinks
| tend to synchronize? It's true*.
|
| * For small values of true.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Since this is HN, I have to ask how it works.
|
| Assuming you didn't install sensors in your eyelids, it's
| probably something processing the feed of the camera?
| stavros wrote:
| Yes, there was a very simple OpenCV-based blink detection
| program on my computer that I repurposed to control my bulbs
| with. When it detects a blink, it turns the bulb off for
| 200ms, which is long enough for me to not perceive any
| darkness.
| cferr wrote:
| Wouldn't power cycling your bulbs like that lower their
| longevity?
| vel0city wrote:
| The part that wears out from cycling often is the ballast
| of the bulb. I imagine these smart lights are in the
| bulb's ballast, so sending the "off" command isn't de-
| energizing the ballast of the lightbulbs.
|
| If you were doing it on a smart light switch that was
| feeding 120V to the ballasts I do imagine it would impart
| some additional wear and tear to the bulbs. I'm not sure
| how much additional wear and tear it would be on an LED,
| I know the main thing that wears out on a florescent is
| the starting circuit which needs to bring the energy of
| the bulb enough to start the arc which wears out over
| time.
| stavros wrote:
| It's very odd to me that bulbs don't come in two parts:
| Ballast and LED. That way, we wouldn't have to keep
| buying and throwing away the perfectly good part when the
| other one broke.
| hexa22 wrote:
| No. These things are designed to turn on and off hundreds
| of times per second to emulate dimming.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Or even tens of thousands of times per second, according
| to an Analog Devices article: "Don't Want to Hear It?
| Avoid the Audio Band with PWM LED Dimming at Frequencies
| Above 20kHz" (https://www.analog.com/en/technical-
| articles/avoid-the-audio...).
| _Nat_ wrote:
| I wonder if, one day, they'll discover malware that infects
| only laptops with webcams, designed with heuristics to detect
| when the user is alone (based on mic, cam, limited wireless
| devices suggesting a public setting or other people, etc.),
| then displays a rude gesture (like a middle-finger) whenever
| the user blinks.
|
| Not that there'd seem to be any point to such malware, but
| given things folks share online and at HackerNews, dunno if
| that's really a basis for anyone to not do it. =P
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I don't know how your bulbs respond so fast. My philips hue
| bulbs seem to always take half a second to react to anything.
| stavros wrote:
| It's a YeeLight bulb and I wrote a library to talk to it
| directly over the LAN.
| nnamtr wrote:
| - Is the lamp still on while blinking? - Is the sun still
| shining during a nap? - Is the fridge's light still on while
| it's closed? - Does God exist?
|
| Some fundamental questions, but we'll never be able to find an
| answer.
| podric wrote:
| Uh, use a light meter? Your comment assumes that that only
| way to assess the presence of light is with your eyes.
| briefcomment wrote:
| Does the light meter function properly while blinking?
| podric wrote:
| My point in bringing up the light meter is that in these
| "tree falls in the forest" thought experiments, it's
| taken for granted that your own biological senses are an
| absolute source of truth.
|
| But your eyes are just another set of equipment, similar
| to a light meter. Just because your eyes are attached to
| the rest of your body, it doesn't make them inherently
| more trustworthy than equipment that's not part of your
| body.
| goatlover wrote:
| However, our expectation is that a tree falling in the
| forest could kill us even if we didn't hear and see it.
| That's why we look when we cross the road. The fact that
| we're subject to all sorts of things that can cause us
| harm without sensing them makes the case a lot more
| compelling that the light meter exists when we blink.
| podric wrote:
| Are the Hacker News servers down when you're not on
| Hacker News?
|
| There are an infinite number of these types of logically
| pendantic questions that are immensely uninteresting to
| think about.
| ooi10 wrote:
| It's been my experience that people who call things
| uninteresting are merely sharing their own unusual
| disinterest in something otherwise interesting. It's also
| been my experience that said people are usually the most
| uninteresting in the room.
|
| Also, I don't know what it says about you that you went
| from effectively "trees falling in the forest" to the
| Hacker News infrastructure to defend your point about
| fun, thought-provoking idioms, but I _do_ know it's
| remarkably uninteresting.
| podric wrote:
| Fair enough. By calling my comment uninteresting, have
| you also rendered yourself to likely be the most
| uninteresting person in the room, by the logic in your
| first paragraph? If so, who wins the title of the most
| uninteresting person in the room?
| vokep wrote:
| You initially would for having claimed something
| interesting is not, however you also started a discussion
| which is pretty interesting, including your own further
| comment, which also adds interest to the situation.
| Paradoxically you two now may be the most interesting
| here.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _Are the Hacker News servers down when you 're not on
| Hacker News?_
|
| That seems like a tautology. If I'm not on Hacker News,
| then of course the server must be down. Why else would I
| not be on HN?
| trutannus wrote:
| If (Stratoscope and Hackernews) -> Stratoscope is on
| Hackernews.
|
| => (Stratoscope is on Hackernews) is false.
|
| => (Stratoscope and Hackernews) is false.
|
| => Stratoscope is true.
|
| ______________________________________________________
|
| Hackernews is false.
| vokep wrote:
| uninteresting to you
|
| A lot of discoveries of interesting stuff resulted from
| something uninteresting being considered interesting and
| deeply contemplated. Others look and say "what an idiot,
| spending such time on such uninteresting x", I say,
| "you're only my self-imagined disagreeable other, I'm
| your god, your consciousness is my consciousness, what
| say you now?" and they would say nothing since the
| puppeteer has been revealed and there is nothing left to
| say. I guess this is why God will never prove he exists.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Tell that to Schrodinger. Even questions that seem
| utterly pointless and mundane at first glance can lead to
| captivating insights if explored at depth.
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| I'm sure the comments were made in jest...
| nefitty wrote:
| Lamp lights are not dependent on whether you can see them or
| not, unless they are programmed to.
|
| The state of an individual person's consciousness has no
| bearing on whether the sun is shining or not.
|
| Refrigerator lights turn off when the door closes. It's
| usually easy to find the mechanism that handles this and
| manually trigger the light to switch off.
|
| Regarding God, I assume you mean the Abrahamic god. There are
| many culturally specific deities and superstitions and there
| doesn't seem to be any verifiable reason why one would be
| "realer" than any other.
| pieshop wrote:
| The problem with this argument is that it's begging the
| question. You're assuming that the Universe is behaving in
| a way that is consistent with how it appears.
|
| There is no possible experiment you could in principle do
| to verify that the universe stays the same when you're not
| looking. We can say that the universe behaves consistently
| as though it does, and I'm not saying that doesn't matter,
| but it's not quite the same thing. Furthermore we can't
| tell whether the universe is tricking us some of the time,
| or all of the time, or never.
| nnamtr wrote:
| What if the world is just a dream? Then an individual
| person's consciousness has a massive influence on the
| weather. And there would be new arguments for the existence
| of God.
| vidarh wrote:
| You're assuming any of this has an existence independent of
| your mind, that more than the present moment exists, and a
| whole lot of other things.
|
| You make reasonable assumptions, but _proving_ them is
| hard, because any attempt you make to prove them still end
| up being filtered through your potentially unreliable
| senses.
|
| In practice we decide to just accept that a material world
| with semireliable senses exists, because the alternative is
| no certainty at all.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| In other words, proofs cannot exist without _axioms_.
|
| "The Simple Truth" addresses this from a different angle:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/X3HpE8tMXz4m4w6Rz/the-
| simple...
| goatlover wrote:
| The alternative without falling into skepticism is
| idealism. But scientific explanations of many things like
| disease, chemistry and physical forces are very
| compelling compared to the world just appears the way it
| does as ideas in our mind.
| TrueGeek wrote:
| That's just, like, your opinion man
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| The 'issue' is that these are essentially 'commonsense'
| answers. By definition it's impossible to empirically study
| the unobservable. Though of course whether these questions
| are at all interesting - after all the answer has no effect
| on anything or it would be observable - is another matter.
| RootKitBeerCat wrote:
| This needs at least 1billion views: this is art and comedy at
| its highest form!
| app4soft wrote:
| Website disabled:
|
| > _This project has received too many requests, please try
| again later._
| Eighth wrote:
| If you like this, I recommend the game 'Before Your Eyes' where
| the game progresses each time you blink. Beware, it will take
| your emotions on a hell of a ride.
| giomasce wrote:
| Nice!
| [deleted]
| amne wrote:
| sooo .. is this website made by the same guy who thought it was
| fine to take snapshots of people staring at apple computers? if
| this is him then he's a genius.
| liang409 wrote:
| How hard would it be for someone with no technical background to
| create something like this? What would a list of tools needed
| look like?
| ivrrimum wrote:
| Hugged to death
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