11 ms·
Photos Always Pointing at the Pointer (2012)
- toyg 4y agoThis would be useful if only I could save the resulting image somehow, and reuse it in my presentations / memes.
- mauriciolange 4y agoGood point!
- egorfine 4y agoI'd like to point out
- zanethomas 4y agowhat's the point?
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoAt some point I might get the point up to a point at least, IDK what point I'm trying to make but I'd like to point out the point.
- unwind 4y agoMeta: title lacks "at", right?
- readingnews 4y agoThis could be a serious time sink for someone. After just a few moments I was like "wait, I am going to sit here and keep moving this mouse... must leave". Seriously though, I wonder where it pulls the images from... seems like a lot of parties and drinking.
- nsxwolf 4y agoThis is the greatest use of machine learning I've ever seen.
- woudsma 4y agoNo ML, just JS and voronoi! https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z2ZXW2HBLPM https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z2ZXW2HBLPM
- apetresc 4y agoHow do Voronoi diagrams help you figure out the trajectory of a finger in a photo?
- mynegation 4y agoThey do not, at least in this implementation they do not. If you watch the video, pointing finger position is actually preset in the data (by human analysis most likely). Voronoi (it is pronounced with “oy” not “ay” btw) is only used for proximity matching.
- ta988 4y agoThe voronoi is just used to map the x,y coordinates to tiles that then map to images. Doesn't say how the images were selected and the finger coordinates mapped in the first place to generate that map.
- silentsea90 4y agoI assume it is done manually?
- naillo 4y agoIt's funny how many cool things could be created with just a few hours of manual labelling labor.
- positus 4y agoDelightful!
- speps 4y agoHN thread from 2012 (67 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4095237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4095237 HN thread from 2020 (68 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25372356
- jwilk 4y ago2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8583179 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8583179 (31 comments)
- flerchin 4y agoWonderful! Good work.
- SilasX 4y agoThere were too many NSFW/L photos with no warning. For me, 2/3 before I gave up.
- neogodless 4y agoAre you talking about people who appear inebriated? Because that's all I saw. Nothing truly NSFW. Just went back for another dozen. No inappropriate skin showing, no illegal activities (unless, of course, there are underage people drinking, but it's hard to tell that for sure.)
- SilasX 4y agoMale lifting up his shirt, which, while not obscene, is also not SFW. Another picture had a bloody finger. 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?
- dspillett 4y ago> I don't know why people seem to be so incredulous/outraged 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.
- 4y ago
- bbbbbenji 4y agoWell, it's not wrong: https://i.ibb.co/8sydp6V/Screenshot-from-2022-07-12-16-23-59.png https://i.ibb.co/8sydp6V/Screenshot-from-2022-07-12-16-23-59...
- ImJasonH 4y agoSome people would call this pointless, but I obviously disagree.
- pkdpic 4y agoYeah those people are the worst. This project rules.
- bestouff 4y agoI see your point.
- toyg 4y agoIt's very clear what direction this conversation has taken.
- EGreg 4y agoI had some pointed criticism of this thread but I’ll keep it to myself. I’ll limit myself to asking: are the photos themselves simply cropped? In that case there doesn’t have to be that many photos.
- mypastself 4y agoIt’s almost clear to me, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…
- pointlessthrwy 4y ago
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoI noticed they are all white people. Does the algorithm have trouble with other skin tones? 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.
- jer0me 4y agoMy guess is that the location of fingers were manually identified so it’s more an issue of where the photos are sourced from.
- ravedave5 4y agoI had several people with darker skin tones.
- zweifuss 4y agoMe too.
- mellosouls 4y agoSnap!
- mellosouls 4y agoMe too.
- Klathmon 4y agoIIRC this wasn't made by an algorithm, the pointing locations were mapped by hand and the list of images is fixed. So I think in this case it is because of personal bias of the author (regardless of how unintended it might be)
- andrew_ 4y agoThese are all photos that look like they were taken with disposable cameras in the early 2000s. First thought was "why do all of these look like they were taken at my college parties?"
- AustinDev 4y agoSeriously I think I saw someone I hung out with in RVA in the late 2000's
- sbarre 4y agoYeah someone got their hands on a Myspace image crawl..
- pchristensen 4y agoApparently this site goes back to at least 2012, so the pics would have to be older than that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4095237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4095237
- toyg 4y agoProbably fishing from the golden age of Facebook sharing.
- quickthrower2 4y agoHalf of the people look drunk. Which makes sense. Being this is selected for photos of people pointing at random places!
- tablespoon 4y ago> These are all photos that look like they were taken with disposable cameras in the early 2000s. First thought was "why do all of these look like they were taken at my college parties?" You're probably not too far off. This is apparently all the photos it uses: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/6937cf84ac6debcb2027cdba13e40d0a 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.
- onionisafruit 4y agoThis is where the magic happens: https://pointerpointer.com/new-positions.json https://pointerpointer.com/new-positions.json
- melony 4y agoTrain neural net and generate it dynamically!
- archibaldJ 4y agooh wow this cracks me up in ways unbeknownst to me, almost in the same fashion as the first time I experienced the surreality of VR ping pong. There is something strange about human reactivity (and interactive humourous side-effects) that we need to research more on.
- Akronymus 4y agoThat was fun. 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 https://i.imgur.com/JimNuUL.png (Showing the injury/pin, so dont click if you dont wanna see it)
- kebman 4y agoOk I get the point!1
- dzonga 4y agowow!!
- p5v 4y agoEhh, the good old college party years :)
- EForEndeavour 4y agoI'd never seen this. So cool! 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.
- dspillett 4y ago> how hard would it be to reduce the time delay between identifying a point and displaying an image 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.
- ksala_ 4y agoAs for the other comment, there is an artificial 2s delay between image loads. It might be to reduce the load on the server, or just to make it seems like it's doing more work than it is. 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()) On a fast connection with this loading it's almost immediate - it's pretty cool to just drag your cursor across the screen. 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.
- nalinidash 4y agoOh...here is an exception https://imgur.com/a/In4MtJY https://imgur.com/a/In4MtJY
- sbarre 4y agoI got that image earlier. You're getting a crop on mobile but there's a guy out of frame on the left who is pointing across the image.
- ASalazarMX 4y agoYup. Some apparent misses are because the images are zoomed, so they can be shifted and reused with different coordinates. Unfortunately some images end up with the pointing finger out of frame.
- jonnypotty 4y agoWhy do I find this so funny? Good work. Thanks.
- goatcode 4y agoI wonder what is the worst picture in its source. I managed to find a bird being flipped in one (as the pointing finger). How deep does this rabbit hole go?
- john-doe 4y agoMade by Studio Puckey: https://puckey.studio/projects/pointer-pointer https://puckey.studio/projects/pointer-pointer
- banana_giraffe 4y agoIf you're like me and just want to see all of the images: https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/6937cf84ac6debcb2027cdba13e40d0a https://gist.github.com/Q726kbXuN/6937cf84ac6debcb2027cdba13...
- shreyshnaccount 4y agoI saw this site YEARSSS ago, brings back memories of bunking class to play games xD really cool!
- adamredwoods 4y agoWhy Voronoi? Why not circle-line collision, the line being from the start of the finger to approximate end space. The lines can be done manually, maybe drawn in with an app.
- dannyphantom 4y agoI remember this from StumbleUpon :) 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.
- vladf 4y agoDidn’t work for me: https://ibb.co/56rr18X https://ibb.co/56rr18X
- felipelalli 4y agoWhat is the point?
- atum47 4y agoThis is hilarious
- _narendra_ 4y agoJust curious, how can you get images like this?