6 ms·
Olo (Color)
- mbeavitt 3mo agoWtf does this mean? “Their square display of olo occupied an angular width of 0.9°[1], around twice the diameter of the moon[7].”
- jdanford 3mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_diameter
- drayfield 3mo agoIs it too late to rename it to Octarine? https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octarine https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/octarine
- ChrisMarshallNY 3mo ago+1 for the Sir Terry reference. I suspect many animals experience color quite differently, including seeing infrared/ultraviolet, etc.
- tiagod 3mo agoNo suspicion needed, that's a very well studied fact.
- phikappa 3mo agoIn my headcanon octarine is a colour between orange and deep purple. Sometimes it has a hazy blackish halo.
- indrora 3mo agoI've always taken it to be that the color is unique to the situation/viewer -- a sort of pearlescent void-color that can't be described in any known language, but which just Is. More a physical phenomenon than an actual color, but distinctly hued somehow.
- dejobaan 3mo agoI always thought it was something like https://www.moodlight.org/ https://www.moodlight.org/ (set to 60 colors/second) or https://flashing-colors.com/ https://flashing-colors.com/ (set to 100 colors/second). Note that those are possibly photosensitive epilepsy risks if you turn them up to 60/100.
- riffraff 3mo agoI think it's described as a "greenish purple" in some of the books.
- Razengan 3mo agoMy thoughts as soon as I saw the title :)
- ameliaquining 3mo agoI thought of "The Colour Out of Space".
- goosethe 3mo agohow bout Grorange
- dorianmariecom 3mo agolol
- ihaveajob 3mo agoNo, that's a different color.
- trembolram 3mo agolol is the complementary color of olo in the theoretical lms color space.
- kridsdale1 3mo agoI guess it’s #FF0033 or so.
- notfed 3mo agoSo could we stare at #FF0033 for a minute and then close our eyes? (Context: negative afterimage, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterimage)
- GolfPopper 3mo agoIt is possible to see something close (how close I don't know) by saturating the S & M cones instead of avoiding them. Wikipedia refers to these as 'chimerical colors': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color#Chimerical_colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color#Chimerical_co...
- Georgelemental 3mo agoDemonstration of this: https://dynomight.net/colors/ https://dynomight.net/colors/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44594808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44594808)
- toxik 3mo agoThis was very interesting, thank you for the link.
- yboris 3mo agoLove this - references one of my favorite ever optical experiences Eclipse of Titan https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage-et.html https://www.skytopia.com/project/illusion/ipage-et.html
- deIeted 3mo agoBTW olo was not discovered in 2025 In ~2016 on the chan someone posted a completely unhinged post about this "bleen" "grue" color that nobody could see. it's probably lost to the ages now, but I remember it.
- vanderZwan 3mo agoAre you sure that wasn't referencing "grue" from this philosophical thought experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction
- rashkov 3mo ago
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- kveykva 3mo agoThis reads like an SCP article
- Luc 3mo agoAh, thank you. Couldn’t put my finger on it.
- semolino 3mo agoHaving read this comment from today detailing variance in the default Windows 95 background (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329282), I'm imagining Olo would be your wallpaper if "257 colors" could be supported.
- hdz 3mo agoThe closest approximation to Olo colored paint you can buy is also by the company that makes some of the blackest black paint. I haven't used it personally. https://culturehustle.com/collections/paint/products/yolo-newly-discovered-colouriest-colour https://culturehustle.com/collections/paint/products/yolo-ne...
- jhiesey 3mo agoNote that there has been controversy for the last few years around Culture Hustle not fulfilling orders and doing other sketchy things. Just a heads up.
- rebeccajae 3mo agoI had ordered something from them and it took me initiating a chargeback for them to ship anything at all. The product that arrived was of terrible quality, and their customer support email is completely useless as well, any email gets a canned "your email is very important to us!" style response. My bank denied my second chargeback request because they had technically shipped something.
- zimpenfish 3mo agoI've seen those complaints going around but, to add a picoGladwell of data, I've not had any problems with fulfilling orders or anything like that.
- kiddico 3mo agoLol $11280.99 now marked down to $33.99!
- nancyminusone 3mo agoThis is part of the shtick - $34 is the "artist price" and for everyone else it's $11k. Basically he only wants the paint used to make art.
- kridsdale1 3mo agoObligatory “Fuck Anish Kapoor” https://www.reddit.com/r/FUCKYOUINPARTICULAR/comments/1dxlt66/fuck_anish_kapoor/ https://www.reddit.com/r/FUCKYOUINPARTICULAR/comments/1dxlt6...
- gste 3mo ago> Only the five subjects of the Berkeley experiment have officially seen olo. Basically equivalent to source: trust me bro
- IAmBroom 3mo agoThe word "officially" is the massive wiggle-word here. Only one person on Earth has officially seen the color of my coffee mug. Send me Venmo for $10, and I'll officiate your viewing of the attached JPG....
- SamBam 3mo agoExcept that this requires extremely specialized equipment to individually trigger specific cone cells in your eyes, so I expect they have a pretty damn good idea of who has seen this and who hasn't.
- moralestapia 3mo agoSo, source: trust me bro.
- soupspaces 3mo agoI'd heard of weasel words but now that you mention it they do tend to be rather wiggly
- orthoxerox 3mo agoThere's a link to Dynomight's webpage in another comment thread. I've seen olo myself with it. It's to cyan what ultramarine is to sRGB blue.
- timonoko 3mo ago...
- SamBam 3mo agoYou can't have discovered this same color, solve it requires specialized equipment to see it. The color in the Wikipedia article is just a rough approximation.
- timonoko 3mo agoI know that. In pure form that color it is both yellow and blue without being green. You sometimes see it in sunsets.
- timonoko 3mo ago---
- timonoko 3mo agoGoddammit. Now I remembered how you see this color. You stare the some shape of 0xFF0030 and then close yores eyes and the inverted color appears.
- timonoko 3mo agoCan I get note in Wikipedia for inventing this 40 years ago?
- reaperducer 3mo agoYou stare the some shape of 0xFF0030 and then close yores eyes and the inverted color appears. So, the cover of R.E.M.'s 1988 record titled Green, which is actually orange. You're supposed to stare at it, then close your eyes, and you see the album cover as it's intended to be viewed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_(R.E.M._album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_(R.E.M._album)
- 3mo ago
- amberjack 3mo agoI wonder how long it will take until this is some kind of an amusement park thing or whatever.
- m-hodges 3mo agoBrown https://youtu.be/wh4aWZRtTwU https://youtu.be/wh4aWZRtTwU
- pixel_popping 3mo agoTime for a trip then.
- dylan604 3mo ago"They then used lasers to deliver tiny doses of light" I didn't know there was funding for this
- tantalor 3mo ago> Funding: This work was supported by a Hellman Fellowship (R.N.), FHL Vive Center Seed Grant (R.N.), Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant FA9550-20-1-0195 (J.F., C.W., W.S.T., A.R., and R.N.), Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant FA9550-21-1-0230 (J.F., H.K.D., C.W., A.E.B., S.R.H., V.P.P., W.S.T., R.S., A.R., and R.N.), National Institutes of Health grant R01EY023591 (A.E.B., B.P.S., P.T., J.E.V., W.S.T., A.R., and R.N.), National Institutes of Health grant R01EY029710 (V.P.P. and R.S.), National Institutes of Health grant U01EY032055 (V.P.P., R.S., and A.R.), and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface (R.S.). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12007580/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12007580/
- throwaway27448 3mo agoThis is how people talk about how ancient greeks viewed blue, except we actually can't see this color normally.
- MarkusQ 3mo agoThe stuff about ancient Greeks not seeing blue is absolute internet balderdash.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- gherkinnn 3mo agohttps://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/history-english-colour-words https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/history-english-colour... > It’s not that people in the past couldn’t see blue. Indeed, there were several words which could refer to things we would call blue today, but these words could also describe things we’d assign to other colours too, especially grey and green.
- throwaway27448 3mo agoYes, hence my comment.
- jeremyjh 3mo agoReminds me a bit of a Greg Egan story from Instantiation called Seventh Sight. Kids with artificial eyes hack them to see colors and spectrum not perceptible by humans.
- pixelatedindex 3mo agoI wonder why if this is the reason for the icon color of the game Olo. The left half of the icon background looks so similar. https://www.eurogamer.net/olo-review https://www.eurogamer.net/olo-review
- purplethreads 3mo ago> The color is named after its theoretical LMS color space coordinates (0, 1, 0), which spells "olo" in leet speak. :) Hm, so is it correct to also call it ultragreen? In the same way that ultraviolet is the same effect but for short waves? In this regard, it can’t be that novel of a discovery.
- riffraff 3mo agoUltraviolet is prnamed that because of the Latin meaning of ultra as "beyond", as it's "beyond violet" in the spectrum, same as infrared is "below red". This would be "sideways green" perhaps :)
- evanb 3mo agoThis page, which predates the recent olo work, calls it psychedelic aquamarine. https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/colour/primary.html https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/colour/primary.html
- antics 3mo agoIf you are interested in "imaginary" colors, the gamut is actually well-specified, and (I hope it is appropriate to comment) that I made a visualization where you can drag a selection thumb over the gamut to see the "simulated" version of that color. Also include it is a 12-step contrast-sensitive color palette generator for said imaginary colors, which would allow you to make websites and (say) vscode themes using entirely imaginary colors! https://docs.moment.dev/d/hausdorff/2zmqjlmldchela29xvbzlbkil/293jztttqyghwswqllu0qou9r https://docs.moment.dev/d/hausdorff/2zmqjlmldchela29xvbzlbki...
- amelius 3mo agoWe know so much about color, but we're in the dark ages when it comes to odor.
- cat-whisperer 3mo agois zoox olo colored?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- zahlman 3mo ago> Olo was discovered on April 18, 2025 by scientists at UC Berkeley.[1][3] The color is named after its theoretical LMS color space coordinates (0, 1, 0), which spells "olo" in leet speak.[4][3] I presume "loo" and "ool" are in-gamut? What hex values?
- amoshebb 3mo ago703 nm laser is almost “loo”, and 417 nm is almost “ool”. Searching those wavelengths gives me #FF0000 and #6400FF. Loo is all red and ool is all violet.
- tclancy 3mo agoReally enjoyed this article about it https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/03/what-would-it-mean-to-see-a-new-color https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/03/what-would-it-...
- vismit2000 3mo agohttps://archive.ph/zXZ9d https://archive.ph/zXZ9d
- jen729w 3mo agoAha! I was trying to figure out the colour of the E5/H5 Shinkansen that are used on the Tokyo-Morioka-Aomori (Hayabusa/Yamabiko) line. This is it. https://kagi.com/images?q=e5+h5+shinkansen&r=au&sh=fWcD0dVpCevQ-QcE77NkDA https://kagi.com/images?q=e5+h5+shinkansen&r=au&sh=fWcD0dVpC...
- xpct 3mo agoSince colors are an activation of rods and cones, could we simulate them by stimulating the eye nerves directly? Not necessarily to see new colors, but to replicate the experience of sight? If we managed that, wouldn't it feel exactly the same as seeing something in nature that itches the back of the eye so nicely? I suppose this is entering the brain interface territory.
- agiacalone 3mo agoSo weird. #00FFCC has been my terminal font color for nearly two decades now. Love the color and had no idea about the ‘imaginary’ color Olo.
- iridescentform 3mo agoSame thing as “ultragreen” (as in ultraviolet)
- timonoko 3mo agoNow I remembered how you see this color. You stare the some shape of 0xFF0030 and then close yores eyes and the inverted color appears.
- redthorn 3mo agoYes! I see purples and greens
- redthorn 3mo agoMix with yellow to get new color Yolo This color does not give a fuck, I use it in my main CTA. People click it like 4000% more
- red_admiral 3mo agoSomeone is trying to recreate "the seven colors of the earthly rainbow and the three extra colors you only get in Heaven" (from Scott Alexander's UNSONG).
- limbicsystem 3mo agoA feature that no one is talking about but which is even cooler: You can use the same technology to a) directly simulate color blindness (drive the L and M cones with the same signal) and b) in theory drive subsets of a dichromat's L cones with derived L- and M- cone amplitudes - does that make them sort of trichromatic? Such an amazing technology! The whole AO story ultimately links back to the Starfire Optical Range : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_Optical_Range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_Optical_Range
- cpt_sobel 3mo agoThis reminds me of a thought I had as a child, that what I see as one color could be what everyone else sees as another color: this had blown my mind back then and thought I was a genius for coming up with it ^_^
- bunkydoo 3mo ago[dead]
- strix_mahalo 3mo agoOlo? Sure, but did you ever see a Hooloovoo?
- notfed 3mo agoI don't get it. Is it saying Olo is an example of a color that can't be displayed on modern RGB displays? I wonder if someone could sell pieces of paper which have this color?
- alejohausner 3mo agoNo. There are lots of colors that our eyes can see, but which no 3-color device can produce. They're usually highly saturated, and many of the deep greens can't be produced by 3-color devices. What's going on here is different. The researchers managed to identify individual cones in the retinas of human subjects. They then shot tiny pulses of light at ONLY the M (green-sensitive) cones. This avoided stimulating the other cones, and subjects saw a color they could not have seen otherwise. The issue here is that the S, M, and L cones have overlapping sensitivity curves: normally if you shine green light on the retina, all three cones will respond, and your brain will say "green". But here they are stimulating only one cone, not all 3.
- ChristmasTomer 3mo ago[dead]
- timonoko 3mo agohttps://x.com/TimoNoko/status/2089598485347672323 https://x.com/TimoNoko/status/2089598485347672323
- teiferer 3mo agoWhat confuses me with these triangles is: shouldn't the color space be 3-dimensional? One dimension for each cone? And then the real-world percievable colors are a 1d-manifold in there?