YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Project Blinkenlights

45 points doener 3 hours ago 18 comments

zahlman 3 hours ago | parent

> Stereoscope — Toronto 2008, City Hall: two towers, one matrix (96×32 pixels, 16 greyscales).

Oh man, I think I remember that.

Animats 2 hours ago | parent

Downtown Shenzhen is rigged for that.

For a while, the SF Bay Bridge was. I once went to an Autodesk event in SF where the guy behind it was controlling the lights from his laptop.

kukanani 1 hour ago | parent

You’re probably thinking of the Bay Bridge Lights or Bay Lights. They first ran from 2013-2023. They were so popular, that starting this year, the lights are back on, every night.

https://illuminate.org/projects/thebaylights/

jolt42 2 hours ago | parent

Is this still well recognized?

ACHTUNG! ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.

bradrn 2 hours ago | parent

Yes! I know it! (And I’m not old at all.) I saw it at, as I recall, a model train exhibition when I was very young, and I found it so hilarious I’ve never forgotten it. In fact I was quite surprised when I eventually learned it was a well-known thing, considerably older than I am.

jdsnape 2 hours ago | parent

I have a letterpress print of this from the Cambridge (UK) museum of technology when I was a kid (so about 30 years ago I guess!). I love the juxtaposition between letterpress and the idea of relaxen und watschen der blinkenlichten

andai 40 minutes ago | parent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights

Has some nice photos. More welcome!

And on the modern computer, there is:

Blinkenlights: PC Binary Emulating Visualizer

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31473846

https://archive.ph/GgGeZ

I was always fascinated by stories from older professors about how they could hear when something had gone wrong with an algorithm, because the sound would be wrong.

In my case, I could hear when some Windows malware (its indexer, updates, etc.) was running, because the computer would make funny noises. These days, everything is so silent, and the LEDs are gone, I only notice from the lag!

I sometimes wish there were still sounds, and more besides (e.g. sounds for strange network packets, and so on).

You can do a lot "artificially"; I set it up so my computer makes a frog croak sound when the LLMs finish cooking, and I have a colored orb in my notification bar showing the packet loss.

unprovable 2 hours ago | parent

It's been so long since I last saw this. Stalwart of the internet.

karim79 2 hours ago | parent

I think it got the HN kiss of death. We need a new page about how to avoid this. Basic scaling skills I tells ya.

esseph 2 hours ago | parent

It's a lot of the same people that refuse free CDNs.

nullc 1 hour ago | parent

Ever wonder why those CDNs are "free"?

andai 39 minutes ago | parent

No, but I am now! Why?

pjot 2 hours ago | parent

Thought this was the ascii Star Wars in your terminal à la

  telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

hellojason 56 minutes ago | parent

Haha yep, first thing I thought of as well.

lacunary 19 minutes ago | parent

me too and I hadn't thought of it in what feels like 20 years. I'm mad that's not what it was

positive_sec 2 hours ago | parent

So nice to see this here! We were inspired by Project Blinkenlights to conceive BlinkenCity, a city-wide installation of the same idea (abusing the radio-controllable individually-addressable street lamps in many German cities): https://positive.security/blog/blinkencity-38c3

sunir 1 hour ago | parent

When I was younger, I was in Berlin and wandered unannounced into the Chaos Computer Club and I met Tim there. What a legend.

The whole club is legendary. We need more of their spirit of the art of the possible and irreverent. Life is for the living, and computers are for the hackers.

Xikaku 56 minutes ago | parent

This was so cool when I first saw it at Alexanderplatz on the way to Sternradio (who remembers the best Soundsystem in town?)! Dialed in with my Nokia and played pong.