[HN Gopher] The Bluesky firehose viewed in the style of a Window...
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The Bluesky firehose viewed in the style of a Windows XP
screensaver
 
Author : consumer451
Score  : 365 points
Date   : 2024-11-16 22:07 UTC (15 hours ago)
 
web link (firehose3d.theo.io)
w3m dump (firehose3d.theo.io)
 
| consumer451 wrote:
| https://github.com/theosanderson/firehose
| 
| I just love that the open nature of Bsky is allowing people to
| hack things like this.
| 
| Now that their growth is crazy, let's hope that the work they did
| on the protocol and corp structure keeps it this way.
 
  | marginalia_nu wrote:
  | Yeah I was looking into the firehose as a potential way to
  | source to discover new domains for my search engine. Even
  | though it didn't pan out, I really appreciate how accessible
  | the data is.
 
    | morkalork wrote:
    | Why didn't it work out?
 
      | marginalia_nu wrote:
      | I decided agains it because it had an incredibly bad signal
      | to noise ratio. Almost all links I saw were either to big
      | websites like newspapers, patreon, onlyfans; or behind url
      | shorteners.
      | 
      | Dunno, I may explore it further down the line, but for now
      | the juice didn't seem worth the squeeze.
 
        | dools wrote:
        | I created a website like 10 years ago called birdmine
        | that indexed every link you or one of your followers
        | shared on Twitter, in a Solr search engine so you could
        | search stuff that had been curated to an extent. It was
        | pretty cool, I think I'm the only person that ever used
        | it though.
 
        | djbusby wrote:
        | BSky could use a better search, or a better curation of
        | feeds. I'm certain there is more room in the discovery
        | play.
 
    | mariusor wrote:
    | I might have asked this before, but did you look at adding
    | this type of ingestion for ActivityPub?
 
      | marginalia_nu wrote:
      | Briefly, but I've come to learn there's a contingent of
      | aggressively search-engine hostile people that has made a
      | home on the fediverse. The federated nature of it makes it
      | somewhat tricky to untangle the search engine friendly
      | people from the hostile.
      | 
      | I don't need the inevitable DDOS:es and death threats you
      | get when upsetting a clique of mentally ill people online.
 
  | blitzar wrote:
  | A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ... there was a
  | twitter firehose and people loved how the open nature of
  | twitter is allowing people to hack things ...
 
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Also just saw this project, which is a little night sky scene
| where stars are posts. No real interactivity but fun to see the
| playing around! https://nightsky.hctr.dev/
| https://bsky.app/profile/hctr.dev/post/3lb3ywnxac22n
 
| billylo wrote:
| Love it! I seriously want to use it as a background for my
| server.
| 
| (any chance to publish a version with a configurable speed?)
 
  | theoretically23 wrote:
  | (Creator here), sure I just added something so you can play
  | with the URL: https://firehose3d.theo.io/?speed=0.9 (but if you
  | slow the movement down too much there will just be way too much
  | content because it's real time)
  | 
  | For people on slow machines you can also reduce the number of
  | messages with e.g. https://firehose3d.theo.io/?discardFrac=0.7
 
    | billylo wrote:
    | Perfect. Thanks!
 
| mbil wrote:
| This crashes my Safari browser on iOS.
 
  | theoretically23 wrote:
  | Yes, best in Chrome I'm afraid
 
  | tsumnia wrote:
  | Firefox ran it, but very broken.
 
    | wkat4242 wrote:
    | Weird, for me it worked great on mobile Firefox
 
  | yazzku wrote:
  | "Works" on Firefox if you can stomach 300-400ms pauses every 2
  | seconds.
  | 
  | Edit: I just profiled it and it spends 42% of exclusive time in
  | texImage2D. It would be better to allocate a set of textures up
  | front and then use glTexSubImage2D to update their contents.
  | glTexImage2D allocates a new texture every time.
 
    | theoretically23 wrote:
    | Thanks - should be better now hopefully on Firefox
 
      | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
      | Still very stuttery before crashing in Safari on iOS on my
      | iPad :/
 
  | consumer451 wrote:
  | For reference, while it does work much better on my old laptop
  | now, on iOS 18.0.1 iPhone 11 Pro Max, it also crashes until I
  | add https://firehose3d.theo.io/?discardFrac=0.6
 
  | Angostura wrote:
  | It's seems to work fir me ok on 18.1
 
  | matsemann wrote:
  | According to the title, perhaps try IE6 on XP ;)
 
| esperent wrote:
| This pretty quickly crashed my tab, using Chrome on Android.
 
  | dicknuckle wrote:
  | Works fine on Kiwi Browser on Android, although I'm using a
  | fairly powerful ASUS phone.
 
    | esperent wrote:
    | I also tried it on Kiwi, using an s21 FE which is a few years
    | old but not exactly a slouch and it crashed after about 10
    | seconds, same as Chrome.
 
| zamadatix wrote:
| I absolutely love these firehose projects. So much fun. Makes me
| hope Bluesky gets 10x bigger soon :D.
| 
| If you add the following line just prior to the return in
| createTextTexture() the blurriness goes away:
| texture.anisotropy = renderer.capabilities.getMaxAnisotropy();
| 
| The perf could probably be largely solved with reusing texture
| objects as a pool instead of creating then destroying them as
| needed. I'm too lazy for that though :p.
 
  | theoretically23 wrote:
  | Thanks - implemented some texture pooling (via LLM). I think
  | the blurriness may [accidentally] help with the retro
  | aesthetic, but I'll try to get that the anisotropy in as an
  | optional parameter.
 
  | Etheryte wrote:
  | Yeah, managing your own memory is a good performance
  | optimization a surprising amount of time when working with
  | large data sets in Javascript. I've seen it used in 3D code,
  | graph problems, etc, and so long as you keep it isolated, it's
  | not too much of a hassle.
 
| catapart wrote:
| This is fucking bonkers, bro.
| 
| Love it!
 
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Cool, but this nearly hard crashed my phone. I'm on a OP12 which
| is one of the fastest phones you can buy.
 
  | consumer451 wrote:
  | The creator is here reading the feedback, and committing code
  | as we speak. I wonder how much HN feedback will help. In any
  | case, this is all a fun experiment!
  | 
  | update: between when I posted OP and now, the site went from
  | utter jank in FF to 90% smooth on my 7 year old ThinkPad Carbon
  | X1 (5th gen, Intel HD 620)
  | 
  | Nice! This is one of the coolest comment->commit experiences
  | that I've ever had!
 
  | petee wrote:
  | For a comparison, I'm on a Pixel 8a mid-level device, and with
  | Opera I get fairly smooth frame rates with some stuttering here
  | and there. Maybe something else is running in the background?
 
  | throwaway519 wrote:
  | $100 Helio G85 with 6G RAM runs fine. Fennex browser.
  | 
  | Check your OS or browser for problems.
 
| nektro wrote:
| crashed my firefox
 
| xunil2ycom wrote:
| I have no clue what "Bluesky firehose" even means.
 
  | squigz wrote:
  | Google to the rescue: https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-
  | guides/firehose
 
  | infotainment wrote:
  | Bluesky == A particular Twitter alternative
  | 
  | Firehose == The raw live feed of all new posts from all users
 
  | consumer451 wrote:
  | Bluesky is a microblogging social network, like Twitter, or
  | Threads.
  | 
  | However, Bluesky is the only one with open access to the
  | firehose, aka all the activity. Here is a different, less
  | aesthetically pleasing tool to see it:
  | 
  | https://firesky.tv
 
    | jeromegv wrote:
    | Mastodon is pretty open as well. Just won't be the entire
    | firehouse due to the decentralized nature of it.
 
      | consumer451 wrote:
      | I should have included Mastodon in my list, my apologies.
      | Theoretically, it's the most copesthetic project.
 
      | CaptainFever wrote:
      | There seems to be some projects that scrape(?) the most
      | popular servers to turn it into a firehose, like this one:
      | https://relay.fedi.buzz/
 
| firecall wrote:
| Warning: May Cause Seizures
 
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Seeing some depth-sorting issues with the text on Safari (macOS).
| Some distant head-on text (not on the sides of the "tunnel") is
| being drawn over nearer head-on text. Also, sometimes top of text
| is being clipped a bit.
| 
| Very cool though.
 
  | theoretically23 wrote:
  | (Here's a version without that problem:
  | https://firehose3d.theo.io/babylonjs.html)
 
| tholman wrote:
| Crashes like a Windows ME screensaver. Jokes aside, it's very fun
| to see open firehose access like this. I seem to recall that
| Dorsey had said that twitter limiting their api access was a
| mistake, hope we can keep this going.
 
  | consumer451 wrote:
  | For people experiencing crashes, Theo mentioned that this will
  | likely work: https://firehose3d.theo.io/?discardFrac=0.6
 
    | djbusby wrote:
    | I was hoping it was some RegEdit hack to fix driver settings.
 
| valeg wrote:
| Whoa!
 
| jaimex2 wrote:
| Not sure about your feeds but I got a lot of moping over
| Twitter/X.
 
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Whoa, Johnny Mnemonic (1995) calling.
| 
| Also, these experiments are good fun, anytime there's a plethora
| of data available to play with it's a good time.... but anyone
| else get the weird sense of having been here before? Early
| Twitter days lots of this kind of thing was going on too with all
| the tweet data. Until they weren't. When everyone at Twitter woke
| up and realized it wasn't sustainable financially and technically
| to keep open firehoses out there. And then the API limits started
| creeping in and never really stopped. Just saying, we've been
| here and it's hard to see it playing out a different way even
| with ATProto's sorta decentralized whatever future.
 
  | TheJoeMan wrote:
  | There could be some pessimism or learned hesitancy, but on the
  | other hand perhaps we can just enjoy it while it is here? I
  | thought the same thing about people building businesses on top
  | of ChatGPT, yet they managed to have exits before any rug-
  | pulls.
 
| smusamashah wrote:
| Which windows screen saver was this exactly? Is it maze?
 
  | djbusby wrote:
  | I think they just mean feelings of early OpenGL (was that what
  | it was?)
 
  | poglet wrote:
  | It appears to have elements of '3D Maze' and 'Flying Windows'
  | (Windows 3.1).
 
| leonewton253 wrote:
| Really cool! Works smoother in Firefox than Safari
 
| qingcharles wrote:
| This is trippy as hell on my 40" ultrawide. Love it.
 
| metadat wrote:
| This is incredible. It's all I ever wanted.
 
| pinerd3 wrote:
| This is SO cool I love it. Feels like I'm reading snippets from a
| million people's diaries one after another. Humbling!
 
| oksurewhynot wrote:
| I would like to know how far through the firehose I have traveled
 
  | 082349872349872 wrote:
  | Use the force to sense how many pixels you've traveled.
  | 
  | Then, when you get to the exhaust port, fire the proton
  | torpedoes.
 
| ulrischa wrote:
| I like the possibilities given by the openness of bluesky
 
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I noticed that for messages facing the camera, ones further away
| from the screen occlude ones closer to the screen. I assume
| there's an alpha layering/rendering order error going on
| (assuming no order-independent transparency)?
 
  | theoretically23 wrote:
  | Here's a version with that fixed
  | https://firehose3d.theo.io/babylonjs.html (will probably
  | replace the current one soon)
 
| issung wrote:
| Reminds me of this old website I used to stare at for long
| periods, found it very relaxing: "Listen to Wikipedia"
| http://listen.hatnote.com/
 
  | dang wrote:
  | Related:
  | 
  |  _Wikipedia Recent Changes Map_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32649091 - Aug 2022 (36
  | comments)
  | 
  |  _Listen to Wikipedia_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25560953 - Dec 2020 (34
  | comments)
  | 
  |  _Show HN: A Billboard-like chart for Wikipedia articles_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10730695 - Dec 2015 (7
  | comments)
  | 
  |  _Listen to Wikipedia_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972781 - July 2015 (63
  | comments)
  | 
  |  _Listen to a melody made by Wikipedia article changes_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588576 - Nov 2014 (10
  | comments)
  | 
  |  _Listen to Wikipedia_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6182576 - Aug 2013 (1
  | comment)
  | 
  |  _Live map of recent changes to Wikipedia articles_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5693189 - May 2013 (13
  | comments)
  | 
  |  _Wikipedia Recent Changes (Live) Map_ -
  | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687722 - May 2013 (1
  | comment)
  | 
  |  _Rcmap: real-time visualization of Wikipedia edits around the
  | world_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5645256 - May
  | 2013 (3 comments)
 
| bitwize wrote:
| Needs more Ellie Goulding: https://helloenjoy.com/lights/
 
| WithinReason wrote:
| You can increase the texture resolution if you "zoom out" of your
| browser (ctrl+scrolldown or ctrl+- in Firefox)
 
| null0pointer wrote:
| A lot of commenters here are having their minds blown by this.
| And while I also love this I get the sense that many others here
| are maybe too young to remember that this kind of open access to
| data used to exist for lots websites. It inspired companion sites
| and loads of creativity. I find it tragic really, what the
| internet has become. I hope federated, and even more-so p2p,
| protocols take significant foothold on the internet and help
| revive this spirit of the web. The corpo-web is so fucking
| boring.
 
  | paulgb wrote:
  | It's worth noting that _twitter itself_ owes a lot of its
  | popularity to its openness in the early days. In the early days
  | there were third-party clients, RSS feeds, XMPP support, etc.
  | You could post from a curl command in a cron job, leading to
  | all kinds of interesting automated feeds. Then they walked it
  | all back in the early 2010s.
  | 
  | I like that Bluesky's federation model makes it harder for them
  | to do an "open platform" bait-and-switch like Twitter did.
 
    | AshamedCaptain wrote:
    | > I like that Bluesky's federation model makes it harder for
    | them to do an "open platform" bait-and-switch like Twitter
    | did.
    | 
    | Why would it? They can still lock everything down and few
    | Bluesky users will even notice. This is similar to what
    | Twitter did, or what Google Chat did, etc. Compare this to
    | other federation platforms where a server that locks itself
    | down loses access to a huge chunk of the network, once the
    | other servers reciprocate.
 
      | diggan wrote:
      | > Why would it?
      | 
      | Since migrating your personal data was a thing they thought
      | about since day one, migrating to another network than the
      | current one would be way easier than any centralized
      | service and also easier than ActivityPub.
      | 
      | Seems there is one piece of the puzzle missing yet
      | ("AppViews") in ATProto to be able to run completely
      | independent, but seems they're currently working on getting
      | that in place now.
 
        | AshamedCaptain wrote:
        | You could still migrate all _your_ data to another
        | service in Twitter quite easily, and most definitely you
        | could in Google Chat. This did not change things.
 
        | diggan wrote:
        | > You could still migrate all _your_ data to another
        | service in Twitter quite easily
        | 
        | Yeah? I don't remember being able to migrate from/to
        | Twitter and taking followers/following etc with you
        | without having to ask/request others to do something too.
 
        | AshamedCaptain wrote:
        | But I'm guessing that you'll also have to request your
        | followers to use a different AppView if Bluesky did a
        | Twitter.
 
    | cma wrote:
    | They are a public benefit corporation that use that as a
    | selling point but then don't disclose their charter. That
    | seems really shady to me, but less than what twitter has
    | become.
 
| yonders wrote:
| It's a nice visualization, but it reminds me of why I avoid
| social media. Endless, worthless garbage spewed out into the
| void.
 
| Kye wrote:
| It feels like Clippy is about to pop out and kick my butt. The
| authentic XP experience.
 
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Would be interesting to know how the app is deployed. I see there
| are some k8s yaml files: does the deployment happen manually
| (e.g., run kubectl commands inside the cluster)? Is there some
| sort of pipeline perhaps? (I don't see any in the repo)
 
| nemo44x wrote:
| The firehouse will allow the scolds and hall monitors to more
| easily hunt down the blasphemers and wrong thinkers.
 
  | mouse_ wrote:
  | weird take
 
| Nihilartikel wrote:
| This is cool! A long time ago I wanted to make something a little
| like this for my 20% project at Google/YouTube - a page that
| rained thumbnails of uploaded videos as soon as they became
| available.
| 
| Unfortunately, the idea was nixed since it had a pretty high
| chance of exposing ugly stuff that would otherwise have been lost
| in obscurity and never seen.
 
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(page generated 2024-11-17 14:00 UTC)