[HN Gopher] Womp 3D - The New Way to 3D
___________________________________________________________________
Womp 3D - The New Way to 3D
Author : danboarder
Score : 127 points
Date : 2022-11-05 06:10 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.womp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.womp.com)
| alpaca128 wrote:
| This horizontally scrolling text is so damn distracting and
| doesn't respect the 'prefers-reduced-motion' flag in the browser.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Anyone as clueless as I seeing SDF littered throughout the
| comments :
|
| Signed Distance Functions
|
| Nice explanation (with some code) :
| https://www.alanzucconi.com/2016/07/01/signed-distance-funct...
| aliqot wrote:
| requires signup.... _womp womp_..
| [deleted]
| badpun wrote:
| I hate this trend of where you go to some product's website and,
| after visiting it, you still don't know what it does and what
| it's for.
| peterpost2 wrote:
| Same here, for the longest time I thought this was a parody.
| andybak wrote:
| You might not be the target market? I knew immediately what it
| might be and had a good sense of how it might be useful.
| badpun wrote:
| When I came to think of it, it's possible that the website is
| not botched. It oozes "coolness" and "innovative tech", while
| being completely vague on specifics, which means it's probably
| just targeting VCs and the next round of funding?
| jameshart wrote:
| You can't just turn 3D into a verb without explaining what you
| consider to be in the scope of '3Ding'.
|
| It seems to be 3D object/character modeling? And maybe a little
| bit of rigging?
|
| Because there are plenty of other things people want to do 'in
| 3D' that are excluded from that very narrow field - like scene
| modeling, CAD, motion graphics, Sfx, game development,
| visualization, capture, etc...
| ttoinou wrote:
| Is it using metaballs ? Does that mean rendering this with a
| shader should be ultrafast without any complex triangle geometry
| ?
| andybak wrote:
| Raymarched SDFs: https://jamie-wong.com/2016/07/15/ray-
| marching-signed-distan...
| Razengan wrote:
| Signing up before trying an app = Instant close & forget.
|
| At least support something like "Sign in with Apple" so I can
| forget about you later.
| DrSiemer wrote:
| Sign up == skip. The "don't spam me" option is always hidden or
| simply ignored. Got enough crap polluting my inbox already.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Interesting, looks like a web based Mudbox clone
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk_Mudbox
| singularity2001 wrote:
| "Welcome to WOMP alpha" ... and nothing happens (noscript
| ALLOWING hotjar, still...)
|
| Anyways switching to chrome and disabling all security it worked.
|
| Why do models take many seconds to load?
|
| Interesting rendering algorithm: You see it converge from low res
| to high res within a few seconds after rotating:
|
| https://alpha.womp3d.com/preview/45050
|
| Pretty good end results I guess? No expert on ray tracing or
| whatever they use.
| [deleted]
| speedgoose wrote:
| I watched some timelapse and it seems to be a neat tool.
|
| Before clicking I though it would be about these new AIs that
| convert text to 3D models.
|
| Example : https://dreamfusion3d.github.io/
| 3qz wrote:
| animal531 wrote:
| I briefly tried it (as an indie game developer). It's basically
| taking a metaball approach to modeling and performing some form
| of real time rendering so you can see what the result will look
| like. It also allows you to add some animation and what-not.
|
| Overall I don't see it replacing any serious tool at the moment,
| its quite slow in modeling (because of the rendering) and
| precision.
|
| What it can be useful for is if someone doesn't have the
| necessary tools/skills and they just want to make a basic and
| quick 3d shape like a smiley face, have it bounce/animate and
| export that to a little gif or whatever.
| andybak wrote:
| > Overall I don't see it replacing any serious tool at the
| moment, its quite slow in modeling (because of the rendering)
| and precision.
|
| Signed Distance Function modeling has different strengths to
| other approaches. It's one more tool in your toolbox. One could
| just as easily say "I don't see [insert other paradigm here]
| replacing implicit SDFs".
|
| In terms of "serious" usage Inigo Quilez did a ton of
| incredible work on Pixar's Brave using SDF techniques.
|
| https://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-...
| FormFollowsFunc wrote:
| I agree, using SDF for everything is probably not a good idea
| but it can be useful as a feature along with standard modeling
| tools. I sometimes use SDF volumes in Houdini to get that
| blended look. nTopology which is a specialised standalone 3D
| software use it for advanced 3D printing. You can do things
| like blend two different infill patterns.
|
| But as a webapp, it is cool looking. I'm curious how he managed
| to get it to work in a browser.
| hansworst wrote:
| If the creators are reading along in this thread, I'd be very
| interested in an article or even a short explanation with some
| pointers on how they got this to perform well enough to render in
| real-time. Every time I've tried to create SDF based shaders with
| many Boolean operations, it kind of starts slowing down to the
| point where it's unusable.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| This looks really pretty.
|
| I assume it uses SDFs, though there isn't really any technical
| explanation for how it works.
| [deleted]
| jb1991 wrote:
| Here is the very welcoming website of the creator:
| http://www.abductee.org/
| gt585 wrote:
| this is true.
| Roark66 wrote:
| It is moderately annoying one has to sign up (and give one's
| email etc) to even see the product in action. Why couldn't they
| put up a public demo where all your work is shared/can't be saved
| just to check it out.
|
| The fact one has to sign up to see the product in action says to
| me they either lack confidence in their product, or are desperate
| to monetise everyone who wants to check it out.
|
| I've been waiting for some product to invent a painless way to
| sketch 3d objects with a touch interface for years.
| kuroguro wrote:
| The only thing worse than that is discovering you need chrome
| after you've given your email away.
| [deleted]
| gt585 wrote:
| I know- we hate it too. But we had to double down on the
| browser our userbase uses. We're working to get it to more
| browsers as fast as we can!
| kuroguro wrote:
| No worries, HN has a way of making me jump on the band
| wagon of criticizing things. Figured that's probably the
| case shortly after posting the comment. Best of luck w/ the
| project, looks awesome from the videos :)
| funstuff007 wrote:
| For a consumer product this practice is indeed annoying. For a
| B2B or B2B2C product, it helps weed out the hobbyists and nosy
| competitors.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Competitors don't have an issue creating dummy accounts to
| test who they are up against.
| funstuff007 wrote:
| dummy accounts that have corporate email domains? While not
| impossible, it's a non-trivial hurdle.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Why do you want to bother with that, fake emails are a
| dime a dozen, no need to bring the real corporation into
| the picture.
| funstuff007 wrote:
| see above
|
| > For a B2B or B2B2C product
| pjmlp wrote:
| So what?
|
| I don't need a company email to extract the information I
| care about.
|
| Never did research for competition when replying to RFPs?
| wolframhempel wrote:
| This attitude really bothers me. I have no affiliation with
| Womp, but from the looks of it, it's a cool product made by a
| small team. And they are giving it out for free - literally for
| free. But free still isn't enough. Even the notion to get some
| contact data in the hope that some subset of subscribers might
| be willing to pay for it in the future is somehow insulting to
| you. Instead, you want the transaction to be completely one
| sided: "give me stuff and get nothing back".
|
| "But if they had confidence in their product, they would just
| make it open and people would try it out. And if they like it,
| they might buy it later!" - Right? Wrong!
|
| People have increasingly short memories. Even if they like it
| now, by the time it makes it out of alpha, they'll long be
| chasing the next, shiny thing. So you have to keep the link
| alive to follow up on it. That's just good business.
|
| So how about you have some sympathy for the talented people who
| put this together and give them the chance to follow up in a
| few months on the off chance that this is something you might
| be willing to use properly?
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| How about they make the app completely frictionless to try
| out, and then charge money for it? I don't want to sign up
| for something before I try it, but if I'm using something I
| don't mind paying for it
|
| Problem solved
| hoosieree wrote:
| I think this attitude is a consequence of (a) so many things
| vying for our limited attention, and (b) people using your
| contact info in ways you don't want.
|
| It's a reasonable response to the environment we live in, not
| necessarily a criticism of this specific app. Unfortunately
| it seems like the OP has wanted something like this for a
| long time, but their knee-jerk reaction to its outward
| appearance will prevent them from even trying it.
|
| Like how an allergic reaction is our body's immune system
| over-reacting to something that may actually be benign.
| scsh wrote:
| I felt the same about having to signup to even see it do
| something. It's really not about THIS particular product or
| the people behind it. It's just that I'm expected to do this
| with seemingly ever new thing that I want to interact with.
| It's become so common that, for me, the signup gate becomes a
| decision point where I ask myself "Do I really care/want to
| see this?". The answer is no a non-zero amount of times and I
| do bounce off it at that point.
|
| I do get the desire for them to want an audience to give
| updates to and try to have a consistent user base. The thing
| that sucks is that not only do they want to email me, so does
| everyone else. I've never been very protective of my inbox
| but the volume has gotten crazy recently so that's had to
| change. If they let me in and then asked for my email to
| continue after a couple minutes I'd be more inclined to
| provide it.
| chronogram wrote:
| I can part with a few monies, I'd rather not sign up to some
| newsletter though. Different free for different folks.
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| When I got to the signup, I just closed the window. How does
| that help them? You want as few possible barriers to
| experience of your product. It's not about denying them some
| sort of monetization, but incrementally that's what happened
| because of the signup.
|
| It should be:
|
| - I got you to click my url, here's some screenshots and a
| description.
|
| - Looks interesting? Try it yourself.
|
| - Like it? Sign up for an account to save your work, or maybe
| submit an email for announcements.
| missosoup wrote:
| On what planet is it 'free' if it requires you to hand over
| some of your most abusable info?
|
| The thing that really bothers me is the normalisation of
| 'hand over your credentials' which inevitably maps to data
| leaks and identity theft. For what, trying out a product that
| you may or may not use?
| abeppu wrote:
| Roark66 described it as "moderately annoying", not
| "insulting", so let's please not start an escalating chain of
| reactions to stuff that hasn't actually been expressed.
|
| But I'm on the same "mildly annoyed" page, because with the
| large majority of "it looks cool" new products or services I
| try out, I know within 5 minutes that it doesn't actually
| meet my needs and I know I'm _not_ interested in it, but I
| still have to trust that this organization both today and in
| perpetuity (or as long as I keep that address) will be well-
| behaved and technically competent in using my information.
|
| Recently on vacation I bought tickets to a museum in a
| country I was visiting, and in the process shared my email in
| order to receive a QR code for entry. They have a legitimate
| use case which involves sending something to me; fine. To my
| knowledge the ticket sales service involved does not operate
| in my region, and I would really prefer never to hear from
| them again after this one useful interaction. Only a couple
| of weeks later, in the space of 30 minutes I receive _dozens_
| of marketing messages from them, each in a different language
| I do not speak, all promoting the same 10% off sale _for
| something I cannot make use of_. I assume some bug didn't
| associate a specific language with my record so they decided
| to send me messages in all of them. Their "unsubscribe" link
| was broken, perhaps for related lack-of-competence reasons.
| There's literally no way for me to tell them I am not in a
| position to buy anything further from them. But we've totally
| normalized online interactions that require (potential)
| customers to trust that an unfamiliar organization with be
| both well-intentioned and skillful in their handling of your
| contact info.
|
| Imagine if receiving a free sample at a grocery store of a
| new product that might be appealing to you but might be
| entirely not to your taste required you to first give the
| company your contact info. Or if trying on a garment in a
| department store required the same trust. In a non-online
| context, this behavior would be creepy and intrusive. And you
| know that you might realize in seconds that you hate the
| mouthfeel of their product, or that the cut of those pants
| just doesn't work for your body, and no you won't be buying
| their product -- but you can't claw back your email.
|
| I think in online contexts we should normalize at least one
| of two other patterns:
|
| - Let people try it for k minutes/actions/new objects without
| a sign-up, after which the UI is blocked by a modal asking
| them to create an account. The customer gets to establish
| whether they actually want to use the product, and the
| company still gets info about people who are actually
| interested.
|
| - Rather than relying on _emails_ specifically, account setup
| could rely on _revocable_ access to any other service that
| allows sending/receiving messages.
| supportlocal4h wrote:
| "Free" means different things to different people. For
| instance, a free phone that records everything you do (not
| just phone calls) and posts the recordings to
| soyouwanttobeastar.com might appeal to some and horrify
| others.
|
| If this free 3D product only required a DNA sample, the group
| who considers it free might change. Or if it required your
| signature. Or your corporate username.
|
| It clearly is not free. It has a price. The question is how
| much different people value that price.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > And they are giving it out for free - literally for free.
|
| Not free of friction, that's for sure.
|
| Do you want every service out there, free or not free, to ask
| you to sign up to access everything?
| tkk23 wrote:
| >I've been waiting for some product to invent a painless way to
| sketch 3d objects
|
| Do you know https://stephaneginier.com/sculptgl/? It is open
| source [1] so you could adjust it to your needs.
|
| [1] https://github.com/stephomi/sculptgl
| moron4hire wrote:
| Because, if they did that, they wouldn't get your email
| address.
|
| How could you even consider such a thing? /s
| preommr wrote:
| It's funny comparing the reviews on product hunt[1] to HN. The
| former has average people and artists - probably the target
| audience - favoring the product and then there's HN where people
| are so low commital that they don't even want to sign in or try a
| different browser.
|
| Anyways, I actually tried it out and... I don't really get it. I
| would find it frustrating to use when blender is so much snappier
| and more powerful. I do like the process of using metaballs for
| design and a lot of whatever the tech is. But I am also surprised
| at how much effort went into this when this seems really really
| niche. Someone else linked a video [2] where there's a project
| with so many layers... bro just use an actual 3d app at that
| point.
|
| Also that landing page is horrible.
|
| [1] https://www.producthunt.com/posts/womp-2?utm_source=badge-
| fe...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DnRehtfCbo
| MathYouF wrote:
| The main value of using SDF shapes for 3D modeling workflows is
| you don't have to worry about topology (the vertex, edge, face
| graph structure which has to be formed over the surface of all
| 3D models) which makes a lot of modifiers (like boolean
| combinations of intersecting objects) vastly less tedious (Womp
| calls this feature "goop").
|
| Right now Blender work still involves a lot of tedium, mostly
| related to topology. A lot of upcoming 3D ML applications also
| work considerably better when using SDF instead of mesh
| representations. I wouldn't be surprised to see this form of 3D
| modeling take off to a significant degree because of those two
| factors.
| preommr wrote:
| Blender sort of has them...
|
| There was the original metaballs. But more recently there's
| also been sdf addons using geometry nodes [1] that mimic the
| same workflow - with my guess being that it uses voxels to
| generate the final polygon mesh that blender needs since it's
| not a fully sdf editor. Although, while I was googling this,
| I did find someone that managed to do it by using pure
| shaders [2] which is pretty cool.
|
| Also, thanks for actually explaining that. I've seen a few
| examples of this kind of "clay like" sculpting approach that
| tries to make it easier for artists. Adobe's Modeler uses
| sdfs for example.
|
| [1] https://blenderartists.org/t/geometry-nodes-in-3-3-sdf-
| prese...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqDCPW85tuQ
| dorkwood wrote:
| You can throw a voxel remesh modifier onto your model in
| Blender to get the same functionality. It will convert your
| model from polygons to SDF and then back to polygons.
| andybak wrote:
| I would imagine that's a fairly lossy process with some
| downsides?
|
| Ideally - the end result of an SDF pipeline is pixels.
| Going back to polygons throws away much of the advantage of
| SDFs. Raymarching is costly and rarely used in realtime
| engines but Blender isn't realtime so rendering SDFs
| directly would probably be viable.
| dorkwood wrote:
| > Raymarching is costly and rarely used in realtime
| engines but Blender isn't realtime so rendering SDFs
| directly would probably be viable.
|
| The viewport still needs to update in real time for it to
| be a viable modeling workflow, though, right?
| andybak wrote:
| It's a lot easier to handle realtime in an editor than in
| a fully featured game. There's less other stuff going on,
| you can take extra shortcuts and usually rely on higher-
| end hardware.
| dorkwood wrote:
| > It's a lot easier to handle realtime in an editor than
| in a fully featured game. There's less other stuff going
| on
|
| I don't think that's true. Most games are optimized to
| limit the number of draw calls and textures. The viewport
| of a 3D software package has no such limits. As a result,
| my viewport rarely runs as well as the games I play.
|
| In any case, that's besides the original point, which was
| that it wouldn't need to run in realtime. My argument was
| that it would.
|
| It's not a completely impossible goal. Look into what
| some artists are making with Dreams on the PS4. It uses
| raymarched SDFs for modeling.
| andybak wrote:
| Point taken.
|
| Small correction - Dreams isn't purely Raymarched SDFs.
| From recollection they ended up with a fairly hybrid
| approach.
| jb1991 wrote:
| That video is rather illuminating that this is definitely not
| an application that my grandmother could use.
| Closi wrote:
| > Anyways, I actually tried it out and... I don't really get
| it. I would find it frustrating to use when blender is so much
| snappier and more powerful.
|
| Why would anyone use Canva when there are plenty of other more
| powerful options?
|
| I believe the answer is that it is simple and not scary for
| people to learn, and that there is a large number of people who
| could use this and create something that looks pretty good but
| that would be intimdated with Blender and have no clue where to
| start. Blender isn't really designed for a casual user to be
| able to pick it up and understand it in 10 minutes.
| gt585 wrote:
| Founder here! happy to see people loving the sign up process. We
| are coming up with different options- but we were against a
| deadline and had to choose a browser and didn't have time to do a
| no- signup experience. We're working on it, we aren't Adobe :) -
| We are a small startup trying to do something new for folks who
| aren't into blender (despite it being the most powerful 3D
| software- its fucking intimidating and hard to use) - that's it-
| please proceed to shit on this :) :heart: gaby
| blooalien wrote:
| Blender isn't hard to _use_ ... It 's hard to _learn_.
| Important difference. Once learned, you can do _amazing_ things
| with it that many other similar 3D software is either incapable
| of, or far more complex to accomplish the same task. As to
| Blender being "intimidating", that much is _absolutely_ true.
| It 's also "overwhelming" at first. It helps to focus on
| smaller tasks when first learning, because it's _easy_ to get
| sidetracked by all the many buttons and that is where
| "overwhelmed" and "intimidating" begin.
|
| I highly recommend Blender Guru on YouTube as one of several
| great places to start for anyone interested in learning
| Blender. He's got a couple beginner tutorials there that'll get
| one up and rolling in no time at all. It's well worth the
| effort to learn for those who have an interest in 3D graphics
| or game development. Having said all that, I'm always in favor
| of more new tools / toys appearing in this space, and I thank
| you for adding to the mix.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| They're the same thing to someone thinking about starting
| with 3D modelling/sculpting. Learning and using aren't two
| discrete steps that follow each other: you decide to give
| Blender (or anything else) a try and your use of it guides
| your learning which guides your use which guides your
| learning on and on until one day you sit down and realise
| you're actually pretty good at using Blender.
|
| Someone saying "use" instead of "learn", to people who've
| never used blender, is fine. IF you've never used blender,
| _everything in blender is hard_ (except maybe deleting that
| cube) because it 's good software, with a rock solid
| elaborate UI that follows (and shaped) industry-conventions.
| This tool doesn't, it's much easier to use if you come in
| knowing nothing.
| kmlben65 wrote:
| smoldesu wrote:
| Hey! As a 5-year Blender user I'm pretty hyped to give this a
| try and see how it competes. You talk a big game, and I'd love
| to test your mettle!
|
| As-is, I can't appraise Womp3D as a Blender alternative since
| it requires me to create a user account. If you ever drop this
| requirement (or let people self-host the app) let me know and
| I'd be happy to compare the two and potentially even recommend
| it as a Blender alternative.
| panzerboiler wrote:
| Thank you for the nice tool, and for all the nice things
| released by Mercury. I loved
| ["On"](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65350) so much, and
| [hg_sdf](https://mercury.sexy/hg_sdf/) is a very nice library.
| portlander52232 wrote:
| Love a lower barrier to entry for 3D. "A new way to 3D" gets the
| point across. Just evaluating the homepage, I like the fun
| aesthetic a lot. However, a large proportion of the examples on
| the homepage have a slight horror/gross-out element to them.
| E.g., does the cowboy dude have to have his torso swelling and
| undulating? I think this comes from trying to demo the SDF model
| overtly, whereas some demos should just be of cool stuff you can
| make that doesn't look like it's made of gooey balls.
| dlivingston wrote:
| I really wish I could try it out without having to sign up for an
| account. I understand compute costs for that would likely be
| high, though.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Same here, I never bother if I can't try out with some kind of
| demo account.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I mean where is the app executed? on the client or on the
| server?
|
| A bunch of JS on a CDN doesn't cost that much to serve, if it's
| running on a remote server Stadia style than yes, but then what
| is the goal here? User/Customer acquisition always costs a lot
| of money...
|
| At the very least, let me test the editor quickly, and prompt
| me to register upon saving a project.
|
| edit: I always thought it was stupid that Stadia didn't provide
| tools like Blender, Gimp and co, it would have been a huge
| avenue for user growth. Then strike deals with Maxon for
| instance and run Cinema 4D in the cloud, that's a missed
| opportunity.
|
| Colab allows that, you can run Blender in the cloud and
| basically use the service as a rendering farm, and it's damn
| fast. No GUI obviously...
| pjmlp wrote:
| Google just doesn't know how to talk with game developers.
|
| Even on Android, it took them 10 years to provide what is
| basic tooling for game development on other platforms.
|
| Games succeed on Android because of the game development
| community standing in for the lack of motivation and tooling
| support from Android team, not thanks to them.
| kelsolaar wrote:
| I haven't checked but considering the display artefacts and
| latency, it seems like it is actually streamed.
| panzerboiler wrote:
| I don't think so. It is clearly raymarching Signed Distance
| Fields, and doing so in realtime is quite slow. Even if you
| use proper acceleration structures, for every pixel you
| have to compute the distance to the closest primitive in
| the scene, and shade it. For a bunch of primitives using
| simple materials it is no problem even on a potato GPU, but
| as your scene gets more complex, the performance goes down,
| quickly. It is a beautiful and elegant technique, but it
| has its downsides. If you are interested in going deeper,
| Inigo Quilez (https://iquilezles.org/) has a lot of
| articles and code explaining how it works. I would start
| from https://iquilezles.org/articles/raymarchingdf/
| fishcrackers wrote:
| womp uses sdf's but it's remotely rendered abductee gave
| a talk on it at revision a while back
| panzerboiler wrote:
| Thanks for the correction. I should have read the
| producthunt page before providing my uninformed guess.
| danybittel wrote:
| Seems to be using similar tech to
| https://ephtracy.github.io/index.html?page=magicacsg
| dmitriid wrote:
| From the video intro this looks like Kai's Power Tools, but for
| 3D
| gardaani wrote:
| YouTube has better videos, like this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DnRehtfCbo
|
| Womp looks like https://www.vectary.com with few additional
| features.
| khazhoux wrote:
| "Even your grandma..."
|
| Once again, that familiar double-shot: "So simple, even a _woman_
| who is _old_ can understand it " :-\
| recuter wrote:
| Absolutely, I hear you loud and clear. Here is a geicko
| commercial in a similar vein:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8aj1AlYvxI. :-\
|
| Typical. Hrmph.
| khazhoux wrote:
| You're proving my point, though.
| recuter wrote:
| As a caveman I can be a little slow. Please, explain.
| drunkencoder wrote:
| Or a man, or a cat, or a person who identify itself as a
| cupboard. :)
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| oh Please ! It's weekend, we can argue whats the right gender-
| roles and the 'correct way' on Monday. I'm sure the OP has
| nothing against grandmas or women and simply used languages and
| expressions that is common.
|
| Forget coding puzzle, the next time I interview someone for a
| job I will actively try to screen for this type of "high-horse-
| police".
|
| As a programmer I want to solve interesting problems not
| partake in woke-police!
|
| So honest question, what is the number one thing on a JD that
| will put you off from applying ?
| moron4hire wrote:
| When people talk about _systemic_ sexism, this is what they
| are talking about. The sexism is so ingrained into culture
| that people don 't even think about what they are saying.
| They just say an objectively sexist thing because it's
| "normal".
| gt585 wrote:
| Hi! Founder here. As a woman entrepreneur, building a hard
| tech company,I'm pretty familiar with sexism, overt and
| systemic. My only living grandparent is my grandma and I
| always use her as a point of reference If I've built
| something easy to use.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| Exactly!! If we were to ask 100 random grandmas if they
| are offended by the 'systemic sexism' i doubt they will
| be offended. Using your grandma as a reference point is a
| more specialised version of 'hallway testing', although
| im now probably offending construction workers and narrow
| passages everywhere.
|
| The world probably is not ending in nuclear war but it
| ends with all this nonsenses.
|
| For heaven's sake, we got the best job in the world,
| building and fiddle with computers, math, algorithms and
| problem solving! And yet some will rather stand on
| ceremony with this idiocy about we are offended grandmas
| ! How about you go build something instead of complaining
| or policing ppl about the correct way to use the word
| grandma in a sentence !! Are you 5 years old ? Yelling to
| the teacher that Johnny said a bad word ????
| cercatrova wrote:
| Good for you, keep doing what you're doing and don't
| listen to these people, people like them just like to
| stir shit up.
|
| Relatedly, have you asked and observed your grandma using
| it? Might be interesting, I'd definitely read a blog post
| about her usability of the product as a sort of UX test.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I was the original commenter, and I can assure you my
| goal wasn't to stir shit up.
|
| I simply don't like that "Grandmother" is the go-to
| example of someone who will fumble to understand a new
| concept. I know there's no active malice when people use
| the expression ( _who doesn 't love their grandma, after
| all?_), but it's a stereotype that makes older women
| essentially the butt of a joke.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| And yet I see no grandmas dying in the streets or
| protesting against the systemic sexism that they are
| subjected to everyday !
| pedalpete wrote:
| I recently heard on the Tim Ferris podcasts about how in Asian
| countries age is considered an honour. It's a good way to look
| at things.
|
| What do you wish the ad copy had said instead?
| [deleted]
| franga2000 wrote:
| I agree it's overused (especially since it's often not actually
| true) and a particularly tech-savvy grandma would have every
| right to be offended by it, but at least the "old people are
| bad at computers" part is is completely normal and nothing to
| be ashamed of.
|
| It's hard to learn new things, especially if you encounter them
| late in your life when you don't have nearly as much time,
| resources and neuroplasticity (is that the right term here? you
| know what I mean...).
|
| As for why it's usually grandma not grandpa, it's probably a
| case of old discrimination showing up in today's statistics. If
| you were denied good STEM education and never got a job that
| involved bleeding edge technology, of course you were
| disadvantaged when computers started appearing. It sucks and we
| should work to never do that again to new generations, but
| history is sealed and I think making "grandma-approachable"
| tech is actually a very important goal (when it's actually easy
| to use, not like this).
| sbarre wrote:
| Thanks for mansplaining this shitty trope to us!
| franga2000 wrote:
| I was just explaining how I see it... I guess dismissing it
| without an explanation would've been better?
| eps wrote:
| Oi vey. That's the only comment you have on the post worthy of
| sharing?
|
| Not _understand_ , but _use_.
|
| Not the mental capacity, but the general aversion of tech in
| older women as compared to that of older men and younger women.
| [deleted]
| Caduceus1 wrote:
| Only works with Chrome..
| mat_epice wrote:
| Gosh... I use Firefox, and it didn't even try to let me know
| before it asked me to sign up. Now I'm twice as glad I didn't.
| andybak wrote:
| It's worth it if you happen to have Chrome installed. (I keep
| it around for times like this)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| For some reason, any app that only works with a certain browser
| truly grinds my gears. It is the antithesis of the free web and
| standards. It is the antithesis of what the web stands for. It
| is the antithesis of why we have to fight for more than one
| window into the internet. It just brings the whole game back to
| square one erasing years of progress.
| hurtuvac78 wrote:
| Yes, but it is frustrating to limit yourselves and your users
| because Safari or Firefox does not support some Canvas
| features, some voice recognition ones, bluetooth or localhost
| interactions for example.
|
| I really don't like the idea and the practice of helping a
| Google monopoly, and I am guilty of it at times. But on the
| other hand, using such features is a way to encourage Apple
| to upgrade their browser... which they have little incentive
| because they want apps.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I remember when we used to speak about IE in those terms.
|
| How the world has changed.
| easrng wrote:
| The problem with the Web Speech Recognition API is that for
| now it more or less requires either:
|
| - including proprietary code (open source browsers are
| reluctant to do that (widevine is usually the only
| exception and it's opt in on Firefox and some Chromium
| forks)) (Google does this for other parts of Chrome at
| least, idk if it's used for WebSpeech or just live
| captions)
|
| - interfacing with OS-provided proprietary code (doesn't
| exist on all platforms)
|
| - streaming everything to a cloud server (likely
| prohibitively expensive unless you're Google) (Google
| does/did this too)
|
| Safari not allowing requests to localhost from HTTPS is
| weird and I'm not sure why it's like that but it works fine
| in Firefox. Same for OffscreenCanvas which is the only
| canvas feature I've missed, Firefox finally added it 2
| months ago.
|
| Anyway, just don't block specific browsers, feature detect
| and if possible use a polyfill or ponyfill.
| franga2000 wrote:
| You don't need to limit yourself, just provide usable
| fallbacks. Most of the time, these missing features aren't
| critical to your app, so just disable them when not
| supported. What browser you use isn't a good indicator
| anyways, as a features are added often and various
| settings/extensions/policies can disable or cripple
| features even in browsers that normally support them.
| keyle wrote:
| Especially for an app that claims "no downloads, no gray app"
| ... dude the arrogance.
| epgui wrote:
| Arrogance? I mean, I agree that things should work in all
| browsers, but... Someone created this thing and put a ton
| of work into it, and you're saying that their failure to
| cater to every possible browser is arrogance? That's
| definitely not the word.
| photoGrant wrote:
| No, more like 'at least another browser'.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > their failure to cater to every possible browser
|
| That ain't their arrogance. Their arrogance is declaring
| all browsers other than the single one they tested to be
| "unsupported" and not even worth attempting to use with
| the app. It's one thing to warn against untested
| browsers; it's another thing to outright _prohibit_ them
| and kick you back out to the homepage (after collecting
| my email address with which to spam me, no less).
| gt585 wrote:
| I'm sorry if you see it as arrogance- we just didn't have
| time to polish experience on all browsers- we had to
| choose our poison.
| yellowapple wrote:
| If it's really a matter of "polish" then the more
| reasonable approach would be to simply put up a warning
| while otherwise allowing full access to the application.
| If it's buggy, then it's buggy; oh well, at least we were
| warned.
|
| If it's more a matter of some specific thing(s) that
| Chrome has implemented and other browsers haven't, then
| it'd be nice to be upfront about what that thing is so
| that those of us on non-Chrome browsers can bug e.g.
| Mozilla and Apple about it - and it would further be nice
| to actually test against the existence of that thing
| rather than gatekeeping the user agent string like it's
| 1999.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I mean, I can understand the challenge of making sure
| everything works well across browsers so that should mean
| that we use standard things and avoid non-standard APIs.
| Otherwise, we're just feeding the shiny Chrome monster more
| fodder to engulf this fucking planet.
|
| May be we should just got back to native apps? Hell, native
| apps that do not connect to the internet. That'd be
| glorious actually. Problem with browser based apps is that
| you have zero control over versioning. Server serves, you
| get the fix. No option to request a particular version of
| the app. Don't like the new version? Tough luck. Server
| issues? Go outside.
|
| You know there is something to be said about code/binaries
| residing on your computer. Call me old fashioned.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Making sure everything works on all platforms is often
| just as hard or harder than making sure it works on all
| browsers and due to basically non-existent security on
| desktop operating systems, downloading apps comes with a
| lot of risk.
|
| What we need is a new app runtime with a unified
| permission-based API across platforms. All the OS-
| agnostic parts of that runtime would be a huge pain to
| develop, so all platforms would probably settle on a
| shared open source implementation and only implement OS-
| specific "adapters" for the native stuff.
|
| What I've done there, is reinvented Electron...fuck....
| pjmlp wrote:
| Electron is Chrome.
| franga2000 wrote:
| Yes, I know, hence the "...fuck..."
| ekianjo wrote:
| Sign-up before trying the alpha? Sorry, no go.
| leiserfg wrote:
| Firefox user here, changed my user-agent to the chrome one and
| the app works fine (just a bit slow).
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