[HN Gopher] A Portal Connecting NYC to Dublin Opens in Flatiron ...
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       A Portal Connecting NYC to Dublin Opens in Flatiron Today
        
       Author : geox
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2024-05-08 21:03 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (secretnyc.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (secretnyc.co)
        
       | Aaronstotle wrote:
       | This is neat, I hope one day similar structures are placed in
       | cities around the globe, and it helps ease tension that builds so
       | easily online.
        
         | delfinom wrote:
         | Yea...if it's countries with tensions, people will start
         | mooning the portal and worse hahaha
        
           | chgs wrote:
           | I believe there's precedent for Americans mooning Austrailia.
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/YkcVzNyj5sI?si=XXY3dnm8WPrmmbu0
        
           | Aaronstotle wrote:
           | Americans & Brits making fun of each other through a portal
           | would be pretty neat haha
        
           | anyfoo wrote:
           | Well, I much prefer people mooning each other, or, similarly,
           | the actual happenstance of countries voting for and against
           | each other in the Eurovision Song Contest for reasons _other_
           | than musical merit, to armed conflict.
        
           | jareklupinski wrote:
           | > countries with tensions, people will start mooning the
           | portal
           | 
           | would make for a beautiful realisation
           | 
           | "how petty our differences become, when we realize we all use
           | the same butt"
        
         | janalsncm wrote:
         | Seriously. Usually the only way we can see images of other
         | places is through media, which may be biased. (Even if the
         | stories are true, the stories which are chosen may not be
         | representative.) This is a really cool opportunity to cut
         | through all of that and just show everyday people.
         | 
         | It would also be really cool if there was some kind of live
         | translation that let people talk to each other in their native
         | languages.
        
       | hderms wrote:
       | is Dublin becoming more of a cultural center since Brexit?
        
         | a_paddy wrote:
         | Brexit? The British left Dublin 102 years ago.
        
           | chgs wrote:
           | As in since the U.K. shot itself in the foot more effort is
           | being spent on an English speaking country in Europe at the
           | expense of an English speaking country in its own.
        
         | wk_end wrote:
         | Ehhh I wouldn't think it'd make a significant difference on its
         | own. London is what it is (was what it was?) because of
         | centuries of English imperial hegemony, not just because it's
         | English-speaking. Berliners speak the global lingua franca
         | virtually just as well and - with no slight intended to the
         | Irish - their city is a much more natural fit as the new
         | European cosmopolitan cultural Mecca.
         | 
         | Dublin's rising global prominence probably has more to do with
         | Ireland's rather business-friendly taxation policies.
        
       | Nihilartikel wrote:
       | I wonder when we'll have light field capturing and emitting
       | surfaces that would make it look like a real hole between
       | places...
        
       | initramfs wrote:
       | What we really need is to have people on both sides of the pond
       | dress up as green men from outer space and wave to each other
       | with three webbed digits.
        
       | IncreasePosts wrote:
       | I wonder what the latency is going to be on this. It needs to be
       | at least 1/30th of a second round trip but I suspect the actual
       | latency is going to be more like 1s+
        
         | crazygringo wrote:
         | I don't know why it would be any different from a Zoom call.
         | 
         | In reality it's probably even faster since neither side is
         | dealing with Wi-Fi.
        
           | bagels wrote:
           | It doesn't say what technology is used, does it? Could be
           | using wifi, or cell networks.
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | Wired, using the subsea fiber cables, your still stuck at a
             | 60 ms RTT minimum from NYC to Dublin. Add in video
             | transcoding time and a more realistic estimate of the
             | networks on either side, and you're looking at latency
             | closer to 200-400 ms. WiFi over this distance actually
             | isn't a significant contributor to latency.
        
               | bagels wrote:
               | Where does it say it's using a wired connection? Agree
               | that the latency from the distance is going to be a big
               | factor.
        
               | oceanplexian wrote:
               | Actually transcoding can be done far below that with
               | consumer hardware. I'm doing Quicksync accelerated
               | transcoding right now for Moonlight and encoding/decoding
               | latency is only a few ms. And Wifi is, by far the
               | greatest source of latency. In fact I can get data to a
               | datacenter a few hundred km away over a fiber connection
               | faster than Wifi across the room (<5ms vs 10-20ms)
        
         | trey-jones wrote:
         | I wonder the same. I already take issue with the use of
         | "realtime" in the marketing material.
        
           | Chilko wrote:
           | Would you consider zoom call with someone on the other side
           | of an ocean "realtime"?
           | 
           | If so, I don't see how this is any different. If not, that's
           | a pretty narrow definition of realtime given the context.
        
           | anyfoo wrote:
           | Realtime means different things in different contexts. If I
           | can watch a webcam of freeway traffic, than 5 seconds delay
           | is, for all intents and purposes, realtime.
           | 
           | If we talk about medical equipment, it may be very different
           | based on the equipment.
           | 
           | Real time OSs advertise maximum guaranteed latencies. 0
           | latency does not exist in the physical world, the speed of
           | light can't be convinced to hurry up, unfortunately.
        
         | chgs wrote:
         | Why 1/30th?
         | 
         | Latency will be far more than that due to speed of light.
         | 
         | My mpeg vision circuits are about 480ms end to end from
         | Washington/New York to London. The j2k ones are faster but
         | still in the 200ms range. In theory you could get it down to
         | sub 100ms but at that point you are certainly having to
         | engineer your paths correctly and use barely any compression.
         | 
         | Uncompressed 4k is in the 10gbit range. My uhd jxs bitrates are
         | about 1.3gbit but wouldn't deliver sub 200 across the pond.
        
           | mysecretaccount wrote:
           | > Why 1/30th? > Latency will be far more than that due to
           | speed of light.
           | 
           | 1/30th of 1s is almost exactly the round-trip time from NYC
           | to Dublin (Wolfram Alpha says 17ms one-way).
        
           | anyfoo wrote:
           | OP is correct, 1/30 s is a good ballpark theoretical lower
           | bound.
           | 
           | Assuming travel across the earth surface, light in a vacuum
           | take about 14ms to cross the distances. Times two for round
           | trip that's about 1/30 s.
           | 
           | Of course we don't have anywhere near ideal conditions there
           | (at a minimum, light in fiber is already slower, closer to
           | 40ms round trip in that case, and of course network
           | infrastructure adds orders of magnitude), but it's a good
           | limit.
        
             | oceanplexian wrote:
             | You don't need round trip with live video, you can push
             | frames in UDP packets from both sides.
        
         | futureshock wrote:
         | Imagine a transatlantic Zoom call off your laptop camera and
         | home wifi. Not great. I have seen this Portal in person.
        
       | crazygringo wrote:
       | Why are none of the photos actually of Flatiron?
       | 
       | (I don't know Dublin well enough to tell if any of them are of
       | the Dublin side.)
        
         | NoboruWataya wrote:
         | > (I don't know Dublin well enough to tell if any of them are
         | of the Dublin side.)
         | 
         | Doesn't look like it.
        
         | lelandfe wrote:
         | https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1cn9cxl/portal_to_dubl...
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | "A sculpture known as The Portal is heading to NYC's Flatiron
         | neighborhood"
         | 
         | Seems you might be thinking of a specific building instead
        
         | anyfoo wrote:
         | Presumably because they are of a previous location of the art's
         | installation. The article is written in future tense, so it
         | stands to reason that there are no (interesting) pictures of
         | the new installation yet.
        
         | futureshock wrote:
         | It's because the photos are of an existing Portal installation
         | in Lublin, Poland and Vilnius, Lithuania. Lublin is my city and
         | this thing has been running for a few years now. Everyone loves
         | waving at it and seeing if anyone on the other side waves back.
         | It's quite silly but also rather touching.
        
       | _dain_ wrote:
       | there are portals ...
        
       | walterbell wrote:
       | Needs gesture recognition to trigger Stargate portal easter egg,
       | https://youtube.com/watch?v=0WvN3Ji-xIQ
       | 
       | Locations: https://www.portals.org/portals
        
       | ElijahLynn wrote:
       | Does it do audio too?
       | 
       | I wonder what the resolution and frame rate is too?
       | 
       | Article was lacking technical detail.
        
         | futureshock wrote:
         | We have one in Lublin, PL for the past several years. I'm not
         | sure if ours will be moved or if they are building a new pair.
         | 
         | There's no audio. Webcam quality isn't a pretty bad, maybe 720p
         | with lots of compression artifacts. It's not a 4k screen,
         | reminds me of digital signage used for highway billboards.
         | 
         | It's still entertaining but every time I see it I long for 8k
         | and a gigabit uplink.
        
       | bagels wrote:
       | Is Facebook going to complain about trademarks?
        
       | chahex wrote:
       | I hope this helps manifest a real portal but yeah JetBlue may
       | disagree (i.e. unmanifest)
        
         | candiddevmike wrote:
         | That was an ad in the beginning, right?
        
       | JumpCrisscross wrote:
       | Reminds me of the Shared Studios containers, except those have
       | audio [1]. Funnily enough, that also started as a project called
       | Portal (between New York and Tehran) [2].
       | 
       | [1] https://www.sharedstudios.com/
       | 
       | [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portals_(initiative)
        
       | janalsncm wrote:
       | Super cool! I would love to see a ring of these leading to all
       | different countries. Really interesting way to connect countries
       | together.
        
         | anyfoo wrote:
         | That would be fun. How do you imagine the "ring"? A huge part
         | of the appeal is that both sides can see each other.
        
           | vundercind wrote:
           | You could ask someone in Dublin to pass on a message, walk
           | over to the portal coming from the "other side", and maybe
           | receive your message back from someone in Japan or something
           | :-)
        
           | boopmaster wrote:
           | Not the op, but I could imagine a series of portals in a
           | circle formation at each site; maybe like 12 or 13 simulcast
           | connections would be insane.
        
       | notnaut wrote:
       | I walk by this location regularly. VERY open to goofy ideas and
       | harmless shenanigans.
        
       | mikeocool wrote:
       | An artist set something similar up between NYC and London in 2008
       | -- was always fun to walk by.
       | 
       | https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/arts/design/21tele.html
        
       | extheat wrote:
       | Cool stuff. It's kind of interesting because the time zones are
       | several hours off, so I wonder how well it works at night. From
       | the renders I see the quality doesn't seem that great (for better
       | or worse), still quite fascinating to look through I'm sure.
        
       | dan-g wrote:
       | Awesome! There's a really cool company in Japan doing something
       | similar for enterprise: https://tonari.no/en
        
       | benatkin wrote:
       | In San Francisco that portal is called BART and it also connects
       | to Pleasanton.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-08 23:00 UTC)