[HN Gopher] Eyechat
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Eyechat
        
       Author : seatac76
       Score  : 251 points
       Date   : 2024-08-05 23:23 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (neal.fun)
 (TXT) w3m dump (neal.fun)
        
       | cranberryturkey wrote:
       | ...probably make it top of the internet too.
        
       | MaxikCZ wrote:
       | This is actually pretty neat.
        
       | yesbut wrote:
       | You all are comfortable just enabling your camera for some random
       | site so it can capture your face?
        
         | colejhudson wrote:
         | yes
        
         | xandrius wrote:
         | As much as I enjoy neal's little games, I'm not going to be
         | trying this one, unfortunately.
        
           | thih9 wrote:
           | Perhaps that's an idea for a next game: match people by "how
           | much info are you willing to provide".
           | 
           | Present options to pick a username, email, social media, live
           | text, live audio stream, live video, health data from a smart
           | watch, teenage diary, ...
           | 
           | It already works in some way; e.g. even if one person has
           | both a HN account and a Snapchat account, they would use
           | these to talk to different people.
        
             | boesboes wrote:
             | Already exists, demo by some dutch(?) privacy expert on how
             | much info he can get out of you and just from your picture.
             | 
             | I showed it to a colleague from marketing as a 'look how
             | bad up this is!' They asked 'cool, can we do that too?'
             | sigh
        
             | fartsucker69 wrote:
             | my match will get tmi
        
         | vzaliva wrote:
         | You know, someone can also capture your face while you just
         | walking on the street?
         | 
         | Given, the different people require different levels of
         | privacy.
        
           | _the_inflator wrote:
           | Yes, inverse profiling works this way. A group with known
           | individuals communicates constantly with someone who ain't
           | using FB or Insta. You still know this person quite well,
           | easily identifiable, maybe lacking some information but more
           | than needed.
           | 
           | This is also why privacy has been a game over for decades.
           | Ten years ago or so, friends boasted that they don't use
           | Gmail due to privacy concerns but happily email folks with
           | Gmail accounts.
           | 
           | One group picture is sufficient, you can work from there.
        
           | aaroninsf wrote:
           | One pertinent difference is that a web property may correlate
           | your captured biometric data with whatever they get out of
           | your connection, making entity resolution much easier and
           | more valuable.
           | 
           | ELI5 when you visit online they have a handle on you.
        
         | _the_inflator wrote:
         | Yes, I had the same question popping up.
         | 
         | On a meta-level, this is the essence of social engineering:
         | creating a seemingly harmless and fun distraction to get what
         | you may really want.
         | 
         | "Consent to give me pictures of your face and movements" as a
         | pop-up would probably spoil the fun a bit.
        
         | archerx wrote:
         | This site wants to share your cookies to at least 662 "venders"
         | and they are being dishonest with the "legitimate interest"
         | scam. The creator clearly does not care about nor respect their
         | users/visitors.
        
           | mandmandam wrote:
           | It's so wild to me that people tolerate this. I just close
           | the tab or 'reader' whenever I see that type of thing, but I
           | know very few others who do the same.
        
             | snorremd wrote:
             | I mean, if a website claims to have tens if not close to a
             | hundred "legitimate interest" cookies I'm reasonably sure
             | they are living of wildly invasive ad tracking. I
             | immediately close these websites just as you do.
             | 
             | It would be swell if more of the web was made by passionate
             | people to share knowledge for free. I know this is a
             | privileged attitude as creating content takes time which is
             | not free. But some of the best web sites are the ones
             | without monetisation. We need a better monetisation system
             | for the web that is based on people paying for content
             | instead of people being sold as user data.
        
         | unsupp0rted wrote:
         | Why worry? It only captures the eyes.
        
           | ashkankiani wrote:
           | It has to capture everything first to figure out where the
           | eyes are...
        
             | gattr wrote:
             | One could wear a paper mask/visor to only show the eyes.
             | (Though the eye extraction feature might malfunction then?)
        
             | GaggiX wrote:
             | The extraction of the eyes is done client side.
        
           | PKop wrote:
           | False
        
         | darajava wrote:
         | Why do you care? You likely give your entire life story to
         | Google? What do you think he's going to do with your face data?
        
         | moralestapia wrote:
         | Yes, I am.
        
         | arendtio wrote:
         | No, I just went straight to the HN comments after seeing it
         | requires camera permissions ;-)
        
         | jsyang00 wrote:
         | sure, have you ever gone outside? thousands of cameras
         | everywhere in any populated place, so why not?
        
         | muppetman wrote:
         | Sure am. This site is a lot more trustworthy than the no doubt
         | 100 cameras I walk past each day that capture my face without
         | my permission.
        
       | bun_terminator wrote:
       | Suure some random site that hijacks your back button, doesn't
       | talk at all what it is and wants my camera permissions
        
         | ferguu_ wrote:
         | exactly! a little explanation please? i dont turn my camera on
         | for just anything!!! who am i chatting with - the nsa?
        
           | archerx wrote:
           | Worst, advertising data miners if you look at the cookie
           | consent form.
        
       | umeshram wrote:
       | Funny
        
       | miguelxt wrote:
       | Another hit from Neal. I wonder (and envy, in a good way) where
       | does he gets the time to work and all this wonderful little
       | games.
        
         | amitlevy49 wrote:
         | Doesn't he do this full time?
        
           | ianbicking wrote:
           | But there's no attempt to monetize anything...
           | 
           | ... which is part of why everything seems so polished, they
           | each express an idea without compromise, and when he's done
           | he can just be done.
           | 
           | Someone could make a pretty good museum exhibit from his
           | site.
        
             | omoikane wrote:
             | > But there's no attempt to monetize anything...
             | 
             | Maybe for the pages you tried, but I see ads on these
             | pages:
             | 
             | https://neal.fun/infinite-craft/ (bottom)
             | 
             | https://neal.fun/perfect-circle/ (right)
             | 
             | https://neal.fun/days-since-incident/ (bottom, near the
             | end, above the "you may also like" section)
             | 
             | The last one occasionally fails to show ads due to some
             | javascript error (visible in the console). The same error
             | was also observed on a few other pages with the "you may
             | also like" footer, so my guess is that some ads were
             | supposed to be visible on many pages, but were accidentally
             | hidden due to some configuration issue.
        
               | bemmu wrote:
               | It's my understanding that Infinite Craft alone is
               | probably so popular that those ads actually bring in
               | decent revenue.
               | 
               | For comparison, at one point slither.io, which is another
               | browser game (not his project) was bringing in $100k/day
               | from one ad unit showed each time the player dies
               | https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-slither-io-goes-viral-
               | games-...
        
               | null0pointer wrote:
               | It boggles my mind how valuable advertising is. Who is
               | clicking on that shit and presumably buying those
               | products? I just cannot believe that there were actually
               | $100k/day worth of actual ad conversions, no matter the
               | player count. Yet the money flows so I guess people
               | really do click on that shit and then buy that shit.
        
               | SandyTown wrote:
               | Kids love ads, and that game was full of kids.
               | 
               | When I say love, I mean genuinely seek them out. When I
               | was younger, there was no internet in my house, and
               | adverts were the opportunity to step away from the TV and
               | do something else. But I worked as a babysitter in
               | December a few years ago and things have certainly
               | changed a lot.
               | 
               | They would turn on the TV just to watch ads to "find out
               | what I want for Christmas" then turn it off again when
               | the advertising finished and ask for Netflix. When
               | playing games on an iPad or laptop, they would click
               | every ad to open it in a new tab, meaning they could
               | browse products after they were done playing.
               | 
               | The first couple of times I told the kids not to do that,
               | and reported back to the parents after. But turns out
               | most parents liked this behaviour...it made Christmas
               | shopping easier, because their kids would make a list of
               | cheaper things aimed at them, rather than all asking for
               | expensive iPads and PlayStations.
        
               | bemmu wrote:
               | I have to agree $100k/day seems close to unbelievably
               | high, so I had to do some napkin math. In short, it seems
               | it may be possible.
               | 
               | If the avg player dies 10 times, and the ads shown had
               | $.5 CPM, then to make a dollar you'd need only 200
               | players. So to make $100k/day you'd need 20M daily
               | actives, which is very high but it was really popular
               | around those days.
               | 
               | Is 20M daily actives possible? Yes, because if the
               | average play session is 15 minutes, with that many
               | players you'd have ~200k concurrent players. There's
               | currently a game on Steam called "banana" where you just
               | click on bananas, and that one has 292k concurrents.
               | There are also several Roblox games with that many
               | concurrents, so it checks out.
        
         | namanyayg wrote:
         | Same. Not just the time, where does he gets the ideas for these
         | games.
         | 
         | Plus, his implementation in a few of them is really exhaustive
         | and polished. Are there any "interns" helping him?
        
         | thornewolf wrote:
         | there was a highly similar project to this on HN a few months
         | ago.
         | 
         | his previous project (infinite craft) was one of the first
         | things i ever heard people talk about wrt LLMs.
         | 
         | His skill is in execution. I think he finds inspiration from
         | the people around him.
        
           | durumu wrote:
           | Was this the one you were thinking of?
           | https://eieio.games/nonsense/game-12-stranger-video/
        
       | lambdaba wrote:
       | Careful doing this as there's a risk of falling in love, as per
       | this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/style/modern-
       | love-to-fall...
        
         | latexr wrote:
         | https://archive.ph/20240808081029/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
        
           | gloosx wrote:
           | thank you sire, I banished the authwall iframe, removed the
           | gradient and made it scrollable only to realize the article
           | was cut for public in the first place. I wonder how
           | archive.ph got the full version automatically...
        
             | latexr wrote:
             | > I banished the authwall iframe, removed the gradient and
             | made it scrollable only to realize the article was cut for
             | public in the first place.
             | 
             | If your browser has a Reader Mode, that's a faster way to
             | get to that scenario, no DOM manipulation needed.
             | 
             | > I wonder how archive.ph got the full version
             | automatically
             | 
             | We have speculation but not certainties.
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36060891
             | 
             | Regardless, the fact it works is why it's so used on HN.
        
         | jimnotgym wrote:
         | I think love has to be a state that can be worked towards. We
         | wonder the earth (with apps) looking for that perfect person,
         | today. But did noone fall in love in the past, when you had to
         | make do with people from your own village?
        
           | 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
           | In my case the Fear Of Missing Out is terrible.
           | 
           | If I lived in a village of a few hundred people I could be
           | satisfied that my spouse was the best match I could possibly
           | hope for, right? Say half the village is men, then a quarter
           | is too young or too old, then there's just a handful who fall
           | in my range of economic status and attractiveness, and I
           | could be as happy as one could hope with any of them.
           | 
           | I live within reasonable driving distance of probably a
           | literal thousand other people in my age range and of similar
           | attractiveness to me. Whoever I stick with, someone else will
           | be better in one way and worse in another. There might be a
           | hundred dimensions on which to measure someone. Hence my
           | current vacation from monogamy.
           | 
           | I think love, as in the feeling of limerence, obsession,
           | desire to be with someone, desire to "get" something from
           | somebody attractive, is easy to cultivate and always has
           | been. I love someone who said she "falls in love with anyone
           | who makes eye contact with her long enough". Ironically, her
           | definition of love doesn't include texting me every month.
           | 
           | But love as in, doing hard marriage shit for decades until
           | one of you outlives the other... I thought I felt that when I
           | was first with my ex-spouse, now I believe I may be happier
           | if I never feel that.
        
       | petepete wrote:
       | The name took me back to a video chat programme I remember using
       | with my friends in the very early 2000s called Eyeball Chat.
        
       | petargyurov wrote:
       | I remember that someone posted a very similar project here some
       | time ago.
        
         | namanyayg wrote:
         | Yes, had a deja vu moment there. I guess it was a similar game
         | by someone else.
        
           | wonger_ wrote:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38305787
        
             | eieio wrote:
             | I made Stranger Video (the linked item)! Neal's a friend of
             | mine and I gave him a (small) hand with eyechat.
             | 
             | We were originally going to collaborate more on eyechat but
             | then One Million Checkboxes[1] blew up and I had to bow out
             | 
             | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40800869
        
               | namanyayg wrote:
               | I'd love to know more. Did he reach out to you? Was it
               | the other way around?
               | 
               | What's the difference in two's codebases, if any?
        
               | eieio wrote:
               | we meet up on occasion to kick around ideas[1] - we're
               | both in nyc and the 'people doing creative tech stuff in
               | nyc' world is not _that_ big. I think(?) we first met
               | right after I made stranger video; we 've batted around
               | ideas about it for a while. Pretty sure this idea was
               | from him!
               | 
               | There's probably 0 overlap in the codebase - 100% (or
               | close to it) of the code is from Neal (the only code I
               | wrote for this was a very early prototype that cropped
               | out _just_ the eyes, instead of the bar you see now). I
               | sent him a couple of snippets from my codebase early on
               | but mostly just gave pointers on my tech stack  / chatted
               | about some of the problems I ran into. Given the size of
               | Neal's audience the default scale for a project he
               | launches is pretty big!
               | 
               | Anyway, mostly wanted to clarify that the similarities
               | between this and stranger video are intentional :)
               | 
               | [1] this is where the idea for one million checkboxes
               | actually came from!
        
               | namanyayg wrote:
               | Always lovely to know how these things work in the
               | background.
               | 
               | I love it when the web is used for something fun and not
               | selling another subscription service.
               | 
               | Sent you an email btw, I had some thoughts that I wanted
               | to talk about
        
       | diimdeep wrote:
       | I would love to read about tech details behind this.
        
       | YounoYouno wrote:
       | Nice try, aint' getting my biometrics this time!
        
         | tharakam wrote:
         | Exactly! lol
        
       | hazn wrote:
       | after eyechatting with 5 people:
       | 
       | * all people had brown eyes
       | 
       | * all went for funny looks immediately
       | 
       | * 3 of them were shocked and left
        
         | sam_perez wrote:
         | Clicking on the link without knowing what it was ahead of time
         | was jarring, even not actively participating.
        
           | manmal wrote:
           | Not for me, at all. Do you generally avoid eye contact?
        
             | sam_perez wrote:
             | Lol no not generally ;)
             | 
             | Just did not expect to be gazing into the windows of
             | someone's soul immediately. The widescreen monitor may have
             | contributed.
        
       | kypro wrote:
       | How is this not a torture method? Do neurotypicals think this is
       | fun? I'm getting anxiety just thinking about it.
        
       | pcranaway wrote:
       | To the people worried about their data being sent to google or
       | whatever (I'm not sure what they're actually worried about) --
       | the extraction of your eyes is done client side, using a
       | seemingly very well made ML model running on Tensorflow which
       | fits in under 15mb.
       | 
       | The feed of your camera is transmitted "directly" to the person
       | you're looking at (well, no, not really directly, it uses WebRTC,
       | so your data passes through Neal's TURN server, but do you really
       | think Neal wants to take care of properly storing your data and
       | handing it off to advertisers?)
        
         | BossingAround wrote:
         | So even after this thought process, it comes down to "do you
         | trust the author" (just like before it)... Not unreasonable to
         | answer either way if you ask me.
        
           | sdenton4 wrote:
           | Yeah, we should probably add a blockchain to the design so
           | that we don't have to trust anyone.
        
         | davedx wrote:
         | What, how do you know all this?
        
           | dvaun wrote:
           | Your browser has developer tools which provide views into
           | transmitted files, network requests, etc. You poke around and
           | see how it is implemented using the tools.
        
       | namanyayg wrote:
       | It's not working for me at all, did it get hugged to death?
       | 
       | I just see a black screen with "Eyes from $LOCATION" under it.
        
         | bot0047 wrote:
         | Congrats! Your eyes are ours now. - them
        
           | namanyayg wrote:
           | Thanks for instilling a new fear in me today
        
         | zikduruqe wrote:
         | "Got Eem" - Worldcoin
         | 
         | *for those that aren't familiar with Worldcoin....
         | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/technology/worldcoin-iris...
        
           | latexr wrote:
           | I find these more relevant (and not paywalled).
           | 
           | https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoi.
           | ..
           | 
           | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-.
           | ..
        
           | namanyayg wrote:
           | I know it's in jest but does worldcoin work with any regular
           | phone camera?
           | 
           | I assumed it needs some sort of closeup high definition image
        
       | IncreasePosts wrote:
       | What we really need for this is on-screen cameras, so you can
       | actually look someone in the eye. Now, you only look them in the
       | eye when you look away from them at the camera. And when you look
       | them in the eye you're just looking at their mouth.
        
         | jbullock35 wrote:
         | We've needed this - easy, direct eye contact - for quite a long
         | time. I keep waiting for someone to develop it. I think that
         | Apple has a relevant patent, but I don't know how much content
         | is in the patent, and I've never heard that Apple has done
         | anything with it.
        
           | shepherdjerred wrote:
           | Apple uses it for its Eye Contact feature in FaceTime
        
             | lupire wrote:
             | Apple applies a filter to make fake eye contact.
        
               | shepherdjerred wrote:
               | "filter" seems to downplay it
               | 
               | https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/03/facetime-eye-contact-
               | correcti...
        
           | 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
           | A guy on Youtube already built this...
           | https://youtu.be/2AecAXinars?si=p42afAGJrUEsHedX
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | They're slowly coming to market:
         | 
         | https://www.androidauthority.com/under-display-selfie-camera...
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | The claim why these aren't adopted is that they aren't high
           | enough quality. Why not include both a standard and
           | undersceen front-facing camera and get the best of both
           | worlds? Could use the under-screen camera for video chat and
           | the standard one for everything else. Or even use some AI
           | algorithm to merge the data from the standard camera with the
           | under-screen one to increase quality.
        
             | filcuk wrote:
             | People want quality selfies more than eye to eye calls
        
               | colordrops wrote:
               | Did you read my comment? That's what I was proposing to
               | address. By "standard camera" I meant the standard front
               | facing camera that is high quality.
        
               | roywiggins wrote:
               | The other problem is that having an under-display camera
               | doesn't stop everyone else's eyes from pointing in the
               | wrong direction, so even if you prioritize eye contact
               | you'd also have to convince all your friends to, as well.
        
               | lupire wrote:
               | OK but that's how regular humans work too.
        
         | bredren wrote:
         | Earliest expected release for an Under Display Camera (UDC)
         | iPhone right now is iPhone 18 in 2026:
         | 
         | >According to The Elec, LG Innotek has entered the preliminary
         | development of the UDC, which sits under the display and does
         | not result in a visible hole in the panel when the camera is
         | not in use...
         | 
         | >Apple will then adopt the UDC in 2027's "Pro" iPhone models,
         | according to respected analyst Ross Young of research firm
         | Display Supply Chain Consultant
         | 
         | https://www.macrumors.com/2023/12/06/iphone-under-display-ca...
        
         | gojomo wrote:
         | Ultimately it will likely be easier to simulate eye-contact
         | with live restyling - that is, synthesizing the view from a
         | virtual 'camera' using one or more other cameras nearby - than
         | physically hide a true camera inside a monitor. (Simulation
         | could also signal eye-contact with any point on the screen, not
         | just a single camera location.)
         | 
         | Nvidia, Apple, & others already have software for this, which
         | will only get better.
        
         | davedx wrote:
         | Ha for important meetings I look into the camera for this
         | reason
        
       | brikym wrote:
       | So this is what it's like dating in the middle east.
        
         | IIAOPSW wrote:
         | It must be terrible for all the autistic people. Nothing _but_
         | eye contact.
        
         | jmprspret wrote:
         | Depending on how religiously pious the man is, he may not even
         | look at her eyes.
        
       | dbg31415 wrote:
       | This is great!
        
       | dhruvagga wrote:
       | Is this the new Omegele where the conversations can't happen?
       | haha
        
       | BHSPitMonkey wrote:
       | It's the eyebrow-inclination detection that really makes this a
       | work of art. Being able to turn a serious stare into a serious
       | aspect ratio is power I didn't know I needed.
        
       | noman-land wrote:
       | For the shy and curious, you can use OBS as a virtual webcam.
       | This is a good option.
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekQHJX9rMp8. Guy keeps winking at
       | me and then rolling his eyes when the video doesn't respond.
        
       | drdrey wrote:
       | this is giving me massive anxiety
        
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