[HN Gopher] Internet Roadtrip: Vote to steer
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       Internet Roadtrip: Vote to steer
        
       Author : memalign
       Score  : 203 points
       Date   : 2025-05-07 05:50 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (neal.fun)
 (TXT) w3m dump (neal.fun)
        
       | abound wrote:
       | I wanted to turn left off of Stow St (and so did everyone else it
       | seems), but at the intersection, there were no left-facing
       | arrows, so we're still on Stow St.
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | I see this domain and immediately get excited.
        
       | paulddraper wrote:
       | Why does it vote every 30 feet, when there is only one option?
       | 
       | Seems very slow.
        
         | Jarwain wrote:
         | Well, it's a road trip! Whoever said road trips are fast?
        
           | euvin wrote:
           | Good point, but I wish I could swivel my head to enjoy the
           | scenery at least.
        
         | greesil wrote:
         | Are we there yet?
        
           | phreack wrote:
           | We're closer than we were before!
        
         | insin wrote:
         | It's about the journey, not the destination
        
         | Jarwain wrote:
         | Also the vote timer is shorter if there's only one option!
        
       | robertclaus wrote:
       | I don't understand why this clown car can't u-turn on these
       | streets...
        
       | gadtfly wrote:
       | Great old Twitch energy.
       | 
       | Badly needs inline chat to be complete.
        
         | Maxion wrote:
         | Volume control needs to also be votable.
        
       | HanShotFirst wrote:
       | The only thing I wish for is that the map showed the whole path
       | taken since the website went live!
        
         | gadtfly wrote:
         | Does it not? Zoom out on the map.
        
           | Jarwain wrote:
           | I've found it to not work consistently. When I first started
           | it showed the whole thing, but after playing for a while and
           | some refreshes it only shows the path that this browser has
           | seen. So if I switch apps for a while with it running in the
           | bg, then come back, it skips straight from where we were when
           | I last played to where we are now
        
       | dleeftink wrote:
       | Fun idea! In between votes, the app could prefetch the next
       | streetview frames, making it a bit more seamless once the vote
       | has been cast?
        
       | mcint wrote:
       | It needs to resolve faster if more people vote, based on a
       | running average of voters, or sqrt of viewers present.
        
       | ffsm8 wrote:
       | I'm missing a history of past votes. Maybe a sliding window of
       | the last n votes that you participated in and how you voted - as
       | well as how it resolved.
       | 
       | Another idea that comes to mind is a to foster solidarity between
       | voters by maybe notifying you if there is someone that voted
       | exactly like you for the last n votes. Might be harder to do
       | unless you're syncing votes via webrtc already
        
       | rwmj wrote:
       | Nice! There was a Daedalus
       | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._H._Jones) column along
       | the same lines back in the day. A bus where passengers could vote
       | for how to steer, with the ones paying most money having the most
       | votes.
       | (https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b7f0cfb077d6ad0f094d665e2bca7072)
        
       | hobofan wrote:
       | Oh boy that's going to be hefty bill for the street view API,
       | isn't it?
       | 
       | 300 people * 12 votes/min -> 3600 street view events/min
       | 
       | 3600 events/min * $0.002/event -> $7.2/min (at current usage)
        
         | higgins wrote:
         | he cached the planet
        
         | Boogie_Man wrote:
         | 1. Query the server for the URL
         | 
         | 2. Use JavaScript to publish it to the webpage in an iframe
         | 
         | 3. ????
         | 
         | 4. Profit
         | 
         | You know our boy Neil isn't paying for shit lmao he's a real
         | one
        
         | caseyy wrote:
         | A clever trick would be to cache all options in the 8-second
         | voting window and then blast them out to the clients. By the
         | time the vote concludes, the clients would already have the
         | image of the next step, and the server would have had 8 seconds
         | to send that to 400+ people. Plus, only a few maps API calls.
         | 
         | Though I'm not sure the StreetView API allows caching. Having
         | worked with maps APIs in the past, I know they often don't
         | allow it.
        
           | moron4hire wrote:
           | It is not clear what, exactly, they consider caching. There
           | are caches everywhere, some of them practically outside of my
           | application's control. Are those a violation of the ToS? Ask
           | the ToS says is "caching".
           | 
           | They also have to catch you, first.
        
       | _QrE wrote:
       | I love the radio, that's a great touch.
        
       | moritonal wrote:
       | Love the immediate protest votes of Horn after we missed the
       | turn.
        
       | foobahhhhh wrote:
       | Tip: open in new tab. History entry per click!
        
       | rzzzt wrote:
       | It looks like a game of chicken for minutes now (we are driving
       | on the left side of the road, red car is on a collision course
       | but somehow it can still maintain an even distance).
        
       | bibelo wrote:
       | the number of cool ideas this Neal guy has is too damn high
        
       | ris wrote:
       | Let's take this thing to Canada.
        
       | kylecazar wrote:
       | Cool.. Interesting that we are going "forward" using the rear
       | street view image, giving the impression that we're in the wrong
       | lane heading towards oncoming traffic
        
         | macNchz wrote:
         | Somehow appropriate for a crowdsourced experience of driving.
        
       | notpushkin wrote:
       | #VoteHonk
        
       | babbledabbler wrote:
       | I wonder how hard it would be to use AI to generatively
       | interpolate the images so it could be a video stream.
        
       | lkramer wrote:
       | Great that it's stuck driving in the correct side of the road
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-10 23:00 UTC)