[HN Gopher] LooksMapping
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LooksMapping
Author : elsewhen
Score : 102 points
Date : 2025-07-04 03:55 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (looksmapping.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (looksmapping.com)
| pimlottc wrote:
| This is gross on multiple levels.
| tra3 wrote:
| I had a quasi physical reaction when reading the description.
| Not a good one.
|
| I don't remember hotornot being amongst asimovs 3 laws of
| robotics..is this really the future we deserve?
|
| The author is gonna be vilified, but next year someone's gonna
| come up with a cute name and a material design for this and
| gonna make bank.
|
| I'm kinda curious to see what 1/10 people look like but these
| are real people right.
| ynab10 wrote:
| I have a feeling that so are you.
| rybosome wrote:
| This appears to me to be intentional and ironic to make a point
| rather than in earnest.
|
| I am interpreting this as a statement about snap judgements in
| an age where AI will increasingly play the role of a judge or
| assessor of humans.
|
| Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems too on-the-nose to be serious.
|
| EDIT:
|
| > This website just puts reductive numbers on the superficial
| calculations we make every day
|
| From the website. If it is in earnest then I'd be embarrassed
| to have shilled for it, because I agree that the idea is stupid
| and gross.
| hyperbolablabla wrote:
| I really do think it's in earnest. I think the author is
| trying to justify its existence as "already a part of
| reality". I think it's quite despicable actually.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| from their site https://walzr.com/
|
| they made a fake steakhouse real for one night, got Twitter
| to verify a fake candidate for congress, etc. etc.
|
| all signs point to art project.
| debesyla wrote:
| I see this as an art project. (And technical exploration,
| because I wonder how did they manage to scrape Google.)
|
| It's made by the dude that has a lot of similarly strange and
| technologically impressive projects: https://walzr.com/
| Takennickname wrote:
| Nice try, restaurant owner with ugly people.
| brcmthrowaway wrote:
| When happens when a creator is stuck in a Twitter bubble
| Mashimo wrote:
| What kind of bubble do you think he is in?
| cobertos wrote:
| > But we judge places by the people who go there. We always have.
|
| Does anyone do this for a restaurants? That's not something that
| ever really factored into my food habits
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| OP might be The American Psycho
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| BusinessCardMapping.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I think we use all our senses out in the real world when
| choosing some place to eat. Seeing the people who eat there is
| certainly one factor. Online maybe too if we look at the food
| pictures, read how the items are worded, look at a restaurant
| website and read the reviews we can get a sense of the types of
| people it appeals to. It's probably not the primary factor, but
| it is one attribute. There are anecdotal reports of
| establishments paying PR professionals (e.g. good looking
| models) to be there - and obviously they will use them for
| their promotional material.
|
| It's good to listen and notice how one is being influenced. The
| real mistake is thinking we do not judge at all.
|
| With that said, only looking at a rating of profile pictures of
| reviews to judge a restaurant is very funny and becomes art.
| Kudos to the creator.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| The app is cool, but the argument there was either written by
| AI or there is a lost in translation moment because it
| doesn't really make any sense.
|
| In your argument you're basically saying "it's impossible to
| know what affects your choice of where to eat. Some think
| looks matter even pay for it; ergo, we must consider it too"
|
| What about music type? Worker's uniform color? Thinking "I
| wanna eat where the hot people are" is... I don't know.. Odd?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| > Thinking "I wanna eat where the hot people are" is... I
| don't know.. Odd?
|
| Well my response was to the question "Does anyone do this
| for restaurants?" and tried to answer it by saying "yes,
| many people may consider it along with other factors"
|
| Yes, I agree it is superficial and odd to consciously and
| only think it. But we choose things with a range of
| subconscious influences, multiple reasons. Yes, uniforms
| and music could also be influences too. We could stop and
| spend time examining our thoughts and feelings to identify
| all the factors but generally people don't do that do they?
| :-)
|
| And if you think about bars... it becomes commonplace for
| some people. "I want to drink where the hot people are"
| seems to be a very commonplace thought, or at least a
| thought which is encouraged by the marketing of bars.
|
| Thinking wider now, we can ponder why do many places hire
| attractive people in their marketing photos? We humans are
| more superficial and less rational than we would like to
| admit to ourselves.
|
| Personally I prefer real ale so will drink where the beer
| is better, but if I'm on a date where my friend doesn't
| appreciate beer as much, I will choose a nicer feeling and
| looking establishment over the beer quality. The people
| inside the place might or might not influence that choice
| to a greater or lesser extent. It is at the very least a
| factor. For a restaurant I think it's less of a factor.
| getcrunk wrote:
| I respect the novelty. It's a meme idea, but the problem solving
| and coding is still legit as a quick and fun challenge.
|
| Any details on how you managed to scrape the all mighty goog?
| ouked wrote:
| OP may have used their own method, but I believe you could use
| a provider like SerpAPI.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Just script a real browser with a chrome extension, and let it
| run kinda slowly overnight.
|
| The rate limits are such that you can get tens of millions of
| data points just from a single browser.
| EarlKing wrote:
| ..........not a hotdog.
| Mashimo wrote:
| Why is 2/3 of LA restaurant visited by "old" people per this map?
|
| I assume it's a racial thing and the AI could not really detect
| the age correctly?
|
| In NY the Irish pubs are tagged as old, which kinda makes sense.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Another bias can be who leaves reviews.
| preetsojitra wrote:
| What about the ethical concerns? Scrapping faces of people and
| feeding them into AI model without their permission.
| gkbrk wrote:
| It's all public pictures though. Why would I publish a picture
| of my face if I don't want people to have a picture of my face?
| jeauxlb wrote:
| I can go into an art gallery but I may not touch the works.
| Often there aren't physical barriers but we all understand
| some behaviours are not acceptable.
|
| Similarly, publication of an image on the internet is not
| implicit permission to use it for any possible purpose,
| however technically feasible. For example, deepfakes.
| gkbrk wrote:
| If you draw a mustache on a drawing in an art gallery, you
| ruin the original for everyone else. If you take the
| drawing home, no one else has the original any more.
|
| If I download, copy, or edit images sent to my computer,
| the original is still there.
|
| The artist puts their art on the gallery with the intent
| that people will enter that gallery and look at it without
| touching. The image uploaders uploads the image with the
| intent that a copy (not the original) gets sent to our
| computers when we look at Google Reviews.
| preetsojitra wrote:
| You're misinterpreting the analogy.
|
| - Drawing a mustache on the art = Vandalizing the
| original data (not what's happening).
|
| - Taking the art home = Deleting the original data (also
| not what's happening).
|
| - Scraping faces for an AI = Following visitors around
| the gallery, taking secret photos of them, and publishing
| a book that rates them by attractiveness.
|
| The fact that the gallery is "public" does not make that
| behavior acceptable. The same is true here. "Publicly
| viewable" does not mean "publicly available for any use."
| gkbrk wrote:
| > Following visitors around the gallery, taking secret
| photos of them, and publishing a book that rates them by
| attractiveness.
|
| Gallery visitors aren't publicly publishing gallery
| reviews with their pictures. This website doesn't go into
| restaurants and take pictures of the customers.
|
| All the pictures here were attached to restaurant reviews
| by the person themselves with the expectation that the
| picture would be sent to others and be available to
| people not currently in the restaurant.
| brigandish wrote:
| > taking secret photos of them,
|
| The visitors took the photo, supplied the photo, and put
| it in a public place.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Similarly, publication of an image on the internet is not
| implicit permission to use it for any possible purpose,
| however technically feasible.
|
| Are memes, or for that matter, satire and parody unethical?
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| Honestly the answer is "most people didn't really expect that
| to be a thing when they did that" add those to all the people
| who "didn't know that I was giving it to everyone. I thought
| this was between me and.. like.. yelp and people in my city"
|
| It's very confusing to technical people, but plenty of people
| were (still are) confused by the concept of the internet.
| What do you think all those people posting private
| information on each other's facebook walls were doing? They
| are on _their_ computer talking to _their_ family member. How
| is anybody else getting in here?
| 1GZ0 wrote:
| I love how quick people are to dismiss the obvious technical
| skill involved in making something like this, just because of the
| off-color premise.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Who's dismissing the obvious technical skill?
| donatj wrote:
| This is some _old internet_ style shenanigans powered by modern
| technology.
|
| I am here for it. I want more of this.
| yapyap wrote:
| You can tell from the old google logo style as well haha
| meindnoch wrote:
| What's the purpose of this? .pix { /*
| Simulate CRT pixelation and low resolution */ text-
| rendering: optimizeSpeed; font-family: Arial, sans-
| serif; font-smooth: never; -webkit-font-
| smoothing: none; -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
| /* Simulate slight pixelation */ filter: blur(0.3px);
| color: black; font-size: 16px; }
| tauntz wrote:
| Aesthetics
| erikig wrote:
| Yep, makes the site look like it was rendered on an old browser
| on a CRT.
| rdlw wrote:
| It simulates CRT pixelization and low resolution
| jofzar wrote:
| https://looksmapping.com/paper.pdf
|
| This feels oddly old school shit posty made reality
| defyonce wrote:
| Top 5 Restaurants (Female vs Male Preferences)
| Female Picks:
| ------------------------------------------------ 1. Big
| Apple Brunch | Hell's Kitchen | 9.2/10 2.
| Pietro Nolita | Nolita | 8.6/10 3.
| Kanu Bar|Grill | Hamilton Heights | 8.5/10 4.
| STK Steakhouse Downtown | West Village | 8.2/10 5.
| Lighthouse Fish Market | East Harlem | 8.2/10
| Male Picks:
| ------------------------------------------------ 1. Lahori
| Kabab | Kips Bay | 2.3/10 2. Big Arc
| Chicken | East Village | 2.5/10 3. Hop Won
| Express | Midtown East | 3.1/10 4. Subway
| | Hell's Kitchen | 3.1/10 5. Nica Trattoria
| | Upper East Side | 3.1/10
|
| it looks like female => attractive
| foresterre wrote:
| This was the first thing that stood out to me too.
|
| I sampled quite some dark red markers, representing
| "attractive", and on the balance they're almost always
| overwhelmingly reviewed by females.
|
| There were some exceptions though. Especially in the south west
| for Chinese cuisine.
| Takennickname wrote:
| Your data is incorrect. That ranking is for male vs female
| (higher number = female).
|
| The hot vs not score is a separate score. (e.g you have Big Arc
| chicken as a 2.5. That means mostly male. It's hotness score is
| 5.5)
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It's probably more like "interested in social media" -> more
| likely to have a very good shot of you as your profile pic ->
| more likely to be considered attractive.
|
| So perhaps this is really just searching for restaurants that
| people into social media review.
| ljsprague wrote:
| It's missing large parts of LA.
| yapyap wrote:
| that's awful, I love it
| TheLockranore wrote:
| This sounds like the opening premise of a 90's romcom.
| bemmu wrote:
| I think there's a category of these kinds of things where you
| apply AI to do something humans could do, but could not be
| bothered to do. Or could not profitably do. At least no human
| would categorize all these reviews just for lols.
|
| Another recent example from HN would be that site which just
| lists hotel rooms that have a desk and a chair. It would be an
| incredibly dull task for a human to look at a million hotel room
| pictures and just select if they have a desk or not.
|
| What else somewhat useful/fun could we do applying perhaps a
| little worse than human attention at something, but a lot of it?
| d--b wrote:
| This was a fun website until I realized that restaurants in
| Harlem score overwhelmingly "not hot".
|
| This sucks.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| NYT feature on this a few days ago
|
| _The Map Rating Restaurants Based on How Hot the Customers Are_
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/dining/looksmapping-hot-c...
| (https://archive.ph/3ItEb)
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44444973)
| esafak wrote:
| Given that we're talking about NY, shouldn't it be Hot Dog
| (Stand) or Not?
| Eduard wrote:
| took only a few checks for me to come to the conclusion that the
| setup has the age-old heavy bias towards beauty standards. I.e.,
| if customers are black or Asian, hotness ranking goes down.
| landl0rd wrote:
| No, the setup doesn't. It's aggregating people's behaviors and
| preferences. People appear to have a preference; whether it's
| good or bad, natural or ingrained, or some combination thereof,
| is a matter for discussion.
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(page generated 2025-07-04 23:01 UTC)