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Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

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Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#71

Post by user-the-name »

junon wrote: post #68
dang wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a case of the contrarian dynamic [1]. Dismissive comments tend to appear first, not because they represent the community, but because they're the fastest to write. Often there's a wave of such comments objecting to the OP, followed by a second wave objecting to the objections with some variation of "I can't believe how negative the comments here are". The irony is that they're driven by the same impul…

Idk. Feels like HN has been veering this direction over the last year or so, and the comments are becoming markedly negative, critical comments about everything. I'm not sure it's a problem HN can solve at all. But I definitely agree with GP. The post the other day about the individual leaving the C++ community (something like "Wrapping Up 2021") was an absolute nightmare thread basically dismissing the author as men…

HN has been like that for a long, long time. You are probably only now starting to notice.

Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#72

Post by dang »

darau1 wrote: post #60
dang wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a case of the contrarian dynamic [1]. Dismissive comments tend to appear first, not because they represent the community, but because they're the fastest to write. Often there's a wave of such comments objecting to the OP, followed by a second wave objecting to the objections with some variation of "I can't believe how negative the comments here are". The irony is that they're driven by the same impul…

What if we force people to wait before they can comment?

We tend to be wary of technical solutions to human problems. I fear the unintended side effects.

Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#73

Post by dang »

junon wrote: post #68
dang wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a case of the contrarian dynamic [1]. Dismissive comments tend to appear first, not because they represent the community, but because they're the fastest to write. Often there's a wave of such comments objecting to the OP, followed by a second wave objecting to the objections with some variation of "I can't believe how negative the comments here are". The irony is that they're driven by the same impul…

Idk. Feels like HN has been veering this direction over the last year or so, and the comments are becoming markedly negative, critical comments about everything. I'm not sure it's a problem HN can solve at all. But I definitely agree with GP. The post the other day about the individual leaving the C++ community (something like "Wrapping Up 2021") was an absolute nightmare thread basically dismissing the author as men…

I think we all need to be cautious about such perceptions. It's easy to see this sort of thing and derive a general conclusion of deterioration, but people have been making such pronouncements about HN for well over a decade—basically since the beginning of the site.

The way these perceptions tend to work is that we notice a few data points and then jump to a general conclusion. Remember the so-called primitive tribe that supposedly could only count "1, 2, 3, many"? It seems that's basically how all our minds work. The trouble is that a stochastic data feed like HN inevitably generates as many such sequences as you could ask for. It's really the mind that decides which sequence to pick out and deem representative. This leads to false feelings of generality (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

(Edit: for example, look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29781019 and how positive the top comments are at the moment. The stochastic feed generates lots of those datapoints too!)

What's worse, those feelings have consequences, since they lead to a "why bother" sense of no longer needing to take care of this place or do one's part of build up the culture. If it's all just a shitshow, why not just add more shit? everyone else is, right? Well, no—that's not true at all.

This is not to say that the problems you mention aren't real. They are, and it's important to work on them, and we spend a lot of time trying to persuade people to work on them. It's in everyone's interest to do that, so we can achieve at least part of what we all want here, which is to have an interesting internet forum that doesn't suck.

We should also all be cautious about seeing other people as the problem ("completely wrecked by nay-sayers and just generally unpleasant people anymore, it seems"). My experience is that if we look honestly at ourselves we find all the same things to be true there too, and that's a more productive place to work.

Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#74

Post by noduerme »

darau1 wrote: post #67
noduerme wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like, what if we make them wait forever? That would be awesome. FWIW as much as I hate to accept dang's logic of the overcoming anti-anti-ness of every thread, it does seem true, so why not just let the thing play out...?

> why not just let the thing play out I think because it could kill the thread, or demotivate the OP. People reflexively rejecting my contributions would demotivate me.

Naw. You have to just gird yourself for the hit. It's true, what he says. The first wave is brutal. Nothing _anyone_ says should demotivate _you_. Your motivation has to come from your own inside vision. Having people talk shit about it is actually a sign that you're doing something right, because they're jealous. The only time you should worry is if they say nothing at all.. =\

Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#75

Post by delosw »

noduerme wrote: post #43
cjnicholls wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lively[1] does this with desktop wallpapers if that helps and is FOSS. Additional shaders can be found on shadertoy[2] and others. It can be a good way of turning your computer into a heater ;) [1] https://rocksdanister.github.io/lively/ [2] https://www.shadertoy.com/

That's really nice. Mac OS needs to get some shadertoy desktops asap. I can't even get a toaster to fly anymore :(

Toasters and more... https://www.bryanbraun.com/after-dark-css/ (Well, it mimics the old screensavers, anyway.)

Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#76

Post by halldorel »

dawnerd wrote: post #25

Crashed latest iOS safari. Something like this probably should be disabled on mobile anyways to be nice to visitors’ battery

The clouds made my top spec 2019 16" MBP completely unresponsive on Safari. Regardless of how well the library may or may not be written, it's kinda scary a web page can do that. I'm talking about the entire OS becoming unresponsive and 2 secs between UI frame refreshes …

Re: Vanta.js: Animated 3D backgrounds for websites

#78

Post by dorkwood »

pixelpoet wrote: post #2

Pretty sure the clouds one is a straight rip from one of Inigo Quilez's shaders: https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XslGRr (note the licence at the top...)

The birds look like this three.js example, too. https://threejs.org/examples/?q=bird#webgl_gpgpu_birds
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