Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

docpop.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 80 posts

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#31

Post by supportengineer »

nhod wrote: post #29
CSMastermind wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they find you an pitch the project to you? You mentioned that the project required some rather arcane programming knowledge. Could you elaborate on this? What areas of programming did you have to delve into that might be considered out of the ordinary? Was there any discussion about privacy when you were implementing it? Were there any features or functionalities that you wanted to implement but couldn't due…

How they found me: When I was 18, I was hired by The Disinformation Company (disinfo.com, the subculture search engine, which presaged our now post-truth conspiracy-theory laden world, though now sadly a shadow of its former self) as their Director of Technology. (I was precocious.) Disinfo had a cozy relationship with Razorfish, perhaps the biggest of the new breed of digital transformation consulting companies that…

I would like to know who funded this project, not knowing if it was even possible or not, within their budget?

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#32

Post by supportengineer »

nhod wrote: post #19
nateguchi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some details on the hardware? What was the image capture device?

The Cocktail Consoles (as we called them) were all custom hardware. Everything was designed to be rock-solid both physically (bars are full of drunk people and liquids) and operationally (everything had to Just Work). Leo designed a core “motherboard” which was a PIC microcontroller (I forget the exact model) that did five main things: serial I/O for the buttons and joystick; serial I/O for the attached TV tuner; ser…

All this was done in Manhattan itself?

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#33

Post by qwertox »

nhod wrote: post #29
CSMastermind wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they find you an pitch the project to you? You mentioned that the project required some rather arcane programming knowledge. Could you elaborate on this? What areas of programming did you have to delve into that might be considered out of the ordinary? Was there any discussion about privacy when you were implementing it? Were there any features or functionalities that you wanted to implement but couldn't due…

How they found me: When I was 18, I was hired by The Disinformation Company (disinfo.com, the subculture search engine, which presaged our now post-truth conspiracy-theory laden world, though now sadly a shadow of its former self) as their Director of Technology. (I was precocious.) Disinfo had a cozy relationship with Razorfish, perhaps the biggest of the new breed of digital transformation consulting companies that…

I love this response. How it gives so much insight into an area of someone's past life dealing with interesting topics, giving one a glimpse of what it was like back then and there.

I'd enjoy reading this as a detailed book.

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#34

Post by supportengineer »

fallendev wrote: post #3

This place seemed so cool, it's a shame it's gone now, I would love to go to a bar like this.

Around 2001 in San Francisco I stumbled into the ruins of a nightclub called the Caribbean Zone, and felt the same way when I saw the waterfall and the Doobie Brothers' airplane

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#35

Post by roughly »

rozap wrote: post #23
confoundcofound wrote: post #9

Is there any way back (forward) to this sort of tech innocence?

I think the general concept has continued to circulate on the internet. Chat roullete was popular for a long time, https://chat.meatspac.es/ was a great niche for a while, omegle, etc, etc. But like Leo said in the video, these sorts of "experiments" are really sensitive to a critical mass, where they're super fun if you have > N people on the thing at the same time, and kinda weird if you have < N.

I think there’s a bell curve here - weird below N, cool above N but below X, and sufficiently full of unwanted penises above X to get weird again.

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#36

Post by BowBun »

barcode_feeder wrote: post #26
nhod wrote: post #10

I actually was the sole developer who wrote all the software that “networked” the custom hardware together. This project was so ahead of its time and yet required some rather arcane programming knowledge. So much fun though. AMA!

Know of any comparably inspired venues in 2023?

Not exactly the same thing, but they had a phone version of this at MeowWolf, the huge interactive trippy art exhibit, in Denver. They had phone terminals laying around with a whole directory of fake businesses. At first, I thought they staffed the lines with employees, but it turned out to be a system like this minus the video screens.

Re: Way ahead of its time: The Remote Lounge NYC (2013)

#39

Post by detourdog »

nhod wrote: post #10

I actually was the sole developer who wrote all the software that “networked” the custom hardware together. This project was so ahead of its time and yet required some rather arcane programming knowledge. So much fun though. AMA!

KPC that you?
Post reply on HN