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Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

prettyip.meetstrange.com

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Re: Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

#31

Post by sgt »

JackWebbHeller wrote: post #7

People are bashing this for being 'pointless', but hey, so is the next great to-do list app you made in 48 hours. This is a fun little experiment. I can see an actual use for this. Look for example at Identicons, Wavatars, and MonsterIDs[1]. They all use browser variables to generate random avatars for use around the web, e.g. on blog comments. I imagine this could do something similar, and a nice colour palette is a…

I agree! Useless things can be some of the most fun things to do with your time. I do recreational motorcycle riding, and admittedly from a practical point of view it's pointless, it's my favorite activity!

Re: Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

#32

Post by up_and_up »

JackWebbHeller wrote: post #7

People are bashing this for being 'pointless', but hey, so is the next great to-do list app you made in 48 hours. This is a fun little experiment. I can see an actual use for this. Look for example at Identicons, Wavatars, and MonsterIDs[1]. They all use browser variables to generate random avatars for use around the web, e.g. on blog comments. I imagine this could do something similar, and a nice colour palette is a…

I see this as like an internet art installation. It injects art into an unexpected place/space.

Finding patterns and/or meaning out of nothing is quite interesting.

Is art useless and not worth executing?

Re: Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

#33

Post by eksith »

pcole wrote: post #5
LukaD wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work for me either. I'm guessing it interprets the 4 octets as RGBA or something similar. It's a cute idea.

Hey guys. Sorry its not working, its on a shared hosting, hosting it somewhere else right now. Its just a bit of fun really, grabs the first 3 numbers of your ip, turns that into an rgb color then generates a color pallet.

Might I recommend a VPS? Don't worry, I'm not getting comission, but Digital Ocean has pretty reasonable prices for fun side projects like this. BTW, this works flawlessly for me on FF, but I wish my colors were prettier though ;)

Re: Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

#35

Post by pdenya »

up_and_up wrote: post #32
JackWebbHeller wrote: post #7

People are bashing this for being 'pointless', but hey, so is the next great to-do list app you made in 48 hours. This is a fun little experiment. I can see an actual use for this. Look for example at Identicons, Wavatars, and MonsterIDs[1]. They all use browser variables to generate random avatars for use around the web, e.g. on blog comments. I imagine this could do something similar, and a nice colour palette is a…

I see this as like an internet art installation. It injects art into an unexpected place/space. Finding patterns and/or meaning out of nothing is quite interesting. Is art useless and not worth executing?

Is generating a 4 color palette based of a random seed all it takes to be art? Not to say it wasn't worth executing from a personal standpoint, it was probably fun to build if nothing else, but really what possible use can anyone else get out of this?

Re: Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

#37

Post by pcole »

pdenya wrote: post #35
up_and_up wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as like an internet art installation. It injects art into an unexpected place/space. Finding patterns and/or meaning out of nothing is quite interesting. Is art useless and not worth executing?

Is generating a 4 color palette based of a random seed all it takes to be art? Not to say it wasn't worth executing from a personal standpoint, it was probably fun to build if nothing else, but really what possible use can anyone else get out of this?

We put this together one afternoon because it was fun and quick to do. We were looking into generating colours for our site and logo that would somehow be different for every visitor. We thought about this but then realised it wouldn't be that practical. If it can inspire someone to do something similar but more useful then that's enough for me :-)

Re: Show HN: What colour is your IP address?

#38

Post by Dylan16807 »

dllthomas wrote: post #30
Udo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just hash the actual IP address. For example, take the IP and apply MD5; then take three bytes each to make, say, 3-colored "flags". That would totally work and yet be reasonably anonymous. This would also take care of the fact that colors come as three byte values and not four.

That would not work, as stated. The search space is way too small. Simply exhaustively building a table mapping hash to IP address is tractable. This could be ameliorated by including a site-specific secret in the hashed value; I'm not comfortable calling that "secure" but it does address this particular flaw.

Yes, but given a single hash you are only able to reduce to 200 candidate IPs.
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