from Hacker News

Show HN: Lapface – live community of people working on laptops

by jiggity on 6/23/15, 12:48 PM with 12 comments

  • by m12k on 6/23/15, 2:15 PM

    A system much like this was used as a plot device in a Danish crime novel written in 2000. In the book ("Mailstorm") the protagonist witnesses what appears to be a murder on the 'random webcam feed as a screensaver'-network. Later he realizes the internet connection was down at the time, so it must have been running on LAN...

  • by jiggity on 6/23/15, 12:48 PM

    Lapface was my weekend hack designed to give the feeling of working with other people. It takes a low resolution webcam shot every 3 seconds of you working. I made the image with slow fps to relieve you of the pressure that usually comes with broadcasting

    It feels nice to have people working alongside you. I've had it described as a virtual coffeeshop where you see people in the ambient background

    Let me know what you think!

  • by arsenide on 6/23/15, 3:09 PM

    I am really enjoying this, and will probably be broadcasting here the rest of the day -- if not longer. However, and this may be solely my personal feeling, I wish there was some sort of IRC-style chat instead of the submission/comment system on the right side, as it is now.

  • by fizzbatter on 6/23/15, 1:43 PM

    Interesting project!

    My first thought is that i am oddly intrigued - enough to try this. Also, someone made the comment of showing people nearby - i like this idea quite a bit. Again, no idea why.

    I'm mildly hesitant to broadcast "to the world", as i'm not sure i have a desire for that. I'd love to broadcast with my coworkers / peers of some sort. It would be interesting to find methods to group users. (though, i imagine that's hard to do atm, given the small userbase)

    Small note, should the "discuss on hacker news" link point to here? Because currently it points to http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

  • by irremediable on 6/23/15, 2:11 PM

    Nice idea! I like the no-database approach, too... I need to look into memcached.