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Internet Roadtrip: Vote to steer (neal.fun)
191 points by memalign 16 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 35 comments





Oh boy that's going to be hefty bill for the street view API, isn't it?

300 people * 12 votes/min -> 3600 street view events/min

3600 events/min * $0.002/event -> $7.2/min (at current usage)


A clever trick would be to cache all options in the 8-second voting window and then blast them out to the clients. By the time the vote concludes, the clients would already have the image of the next step, and the server would have had 8 seconds to send that to 400+ people. Plus, only a few maps API calls.

Though I'm not sure the StreetView API allows caching. Having worked with maps APIs in the past, I know they often don't allow it.


It is not clear what, exactly, they consider caching. There are caches everywhere, some of them practically outside of my application's control. Are those a violation of the ToS? Ask the ToS says is "caching".

They also have to catch you, first.


he cached the planet

1. Query the server for the URL

2. Use JavaScript to publish it to the webpage in an iframe

3. ????

4. Profit

You know our boy Neil isn't paying for shit lmao he's a real one


Nice! There was a Daedalus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_E._H._Jones) column along the same lines back in the day. A bus where passengers could vote for how to steer, with the ones paying most money having the most votes. (https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/b7f0cfb077d6ad0f094d665e2bca7072)

Love the immediate protest votes of Horn after we missed the turn.

I'm missing a history of past votes. Maybe a sliding window of the last n votes that you participated in and how you voted - as well as how it resolved.

Another idea that comes to mind is a to foster solidarity between voters by maybe notifying you if there is someone that voted exactly like you for the last n votes. Might be harder to do unless you're syncing votes via webrtc already


the number of cool ideas this Neal guy has is too damn high

Great old Twitch energy.

Badly needs inline chat to be complete.


Volume control needs to also be votable.

I wonder how hard it would be to use AI to generatively interpolate the images so it could be a video stream.

Fun idea! In between votes, the app could prefetch the next streetview frames, making it a bit more seamless once the vote has been cast?

Cool.. Interesting that we are going "forward" using the rear street view image, giving the impression that we're in the wrong lane heading towards oncoming traffic

Somehow appropriate for a crowdsourced experience of driving.

Great that it's stuck driving in the correct side of the road

It looks like a game of chicken for minutes now (we are driving on the left side of the road, red car is on a collision course but somehow it can still maintain an even distance).

The only thing I wish for is that the map showed the whole path taken since the website went live!

Does it not? Zoom out on the map.

I've found it to not work consistently. When I first started it showed the whole thing, but after playing for a while and some refreshes it only shows the path that this browser has seen. So if I switch apps for a while with it running in the bg, then come back, it skips straight from where we were when I last played to where we are now

I see this domain and immediately get excited.

Let's take this thing to Canada.

I love the radio, that's a great touch.

I wanted to turn left off of Stow St (and so did everyone else it seems), but at the intersection, there were no left-facing arrows, so we're still on Stow St.

I don't understand why this clown car can't u-turn on these streets...

It needs to resolve faster if more people vote, based on a running average of voters, or sqrt of viewers present.

#VoteHonk

Tip: open in new tab. History entry per click!

Why does it vote every 30 feet, when there is only one option?

Seems very slow.


Well, it's a road trip! Whoever said road trips are fast?

Good point, but I wish I could swivel my head to enjoy the scenery at least.

Are we there yet?

We're closer than we were before!

It's about the journey, not the destination

Also the vote timer is shorter if there's only one option!



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