List for whatever reason.. the most obscure, interesting design, the worst design, etc.
I'm waiting to see some exciting findings.
The website of the Nintendo founder's family office. It..is just beautifully designed, and a homage to the original game consoles and the entire art form of PC gaming when it started.
Earlier thread on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26803201
Edit (from the site): "Japan was once globally renowned for its people's quality of unique creativity teamed with a pioneering mindset. Their innovation and inventions changed the world. But that golden era has long been gone. It seems that the quality Japanese people once possessed is overshadowed by worry and fear."
It's really interesting to hear that coming from the family office of one the largest companies in Japan. I can't imagine an American leader making a public statement like that (about the USA), probably because US companies prey on fear and FOMO.
I'm referring to the typeface that is similar to Inter (but isn't).
Basically, it's so bad, it's charmingly good.
A private artistic project by Russian artist Oleg Paschenko. Very strange, creepy, interesting, and years ago, it was interactive (flash). Now it's just a walkthrough video that doesn't provide the same mystique. And it seems some of the creepier skeletal sections aren't shown. I think it might be a different version from the original.
Back when I first stumbled upon the site (90s), it was like a curiosity amplification engine for my young mind. What is it? Why would someone spend time on something like this? And why wouldn't they provide information about what it is or who they are? Am I using it right? Are there easter eggs I'm missing out on?
It was depressing, creepy, and intriguing. I wasn't able to find any writeup on it when I first found it (pre-google) and I was just so drawn in. I'd click in one place, and something weird would show up on the screen, then I'd click again and nothing would happen. I'd see random flashes of skeletal structures or a small child that appeared to be crying. And the sounds were just as disturbing as the visuals. I never forgot it.
Here's a writeup in eyemagazine https://eyemagazine.com/feature/article/conclave-obscurum
Here it is in the Web Design Museum https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/flash-websites/conclave-obsc...
He was employed since '99 by Art. Lebedev Studio, one of the first web design companies here, known also for the Optimus keyboard. And he wrote some time later that it took him a while to realize that Lebedev, the company's owner, was just giving him money to let him continue making his art.
<!-- <div class="squeeze-brains">
<img class="brain-head" src="https://images.lingscars.com/images/brains/ling-brain-head-index.png" alt="Ling top of her head" />
<img class="brain-body" src="https://images.lingscars.com/images/brains/ling-brain-body-index.png" alt="Ling wide open head with brains" />
<img class="brain-eyes" src="https://images.lingscars.com/images/brains/ling-eyes-detail.png" alt="Ling's crossed eyes detail" />
<img class="brain-splat" src="https://images.lingscars.com/images/brains/ling-brain-splat-index.png" alt="Ling's brain blood splat" />
<img class="brain-title-1" src="https://images.lingscars.com/images/brains/title-1.png" alt="Brains section title part 1" />
<img class="brain-title-2" src="https://images.lingscars.com/images/brains/title-2-index.png" alt="Brains section title part 2" />
<a href="/brains">Squeeze now!</a>
</div> -->Definitely the guy has a great humor.
Sadly, I don't really know of anything like that anymore. I'll run across a random Tumblr from time to time. Or, strike gold with a random Pintrest list. But, it's nothing like it used to be, in regards to out-of-the-box web design.
Ah yeah that's a nice hit of nostalgia.
gmunk was a favorite of mine back then. Nice to see he's had a rad career: https://gmunk.com/
Looks like the site is still around, but with the awesome flash content replaced by pictures.
I used to go on k10k and deskmod all the time back then!
For 'answers' to these deep questions, see:
In Sweden, we use week-number quite often, but it is nowhere to be found in our calendar software, so, there is a webpage that just displays what week it is now, nothing else..
also: vecka = week
nu = now
(function(v,e,c,k,a,n,u){v['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=a;v[a]=v[a]||function() ...
Map-based internet radio tuner.
As a user (and fan) of Kirby CMS [0] I really found it interesting to see this being shown.
Its a family tree of zoo-born red pandas with almost 30,000 pictures (hand-tagged and searchable) and over 1300 animals.
I'm proud of making it for many reasons, but this is the biggest one: if you pick an animal and swipe through a few dozen photos, you start seeing a little life, growing and changing, and eventually ending. It's a precious lens on the world.
I would have (if I would ever have had such an idea - unlikely) and added footnotes like in scientific writing instead of not linking out. But whom am I to judge.
A fun way to make a shareable board of notes, links, and content
It's a huge compilation of weird technologies and inventions. Most of them are crackpot, of course, but some of them are legit and truly fascinating. Rex Research predates the Internet, you used to have to order from little ads in the back of Popular Mechanics. Back then this was pretty much the only way you could learn about this stuff. Nowadays some of the less crackpot tech is more widely known, and some of the inventions even have their own Wikipedia pages, e.g.:
Rolamite "the only elementary machine discovered in the twentieth century" http://www.rexresearch.com/wilkes/1wilkes.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolamite
Aerosol Electrical Generator aka Vaneless ion wind generator "a device that generates electrical energy by using the wind to move charged particles across an electric field" http://www.rexresearch.com/marks/marks.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator
Hilsch-Ranque vortex tube "a mechanical device that separates a compressed gas into hot and cold streams. The gas emerging from the hot end can reach temperatures of 200 °C (392 °F), and the gas emerging from the cold end can reach −50 °C (−58 °F).[1] It has no moving parts." http://www.rexresearch.com/ranque/ranque.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube Maxwell's Demon! Although it does not violate thermodynamics.
(Disclaimer: I'm also the author of said site, but it answers the question really well.)
Though it's a pretty faithful rendition of their old paper catalogue...
from his news section:
I should update this website more often, but no one visits art websites so much these days. I think in 2010 I'd average 200 visits a day, and I think it's about 30 these days. So if you're here, thanks visiting my website.
-- Not after HN meets you, mate.
Ahahaha :P ;) xx;p
The same flan since 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20001206203700/http://www.pudim....
Sadly it no longer exists.
It appeared to be some kind of augmented reality game leaving trails of (very) difficult clues to follow. The website itself used hand-written pages that appeared to have been scanned in and posted as images (some as image maps that linked to other pages depending on which hand-written words you click on).
Some of it was very funny, some of it was quite spooky, and none of it made any kind of sense to me. It was great.
"There is no terror but freedom from the illusion"
There's a wiki that documents the various pages here: https://hat-shoe.fandom.com/wiki/Hatshoe_Wiki
And here's the homepage from the 25th of August, 2011: https://web.archive.org/web/20110825015858/http://www.hatsho...
(try typing dir)
Web search for pages which are "simple in design. Simple HTML, non-commerical sites are preferred. Pages should not use much scripts/css for cosmetic effect."
Warren Buffett is practically a Luddite.
Off the top of my head, I remember visiting the website for the movie Donnie Darko back when the film was originally released and being blown away at the strangeness and creativity of it.
Clicking on the header launches a (simple) WebGL music video
This is a website I've built cataloguing high-effort and unique websites, if you don't mind the shameless self-promotion.
One of the most distinctive websites I've found on my journeys is http://www.deuceofclubs.com/ . I've visited many times and it is still impossible to categorise.
Neocities also offers much of what you seek.
[1] https://yvettesbridalformal.p1r8.net/
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110718150425/http://yvettesbri...
They used to have different website, weird and entertaining at the same time. This one somewhat follows on the tradition.
A little confusing, but it allows advanced searching across multiple image search sites - set your filters then it shows you all the sites you can search with those settings and deep links to the search results for each one.
A collective fiction website, kind of like X-Files, meets the internet.
taxi1010.com. A veteran taxi driver (?) organizes his thoughts around "verbal self defense," creating a highly crosslinked database of adversarial conversational openers, and possible ways to deflect them. Reasonable starting point: http://www.taxi1010.com/stargate01.htm#sitemap
everything2.com: another free-form database mixing facts, fiction and personal notes written by an unusually literate subcommunity. Adjacent to slashdot and h2g2, even documents some early reactions to wikipedia. https://everything2.com/
My Boyfriend Came Back From The War: net artist Olia Lialina crafts a poem in the browser by exploiting properties of the medium. Remixed dozens of times by other net artists. Archived by Rhizome with a simulated slow load over Netscape. https://sites.rhizome.org/anthology/lialina.html
One of the top quantitative hedge funds in the world, 90s era website.
Wikipedia page for RT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies
The site map is a map of the campsite :D
HN discussion about the site: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27084995
Absolutely legendary.
Art project based around several hacked copies of Re-Volt and a flight simulator.
The artist also has some more recent work.
https://www.retroyou.org/archive_2015-1994.html
https://www.retroyou.org/sr_blue-planet-bulkdown.html
https://www.retroyou.org/sr_beta-renders-01_beta-interpretat...
However, I think I'd disagree. The reality is we all knew what OP meant because the colloquial (non-CS) definition of unique is just "very unusual". It isn't often in meatspace that humans are trying to distinguish completely physically unique items, so such a constrained definition is understandably rare in normal conversation.
In common contexts "unique" just means "unusual." It's like how "theory" can just mean "hypothesis" in normal discussion, but in strictly scientific contexts it only applies to explanations that are supported by a large body of evidence. So if one is in a rare context that is sensitive to the strict boolean definition of "unique," then you are correct. All other times (i.e., most of the time) you are incorrect.
When it comes to language, the most common usage is the correct usage. This may occasionally annoy us (see: "literally", "begging the question", etc.), but the fact is that languages are fluid and evolving, and there was no moment in history when the English language was frozen and declared perfect. Language is inherently democratic, and sometimes one is outvoted.
Granted, it's fine to try to realign the language to match your preferences, but more often than not this is a fool's errand.
Seafaring nomads that code up their own software tools.
Quite a story here.
is a 20 year old web art thing.
you have to click around. still works for the most part: I like the lotus page
https://www.superbad.com/1/lotus/index.html
the old memepool.com site was great. https://web.archive.org/web/20050531235511/http://www.memepo...
The result is beautiful and the creator's love spillingly apparent.
Workable on mobile but better on the desktop.
Sadly, the original website was taken down last year, but thanks to the Wayback Machine this masterpiece is still available to marvel at.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210330113905/http://www.peters...
Met the the guy who started this (now deceased) many years ago at a concert while I was in college. He owned the company that provided the PA and lighting, and was wondering around wearing the the most ridiculous motcross boots I had ever seen, struck up a conversation and he told me about this site, and I still think about it from time to time.
I think that was about 20 years ago.
Rather simple design, just a couple of images and text.
But the text is German dadaist poetry, and I'm not really sure if parts of it or the pictures aren't computer-generated, based on the sheer amount of content, supposedly created by a single person for fun.
On the other hand, the creator is kind of a genius, so maybe he really did write it all himself
It's a comical March Madness bracket tournament. The winner gets a candy bar, and everyone gets some lovely funny email updates as the month goes on. In addition to human competitors, you compete against a 1000 chimpanzee army and their own predictions. Each page on the website has a velociraptor button.
One just picked at random: https://paul-daunais.info/
however upon visiting just now it appears there has been an upgrade to poolsuite.net
Iniital thought: "eh, might be a cool free version of Ancestry, with some huge limitations because 'free' means 'bad'".
An hour later, I became convinced it was the most interesting website I've ever seen, both in what it provides and the technology behind it. It basically gameifies building your family tree.
Plug in a name of your grandparent. The site goes: "Hey, here are three documents you might want to attach." The documents are indexed by all the information they provide: age, sex, birth location, etc. Adding one document gives the site higher confidence in finding other documents. It results in a cascading effect where the more info you add, the more family members it finds, all in real time as you continue building out the tree.
Eventually, you add an ancestor that is the common ancestor of someone else, who already build out THEIR tree, and that tree becomes instantly available to you, and suddenly you see hundreds of relatives.
https://www.familysearch.org/en/home/sponsorship
Oh, and why are Mormons so into genealogy? (obviously this isn't the only reason)
"No court order has ever been served; any order served will be published here -- or elsewhere if gagged by order. Bluffs will be published if comical but otherwise ignored."
It is the "first" interactive music video of a german rap crew. I was stunned when I saw it many years ago. A wonderful piece of work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Unusual_articles
It's a giant rabbit hole.
A wonderful series of riddles, the answer of each being the filename of the next riddle.
It is an endless journey of investigation, parody, mystery, and intrigue. Try to click around for at least 10 minutes and see where you end up.
The teacher had some sort of a Russian name, I believe but the site was in English.
It helps to read the articles/blogs clutter-free. Tracks the % of reading, you can share your thoughts only after finishing reading at 90%.
2Advanced v2 (2001): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWkNkQoQY_8
2Advanced v4 (2003): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM_JNqFCvyo
For context on the time period, most people were on Windows 98 and IE6 was brand spanking new. This was truly mind blowing stuff.
Video only, since browsers can't easily run Flash these days.
I wonder what Steve Jobs would think of the new Flash, super bloated JavaScript websites.
Which are my favourite 500+ unique websites hidden in a google spreadsheet looking like a pokemon map.
because I love domain names, and I appreciate things on sale.
(not suitable for people with epilepsy)
A forum where you up and downvote with satoshi (BTC).
cross-ref - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30456611
especially rn while the world is on fire
Just magical
Almanac of human made EM signals. The diversity of signals and how they sound and look on a spectrograph is engaging and informative.
For the reasons we come here year after year.