Top all-time · #2260
Boris Smus
Personal blog · smus.com · on HN as borismusprogrammingwebdesign
Boris Smus's personal blog at smus.com covers programming, web and design. Since 2011, 36 different Hacker News readers have linked it 43 times, most often “Ultrasonic Networking via Web Audio”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Personal site of Boris Smus — essays on software and interaction design, projects, and notes on the books he reads.
Most-linked posts?
- Ultrasonic Networking via Web Audio6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2013-08-08
- Use OAuth2, Facebook and Twitter Auth in Chrome Extensions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-07-08
- Responsive WebVR, headset optional (2015)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-02-02
- Backbone vs Ember2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-02-16
- Let's get physical(units)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-05-03
- Consolidating mouse, touch and other pointer-like event systems with pointer.js2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-14
What Hacker News says?
"Wireless" transmission of sounds through the air to achieve some programmatic purpose is relatively widespread, although not very well-known. The air is a noisy medium, so ultrasound is often used to move the sounds squarely out of the frequency range that humans can produce or hear, but usually keeping it within ranges that off-the-shelf microphones can record and speakers can produce. In recent years, one particu…
Comment linking /ultrasonic-networking/
on “The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)”Submitted Backbone vs Ember as a story · 147 points
HN discussionI find this to be a very relevant article on render times between various contexts: http://smus.com/canvas-vs-svg-performance/ Along these lines I've written projects in canvas only to realize later I should've written in SVG. One of the aims of two.js is to afford a canonical API for the developer. So the idea is that if you're rendering lots of particles and not doing any manipulation to individual particles, canv…
Comment linking /canvas-vs-svg-performance/
on “Two.js”Submitted Developing Multiplayer HTML5 Games with Node.js as a story · 108 points
HN discussionPre-6.0 Android permissions aren't granular and are 'take it or leave it' approved at first install. Some apps install services that run at startup. This would make for a rather excellent monetizatation/interactivity strategy for a chat app, which already has all the necessary permissions for 'normal' operation (think Snapchat LIVE or Moments). Sonic networking in action: [1] http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/ […
Comment linking /ultrasonic-networking/
on “Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC”Submitted JavaScript Screen video capture for Chrome OS as a story · 59 points
HN discussionFor anyone having trouble believing that their computer can network using sound, give this demo a try: http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/
Comment linking /ultrasonic-networking/
on “Mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps?”Submitted Ultrasonic Networking via Web Audio as a story · 51 points
HN discussionThe book "Seeing like a State" expounds on this topic significantly, using scientific forestry as an example. The "recipe for failure" [0]: 1. Look at a complex and confusing reality 2. Fail to understand all the subtleties of how the complex reality works 3. Attribute that failure to the irrationality of what you are looking at, rather than your own limitations 4. Come up with an idealized blank-slate vision of wha…
Comment linking /books/seeing-like-a-state-by-james-scott/
on “Management by metrics leads us astray”Submitted Ultrasonic Networking with the Web Audio API as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThere was a whole wave of interest in this space in 2014. I believe @kategeek did the first easy-to-use library with Quietnet ;) https://github.com/Katee/quietnet Some other material on the subject: - http://www.whence.com/minimodem/ - https://quiet.github.io/quiet-js/ - https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2014/files/05-li-lynch-z... - https://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/09/ultrasonic-communication-c... - https://smus.co…
Comment linking /ultrasonic-networking/
on “Show HN: I made a tool to communicate data using the PC speaker”Submitted Ultrasonic networking as a story · 7 points
HN discussionA webapp using the Web Audio API adopting the same sort of approach: http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/
Comment linking /ultrasonic-networking/
on “Quietnet: Chat client that works over near-ultrasonic sound”Submitted Frank Herbert by Tim O’Reilly as a story · 4 points
HN discussionA little while back, somebody a cool demo of ultrasonic networking (using HTML5 Web Audio!) http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/
Comment linking /ultrasonic-networking/
on “Scientist-developed malware covertly jumps air gaps using inaudible sound”Submitted The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThat was my first question too. This is the best summary I found: http://smus.com/backbone-and-ember It links to a much longer IRC argument between their respective evangelists -- the whole thing is an interesting read if you like that sort of thing. But the takeaway is that Ember is pretty opinionated about how to connect views to subviews to templates to models to controllers to data stores, and backbone pretty mu…
Comment linking /backbone-and-ember
on “Ember.js - Rich Internet Applications Done Right”Submitted Forward polyfills: How the web should work as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI thought this was going to be about adding spatial audio processing [1] to recorded music. One of the reasons recorded music is uncanny is that the act of listening to something with stereo channels piped directly into your ears is vastly different than listening to the same music in a room as it is affected by the room's dynamics. There is a lot of work being done in VR research labs to simulate realistic audio by…
Comment linking /spatial-audio-web-vr/
on “Undisembodying Recorded Music”Submitted Responsive WebVR, headset optional (2015) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHere are a few of my favorite crowdsourcing links. They're not all directly related to Mechanical Turk, but you may find them interesting. Research on crowdsourcing complex tasks, such as writing articles (open source): http://smus.com/crowdforge A company that adds an automated quality layer and/or automated peer review layer: http://www.crowdflower.com Crowdsourced translation: http://www.mygengo.com Audio transcr…
Comment linking /crowdforge
on “Ask HN: Amazon Mechanical Turk Examples”Submitted Really Simple Social Syndication (RSSS) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI highly recommend this interactive timeline of Invention and Innovation cards, which visualizes the network of interdependency relationships. It features a clean interface, consistent visual style, fast loading times, and intuitive interaction design, while being informative and engaging. * Time Span: 2,000,000 BCE to 1993 CE * Mobile-Friendly: presented as a stack of cards on mobile devices for easy finger-browsin…
Comment linking /visual-chronology-science-discovery-v2/
on “Visual Chronology of Science and Discovery 2.0 (2024)”Submitted Backbone and Ember, two distinct philosophies as a story · 3 points
HN discussionGame developers sometimes make the “randomness” favor the player, because of how we perceive randomness and chance. For example in Sid Meier’s Memoir, this is mentioned. Quoting from a review of said book: > People hate randomness: To placate people's busted sense of randomness and overdeveloped sense of fairness, Civ Revolutions had to implement some interesting decisions: any 3:1 battle in favor of human became a…
Comment linking /books/sid-meiers-memoir/
on “LÖVE: 2D Game Framework for Lua”Submitted Let's get physical(units) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Loading Large Assets in Modern HTML5 Games as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Visual Chronology of Science and Discovery (According to Asimov’s Book) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Simulating wealth inequality as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Responsive WebVR, Headset Optional as a story · 2 points
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