What colour is your IP address?
Other
fun web experiment
SHOW HN2013
What colour is your IP address?
Heh, thanks for the correction - will make that change now!
prettyip.meetstrange.com208points
73comments
#66of 1,739 in 2013
Top 4%of 2013 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
14 positive, 20 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 8 critical, out of 44 comments about the project. Thread score +0.13.
Idea: 8 for, 3 againstDesign: 4 for, 1 againstExecution: 1 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstPerformance: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fun experiment and creative art-like idea
From 3 comments
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…
up_and_up on HNPeople 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…
JackWebbHeller on HNI think this is very cool. A very creative way of showing off skills. Does it help me with anything right now? I'm not sure. But it does show outside the box thinking. I would…
orangethirty on HN
Useful for distinguishing IPs in logs or ssh sessions
From 2 comments
Its not pointless at all - I can think of situation where this idea would be very useful: When looking at client (request) logs full with IP addresses, the colorful visual cue…
spion on HNThis would be a great bash addition for anyone that sshs into servers all day. Just as some people color their console red in production or green for staging, this would be a…
gsiener on HN
Objections
Pointless as a product
From 2 comments
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…
pdenya on HNhonestly who cares what 'colour' an ip address is? plus, it doesn't work "Your IP Address is We can't find it... Sorry! "
arb99 on HN
Privacy: colours can be reversed to recover the IP
From 3 comments
I like how you blur out the IP address but it could be trivially recovered by sampling the colors :)
tlrobinson on HNHmm would be neat if the site saved the color scheme the user's IP created and showed a list of them sans the actual address. But then again, the users IP could be easier figured…
niix on HNThat 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…
dllthomas on HN
Does not work for some users, shows can't find IP
From 3 comments
honestly who cares what 'colour' an ip address is? plus, it doesn't work "Your IP Address is We can't find it... Sorry! "
arb99 on HNDoesn't work for me in Fx 18 but it does seem to work in Chrome (both Win7)
Kartificial on HNThe work to derive the palette? Do you mean RGB to HSL and back? That isn't particularly CPU-intensive. One of many implementations:…
rachelbythebay on HN
Ignores IPv6
From 1 comment
What, no IPv6? :(
bnewbold on HN
Requests
Support IPv6 addresses
From 2 comments
As a follow up to your little project, find out a way to color IPv6 addresses ::] *edit: changed standard smiling emoticon to IPv6 smiling emoticon :P
marios on HNWhat, no IPv6? :(
bnewbold on HN
Let users enter an arbitrary IP address
From 1 comment
Neat! My place of work has a surprisingly attractive IP address palette. It would be cool if you could specify an IP address; I'd like to see what the IP for my hosted VM looks…
meej on HN
Use a better IP-to-colour mapping
From 2 comments
FWIW, due to the way that the IPv4 address space is allocated, you could achieve far fewer "collisions" (i.e. different IPs producing the same palette) by throwing away the first…
siddboots on HNIt would be nice if there were a less trivial mapping of IP address to color -- something where ASN boundaries mattered, and maybe where netmask got taken into account. (so a…
rdl on HN
Questions
Can this be used for avatars or visitor colours?
From 2 comments
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…
JackWebbHeller on HNI was considering something related for my own software -- giving some level of differentiation to "Anonymous" users in a discussion, to reduce samefagging; users on the same…
Shish2k on HN
Alternatives named
Identicons, Wavatars and MonsterIDs
From 1 comment
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…
JackWebbHeller on HN
ntc color name tool
From 1 comment
You can name the color too - http://chir.ag/projects/ntc/ It's not an exact match of course but I did my best to make it as close as possible.
chime on HN