138 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] thread
(comment deleted)
The battlestations subreddit has a lot of really epic setups.
It really does! It's massively inspired by that subreddit and /r/macsetups too. I wanted to create this to hopefully fill the gaps a little when talking about your setup in detail. It's a very early Alpha so it isn't very feature rich but planning to build on this more in the future.
Most of those I saw were pretty much the same. Towers with windows and those ugly LED wall triangles, often aiming for a "vaporwave"/CGA look.

There was definitely more variety when beige cases were the rule and you had to paint and dremel things yourselves…

And /r/retrobattlestations !
There also used to be deskography.org
This is a refreshing fun project. What are your plans for this site if you don't mind me asking?
Thanks! It started as a conversation between a friend mostly off the back off /r/battlestations and how I'd love to be able to see more of peoples setups.

Initial steps where just to throw something together to allow people to upload multiple setups and view others.

Next steps on the roadmap

- Multiple image upload support

- Like setups

- Build collections out of setups

- Search (tags, product names, setup titles etc)

- Tagging products on setups (like how Facebook does but you know, respect peoples data etc)

Later later steps would probably be allowing the user to build collections out of popular products that get uploaded.

Cool! I am working on almost the exact same thing. Grats on shipping!
As a computer hardware nerd, I'm always down for a good build sharing site. And for an alpha, you seem to have gotten the basics down.

I'm curious, though, what this will bring to the table that other sites like Builds GG[0] or PCPartPicker[1] don't currently offer. I would assume including information about the desk and lighting setup? I'd like to know what's on the roadmap for features and sucj.

Best of luck!

[0] https://builds.gg/

[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/

Weird, no images load for me on this site.
Unfortunately, all the images are returning "402: Payment Required" for me [1].

[1] https://i.imgur.com/WWuN4Tw.png

Thanks for sending that over - fixed now!
Just an FYI- there was goatse as the 3rd image when I loaded the site, username was also goatse. You'll probably want to remove that.
(comment deleted)
Working on the image fix now slowly dying inside

Edit: Fixed!

Something's up with the retrieval of images. Getting errors (402 status code) from Firebase storage / Google. — EDIT: seems to be fixed!

Fun project though! What are your plans with it? Like to hear about your ideas.

Some – unsolicited – suggestions (feel free to ignore):

- describing (primary) usage(s) – e.g. workstation, gaming, web dev, music, audio, etc.

- describing setup components by selecting items from a parts list

- adding benchmark results

- filtering / searching setups by varying properties

- breaking down components even further.. there's a huge community around mechanical keyboards for example, these come in all kinds of shapes.. users may have desires along the lines of: "I'd like to see setups with wireless 60% keyboards"

- listing similar setups ("if you like this, you might like..")

- capturing setup updates (and displaying VCS-style diffs :-))

- recently updated systems

- in the same vein: build logs

- image annotations

- up- / downvoting

- comments

Fun stuff to come up with.

These are great suggestions, thank you and it's exactly what I've posted it for tbh - It feels like this project could have endless possibilities but I also want to know what others care about too.

My next steps (I posted below but happy to post here too)

- Multiple image upload support

- Like setups

- Build collections out of setups

- Search (tags, product names, setup titles etc)

- Tagging products on setups (like how Facebook does but you know, respect peoples data etc)

I think after that or even during, I'll need to definitely come up with a more structured roadmap.

Again, thank you for the suggestions!

+1 for comments. Would like to be able to ask questions.
Cool, but I’m sad that a picture of my “workstation” is basically just a Thinkpad.
Pfff, amateur. My "workstation" is just an iPad.
This would still be cool to upload imo :)
The computer itself isn't the only interesting part of a workstation setup, your desk layout can be pretty interesting too
Just a bare desk and an occasional smart phone next to the laptop :(
Please tell me you're stripping EXIF tags from all images; otherwise this is just a "rob these people now" list.
First image I checked for this, full EXIF data is intact, including GPS data.
Kinda surprising, as many web-applications forget to add that meta-data after e.g. resizing photos. Still, not a good idea to upload pictures with GPS data to an online service (unintentionally).
iOS includes it by default.
It disappoints me that there apparently isn't an option on iOS to track photo location using some scheme other than EXIF. I really like being able to organize photos by location on my phone, but I dislike relying on image hosts and social networks to strip EXIF data when I post them to the web. Couldn't iOS store locations for photos it's taken out of band, in a sqlite db or something?
You can strip your own exif, there are many apps. Do not trust anyone else to do so, or not to keep that data for themselves even when they do. Cougfhaceboockough.
So iOS does it one way, Android does it another, and your old DSLR still stores data in EXIF? Sounds like a great way to be locked into a certain vendor.
I wish cameras wouldn't default to include location data. Most people don't even know pictures can include that type of info. It really should be an opt-in feature.
There is nothing extraordinary though, especially for HN crowd.
Soooo... everybody's a neat freak with a Ph.D. in cable management.
Might be a little bit of self selection bias going on here.
Everyone willing to post their photo, at least. My hardware setup isn't that different than images, but I have 2 laptops KVMed to one monitor and the resulting pile of cables. I have no desire for the world to see my chaos, or my messy office, or my pile of diet mountain dew cans, because somehow admitting to such vices on HN is OK, but documenting them via a photo feels wrong.
You see the same principle behind people's Instagrams. People shoot, re-shoot and meticulously edit their uploads so they're as flawless as possible. I think Reddit has something called 'r/shittybattlestations' as a joke sub to counter the deluge of samey "minimal IKEA desk w/ hyper-expensive equipment" content on the main subs.
Great idea. I used to be active on the CGTalk forum back in the day and always loved the workstation threads.
This is a cool idea. One suggestion though, it would be nice when viewing a setup to be able to use arrow keys to advance to the next setup.
As a regular visitor on /r/macsetups, I find your site's navigation cool! I look forward to more setups :-)
Suggestion:

a) let the user add their commentary and

b) get folks to mention which chair, too. Some of us invest in ergonomic chairs, and those who don't would benefit from opinions on which chairs are good

For what it's worth, I got this chair recently (a Torch Iris Gold) in Hong Kong, and found it incredible value for money, at least compared to a Herman Miller Aeron, Mirra etc; : it has a bunch of adjustments that the Aeron and Mirra do not. Obviously, this advice isn't that useful if you're not in Hong Kong.

https://shop.freemax.com.hk/eng/product/%E9%9B%BB%E8%85%A6%E...

Indeed. Added my setup just now, comments (and votes) would make this much more interesting.

Also please fix scrolling in the submission form on mobile (iOS) with the -webkit-overflow-scrolling CSS property.

All seem to be nice and ordered places, which is definitely not my case.
A nice setup is something I'm really, really looking forward to once my student life is over. So I can't upvote this, viewing it makes me too sad :'(
If anyone's really into "setups", I'd highly recommend checking out usesthis.com. There's some great discussion on why people like certain tools, and some high-profile people on there from all walks of tech life (writers, podcasters, musicians, mechanical engineers). Here's a few of my favorites:

Aaron Schwartz: https://usesthis.com/interviews/aaron.swartz/

Mike Hoye (Mozilla): https://usesthis.com/interviews/mhoye/

Drew DeVault: https://usesthis.com/interviews/drew.devault/

Naomi Wu: https://usesthis.com/interviews/naomi.wu/

The improvements section/conclusion in Aaron Schwartz article is actually very possible today.

>I wish all my hard drives were consolidated onto one big drive. I wish I had SoundSticks. I wish my G1 was much, much faster. I wish that Terminal would have built-in support for screen so that different screens would appear as tabs and it would auto-reconnect. I wish that there was decent todo management software that deeply integrated with my email. I wish that everyone had perfectionist levels of attention to detail.

Phones are much, much faster, NAS’s (synology for example) allow you to merge a whole bunch of drives on a network. And Iterm is integrated with tmux, which makes it feel supremely native.

Not sure about the todo or attention to detail though.

I think most “to do” / productivity software integrstes with email these days (ie Asana has plugins for both GMail and Outlook and I think lots do), and slightly related emails has also become more easily “actionable” when Mailbox created the whole “swipe to action” email gestures that Apple and google then learned from etc.
You can't really see it in my article there, I use a rolling cart with my laptops (Apple or Xiaomi depending): https://i.imgur.com/0OB23tw.jpg

Better look: https://i.imgur.com/ydgpMus.jpg

I avoid having a desk surface because it just gets overwhelmed with crap. This way I can't just set things down- they need to be put somewhere. Also I can move it out of the way for shooting YouTube videos, roll near the window when I want more daylight, roll near the printers when I am tweaking them etc.

It looks neat and cool but I prefer a sturdy surface than the flimsy coat hanger
Yeah there's a bit of wobble, I could see that annoying some people.
It is crazy that we have some trade war and xenophobia going on at the moment, I think your channel and comments here are helpful in challenging assumptions commonly held in the West.

I have a rig like yours with a hospital style adjustable height table that has wheels and can be used in a bed (if need be) to pile the junk on. The lip around the edge of the table top stops small things rolling off, plus it has a cup holder, unlike most tables.

I will be subscribing even though your content is not my normal fayre and I commend you for making the world that bit more interesting and surprising!

Thanks Theodores! It's a bit crazy, I'm trying to be very, very careful...
How is this different from /r/battlestations?
You have a NSFW image in there...
yeah seriously... RIP my job - waiting for that ASK HN: Who's hiring June 2019 edition.
Seems to be gore/porn on the frontpage... perhaps some moderation wouldn't be a bad idea?
Might need some moderation as an image in the first row was about as NSFW as could possibly be and not remotely related to computers.
Flag it!
I backed out quickly and don't intend to go back as I am at work and I don't think it would look great if someone walked by with that on my screen.
I meant: flag it here in HN. That's what I did...
I suppose that's appropriate. HN's moderators can bring it back once they remove it and put a hold on new submissions until they fix it.
OK, we've turned off the flags now. Thanks!
It is simultaneously depressing and delightful that you've got goatse on the first page.
indeed. classic. i never have and never would never post goatse so i don't actually condone others posting it though.
Or to use some web service to detect nudity in images.

I was getting my college degree during peak goatse and have gotten good at tuning out goatse, so it hasn't hurt my impression of the site. It's a great idea to bring usesthis to the masses, and I wish success for OP. I'd consider excluding things that are primarily gaming because there are already places for people to show off their gaming rigs (such as battlestations on reddit).

IIRC Google Cloud, Azure, and (least certain of this one) AWS have machine learning driven adult image detection (among other things, like recognizing famous people's faces) as a service.
I just had it sitting open on my big ass monitor for about 15 minutes and had no idea it was up for the whole company to see.