I've not tried it because the site is down, but a requirement for paired users to have something in common - like being a hn reader - works really well for these things! Omegle's main chat is really spammy, but if you add "gardening" or whatever as a requested common topic, you're likely to get an actual conversation.
For anyone else troubleshooting I learned Firefox on iOS isn’t allowed to use the Web Audio API, so things seem broken when trying to connect to a recording device. You’ll have to use Safari.
I've just changed the DNS settings to a deno deploy instance, rather then my own server. (I initially used my own server, because in deno deploy it's split accross regions, so you have to find a match in your region.)
If that doesn't work it might be that the DNS change didn't propagate yet to you, please use https://coffeehouse.deno.dev/hn.
> while that does make sense, i am in a pretty isolated region and i'd like to pick a specific different region.
Really, people shouldn't have to be aware of regions at all, which is why I initially wanted to use just one server, rather then deno deploy. (I still plan to realize that with deno deploy, it's just harder.)
> also, while i am at it, i'd prefer a small group rather than one on one.
Thought about that, but one-on-one seems simpler in many ways. There's never the question of who starts speaking. If one person stops, the other starts. It's also easier for two people to find a common interest then for more.
right, no region is better than being tied to a specific region.
one-on-one requires everyone to speak. with more people some can listen and only speak when they have something interesting to add.
if the two people don't have a topic then there will be an awkward silence.
with more people it is also easier to find any topic to talk about.
for introverts getting started is difficult, but ending a conversation equally so.
in small groups people can join, wait until they are asked to introduce themselves, listen until they have something to say and leave whenever they need to without inconveniencing anyone else who wants to continue to talk.
This comment is giving me such a laugh. Mine too. When I visited the site out of morbid curiosity I saw that all I had to do to realise my nightmare was to click. Click anywhere. Click anywhere to start.
I had to hurl my computer off the bridge into the river to ensure I didn't click anywhere to start.
Even if you click, the text changes to say: "looking for a match ...
keep this tab open and your headphones on for a while ..."
There's no indicator for how long the queue is, so a match could happen at any time. The serif font, lack of sentence capitalization, and repeating stock photos of the espresso cup also create an emotional atmosphere reminiscent of the SCP Foundation and nosleep fictional horror stories involving the exploration of the internet.
Cool idea. I spent a few minutes waiting for a match but no luck, so I’ll try again later. If this link was shared to say, Reddit or 4chan, would it be fair to say we wouldn’t pair with random HN users?
Of course I have no way to know who really is an HN user. But why would anyone who isn't use an app that's marketed as voicechat with random HN users?
In the long term, I want to make it possible for everyone to have their own coffeehouse ... voicechat with random people from your favorite subreddit, readers of your favorite blog, etc..
I'm not sure what exactly your concern is. Someone just trolling? The nice thing about this concept is that no one can waste more time then they're willing to spend themselves. But if people just want to talk to HN users, even though they don't use it themselves, I think that's fine?
My answer is tongue-and-cheek. Users will frequently find innovative ways to use open products in unintended ways if there is a value proposition - even if the only value proposition is to troll a random stranger on the internet.
Maybe they work out the matching algorithm to consistently connect with exactly who they want to connect with. Maybe they can get IP addresses or PII or social engineering returns from meeting people.
All that said, that doesn't mean this project isn't valid, fun, cool, innovative, or has potential. Its an impossible expectation to want every side project to have perfect security, authentication, and user-verification/moderation.
I just want to make the point that there's a very high likelihood people will do weird shit with it.
I thought about that, but many people use HN via RSS, via other sites that scrap it, etc.. And of course people might want to use it from the address bar.
Cool idea. I'm stuck waiting for a match for a few minutes.
It would be great if it could show how long it takes on average until one is matched with a partner. Maybe it could also show how many people are chatting right now.
No. It just says that because if you do you use headphones, it would awkward if you take them off and then you don't hear it when you're matched someone wants to talk to you.
Actually, I would really want something like that to happen sometime. There was a really fun April Fool's experiment on Reddit a few years ago called Robin. Gathered bunch of people in small groups, active groups would then merge if people in there were active. Conversations there were much more spontaneous then on typical IRC/discord groups in know. I hope someone will manage to do something similar at scale, ideally on HN.
I'm pretty sure I've shared this anecdote before - when I was working at Thomson Reuters at one point HR was doing some sort of reach out to accountants that used our services and doing like socializing stuff with them and at one of these social get togethers where HR was doing their best to get the accountants to be sociable one of them stood up and said "You do realize we didn't become accountants because we like people?"
When I heard about it I really felt a deep connection to that accountant. Sure hope I never meet him.
I hate voice chats, just like I hate phone calls. I would feel much less awkward having a video chat with a stranger than just a voice call, though of course text is the best.
While I like the notion and appreciate the witty nomenclature, before anyone rushes out to register a domain anything like it - I must say that in my experience, the cat roulet folks (spelled that wrong on purpose btw) are quite aggressive at taking people to icann court or whatever it's called and forcing you to give up similar domain names.
I'm confused why it would take any time at all to find a match. Sounds fun and weird and a little awkward, just how the internet should be. But I can't seem to be matched with anyone.
Yes, I've been waiting (still on) for about 10 minutes so far on Chrome (adblock disabled) to ensure browser compatibility. I started a timer for a different task at around the same time the wait started, so this measurement is fairly accurate.
Update 1: A match didn't occur yet, 30 minutes total wait time.
Update 2: Still no match. I entered the wait room for the original submitted link and left the tab open for 30 more minutes in the background (2:48 pm ET to 3:18 pm ET), with unmuted headphones on. 60 minutes total wait time across sessions.
I'm using deno deploy, which is split accross 25 regions, so you have to match with someone from the same region. (I tried to use my own server at first, but it crashed, so I switched to deno deploy in a hurry, without having figured out how to connect it accross regions.)
seems the many regions spread the potential users to thin. you probably want a stronger single server because connecting chats across multiple servers only makes your code more complex when your actual problem seems to be that you just need more ram or cpu.
alternatively consider using existing platforms like jitsi. the benefit of your site is not the implementation of the audio channels but the ability for HN users to find each other. you could create a frontend where HN users join but are redirected to a jitsi room once they are matched.
unless of course part of the point is for you to experiment and learn webrtc and related technologies...
> seems the many regions spread the potential users to thin. you probably want a stronger single server because connecting chats across multiple servers only makes your code more complex when your actual problem seems to be that you just need more ram or cpu.
I checked ram and cpu with top when I was using a VPS, and it was basically nothing. (I didn't monitor it continuously, so maybe that was still the problem.) But you're right in principle, I should use one server.
> alternatively consider using existing platforms like jitsi. the benefit of your site is not the implementation of the audio channels but the ability for HN users to find each other.
But once people found each other, it's webrtc, it's p2p, so that shouldn't be a problem for the server.
then i'd suggest to go back to a single server and find out what causes the crashes. you can keep the current version running in parallel and tell people to hit your single server for testing.
Still no match yet. I was waiting for 10 minutes on the submitted link, but didn't get a match. I then waited 20 minutes on https://coffeehouse.deno.dev/hn recommended by the developer in the comments, but also haven't found a match yet.
Update: No match yet, after another 30-minute session. I opened the wait room for the original submitted link and left the tab open for 30 more minutes in the background (2:48 pm ET to 3:18 pm ET), with unmuted headphones on.
This would be awesome if it works. Though I tried and waited for a while with no match - I suspect it’s a proof of concept to judge demand. Would be better if I could actually read HN while waiting, might make people willing to keep waiting longer on mobile.
you could also add some statistics of how many users there have been in the past hour. or how long people have been talking. (just add up all the talk time for the past hour)
just to get an idea how active the service is.
later also show stats for 24 hours to see which daytimes are busiest and more likely to meet find someone online.
> Would be better if I could actually read HN while waiting, might make people willing to keep waiting longer on mobile.
It actually would be really interesting if there was a functionality to chat with other people viewing the same article. Or still one-to-one, but with someone else also looking at the article.
Oh that could be great, especially if there were someone (like the submitter, or just with the right personality) to get people talking.
Would hate for something like that ever to detract from the reading experience though - e.g. someone with something great to say or niche experience etc. tells their story then feels no need (or lacks the energy/motivation) to write it out again.
i am guessing to many users killed the initial server. the workaround of distributed servers doesn't allow people to connect if they are not on the same server.
it's not easy to find a solution for that on the spot. give it time.
The idea was really interesting, though it's too bad the software didn't work for me.
Still, I learned a lot from the comments (e.g. the problem of a server overload and fix of switching to a distributed server as a workaround; the jitsi platform; the importance of user statistics (e.g. number of people chatting right now, average time for connection) to encourage people to stay on; and the bug that another user found that may have caused the software to work locally, but not when deployed [0].
Goes to show the relative power of titles over content in getting stuff to the front page. And makes one wonder how much awesome stuff is buried because the title wasn't shiny enough.
129 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadI know many people that go through Omegle when bored and meet new folks. Seems like the same concept.
At first try the website did not load, a few refreshes later I can now see the home screen but nothing happens when I click anywhere on the page.
If that doesn't work it might be that the DNS change didn't propagate yet to you, please use https://coffeehouse.deno.dev/hn.
also, while i am at it, i'd prefer a small group rather than one on one.
Really, people shouldn't have to be aware of regions at all, which is why I initially wanted to use just one server, rather then deno deploy. (I still plan to realize that with deno deploy, it's just harder.)
> also, while i am at it, i'd prefer a small group rather than one on one.
Thought about that, but one-on-one seems simpler in many ways. There's never the question of who starts speaking. If one person stops, the other starts. It's also easier for two people to find a common interest then for more.
one-on-one requires everyone to speak. with more people some can listen and only speak when they have something interesting to add.
if the two people don't have a topic then there will be an awkward silence. with more people it is also easier to find any topic to talk about.
for introverts getting started is difficult, but ending a conversation equally so.
in small groups people can join, wait until they are asked to introduce themselves, listen until they have something to say and leave whenever they need to without inconveniencing anyone else who wants to continue to talk.
I had to hurl my computer off the bridge into the river to ensure I didn't click anywhere to start.
keep this tab open and your headphones on for a while ..."
There's no indicator for how long the queue is, so a match could happen at any time. The serif font, lack of sentence capitalization, and repeating stock photos of the espresso cup also create an emotional atmosphere reminiscent of the SCP Foundation and nosleep fictional horror stories involving the exploration of the internet.
The first just rambled about how much PHP sucks and how great Postgres is, for no apparent reason.
The second touted how amazing Kubernetes is, and then asked if I could help them configure it for their small project.
The third went on a long rant about how they could build Zoom as a weekend MVP.
The fourth tried to explain how we should run the entire world on SQLite.
In the long term, I want to make it possible for everyone to have their own coffeehouse ... voicechat with random people from your favorite subreddit, readers of your favorite blog, etc..
Maybe they work out the matching algorithm to consistently connect with exactly who they want to connect with. Maybe they can get IP addresses or PII or social engineering returns from meeting people.
All that said, that doesn't mean this project isn't valid, fun, cool, innovative, or has potential. Its an impossible expectation to want every side project to have perfect security, authentication, and user-verification/moderation.
I just want to make the point that there's a very high likelihood people will do weird shit with it.
It would be great if it could show how long it takes on average until one is matched with a partner. Maybe it could also show how many people are chatting right now.
When I heard about it I really felt a deep connection to that accountant. Sure hope I never meet him.
https://loginwithhn.com/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29923736
Update 1: A match didn't occur yet, 30 minutes total wait time.
Update 2: Still no match. I entered the wait room for the original submitted link and left the tab open for 30 more minutes in the background (2:48 pm ET to 3:18 pm ET), with unmuted headphones on. 60 minutes total wait time across sessions.
alternatively consider using existing platforms like jitsi. the benefit of your site is not the implementation of the audio channels but the ability for HN users to find each other. you could create a frontend where HN users join but are redirected to a jitsi room once they are matched.
unless of course part of the point is for you to experiment and learn webrtc and related technologies...
I checked ram and cpu with top when I was using a VPS, and it was basically nothing. (I didn't monitor it continuously, so maybe that was still the problem.) But you're right in principle, I should use one server.
> alternatively consider using existing platforms like jitsi. the benefit of your site is not the implementation of the audio channels but the ability for HN users to find each other.
But once people found each other, it's webrtc, it's p2p, so that shouldn't be a problem for the server.
Update: No match yet, after another 30-minute session. I opened the wait room for the original submitted link and left the tab open for 30 more minutes in the background (2:48 pm ET to 3:18 pm ET), with unmuted headphones on.
No it actually is meant to work, though, I admit, it doesn't seem to.
> Would be better if I could actually read HN while waiting, might make people willing to keep waiting longer on mobile.
Interesting idea.
just to get an idea how active the service is.
later also show stats for 24 hours to see which daytimes are busiest and more likely to meet find someone online.
It actually would be really interesting if there was a functionality to chat with other people viewing the same article. Or still one-to-one, but with someone else also looking at the article.
Would hate for something like that ever to detract from the reading experience though - e.g. someone with something great to say or niche experience etc. tells their story then feels no need (or lacks the energy/motivation) to write it out again.
1. Doesn't seem to work for anyone
2. Doesn't have anything specific to do with HN users. Since anyone can use it, it's just a random voice chat connection website.
it's not easy to find a solution for that on the spot. give it time.
Still, I learned a lot from the comments (e.g. the problem of a server overload and fix of switching to a distributed server as a workaround; the jitsi platform; the importance of user statistics (e.g. number of people chatting right now, average time for connection) to encourage people to stay on; and the bug that another user found that may have caused the software to work locally, but not when deployed [0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30183557