I like it! I happily note that you mention that the client works fully offline. But is there or have you considered a self-hosted option that can be run completely on-premise and without cloud access?
Being cloud-based makes this an immediate non-starter for many use cases (and I specifically don't mean large enterprises but especially SMB, NGO, and homelab use).
Unfortunately, it doesn't let you filter by aspect ratio, so you cannot get e.g. all 16:10 monitors which is something I'm always actively searching for and it's so difficult. The page also doesn't list the unique Dell U3023E and its predecessors which are 2560x1600, i.e. 16:10 monitors, and perfect for design & development both in portrait and landscape mode.
If the developer of that website is on HN, I hope they can add a filter for aspect ratio and more 16:10 monitors as well.
I would really like to know what the whole tech stack was to produce this: Which camera system was used to record these images and what platform they used for building the 3D experience?
The pictures must be of insane resolution, as you can zoom in to read even the smallprint on all the posters clearly (imagine Google StreetView like this). And I didn't really notice any stitching, tripods etc.
Also they have cleverly embedded video animations in some of the rooms 360 degree images. These were clearly recorded separately but I still haven't fully figured out how they added them.
Very well done and indeed probably almost as good as being there in person.
I have a friend in real estate who uses matterport [1] to do something similar to this. They have tools to do animations very close to what is happening here. Even the circular cursor looks similar.
You could produce this using one of several 360° cameras (e.g. Ricoh Theta, Insta360 X3) for the images, and then using 3D Vista to create the tour experience, embedded media, etc.
That may or may not be a correct assessment but you will have a hard time convincing anyone, moronic or non-moronic, without any real arguments and counter-examples.
I for one would have loved some more substance to your post...
I would stand up to defend your right to read and enjoy a good book by a person that you aren't an expert in.
In general, I try to start by extending the benefit of doubt. It seems like nobody here stopped to wonder if pmarca had any idea that the dude wrote the Fascist Manifesto. And if he didn't, does he still deserve to be shamed for enjoying his other work without Googling him first?
What if you found out the author of the last thing you read was a fascist after the fact? Should we be mad at you?
Do you Google the author of everything you read? If so, that sounds exhausting.
If you call one of the fathers of fascist ideology your “patron saint,” in the context of also listing several other right wing thinkers, I think you know what you’re doing and should expect corresponding disdain.
Are any of those, or a similar well-polished service, available for use with your own workstation, e.g. for 3D/engineering/video editing workloads? (Basically remote desktop on steroids)
Most - if not all - the people in your first group are also in the second group! That is, I think, what they (and everyone) really needs to realize and understand:
The all-powerful CEO who wants access to detailed customer data? He will be in The Database himself (if not his own, then in the one that a rival company offers). As will his favorite son with the drug habit, and the questionable thing he did on holiday that one time... Might not even be that bad or illegal. But would he want his workers to know those things about him?
The policitian whose party is in power right now? She is in The Database, too. As is her shady half-brother, all the info about the medical procedures she had done while in college, plus her husband's business dealings. Sure, they are legal but will it sound good to her constituency if it leaks? After all, her party might not be in the majority anymore after the next election...
Whenever your unbridled greed for tracking, profiling and surveillance becomes overwhelming, please attend your closest meeting of "Data Collectors Anonymous" and memorize the mantra: IYDTS - It's your data, too, stupid!
Your own daughter will be spied on by creeps. Your mother may be discriminated against when trying to get a mortgage. Whenever you collect people's data for profit or control, you WILL hurt yourself and the ones you love.
Even if you personally are the cleanest Mr. goodie two shoes to ever live, those around you surely aren't - and don't forget, in the end it's very easy for The Database to have some entries about you that might not even be true. Mistakes happen. Good luck proving or correcting them.
If you don't do whatever you can to protect privacy and minimize data collection, every day the chance increases that your own data will be collected and used against you or the ones you love. Then you might not be in a position to stop it anymore. And you may never be happy again...
> The Database to have some entries about you that might not even be true. Mistakes happen. Good luck proving or correcting them.
This actually happened to me. A clerical mistake by a teacher changed my name in databases which led me to change my name officially so that I can have my original name back.
Why wouldn't they just special-case themselves? Pass a national security law (or a de-facto informal agreement) against harvesting politicians' personal data?
Adobe demoed a similar project as far back as 2016 called "Project Voco" [1] which was also called "too dangerous to release" at the time, even though it apparently still needed as much as 20 minutes of source material (vs. allegedly a mere 2 seconds here).
It was never heard from again afaik - even though Adobe is not known to shy away from an opportunity to increase revenue, so one cannot help but wonder...
This is awesome. Helped me find an elusive HN submission from a few weeks ago that I remembered vaguely but was unable to find with HN's own search function (algolia) even after good five minutes of searching. With your plugin, the desired post was in the top 3 results at first try. Thanks for making this.
Finally, it's about time that Embarcadero remembers again what used to make Delphi great: Its community! I recently gave Delphi 11 a try again and it is eminently usable for both cross-plattform development and for web and Windows.
Built a couple of quick & beautiful apps over a weekend and it got me determined to use Delphi more and more now. It has several ChatGPT plugins available for the IDE which work quite well and speed up development especially for someone like me who is a bit rusty, not having used it for some years. The component ecosystem is amazingly still thriving, with companies like TMS and others offering tons of great (and, for academia, free) ready-to-use components for everything you need these days, from HTML components, full SIP servers, WebView2 integration, SVG support to one-click AWS and Azure integration etc. Such an immense timesaver for anyone wanting to create beautiful GUI apps, too.
I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed properties without scrolling (that would save so much time when naming a bunch of components, setting captions or adjusting height and width). Never understood why such an obvious and simple feature was never implemented.
The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup, with GUI settings, installed components etc. (similar to how Adobe InDesign lets you package projects with all font files, graphics etc. included), so you can save them along with a project. I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again. Oh well, maybe one day.
Anyway, so great to be able to do Rapid Application Development once again, the latest Delphi is a win, maybe Embarcadero finally saw the light again. Fingers crossed.
1: "I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed..."
I recommend you install GExperts. It's a free, sources included, nifty utility that greatly improves Delphi IDE.
2: "The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup...." ... "....I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again"
Those are 2 different things. For 1st part, get a docker container / VirtualBox / VMware machine and you can get everything in the snapshot way. I have a VMWare machine from 2007 with Delphi 7 and tons of components from that era, that works like a charm to this day. For 2nd part, to get latest version of components for latest version of Delphi - well, there is a GetIt package manager built in Delphi directly or you can just get the components from their vendors and use their installer. All major Delphi component vendors (TMS, DevExpress, ReportBuilder, etc) have that.
Have fun, I know I do everyday in Delphi. I am a freelancer for 13 years already and 90% of my projects are in Delphi.
> I have a VMWare machine from 2007 with Delphi 7 and tons of components from that era, that works like a charm to this day.
I did the same back in 2007 or 2008 after spending 3 days with a consultant setting it up.
Then, before I got a working backup, the external drive that we had it on broke down :-/
Still remember the process:
I hunted source forge, bookshelves, file shares, cabinets and old vendor web sites to find every dependency we needed.
This was around the same time I was introduced to Maven and while it took me a while to fully grasp Maven, once I realized that one small tool could replace this process I was sold.
(To anyone who grew up with Nuget or NPM/Yarn: back you added depencies in Visual Studio the same way as you did in Delphi, by downloading them and double clicking them and clicking next, next, next, accept, next and install. And everyone still knew Javascript was a toy language and didn't need a package manager.)
I did not know that Pascal is still in use till today. What kind of freelancing projects are in demand? I mean in Delphi/Pascal. If you do not mind my asking.
Anything a business needs. The idea is to actually hunt for a business owner that has problems and they don't care about the programming language you use to solve the problems. When I quote the estimated hours of some application they need in Delphi vs React or C# or whatever other programming language they heard through the vine is good for them, they always choose Delphi. In the end they care about problem solving, not the tech behind.
Finally, it's about time that Embarcadero remembers again what used to make Delphi great: Its community! I recently gave Delphi 11 a try again and it is eminently usable for both cross-plattform development and for web and Windows.
Built a couple of quick & beautiful apps over a weekend and it got me determined to use Delphi more and more now. It has several ChatGPT plugins available for the IDE which work quite well and speed up development especially for someone like me who is a bit rusty, not having used it for some years. The component ecosystem is amazingly still thriving, with companies like TMS and others offering tons of great (and, for academia, free) ready-to-use components for everything you need these days, from HTML components, full SIP servers, WebView2 integration, SVG support to one-click AWS and Azure integration etc. Such an immense timesaver for anyone wanting to create beautiful GUI apps, too.
I only wish Delphi had a "favorites" filter for the Object Inspector, so you could quickly access your most needed properties without scrolling (that would save so much time when naming a bunch of components, setting captions or adjusting height and width). Never understood why such an obvious and simple feature was never implemented.
The other thing Delphi should really have is a way to "package and export" (or snapshot) the whole Delphi setup, with GUI settings, installed components etc. (similar to how Adobe InDesign lets you package projects with all font files, graphics etc. included), so you can save them along with a project. I find it still a big pain to open an old project on a new machine and having to spend three hours searching and installing components in their latest versions again. Oh well, maybe one day.
Anyway, so great to be able to do Rapid Application Development once again, the latest Delphi is a win, maybe Embarcadero finally saw the light again. Fingers crossed.
Being cloud-based makes this an immediate non-starter for many use cases (and I specifically don't mean large enterprises but especially SMB, NGO, and homelab use).