Show HN: Hacker News on a train station-style flip board (popflame.quickish.space)

109 points|by PaybackTony|1d ago|21 comments|Read full story on popflame.quickish.space

Although the page itself is more just fun to have made and look at (I like the flip sound), the fun part is how I made it to verify the (and I hate to say it) vibe host service I've been working on. The recent flip board back and forth's on Twitter (X) are what inspired me.

The idea here is that people (like me or you) can create something neat like this, and others can remix it, change it and publish their own version. This is that all in action and it worked great. I wrote a blog about it (the blog is dogfooding, it's just an app hosted on quickish that uses the built in db lib).

For the HN version of this flip board I use their firebase api via the built in quickish server functions that make use of the fact that the front-end can get realtime updates (now that you mention firebase) from cloud function db updates. Of course that's over-kill but I wanted to show something fun. You can remix and host your own version for free, just need a google oauth login that's it.

OG flip board I built (Portland Based - Current Weather): https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview

Blog post that dives a tiny bit deeper: https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-...

Comments (21)

21 shown

1. throw03172019|1d ago|context

Rate limited. RIP
2. PaybackTony|1d ago|context

Yes, got rate limited. Didn't expect the traffic but it's back
3. freitasm|1d ago|context

Sounds cool. Couldn't see it though. "Rate limited" on my first visit. Using a static IPv4 and IPv6.
Unless your host is limiting number of requests, indiscriminately.
4. PaybackTony|1d ago|context

Was CloudFlare limiting after a large burst of interest. All better. Only took a leg
5. gorgoiler|1d ago|context

Do I recognize the UI style here as being that cool, hacker, dark-mode, glowing aura text, rounded mono typeface style? Whoever came up with that motif and inadvertently coaxed fhe AI tools into copying it into ubiquity has had an enormous impact on the world!
There are a lot of cells used for rank and vote count. If you used A-Z for rank and dropped the vote count you’d be able to see 50% more title, which is a lot. Vote count could be an optional overlay shown at the end of the title in the last 3 seconds of each frame. Or just drop it altogether.
6. graypegg|23h ago|context

And there's always a flashing "ONLINE" or "LIVE" indicator for whatever reason. I think the general aestetic is more just pointlessly greebled UI [0] since more stuff on screen has got to directly correlate with people's first surface-level impression of "how much AI can do". A sort of phosphor-glowing TTY-esque interface just has many greebling options, maybe? You nudge the vectors towards impressing people, and implied complexity is one way to impress people.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble
7. StizzurpXDD|1d ago|context

The title of the first post is crealy readable, while the rest of the texts and numbers are glitched.
It's cool though.
8. PaybackTony|1d ago|context

Was not expecting 30k visits in an hour. Patched up the mobile view and got everything running again. Oof. Thank you for checking it out!
9. sixtyj|1d ago|context

Nice graphics. It reminded me
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-flap_display
In Prague near the main railway station there is a physical installation made from discarded Pragotron split-flap cards. Installation named Variety was made by Richard Loskot and it randomly generates sentences.
10. jimmydddd|1d ago|context

Are there supposed to be article titles? It just looks like giberish to me?
11. gab007|1d ago|context

Neat. Now where can I get a real physical flip board, lol?
12. jimmcslim|1d ago|context

You can!
https://www.vestaboard.com
13. qingcharles|1d ago|context

Or if you're a bit handy this guy is selling the plans to make your own:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C8_AtxEEQc
14. bitwize|1d ago|context

I was kinda hoping that you would arduino the Hackernews front page onto an actual train-style flipboard, but this is a pretty cute web trick.
15. Otek|1d ago|context

Please vibecode mobile support
16. blourvim|1d ago|context

quite satisfying to hear the clicks
17. kaueg|1d ago|context

After clicking "?", the help page mentions there should be a settings icon [1], but it seems its not visible.
[1]: "Up top: opens settings (page timing and a token to drive the board from a script), ♪ toggles the flap clicks, and goes fullscreen. Own this board? Click any row to pin your own text over it."
18. anonu|1d ago|context

With AI coding tools lots of people are having the same idea. Here is another one that uses sampled split flap sounds: https://www.minisplitflap.com
19. conartist6|1d ago|context

That's a pretty good one. It's more realistic than the one shared here in that it uses an actual deck of cards so that all the segments don't arrive at their destination at exactly the same moment, but rather the message is revealed as the cards arrive one by one (depending on how far they had to travel to get there). I love that effect!
Anyway, here's one that I made with jQuery 10 years ago (since forked and now maintained by qrion) https://qrion25.github.io/splitflap/
In terms of features I haven't seen other split flap displays offer, it rolls a little better (more than one flap segment can be rolling at a time, letting the rolling animation be slower) it lets you set up a completely custom deck, and can even support muliple letters or numbers on a single flap (like the real displays sometimes do -- they might have the name of a whole train station)
20. blue1|1d ago|context

To my ears, the sound is wrong. At least the Solari flip boards had a typical rustling sound, this is too much clicking.
21. insane_dreamer|10h ago|context

love the design. I agree with another poster who commented that the sounds are the wrong click.