PHaker News - A Stupid Markov Chain Experiment
I've been learning all about autostereograms (aka "Magic eye" illusions) recently and had a fun idea: If I can somehow get a depth image of my webcam, I can see myself in a "magic (eye) mirror" on my screen. It turns out that it's actually pretty feasible to get real-time depth estimates, at least on newer hardware and in browsers with WebGPU. To my delight, this worked pretty well, so I decided to polish it somewhat and share it here. To be honest, all the heavy lifting is done by the depth-estimation model [1], otherwise this demo just wouldn't be possible. I will warn you that viewing…
PHaker News - A Stupid Markov Chain Experiment launched on April 28, 2015 with 17 votes, #1,059 of 3,600 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 11 years on.
In plain words
PHaker News is a web-based "magic eye" mirror that uses real-time depth estimation from your webcam to create autostereogram illusions of yourself on screen. Built with WebGPU technology, it leverages a depth-estimation model to generate the 3D effect. The project is designed for users interested in autostereograms and visual illusions, though it requires a modern browser like Chromium and performs best on desktop or laptop hardware. Viewers should note that autostereogram viewing requires practice to perceive the effect properly.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I've been learning all about autostereograms (aka "Magic eye" illusions) recently and had a fun idea: If I can somehow get a depth image of my webcam, I can see myself in a "magic (eye) mirror" on my screen. It turns out that it's actually pretty feasible to get real-time depth estimates, at least on newer hardware…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
A raycaster that renders to random dot stereogram (like Magic Eye)2019 · github.com · ▲277A raycaster that renders to random dot stereogram - ammonb/stereogram-raycaster
DeepDream for Video with Temporal ConsistencyJan 2026 · github.com · ▲72I forked a PyTorch DeepDream implementation and added video support with temporal consistency. It produces smooth DeepDream videos with minimal flickering, and is highly flexible including many parameters and supports multiple pretrained image classifiers including GoogLeNet. Check out the repo for sample videos! Features: - Optical flow warps previous hallucinations into the current frame - Occlusion masking prevents ghosting and hallucination transfer when objects move - Advanced parameters (layers, octaves, iterations) still work - Works on GPU, CPU, and Apple Silicon
- MJMagicEye.js – Generate Magic Eye in Your Browser2014 · peeinears.github.io · ▲111
LLaVaVision: An AI "Be My Eyes"-like web app with a llama.cpp backend2023 · github.com · ▲154A simple mobile web app inspired by Fuzzy-Search/realtime-bakllava that uses llama.cpp server backend with multimodal mode to describe and narrate what the phone camera sees. I built this thing in a few hours using a single ChatGPT thread to generate most things for me and iterate on this project. Here's the workflow: https://chat.openai.com/share/ea84ec69-5617-45e8-8772-ac2dcf...
I made a computer vision addon for Blender2020 · github.com · ▲268A Blender addon for generating synthetic ground truth data for Computer Vision applications - GitHub - Cartucho/vision_blender: A Blender addon for generating synthetic ground truth data for Computer Vision applications
More life & fun this month
the category →
A free city-building game in your browser. You are the mayor. You know what the city needs. Now get it past the zoning board, the neighbors, the appeals court and the next election.
Life & fun · 2d ago · permit.petercai.com
- IV
Life & fun · 15d ago · tanzaniaeducationproject.org
Turn a phone, tablet or TV into a sign. Type a message and it fills the screen: welcome signs, timers, Wi-Fi passwords and more. No app, no account, free.
Life & fun · 16d ago · bigwords.page
Play a free virtual guitar online with your keyboard or by touch. Slow songs down and see every chord, string and strum. Acoustic, classic, electric and bass.
Life & fun · 9d ago · guitoro.com
Carrier settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware, decoded and compared: APNs, VoLTE, 5G and Wi-Fi Calling per carrier, and what each build changed.
Life & fun · 13d ago · carrierexplode.com
Life & fun · 23d ago · space.bl2.net
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, April 2015
the whole month →
Hunter▲1,703Find any company logo by domain with Hunter’s free logo API. No account, no API key. The simplest Clearbit Logo API replacement, switch in 30 seconds.
Growth · 2015 · hunter.io
saas that helps convert
Life & fun · 2015 · transformy.io
- AR
Life & fun · 2015 · tiffzhang.com
