
A demonstration of browser events used to monitor online behaviour - jameswiseman
https://clickclickclick.click
======
ogig
This reminded me that notch web game[1]. Both kept me interested and I find
them a very pleasant form of art.

[1] [http://game.notch.net/drowning/](http://game.notch.net/drowning/)

~~~
pawadu
Surprised no one has mentioned Cookie Clicker yet, which I think was what
inspired notch to write that game:
[http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/](http://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/)

Notch's game was written in Dart and the source code is simple and elegant:

[http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-29/?action=preview&uid...](http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-
dare-29/?action=preview&uid=398)

~~~
darrelld
Thanks for effectively killing my productivity with that cookie clicker game.

~~~
henrikschroder
Cookies are stupid, kill monsters instead in Clicker Heroes!

[https://www.clickerheroes.com/](https://www.clickerheroes.com/)

(Once you understand the meta-game and the meta-meta-game, it becomes
seriously addicting)

~~~
simik
Finally, a use for my triple-click mouse button!

~~~
NTripleOne
Coolermaster Inferno, by any chance?

------
danfromberlin
Who else feels a sense of horrible dread and frustration that every minutiae
of my (and your) online activity is recorded for eternity and exploited to the
fullest extent?

What are you going to do about it?

~~~
dx034
Not really horrified. Yes they save it, but they don't seem to be able to use
it well. The ads I get on Facebook are sometimes really interesting (i.e.
targeted well), on other pages it's mostly stuff I bought a while ago or
topics where I don't even have a clue why they think that could be
interesting.

And even though they can save it forever, it's outdated pretty quickly. If
someone has information that I clicked a button 5 times when I visited a page
in '09, this will have zero value now. The information is only valid for hours
or days.

I guess most of this information is used to test behavior on pages and to
optimize them. And I can only support that. Tracking like this is the reason
why popular pages are intuitive. They perform A/B testing extensively to see
what works best. I don't see an issue with that.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
But the goal of that optimization is not to make your life better, it's to
make money for them.

They may be pretty bad at it now, but one thing about technology is that it
gets better and better, and their goal is to encourage consumption of their
product.

I'm thinking about buying a new laptop right now. I'm trying to make a smart
choice, weighing the funds I have available, my need for it, the options
available, my preferences for various brands and features, and my own desire
to have new shiny stuff.

The advertisers can distort this rational decision. Right now they just have a
poorly-targeted generic bit of text that I don't really read in the sidebar of
certain websites, and I feel comfortable with this level of influence. If they
were super-persuasive at selling their product to me Present Me would consider
that theft. Future Me would probably be grateful to the advertiser, and that's
terrifying.

A Self-Driving, Self-Selling Tesla might show up at my door, perform an
inspection of my current car, and, in its silky voice, deliver an irrefutable
argument why I must never get in that car again and should instead hop in for
a free ride across state lines so I can take out a home equity loan and cash
in my 401k to buy it. Yikes!

The optimistic side of this is that maybe they'll eventually move beyond
market research and on to individual research to give us stuff that we
actually want. "Oh, LeifCarrotson is filtering out our 1366x768 TN panels,
doesn't seem to care about thickness, has recently read about the Samsung 960
Pro? Let's build him one with a big 9-cell battery and longer travel keyboard,
a good screen, and one of those SSDs. And he seems to be running Linux? Let's
swap our default touchpad for one with an open driver, and donate a few
percent of the profits to the EFF, that's sure to make him happy."

~~~
dx034
> But the goal of that optimization is not to make your life better, it's to
> make money for them.

I don't pay to use services online. They somehow have to make money. Until we
start donating/paying for each service we use, we have to expect that people
will make money otherwise.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
I'm not even talking about the free services, though.

I am talking about the ordinary consumer goods manufacturers that buy the ad
space that may or may not be sold on free online services. They're the ones
who want that ad space, who benefit from the targeting, and who make the whole
operation work.

------
aroch
It looks like all the audio files are stored as numbered mp3's on AWS, so
those interested can grab all of them pretty simply.

My personal favorite is the, "Oh, for fucks sake": [https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/clickclickclick.click/Voi...](https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/clickclickclick.click/Voice/7030.mp3)

There's a song as well: [https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/clickclickclick.click/Voi...](https://s3-eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/clickclickclick.click/Voice/10001.mp3)

~~~
ahstro
Why do I know that song? Isn't it in Moulin Rouge or something?

~~~
aroch
Its a pretty old jazz standard by Nat King:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Boy)

There are tons of versions and variations of it

It does in fact show up in Moulin Rouge:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekCvBztYs_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekCvBztYs_A)

------
yati
I'm at work and a Dutch guy is speaking on the phone behind me, and then I
hear this guy talk with a Dutch accent. It felt creepy as hell for a moment.

------
onion2k
Thank goodness for devtools...

    
    
        for (var lazyisgood = 0; lazyisgood < 1000; lazyisgood++) { $('a.button').click(); }

~~~
jackpointnl
Subject has run script to click on the button ten times within one second

~~~
barrystaes
This is as far as i got..
[https://clickclickclick.click/#4650e8c30d3089e27cf1a931bdf06...](https://clickclickclick.click/#4650e8c30d3089e27cf1a931bdf06c96)

~~~
vool
this seems to have overwritten my session, I now have your score

Lucky I had it open in another browser

------
ryan-c
I got "Subject has run script to click on the button 10 times in one second"
by using xdotool click --delay 10 --repeat 100 1, wonder whether that's
checking timing or just assuming nobody clicks that fast.

~~~
jagthebeetle
Suspect it must be checking time, below didn't really trigger anything:

for (var i = 0; i < 30; i++) { setTimeout(()=> button.click(),
Math.random()*1500) }

I wish bundle.js weren't minified, it could be fun to read.

~~~
korethr
[http://unminify.com/](http://unminify.com/) might help.

------
return0
Haha. Well the narrator's accent betrays more than my mouse movements. could
it be a dutch / danish white male in his late 20s?

~~~
gpvos
Clearly a fairly strong Dutch accent.

------
GoToRO
I used HotJar and it's pretty cool to see the actual website and the user
navigating.

This is a video of an actual recording a site owner will see:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Odc4k4KXjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Odc4k4KXjc)

~~~
tomatohs
I'm working on a similar project that aims to fully emulate the user's
browser, [http://screensquid.com](http://screensquid.com)

------
i336_
_Subject has clicked on the button nine times within one second._

Yup, ThinkPads with their dual mice (and mouse buttons!) are cool.

 _Subject has run script to click on the button ten times within one second._

"Wha--" * looks at xterm with "sleep 1; while true; do xdotool click 1; done"
in it * "how did you--"

 _Subject has tried to drag the body._

"So I can't select now?!"

Then I ran one of the JavaScript excerpts in another comment which proceeded
to make the page continuously open extra tabs (from other links). Task Manager
to the rescue...

------
OliverM
Doesn't seem to load on Safari/macOS. Console error:

    
    
        Failed to load resource: An SSL error has occurred and a secure connection to the server cannot be made.

------
brianzelip
What's the difference to the browser between "tripleclicking" the button and
"clicking the button >X times in one second"?

ie: why did it respond that I "clicked the button seven times within one
second" _before_ it responded that I "tripleclicked the button for the first
time"?

See this screenshot for reference:
[http://imgur.com/xhWHPQa](http://imgur.com/xhWHPQa)

~~~
avisser
In Windows, at least, on your ie: sentence,

* Single click - nothing

* Double click - highlight word

* Triple click - highlight paragraph

------
franze
funny, it can track/sync me from my "normal" chrome window over to the
anonymous chrome window, anybody have a guess how it does that?

~~~
jimboj
Did you copy and paste the URL? It adds an id on the end, it doesn't track me
when I remove the id.

------
pault
> "Subject is privacy conscious, educated"

1/2

~~~
korethr
I was somewhat unnerved when I heard that -- my reaction being something along
the lines of "Uhh, yeah, but who told you that?"

I'm curious how it determines these things, so I'm looking through the
unminified JS, trying to understand it.

Now if it were to detect and call out that I was trying to reverse engineer
it, that would be truly creepy.

~~~
pault
I have a bunch of ad and tracker blockers installed, so in a certain sense I
am "technically educated", but not classically so. :)

------
lucb1e
Turns out this was made not more than 10 minutes walking from where I am right
now. Kind of cool to see.

~~~
tirant
and that is...?

~~~
ragebol
Eindhoven, Netherlands (Source:
[https://clickclickclick.click/credit](https://clickclickclick.click/credit))

~~~
dx034
hmm? Did they just delete that page?

> Cannot GET /credit

~~~
lucb1e
On the right top you can click on Achievements; then again right top for
Colophon. This brings me to
[https://clickclickclick.click/credits#](https://clickclickclick.click/credits#)
but going there directly doesn't seem to work.

Also, specifically, Strijp-S in Eindhoven.

------
codsnake
Is it open source?

~~~
markharris99
I'd love to know this as well. Thanks.

------
linkmotif
Wow this is very nice. It is like my dream. The inline aggregations are really
cool too. Great demo!

EDIT: First saw this on mobile. Didn't realize there was sound. Distracting
for me. Wish it wasn't there. (Well done, though.)

------
0898
Is there anywhere I find a huge list of all these new weird domains?

~~~
icebraining
Go to the source: [https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-
strin...](https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings)

They may not all be available for registration, though.

------
retube
Hmm. Tells me to open on a desktop computer but am on a desktop.

~~~
dschuetz
Yeah, it's messing with you, don't believe everything it says.

------
corecoder
Hug of death? I'm getting loads of 500 errors.

~~~
corecoder
It seems to work now.

------
kelseydh
They should have showed more info from the request headers, like the subject's
type of computer and location based on IP.

------
ablation
That was interesting. Certainly kept my attention.

------
acqq
Looking at the source of the page, its own description is

"A browser-based game on online profiling"

which is even better than the current HN title.

------
corecoder
Has anybody granted the camera permission?

~~~
SilkRoadie
Yep. It took a picture, insulted me then turned off the camera :D

------
garaetjjte
How it knows how many cores CPU have?

~~~
SCdF
Note that it's how many threads, not cores. I have a this CPU:
[http://ark.intel.com/products/84985/Intel-
Core-i5-5257U-Proc...](http://ark.intel.com/products/84985/Intel-
Core-i5-5257U-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz) which the websites believes
is 4 cores when really it's 2.

~~~
bpicolo
It's logical cores vs physical cores.

------
mcintyre1994
Surprising omissions: touch events, and zoom events.

Subject develops on a MacOS machine?

------
ChefDenominator
I would like to see the app equivalent of this.

------
janci
Would be fun to see what other subjects are doing...

------
petervandijck
omg that is fun and freaky at the same time.

------
mountaineer22
Awesome work.

------
vool
hi score ?

------
thomasdd
???? (please turn on your sound) nothing else on the site here.

~~~
piyush_soni
Same happened to me on Firefox first (and worked on Chrome), but then when I
tried again in Firefox, it worked there too. Also told me "Firefox! hmmm ...
Privacy, alternative etc.." :)

------
diskooo
The 'Dutch English' is hugely annoying...

~~~
Teever
Why?

