
Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside Official Maps - htk
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/for-decades-cartographers-have-been-hiding-covert-illustrations-inside-of-switzerlands-official-maps/
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qubex
This is the kind offbeat yet totally fascinating content that Hacker News is
so adept at surfacing.

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Angostura
I agree, except in this case it was on Digg.com a week ago. I rather like
Digg.

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jsilence
Digg.com still exists? I'm baffled.

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Angostura
It does, but it shares nothing other than a domain name with old Digg. Hand
curated. No upvotes, no comments.

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lqet
> A spider appears over an ice field on the Eiger mountain

There actually is an ice field on the Eiger Nordwand that is called "White
Spider" [0], which might be the motivation behind it.

[0] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Eiger-
Nordwand_2008_Weis...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Eiger-
Nordwand_2008_Weisse_Spinne.jpg)

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ptha
To me they are reminiscent of the drawings the monks put in the margins when
creating the illuminated manuscripts. These were not hidden, but were
certainly at odds with the serious text they surrounded.

[https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/naughty-nuns-
flatu...](https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/naughty-nuns-flatulent-
monks-and-other-surprises-of-sacred-medieval-manuscripts/)

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Vysero
This is just fun. People need to learn to have more fun like this. It's why I
am always opting for Easter eggs in our software but NOOOOOO we are a serious
company and serious companies don't like humor....

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sli
I typically hide the Konami code in there anyway. Enter it an "A winner is
you." prints to the JS console.

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Vysero
How about: If the user enters in a certain combination of key presses on the
keyboard. Then the James bond animation plays where he walks out and shoots
the screen. The whole thing goes red and the console shuts down... too much?

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ValentinPearce
This reminds me of trap streets (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street))
and makes me wonder if there is a directory of those.

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divbzero
Curious. I wonder if analogous “traps” could be added to software.

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jlg23
You could have dead code that the compiler cannot recognize as dead and
therefore cannot optimize away (basically everything the type system cannot
catch). For example, given a function(int x) where, to make sense, x can only
be an even number that is a multiple of 42. You are free to handle all x that
don't match the criteria however you want, though you'll burden yourself with
bad error handling should an invalid x slip through at the caller's site.

Much easier (and safer) would be to find n characters or words in strings
which, when replaced with another one, don't change the program's behavior or
misguide the user - documentation, menu labels, error messages and so on. This
way you can even include a n-bit identifier to identify the copyright
violator.

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Wiles_7
I remember watching a documentary about the Ordnance Survey department and it
mentioned that the artists would hid their name in things like rivers because
they did not get official credit.

I think it is somewhere in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5_kWzUahQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5_kWzUahQU)

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pretendscholar
If I wanted to make my own highly customized maps with open source software
whats my best bet these days? I was inspired by this author
[https://zeihan.com/disunited-nations-maps/](https://zeihan.com/disunited-
nations-maps/) All of his maps are gorgeous.

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samdung
Wasn't this art to prevent copy cats ?

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mnw21cam
The title may be true, but doesn't seem to have much to do with the contents
of the web page, which is just an blinking eye in the middle of a blank pink
page.

[https://outline.com/rRfCTV](https://outline.com/rRfCTV) actually has some
content.

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nkrisc
The AIGA Eye on Design site has always been very poorly designed, which is a
bit ironic for a site about graphic design. Or maybe it's to be expected,
since they're graphic designers, not web designers.

For a long time the title of the site used to be in the sticky header, and the
eye logo would occasionally blink. It was incredibly distracting and I'd lose
my place while reading every time it did. Perhaps they were excited to
introduce motion into their design, something not possible in traditional
graphic design, but maybe they didn't know how insanely primed our vision is
to focus on motion at the expense of everything else.

Mercifully, they've since removed it.

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jmkb
The Swiss topos are seriously beautiful. Half of the fun of hiking in the Alps
is collecting these meticulous hand-illustrated maps. They are shamelessly
artistic, and at the same time give a much better feel for the character of
the landscape than "drier" maps.

