
Google: Let it snow - jakozaur
https://www.google.com/#q=let+it+snow&fp=1
======
ck2
Hey google folk - snow is pretty and nice but how about considering making
your home page black or put a black ribbon (ala "censor" band) to alert more
people to the SOPA vote moved to the 21st?

~~~
ticks
Google's homepage shouldn't have anything to do with politics IMO. Leave it to
the organisations that specialise in those sorts of issues.

~~~
mike-cardwell
Exactly. Why do people want yet another hugely rich corporation using their
money to interfere in politics?

What if Google was pro SOPA? Would you be happy with them advertising for it
on their front page?

America needs to learn to govern it's self without the intervention of
corporations. America doesn't need more of them getting involved.

~~~
mseebach
> What if Google was pro SOPA? Would you be happy with them advertising for it
> on their front page?

You're writing that as if SOPA was one side of an argument where good people
could reasonably be on either one side or the other, and HN and Google just
happens to be on the same.

But it's not, SOPA has a right and a wrong side. We're on the right side,
Google is on the right side and good people are either uninformed or on the
right side. It's not unreasonable to wish for Google to employ some of their
considerable clout in evangelising the right side.

~~~
mike-cardwell
"My opinion is right because I say it is. Anyone who doesn't hold the same
opinion is either bad, or needs educating"

Well, that's me convinced.

~~~
KeithMajhor
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. People get stupid when they're this
opposed to something. His argument had absolutely no value and your
characterization of it was spot on.

~~~
waqf
I don't think mike-cardwell deserves downvoting either, _but_ I don't think
your (and his) characterization was quite fair.

mseebach didn't intend to make a convincing anti-SOPA argument, he was
commenting under the assumption that his audience was already opposed to SOPA.
He may have been wrong — that's a danger on the internet — but I don't think
that makes him stupid.

~~~
KeithMajhor
Lets break it down.

mseebach: "You're writing that as if SOPA was one side of an argument where
good people could reasonably be on either one side or the other, and HN and
Google just happens to be on the same. But it's not, SOPA has a right and a
wrong side. We're on the right side..."

parody: "My opinion is right because I say it is."

mseebach: "Google is on the right side and good people are either uninformed
or on the right side."

parody: "Anyone who doesn't hold the same opinion is either bad, or needs
educating."

mseebach: "It's not unreasonable to wish for Google to employ some of their
considerable clout in evangelising the right side."

I was wrong. This part has value. The "right side" part of it is overreaching
though. In my opinion.

Also, I didn't call him stupid, I called the downvoters stupid. I meant it in
the way people usually do: I don't like it. The people who can downvote are
supposed to be the pillars of our community. Yet they seem more interested in
policing opinions than quality. More interested in SOPA than HN. Then they
turn around and complain that it's all going to shit. Come on... lets promote
the strongest arguments and promptly refute the lousy ones.

------
lysol
I see Google has decided to turn their search results page into every website
from 1998.

~~~
jebblue
Except that using modern technologies it uses a ton of CPU time to accomplish.

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holman
If you didn't notice, this also ties into an orientation sensor if you've got
one. On my MacBook Pro, for example, just tilt your laptop left or right and
the snow will fall that direction.

~~~
nostrademons
You can also draw doodles in the fog and then send them around to your friends
or post them on websites:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=let+it+snow&frostwriting...](https://www.google.com/search?q=let+it+snow&frostwriting=1;GZB0BABACADADADADACAEBDBDCCBDCFCFDEDFEEEEEEFEDDFEFDFDFEEDFDFEGDGDHCGCFDICGDGDKEJCIEKDKDJEKEJEIEHDGEGEGEFDFCDCDCDBCBBBBBABCBBBBBBBBCAABBABABBCACACADACBDABADACABABAhA!H_DxhAjAlDmEnFlFmGkFjFjGkGkGjEkFjFjEiEiEjEjDiEkEoJnHnJkFkFiChChChBhBAB!GLF5)

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ricardobeat
Lots of bitterness here. Come on, it's christmas time, that's just a little
fun for normal people.

------
ell
Why is this on top of Hacker News? What is amazing about this?

~~~
seanp2k2
Can someone extract and de-obfuscate (or de-compress) the snow JS here so
other people can use this on their sites?

~~~
davidw
You could search on Altavista for nice Javascript snow effects.

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city41
I was hopeful the "defrost" button would simulate someone running their hand
over the screen.

~~~
memset
If you click and drag across the screen, then it will have the effect of doing
this with your finger :)

~~~
sp332
I think that part of the effect only works on chrome. Actually I can't get any
of it work work on IE9 on Win7, it just shows regular serach results.

Edit: oh I see, you have to wait for the "Defrost" button to show up before
you can "wipe" the frost off. Still doesn't work in IE though :)

~~~
dimmuborgir
Works on Firefox 8 (Linux).

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babarock
Do they announce these things somewhere, or did someone actually input "let it
snow" and thought to post it here?

~~~
ctdonath
Yeah, different results for different platforms. Tapped the link on my tablet
and just got a list of videos of Sinatra singing "Let It Snow". Nice
sentiment, but didn't see why it topped HN.

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nvk
The "Defrost" button was a nice touch.

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aw3c2
Eats one cpu core for me and makes the fan blow loudly. Which is why I never
like these things.

~~~
est
Funny, half year back the same bunch of people said the same thing to Flash.

Now imagine a world where every banner or sidebar is full of HTML5 canvas
animation ads.

~~~
melling
Firefox takes one core, while Chrome seems to split it across two cores, with
a lower combined CPU utilization. I'm using the Nightly's for both browsers.

With open source technology we get multiple implementations and a lot more
people working to improve the technology.

~~~
est
> multiple implementations

Remember Android fragmentation? Talk about open source as golden hammer to
solve problems.

~~~
seanp2k2
Android fragmentation is not the same matter that was being referred to here.
A better analogy might be Android and MeeGo or OpenMoko.

Having a real choice is great in my opinion, and having three mainstream
browsers (one open, one mostly open, and one totally closed) to choose between
is awesome.

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culturestate
I wonder why they didn't enable this in their tablet layout. I thought
performance at first, but It runs acceptably well on my iPad 2 when
identifying as OSX Safari in terra browser, and the desktop version even
responds to changes in the accelerometer.

~~~
subspaceman
not sure about why not on the ipad, but on my playbook it seems to work fine
as well.

------
dkasper
Another easter egg I found is that they added a row of stars of David on the
result page for "hanukkah".

------
catsdogsbobcats
In somewhat related news, searching for "Chanukah" results in a nice
decorative border.

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davidpardo
Doesn't work on the iPad. :(

~~~
wavephorm
Google is becoming notorious for not supporting the iPad. I found Google+ to
be totally unusable.

~~~
cma
It is because the defrost with pointer effect wouldn't work on ipad because
that is how you drag

~~~
kalleboo
Defrosting with the cursor didn't work for me in Firefox either, and Firefox
used about 2x the CPU that Chrome did.

~~~
jrockway
Well, yeah. It's Firefox.

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davidw
Hrm. Xsnow did that back in the 90ies. Wonder if they'll do an xroach thing
where you click on results and the roaches scurry out from under them to other
result blocks...

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gaving
Anyone wanna tear out the source and package it up?

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apieceofpi
Ah, reminds me of another search trick that doesn't work any more -- make fart
noises and voice recognition recognizes it as New York.

~~~
resnamen
Oh, damn, I could've used that to antagonize my New Yawk cousins on Christmas.

~~~
mkopinsky
Reminds me of
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iu6a1-9ajUQ)

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pablosanta
Just plain old awesomeness from Google...

~~~
DanBC
Hacking away at the Labs is awesome. This? It's just tinkering with the UI.
There are a gajillion different key word searches they could do; tilt tilts
the screen, scary ghost scream waits ten seconds and then flashes a scary
ghost on the screen with a scream; etc etc.

And, while they're doing that, and Google just works for most people there are
a small group of users who'd really appreciate better documentation for
searching. Wanna-be power users need to know how to combine terms or have
options or how to use stemming etc. I dunno why a single page of instructions
with examples is so hard to get.

~~~
mkr-hn
[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=136861&rd=1)

Advanced search (bottom of search results)->Advanced search tips (top of the
advanced search page)

~~~
DanBC
repeated words count?

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kr1shna
Enjoyed the defrost button :)

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lang
Doesn't seem to work on ipad

~~~
nostrademons
Look again?

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jpd
Sadly, searching for "make it rain" does not produce the desired results.

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alzberg
Also, if you type "Hanukkah" you'll see a row of Jewish stars.

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craigyk
i found "tilt" accidentally a while back

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xrt
xsnow anyone, like 20 years ago? Awesome!

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dyun
It is so cool!

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nailer
Very laggy on latest Chrome on 2010 MacBook Air.

~~~
zobzu
Try on Firefox. However odd that sounds, given this has been made by Google,
its smoother for me.

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NARKOZ
Pretty cool. I want to see that on twitter.

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diamondhead
the world will be a better place when the humanity stop putting lots of effort
and interest on snow scripts.

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ihatefamous
This is awesome!!

