
Show HN: Kosmi – Hang out with friends and family online - hauxir
https://kosmi.io
======
hauxir
Been developing this platform for over a year.

It allows you to create virtual rooms where you can chat with room members
using webcam and microphone and run realtime apps that include:

\- Screensharing(useful for e.g. Netflix)

\- Cowatching video player

\- SNES and NES Emulators

\- Virtual cardtable

\- Poker with Playmoney

\- Quake 3 in-browser!

\- Synced YouTube player

and many more coming.

~~~
jawns
I would love to know the legal implications of running a service where people
are able to stream copyrighted content to others, or to share subscription
services like Netflix in violation of its TOS.

~~~
tyrust
This is like every other service that supports screen sharing, is it not?

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jawns
Except that _this_ service explicitly says it's for "watching movies or TV
shows on Netflix together online."

~~~
holler
justin.tv almost exclusively was for chatting/watching copyrighted videos/tv
shows together online (later rebranded and sold for ~$1B as twitch.tv)

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robbrown451
This is cool, I'm especially interested in YouTube synching so I can share
videos with my daughter when she is at her moms. Also so she can chat with her
friends while school is canceled and they can watch stuff together. (hopefully
being able to talk to each other too?)

~~~
pfranz
I'm surprised I haven't seen this before (or if it's been around, it hasn't
been more popular). In person you often show people videos and via podcasts I
often hear people haphazardly trying to play videos simultaneously.

~~~
Malankov
I created Togethr.TV in 2013 ([https://togethr.tv](https://togethr.tv)).
People can watch videos together and chat (text/audio) and some other
features. It never took off much unfortunately. I didn't touch the code since
some time already but it is still working fine, the site is currently having
about 15k monthly users.

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hombre_fatal
I was surprised that even public rooms require a request to join from the
lobby page. Though I also know that direct room links do let you in to the
channel which is what you'd be passing around to your friends.

And I was also surprised that when someone sends me a join request, it
completely blots my screen out with a modal. Seems like this would be very
annoying if you were actually running a channel. I think that needs some
attention. For example, am I ruining someone's experience by constantly
sending them join requests?

Online hangout was always a dream of mine ever since my friends and I used
socks to tie the home phone around our heads so we could talk while playing
Unreal Tournament online together. Always cool to see people trying to work on
this.

------
o_____________o
Nice work! How are things working so far on iPads?

\- "Create a room" should be actionable on the sidebar

\- Don't know how niche this is these days, but I would love to see Freeze Tag
supported in Arena:
[https://openarena.fandom.com/wiki/ModCompat/Ultra_Freeze](https://openarena.fandom.com/wiki/ModCompat/Ultra_Freeze)

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pugworthy
I was just reading about On-nomi (オン飲み) - drinking online. Was a Boing Boing
post at [https://boingboing.net/2020/03/13/on-
nomi.html](https://boingboing.net/2020/03/13/on-nomi.html) Perhaps this needs
to be added for us mandatory-work-from-home people can have a beer later with
co-workers.

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nsarafa
This is great. Been looking for a way to create a "virtual water cooler" for
our team as we move 40+ people remote. Does the room always exist, and people
can hop in and out? What's the business model? IE how can we pay for the
service/support the mission?

~~~
pablosca
We've been using [https://team.video](https://team.video) for our calls and
working sessions in rooms that we hop in and out

~~~
nsarafa
Oh yeah. And the room never closes, right?

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pablosca
No, it never closes because is a URL that you can always come back. We stay in
there working for hours, sometimes with multiple screen sharing at the same
time.

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shripadk
Love this! Especially the fact that you can launch an OpenArena server so
easily! Played a lot of Quake 3 Arena during my college days. Hadn't heard of
OpenArena before. Thanks!

EDIT: Is there a way to store and load a config file? Or have the binds stored
permanently?

~~~
hauxir
Thank you! Unfortunately the config file is not export/importable right now
but I might add support for that later!

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opan
Reminds me of rabb.it. Very disappointed to see a link to Discord and lack of
link to source. I was hoping this was going to be free software, but now I'm
thinking it's unlikely. Playing OpenArena in the browser is an interesting
idea.

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ninguem2
Are you planning any features to help with online teaching (e.g. whiteboard
support)?

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pugworthy
Really timely question with so many school systems being closed down.

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ammar_x
Cool idea especially for people living in different country than their
families.

Will it remain free?

What is the privacy policy? Will my data (video/audio) be kept on the servers?
I couldn't find such info in the website.

~~~
hauxir
The video and audio is all p2p. It never touches our servers.

Text chat is kept on the server but you can permanently delete all your
messages any time from your profile settings.

As for remaining free, I plan to keep the current featureset free!

~~~
ammar_x
Thank you man :)

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a254613e
Tried it now with a non-tech savvy person.

* Mobile version hid the chat and everything.

* It was not clear how to start video chat.

* Audio wasn't working at all, even after 10 minutes of trying to get it to work (permissions were granted). At this point I'm not sure if it's a feature or a bug.

* Half of the apps aren't available.

I'm sorry, but in the current state it is not usable for me, or anyone I know,
at all. Compared to whereby, hangouts, etc I'm not sure which currently
existing features it really offers that are better.

~~~
hauxir
sorry to hear your bad experience. contact me on discord and I'll try to help
you work out those issues!

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flingo
I'm always disappointed when things like this aren't partially or fully open
sourced.

Makes me wonder what the profit model is, and when the thing is going to die
forever.

~~~
robbrown451
I'm impressed when I see people actually build something that they believe in,
rather than just work for the man.

This looks to me like more than someone could build in their free time while
they work for a soul sucking corporation. I mean, maybe, but it's not possible
for everyone. I hope he or she figures out a way of making a living at it.

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sparklepwny
awesome work!

how are you funding this? what are the backend requirements on your part to
run this site?

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mstade
Looks slick, seems to work real well on mobile too. Good work!

I noticed when creating a private room there's no auth, would it be possible
to have something simple even like a shared password so you need something
more than just the link to join? Also would it be possible to make it request
audio and/or video access by default when joining, rather than making it a
user action?

~~~
fastball
What's wrong with a link and no password?

Seems like the rooms are meant to be fairly disposable, so any situation where
you would normally "change the room password", you instead just change rooms.

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29athrowaway
I suggest removing the NES/SNES emulator part as it will cause Nintendo to
send you a Cease and Desist letter. Or probably more.

~~~
Hydraulix989
If he's not hosting copyrighted ROMs himself, then it should be fine. Sony
couldn't beat Bleem! in court:

[https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-
games/is...](https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-
games/issues/issue_117/2295-Best-Little-Emulator-Ever-Made)

~~~
29athrowaway
Emulators live in a very grey legal territory.

They are the product of reverse engineering of proprietary
schematics/designs/programs.

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stollercyrus
Great idea especially with a lot of people staying home in light of COVID-19.
I've been considering ways to stay connected with friends and family now that
I'm spending more time alone.

I've been considering doing regular Google Hangouts with open invites to make
hanging out feel more spontaneous.

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vikramkr
This is pretty cool - I'm wondering what like, makes it different than just
having a zoom call or something on discord? I can tell it's different I just
don't know how to articulate it and I'm curious how you'd differentiate it
from other ways to hang out online?

Looks really cool!

~~~
hauxir
I would say the difference lies in the ability to start interactive apps in
addition to chatting/communicating

~~~
quickthrower2
That deck of cards thing looks awesome. Probably good to use even if you are
in the same physical room!

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nsarafa
I've been hosting a YouTube trippy video room for 30 minutes now. My only
suggestion is to kill the pop over modal every time somebody wants to join.
Kills your ability to interact as the modal can pop up anytime

Should just let anyone pop in without the need to accept every individual
person

~~~
hauxir
I'm planning to add the ability to skip the need to request to join public
rooms soon!

~~~
hombre_fatal
They're talking about how you, the room host, get an entire "user wants to
join" modal that disrupts the whole UI every time someone wants to join the
room. You should just add requests to the sidebar or something, not use a
modal.

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tomerv
This is very cool! Tried it now with my friends. The main complaint is that a
grid view would be better than vertical (or horizontal) bars. Also would be
nice to have done indication which anonymous animal is which video. Thanks for
this!

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jujodi
I noticed your contact is in a discord channel and my first thought was how
this is differentiated from discord. If people are actually contacting you on
discord and this is "installation free", why not make that contact via your
own service?

~~~
hauxir
Good point. the only reason i list discord as a contact is because my platform
doesn't offer private messages yet.

For anything that doesn't need to be private you can simply ask around on the
public chat on the platform :)

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petra
Thanks. This looks cool.

A question: when trying to play SNES games, it requires an .sfc file. This is
for japanese games for the SNES.

Is is possible to make it run .smc files ? those are american versions, much
easier to find, with english text by default.

~~~
jchw
SFC and SMC files are usually identical. It’s just a different choice in file
extension.

“SMC” comes from Super MagiCom, a floppy-based cart copying device for
backup/piracy. The original .smc files produced by the device contained a 512
byte header. Since it’s pretty easy to detect and ignore most emulators do. If
not, it’s easily removed.

Because .smc is in reference to effectively a piracy device, the new preferred
file extension is .sfc and has been for a while now.

(In case it is not obvious, the file format is nominally just a raw dump of
the ROM on the cartridge with no added headers.)

(Note 2: if you are looking for a way to run homebrew/patches/etc on a real
SNES/SFC nowadays, sd2snes is probably the absolute best option.)

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husam212
That's a really bad name for the Arab world :P

~~~
Ftuuky
What does it mean?

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malkia
It's bit funny - "kosmi" means "hair" (plural) in bulgarian, actually
bodyhair. Just sayin ;)

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scottlocklin
Great tool; watched videos with a couple pals who haven't been in the same
room together for a decade!

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phailhaus
Do you host your own server for brokering connections between users? How do
you manage it?

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bfdm
We tried this tonight for some Jackbox games and it worked great. Thanks so
much!

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Jemm
Nice.

On an iPad screen sharing did not work for me. Not that is was expecting that
it would.

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hr2016
Vel gert, til hamingju! / Well done, congratulations!

~~~
hauxir
takk!

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snvzz
Seems like a lite, streamlined Second Life to me.

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chronicler
Are you utilising webrtc to achieve this?

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brandonmenc
Reminds me of The Sierra Network.

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sitzkrieg
this could get extremely popular as a rabb.it replacement

