
To Be - of
https://to.be/
======
bshimmin
I feel like someone spent a lot of money on the domain and then subsequently
tried to work out what the hell to do with it, "pivoted" a number of times,
and somehow ended up with... whatever the hell this is.

~~~
Mahn
It looks stupid now, but in retrospect twitter and instagram looked stupid as
well. It's the kind of startup that either fails horribly or explodes in usage
inexplicably.

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r109
Myspace and Geocities had a baby? But they're both dead?

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pcthrowaway
More like Google Wave and Google Docs had a baby.

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DiabloD3
This is interesting, but the front page is rather cluttered and makes it hard
to pay attention to the core message.

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codemac
AdBlock Plus blocked this entire page, if anyone is seeing an entirely white
page like I was.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
So did noscript.

I temporarily allowed the domain and it was well worth the click.

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Kiro
Don't you expect most pages to be broken when using noscript?

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GigabyteCoin
Yes, but most are at least visible.

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kaybe
If I only have to allow one page, it's all good.

But then the first page wants to load from another 10 pages. I allow the non-
tracker ones, usually two or three. Reload.. and they want to load from
another 5 pages. I usually give up here since I'm not that interested anyway.
Why the heck do you need code from over 15 external pages?

~~~
GigabyteCoin
It is truly amazing how bloated most webpages are these days.

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arcameron
Completely white page with NoScript, please add a <noscript> tag

~~~
of
That's a good idea. Why would someone downvote this?

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yzzxy
Because it's silly to ask web developers to cater to a specific extension used
by a marginal minority of people. Much better to use a more general method for
when JS is unavailable.

And people using noscript or similar tools (like myself) should know by now
when a page fails to check that first.

~~~
of
But the comment applies to anyone who's not using JavaScript in their web
browser.

Although I like programming in JavaScript, there's many people I know that
consider JavaScript itself to be a silly extension of what a web browser
should do.

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jobposter1234
And many people, including those who made this website, consider Javascript to
be an integral part of what a web browser should do.

Would you complain about a free video game if it only worked on playstation,
and you had only an xbox but still refused a free playstation?

~~~
kephra
Hackers news work perfectly fine without JavaScript.

JS should be an enhancement to improve UX, but not a doorstopper for search
engines, web scrappers, and blind people.

~~~
jekrb
Hacker News is a fairly simple site for this use case. It works. However I
would not say that it is perfectly fine.

Try upvoting with js disabled. The page has to do an entire refresh. That
could be a doorstopper for people with limited data plans or with spotty
network coverage.

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NiklasPersson
I'm thinking modern art, make no sense, have fun, be "strange", create
something raw and unique... yeah. Some people will have fun with this I'm
sure. Not for me at this moment in life though, but that shouldn't matter to
anyone.

Cheers

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jstanek
What exactly is this? It looks to me like a multiplayer vaporwave-inspired
shirt maker.

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dinkumthinkum
My advice is the demo video should show something compelling being created not
a bunch of completely random nonsense that does nothing to evoke any kind of
connection with anyone. Presumably you created this with this Hamletesque
title to create memorable "Internety" experiences. Show one. Otherwise I think
it is hard to understand. Sure, someone else could probably create something
much better than is in that video but if even the creator can't create
something compelling ... its a bit weird. Just my advice. It is an interesting
drawing tool, otherwise.

~~~
jbullfrog
I thought the same thing. Was wondering why the lack of anything substantial
created. They made a video. Could have made a more complete project with their
product for the video. :)

Regardless, cool idea.

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unicornporn
Target group:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seapunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seapunk)

[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%22seapunk%22](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=%22seapunk%22)

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Orangeair
It's like a hipster Web 2.0 version of YTMND.

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at_
Maybe I'm overreacting b/c this aligns with my interests pretty directly but
this is outrageously cool + well-executed. And better yet looks like there's
already a bunch of interesting users on there.

Completely eliminates the technical barriers to creating this type/genre of
net art so it's gonna be interesting seeing the effect that has alone

How long has this been around?

~~~
of
to.be has been around since 2012 / 2013\. I'm glad you think it's cool.

~~~
yabatopia
The domain to.be has a long history in Belgium (.be is the CcTLD for Belgium).
Before and around 2000 it was one of the most popular websites there, it was
literally the place.to.be. I always liked the domain name, it was clever and
with lots of potential. At one stage it was a well-known chat site, but a
succession of pivots and different owners led to a obscure existence. And now
it somehow resurrected as a t-shirt printing company based in the US.

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Det_Jacobian
The concept was a lot more interesting to me than the implementation. I
thought I would end up being able to view a and click bunch of masked, active
HTML items, instead it seems to bake it down into a single image. Editing
tools looked neat, but "print on a T-shirt" was the last thing I expected, and
a disappointment.

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of
Hmm, I'm not sure what you mean by 'bake it down into a single image'. You
should be able to drag around the HTML elements on the field, if you've made
an account and are working on your own field, or pulled it from someone else.

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emehrkay
I haven't had a chance to read through some of the source, but does anyone
know how the photo editing is done? Are there libs to handle those effects?

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nicwolff
Safari 7.1, no extensions: blank page. Firefox 34.0.5, clean install: blank
page. Chrome 39.0.2171.99, clean install: blank page.

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hypron
Looks like a great site to make dank memes with.

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grandalf
Love it. A free form virtual world. Been wanting to build one of these for a
long time.

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antihero
Somehow, I'm not sure how, you've crippled the scrollbar on my browser :S

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blacksqr
|| !

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rvern
or not (to be)?

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WA
Could be used to create "mood boards" for games, stories, art

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state
Who owns the content?

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of
The terms are here: [http://to.be/terms](http://to.be/terms)

There's a long section on "Ownership" that I don't fully understand, but you
can interpret if you're interested.

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icebraining
IANAL, but seems like a typical clause. Essentially you hold the copyright,
but you agree to give them a perpetual license to do whatever they please with
the stuff you submit (including allowing other users to incorporate it in
their own works).

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chunkiestbacon
Tumblr will love it! ;)

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MyNameIsMK
Well done! _clap_

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quest88
I don't get it.

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_almosnow
No snide. The fact that most here don't get it makes me think this project
will be, at least, moderately successful.

