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Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

439 points david927 | 1 comments | 29 Jun 25 20:21 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

What are you working on? Any new ideas which you're thinking about?
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rorylaitila ◴[30 Jun 25 13:07 UTC] No.44422829[source]▶
Working on a physical and digital archive of all American vintage print advertising. I've built the archival and database software on Lucee & MySQL to store images and automate, and I use OpenAI to analyze images and extra meta data. All of the full page ads are pushed to https://adretro.com.

I've gotten the process to fully catalog all of the advertisements in a magazine (about 150 on average) down from over a week to a few hours. I should be able to get through the material within my lifetime now :)

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DamnInteresting ◴[30 Jun 25 16:01 UTC] No.44424838[source]▶
It's funny...I absolutely despise being advertised to, yet I find vintage ads fascinating. I don't know what that says about me.

I feel the same about a lot graffiti; if it's recent, it's an eyesore, but old graffiti can be extremely interesting. I guess both domains expose some elements of the zeitgeist seldom explored in other mediums. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nice site, by the way!

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gwbas1c ◴[30 Jun 25 21:53 UTC] No.44428308[source]▶
I think it's more about how there's a lot more advertising now than in the past; and just how generally intrusive advertising has become overall.

Think about a newspaper / magazine: The ads didn't suddenly block the article, move the page around, or phone home to the advertiser. Likewise, the ads wouldn't slow the magazine down, flash, or make noise.

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1. DamnInteresting ◴[01 Jul 25 14:32 UTC] No.44434265{3}[source]▶
Those elements certainly amplify the awfulness, but I am old enough that I remember reading magazines, and I despised the ads there was well. I'm trying to read this OMNI article about colonizing Mars, and this stupid full-page ad for calculator wristwatches is getting in my way. *shakes fist*

I'm sure glad that the inline ads model never caught on in novels.