Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
airstrike
3dfx
The trivia thing was asked for at reddit too, but i looked into the file storage of the server and it seems that the photos are just plainly stolen from all over the internet with file names like chronophoto.app/years/1963/ap630629032-02fcaf4ca7736109b998d760283a3a9ba7bceda7-s900-c85.webp or chronophoto.app/years/2017/ed-jones-north-korea-top-100-photos-2017.jpg No credit is given anywhere too. This is probably illegal and the author will get in a lot of trouble if he does not do something about that soon.
par
> author will get in a lot of trouble if he does not do something about that soon.
probably worst thing that will happen is some kind of cease and desist.
undefined
candlemas
I wish it had a seed that you could specify.
IndySun
Why would this work better as a daily game like wordle?
I ask because I disagree. Visuals are far more infinite than guessing a 5 letter word with restricted choices. Chrono and Wordle are not comparable.
gojomo
People like to compete: seeing the same questions makes the scores comparable. Having common context of the same "daily pics" also creates opportunities for discussion & debate which don't exist otherwise.
Trickling out synchronized games may create more durable entertainment, because otherwise many tend to play intensely until they bore of it, considering it "done" – never checking back.
Returning back each day may generate more 'fun' per game, as the satiation of repeated play is minimized. It also cultivates a reliable audience for incremental changes/experiments that take time to implement & evaluate – assiting iterative improvement.
satvikpendem
If it gets popular by going viral, the creator could sell it for 7 figures to the New York Times too.
jayknight
Framed is pretty popular with some of my daily game friends, and it's visual.
dirtyid
This is great
cush
Well I want to play it again
tobr
Simple and fun game. I just wish the score was more forgiving the older the photo was. It’s a lot harder to tell 1905 and 1910 apart than 2015 and 2020, from the perspective of 2023.
pavon
Actually I've been doing consistently worse in the years I lived through than the rest of the timeline. Apparently the older I get the more styles blur together. I tend to estimate ~5 years too early for the 1980-2000, and ~10 years too early for 2010 to present.
charles_f
Interesting, unless there was a major clue, I've had as much pain in both cases.
moffkalast
I always got the most points when I just did a completely random guess haha. Taking the actively misleading part out of the equation.
intrasight
I was finding that I had a harder time with very recent photos. Fashion has become a bit static perhaps.
yieldcrv
I found 1973-1997 looking very similar in color film quality, and cars on the street. maybe if I was more familiar with models, maybe.
it was only obvious it was 80s or 90s if something silly was going on.
my top score is 2900 right now
blauditore
Changes in consumer-grade photo quality between 70s/80s/90s are actually quite visible if you've looked at many of them. It's subtle, but e.g. newer ones have better range in brightness, i.e. less overly bright or dark areas in high-contrast images.
thechao
I got a bunch of Edwardian—WW2 photos in one go, and netted 3190. I might be able to get higher than that, but only if the photos predate 2000.
I think styles changed a lot from 1900—1970. After that, things are pretty hard to distinguish; retroactive clothing styles muddyvthe waters.
yieldcrv
got 3632! and now my watch has ended
ipaddr
First time 2200.. what a fun game. I'll use your 2900 as a goal
washadjeffmad
One of the photos was labeled with the year, and the game identified it differently. It's all in fun.
thinking4real
Disagree, it’s just a matter of analyzing each decade precisely
Thought often the pictures are not a great representation of the time they convey :/
softfalcon
Wow… for the first time in my life, knowing intricate information about film development colouring paid off
NikolaNovak
It's tricky. I got one that was full bright standard colour... from 1912. Normal contrast and hue and saturation, no noise. I assume recoloured later?
There are bw photos from 70s and colour photos from 50s. Contrast and noise and hue can give clues, but nothing stops a photographer from using old film in new times. I ended up going for cars and styles more when possible.
kxrm
> I assume recoloured later?
Color capable film has been around since the late 19th century.
function_seven
Sure, but the character of the saturations and hues is different. I think that’s what parent is talking about.
softfalcon
Fair point! Maybe I just got lucky and my 5 or so photos were all time accurate to their development methods!
OtherwiseBenign
A bit like the car meta in Geoguessr
swyx
do geoguessr style livestreaming but for old photos and talk thru your process, people will love it
whoibrar
yes, I would 100 percentage watch it
amelius
People still use old film sometimes ...
dbosch
Great game ! Thanks for sharing.
Small suggestion: it would be great to get some information about the picture (location, context, people) in addition to the year, after we tried to guess the date.
achairapart
Like others, I wish there was some info about the photos like context, location or source (Wikipedia?).
Anyway, here's the complete dataset (funny way to store it):
https://www.chronophoto.app/badSneakers.txt
Also, I couldn't resist and cheated a bit to see if you'ld get something special for 5000, but nothing :(
orlp
This is very similar to Wikitrivia: https://wikitrivia.tomjwatson.com/ , which asks you to place general historical concepts/events on a timeline.
tasuki
Not sure how similar it is, but hey Wikitrivia is great!
dougdonohoe
Reminds me of the Timeline (I think this is the name) card game where every player has a bunch of cards, each of which represents a historical event (e.g., moon landing, or sinking of Titanic, discovery of Radium, etc. Each player has to put down the card in the proper order, with respect to previous cards played. It gets harder as more cards are "on the timeline". Fun game.
RicoElectrico
Yeah, it's called Timeline. At work we took Armenian colleagues to a pub which had it available. It was funny to play with the Polish localization, they understood more than we assumed (Armenians know Russian). But the replay value is dubious. The guy who won turned out to have this game at home. Kinda cheating ;)
pwenzel
This is really fun. My only wish is that I could see some information about the photos in the summary screen. Maybe a photographer credit or link to a Wikipedia?
ddejohn
Absolutely love these types of games. Geoguessr is another classic.
EDIT: oof, just got the Columbine High School class photo.
pcthrowaway
I prefer Explordle to Geoguessr
PerryCox
As my last image in round 5 I got a photo of WWF where Mankind was on top of the hell in a cell. I guessed 1998 because of the meme and got it correct! It was the only image I hit dead on.
imiric
Same for me with Musk on stage with the Cybertruck (2019).
It would be more interesting if these popular photos were removed, and guessing would be based only on knowledge about clothing and hair styles, film type, car design, etc.
Great game!
earthbee
I feel I'd be doing better at this game if I was a car person. The only time I've got the year spot on was with a photo of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. The worst I did was guess 1960 on a black and white photo taken almost directly above of some cars on a road, it was actually 1980.
Fun but tricky
anthomtb
I was a cat nut in middle school. The four photos with cars? All guessed within 5 years. The one without a car? Off by 30 years.
dinkleberg
This is a fun little game. It is interesting to see what the tells are for the time periods. The reliable ones for me so far are military uniforms, cars, and computers. Hairstyles and clothes for some time periods are a give away, but some of those have thrown me off too.
ghayes
Helped for me that I am in one of the photos (NHL game played at Lake Tahoe during the pandemic).
dinkleberg
That is fantastic. Gotta wonder what the chance of that is.
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
I feel like this would work even better as a daily game like Wordle with the same 5 pics for everyone to play so you can (lightly) compete with friends.
And at the end, you could get some trivia for each of the photos