Dressed to defeat the machine
Hey 👋 — today's issue opens with a piece of clothing that's basically a diss track for object-recognition models, then wanders through a browser-rendered San Francisco, some Blender-to-Three.js wisdom, and an executable that moonlights as a database. Something for everyone with a monitor and a healthy suspicion of surveillance cameras.
Digital Camouflage – Present to the human eye, absent to the model
This is a garment designed to look like nothing more than an abstract print to you or me, while quietly scrambling the object-recognition systems behind public surveillance cameras. It's the kind of adversarial art that treats the model's blind spots as a design material rather than a bug to route around, which is exactly the sort of creative-AI mischief we're suckers for. Wearable, deniable, and pointedly political without saying a word.
The entire city of San Francisco as a video game
Someone took real map tiles and turned the whole city into an explorable open-world game you run in a browser tab, complete with walking, driving, and gliding modes. It's the sort of project that sounds like a weekend hack until you actually start exploring and realize how much of the city is genuinely there (via HN discussion).
Speaking of building whole worlds in the browser —
Blender to Three.js and back: 10 tips for a better workflow
Codrops rounds up ten practical fixes for the eternal Blender-to-Three.js shuffle, including using Blender MCP and AI prompting to speed up scattering objects, syncing transforms, and cleaning up exports. Nothing flashy, just the kind of workflow grease that saves you an evening of squinting at mismatched pivot points.
ElementMirror: React component to stream live DOM element images into canvas
An open-source React component that keeps a live, synced canvas copy of any DOM element — handy if you want to run effects, distortions, or compositing over ordinary page content without wrestling with screenshots (via X thread).
Your executable is a SQLite database
A neat Linux trick shows how to build a file that's simultaneously a runnable ELF binary and a valid SQLite database — ELF pieces tucked into SQLite tables, with binfmt_misc convincing the kernel to just run the thing. Delightfully unnecessary, exactly the kind of engineering curiosity that makes you rethink what a "file" even is.
Quick hits
- Moon (2024) — an interactive explainer so good you'll forget you're reading about orbital mechanics.
- Show HN: Galaxium, an experimental WebGPU space explorer — a playable pocket universe running straight in your browser.
- Anger, Anxiety and Agency — a clear-eyed essay on the emotional weather of building things in the AI era.
- The Future Belongs to the Weird — a case for staying odd on purpose.
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