1 HN user recommended this explainer1 month2012–2025score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN links it as the author's own breakdown of Pointer Pointer's inner workings.
Paul Irish explains how pointerpointer.com works. It uses a hidden canvas of colored Voronoi regions to look up which photo matches the cursor position.
“Paul Irish did a breakdown of it quite a while ago” (HN, 2020)
Here's a picture of all the different regions: [link] For those curious if how it works, Paul Irish did a breakdown of it quite a while ago: [this video] TL:DW - Vornoi Diagrams[1] and manual tagging, no machine learning needed. [1] [link]
Breakdown of Pointer Pointer using Voronoi and manual tagging
I made a quick video explaining how the webapp works: [this video] Essentially, using the gridPositions.json to populate a Voronoi Grid (toggle display of the <canvas> in your browser). Then your cursor position is used against the grid to find which shape encloses it which maps back to the source JPEG which is then displayed.
Paul Irish explained the basics of how it works here: [this video] I wonder if you could create something similar nowadays using generative AI but with the finger in a very specific location without pregenerating thousands of images.
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