There's music? I didn't get any at all!

I guess that explains why I couldn't understand the point of this... For a while I thought it was just a kinda cool but nothing special particle effect, and wondered what it was even doing on the HN front-page.

OP:I dunno what the issue is but I didn't get any sound on Android. Might be a bug in your page. Sorry for the detail-free bug report.

For me the audio stutters when I look at it, but it plays smoothly when I am in a different tab.

I was just gonna write the same thing. First I opened it in Firefox, which works fine for a couple of seconds, then the audio glitches out. Then I decided to try Chrome, as many of these "toys" are ever only tried in Chrome, but then this happened instead.

Helped me to have my headphones on.

To each their own I guess. I listened to it with headphones, and it was very soothing.

Yep. And more importantly, give an indication you're going to make noise, and give people an option to turn it off before it starts.

How common is photosensitive epilepsy?

This is when seizures are triggered by certain rates of flashing lights or contrasting light and dark patterns.

Around 1 in 100 people has epilepsy and of these people, around 3% have photosensitive epilepsy. Photosensitive epilepsy is more common in children and young people (up to 5%) and is less commonly diagnosed after the age of 20.

Source: https://epilepsysociety.org.uk/about-epilepsy/epileptic-seiz...

I immediately thought about that, my first go at it started with a big glitchy rapidly-flashing ball right in the middle of the screen. (Not sure if it should be like that? iOS safari, iOS16.0) Kind of the worst case scenario.

This just gave me an idea for a browser extension.

And a mute button.