Ninja von Oertzen

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

A GUY AT GOOGLE DEEPMIND MADE AN ISOMETRIC PIXEL-ART MAP OF NEW YORK CITY AND PUT IT ON THE OPEN WEB FOR FREE

it's called https://t.co/8fAASvEmXT

you open the tab and the city is just sitting there in classic SimCity 2000 isometric pixel art. you scroll. and it keeps going. and going.

i zoomed in on midtown and i could read the H&M signage in times square. in red. as actual pixel-art letters on the side of a building.

i could see the crystalline spire of the Bank of America Tower poking out of a clump of skyscrapers. individual rooftop HVAC units. tiny green roof gardens. the little driveway loops in front of the hotels.

he estimates the map needs roughly 40,000 tiles. nothing is a placeholder.

the guy who made it is Andy Coenen, a senior staff engineer at Google DeepMind. he is not a pixel artist. by his own admission he is "a former electronic musician."

what he actually did is kind of insane:

> pulled NYC's geometry from the Google Maps 3D tiles API

> fine-tuned an open-source image model (Qwen-Image-Edit) on ~40 hand-paired examples of "satellite tile → pixel art tile"

> spun up 50 parallel instances on rented GPUs and generated tens of thousands of tiles in a few hours

> the fine-tune cost him 12 bucks

his own stated mission for the project, verbatim, is one sentence: "what's possible now that was impossible before?"

apparently the answer is "one engineer can pixel-art most of a metropolis for the price of a sandwich."

and the wildest part to me is he didn't sell it. no signup. no paywall. no NFT. you open the URL and the city is yours to wander.

the post landed at 1,325 points on Hacker News and topped bestofshowhn's 2026 list.

we live in a timeline where a senior engineer at one of the largest AI labs on earth spent his nights pixel-arting Manhattan for fun and then gave it away.

the internet is healing.

[Emily Pontecorvo @emilypont]

We are launching a big project today with MIT —

The Electricity Price Hub!

You can view monthly electricity prices per kwh and avg. bills for every major utility in the country going back to Jan 2020.

https://t.co/xcyd51Z8cy

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@JimCantore Never park on the RIGHT side of the street during a snow storm

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

The MOBILE UX let me create a shared album without warning prompt, then "disappeared" the new album upon creation. Either instantly, or with an arbitrary delay of up to two hours due to connectivity issues. No warning/explanation/feedback re: deleting.

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@Apple
Are you seriously capping the # of shared albums on a platform designed to organize & share all images, for years to come?

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

This prompt is the desktop UX.
No new album unless I delete one I consider part of my archive.

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

“… New Partnership to Enhance Registration Experience for Riders”

That didn’t age well. Still no start wave assignments published, no start package mailers received — days from the tour!

#tdfbbt2025, ⁦@bikenewyork⁩ ⁦@letsdothisrace⁩ https://t.co/4mkSlu2Jls

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@Tim_Walz Bunch o’snowflakes ❄️

[GermanForeignOffice @GermanyDiplo]

Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down – not building – coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs. #Debate2024

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@CatWorkers Tap centering made easy!

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

A female GPS-tracked falcon flew from South Africa to Finland. In 42 days she flew over 10,000 km. That's 230 km per day. What have you achieved in the last 42 days? Source: https://t.co/5vsQb4LR5x

[Max RN @MaxRivlinNadler]

"The DMV settled on a design that has the vibe of what can best be described as a "subway ad for a for-profit college.".....This license plate captures a moment: a city with its sweatpants on at dinner."

@adlankj on fire for @HellGateNY

https://t.co/PBN6jsVXLI

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@THerman23 @LouisatheLast Too cool for 4th grade!

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@swissmiss Brava 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 can’t wait to hear all about it! You are an inspiration as a human and an entrepreneur … and especially growing your business heart first.

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

This 🧵

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

Something interesting you might not have realized: a number of words in English are nouns when you stress the first syllable but verbs when you stress the second.

"Your CONduct is better when you conDUCT yourself appropriately.”

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@Power1051 @angelayee Congratulations @angelayee 🔥🎙️🤘🏼

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@missmulrooney Severance

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

@mattwinn Doesn’t support multi-word last names, which would have to merge without dot separations, like on airplane tickets

[Dan Cassaro @Dan_Cassaro]

they even paid tribute to the old Massimo Vignelli version of the logo which i think is a nice touch

[Ninja von Oertzen @nvony]

Best 🔥🔥🔥

[Dan Cassaro @Dan_Cassaro]

A lot of immature designers are piling on this logo without looking at or understanding how WELL the full system works. This is elegant and functional and I will die on this hill!!!