9 ms·

google.com/humans.txt

205 points by netgusto 11y ago

sluggg 11y ago
what is the point of this?
- lukevers 11y ago
  It's just a thing that some people do. http://humanstxt.org/ http://humanstxt.org/
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelbuckbee 11y ago
  It's meant to be a counterpart to robots.txt - a plaintext file that indicates who worked on a site.
- radicality 11y ago
  You usually put a robots.txt file for search engines. A search engine putting a humans.txt is funny.
  - SilasX 11y ago
    I hope this becomes a thing though -- a text file you can reliably find that gives you the barebones explanation of what the sites is for ... though I guess /about already functions that way. It's two weeks late though, would have been a great "April Fools but we're serious" thing.
    - ralmeida 11y ago
      It's already a thing (http://humanstxt.org/ http://humanstxt.org/), and Google's has had the file for quite a while now. It's currently used mostly as a "painting's signature", a point of pride for the team behind the site. Looking through all the comments in this thread you will see many other examples.
- sp332 11y ago
  It's like robots.txt but for humans. This Firefox add-on shows you if the site you're browsing has one and lets you read it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/humanstxt/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/humanstxt/
- insertion 11y ago
  Two reasons: 1. You'll come across it and apply for a job at Google. 2. You'll have a positive interaction with the Google brand. A big part of this: it's something people want to share. Without that element, it would only ever be seen by a few dozen people.
  - ArtDev 11y ago
    Without a single name listed, Google is doing it wrong. So for me this is a negative reflection of the Google brand.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
quantum_nerd 11y ago
Would love to help them out, if I can get an interview...
- kristopolous 11y ago
  have someone that works or has worked there vouch for you. I've had a google recruiter contact me on that alone.
  - Bahamut 11y ago
    It's probably the easiest way to get an interview for most companies.
    - stuxnet79 11y ago
      But the question is, are you going to pass the interview? Getting an interview is the easy part - I've gotten two Google interviews so far just from recruiters and a friend recommending me.
- hal9000xp 11y ago
  The best meritocratic way (i.e. not dependent on your CV too much) to get invited to an interview with Google is to be top 1000 in Google Code Jam. Study algorithms a lot, practice on CodeForces and TopCoder. If you work hard on it, in some year you will be on top of Google Code Jam. Recommendations is good to have but it won't help you to be successful on the interview. Practice algorithms a lot, ... I mean literally A LOT. P.S. I had recommendations from Google employees. I screw up Google interview. Now, I'm preparing with algorithms and participate on coding contests including Google Code Jam (right now).
  - nxzero 11y ago
    Do you have any suggestions how to practice algorithms?
    - 11y ago
azinman2 11y ago
Cute
Jordrok 11y ago
Tried hackers.txt. Was disappointed.
- gnuarch 11y ago
  Try twtxt.txt
  - topher200 11y ago
    To help others before they try it, it's a 404
    - gnuarch 11y ago
      Thanks and sorry, just thought it might fit, twtxt being ... Decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers. http://twtxt.readthedocs.org/en/stable/ http://twtxt.readthedocs.org/en/stable/
Kurtose 11y ago
Human after all. http://www.ycombinator.com/humans.txt http://www.ycombinator.com/humans.txt
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ryanburk 11y ago
the nest one has always been great http://www.nest.com/humans.txt http://www.nest.com/humans.txt
ikeboy 11y ago
http, no auto redirect to https? On chrome. I thought Google preloads key pins which force https loading, but apparently the www subdomain isn't included [0]. Are there legacy reasons why? [0] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/net/http/transport_security_state_static.json https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/n...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dperfect 11y ago
humans.txt: everyone: don't poke around /admin don't look in /cgi-bin don't put javascript into the form fields don't make your username look like valid SQL users: don't try to access IDs that you don't own always trust emails that appear to be from us don't look at /pricing#fine_print hackers and security researchers: please stay away lawyers: don't look too closely at /eula employees: don't look at other companies' job postings don't talk about your salary competitors: don't copy us don't undercut the prices listed at /pricing potential investors: don't look in /forum or /complaints don't look at /user_stats look at /pricing#most_expensive_plan
- nxzero 11y ago
  dogs,cats: don't pretend to be human robots: don't pretend to be human google(self): do pretend to be human
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  google.txt: don't be evil.
  - nxzero 11y ago
    Funny, that was deleted years ago, now returns: "404: File not found."
    - amsilprotag 11y ago
      I'd love to see more companies with an evil canary cartoon image file. Perhaps when violated, canary.png could direct to a cartoon unicorn sheepishly grinning with one stuffed cheek.
      - nxzero 11y ago
        In case it's not obvious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11400112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11400112
umeshunni 11y ago
http://humanstxt.org/ http://humanstxt.org/
- OJFord 11y ago
  http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt
bckmn 11y ago
I made a list of some interesting humans.txt files a while back: http://www.andjosh.com/2015/12/17/cool-humanstxt-files/ http://www.andjosh.com/2015/12/17/cool-humanstxt-files/
- pwenzel 11y ago
  The Tumblr choose your own adventure is amazing.
fiatjaf 11y ago
Why? Do you have so much spare time to waste on things like this?
- IanCal 11y ago
  Spare time wasted on what? Me reading the three sentences or someone else writing three sentences?
- ludamad 11y ago
  Why are people so malicious to people who have spare time?
  - jlappi 11y ago
    Jealousy
ArtDev 11y ago
Doesn't this implementation actually undermine the whole point of humans.txt? This is the equivalent of a robots.txt file consisting only of comments. The whole point is to list who is behind the website. A LinkedIn list of people currently working for Google might suffice. This is the best example of humans.txt: http://nest.com/humans.txt http://nest.com/humans.txt
- erichurkman 11y ago
  We list out our product team: https://esharesinc.com/humans.txt https://esharesinc.com/humans.txt It's the first pull request new product people submit: adding themselves to humans.txt – works really well.
csours 11y ago
http://www.gm.com/humans.txt http://www.gm.com/humans.txt I never would have guessed it. Disclaimer: I work at GM. It's probably not as terrible as you imagine. Any opinions are my own.
- chiph 11y ago
  Not bad! Don't let the marketing team find it.
- bdirgo 11y ago
  I work with the team that made that site! That is so funny that they put that in.
  - pros599 11y ago
    Hey! I'm the dev leader of Team Blackbird. I never knew this actually got deployed. AMA!
GuiA 11y ago
i was cofounder at a startup a long time ago, and wrote most of the backend code. i put a humans.txt in there, and updated it every time we had a new employee. then the CEO fired all the best engineers, and I decided to leave shortly after because sometimes in life you gotta let go. the company is still (miraculously) around these days, although all of the original engineers are long gone. the humans.txt is still accessible on their domain as it was on my last day, with all the names of the founding team for the first ~2 years inscribed in there - looks like their newer engineers never stumbled upon it. sometimes when i get nostalgic i like to hit that URL and look at it
- trump2016chalk 11y ago
  I think that the fact they haven't found it is a statement about the new team as well and what their priorities are... Or aren't
- nxzero 11y ago
  "Legacy Code"
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Right in the feels.
- stuxnet79 11y ago
  Is it really that easy to miss an errant text file in the site directory? I'm so meticulous when it comes to code that you couldn't possibly get that past me.
  - breischl 11y ago
    Could be they found it but just never changed it. Maybe they thought it was amusing, or just didn't want to deal with it in code review.
  - rconti 11y ago
    I suppose it depends on what all they do. Maybe their website is not their main product. Maybe they have thousands of sites. Who knows.
danieljp 11y ago
old
YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
404. That’s an error. The requested URL /cats.txt was not found on this server. That’s all we know. I am so disappointed :(
rexreed 11y ago
(psst - try https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt)
andrewfromx 11y ago
robots.txt, humans.txt, where are the cyborgs.txt files!!?
emartinelli 11y ago
Try: https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988924 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7979909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7979909
- netgusto 11y ago
  haha awesome :]
dave2000 11y ago
If they were really smart they'd have knocked up some AI to keep Reader going. Google Reader: Never forgive, never forget.
distantsounds 11y ago
https://www.facebook.com/humans.txt https://www.facebook.com/humans.txt i knew Zuck was a robot!
yati 11y ago
http://booking.com/humans.txt http://booking.com/humans.txt (Disclaimer: I work at Booking; opinions my own)
gitdude 11y ago
https://bitbucket.org/humans.txt https://bitbucket.org/humans.txt
mrspeaker 11y ago
Oh, this is FOR humans? Years ago I made a "human.txt captcha project" to prevent wasting precious CPU cycles on non-robots http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/07/15/humans-txt/ http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/07/15/humans-txt/
- ytjohn 11y ago
  It looks kind of interesting. Do you have anything explaining how it's supposed to work? Are you determining if people are humans by their attempt to answer the math questions? When it says "you are one of them?" does that mean I'm a human or a robot? I'll answer an addition, but then it will ask something like "43 >> 86 = " or " ~ 76 = " and it's like "wtf is going on here?" as the counter ticks down.
eskriett 11y ago
https://disqus.com/humans.txt https://disqus.com/humans.txt ...
eskriett 11y ago
Another interesting one is: https://www.tumblr.com/humans.txt https://www.tumblr.com/humans.txt
- matthewmcg 11y ago
  Just saw this too. It's a text-based adventure game!
- coke12 11y ago
  Seems they forgot to fill out this page: https://www.tumblr.com/txtventure/song.txt https://www.tumblr.com/txtventure/song.txt
masukomi 11y ago
to me this reads as "Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and others..." but frankly we don't really care enough about them to bother naming them. Come, join the great "team" of faceless cogs.
riltsken 11y ago
Might as well add the only humans.txt I've survived in. Maybe I'll see this in 5 years again too. https://mycloud.rackspace.com/humans.txt https://mycloud.rackspace.com/humans.txt
wellsjohnston 11y ago
humblebrag
tomschlick 11y ago
https://github.com/humans.txt https://github.com/humans.txt Looks like they currently have 550 employees...
zaro 11y ago
We are Google ! So nice you stopped by. Would you like to be assimilated ?

205 points by netgusto 11y ago

sluggg 11y ago

what is the point of this?

lukevers 11y ago
It's just a thing that some people do. http://humanstxt.org/ http://humanstxt.org/
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
michaelbuckbee 11y ago
It's meant to be a counterpart to robots.txt - a plaintext file that indicates who worked on a site.
radicality 11y ago
You usually put a robots.txt file for search engines. A search engine putting a humans.txt is funny.
- SilasX 11y ago
  I hope this becomes a thing though -- a text file you can reliably find that gives you the barebones explanation of what the sites is for ... though I guess /about already functions that way. It's two weeks late though, would have been a great "April Fools but we're serious" thing.
  - ralmeida 11y ago
    It's already a thing (http://humanstxt.org/ http://humanstxt.org/), and Google's has had the file for quite a while now. It's currently used mostly as a "painting's signature", a point of pride for the team behind the site. Looking through all the comments in this thread you will see many other examples.
sp332 11y ago
It's like robots.txt but for humans. This Firefox add-on shows you if the site you're browsing has one and lets you read it https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/humanstxt/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/humanstxt/
insertion 11y ago
Two reasons: 1. You'll come across it and apply for a job at Google. 2. You'll have a positive interaction with the Google brand. A big part of this: it's something people want to share. Without that element, it would only ever be seen by a few dozen people.
- ArtDev 11y ago
  Without a single name listed, Google is doing it wrong. So for me this is a negative reflection of the Google brand.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

quantum_nerd 11y ago

Would love to help them out, if I can get an interview...

kristopolous 11y ago
have someone that works or has worked there vouch for you. I've had a google recruiter contact me on that alone.
- Bahamut 11y ago
  It's probably the easiest way to get an interview for most companies.
  - stuxnet79 11y ago
    But the question is, are you going to pass the interview? Getting an interview is the easy part - I've gotten two Google interviews so far just from recruiters and a friend recommending me.
hal9000xp 11y ago
The best meritocratic way (i.e. not dependent on your CV too much) to get invited to an interview with Google is to be top 1000 in Google Code Jam. Study algorithms a lot, practice on CodeForces and TopCoder. If you work hard on it, in some year you will be on top of Google Code Jam. Recommendations is good to have but it won't help you to be successful on the interview. Practice algorithms a lot, ... I mean literally A LOT. P.S. I had recommendations from Google employees. I screw up Google interview. Now, I'm preparing with algorithms and participate on coding contests including Google Code Jam (right now).
- nxzero 11y ago
  Do you have any suggestions how to practice algorithms?
  - 11y ago

azinman2 11y ago

Cute

Jordrok 11y ago

Tried hackers.txt. Was disappointed.

gnuarch 11y ago
Try twtxt.txt
- topher200 11y ago
  To help others before they try it, it's a 404
  - gnuarch 11y ago
    Thanks and sorry, just thought it might fit, twtxt being ... Decentralised, minimalist microblogging service for hackers. http://twtxt.readthedocs.org/en/stable/ http://twtxt.readthedocs.org/en/stable/

Kurtose 11y ago

Human after all. http://www.ycombinator.com/humans.txt http://www.ycombinator.com/humans.txt

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ryanburk 11y ago

the nest one has always been great http://www.nest.com/humans.txt http://www.nest.com/humans.txt

ikeboy 11y ago

http, no auto redirect to https? On chrome. I thought Google preloads key pins which force https loading, but apparently the www subdomain isn't included [0]. Are there legacy reasons why? [0] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/net/http/transport_security_state_static.json https://code.google.com/p/chromium/codesearch#chromium/src/n...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dperfect 11y ago

humans.txt: everyone: don't poke around /admin don't look in /cgi-bin don't put javascript into the form fields don't make your username look like valid SQL users: don't try to access IDs that you don't own always trust emails that appear to be from us don't look at /pricing#fine_print hackers and security researchers: please stay away lawyers: don't look too closely at /eula employees: don't look at other companies' job postings don't talk about your salary competitors: don't copy us don't undercut the prices listed at /pricing potential investors: don't look in /forum or /complaints don't look at /user_stats look at /pricing#most_expensive_plan

nxzero 11y ago
dogs,cats: don't pretend to be human robots: don't pretend to be human google(self): do pretend to be human
em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
google.txt: don't be evil.
- nxzero 11y ago
  Funny, that was deleted years ago, now returns: "404: File not found."
  - amsilprotag 11y ago
    I'd love to see more companies with an evil canary cartoon image file. Perhaps when violated, canary.png could direct to a cartoon unicorn sheepishly grinning with one stuffed cheek.
    - nxzero 11y ago
      In case it's not obvious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11400112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11400112

umeshunni 11y ago

http://humanstxt.org/ http://humanstxt.org/

OJFord 11y ago
http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt http://humanstxt.org/humans.txt

bckmn 11y ago

I made a list of some interesting humans.txt files a while back: http://www.andjosh.com/2015/12/17/cool-humanstxt-files/ http://www.andjosh.com/2015/12/17/cool-humanstxt-files/

pwenzel 11y ago
The Tumblr choose your own adventure is amazing.

fiatjaf 11y ago

Why? Do you have so much spare time to waste on things like this?

IanCal 11y ago
Spare time wasted on what? Me reading the three sentences or someone else writing three sentences?
ludamad 11y ago
Why are people so malicious to people who have spare time?
- jlappi 11y ago
  Jealousy

ArtDev 11y ago

Doesn't this implementation actually undermine the whole point of humans.txt? This is the equivalent of a robots.txt file consisting only of comments. The whole point is to list who is behind the website. A LinkedIn list of people currently working for Google might suffice. This is the best example of humans.txt: http://nest.com/humans.txt http://nest.com/humans.txt

erichurkman 11y ago
We list out our product team: https://esharesinc.com/humans.txt https://esharesinc.com/humans.txt It's the first pull request new product people submit: adding themselves to humans.txt – works really well.

csours 11y ago

http://www.gm.com/humans.txt http://www.gm.com/humans.txt I never would have guessed it. Disclaimer: I work at GM. It's probably not as terrible as you imagine. Any opinions are my own.

chiph 11y ago
Not bad! Don't let the marketing team find it.
bdirgo 11y ago
I work with the team that made that site! That is so funny that they put that in.
- pros599 11y ago
  Hey! I'm the dev leader of Team Blackbird. I never knew this actually got deployed. AMA!

GuiA 11y ago

i was cofounder at a startup a long time ago, and wrote most of the backend code. i put a humans.txt in there, and updated it every time we had a new employee. then the CEO fired all the best engineers, and I decided to leave shortly after because sometimes in life you gotta let go. the company is still (miraculously) around these days, although all of the original engineers are long gone. the humans.txt is still accessible on their domain as it was on my last day, with all the names of the founding team for the first ~2 years inscribed in there - looks like their newer engineers never stumbled upon it. sometimes when i get nostalgic i like to hit that URL and look at it

trump2016chalk 11y ago
I think that the fact they haven't found it is a statement about the new team as well and what their priorities are... Or aren't
nxzero 11y ago
"Legacy Code"
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Right in the feels.
stuxnet79 11y ago
Is it really that easy to miss an errant text file in the site directory? I'm so meticulous when it comes to code that you couldn't possibly get that past me.
- breischl 11y ago
  Could be they found it but just never changed it. Maybe they thought it was amusing, or just didn't want to deal with it in code review.
- rconti 11y ago
  I suppose it depends on what all they do. Maybe their website is not their main product. Maybe they have thousands of sites. Who knows.

danieljp 11y ago

old

YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago

404. That’s an error. The requested URL /cats.txt was not found on this server. That’s all we know. I am so disappointed :(

rexreed 11y ago

(psst - try https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt)

andrewfromx 11y ago

robots.txt, humans.txt, where are the cyborgs.txt files!!?

emartinelli 11y ago

Try: https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt https://www.google.com/killer-robots.txt Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988924 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7979909 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7979909

netgusto 11y ago
haha awesome :]

dave2000 11y ago

If they were really smart they'd have knocked up some AI to keep Reader going. Google Reader: Never forgive, never forget.

distantsounds 11y ago

https://www.facebook.com/humans.txt https://www.facebook.com/humans.txt i knew Zuck was a robot!

yati 11y ago

http://booking.com/humans.txt http://booking.com/humans.txt (Disclaimer: I work at Booking; opinions my own)

gitdude 11y ago

https://bitbucket.org/humans.txt https://bitbucket.org/humans.txt

mrspeaker 11y ago

Oh, this is FOR humans? Years ago I made a "human.txt captcha project" to prevent wasting precious CPU cycles on non-robots http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/07/15/humans-txt/ http://www.mrspeaker.net/2010/07/15/humans-txt/

ytjohn 11y ago
It looks kind of interesting. Do you have anything explaining how it's supposed to work? Are you determining if people are humans by their attempt to answer the math questions? When it says "you are one of them?" does that mean I'm a human or a robot? I'll answer an addition, but then it will ask something like "43 >> 86 = " or " ~ 76 = " and it's like "wtf is going on here?" as the counter ticks down.

eskriett 11y ago

https://disqus.com/humans.txt https://disqus.com/humans.txt ...

eskriett 11y ago

Another interesting one is: https://www.tumblr.com/humans.txt https://www.tumblr.com/humans.txt

matthewmcg 11y ago
Just saw this too. It's a text-based adventure game!
coke12 11y ago
Seems they forgot to fill out this page: https://www.tumblr.com/txtventure/song.txt https://www.tumblr.com/txtventure/song.txt

masukomi 11y ago

to me this reads as "Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and others..." but frankly we don't really care enough about them to bother naming them. Come, join the great "team" of faceless cogs.

riltsken 11y ago

Might as well add the only humans.txt I've survived in. Maybe I'll see this in 5 years again too. https://mycloud.rackspace.com/humans.txt https://mycloud.rackspace.com/humans.txt

wellsjohnston 11y ago

humblebrag

tomschlick 11y ago

https://github.com/humans.txt https://github.com/humans.txt Looks like they currently have 550 employees...

zaro 11y ago

We are Google ! So nice you stopped by. Would you like to be assimilated ?