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This Website Will Self Destruct
- ozdevi 6y agoThis is a great idea and what a coincidence, just one week ago I posted a side project to HN that aims to build a website completely by user requests from scratch, while your website is destructing itself. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23315733 // https://userbricks.com/ https://userbricks.com/
- totetsu 6y agoSurely the post-to-hackernews button should self destruct after one use also..
- ronack 6y agoDear Website, I wish you would put the "Read a message" button above the content so it doesn't jump around vertically each time I click it.
- snazz 6y agoThis is wonderful. How is content moderation being addressed? That's always going to be my primary concern with this sort of thing.
- surround 6y agoThere’s a “report” button at the bottom.
- kiernanmcgowan 6y agoToss this into a cronjob and the website will never die ;) curl -XPOST -d 'body=you cant die. you will never die' "https://www.thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com/api/send_letter" https://www.thiswebsitewillselfdestruct.com/api/send_letter"
- baddox 6y agoWell, that would just be a “who lives longer” contest between the two servers. :)
- 361994752 6y ago... Or hundreds of "who lives longer" contests simultaneously. And the website must win them all to self-destruct
- mrichards212a 6y agoI wonder how such tactics will evolve over the long run
- thanksforfish 6y agoEasy. Add it to a Lambda function on an AWS account. Run once a day, it shouldn't generate a bill on it's own. Outlive an AWS account that never generates a bill? That could be a challenge.
- surround 6y agoIt ought to only allow one message per IP address, then things would get interesting.
- deepsun 6y agoFinally the use case for IPv6!
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoHi! I made this. I'm not going to talk too much about the back end of the system, but that won't work. :)
- saagarjha 6y agoWould you be willing to talk about it once it self-destructs?
- trynewideas 6y agofirst one I got encouraged suicide (starting "Being dead is actually not that bad") and it was such a "dead dove do not eat" situation, why did I fall for this stupid link
- bananamerica 6y agoPeople write what they want. I only saw nice messages.
- liquidify 6y agoThe website could sell advertisement space for crypto currency, and pay its hosting fees automatically. It could become autonomous.
- elliekelly 6y agoPlease considering adding a privacy policy and some CYA legalese. I know it probably seems excessive and unnecessary but I would just hate to see someone wind up in a whole mess of trouble for a super cool side project that was supposed to be fun. The FTC has resources for small-business COPPA compliance and there are plenty of free tools to help with a privacy policy.
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoThis is extremely high on the todo list. It was going to be done this weekend, but then I ended up living a little too close to some of the ongoing protests in the US to concentrate on getting it done. Thanks for the reminder.
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoHey, Thanks so much for checking this out. I made this site as part of Ludum Dare 46, a game jam. The theme was "Keep it alive." I wanted to do something that was positive and that would give people an outlet to write about their experiences related to Covid. I've had to deal with some abuse, particularly after the first week, but overall it's been an incredibly positive experience. There are certainly a lot of improvements I hope to make soon. I honestly built it in an evening and expected it might be dead within a day or two. That it's lasted over a month is incredible. With a large influx of new readers, I'm sure you'll come across a few less savory posts. I'd encourage you to click the report button on the bottom of the page. Thanks so much for checking it out! Edit: Since this is HN, and I'm bound to get the question - It's built with Rails and Vue, with PaperCSS for the styling, Postgres for the database, and Redis is being used as part of the spam mitigation system. Oh, and the DB really will wipe itself if it goes more than 24 hours without a post.
- bathtub365 6y agoInteresting website. How will the database wipe itself?
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoDROP TABLE table_name;
- anticensor 6y agoDROP DATABASE website;
- NikolaNovak 6y ago1. Thank you for doing this 2. It's strange how the simple things, efforts and connections mean so much these days 3. It is joyous and comforting how many interesting, loving, quirky, emotional, sincere messages I've found, and how few trolls I've stumbled upon. Hope it stays that way (understanding that it may be unlikely if it keeps getting more visibility). 4. I have no idea if by deleting reported spam you become more culpable/liable for any offensive messages you don't remove, or any freedom of speech issues - check the laws in your region I guess, and yes it's sad that one has to think about these things :-/ 5. Best of luck! :)
- Waterluvian 6y agoIn high school I thought of the opposite idea: “This website contains a timer for seven days. If this timer reaches zero a one million dollar donation will be made to numerous charities. The button below resets the timer.” I was going to call it “This is why we can’t have nice things” But I couldn’t find a million dollars.
- bananamerica 6y agoYou could make it accept donations and/or start with a much lower value like that 100 or 1000.
- saagarjha 6y agoSomeone from 4chan will just write a script to keep it from ever running out.
- swilliamsio 6y agoMake it so only one entry per IP address? The script would very quickly run out, assuming they couldn't spoof (not sure how easy it is to spoof IP addresses).
- waynesonfire 6y agoI love the ideas in this response. To reset to the timer requires donating $$ to the cause.
- jtolmar 6y agoI love the game theory of this. For a charity, you could choose a good cause that upsets assholes. So they have to donate money to the charity to prevent it from getting the money that was donated.
- ganstyles 6y agoThis is a cool concept! Lots of messages appear to be people spamming their twitch or whatever IDs asking for followers.
- klenwell 6y agoDidn't Reddit do something like this with one of their April 1st experiments? What ever happened with that? Ah, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit) Looks like it lasted about 4 months. So I guess that gives us a baseline for the over-under on the lifetime of this site.
- harryh 6y agoThe major difference is that an individual reddit account could only press the button once and anonymous presses were not allowed. A single person can send an unlimited number of messages to this new website. Given that I would expect this to go longer. On the other hand, The Button was an april fools experiment on one of the internet's most popular websites and thus garnered a ton of attention. This could easily fade into obscurity much faster. So who knows!
- DC-3 6y agoAlso worth noting that accounts created after the start of the event were barred from participating.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoAlso no recaptcha on the form, so I guess at some point the spam bots of this world will keep this running.
- pjfin123 6y agoWikipedia says 2: "the countdown timer reached zero and ended 2 months and 4 days after it had begun" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)
- whymauri 6y agoI miss when Reddit April Fools was fun :(
- yreg 6y ago
- egfx 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9531265
- netsec_burn 6y agoLooks like the messages can serve XSS payloads. I just came across one. Perhaps self destruction of this codebase wouldn't be so bad.
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoThat shouldn't be possible. They might try to, but it won't work. If you really did see one, please let me know what it was doing so I can figure out what happened, and if someone else does, please report it. There's a report button at the bottom of every page.
- system2 6y agoThe amount of CSS went into those boxes is mind-boggling.
- xook 6y agoIt reminds me of Space Email but with a twist. This is cool!
- tjchear 6y agoThis reminds me of an indie game (or a web game) where players have to press a button to keep a girl alive. Does anyone remember what it's called?
- for_i_in_range 6y agoFirst message I got: “Dear Website, I wish I was aborted.”
- divbzero 6y ago“Depression is like drowning in a shallow bath. Never give up.”
- ToFab123 6y agoReminds me of "the really big button that doesn't do anything" from www early days https://krystalrose.com/rosewood/library/BigButton.htm https://krystalrose.com/rosewood/library/BigButton.htm
- sozy777 6y agoCan anyone explain what's so special about this website? I'm missing the point
- jachee 6y agoIn the creator's own words: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23374842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23374842
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Illniyar 6y agoThe design of the site is just perfect. I love it. (And the idea is awesome too)
- sillysaurusx 6y agoDear Website, I wish I didn’t make this life I have. I wish I had made different choices and had the foreknowledge to not meet certain people. I wish I felt happier with what I have, instead of yearning for the things and situations I don’t. I just wanted to say, whoever posted this, things can get better. I was in much the same situation about four years ago. One thing that helped greatly was antidepressants. But that's a can of worms that seems to upset people whenever it's brought up, so perhaps I'll just mention it in passing. Good luck, whoever and wherever you are.
- glasshead969 6y agoThanks for this. I am not person who wrote the message but I am in similar situation, may be it’s the quarentine and being alone at home for weeks now but I have been thinking about my choices and mistakes. I hope it gets better eventually.
- aphrax 6y agoIt will get better eventually, take care & feel free to email me
- moulei 6y agosomeone said "Could you publish your source code thx“ lol
- the_duke 6y agoFirst message I read below. A Narcissist’s Prayer: That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did… You deserved it.
- shultays 6y agoI remember something like this, it was not the website itself but you were keeping a character in space alive by supplying air to her? or something similar. Eventually she died because because of website having issues and people not being able to support her
- air7 6y agoVery beautiful and inspiring. How did you get the word out once it was ready?
- hiisukun 6y agoI'm late to the party, but wanted to say I really liked the slight tilt on the wonderful floating buttons, with their gentle shadow and floaty-but-satisfying animation. Great page and excellent attention to the little details that makes it feel like it was made with love :)
- marakv2 6y agoDamn op that's addictive as hell. Some of the things you read can be incredibly sad, to be followed by something inspirational. Excellent job, I'm interested in just how long it lasts!
- csunbird 6y agoOne of the notes included a base64 encoded message that reads: "You are Big Brain. Good job finding an Easter egg. Know that God is Real. Believe in Jesus Christ and repent for your sins. It's not just a bunch of rules you have to follow but a relationship with him. Know that everything happens for a reason and God only wants the best for you."
- robinnift 6y agoHow can i create a similar website for a polling or getting a survey on some topic? I am no coder.
- Minor49er 6y agoYou can use sites like surveymonkey.com or strawpoll.me
- robinnift 6y agoHow can i create a similar website for a polling or survey on some topic? I am no coder.
- achairapart 6y agoFunny thing is that no website will live on forever, so, in some way, every website fate is just to self destruct at some point.
- ibdf 6y agolol - I expected to see this in the messages... was not disappointed. 1 AND 1=2 UNION SELECT table_schema, table_name, 1 FROM information_schema.tables
- m1117 6y agoThat's great that it'll self destruct!
- wsinks 6y agoDoes anyone else experience that if you highlight the seconds counting down on the webpage that they disappear? And that if you reload the webpage, it's always at the appropriate seconds for 24 hours?
- trox 6y agoConcerning the second question: I assume it is displaying the placeholder value before replacing it with the actual value.
- Pxtl 6y agoSurprisingly low number of SQL injection attempts and hateful screeds in the "read a message". Although I did see what looks like a blockquote rendered in what looked like code blocks. Markdown?
- elwell 6y agoUnique design. When I right-clicked to view page source the tilted orientation surprised me. It's like in life, you can realize something is a bit-off, and then time passes, and you get used to it. Then one day, a 'true north' appears and you realize how tilted your perspective was.
- jtxt 6y agoDear Website, If you were a person you would be the type that threatens suicide for attention. Not the most healthy. Good luck!
- kruasan 6y agoSomeone posted this, whatever that means: 𐐌 𐑊𐐴𐐿 𐑉𐐴𐐻𐐮𐑍 𐐮𐑌 𐑄𐐮𐑅 𐐻𐐯𐐿𐑅𐐻, 𐐮𐐻 𐑊𐐳𐐿𐑅 𐐿𐐭𐑊. 𐐶𐐲𐑉𐐿𐑅 𐐼𐐮𐑁𐐲𐑉𐐲𐑌𐐻 𐑄𐐰𐑌 𐑅𐐻𐐰𐑌𐐼𐐲𐑉𐐼 𐐬𐑊𐐼 𐐢𐐰𐐻𐐲𐑌 𐐰𐑊𐑁𐐰𐐺𐐯𐐻, 𐐺𐐲𐐻 𐐲𐐻 𐑄 𐑅𐐩𐑋 𐐻𐐴𐑋 𐑁𐐫𐑉𐑋𐐼 𐑁𐑉𐐲𐑋 𐑄 𐐢𐐰𐐻𐐲𐑌 𐐰𐑊𐑁𐐰𐐺𐐯𐐻. 𐐆𐑋𐐰𐐾𐐮𐑌 𐑄𐐮𐑅 𐐺𐐨𐐮𐑍 𐐲𐑅𐐲𐐼 𐑁𐐫𐑉 𐐹𐑉𐐰𐐿𐐻𐐮𐐿𐐲𐑊 𐐹𐐲𐑉𐐹𐐲𐑅𐑆. 𐐡𐐰𐑌𐐼𐐲𐑋 𐐼𐐭𐐼 𐐮𐑌𐐻𐑉𐐨𐑀𐐼 𐐺𐐴 𐑄 𐐔𐐯𐑅𐐨𐑉𐐯𐐻 𐐈𐑊𐑁𐐰𐐺𐐯𐐻 .
- alexjm 6y agoThat's Deseret, an alternate alphabet for English. According to a converter, it says: > I like writing in this text, it looks cool. Works different than standard old Latin alphabet, but at the same time formed* from the Latin alphabet. Imagine this being used for practical purposes. Random dude intrigued by the Deseret Alphabet. * The converter gave me "/f/aw/r/m/d/" here