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One time a friend and I built an app for a weekend hackathon competition called Rails Rumble. At the time (2010), link shortening services were all the rage, b

One time a friend and I built an app for a weekend hackathon competition called Rails Rumble. At the time (2010), link shortening services were all the rage, but they were being used to obfuscate malware links. To fight this, we wanted to create a link shortening service that couldn't be used for malware. Instead of redirecting to a webpage, it broke the page apart into its core elements so you could see what it was about before you visited it. If the site had photos, we even put them into a nice looking image gallery that you could peruse. We finished the project in 72 hours and got an honorable mention for the competition, but we didn't win. A month later, our free server hosting we were given for the competition was about to expire. I logged in to spin the whole thing down. Poking around the DB a bit, I realized our little weekend project had thousands of links shortened and the traffic for the site was actually exceeding the limits of the server. Looking at the URLs, I realized they all had one thing in common; they were all porn sites. The simple inclusion of the image gallery had inadvertently created a porn scraping service. It was like your browser's reader view, but perfect for adult sites! It was so obvious in retrospect, but sometimes in your rush to build an idea, you can be completely blind to its true nature. This time it was amusing, but the next time it could be dangerous, and the lesson always stuck with me.

wolco2 6y ago
Did you ever open source the project? I can see it being useful in a more limited context.
Scoundreller 6y ago
Reminds me of Firefox Send. Found myself in a situation needing it a few weeks ago and was like, ugh, what do I do now.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  I swear Mozilla misses out on a ton of opportunities to make money and fund MDN / Firefox properly. They need to stop making free services, and charge money for services that will fund the open source projects in their foundation, that or finally donate it to a real org that will actually maintain the projects in question.
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
    Firefox Send had a known malware problem for awhile but when it was used to successfully target a NGO the pressure forced Mozilla to pull the plug. At least that’s the version that’s publicly available. If Firefox had used something other than firefox.com the brand trust could be decoupled from the service but by offering it for free they received PR. Catch 22 I think. The nature of Mozilla not having access to the files eliminated any sort of scanning/vetting and malicious actors quickly exploited it. If Firefox had decided to charge for send I’m sure fraudulent payments would have been used to procure accounts intended for malware. That could have helped expire out malicious links before unsuspecting users clicked them but it wouldn’t have completely addressed the issue.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      I think paras 2&3 were also the curse: firefox.com was a “good neighbourhood”, which made it convenient/accessible, but that’s good for the whole spectrum of actors. I guess this is why most no-account file hosting is on sketchy sites.
- cbkeller 6y ago
  There's still a working donation-supported command-line-focused version of it here [1] for anyone who doesn't know! [1] https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend
  - timvisee 6y ago
    Thanks for linking ffsend! You can also use it in your browser, like Send, at `send.vis.ee`. ffsend uses this host, but I don't widely advertise it's address to prevent overloading the server with spam.
- Iv 6y ago
  The year is 2020 and transferring files between devices is still hard. I think a decade ago I started paying ~5$ a month for a server at OVH with a lot of storage. SSH/Filezilla, Nginx on an obfuscated URL, has solved a lot of my problems. I also use it as a server to test docker images, a VPN when I want a French IP, a pictures backup server and a professional presentation website. My free email account I am using since the 90s is now telling me it is almost full so I am considering to switch it. Really, storage is cheap but is not free. Save yourself a lot of hassle: pay it yourself, take back control.
  - csunbird 6y ago
    I am working on a pet project, which is an application that would allow people to share files for limited time with short urls. Do you think that would be useful to many people?
buu700 6y ago
Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24119024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24119024
l-p 6y ago
We just wanted to build a gif-making app for a hackathon. You could search for and browse movies by clicking on directors, actors and other staff, download a movie with one click, preview it to select what you want to clip, and make a gif out of it. Turns out it was a very convenient interface to discover, download, and view movies. All we had to do was front-end to TMDb, a torrent search scrapper, and a layer between the Transmission CLI and the front-end. We inadvertently built a popcorn-time clone in a day.

wolco2 6y ago

Did you ever open source the project? I can see it being useful in a more limited context.

Scoundreller 6y ago

Reminds me of Firefox Send. Found myself in a situation needing it a few weeks ago and was like, ugh, what do I do now.

giancarlostoro 6y ago
I swear Mozilla misses out on a ton of opportunities to make money and fund MDN / Firefox properly. They need to stop making free services, and charge money for services that will fund the open source projects in their foundation, that or finally donate it to a real org that will actually maintain the projects in question.
- dkdk8283 6y ago
  Firefox Send had a known malware problem for awhile but when it was used to successfully target a NGO the pressure forced Mozilla to pull the plug. At least that’s the version that’s publicly available. If Firefox had used something other than firefox.com the brand trust could be decoupled from the service but by offering it for free they received PR. Catch 22 I think. The nature of Mozilla not having access to the files eliminated any sort of scanning/vetting and malicious actors quickly exploited it. If Firefox had decided to charge for send I’m sure fraudulent payments would have been used to procure accounts intended for malware. That could have helped expire out malicious links before unsuspecting users clicked them but it wouldn’t have completely addressed the issue.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    I think paras 2&3 were also the curse: firefox.com was a “good neighbourhood”, which made it convenient/accessible, but that’s good for the whole spectrum of actors. I guess this is why most no-account file hosting is on sketchy sites.
cbkeller 6y ago
There's still a working donation-supported command-line-focused version of it here [1] for anyone who doesn't know! [1] https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend
- timvisee 6y ago
  Thanks for linking ffsend! You can also use it in your browser, like Send, at `send.vis.ee`. ffsend uses this host, but I don't widely advertise it's address to prevent overloading the server with spam.
Iv 6y ago
The year is 2020 and transferring files between devices is still hard. I think a decade ago I started paying ~5$ a month for a server at OVH with a lot of storage. SSH/Filezilla, Nginx on an obfuscated URL, has solved a lot of my problems. I also use it as a server to test docker images, a VPN when I want a French IP, a pictures backup server and a professional presentation website. My free email account I am using since the 90s is now telling me it is almost full so I am considering to switch it. Really, storage is cheap but is not free. Save yourself a lot of hassle: pay it yourself, take back control.
- csunbird 6y ago
  I am working on a pet project, which is an application that would allow people to share files for limited time with short urls. Do you think that would be useful to many people?

buu700 6y ago

Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24119024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24119024

l-p 6y ago

We just wanted to build a gif-making app for a hackathon. You could search for and browse movies by clicking on directors, actors and other staff, download a movie with one click, preview it to select what you want to clip, and make a gif out of it. Turns out it was a very convenient interface to discover, download, and view movies. All we had to do was front-end to TMDb, a torrent search scrapper, and a layer between the Transmission CLI and the front-end. We inadvertently built a popcorn-time clone in a day.