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The Exclusive Website
- whymauri 6y agoI love this! Reminds me of when people just made random tiny websites for fun. Uh, my number keeps going up but I'm not leaving the tab :( Edit: somehow I became the first person in the queue https://i.redd.it/r9b2dz5dnbg61.png https://i.redd.it/r9b2dz5dnbg61.png I left to give the next person the slot :P
- nicoburns 6y agoIt's the number of people in the queue that counts up, not your place in the queue.
- LocalH 6y agoI keep seeing the "people in front of you" number count up. It just went from 385 to 392, then down to 375, and now it says 385 again.
- sharkweek 6y agoThere was a website I used to love sending people to when I was in middle school (crashme dot com, just a parked domain now). It had this bomb timer-like countdown clock and a big warning that it would destroy your computer if it reached zero. Totally pointless, but was always fun back before I really understood too much about this brave new world of internet.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y agoWho remembers the million dollar website? Last time I’ve checked it was still online.
- codazoda 6y agoRaises hand. Did I buy some pixels? I thought about it.
- PhillyG 6y agoIt's still going. Full of dead links though.
- echelon 6y agoIt's still online. The creator went on to found several startups. https://www.crunchbase.com/person/alex-tew https://www.crunchbase.com/person/alex-tew
- tempestn 6y agoThat ridiculous website prompted me to learn web development and ultimately resulted in the company I've been running for the past decade. (Which is loosely based on the throwaway project I decided to do to learn what I was doing, before moving on to the real site I'd make - some 'clever' million dollar homepage knockoff with a twist, that certainly would have failed!)
- soulofmischief 6y agoI bought a block on it two years ago as a birthday gift for someone.
- ivraatiems 6y agoQuick feedback: I had to press "play sound" twice before it muted, because of autoplay. This is a fun experiment. Can't wait to get in. Edit: Okay, the number keeps jumping around... clearly something fishy going on here. Maybe it's only sessions that are currently connected that are included? ;)
- atdixon 6y agoTo Webmaster: How much $$ to jump first in line?
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoThe website should host an auction!
- valentinvieriu 6y agoI’ve opened it on 2 devices and showed 2 different numbers. So either the counter is fake, or there is a load balancer issue :)
- grishka 6y agoIt definitely is not fake, it updates through a websocket.
- 101008 6y agoIs it using any kind of IP or something like that to recognize the place in queue? I was around 100, I pasted the link on a Whatsapp conversation to share it (I guess it did a request to get a preview), and when I came back to the tab I was last in the queue.
- theginger 6y agoI've lost my place quite a few times, i can't tell if it is by design due to navigating away or the websocket flaking out because of too many people.
- greenshackle2 6y agoDefinitely flaking out. I had the tab open on a monitor, it said I got disconnected then I got booted to the end of the queue.
- grishka 6y agoIt stores a UUID-looking string in localStorage and uses that to retrieve your position in the queue. At least that's what I gathered from looking at requests and trying to make sense of obfuscated JS.
- theginger 6y agoi opened dev tools and lost my place in the queue :(
- werds 6y agomy friend... developers are not allowed in
- recursivedoubts 6y agotheory: it never lets you in the experience of wanting to get in is the experience
- Xevi 6y agoIt's an old website. I got in last time I tried about two years ago. If I remember correctly you see a message from the person who got in before you, and then you write a message for the next one in line.
- recursivedoubts 6y agothat's exactly what I would expect someone in on the art project to say
- fireball_blaze 6y agoIt's about the friends we made along the way?
- mfkp 6y agoI was up to #97 in line, then it pushed me back to #392... I demand a refund.
- whymauri 6y agoI'd like to talk to the manager >:( I don't think it ever lets you in, haha.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- insickness 6y agoLook, they don't let just anybody into the website. It's exclusive.
- elliekelly 6y agoOP needs a "grease the bouncer" button and an "upload selfie" button to let wealthy and attractive people skip the line.
- gorkish 6y agoIt's buggy as shit. If you lose the websocket for any reason it falls back to a polling mode which appears to be completely broken. I know it's just for fun, but as someone who has written a very robust distributed FIFO queue before, this implementation ... bothers me.
- deathanatos 6y agoI'm watching the websocket data, and even in that … the count is just bouncing around, sometimes going up, sometimes going down. Seems like an elaborate troll, in that, the sibling comment is right: "look, they don't just let anybody in"
- whoomp12342 6y agoits like trying to get into the roxbury.
- ffpip 6y ago> The last entry into the website was Tuesday, February 9 2021 2:46AM Dear Random HN person please get off the site. It's been 10 mins now.
- kreeben 6y agoSorry, I was totally mesmerized by the content. All yours now.
- jaytaylor 6y agoReminds me of the BBS days, where for the good sites it was necessary to keep re-dialing until you got through! I never did make it into L0pht.
- themodelplumber 6y agoFunny! I remember getting a taste of a few really good ones, in my case some of the PNW high-graphics BBSes in '95 or so, and then not being able to get through again for days...a frustrating experience. Same with download quotas for new users. :-)
- jcoletti 6y agoWaiting music reminds me of the hotel lobby in Leisure Suit Larry 6.
- quercusa 6y agoI was thinking the elevator scene at the end of The Blues Brothers.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- grishka 6y agoHmmmmmmm. We know what you're thinking... and yes, you really can get into the website.
- dt3ft 6y agoGetting 500, internal (exclusive?) server error...
- tcgv 6y agoI'm guessing it's due to HN's hug of death
- spazx 6y agoSuddenly, the number of people in front of me started going UP.
- markdown 6y agoWas just a blank page for me. Had to refresh to see anything... and find out I was in a queue.
- ravenstine 6y agoI'm getting a 500 internal server error. It's kind of funny how these contemporary webpages crash under the load of HN, but the few times we link to sites from 1996 they somehow manage to remain online. The other day I remember people trying to link to the pages with the oldest images they could find and I'm pretty sure none of the pages suffered from the hug of death.
- hypertele-Xii 6y agoYou missed the joke. It's trying to be exclusive, so it gives a 500 error to all visitors the first time they come. Refresh, and you'll... almost get in.
- codazoda 6y agoI... I didn't get a 500 the first try. Unintentional joke?
- eat_veggies 6y agoI guess this is easier to hug to death since it's stateful and (based on other comments) opens a websocket per user
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> I'm getting a 500 internal server error. Or are you? >:)
- rabidrat 6y ago> oldest images they could find Sounds like survivorship bias (as with most "they don't make 'em like they used to" plaints).
- scrollaway 6y agoI've seen plenty of old websites crumbling when HN linked to them. You're getting tricked by bias. If (made up numbers) 1% of links crash under HN load, and 1% of links are to websites from before 2005, then 1% of 1% will be 15+ year old websites crashing. And given that I've said I've seen several i think the real number is a lot higher.
- srl 6y agoIn firefox, trying to 'view source' yields the source for a 500 internal server error. Does that mean that firefox makes a different request when I click "view source"? As in, from the server logs, someone could in principle discover whether a request was created by clicking "view source"? Also, like everybody else, I'm here to report that the counter does not decrease monotonically :(
- lights0123 6y agoBut only the first time. Reloading the page or clicking "View source" again made it appear for me. Of course, it's possible that was just random chance like others experienced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070729
- frogpelt 6y agoYou can "inspect element" and maybe that will work better.
- chrismorgan 6y agoYes, browsers make a new request in order to view the source, because they don’t retain the original page source after parsing it (because the corner case of “view source” is the only thing that could conceivably have any use for it at all, so it’s not worth wasting memory on). One alternative that I’ve found useful on occasion is to Select All (Ctrl+A / ⌘A), then in the page context menu, View Selection Source. That shows you the current DOM, serialised to HTML, which is sometimes easier to look at than the dev tools.
- owl57 6y agoAt first it showed me a 500 error. This time I'm unsure if it is the usual HN effect or a variation of the joke.
- smitty1e 6y agoRecalls uselessaccount.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/uselessaccount.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/uselessaccount.com Which has apparently been hijacked by something blog-like.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- afkqs 6y agoThe website of the studio behind it is worth checking: https://dayjob.work/ https://dayjob.work/
- ASalazarMX 6y agoI absentmindedly middle click that link, came back later to it, and thought it was the actual exclusive website. If they actually had a Doom port on the exclusive website, it would make Satan proud.
- elixanchor 6y agoit is a doom port!
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoReally beautiful.
- asimjalis 6y agoI want to know how many people are behind me in the queue.
- urbandw311er 6y agoIt tells you that at the top of the page. Well, ok, it tells you the total number of people waiting. Subtract your queue position from that number and you have the number of people behind you.
- z77dj3kl 6y agoThis is one of those frustrating things where (assuming the queue is stable), you'd assume to wait much longer for the last 10% than the first 10% as people reneg. I wonder what the queueing time distribution is like, parametrised by position in the queue.
- ccn0p 6y agoso exclusive the site threw 500's trying to get in line!
- blunte 6y agoOne definition of exclusive is "Excluding or tending to exclude". That was indeed true for me, as I was unable to see anything.
- singold 6y agoSame here, Reminded me of a youtube parody "the closed cafe - so exclusive it's closed all day"
- jweir 6y agoThis vaguely reminds me of hell.com. I don’t remember what was on it - maybe some net art? But it was a rare “private” website requiring an invite to get it - this in the early era when websites were never private.
- elixanchor 6y agoAlthough I'm too far back in line to comment on the link, the design agency that created this site, Day Job, has an excellent retro-inspired home page - https://dayjob.work/ https://dayjob.work/ Something to play with while you wait!
- jimmont 6y agowelcome to the http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ fold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage
- xwdv 6y agoThey should have a chat that lets you talk to only the person in front of you and behind you.
- marban 6y agoWould someone apply the same principle on the checkout page of their web shop?
- fctorial 6y agoIs this what a thread in scheduler queue sees? Does this website have a timeout? Edit: Apparantly not > The last entry into the website was Tuesday, February 9 2021 5:55AM Someone is squatting. Either that or it doesn't use local time.
- SllX 6y ago> The last entry into the website was Monday, February 8 2021 4:25PM Doesn’t specify a time zone, but it isn’t this time anywhere in the world right now, and assuming local time, that was over 5 hours ago.
- turing_complete 6y agoIt's so exclusive I only get a 500 error. Not even 403. Just 500.