5 ms·

"Oh By"[1] It's a "universal shortener" which means it doesn't just shorten URLs - it shortens anything and turns it into a short, recognizable code. Or, what

by rsync 5y ago

"Oh By"[1] It's a "universal shortener" which means it doesn't just shorten URLs - it shortens anything and turns it into a short, recognizable code. Or, what would be a recognizable code if anyone used it :) Here's an example: https://0x.co/examples.html https://0x.co/examples.html ... and for some reason I am still enamored with the "send a text to someone in the future" use-case. [1] https://0x.co https://0x.co

kingcharles 5y ago
The lost and found example is horrible LOL. If I came across that glove, I guess I might be tempted to Google the code, but that's because I'm a nerd. At best you still need to write "IF FOUND PLEASE GO TO 0x.co". And bear in mind that 0 and O are very similar.
- ghostly_s 5y ago
  If I found that I would think "how weird, someone wrote a hex code on this," and best-case might try to translate it to ASCII or google "hex code graffito" or the like, which I doubt would bring up this site because it doesn't use the term "hex code" anywhere.
  - rsync 5y ago
    hmmm... Oh By codes are random so they may or may not have >F characters in them. If I have some time I will make it such that all Oh By codes have at least one >F character in them so they cannot be confused with hex codes ...
seaman1921 5y ago
I work in abuse (prevention), and you might want to change the name of that website since it is very similar (edit distance 1) from some really bad stuff - unfortunately i can't share more details for obvious reasons :)
- seaman1921 5y ago
  By the way, your website access is already blocked by certain ISPs and marked as "dangerous".
  - rsync 5y ago
    I have learned that this is common with a URL shortener - they immediately get used by all kinds of scammers. I learned a bit and played the cat-and-mouse game for a bit but for now ... we're marked as "dangerous".
ghostly_s 5y ago
Every other url shortener has the massive advantage over yours of providing urls that can actually be used to retrieve the information, whereas your codes are meaningless unless someone is already aware of the service. Furthermore, I would argue they are not "recognizable" because the format you've chosen already has a well-known unrelated meaning for hex notation.
- rsync 5y ago
  Just to clarify: if you use 0x.co as just a plain old URL shortener then it will work just like you expect it to. The odd use-case - codes out in the real world - is a chicken-and-egg problem that will probably never resolve itself.
sundarurfriend 5y ago
Sorry, maybe I don't understand: from the comparison with QR codes I thought this was encoding the information in some way (like tio.run and many other places do), but it looks like the code is just a handle for your internal lookup? How is this different from the many pastebins out there? One could as well write on the shoe paste.ee/p/t7lCK and put the information there - or just the p/t7lCK part if paste.ee was seen as a universally recognised data store the way you seem to think of 0x becoming. Maybe the difference is on the social side, not at a technical level: having the code be recognised with the 0x, and encouraging people to converge on this as a standard. That would be perfectly legitimate, I'm just trying to make sure I've understood this correctly.

by rsync 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

The lost and found example is horrible LOL. If I came across that glove, I guess I might be tempted to Google the code, but that's because I'm a nerd. At best you still need to write "IF FOUND PLEASE GO TO 0x.co". And bear in mind that 0 and O are very similar.

ghostly_s 5y ago
If I found that I would think "how weird, someone wrote a hex code on this," and best-case might try to translate it to ASCII or google "hex code graffito" or the like, which I doubt would bring up this site because it doesn't use the term "hex code" anywhere.
- rsync 5y ago
  hmmm... Oh By codes are random so they may or may not have >F characters in them. If I have some time I will make it such that all Oh By codes have at least one >F character in them so they cannot be confused with hex codes ...

seaman1921 5y ago

I work in abuse (prevention), and you might want to change the name of that website since it is very similar (edit distance 1) from some really bad stuff - unfortunately i can't share more details for obvious reasons :)

seaman1921 5y ago
By the way, your website access is already blocked by certain ISPs and marked as "dangerous".
- rsync 5y ago
  I have learned that this is common with a URL shortener - they immediately get used by all kinds of scammers. I learned a bit and played the cat-and-mouse game for a bit but for now ... we're marked as "dangerous".

ghostly_s 5y ago

Every other url shortener has the massive advantage over yours of providing urls that can actually be used to retrieve the information, whereas your codes are meaningless unless someone is already aware of the service. Furthermore, I would argue they are not "recognizable" because the format you've chosen already has a well-known unrelated meaning for hex notation.

rsync 5y ago
Just to clarify: if you use 0x.co as just a plain old URL shortener then it will work just like you expect it to. The odd use-case - codes out in the real world - is a chicken-and-egg problem that will probably never resolve itself.

sundarurfriend 5y ago

Sorry, maybe I don't understand: from the comparison with QR codes I thought this was encoding the information in some way (like tio.run and many other places do), but it looks like the code is just a handle for your internal lookup? How is this different from the many pastebins out there? One could as well write on the shoe paste.ee/p/t7lCK and put the information there - or just the p/t7lCK part if paste.ee was seen as a universally recognised data store the way you seem to think of 0x becoming. Maybe the difference is on the social side, not at a technical level: having the code be recognised with the 0x, and encouraging people to converge on this as a standard. That would be perfectly legitimate, I'm just trying to make sure I've understood this correctly.