5 ms·

Humans.txt

171 points by skilled 4y ago

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
>More often than not, the owners of the site don't like the authors signing it They'll surely allow humans.txt!
- loxdalen 4y ago
  The owners might never go to /humans.txt and never read the source code.
  - rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
    This is so stupid I don't even know where to start...
    - smallnix 4y ago
      Poe's law at work perhaps?
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      It somewhat reminds me of the history of video games. Back "in the day" game programmers and others were seen as largely disposable labor and did not even have their names listed in any sort of credits. This is what led directly to the creation of Activision. A handful of programmers (in very small teams) were responsible for the large majority of Atari's sales, but were receiving relatively meager wages, and not even receiving credit for their products. So these 4 programmers started a new company - Active Television - Activision, where the people building the products being used received credit, alongside better compensation for such. And today, 40 years later, Atari is Atari while Activision is Activision. Of course the irony being that Activision has gradually become another metaphorical Atari meaning 40 years from now there will undoubtedly be some new name in here, but such is the cyclical nature of everything in society.
dspillett 4y ago
- dark-star 4y ago
  > The this get one file, one bit if representation I read this part 3 times, but I think it is either missing some punctuation or some words (or both)...
  - blauditore 4y ago
    I'm not even sure what that comment is about, maybe it was posted on the wrong article?
  - Karellen 4y ago
    I thought it made the comment look like it was posted by a bot, in an attempt to troll (some) humans into turning against humans.txt, leaving robots.txt as the "winner". Not knowing whether this was intended by a human ironically, or actually posted by a bot, or is just the result of someone not getting enough sleep and/or a stray cat on the keyboard, was part of the intrigue.
- vore 4y ago
  Please don't try turn this into a culture war thing when it isn't, even as a joke.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
onion2k 4y ago
While it might be nice to claim authorship of a website you're proud of building, the main impact of adding this would be it'd provide an easy mechanism for bots and attackers to harvest data about the people and tech behind something on the internet. Knowing that "Name: Jimbob Smith" was on the team is incredibly useful to anyone who wants to phish access credentials.
- 867-5309 4y ago
  exactly, best example I've seen: https://abbey-decorators.co.uk/humans.txt https://abbey-decorators.co.uk/humans.txt
- jsty 4y ago
  Between the "About Us" / "Team" / ... company website pages and LinkedIn profiles, I'd wager a majority of white-collar employees already have much more than the contents of Humans.txt linking back to details of their employment
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    Yes but this is easily harvested. Ironically, by design this would make that far easier. You could probably work out my mother's maiden name from Facebook, but I wouldn't make a SecurityQuestions.txt file and chuck it on websites I make.
    - elcomet 4y ago
      Yes but social engineering doesn't really scale, does it? You need to craft each message manually and adapt it to each company. The name search might not be the most complex part
      - AstralStorm 4y ago
        You would be surprised what people (in receptions in particular) sometimes let slide when you know the name and where some person is employed.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
Does this imply that the latest SPA monstrosity I had to ship could be tied back to me? No thanks!
- rob74 4y ago
  My thoughts exactly - in that case, I want to be known as Alan Smithee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee)...
nixcraft 4y ago
Wow. I last updated my humans.txt[0] file many moons ago. It is one of those things you find the first time, jump on it, and then forget about it. LOL. I guess the same goes for security.txt[1] [0] https://www.cyberciti.biz/humans.txt https://www.cyberciti.biz/humans.txt [1] https://securitytxt.org/ https://securitytxt.org/
- Aethylia 4y ago
  The same often goes for security without the .txt too.
Trouble_007 4y ago
Previous post; Humans.txt, like robots.txt, but for humans. (on Jan 23, 2011 43 comments) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131692
- alx__ 4y ago
  Top comment, still relevant 11+ years later :shrug-emoji:
  - rpigab 4y ago
    https://humanstxt.org/humans.txt https://humanstxt.org/humans.txt /* SITE */ Last update:2012/02/04
O__________O 4y ago
Examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:.com+inurl:%22humans.txt%22+%22the+humans+responsible+%26+colophon%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=site:.com+inurl:%22humans.tx...
- myfonj 4y ago
  > site:.com inurl:"humans.txt" "the humans responsible & colophon" That yields just "About 139 results". But searching for inurl:humans.txt filetype:txt [1] gives "About 2,030 results". Quite surprised seeing it somewhat adopted by Google and Netflix, but not exactly in the way proposed by the "standard". https://www.google.com/humans.txt https://www.google.com/humans.txt (Vague.) https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt (Promotional misuse, probably.) https://www.paulirish.com/humans.txt https://www.paulirish.com/humans.txt (Awww.) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:humans.txt+filetype:txt https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:humans.txt+filetype:tx...
- diegof79 4y ago
  Looking at the examples, it seems that most companies use humans.txt as an Easter egg for curious people. The one from Medium is “fun” because the only contact info that they share is from people who reported security bugs: https://medium.com/humans.txt https://medium.com/humans.txt
blauditore 4y ago
What's up with the linked Spotify playlist? I don't understand how a music playlist could be related, and the list itself mildly looks like it was composed as a joke to create sexual references through titles.
- tfsh 4y ago
  It's a publicly open collaborative playlist. Not sure why it's linked, maybe an experiment from the author?
felipelalli 4y ago
Opsec sent hugs. :'(
harryvederci 4y ago
Maybe we can also have a network.txt file, containing all 3rd party services that the website (both client and server?) will connect to. Then you can decide up-front if you want to make use of a website, and block any outgoing calls that aren't mentioned in network.txt. It's just an idea. The server-side part is hard to verify (especially for closed source software), of course.
- Wronnay 4y ago
  That's actually a good idea and would make it easier to create GDPR solutions. E.g. if a Agency needs to create a new cookie banner, they could just look at the network.txt instead of having to call the client multiple times (one call won't be enough because most clients don't have any clue which 3rd party solutions they actually use)
  - Wronnay 4y ago
    I wrote down my Idea how this could look: https://github.com/CMiksche/network.txt https://github.com/CMiksche/network.txt
    - O__________O 4y ago
      Quick look shows you’re limiting it to “data transmission” — but to me it should list all network connections, regardless of if data sent. If you’re limiting it to just data, I would just call it data.txt.
      - Wronnay 4y ago
        I was primarily thinking of a file which can be used for generating e.g. privacy policies and cookie banners. I am welcome to PRs and Issues - feel free to show me how you would structure it ;-)
Cloudef 4y ago
I thought it would be a text file for filtering out certain humans
- psychphysic 4y ago
  Allow Leet Hax0rz Deny Lame Fedz
- divbzero 4y ago
  … and ignored by most humans just as robots.txt is ignored by most robots.
marban 4y ago
My rule of thumb: I love Web-Standards but if some quirky format hasn't taken off over a decade after introduction, it's not worth implementing. Maybe someone can come up with something less prone to scraping under the .well-known umbrella.
- mg 4y ago
  if some quirky format hasn't taken off over a decade after introduction, it's not worth implementing. Like this hypertext thing, which was introduced in the 60s and still not used much in the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
  - marban 4y ago
    Apples and oranges?
    - mro_name 4y ago
      mg is to the point but doesn't invalidate your personal opinion either. Exception, rule.
sneak 4y ago
The /.well-known/ directory was created specifically to keep clutter like this out of the webroot. Please use it!
- account42 4y ago
  That was my first reaction too but it does kind of mess with it being a joke about /robots.txt, which is grandfathered in at the root. Also, /.well-known/ is not very human-friendly.
muppetman 4y ago
What possible useful purpose could this serve other than an ego stroke for the people who list themselves in it? Anyway a variation on this ego-stroke existed back in the day, the webmaster! No one emailed the webmaster back then either (despite his/her multiple pleas on every page) so I can't fathom how anyone thinks this sort of silliness will take off. Good on them though, but I can't help but feel not enough people liked or subscribed to their YouTube channel.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jemurray 4y ago
  I use my humans.txt to give credit to the people who influenced me over the years. https://jasonmurray.org/humans.txt https://jasonmurray.org/humans.txt - not everyone needs their ego stroked, even if they do who cares.
ilyt 4y ago
So like about page but worse ? I can't see benefits
- Hoasi 4y ago
  An original human.txt page is fun.
garbagetime 4y ago
This just doesn't make much sense. HTML files are much better than txt files because HTML allows for hyperlinks.
divbzero 4y ago
2 of 5 FAANG companies appear to implement humans.txt. F: n/a A: n/a A: n/a N: https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt |\ |\ | | /| /| |\ |\ | +---------------------------------------------+ | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | * _ _ _ | | /| /| |\ |\ | | |\ | |_ | |_ | | \/ * | | /| /| |\ |\ | | | \| |_ | | |_ | /\ | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . . STARRING . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | | | /| /| |\ |\ | | An all-star cast of talented | | /| /| |\ |\ | | designers & engineers | | /| /| |\ |\ | | * | | /| /| |\ |\ | | * | | /| /| |\ |\ | | JOIN US! . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | jobs.netflix.com . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | | | /| /| |\ |\ | +---------------------------------------------+ | /| /| |\ |\ | | /| /| |\ |\ |=======================================================| /| /| |\ |\__/ \__/| /| |__/ _ \__| | _[_]_ 88 _ _ o _ (_) | ( ) s( )s ( ) / ( ) -#- ( ) =() .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | _ _ __ _ __ _ _ { } [ ] q p <( )> ( ) ~( )~ ( ) .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | G: https://www.google.com/humans.txt https://www.google.com/humans.txt Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and others in many different sites across the globe. It is updated continuously, and built with more tools and technologies than we can shake a stick at. If you'd like to help us out, see careers.google.com.
catfishx 4y ago
I don't see how this will be useful to humans (which it, as I understand, should). If the site owner wants to publish who the people behind a site are, they can add that to an About or Team page which are also a lot easier to read, especially for non-tech people. I think this "humans.txt" file will be mostly useful for robots collecting that information and running automated phishing attacks or other bad stuff..
- moffkalast 4y ago
  It definitely sounds to me more like a doxxing.txt
vesinisa 4y ago
This sounds like an April Fool's RFC
amelius 4y ago
Can we also have a lawyers.txt?
instagraham 4y ago
It's cute and harmless to add if you're okay with getting more visibility/giving your developers more visibility
Bricklace 4y ago
imhoguy 4y ago
I was curious would I get this https://humanstxt.org/hackers.txt https://humanstxt.org/hackers.txt, but nah. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15358356/what-is-the-use-of-the-hackers-txt-file https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15358356/what-is-the-use...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jpswade 4y ago
I know this is a play on robots.txt, but I always thought this should be people.txt.
rouxz 4y ago
How about pets.txt? My cat contributes a lot to my wellbeing so it was a tremendous help while building a website, I am sure people would like to know it.

Humans.txt

171 points by skilled 4y ago

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago

>More often than not, the owners of the site don't like the authors signing it They'll surely allow humans.txt!

loxdalen 4y ago
The owners might never go to /humans.txt and never read the source code.
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
  This is so stupid I don't even know where to start...
  - smallnix 4y ago
    Poe's law at work perhaps?
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    It somewhat reminds me of the history of video games. Back "in the day" game programmers and others were seen as largely disposable labor and did not even have their names listed in any sort of credits. This is what led directly to the creation of Activision. A handful of programmers (in very small teams) were responsible for the large majority of Atari's sales, but were receiving relatively meager wages, and not even receiving credit for their products. So these 4 programmers started a new company - Active Television - Activision, where the people building the products being used received credit, alongside better compensation for such. And today, 40 years later, Atari is Atari while Activision is Activision. Of course the irony being that Activision has gradually become another metaphorical Atari meaning 40 years from now there will undoubtedly be some new name in here, but such is the cyclical nature of everything in society.

dspillett 4y ago

dark-star 4y ago
> The this get one file, one bit if representation I read this part 3 times, but I think it is either missing some punctuation or some words (or both)...
- blauditore 4y ago
  I'm not even sure what that comment is about, maybe it was posted on the wrong article?
- Karellen 4y ago
  I thought it made the comment look like it was posted by a bot, in an attempt to troll (some) humans into turning against humans.txt, leaving robots.txt as the "winner". Not knowing whether this was intended by a human ironically, or actually posted by a bot, or is just the result of someone not getting enough sleep and/or a stray cat on the keyboard, was part of the intrigue.
vore 4y ago
Please don't try turn this into a culture war thing when it isn't, even as a joke.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

onion2k 4y ago

While it might be nice to claim authorship of a website you're proud of building, the main impact of adding this would be it'd provide an easy mechanism for bots and attackers to harvest data about the people and tech behind something on the internet. Knowing that "Name: Jimbob Smith" was on the team is incredibly useful to anyone who wants to phish access credentials.

867-5309 4y ago
exactly, best example I've seen: https://abbey-decorators.co.uk/humans.txt https://abbey-decorators.co.uk/humans.txt
jsty 4y ago
Between the "About Us" / "Team" / ... company website pages and LinkedIn profiles, I'd wager a majority of white-collar employees already have much more than the contents of Humans.txt linking back to details of their employment
- psychphysic 4y ago
  Yes but this is easily harvested. Ironically, by design this would make that far easier. You could probably work out my mother's maiden name from Facebook, but I wouldn't make a SecurityQuestions.txt file and chuck it on websites I make.
  - elcomet 4y ago
    Yes but social engineering doesn't really scale, does it? You need to craft each message manually and adapt it to each company. The name search might not be the most complex part
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      You would be surprised what people (in receptions in particular) sometimes let slide when you know the name and where some person is employed.

bigDinosaur 4y ago

Does this imply that the latest SPA monstrosity I had to ship could be tied back to me? No thanks!

rob74 4y ago
My thoughts exactly - in that case, I want to be known as Alan Smithee (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee)...

nixcraft 4y ago

Wow. I last updated my humans.txt[0] file many moons ago. It is one of those things you find the first time, jump on it, and then forget about it. LOL. I guess the same goes for security.txt[1] [0] https://www.cyberciti.biz/humans.txt https://www.cyberciti.biz/humans.txt [1] https://securitytxt.org/ https://securitytxt.org/

Aethylia 4y ago
The same often goes for security without the .txt too.

Trouble_007 4y ago

Previous post; Humans.txt, like robots.txt, but for humans. (on Jan 23, 2011 43 comments) : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131692 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131692

alx__ 4y ago
Top comment, still relevant 11+ years later :shrug-emoji:
- rpigab 4y ago
  https://humanstxt.org/humans.txt https://humanstxt.org/humans.txt /* SITE */ Last update:2012/02/04

O__________O 4y ago

Examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:.com+inurl:%22humans.txt%22+%22the+humans+responsible+%26+colophon%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=site:.com+inurl:%22humans.tx...

myfonj 4y ago
> site:.com inurl:"humans.txt" "the humans responsible & colophon" That yields just "About 139 results". But searching for inurl:humans.txt filetype:txt [1] gives "About 2,030 results". Quite surprised seeing it somewhat adopted by Google and Netflix, but not exactly in the way proposed by the "standard". https://www.google.com/humans.txt https://www.google.com/humans.txt (Vague.) https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt (Promotional misuse, probably.) https://www.paulirish.com/humans.txt https://www.paulirish.com/humans.txt (Awww.) [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:humans.txt+filetype:txt https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:humans.txt+filetype:tx...
diegof79 4y ago
Looking at the examples, it seems that most companies use humans.txt as an Easter egg for curious people. The one from Medium is “fun” because the only contact info that they share is from people who reported security bugs: https://medium.com/humans.txt https://medium.com/humans.txt

blauditore 4y ago

What's up with the linked Spotify playlist? I don't understand how a music playlist could be related, and the list itself mildly looks like it was composed as a joke to create sexual references through titles.

tfsh 4y ago
It's a publicly open collaborative playlist. Not sure why it's linked, maybe an experiment from the author?

felipelalli 4y ago

Opsec sent hugs. :'(

harryvederci 4y ago

Maybe we can also have a network.txt file, containing all 3rd party services that the website (both client and server?) will connect to. Then you can decide up-front if you want to make use of a website, and block any outgoing calls that aren't mentioned in network.txt. It's just an idea. The server-side part is hard to verify (especially for closed source software), of course.

Wronnay 4y ago
That's actually a good idea and would make it easier to create GDPR solutions. E.g. if a Agency needs to create a new cookie banner, they could just look at the network.txt instead of having to call the client multiple times (one call won't be enough because most clients don't have any clue which 3rd party solutions they actually use)
- Wronnay 4y ago
  I wrote down my Idea how this could look: https://github.com/CMiksche/network.txt https://github.com/CMiksche/network.txt
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Quick look shows you’re limiting it to “data transmission” — but to me it should list all network connections, regardless of if data sent. If you’re limiting it to just data, I would just call it data.txt.
    - Wronnay 4y ago
      I was primarily thinking of a file which can be used for generating e.g. privacy policies and cookie banners. I am welcome to PRs and Issues - feel free to show me how you would structure it ;-)

Cloudef 4y ago

I thought it would be a text file for filtering out certain humans

psychphysic 4y ago
Allow Leet Hax0rz Deny Lame Fedz
divbzero 4y ago
… and ignored by most humans just as robots.txt is ignored by most robots.

marban 4y ago

My rule of thumb: I love Web-Standards but if some quirky format hasn't taken off over a decade after introduction, it's not worth implementing. Maybe someone can come up with something less prone to scraping under the .well-known umbrella.

mg 4y ago
if some quirky format hasn't taken off over a decade after introduction, it's not worth implementing. Like this hypertext thing, which was introduced in the 60s and still not used much in the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
- marban 4y ago
  Apples and oranges?
  - mro_name 4y ago
    mg is to the point but doesn't invalidate your personal opinion either. Exception, rule.

sneak 4y ago

The /.well-known/ directory was created specifically to keep clutter like this out of the webroot. Please use it!

account42 4y ago
That was my first reaction too but it does kind of mess with it being a joke about /robots.txt, which is grandfathered in at the root. Also, /.well-known/ is not very human-friendly.

muppetman 4y ago

What possible useful purpose could this serve other than an ego stroke for the people who list themselves in it? Anyway a variation on this ego-stroke existed back in the day, the webmaster! No one emailed the webmaster back then either (despite his/her multiple pleas on every page) so I can't fathom how anyone thinks this sort of silliness will take off. Good on them though, but I can't help but feel not enough people liked or subscribed to their YouTube channel.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jemurray 4y ago
I use my humans.txt to give credit to the people who influenced me over the years. https://jasonmurray.org/humans.txt https://jasonmurray.org/humans.txt - not everyone needs their ego stroked, even if they do who cares.

ilyt 4y ago

So like about page but worse ? I can't see benefits

Hoasi 4y ago
An original human.txt page is fun.

garbagetime 4y ago

This just doesn't make much sense. HTML files are much better than txt files because HTML allows for hyperlinks.

divbzero 4y ago

2 of 5 FAANG companies appear to implement humans.txt. F: n/a A: n/a A: n/a N: https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt https://www.netflix.com/humans.txt |\ |\ | | /| /| |\ |\ | +---------------------------------------------+ | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | * _ _ _ | | /| /| |\ |\ | | |\ | |_ | |_ | | \/ * | | /| /| |\ |\ | | | \| |_ | | |_ | /\ | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . . STARRING . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | | | /| /| |\ |\ | | An all-star cast of talented | | /| /| |\ |\ | | designers & engineers | | /| /| |\ |\ | | * | | /| /| |\ |\ | | * | | /| /| |\ |\ | | JOIN US! . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | jobs.netflix.com . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | . . | | /| /| |\ |\ | | | | /| /| |\ |\ | +---------------------------------------------+ | /| /| |\ |\ | | /| /| |\ |\ |=======================================================| /| /| |\ |\__/ \__/| /| |__/ _ \__| | _[_]_ 88 _ _ o _ (_) | ( ) s( )s ( ) / ( ) -#- ( ) =() .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | _ _ __ _ __ _ _ { } [ ] q p <( )> ( ) ~( )~ ( ) .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. .----. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | G: https://www.google.com/humans.txt https://www.google.com/humans.txt Google is built by a large team of engineers, designers, researchers, robots, and others in many different sites across the globe. It is updated continuously, and built with more tools and technologies than we can shake a stick at. If you'd like to help us out, see careers.google.com.

catfishx 4y ago

I don't see how this will be useful to humans (which it, as I understand, should). If the site owner wants to publish who the people behind a site are, they can add that to an About or Team page which are also a lot easier to read, especially for non-tech people. I think this "humans.txt" file will be mostly useful for robots collecting that information and running automated phishing attacks or other bad stuff..

moffkalast 4y ago
It definitely sounds to me more like a doxxing.txt

vesinisa 4y ago

This sounds like an April Fool's RFC

amelius 4y ago

Can we also have a lawyers.txt?

instagraham 4y ago

It's cute and harmless to add if you're okay with getting more visibility/giving your developers more visibility

Bricklace 4y ago

imhoguy 4y ago

I was curious would I get this https://humanstxt.org/hackers.txt https://humanstxt.org/hackers.txt, but nah. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15358356/what-is-the-use-of-the-hackers-txt-file https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15358356/what-is-the-use...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jpswade 4y ago

I know this is a play on robots.txt, but I always thought this should be people.txt.

rouxz 4y ago

How about pets.txt? My cat contributes a lot to my wellbeing so it was a tremendous help while building a website, I am sure people would like to know it.