A URL Lengthener • Hacker News Board

Re: A URL Lengthener

#301

Post by vanderZwan » Sun, May 16, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #293

vanderZwan wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days it's all about personalised, targeted rolling . You have to find out what song your friend hates the most (say, "Africa" by Toto) and try to trick them into listening to ever-more-horrible cover versions of it. At least, that seems to be the thing in my friend group.

Someone should offer this personalization as a service. I’m sure it’s easy to purchase all the necessary PII

I don't know if that really works though. It's a bit like gift giving: the point is arguably more to show off the effort you personally put in just to prank your friend.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#302

Post by SumBird » Sun, May 16, 2021, 6:47 PM UTC

arghwhat wrote: post #251

cube00 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so frustrating, I just want the url, but NO, you can an escaped version of the URL embedded inside another escaped blob instead. Ditto with Facebook.

How would Microsoft, Google and Facebook otherwise be able to track when and what you click?! Think of the hit to their revenue!

That's the point, How else are we supposed to fight these companies? Take their source of money away and watch them squirm.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#303

Post by SumBird » Sun, May 16, 2021, 7:07 PM UTC

chromanoid wrote: post #132

lostcolony wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. Checkbox Driven Development. AKA Monkey Paw Development, where you give exactly what was asked for; it remains surprisingly popular in the government and enterprise spaces.

"Monkey Paw Development" was a new one for me :) Thank you! Great analogy. Reminds me of this :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDA3_5982h8

I was reminded of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W_wd9Qf0IE

Re: A URL Lengthener

#304

Post by towardsclarity » Mon, May 17, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

ykdojo wrote: post #20

Source code: https://aaa.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

I'm curious about the decision to host the source code on replit vs github?

Re: A URL Lengthener

#305

Post by finalhacker » Mon, May 17, 2021, 8:18 AM UTC

Looks great. But I don't known any scenes we need to use this function.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#306

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, May 17, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

retpirato wrote: post #204

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hilarious! Though I'm kind of disappointed about the lack of HTTPS support on that site.

I assume this is a joke, right? A real shady url certainly wouldn't use https.

Not necessarily. It's trivial and free to get certificates. A lot of shady sites are using them now.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#307

Post by MilnerRoute » Mon, May 17, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

patrickmcnamara wrote: post #246

unnah wrote: post #239

Microsoft also provides a URL lengthener via "Advanced Outlook.com security for Office 365 subscribers". Thanks to them, any URL we send or receive by email at work turns into an unrecognizable monster. At least the links include comforting words like "safelinks" and "protection" so that everyone can feel safe and protected.

Or when you Google something and copy a link straight from their search page. Novel-length URLs.

I've actually tried switching to Bing, just because Bing's search results include the actual URL of the page when you right-click (instead of some Google-riffic monstrosity...)

Re: A URL Lengthener

#308

Post by bscphil » Mon, May 17, 2021, 10:40 PM UTC

piemadd wrote: post #263

bscphil wrote: post #201

Dumb question: the lengthener prepends the URL with "\x20\x0b" strings which are then not removed on the other end. So the link inserted in the redirect ends up looking like " \x0b \x0b \x0bhttps://www.example.org" But this apparently works! Why does it work?

so what you're seeing is the creation of a zero width space. When you combine an \x20 and an \x0b, it makes a zero width space, which your browser ends up ignoring. Only reason these are in there are to ensure the URLs are at a minimum length. Who wants a mere 20 character URL when you can have a minimum of 250 characters.

Thanks!

Re: A URL Lengthener

#309

Post by devmor » Tue, May 18, 2021, 1:56 PM UTC

mypalmike wrote: post #125

devmor wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Must" and "Must Not" are keywords in formal spec. If it says "Must support up to 100" and doesn't say "Must Not support over 100" then I would consider the upper limit to be whatever limit is sane for the data type.

So you would pick an arbitrary upper limit based on your own notion of what is sane. Picking such a limit, you would still need to write the same error handling code for limits, but it would happen at maybe 200. And the next programmer who inherits your code looks at the spec and your code and has to guess "why 200"? And it becomes lore. Which is specifically worse than writing to the spec.

The spec doesn't exist. It's undefined. "Must support up to 100" is not a limit, it's a lower bound.

Re: A URL Lengthener

#310

Post by greyhair » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

m3at wrote: post #215

js2 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That totally reminds me of this story: http://www.5z8.info/awesome-real-life-headshots_q2h6fv_linke...

This is a great story, thanks for sharing! Edit: if someone need the url at work: https://m.slashdot.org/story/17042

If you go to that page, it is a good read. Then you hit the back button to get back here, and it just reloads the page.

Why?

Because slashdot are assholes.