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Probably the worst URL scheme ever

bvb.de

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Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#71

Post by X4 »

joosters wrote: post #27
jakub_g wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually when you google site:www.bvb.de there are some readable URLs (not sure how they got there), upon navigating to which they do 302 redirects.

It's just like tinyurl.com, but in reverse :)

hahaha :D

Let's put the tech sensation aside. I'm glad to know that the HN Folk have a good sense of humor :)

BTW: you can add multiple routes pointing to the same url, but allow only the SEO URLs to be indexed. This keeps the cryptic URLs for the entertainment of the Users/Crawlers.

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#72

Post by oh_sigh »

jgrahamc wrote: post #51
Robin_Message wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are ids to lookup closures in a database. They time out to stop the database overflowing ;) It's called continuation-based web development [1], popular with Lisp and Smalltalk-based web servers (because who else has continuations?) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation#In_Web_development

There's no database. EDIT: to all the people arguing with me. Read the source code to Hacker News. (= fns* (table) fnids* nil timed-fnids* nil) ; count on huge (expt 64 10) size of fnid space to avoid clashes (def new-fnid () (check (sym (rand-string 10)) ~fns* (new-fnid))) (def fnid (f) (atlet key (new-fnid) (= (fns* key) f) (push key fnids*) key)) (mac afnid (f) `(atlet it (new-fnid) (= (fns* it) ,f) (push it fnids…

Then where is the data that is associated with "b7VO4wED8MRumCeiX5fCnF" stored? How is that data requested? There certainly is a database, it is just most likely not a traditional database that most people think of.

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#73

Post by Robin_Message »

jgrahamc wrote: post #51
Robin_Message wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are ids to lookup closures in a database. They time out to stop the database overflowing ;) It's called continuation-based web development [1], popular with Lisp and Smalltalk-based web servers (because who else has continuations?) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation#In_Web_development

There's no database. EDIT: to all the people arguing with me. Read the source code to Hacker News. (= fns* (table) fnids* nil timed-fnids* nil) ; count on huge (expt 64 10) size of fnid space to avoid clashes (def new-fnid () (check (sym (rand-string 10)) ~fns* (new-fnid))) (def fnid (f) (atlet key (new-fnid) (= (fns* key) f) (push key fnids*) key)) (mac afnid (f) `(atlet it (new-fnid) (= (fns* it) ,f) (push it fnids…

That's probably true John. If I may mis-quote Greenspun:

"Any sufficiently complicated Lisp program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of an actual database."

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#74

Post by joosters »

X4 wrote: post #71
joosters wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just like tinyurl.com, but in reverse :)

hahaha :D Let's put the tech sensation aside. I'm glad to know that the HN Folk have a good sense of humor :) BTW: you can add multiple routes pointing to the same url, but allow only the SEO URLs to be indexed. This keeps the cryptic URLs for the entertainment of the Users/Crawlers.

How would you do this? (Leaving aside the question of 'why?')

I suppose you could try blocking crawlers from the raw URLs with an aggressive robots.txt and then put a sitemap (with friendly/SEO URLs in) somewhere for them to discover instead. Would that work?

Paranoid web spiders could flag the site as suspicious, though. Such schemes might make it seem like the website is presenting one view to the spider, and another to real visitors. Almost like it was trying to hide malware from a scanner.

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#75

Post by mkl »

joosters wrote: post #27
jakub_g wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually when you google site:www.bvb.de there are some readable URLs (not sure how they got there), upon navigating to which they do 302 redirects.

It's just like tinyurl.com, but in reverse :)

Unsurprisingly, that actually exists: http://hugeurl.com/

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#76

Post by defen »

oh_sigh wrote: post #72
jgrahamc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no database. EDIT: to all the people arguing with me. Read the source code to Hacker News. (= fns* (table) fnids* nil timed-fnids* nil) ; count on huge (expt 64 10) size of fnid space to avoid clashes (def new-fnid () (check (sym (rand-string 10)) ~fns* (new-fnid))) (def fnid (f) (atlet key (new-fnid) (= (fns* key) f) (push key fnids*) key)) (mac afnid (f) `(atlet it (new-fnid) (= (fns* it) ,f) (push it fnids…

Then where is the data that is associated with "b7VO4wED8MRumCeiX5fCnF" stored? How is that data requested? There certainly is a database, it is just most likely not a traditional database that most people think of.

where is the data that is associated with "b7VO4wED8MRumCeiX5fCnF" stored

In the Racket process that's running the Arc code for news.yc

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#77

Post by viame »

masnick wrote: post #15

LinkedIn URLs are by far the worst. For example, the first profile that came up when I searched for Paul Graham: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=23081590&authTyp...

I was just going to say that! Before I saw this post I was on LinkedIn looking for something, and you simply cannot miss when something like this shows in your address bar:

...gid=3396514&goback=%2Enpv_152562310_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_1_*1&trk=NUS_JGRP-grp-nm

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#78

Post by gcr »

jgrahamc wrote: post #51
Robin_Message wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are ids to lookup closures in a database. They time out to stop the database overflowing ;) It's called continuation-based web development [1], popular with Lisp and Smalltalk-based web servers (because who else has continuations?) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation#In_Web_development

There's no database. EDIT: to all the people arguing with me. Read the source code to Hacker News. (= fns* (table) fnids* nil timed-fnids* nil) ; count on huge (expt 64 10) size of fnid space to avoid clashes (def new-fnid () (check (sym (rand-string 10)) ~fns* (new-fnid))) (def fnid (f) (atlet key (new-fnid) (= (fns* key) f) (push key fnids*) key)) (mac afnid (f) `(atlet it (new-fnid) (= (fns* it) ,f) (push it fnids…

Racket (arc's host language) keeps continuations on the filesystem, or you can write your own "stuffer" to do what you want with them (store them in a database or whatever). But you have to keep them somewhere or else (assuming the server uses continuations) you can't keep track of the user's path through your code as they click through links and such.

Racket does have an option to serialize the continuations, gzip them, sign them with HMAC, and then send all of that to the client so the server doesn't have to keep track of anything, but HN doesn't use it.

See http://docs.racket-lang.org/continue/#(part._.Advanced_.Cont... for a quick introduction.

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#79

Post by mhd »

claudius wrote: post #68
masklinn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal portals are generally gasbage, here's the french one for Article L511-1 of the environmental code: http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle...

§ 1353 of the BGB (German Civil Code) can be found at http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__1353.html (literally ‘laws on the internet’).

So close, with minimal effort they could map that to '/bgb/1353'. It seems that dejure.org actually works that way -> http://dejure.org/gesetze/BGB/1353 seems to map to http://dejure.org/gesetze/BGB/1353.html, but they graciously ignore any kind of file extension...

Re: Probably the worst URL scheme ever

#80

Post by 3825 »

raverbashing wrote: post #56
masnick wrote: post #15

LinkedIn URLs are by far the worst. For example, the first profile that came up when I searched for Paul Graham: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=23081590&authTyp...

You can have a public URL for linkedin in the format /in/CustomName E.g.:www.linkedin.com/in/barackobama

Apparently he is a 3rd connection. o.O
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