I did end up implementing a simple hit counter on my site just to satisfy my craven need for validation without resorting to full analytics. It doesn't beep at me, but maybe it should.
tail -F -n 0 /var/log/visitlog | while read ; do printf '\a' ; done
Good stuff. Cheers.
The dreadnaught is tough but not impossible. Torpedoes will help but a few lucky hits with lasers will also do the job.
(His cat adds some dry remark which I have forgotten)
I just downloaded a click sound and I think I'm going to see if adding it drives me crazy.
https://joeldare.com/private-analtyics-and-my-raspberry-pi-4...
I really hate that modern websites include multiple trackers - there is really no need for invasive analytics.
But I feel that, if unchecked, that same impulse can lead to deliberately doing projects specifically for validation which leads to low quality click-bait and vapid self-promotion. I think a healthy indifference for the public at large is a good thing.
That is one of the reasons I got rid of detailed, real-time analytics in favor of a simple hit counter (the other is privacy). If I really stuck to my principles I wouldn't even do that but I am a hypocrite.
Talking about that, I have a great blog that…
Just kidding
while true; do; sleep 5; curl http://susam.net:8000 ; done
curl: (1) Received HTTP/0.9 when not allowed
curl: (1) Received HTTP/0.9 when not allowed
curl: (7) Failed to connect to susam.net port 8000 after 11 ms: Couldn't connect to server
curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peer
curl: (7) Failed to connect to susam.net port 8000 after 8 ms: Couldn't connect to server
curl: (1) Received HTTP/0.9 when not allowed
curl: (7) Failed to connect to susam.net port 8000 after 8 ms: Couldn't connect to server
curl: (1) Received HTTP/0.9 when not allowed
curl: (7) Failed to connect to susam.net port 8000 after 10 ms: Couldn't connect to server
curl: (7) Failed to connect to susam.net port 8000 after 11 ms: Couldn't connect to server
curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peer
curl: (56) Recv failure: Connection reset by peer
curl: (1) Received HTTP/0.9 when not allowedI'd've said the benefit is that it's simply a concise single command instead of a "while true" loop and a "sleep 5" command.
The best kind of experiments. And sometimes huge innovations/inventions/medicine/progress/more fun will arise from it.
I ran this for a number of months back in the day, it made my living room sound like a jungle. Running the same setup nowadays would probably make it sound like the gates of hell given the increase in network traffic.
You can still find it at Sourceforge but it will need some work or maybe a VM running an older Linux distribution:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/peep/
[1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedin...
I never heard back, although I ended up working for one of their companies the next year anyway.
Any, and only, nerds who were interested in web development incessantly "View Source"ed on every page that looked interesting. It was a major vector by which early-web frontend techniques spread themselves, and it was great: you could cut-and-paste the html, direct download the .css and other resources, and get an offline model of their site running for you to tinker with to learn their secrets. All the magic was out in the open (for those who cared to pull back the curtain), and the future seemed limitless.
https://idiallo.com/blog/surviving-the-hug-of-death (sorry not mobile friendly)
There is a surprising number of bots. It will be fun to setup something like this whenever I get hn traffic.
> When their bot accessed my site, I served it a tiny compressed file. Their server eagerly downloaded and decompressed it, only to unleash several gigabytes of chaos. Boom. Game over.
How did you know their bot would decompress it? I thought a bot would copy the HTML content of your article, maybe the images, and paste them on their own website. At no point does it involve editing or decompressing files?
Impressive animation, by the way—the number of bots is staggering.
Of course, Some bots just post spam without ever reading the content back, which defeats my scheme.
telnet -4 susam.net 8000> The other party can use whatever client they have to connect to port 8000 of my system, e.g., a web browser, nc HOST 8000, curl HOST:8000, or even, ssh HOST -p 8000, irssi -c HOST -p 8000, etc.
> curl -v --http0.9 susam.net:8000
Within half a day I had some pirate "marking" his claim to my FTP server, then he/she started uploading a game. I deleted everything and left it open again.
It was a long time ago, so I don't remember all the details, but all the pirates would create directories inside directories, upload files, then mark it with their mark. All of this was scripted I gather.
After a while, I set up a file system watcher that deleted subdirectories. This gave me an FTP server I could use for anything. I shut it down a few months later.
Interesting though.
You can type it in a terminal with ctrl-g. It won't be displayed in most cases and if you've configured your terminal like me won't make a sound.
It's kinda risky to but something like this in the comments, what if nobody ever sees it? What if it never beeps?
It's just weird enough people (like myself) would do it. I would have if I saw it, but I missed it.
Such a shame susam.net still has not adopted IPv6 in 2025 :-Q
For example, one person here offers: > Our AI generates relevant, useful replies to selected mentions, that aim to genuinely help the original poster, and that include a subtle mention of your product.
and ProductHunt: https://wakatime.com/blog/67-bots-so-many-bots
Hi everyone, my VPN is running slow. Anyone have any tips?
When I originally shared this in 2022, it was just a comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30146019#30146451
I didn't expect it to get much attention, so I went with four beeps. I felt that a set of four beeps spread over three seconds would be long enough to grab my attention, even if I was busy with something else.
Also, as another commenter pointed out, a sequence of four beeps is distinctive enough that it doesn't get lost among the stray, ordinary beeps I might hear while working in a terminal or Emacs (like from hitting backspace or pressing ctrl+g, etc.).
Look at the quoted command, there it is.
In the current graphs, the x-axis represents the hour of the day in UTC. For example, the first graph shows 43 connections between 10:00 UTC and 11:00 UTC, 407 connections between 11:00 UTC and 12:00 UTC, and so on.
Previously, the first graph showed the number of hours elapsed since the experiment began (which started at 10:14 UTC). That's likely what you saw earlier today. After reading your question, I updated the graph to display the actual hour of the day (in UTC) instead of elapsed time, making the time of the day clearer. Thanks for the great question!