
Show HN: Real-time file sharing site - chmod775
http://volafile.io/r/GAKbA
======
dpiers
The 12-hour lifespan of content links is interesting; it prevents indexing or
hot-linking content on the site. Even if the RIAA/MPAA/etc. set up bots
watching the room and issuing takedowns for infringing files, the time allowed
to comply with a DMCA takedown is greater than the lifespan of a file on the
service.

In other words: this should be fun, until they get sued out of existence.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Feature Request: Host on infrastructure outside of the US.

EDIT: DISREGARD. It's already hosted outside the US. (Germany:
[https://www.ip-projects.de/](https://www.ip-projects.de/))

~~~
dsrguru
I know a lot of this post-PRISM fear of the US government is to be expected
and is certainly popular on HN, but comments that single out the US like this
really make little sense to me. The governments of Britain, Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand all share tech-related intel with the United States and,
potentially if not presumably, have similarly intrusive methods of
surveillance. China goes so far as to ban social media sites that they don't
have control over (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube) and replaces them with
sites that they do (renren, weibo, and youku/tudou). That, combined with
general censorship of the web, is far scarier than what the NSA does, even
assuming the NSA's scope is as wide as television shows make it out to be. And
even in most other countries, the scope of domestic Internet surveillance is
unknown, which is very different from "known to be minimal".

Edit: Ah if this was about intellectual property takedowns, then currently the
US situation _is_ a bit worse than most of the rest of the world. But still,
China friggin censors their Internet, and comments like the above still seem
to always single out the US.

~~~
buro9
The USA has taken possession of .com domains and raided physical premises
based on copyright.

This need have nothing to do with the NSA and still be a perfectly valid and
reasonable suggestion.

I think it's reasonable that _any_ site that has user generated content should
consider not being hosted on US soil or using a .tld that is under US control.

~~~
Semaphor
In general I'd say Germany has quite some problems with UGC hosted here as
well.

------
dexen
Auto-assignment of nicknames seems a particularly nifty feature -- a warm
welcome for first-time users.

Overall seems a well-balanced crossover of IRC and message board. (Almost)
Everything Google Wave wanted to be, but never had a chance to become.

How do I rent a private channel for company-wide use? ;-)

~~~
wanda
yeah, I would also be interested in having a private channel.

------
spindritf
> Announcement: Because of the high traffic we are seeing right now, the radio
> might take a long time to load or not work at all.

Hacker News killed the radio star.

Very cool idea. With a little faster chat (there's currently quite a delay
between saying something and seeing it displayed) I can see it catching on.
Hang out, share files, listen to the music together.

------
aperture
There seems to be a twitter account here for it:
[https://twitter.com/volafile](https://twitter.com/volafile)

Also, in chat I found [https://github.com/binlain/volafile-
bugs](https://github.com/binlain/volafile-bugs) for solutions to fixing the
site. However, I cannot vouch that is an official bug report location.

Considering this issue (nfsw): [https://github.com/binlain/volafile-
bugs/issues/5](https://github.com/binlain/volafile-bugs/issues/5)

I find this website a little amusing, but also creative. I think it's quite
exciting overall! Good luck!

~~~
PhearTheCeal
That is the official bug report location.

------
justhw
For those at work, there's quite a bit of stuff not tagged nsfw. Tread with
care.

~~~
omnisci
Thanks, I was worried about that:) Cool idea though, once it's a little more
structured, that could be helpful.

------
pla3rhat3r
Wait, a chat room AND the ability to share NSFW pics? What could go wrong!?!

------
gmjoe
There's always something kind of magical about real-time sites -- like the
Internet is a little less lonely, and there are real people out there.

Very cool!

~~~
hfantods
Exactly my feeling. Couldn't really articulate it.

------
hornbaker
The HN room is full. You can discover other rooms here:
[http://volafile.io/discover](http://volafile.io/discover)

------
skizm
Haha, just logged in to see this: "PaulGraham: APPLY TO YC SO I CAN MAKE SOME
MONEY FROM THIS" and also "PaulGraham: THIS IS THE NEXT FACEBOOK".

~~~
chmod775
I'm German so I probably can't apply to YC. Plus I've just made this as a
hobby/side project and don't have time to deal with trying to monetize it yet.

~~~
skizm
I am assuming this was not PG. There are much better ways to contact a site
owner. Also the user kept saying "DROP THE THE". Obviously there is no "the"
in the site's name.

------
vxNsr
This is basically IRC with file sharing... and everyone is ignoring the
filesharing part because it's full of porn. So basically you created a html5
IRC clone, very cool.

Just wondering: What are your plans for this? And Does this have any IRC-like
commands?

~~~
hex12648430
>and everyone is ignoring the filesharing part because it's full of porn. It's
much better in smaller rooms.

~~~
vxNsr
Makes sense, I could see this eclipsing the current way we share files.

Thought of a new analogy: snapchat meets IRC meets torrents

------
rebel
I love this idea and I think this has the potential to be really amazing. I
could see myself using it socially as well as a sort of remote office. The
ability to have music autoplay (? it appears anyway, doesn't seem to be
working for me right now) seems very interesting. I think you're really onto
something with this. My main concern would be privacy before I started using
this on any type of regular basis though. If you can solve that, or even
really just make a self-hosted version, I'd be all over it.

------
codingdave
Real-time file sharing on a site that seems to have already become a real-time
UI to 4chan....

Let me think about this. No, no I don't trust my virus protection enough to
open anything here.

------
mikegioia
You did a great job with this. I got a couple 502s viewing files but it works
really well so far.

------
jaggs
"The room is full. Please try again later."

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

~~~
chmod775
I had to limit the room size to 300 people because my cheap 5€ VPS was hitting
100% CPU load. There are about 500 people on the page across all rooms now.

------
kclay
Nice concept, looks like 4chan may have gotten a hold of this one.

~~~
hex12648430
Talking about 4chan, I really love how this site seems to be a mix of some
kind of IRC and imageboard. It's also bringing back memories of some DC++
rooms I used to visit when it was the best way to share files.

~~~
degenerate
Yeah DC++ and i2hub were both awesome. Both got my internet privileges taken
away for a year by my university for internet misuse. Good times.

------
meritt
Interesting proof of concept although I personally prefer hipchat for a the
"chatroom with group file sharing" benefit.

The ephemeral nature of the downloads is really interesting though. I've seen
a number of sites starting to target that niche
([http://dissipateapp.com/](http://dissipateapp.com/) for file sharing
specifically with "self-destructing" files) but mostly aimed at just messaging
(like Snapchat or Frankly).

Why risk putting your important documents on a site where it's only a matter
of time before it's compromised? Most of the time once your recipient has the
file it's safe to remove from the cloud.

------
Raphmedia
It's very nice for what's going on right now. I mean, a big internet orgy.
However, the lack of private rooms pretty much kills it for me.

Otherwise, it would have been perfect to use at work.

~~~
chmod775
There will be private rooms (hidden in the public list) and password protected
rooms in the foreseeable future.

~~~
Raphmedia
I really like your app. I have been using it for a while and brought a few IRC
buddies on it.

------
jameshsi
Interesting concept for sure. What's the tech behind this?

~~~
chmod775
Hello. It's almost exclusively a nodejs + redis stack.

There are currently a little over 200 people on the page and moderating the
site is taking most of my attention, I'll try to answer all questions in this
thread anyways.

~~~
darkbot
Build some community moderation tools and promote some trustworthy people.

------
ww520
What's the bandwidth cost for this kind of app? I'm always afraid a popular
rampup would incur a huge bandwidth bill for sites like this.

------
Chromozon
Might be desired behavior, but holding CRTL while clicking on a link in
Firefox opens the link in a new tab, but it does not keep you on the main
page. It's a bit annoying to click on a file and have to switch back to the
homepage tab to get something else.

~~~
fenollp
Also press MAJ then, new tab should open in background ;

------
desouzt
It never ceases to amaze me how immature people can be when unleashed with
this type of product!

~~~
vezzy-fnord
To be fair, it's a 4chan project.

------
keypusher
The spam right now is out of control, but it might die off in a few days. You
should consider using [http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/XKCD-
SIGNAL](http://wiki.xkcd.com/irc/XKCD-SIGNAL) mode for your chat.

------
dgouldin
I'd hoped this was something like Napster built on WebRTC data channel. No
such luck.

------
devinmontgomery
I feel like I reached out and touched the face of the Internet. This is very
very cool.

------
pmelendez
I find very interesting how a lot of people is sharing their resume, suddenly
all the HN traffic (potential employers included) are reading random resumes.

I don't know if that would be effective at all but it is very interesting.

------
volker48
Trolls... Trolls everywhere.

------
scottydelta
I just saw some sick stuff there which can't be unseen. :'(

------
Geee
This thing will explode. Get ready to monetize or shut it down :) Easy thing
you could do is rate limit transfers by default and offer higher bandwidth
with a small bitcoin payment.

~~~
antocv
Please dont go down this route it leaves bad taste.

Any site which segregates its users, oppreses those non-paying, poor people,
isnt attractive at least in my book.

An alternative is to do like reddit, offer pay-for-services in exchange for
something more, not take away functionality from those poor users to force
some kind of payments.

------
diaz
Very nice and cool.

Just one thing, I like to open links in a new background tab, so I just CTRL +
click or just middle click with the mouse, the first option is not working the
last one is fine.

------
jffry
This sounds really cool, but socket.io.js is throwing "Unexpected response
code: 502" when attempting to make a websockets connection.

I'll have to try again later, I suppose.

------
Skovy
So basically this is a porn site... It needs moderation badly!

~~~
theorique
To remove all the non-porn content?

------
Vekz
This reminds me of the old school Napster. I think it could use an AV scanner
on upload. Also a preview mode for images and documents and videos would be
cool too.

------
Globz
Awesome project! I love the feel and the sharing mechanics!

~~~
taigeair
Yeah I like it too.

------
pearjuice
>paul graham dancing with bill gates 1999.jpg

That escalated quickly.

------
ElongatedTowel
You count how many lines in the chat one has missed, but if you come back to
the tab there is no indication where you left off. Might be useful.

------
shahar2k
Is this kind of platform possible with WebRTC? (where the files are hosted on
the users' computers instead of requiring your own servers?)

~~~
erbbysam
Yup it's possible. It doesn't appear to be here though, especially if the
files have any sort of lifespan not dependant on the users browser staying
open. Anyhow, I built something similar over at rtccopy.com which does use
webrtc

------
novaleaf
lol. clicking on those pictures... "for adults only", "NSFW"

good thing i'm the first one here this morning....

------
ahoy
I saw this a few weeks ago, very cool project you're working on. I love the
proto-web feeling it has. All the best!

------
asdad
Is the source for this available somewhere?

------
Da_Capo
How are you handling piracy on the site? Surely that must be an issue. I see
some torrents are being uploaded.

~~~
chmod775
Piracy is obviously an issue. And we (mods) will of course delete all files
that might bring volafile in legal trouble.

------
hippich
NSFW

~~~
speedyrev
I don't know that the site is NSFW, but clicking the links on the site is not
advised at work.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's [largely?] unmoderated UGC, it's NSFW.

------
toomuchtodo
You should probably block EXE files for the safety of your users.

~~~
fragsworth
And .bat, .scr, .pif, .com? And .zip, .tar, .gz, .rar?

And then a shit load of file extensions that potentially run arbitrary code if
you have the tool installed.

Seems kind of pointless.

~~~
zhemao
Or they can just take the executable and change the extension. Extension-based
blocking doesn't really work. However, these types of files generally have
magic numbers in their headers that you could inspect to determine what they
are.

Also, it'd be rather inconvenient if you couldn't upload a compressed archive
to a file-sharing site.

------
Fundlab
Is there an upload limit? Is it possible to share a 5gb file?

------
dec0dedab0de
Maybe some kind of AV scanning as files are uploaded.

------
wehadfun
Glad it dose not automatically show the images.

------
gcv
Keep it classy, Internet. Keep it classy.

------
bigd
AWESOME I'm already addicted

------
scottydelta
music piracy is the biggest issue you will face.

------
jayt92
Very cool site.

------
bolder88
There's a _lot_ of lag for a few people in a chatroom. Looks fun apart from
that though.

