
Don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening (2010) - handpickednames
http://shadyurl.com/
======
sathishmanohar
[https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

is now

[http://www.5z8.info/horse-slaughter_o2z4pp_heroin-
od.avi](http://www.5z8.info/horse-slaughter_o2z4pp_heroin-od.avi)

:D :D

~~~
narag
It was already scary as is. You know, _Hacker_ News.

~~~
jen729w
I have security clearance. This required an interview.

“What forums do you regularly participate in?”

After a raised eyebrow, I had to explain in some detail the meaning of the
word ‘hacker’...

~~~
leoc
Note to self: in similar situations, avoid entering a digression about how the
treatment of pg's friend RTM was totally unfair.

~~~
jwilk
If you don't know who RTM is:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris)

------
osteele
This PHP code
[https://github.com/osteele/wideurl.com/blob/master/wideurl.p...](https://github.com/osteele/wideurl.com/blob/master/wideurl.php)
turns e.g.
[http://osteele.com/archives/2006/04/wideurl](http://osteele.com/archives/2006/04/wideurl)
into `http:​//w-i-d-e-u-r-l.com/aitch-tee-tee-pea-colon-double-slash-oh-ess-
tee-double-ee-ell-ee-dot-see-oh-em-slash-aye-are-see-aitch-eye-vee-ee-ess-
slash-two-double-zero-six-slash-zero-four-slash-doubleyou-eye-dee-ee-you-are-
ell`.

It was loosely inspired by a BBC broadcast I heard during the very early days
of the web. The announcer said something like “If you would like to learn more
about this radio program, enter the following into your browser: aitch aitch
tee pea colon forwards-slash forwards-slash bee bee see period see oh em
forwards-slash — oh, never mind.”

My hosting provider eventually took it down, because URL redirectors can be
used for phishing.

~~~
piracykills
> My hosting provider eventually took it down, because URL redirectors can be
> used for phishing.

What provider was this? I'm going to make sure to never use them. That's not a
valid reason at all to take someone's site down, even if it's being actively
abused you notify them first and notify them many times before even
considering booting them as a customer.

------
natej
Ha, that's great! Fun idea. I recently made a URL shortening service that
generates a random adjective/noun pair, and I specifically looked for a
'clean' set of words. I would've never thought of doing the opposite :)
[http://shrt-url.azurewebsites.net/](http://shrt-url.azurewebsites.net/)
[https://github.com/natejenson/url-
shortener](https://github.com/natejenson/url-shortener)

~~~
Bromskloss
I note that "juvenile" and "toucher" are present.

------
rutierut
I love that the site itself looks super shady and has no HTTPS

~~~
KozmoNau7
It has a bit of that "90s l337 Winblowz h4xx0r toolz" vibe going on.

------
lotsofcows
The example looks funny but I'm not giving free training to Google's AI just
to try it out.

~~~
ben_bai
OT: I did, it asked me to select traffic signs. No picture had any. Not
marking anything is not an option. So I marked 2 traffic lights and a gas
station sign. Accepted. :(

~~~
written
Even random clicking on these "select X" captchas works. You'll just get a
longer run around, until AI gets bored and lets you in.

Perhaps it recognizes that being annoyed and a willful breaking of rules are
also human qualities.

------
lillesvin
Can't actually generate a URL on the site (presumably because everyone's
trying at the moment) but it reminded me of
[https://verylegit.link/](https://verylegit.link/) which does something
similar.

------
Keloran
this just reminds me of [https://verylegit.link/](https://verylegit.link/)

this thread:
[http://extremely.absolutely.completely.verylegit.link/0x8c*c...](http://extremely.absolutely.completely.verylegit.link/0x8c*cracked$93moneygram!bitcoin!javaexploit.min.css.malware.exe)

------
aranw
This is now my preferred choice of URL Shortner for sharing my CV with
recruiters.

------
nergal
Seems that it just got hit by the hackernews DoS.

------
dabber
If I remember correctly, the author of this site hangs around here and last
time the site came up he had mentioned there used to be a free API but it had
to be taken down because of constant abuse by scammers.

Its also possible I'm thinking of another similar site, if that's the case I
apologise.

------
bartl
It's slow as mail. I tried an URL several minutes ago and it still hasn't come
back.

------
lostmsu
Did not work on
[https://losttech.software/stack.html](https://losttech.software/stack.html)

Looks like an unnecessary restriction on the length of the last piece of
domain name.

------
Arnt
All the modern SEO-heavy links lend themselves to modification. You can give
someone the URL
[https://www.amazon.com/fnord/dp/0440539811](https://www.amazon.com/fnord/dp/0440539811)
and he may say "oh, I've read that, fine book" and won't have noticed anything
peculiar about the URL.

(Using the male pronoun seems appropriate for that book.)

~~~
tialaramex
That's because there isn't anything peculiar about that URL. Are you seeing
something in there? Because there isn't anything. Perfectly normal URL.

~~~
bbernoulli
I think it's the "fnord" part which you can change to whatever you like?

[https://www.amazon.com/dont-cause-a-scene-fellas-nothing-
to-...](https://www.amazon.com/dont-cause-a-scene-fellas-nothing-to-see-
here/dp/0440539811)

~~~
tialaramex
#ThatsTheJoke 'fnord' is supposed to be invisible, and you, the reader, are
outstanding in that you are resisting this mind-control and able to see it
anyway. It's a reference to the novels linked in in the Amazon link.

------
eXpl0it3r
Is there an addon that will retrieve the redirects in a "sandboxed" way and
then ask you if you want to visit the original URL?

I really dislike when people shorten all their URLs just so they can run
statistics on them.

~~~
gruez
you can't avoid the statistics gathering because you need to contact their
server to get the full URL. the best you can do is look for workarounds
(goo.gl has a details page if you append .info to the end of a link, not sure
whether that gets recorded as a visit). either that, or you have some sort of
centralized service that caches short URLs so they only need to be visited
once.

~~~
eXpl0it3r
I don't really mind being tracked, I'm more interested in knowing what site
I'm visiting before I actually visit the site.

Caching short URLs might be problematic when the short URLs are editable, so
you might end up with old URLs that are no longer valid.

------
limaoscarjuliet
Confirmed tool's promise: the "shortened" url to my company website has been
immediately blocked by our big brother firewall citing internal policy :-)

------
cypherg
[https://verylegit.link/](https://verylegit.link/)

------
arctica
Too bad I am getting 500 Internal Server Error for all URLs I tried.

------
dalore
No https version?

~~~
jwilk
No, because HTTP is shadier.

------
AnnoyingSwede
Site is soo slashdotted right now..

------
bryanrasmussen
funny, but seems in the end a damaging joke.

~~~
jstanley
Who is it damaging? I think it's funny, with no caveat.

~~~
dingaling
Nontechnical users whom we are trying to train to parse and understand URLs.
And to avoid those which are outside the norm, even when received from known
contacts.

"Haha it's just a joke, click it" undermines that. Just like it would dilute
an AI's training.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Yes, my point, really anyone who looks at urls if this became prevalent
couldn't trust their intuition - maybe trusting intuition isn't a good thing
anyway. For some reason though I got minus 4 points for what seemed like a
reasonably clear and uncontroversial observation.

~~~
pjc50
I think the whole point of the joke is that URL shorteners have _already_ made
it impossible to look at URLs and intuit anything about where they lead and
how reliable they are. e.g. the "t.co" through which all twitter links are
blinded.

~~~
dingaling
If so, why permit any arbitrary target for this 'joke' tool?

Instead have it resolve all links to a page that says 'don't click on
shortened URLs'.

You get your joke and curious recipients get a lesson.

I'm sure this was fun to program but beyond that I don't think it should be
disseminated.

~~~
jstanley
Perhaps we should start a rival service.

It gives you urls like [https://upstandingcitizenry.com/peace-and-love-and-
ponies](https://upstandingcitizenry.com/peace-and-love-and-ponies) except
instead of redirecting you to a safe URL, it drive-by downloads some malware,
fills your screen with porn popups, and uses your CPU for monero mining.

Maybe that would spread your message better?

You obviously don't get the joke. The joke is that it looks shady but is
actually perfectly fine. If every URL tells you "don't click on things that
look shady", then the joke is gone.

------
jiveturkey
wish it was just shadyurl.com/foo. that’d be delicious. all the obvious text
in the url is just sophomoric.

~~~
jiveturkey
valid opinions get downvoted on HN? that's sad. oh well.

