
Show HN: This page will disappear in 10,000 views - teddynsnoopy
http://www.blinklink.me/b/4XIxfoeF4C0
======
richardv
Kinda feel like a jerk on this one. Wasn't really expecting to be able to nuke
it so easily.

    
    
        ab -c 30 -n 3000 http://www.blinklink.me/b/4XIxfoeF4C0
    
        Concurrency Level:      30
        Time taken for tests:   93.802 seconds
        Complete requests:      3000
        Failed requests:        2137
         (Connect: 0, Receive: 0, Length: 2137, Exceptions: 0)
        Write errors:           0
        Requests per second:    31.98 [#/sec] (mean)
        Time per request:       938.024 [ms] (mean)
        Time per request:       31.267 [ms] (mean, across all     concurrent requests)
        Transfer rate:          182.47 [Kbytes/sec] received
    
        Connection Times (ms)
                      min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
        Connect:      116  165 165.9    122    1276
        Processing:   137  771 624.6    625    6827
        Waiting:      132  733 595.7    601    6823
        Total:        254  936 644.7    789    7062
    

Perhaps should have "view" throttling per IP. Quite a few mechanisms could
have solved my abuse.

~~~
tyilo
What is ab?

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voidlogic
Don't use it for actual benchmarking though, it has lots of known problems.
Use something like: [https://github.com/wg/wrk](https://github.com/wg/wrk)

~~~
azth
What sort of issues does ab have?

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voidlogic
Well the best thing would be to try it yourself. I have found:

    
    
       * ab has more results variation between runs
       * ab will almost always report lower performance than wrk
       * If you have two implementations being benchmarked, A and B and B is always faster than A. wrk will report a greater degree of performance separation between A and B.
    

These results are less noticeable the lower performance the site being
benchmarked is.

~~~
justincormack
ab takes more CPU time than a decent web server too.

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ggreer
I'm not sure if the submitter created BlinkLink, but I hope the author had fun
making it. It's a neat idea, and it exploits human psychology in clever ways.
I like how the reward for tweeting increases as the number of views remaining
goes down. Also, people are driven to share the link with their friends
_immediately_ since they know views remaining are scarce.

That said, it's pretty easy to mirror content. In case the link is dead,
[http://i.imgur.com/KGo7oRH.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/KGo7oRH.jpg) is what was
on the page originally.

Oh, and I found a UI annoyance. On the front page
([http://www.blinklink.me/](http://www.blinklink.me/)), the blue "Make a
BlinkLink" button at the top that says is just a link to blinklink.me. The
bottom button (which is a less-noticeable white) actually posts the form. You
should probably hide the top button on the front page.

~~~
wicknicks
I find it very interesting how the fact that making the rules of the game
"obvious" changes the way people approach. If you think about it, almost all
content on the internet follows this rule: share-or-die.

But here, after slapping the die part on the face, people are forcing
themselves to post the link on twitter. Very cool!

~~~
H3g3m0n
I would hardly describe requiring people to spam as cool. More like fucking
annoying. Also you have no idea what the content will be until you have
propagated the spam, it could just be penis pills.

~~~
kristopolous
It would be like

"Before we allow you in our restaurant or show you a menu, you must give us a
positive review on yelp."

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biot
Kind of like a Zynga game. At a certain point, you can't continue unless you
spam your friends.

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jmtame
This is like Snapchat for the web, except it's too easy to take a screenshot
of the content which means there's not much of a point to the view limit.

You could make it difficult perhaps by requiring the user follow a path with
their mouse, otherwise white noise appears. That way they cannot actually move
their cursor to take a screenshot. Maybe do something else to occupy one of
their other hands, such as pressing a series of keys. Of course someone else
could be standing there ready to push the "print screen" button or use a
camera, like you can with Snapchat. Don't forget a time limit.

~~~
nemo1618
You could improve it significantly by implementing something similar to this:
[http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/](http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/)

Any mouse movement or keypresses would blank the page and you'd have to reload
it to see the contents again. Of course, there are probably ways to subvert
this, but it would stop most people.

~~~
nrivadeneira
I'm sure there are Windows and Mac equivalents, but Ubuntu has a timed
screenshot option. It would be fairly easy to just set the timer, go the the
website, and wait. But I agree, most people probably won't care enough or
think of it.

~~~
sirsar
Even if there isn't one currently, windows exposes an interface to the screen
through gdi+ which can be used in a C++ program, for example.

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zefi
A variant of this, involving payment, could be the future of journalism.

~~~
jmtame
This content disappears after 1,000 views unless you pay $5.

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glifchits
But if you have seen it, what's the incentive for paying money after the fact?
If you haven't seen it then it's just the same as a paywall.

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tunesmith
Because you want other people to read it.

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hnha
select, copy, paste, share, the end.

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robotresearcher
select, copy, paste, share (copyright violation), the end.

It's kind of not OK to distribute other people's work when they don't want you
to.

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arjie
Your users will still do it, and you won't be able to stop them.

~~~
robotresearcher
Right. I'm just saying it's not a strategy to advocate.

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link10
[http://i.imgur.com/Tz8K46w.png](http://i.imgur.com/Tz8K46w.png)

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farolino
I disagree with other posters, I think this is a great concept. It would be
fantastic for brands to share promotional offers and voucher codes as people
would have to tweet to revive access to the code therefore spreading the promo
further.

~~~
Anonymous238
How is this a good thing? You want users to visit a promo page, where they're
forced to retweet the content before getting access? This sounds awfully
familiar to those sites that ask you to share a referral link with 10 friends,
or complete a survey before receiving a free gift that doesn't exist. Also
reminds me of the days of browsing _warez_ online. Click these three links to
vote for us on Top 100 sites, then you'll get access to the file. They're just
taking people hostage and encouraging spam on social networks.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It could be useful if done right.

>> "before receiving a free gift that doesn't exist"

Presumably if this was done by someone like Coca-Cola you would receive
something for sharing the page. The spam problem could be improved by asking
them to tweet their own content + link rather than a predefined message. e.g.
Tweet your favourite thing about [brand] and get [reward]. And the tweet would
be [your message] + link.

These techniques could be used in interesting ways - most people just don't
bother.

>> "You want users to visit a promo page, where they're forced to retweet the
content before getting access?"

Also if the user is getting something of value I don't see the problem with
asking them to do something to get it. They aren't being forced, they are
being given a choice. Do this thing and get rewarded. Don't do it and life
goes on.

~~~
Anonymous238
You're basically buying tweets at that point, and I'm completely against the
concept. I go the exact opposite route with my community and promise users
they'll never have to jump through a single hoop. In return, I get a lot of
respect and loyal members. People know when you're trying to use them. It
leaves a bad taste in their mouth, and they don't forget. A good reputation is
better than a few thousand _likes_ or _tweets_.

~~~
sejje
Feels better. Not sure it's worth more.

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jjoe
What a great innovation that now content disappears...unless you tweet...

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hornbaker
Why does the view count change wildly up and down as I refresh?

Otherwise, love it. Needs a favicon. Get ready for viral growth.

~~~
Anonymous238
It's an interesting concept, However, I'm struggling to figure out a situation
where it would be useful. There might be something here, just not in it's
current state, and for that reason, I don't see it going viral anytime soon.

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gotoY
gotcha!
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.blinklink.me/b/4XIxfoeF4C0)

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ArekDymalski
This could become a bit more useful if you could add clickable links in the
message. Or other files (like PDF) instead of an image. Or if it worked in the
opposite direction - "tweet to decrease the number of available views". Why?
To create some kind of scarcity, if the content is really valuable.

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paul9290
Snapchat for URLs

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adamlj
Seeing the hits/sec on the count down is pretty impressive

~~~
gamegoblin
Yeah I was watching it lose about 30 every time I refreshed it. This is an
interesting concept, for sure.

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wavesounds
I wonder how adding a link to who "sponsored" the content your viewing (if
available) would change things. It's interesting how a tweets are now
currency.

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ohashi
Kind of like [http://securesha.re](http://securesha.re) but less security,
more social.

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shmageggy
Reminds me of this [http://www.savetoby.com/](http://www.savetoby.com/)

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bestest
please forgive my humble input, but wtf?

~~~
agilebyte
I may be bad at reading facial expressions and may be assuming the best
scenario (...) but that person seems a bit sad to me. Maybe to feel connected
to others?

~~~
kintamanimatt
That's a contrived expression, and not one of genuine sadness; he's pulling a
face, not expressing an emotion. You can see on his GitHub profile he's got a
similar facial expression, although a little less pronounced. [0] It's kinda
like his duck face!

I think this has just been created for giggles, not for any particular reason.
Admittedly, it piqued my curiosity!

[0] [https://github.com/clayallsopp](https://github.com/clayallsopp)

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Bjoern
Just saw it at <1000..

[http://imgur.com/6bpnSQl](http://imgur.com/6bpnSQl)

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yaddayadda
It'd be great to publicize a dataset of hit-times from each ip and from
twitter accounts.

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coherentpony
Am I the only one that finds this 'feature' utterly pointless?

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informatimago
zut, we could still make it appear back with a tweet. I hoped to make it
disappear for good.

But the conclusion is that it is easier to click reload twenty times than to
tweet a single message.

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sahrizv
Thanks for the combined efforts of HNers to make it disappear :-)

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azth
And it's gone :)

~~~
pdw
Meh, seems like it can be revived with another tweet.

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hnriot
Anyone read the barcode yet?

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kousuke
Is It true?

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nickbyfleet
It is done!

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pkdog
哈哈哈

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qianyang
creative idea

