
Show HN: Findr, an omegle like chat made with Node.js, socket.io and angularJS - kickling
http://findr.mybluemix.net/
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diesal11
My partner made their name '<script>alert("xss");</script>'

Good effort but didn't work.

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Gammarays
Short story: I gave this a try not expecting much. I got matched with a person
named "Lenny". The conversation started off fairly straight forward:

>Lenny: hello there

>hnperson: whats up

>Lenny: How are you doing today?

>hnperson: Not bad, yourself?

>Lenny: I'm doing beautifully

Having tried all the features I wanted to try, I was ready to end the
conversation and get on with my work when Lenny asked:

>Lenny: I'm a recruiter for Facebook.

>Lenny: Are you happy with your current work?

This was a bit of a pleasant surprise, as I just entered the interview process
with a few companies including Google and was planning to reach out to FB
sometime today.

Unfortunately, before we were able to exchange contact info, Lenny left the
chat in the middle of typing (presumably an accident?). I just wanted to share
my Tuesday morning experience, and if Lenny is out there, I'd love to continue
the conversation! If not, thanks for sharing this Show HN :)

~~~
pRusya
Just had three disconnects in 5 minutes in different chats while people were
typing.

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kickling
Weird and sorry to hear. Could be due to them being on mobile and leaving
their internet app. Have not experienced this otherwise.

------
gh1
Chatted with a few. Everything was going well until I said "Are you here from
HN?". I was greeted with "Your chat partner has left".

~~~
hakcermani
I was on with Cloudy who wanted to know if it was open source. I said not sure
and then s/he disconnected !

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51Cards
Chatted with Jesus. Short conversation, guess he's a busy guy. Nice tool
though, well done.

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robertleon
Fun chat app, Joakim. Tried it out for a bit and chatted with a nice person
for a few minutes.

As others have said, some minor scrolling things. Two other tiny bits:

* Words wrap around in the middle of the word rather than getting moved to the next line, so it's not very 'pretty'.

* When your chat partner is typing, it fluctuates too easily from 'x is typing...' and 'you are chatting with x' in the middle of their conversation. Maybe set the timeout for that message to be a little higher?

~~~
kickling
Thank you for your input, appreciate it. The word wrapping is a problem that
is now fixed. Maybe a longer timeout is a good idea, but I think a too long
timeout would be confusing? Maybe the user only writes something and then
deletes it and it will look like as if he/she is typing for 3 seconds?

~~~
robertleon
The nice thing about seeing 'x is typing...' is that you know they have read
your message and have begun to respond. I think a lot of movement from
'typing' to not is more distracting than anything. When I'm in a conversation,
I really just want to know that my chat partner has read my message and is
trying to respond.

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bruno2223
Cool chat! Fast!

Somethings that I saw:

1\. Horizontal scrolling is a bit boring (when you text a long message)

2\. Automatic Vertical scrolling is not always working

But it still awesome :-) congrats!

~~~
kickling
I have noticed. Really annoying to not be able to make these changes without
disconnecting all current users..

~~~
bruno2223
Humm why they get disconnected?

Because you do a node refresh on the server on every Git Push?

You could make 2 repos to avoid that: frondend + backend

Then you could update frontend without disconecting users... On backend update
you'll still get this issue of disconecting on Git pushs, there is no fast-
and-easy solution, I think.

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z3t4
Besides the chat stopped working, chatting with a random HN member / developer
was a very nice experience.

Does HN have a IRC channel ?

~~~
klausjensen
I had a very nice chat with a fellow developer from NL, which was fun.

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mohsinr
Chatted with a fellow HN user from Germany! It was nice chat to make my day :)
Peace!

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inlineint
It is worth noting that this kind of chat is fundamentally vulnerable to MitM
attack: anyone can just open two chat windows and copy all messages from one
to the other and vice versa, even by hands or using browser automation.

~~~
kickling
How would I tackle this?

------
overcast
Just had a good chat with "myself". I learned a lot about myself.

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Vesper
That's the first time i've got to know some people from HN. Awesome.I hope it
stays popular and becomes self-fueling. Is there some place else where HN
people chat(other than HN itself)?

~~~
tbirrell
I look forward to seeing the answer to this on the FP tomorrow :D

~~~
Vesper
fingers crossed! :)

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adhipg
HTTPS?

~~~
newjersey
HTTPS should just work. Just add s to http in the URL. You can expect a cert
issued to IBM. Background on my blue mix:

[https://www.ibm.com/blogs/bluemix/2014/06/introducing-
myblue...](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/bluemix/2014/06/introducing-mybluemix-
net-new-domain-application/)

Mods, can someone please change the submission URL to HTTPS?

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tbirrell
'word-break: normal;' would be a good backup to 'break-word' which is not
actually working. Also, why do I need to reenter my name every time?

~~~
kickling
You are right, it is a bit weird. The only point is that it makes you less
willing to end a conversation.. But really i was just lazy/not thinking about
it. Putting it on The list!

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vthallam
Looks great! Simple and just works. How long did it took to get this done?
I've been thinking to just make something like this to learn node and socket.

~~~
kickling
I started making it maybe.. thursday? I had previous knowledge in node.js and
a bit of knowledge in socket.io (did the tutorial) but this project was a
perfect way to learn some more socket.io and also angularJS for me:)

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yilugurlu
Cool and smooth app, got nice chat with Dan. Good luck.

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kickling
Will restart the server in 5 minutes.. i hope you finish chatting. I am
introducing a way to broadcast messages as ADMIN so that I can prepare you!

------
kickling
Thank you for all the comments! I've had a great time chatting with some of
you. New features will be added:)

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aethertron
This is really cool. I might use this sort of stack for building my ideal,
2-player, deep collaboration app.

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shaunrussell
Is this open source? or are you planning to make it a business?

~~~
kickling
I am not plannning to make it a business. And even if so, I wouldn't forbid
anyone to use my code.

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uberneo
Looks good, any github?

~~~
kickling
It's on github now:

[https://github.com/mrkickling/findrchat](https://github.com/mrkickling/findrchat)

~~~
elldoubleyew
Looks like this is your first project on Github; impressive stuff!

~~~
kickling
Thank you!

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vmateixeira
Not bad at all.. a few problems with the scrolling though :)

~~~
kickling
I'm aware. Will make changes when there is less people on:)

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acgIssues
Found some people to chat, mostly from here which is cool.

Hi, Jason

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kickling
Restarting the server now..

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anondon
Are you running the app on the free plan of bluemix?

~~~
kickling
I have an internship at IBM atm so I get to use 2gb of space for 200 days or
something. I don't know what's included in the free plan.

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NicoJuicy
I Made a chat in 2 hours for communicating with GPRS devices. It's not hard
anymore

~~~
kzisme
Great job :) care to share? No reason to be snarky towards others.

~~~
NicoJuicy
It currently contains proprietary code. But there will be a later version open
sourced.

I didn't mean to be snarky though, in my eyes, it was just a fact

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jlebrech
If it supported video and used github logins, it could be a site where you can
bounce ideas off other users. maybe stop github users without repos to use it
to prevent nudity.

~~~
elmigranto
It's trivial to fork or create some random thing using just web UI, and since
you are already registering at GitHub, this wouldn't be that effective,I
think.

