Show HN: Hacker Spring – Instant blog by email, no signup required | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hacker Spring – Instant blog by email, no signup required

hackerspring.com

70 pointshacker25661 comments

Hey HN! I worked hard to make this so that everyone, even Grandma and Grandpa, can now blog, make a website, or even learn to code with JavaScript!

You can send an email to anything@hackerspring.com and it will automatically create a post based on your Subject and Body of your e-mail!

You can also attach javascript, css, or html files to make a full website that is hosted free by just sending an email!

I hope you guys like it!

I assume each blog is distinct FIOS he’s by the sender’s email address?

What happens if someone sends an email spoofing your FROM address?

A spoofed email will just be ignored because it won't pass the checks!

What checks?

Said the spider to the fly.

Heh. I’m just curious, and the answer might affect my decision whether to use something like this, but you have a point.

The checks have changed significantly since we last spoke! Right now there are ~30 conditionals as it relates to determining if an e-mail is legit, and I imagine this will increase and be tweaked over time!

It’s a great idea. I think it would be a lot nicer to read without the typing animation for blog text. It seems like a fast site - show that off!

Thank you! The animation site was actually just to show that you could attach a javascript file and embed it in your e-mail!

https://hackerspring.com/p/protonmail.com/hackerspring/5ec06...

Is an example without the javascript!

But... why? Giving a user complete control over JS code that will run directly off the site is inherently an unsafe idea, for you and for the user.

Sorry about that, a more serious answer: There are already hundreds of thousands of webhosts who offer Javascript hosting - what makes this one any less safe?

Do your grandma and grandpa know css and js? Kidding! Although if they did, that would be cool.

How much do you hate me if I spoof email addresses?

Is the source published anywhere?

I noticed a minor typo in the header:

  8     <meta name="author" content="Podesta Pizzeria, LLC
  9 ">

I fixed the typo! Thank you!

It was because of an issue where saving a file included an extra \n. I wrote a script to trim the files and it's fixed now!

As pointed out by samstave in a comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23209348 :

You send an email to this service to post a blog entry, and this service exposes your name and email address (as obtained from the email headers) to everyone! That’s a huge privacy disconnect in a world where exposed emails can cause a lot of problems, and more so for non-technical people, which this service intends to make things easy for.

One look at the homepage of this service shows all the email addresses used by the users to post. Since the service also claims (in another comment here) that spoofed email addresses won’t work, users must use a non-personal address and name if they don’t wish to expose their information publicly.

This site isn't an anonymous posting forum. If you want to be anonymous you can use an anonymous e-mail account, but for everyone else it's to speak with your name and your voice.

What you're looking for is a different service with different goals, and that doesn't make this one worse at what it is trying to do.

No need to get defensive. You have basically created a spam attractor for non-technical users by saying that this is suitable for “Grandpa and Grandma” and making them a lot more vulnerable to email scams.

Writing in one’s voice doesn’t need to have an email address attached with it. I can understand using the person’s name. You could do better by not displaying the email address or obfuscating it. Or you could remove that “Grandpa and Grandma” part from your description and say that it’s for those who understand how email addresses in public can get misused.

This isn't defensive. I'm simply stating that anonymous posting is different from named posting. That said, I will be adding a way to do anonymous posting and unlisted posting today. :-)

Thank you for your suggestions!

Unlisted posting is complete. If you send to topic.unlisted@hackerspring.com (or anytopic.unlisted@hackerspring.com) the post will not show up in new/popular/categories. However, it will still show up in your user view.

If you want it to be visible with a link only and not even show on your user page, you can send to anytopic.linkonly@hackerpsring.com.

Anonymous posting is coming next!

You could implement email like Craigslist do with an "email relay".

That way the users email is hidden with an anonymous alias. But people can still reply to that alias email.

This is a great idea. I've actually started down this path a bit, and will add the actual email relay tomorrow!

Named posting doesn’t need to expose one’s email address. You could just use the name. That was my point. There is no need to expose anyone’s email address to the world, be they technically knowledgeable people or otherwise.

I still believe your site is harmful to users unless the default is publishing with just the name and no email address, with an option of publishing with the email address if someone really wants to. The current defaults seem inverted.

I’ll stop with this comment since I’ve said enough.

I updated it to hide name and email by default.

If people wish to expose their name and email, they can include an email signature!

Edit: If you already posted, this page was already archived so you should create a new e-mail address if you want to be pseudoanonymous.

And while happily displaying the sender email publicly, it gives no indication that someone has embedded (potentially malicious) javascript in a post (why that is even allowed is another question), or that some expected 'blog posts' are actually unexpected redirects to external sites that can contain even more malicious/illegal content.

Leaving aside that a site like this is so wide open for abuse of all kinds it won't last five minutes, I don't even see the advantage of submitting a form at an email provider over simply submitting a form directly on the site.

There was a service a while back - I cant recall what it was - but it would send you a question via email asking what you did today and you would reply to it and it would keep a history...

I cant recall what that was now though.

I really like this though.

---

Custom URLs?

I am going to try this right now. What happens....

WAIT A MINUTE. HOL' UP. SOMETHIN AINT RIGHT.

This exposes your email to anyone on Hackerspring. and allows you to effectively non-anonymously post to a forum, whereby your post is intermixed with everyone elses?

No thank you.

Here is a feature request I would like:

TO: join@hackerspring.com Subject: Join, "PHLUX"

SEND

---

From: Join@Hackerspring.com Subject: Join, "PHLUX"

Hello,

Your new page has been created under Hackerspring.com/phlux!

Any emails you send to phlux@hackersping.com will now be visible at hackerspring.com/phlux

Please enjoy your nano blog! Also, your email will never be visible, unless YOU put it into the body of your email-post sent to Hackerspring, so pllease be careful of signatures.

If you wish to delete a post at any time, simply send an email - just as you would a post with "Delete [POSTID]" as the subject of your email!

Please be sure to adhere to our TOS regarding harmful content posts.

----

I dont want all my posts intermingled with others.

Thanks

Makes sense and I think that creates a different dynamic and community. You can delete emails by just sending $DELETEME.

There are more commands available in https://hackerspring.com/faq

It was considered to do 'unlisted' posts, but in the end, what's a blog if it's not for worldwide publication?

Im confused - so my collection of posts is contained under "category +me"

Does it post inline images from within the body of the email? I must have missed that part.

And I didnt say not available to the world - I said not intermingled among everyone elses posts. That is a forum.

By your definition, HN would be a blog - as I can post to HN, and it just shows up under /new I just happen to be the poster...

Am I missing something?

> Im confused - so my collection of posts is contained under "category +me"

Yes

> Does it post inline images from within the body of the email? I must have missed that part.

Yes! You can include anything you can with HTML and e-mail. You can even include a .js or .css file!

> By your definition, HN would be a blog - as I can post to HN, and it just shows up under /new I just happen to be the poster...

With Hacker Spring, it's both a blog and an aggregator. HN can be used as a blog by doing a text post! :-). Hacker Spring just has a bit more features to customize your site since it's fully geared toward this.

> You can delete emails by just sending $DELETEME.

Does that still fit with the view that this is suitable for “Grandpa and Grandma” if it exposes one’s email address? Shouldn’t a service intended for non-technical audiences take more care in not exposing the users by default?

Spoof the from header and you're golden.

What do you mean by spoofing the from header? I do not know much about mail spoofing.

You can now send to tech.unlisted@hackerspring.com and it will not show in the public popular/new/category view. However, it will still show in the view of all posts from your e-mail address.

If you want it not to show up in your user view and only with a link, you can send to tech.linkonly@hackerspring.com.

This reminds me of a blogging by email service I used called Posterous. Loved it but got shut down after Twitter bought it.

I was just thinking the same. It was the first platform I actually used for quite a while.

Nice! I hope you'll give this a shot too! :-)

Damn, I really like the concept of creating blog posts simply by sending email. Solves a lot of UI problems.

I agree! I really hope this takes off and also sparks a revolution of making things easier for people!

On consideration, I would prefer if it worked without js. Since the whole site requires js to load content, clicking on someone's post that has js that effs with my computer is something I prefer to avoid.

At the very least, label a post that has js so I don't click it, if you are going to require the site to function with js.

Is it really necessary that every link opens in a new tab?

It now indicates that there is a script by putting [JS] next to the title. Links that redirect elsewhere have an arrow in the post title appended!

Thanks for the suggestion!

I just added a dark mode toggle (no cookies still)! Hope you like!

https://hackerspring.com?darkmode=1

I have typed my website URL wrong. How do I edit?

There is no edit, but you can delete and repost! Just go to your sent mailbox and find the email, click on the mail you sent us, and hit reply. Then type "$DELETEME" as the first text in the body.

https://hackerspring.com/faq/

>Just e-mail [email protected] to post or pick your own topic@hackerspring.com.

Nice concept and cool animation!

Thank you!