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The Exclusive Website

exclusive.website

133 pointszuhayeer77 comments

I'm getting a 500 internal server error.

It's kind of funny how these contemporary webpages crash under the load of HN, but the few times we link to sites from 1996 they somehow manage to remain online. The other day I remember people trying to link to the pages with the oldest images they could find and I'm pretty sure none of the pages suffered from the hug of death.

The original term was the Slashdot Effect, and they were crumpling websites like old paper cups by 1999.

I guess this is easier to hug to death since it's stateful and (based on other comments) opens a websocket per user

> oldest images they could find

Sounds like survivorship bias (as with most "they don't make 'em like they used to" plaints).

Aren't the old 1996 websites behind CDN's or beefy webservers nowadays? I'm sure a modern nginx instance can easily deal with tens of thousands of plain http requests per second.

Nginx can, most backends can‘t. ;-)

> I'm getting a 500 internal server error.

Or are you? >:)

I've seen plenty of old websites crumbling when HN linked to them.

You're getting tricked by bias. If (made up numbers) 1% of links crash under HN load, and 1% of links are to websites from before 2005, then 1% of 1% will be 15+ year old websites crashing. And given that I've said I've seen several i think the real number is a lot higher.

You missed the joke. It's trying to be exclusive, so it gives a 500 error to all visitors the first time they come. Refresh, and you'll... almost get in.

I... I didn't get a 500 the first try. Unintentional joke?

I love this! Reminds me of when people just made random tiny websites for fun.

Uh, my number keeps going up but I'm not leaving the tab :(

Edit: somehow I became the first person in the queue https://i.redd.it/r9b2dz5dnbg61.png

I left to give the next person the slot :P

There was a website I used to love sending people to when I was in middle school (crashme dot com, just a parked domain now).

It had this bomb timer-like countdown clock and a big warning that it would destroy your computer if it reached zero. Totally pointless, but was always fun back before I really understood too much about this brave new world of internet.

Who remembers the million dollar website? Last time I’ve checked it was still online.

It's still online.

The creator went on to found several startups.

https://www.crunchbase.com/person/alex-tew

That ridiculous website prompted me to learn web development and ultimately resulted in the company I've been running for the past decade. (Which is loosely based on the throwaway project I decided to do to learn what I was doing, before moving on to the real site I'd make - some 'clever' million dollar homepage knockoff with a twist, that certainly would have failed!)

I bought a block on it two years ago as a birthday gift for someone.

Raises hand. Did I buy some pixels? I thought about it.

It's still going. Full of dead links though.

It's the number of people in the queue that counts up, not your place in the queue.

I keep seeing the "people in front of you" number count up. It just went from 385 to 392, then down to 375, and now it says 385 again.

One definition of exclusive is "Excluding or tending to exclude". That was indeed true for me, as I was unable to see anything.

Same here, Reminded me of a youtube parody "the closed cafe - so exclusive it's closed all day"

Reminds me of the BBS days, where for the good sites it was necessary to keep re-dialing until you got through!

I never did make it into L0pht.

Funny! I remember getting a taste of a few really good ones, in my case some of the PNW high-graphics BBSes in '95 or so, and then not being able to get through again for days...a frustrating experience. Same with download quotas for new users. :-)

I was up to #97 in line, then it pushed me back to #392... I demand a refund.

Look, they don't let just anybody into the website. It's exclusive.

OP needs a "grease the bouncer" button and an "upload selfie" button to let wealthy and attractive people skip the line.

It's buggy as shit. If you lose the websocket for any reason it falls back to a polling mode which appears to be completely broken. I know it's just for fun, but as someone who has written a very robust distributed FIFO queue before, this implementation ... bothers me.

I'm watching the websocket data, and even in that … the count is just bouncing around, sometimes going up, sometimes going down.

Seems like an elaborate troll, in that, the sibling comment is right: "look, they don't just let anybody in"

its like trying to get into the roxbury.

I'd like to talk to the manager >:(

I don't think it ever lets you in, haha.

In firefox, trying to 'view source' yields the source for a 500 internal server error.

Does that mean that firefox makes a different request when I click "view source"? As in, from the server logs, someone could in principle discover whether a request was created by clicking "view source"?

Also, like everybody else, I'm here to report that the counter does not decrease monotonically :(

Yes, browsers make a new request in order to view the source, because they don’t retain the original page source after parsing it (because the corner case of “view source” is the only thing that could conceivably have any use for it at all, so it’s not worth wasting memory on).

One alternative that I’ve found useful on occasion is to Select All (Ctrl+A / ⌘A), then in the page context menu, View Selection Source. That shows you the current DOM, serialised to HTML, which is sometimes easier to look at than the dev tools.

But only the first time. Reloading the page or clicking "View source" again made it appear for me. Of course, it's possible that was just random chance like others experienced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26070729

You can "inspect element" and maybe that will work better.

Quick feedback: I had to press "play sound" twice before it muted, because of autoplay.

This is a fun experiment. Can't wait to get in.

Edit: Okay, the number keeps jumping around... clearly something fishy going on here. Maybe it's only sessions that are currently connected that are included? ;)

The website of the studio behind it is worth checking: https://dayjob.work/

I absentmindedly middle click that link, came back later to it, and thought it was the actual exclusive website. If they actually had a Doom port on the exclusive website, it would make Satan proud.

it is a doom port!

Really beautiful.

> The last entry into the website was Tuesday, February 9 2021 2:46AM

Dear Random HN person please get off the site. It's been 10 mins now.

Sorry, I was totally mesmerized by the content. All yours now.

This is one of those frustrating things where (assuming the queue is stable), you'd assume to wait much longer for the last 10% than the first 10% as people reneg.

I wonder what the queueing time distribution is like, parametrised by position in the queue.

This vaguely reminds me of hell.com.

I don’t remember what was on it - maybe some net art? But it was a rare “private” website requiring an invite to get it - this in the early era when websites were never private.

To Webmaster: How much $$ to jump first in line?

The website should host an auction!

theory: it never lets you in

the experience of wanting to get in is the experience

It's an old website. I got in last time I tried about two years ago.

If I remember correctly you see a message from the person who got in before you, and then you write a message for the next one in line.

that's exactly what I would expect someone in on the art project to say

It's about the friends we made along the way?

At first it showed me a 500 error. This time I'm unsure if it is the usual HN effect or a variation of the joke.

Hmmmmmmm.

    We know what you're thinking...
    and yes,
    you really can get into the website.

Was just a blank page for me. Had to refresh to see anything... and find out I was in a queue.

Suddenly, the number of people in front of me started going UP.

Getting 500, internal (exclusive?) server error...

I'm guessing it's due to HN's hug of death

I’ve opened it on 2 devices and showed 2 different numbers. So either the counter is fake, or there is a load balancer issue :)

It definitely is not fake, it updates through a websocket.

Although I'm too far back in line to comment on the link, the design agency that created this site, Day Job, has an excellent retro-inspired home page - https://dayjob.work/

Something to play with while you wait!

Is it using any kind of IP or something like that to recognize the place in queue? I was around 100, I pasted the link on a Whatsapp conversation to share it (I guess it did a request to get a preview), and when I came back to the tab I was last in the queue.

I've lost my place quite a few times, i can't tell if it is by design due to navigating away or the websocket flaking out because of too many people.

Definitely flaking out. I had the tab open on a monitor, it said I got disconnected then I got booted to the end of the queue.

It stores a UUID-looking string in localStorage and uses that to retrieve your position in the queue. At least that's what I gathered from looking at requests and trying to make sense of obfuscated JS.

They should have a chat that lets you talk to only the person in front of you and behind you.

Recalls uselessaccount.com

https://web.archive.org/web/*/uselessaccount.com

Which has apparently been hijacked by something blog-like.

Would someone apply the same principle on the checkout page of their web shop?

Is this what a thread in scheduler queue sees? Does this website have a timeout?

Edit: Apparantly not

> The last entry into the website was Tuesday, February 9 2021 5:55AM

Someone is squatting. Either that or it doesn't use local time.

Waiting music reminds me of the hotel lobby in Leisure Suit Larry 6.

I was thinking the elevator scene at the end of The Blues Brothers.

I want to know how many people are behind me in the queue.

It tells you that at the top of the page. Well, ok, it tells you the total number of people waiting. Subtract your queue position from that number and you have the number of people behind you.

welcome to the http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ fold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage

It's so exclusive I only get a 500 error. Not even 403. Just 500.

so exclusive the site threw 500's trying to get in line!

> The last entry into the website was Monday, February 8 2021 4:25PM

Doesn’t specify a time zone, but it isn’t this time anywhere in the world right now, and assuming local time, that was over 5 hours ago.

i opened dev tools and lost my place in the queue :(

my friend... developers are not allowed in

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