Secret blog published in robots.txt file | Hacker News Reader

Secret blog published in robots.txt file

webmasterworld.com

54 pointssoundsop13 comments

Very interesting blog I see! Don't think it's only hype because of the title, the content is really worth a read, and no doubt much more interesting than many blogs that get to the front page.

I second. It dawns on me today - the web is made unnecessarily heavy. For most blogs and content all we need is simple text :) so light, so clean.

PS: Repeated the note as it was hidden and in the wrong context.

"... For most blogs and content all we need is simple text :) so light, so clean. ..."

Plan files?

Back when linux was new and lots of servers started popping up, .plan (dot plan) files ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol where the blogs of that era. Easy to read, quick to load you get a heads up of what was going on via text - a lot like HackerNews. And the best .plan files to read had to be iD & John Carmack.

   3/23/1997 - Damaged F40

   Someone ran into my F40 in the 
   parking lot, then took off. Words 
   cannot do justice to how I feel 
   right now.

   If anyone knows a tall white male 
   in the dallas area that now has 
   red paint and carbon fibre on their 
   tan pickup truck, turn the bastard in!

Not only did you get the best technical insight in to programming they where more personal than blogs, funny even. No ads. No cutting edge design to get in the way of the information. Plan files don't really exist now. Carmack closed his down in 2005 ~ http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates and now blogs like the rest us. An archive exists at http://www.scribd.com/doc/14193/John-Carmack-Archive-plan-19... Port 79 and plan files went the way of telnet and the Dodo. Btw it was reported the esteemed Rtm and his pesky worm exploit ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm that had a part in plan files demise. After exploiting a buffer overflow in fingerd (among others) [0] "too risky", ISP admins claimed.

[0] Not confirmed ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol#Security_concer... but mentioned ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris#The_worm

I have to admit, I miss finger (and would take it over Twitter any day)

I don't tweet, but I might update my .plan. I'd even hack something together to generate RSS from it, but Firefox and Safari don't support finger:// so it would be kind of useless.

Also write an aggregator and call it 'hand' :)

Interesting. That was an exploit in fingerd and .plan residing on users home directories is definitely vulnerable.

"... - a lot like HackerNews"

exactly :). May be just simple text files or basic html with bold, italic, href tags served out of the secure web server context. No ads would be a big relief.

Does wordpress has any such plain theme ?

For some reason, this makes me think of Phrack magazine. I second (or third?) the idea that plain text is so easy to read.

Google did index it, but only with an extra URL parameter: http://www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt?view=producecode

Google has it in its pages - http://www.google.com/search?q=brett+tabke+blog and with a nice meta description

Brett Tabke experiments with writing a weblog in a text file usually read only by robots. Commentary on the world of search engine marketing. www.webmasterworld.com/robots.txt - 2k

It dawns on me today - the web is made unnecessarily heavy.

It's listed on Dmoz:

http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Web_Design_and_Develo...

Fans of this might also like outguess by Niels Provos.

http://www.outguess.org/

This is awesome.. it kinda reminds me of _why's hoodwink'd.

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