You get a surprising amount of functionality for $20. I just got an account and I've been poking around for about an hour. I'm seriously impressed. You get:
- a webpage
- DNS
- email forwarding
- a statuslog
- url shortener
- a pastebin
- a weblog
- an optional Mastodon account
- optional IRC/Discord
- and probably some more stuff I missed
And all of this stuff is much more configurable than it would typically be on other services. It is ripe for creative integrations. Oh and the whole thing can be interacted with through an API. Pretty cool for $20. Definitely not the same as "just getting your own domain."
It's not $20. It's $20 per year. I know that might be semantic for some people, but for much of these services, I wouldn't want it going away after 1 year if I'm unable to pay that cost again. And for that reason, I think it's worth noting.
These are ongoing services so a once off payment doesn't make sense for the business. The alternatives are self-hosting and free services, self hosting is great. If you are using free services though, they could disappear too, and you have to question the business model of anyone givingyou something for nothing.
At least if you are paying for it you are entering into a contract of service from the provider which gives you a lot of legal recourse and leverage and also supports the business so that they do keep providing you the service.
Domain registration has to be renewed, either per year or per <x> years if you buy a bunch of licenses up front. So what's the alternative to this then? A lot of domains can cost around $20 per year.
Worth noting many of the services on omg.lol support custom domains, e.g. https://zwe.st/omglol is on the URL shortener.
I extensively use the API for pastebin and URL shortener. It's very much a selling point for me -- love being able to control things on the command line with a few simple scripts.
Great package of tiny little web apps for a good dollar amount and a great author.
I love the service, I hate the name. It's got too much cute/whimsy for my taste, and it just makes me feel like the "hello fellow teenagers" guy. If they had the same everything but it was a "short and easy to spell/pronounce" domain service, I would 100% go for it.
It doesn't have to be entirely boring, but less... cute. Also I think that meme language has a high risk of drifting into the cringe zone, and then that will feel bad too. I would have the same problem with lit.lol or yeet.lol.
Am I alone in being willing to pay more for less whimsy? Give me the $30/year plan where I can pick bucket.web or tiny.star or something less of the moment.
oh same. I'm not sure I'd want this with anything other than my own domain name anyway, but definitely I wouldn't want "omg.lol". I hate that internet-ass humor.
That's actually a shockingly decent list of provided features for $20 a year. A more than fair price, and worth every dime as long as the servers are at least semi-reliable. I pay $12 a year for a domain, and another $5 per month for a VPS to host services on that domain, and even that's totally worth it to me, so $20 a year for all that they're offering (even if it is only on a subdomain)? Quite good indeed…
I've been a happy omg.lol subscriber for years, originally as a fun little joke but it's actually pretty useful and I use my profile as my "link in bio" for twitter and other social sites.
The founder, Adam, is a genuinely good dude. He just keeps adding more features and the service gets better and better.
It seems like a very nice service. It is great to hear that they are already around for quite some time.
And remember: if you’re not paying, you are the product. This seams both very reasonably priced and also priced high enough that if you take a little care at running things well it can be sustainable
Interesting, how many years would you estimate it's been around?
I see their Mastodon server is pretty new (since last July) and wayback doesn't have the homepage archived at all. Can't think of another way of checking.
Felt like making an account here just to say how much I've been enjoying this service.
I got a lifetime license awhile back and love how it just keeps giving. The shortened email is cool enough, but all the extra goodies are just really tasty icing on the cake. The simple status social media site is fun because it's so low friction, you don't worry about anything other than just creating a stream of little updates.
I'd love to see this entire concept become the new way we web. Like instead of giant conglomerate companies trying to do everything, we have a bunch of smaller little services that interact with each other (a la fediverse or something similar) and they occasionally add a new little set of tools. Feels very "old-web" like. Like a modern BBS.
Great work so far Adam! Keep it up :)
Much love from spencer.omg.lol
Oh man, I just tried to see if spencer.omg.lol was available and it looks like I'm already too late! This was my first time hearing about omg.lol, so congrats on beating me to the punch :D
...Also your lifetime account is basically worthless if more people don't sign up and pay. As there is no reason for the owner to lose money giving you services
> The idea of curating alternate services together and offering it as a product feels novel - does anyone else do this?
It's a different but related concept: Framasoft in France (https://framasoft.org/fr/). It's a non-profit that provides open-source alternatives to common cloud services. They also teach people how to install and configure these tools on their own server instead of relying on providers reselling their data.
I love PeerTube. Been running an instance of it of my own for a few weeks.
I currently have only two videos on it so far.
The subject of the videos on my instance are computing and music.
My instance does not allow others to sign up, but I would like to invite other creators to host videos about computing and music on my instance. I tried to reach out to one person that was currently using YouTube and who was making videos about computing to ask them if they wanted to host their videos on my PeerTube instance instead. Didn’t hear back from that person yet.
I would like for about ten to one hundred people who have a history of creating videos about computing or music to join my instance. The goal being that we would be enough people on the instance so that every week there is 1 to 2 new videos posted, while still being few enough people so that we are not flooded with many videos, and while also maintaining a strict focus on videos whose topics are restricted to one or more of the following three:
- computing (by this I mean programming, software engineering, computer science and such)
- music (includes music videos for music created by the person, as well as videos about music theory and videos about music production)
- electronics (meaning things like microcontrollers, soldering, PCB design, etc)
Essentially, to create a small and focused community.
Still not sure how to actually get other people to join though. For now my strategy will be to continue making videos of my own, and occasionally reaching out to others to ask them personally if they want to join the instance when I see someone that makes content of a similar nature as the kind that I host on my instance.
Two common types of services are bundling and unbundling. Either compiling multiple existing products or services into one, or offering one focused part of some overbundled service. It's the circle of life.
> I expected to hate this and walked away thinking it was a pretty ok idea. Good job!
Same here.. Though the services aren't bad, but the decent API made me feel like there's really some love put in.
The main thing that put me off is the two acronyms that I barely hear anymore.. haven't seen lol in a long time and omg has certainly decreased for me, I'd feel awkward using it.
Maybe if they had an additional re-branded version that was less 'hip', I'd be up for it :D
Slow loading times, 8 bit images, animated gifs, crazy colorful pages, pages optimized for a screen resolution, for a special browser,...
no thank you, i stay on the new web ;-)
Slow loading times, 8 GB images, animated gifs, crazy dull pages, pages optimized for mobile, for a special browser,... no thank you, i stay on the old web ;-)
SDF was an inspiration when I first found it. I think that it’s hard to capture what was so magical about it in a land of beige Windows boxes.
But what’s really amazing about it is that people still host things on there. And on top of that there are active message boards where people actually talk. It’s a weird little corner of the universe.
In a way I wish they had modernized a bit. But also I think if it turned into another PaaS system it would lose its charm. It is better off with the “weird” constraints that it has because it keeps it interesting.
Wow, and I was embarrassed to log in again after ~3Y. Awesome that it still works. I have been meaning to check in again, so this thread is a great reminder.
could someone explain what is SDF? i genuinely tried to search but where i live it means "homeless" I also know about "signed distance functions" and while they are so cool indeed i doubt you're talking about it ?
What is SDF? I found it (sdf.org) but still unsure of what is the practical use. It reminds me of hashbang.sh, of which I also have an account but never found a use for it.
There really isn't any practical non-hobbyist use, just a community built around being a user in an old-school multiuser remote computer and basic web services.
I set up an account and made a small donation for the 'verified' account thing.
I can use my sdf email address for email newsletters and such. I also log in (as another poster mentioned) and use the text mode browser for checking on Web sites from outside my local and national network.
Finally the system is a nice example of netbsd in action.
I have not joined in any of the forums &c yet. I might play with gopher and gemini for lutz
How do these email addresses do against spam filters? In my experience trying to send an email from any domain on a non-standard TLD (regardless of properly configured SPF and DKIM) gets heavily penalized and almost always ends up going straight to the recipient's junk mail folder.
They don't. Because new TLDs are default on many blocklists, not necesarily blocked but you're one or two mistakes away (shouty title, short body) that you'll be thrown on the blocklist eventually.
Yeah. I was thinking politicians, corporate customer service departments etc. Put a header on each email saying "This email was sent to [politician name]@fullofcr.app"
Google was a $23 billion at the time they launched Gmail.
Not sure why an email service from Yahoo or Microsoft - which were not the primary focus of either company's business - would be more likely to persist.
If this was positioned as "20usd/year mastodon account on our cool instance and - BTW - you get free webpage and email forwarding" would get much closer to the audience.
I sense the point of this funny domain is the community, and community is centered on mastodon instance which btw, is not cheap to run as soon as it grows beyond a few hundred people. (I'm including potential moderation costs)
I think you could be underestimating it. I’d guess there’s a simmering level of interest among a lot of people, especially those more conscious of moving away from big tech / corporate platforms. FWIW, this tipped me over the edge into setting up a Mastodon account — it was very painless. We’ll see whether I actually start using Mastodon, but it’s a start.
They have grown from 300K monthly active users to 2.5M in December. Nothing compared to social networks at large, crazy numbers compared to the omg.lol user base.
You really have no interest in the concept of a non-corporate / non–billionaire-controlled Twitter? Not trying to bait you, but genuinely curious on your stance.
The service has been around for years, the real die-hards are actually on the IRC (which recently got a tie-in with a Discord server for those who want to chat on there without having the technical knowhow to use IRC).
I personally got it for the webpage, to use as an online business card, and have been loving all of the other stuff that surrounds it like the new Weblog feature
Have been using this for 7/8 months and its honestly great. The community is really wholesome, the admin is very helpful and the product is far more than just a silly webpage. Glad to see it getting attention on HN!
How do you maintain a site like that today? Won't it need an army of moderators?
Had a mate starting some sort of a pastebin / blog site and it wasn't long before people started posting questionable content and he had to be on top of it so that the hosting provider doesn't suspend his account. That took majority of his time and he basically couldn't get time for anything else and site wasn't bringing enough money from ads to hire staff. On top of that common theme was someone posting adult content and then reporting to Google so that they would block ads.
I guess having paid accounts keep people who are up to no good slightly at bay.
I'd have some concerns about the idea of a paid Mastodon or IRC account, in that it kind of produces a perverse incentive for moderation; if you have a misbehaving user who's paying you, well, what do you do?
Though, doing the SomethingAwful approach ($10 one-off membership fee, extremely strict moderation, if you get banned that's another $10) would be an interesting experiment!
He’s just a baby but still needs a unique email for me to create him accounts (eg frequent flyer, global entry) and I had previously been using a +variant on my gmail.
I saw the same need, but I've actually purchased domains for all of my children, so that when they get older, I can transfer ownership to them.
10-18 years is a long time window, so I felt that purchasing a domain was more appropriate than setting up an address at a service which may or may not still be available in decades.
Thank goodness for services like Purelymail[1] and Forward Email[2] that offer free or cheap forwarding from various domains!
It's in fact a really nice service. I think addressing the portability issue with a bring-your own DNS might appease some people (and still bill $20, or even more). BUT, if I had a Product Owner hat on, this is not something I would prioritize as a one-man show.
I'm sorry to ask this, I am on a 5 minute break at work where was this that you got what sounds like an amazing deal? I would love to tinker around a bit.
Honestly, for a good personal homepage, a full suite of managed open source / self-hosted apps, and a decentralized social network I’d pay $20 per MONTH.
That’s pretty cool, glad to see good old internet services being sold in a neat package without hiding them down behind proprietary APIs and things like that.
The negativity here is bizarre. This looks just about exactly like the first steps we need to create good spaces for social networking and publishing online. The guy is already taking feedback about subdomains and looking at selling domains, which obviously would give people a little more control and assurance they can own their stuff.
The readership of this site is for some reason primed to immediately surface negative feedback for almost anything creative that gets posted. It happens for basically every “Show HN.”
The longer something has existed, the longer it is likely to continue existing. Going with Gmail or a custom domain is a really safe bet. There is no way I’d use an email service that’s less than 10 years old now.
My gmail account from when I was a kid is still active and working while most of the vanity/foss/privacy focused ones I signed up for have since died.
I agree. I trust this one more than if Google would launch a free, customizable "start page" service like it. They're killing their free services like no tomorrow.
Idk why but why are people getting mad at stuff that literally affects every other type of services online (like the chance of it shutting down)?
20$/year also doesnt sound all that expensive, thats 1.6$ per month! I rarely ever pay for things online, but I know damn well that anyone who pays for this service and then not use it would probably forget that they are paying because its so cheap!
Sigh Hacker News moment I guess. Criticising harshly for something thats suppose to be fun.
The difference here is you are sharing email addresses, domains, feeds, networks, etc. none of which you will ever own if the service shuts down.
Other services can shut down but this type of entrenchment isn't there when my cloud notes shuts down, or when my hosted collaborative kanban shuts down. They can give me my data and I can go elsewhere. I don't have to get the world to update contacts and bookmarks and other stuff like that.
I created an account and I consider shutting my own low traffic, personal homepage and blog. I think I belong to a sort of target demographic there. I also chose this to finally get a "start page" on the web with links to my social network profiles to find me. There are many others like it but they usually don't offer the same value and bonus feature sets at all.
That it's $20/year is very little but also significantly raising the likelihood it'll stay around for years. The author is also intelligently creating relatively low maintenance but high value services so this actually looks workable in the long term.
I didn't, omg lol is really not my style. Besides that, I already have a fun domain name that I use as an email alias. I pay $10 a yearly and it gets a laugh every time I give it to someone.
Other than hosting a basic web page, the other features are not useful to me.
Where do you pick up political undertones? I'm genuinely curious. I read the whole landing page and it is all lighthearted and friendly, and I pick up on nothing that makes me think otherwise.
I hadn't heard of Transhumansim before so I looked it up. Wikipedia says:
> Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.
Is that the word you meant to use? It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of your list/comment.
There are a lot of negative folks in the comments here but I think this is kind of neat. I helped a buddy set up a little art boutique site using a .lol domain and the overall feedback was that people liked the whimsy. Combine that with the fact that that TLD was heavily discounted on porkbun at the time and it all made reasonable business sense!
It's not just a subdomain. It's the landing page, an email address with forwarding, creation of a Mastodon account on their instance... there's a lot there.
$20/year is actually a bargain as it would likely cost you more than that each month to run all of that yourself
Many DNS registrars offer very similar sets of value-add services for free for real TLDs people buy through them. Web "parking pages" and vanity email forwarding are table stakes.
What wouldn't be table stakes, would be if each of these was its own Mastodon instance, or something else like that that actually had an OpEx cost.
I can see a lot of potential here as an alternative for people like me who don't have or want social media accounts. Sometimes I do want to share a profile with people without linking to my business website. But managing a separate domain / server / registration / email / etc. for that purpose hasn't seemed worth it. $20 a year is pretty reasonable.
I think the one thing that would stop me from taking up on a service like this would be the "omg.lol" - it's just a little too off-brand for a guy who wears all black and hates texting. But I can see how a lot of people might be into it.
The hostname is pretty fun sounding, seems to offer a basic profile page and email forwarding. Assuming the setup is noob friendly I wouldn’t call it a very unfair price. Yes you can do it for cheaper in gandi but seems more daunting a task.
I bought <my-name>.is.gay, because lol (nothing derogatory, I just used it as a link shortener). About 6 months later it stopped working because apparently reselling subdomains isn't allowed for .gay :(
The main reason is you have more protection and guaranteed continual ownership of the thing (depending on the TLD you choose, of course). Whereas if this service shut down in 12 months time ... well it wouldn't be buckling any trends by doing so.
And if they shut down and let the omg.lol lapse or sell it, someone could then redirect all the subdomains to who knows what.
Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
Domains are easier to resell. I don't think there will be a secondary market for omg.lol and if you sell you business based on an omg.lol it will be a red flag vs. a top level domain.
On the other hand if you intent is a personal CV / bio type page, with email (you need fastmail too) and so on, the $20 is a great deal.
But I would rather just use a xyz.netlify.com for such a project, then couple that with a free email service.
The service itself is interesting. The branding…is not to my taste.
I think that some people may be able to get behind the service by virtue of its usefulness alone, and either are unbothered by the branding or are even attracted to it.
And then there are some people who are totally put off by the branding for various reasons, be it because they perceive certain political/ideological undertones behind it or just think that it’s immature and are even aghast that other HN users (who are predominantly middle-aged men, presumably) find it appealing.
To criticize the branding, puts one’s self in a position where one can either make a statement that can either be perceived as “politically incorrect” or insensitive, or reconciliatory (“I understand why people like it, but it’s not for me, I should’ve kept my opinions to myself and let people have their fun.”)
It defo screams astro-turfing. This post is filled with sock puppets who think this weird service is worth $20 and are completely ignoring all the downsides.
It’s probably somewhere in the middle. When YOLO became popular a decade ago, most millennials were already in their mid-twenties, and the way I see it, new internet slang always “belongs” to the youth, and that was Gen Z at that time.
Anyone remember hey.com from a couple of years ago? Offered a chance to get a email at a 3-letter domain dot com....yeah and how many people are still using their hey.com email today?
This is also similar to about.me links people were posting from a couple of years ago.
What kind of strange conspiracy rabbit holes have you dug yourself into? Take a step back and get out asap. It's just a fun subdomain to have... do you _really_ expect this is some secret initiative to start new social platform to rival "twitter/parler/etc" full of only "neoliberals"? oof.
Where in the description did you infer this was in any way attempting to become "the ultimate fix for online discourse"?
it is obviously on the front page because people are running away from Twitter, now that the dominant, extreme left has lost control of the narrative there.
Seems cool except I refuse to use the "omg" acronym, you're all free to, but for me I don't find it very tasteful. Even "lol" is pretty dated, it's the complete polar opposite of a domain I'd put next to my name. Will you still like this domain in 20 years? It's like getting a batman tattoo.
Cool isn't an acryonym but I get your point, I'll probably not be using it in 20 years either. It's still not something I'd put next to my name. It just comes down to being "not my style", there's a target market for this and it's not me.
You get a surprising amount of functionality for $20. I just got an account and I've been poking around for about an hour. I'm seriously impressed. You get:
- a webpage
- DNS
- email forwarding
- a statuslog
- url shortener
- a pastebin
- a weblog
- an optional Mastodon account
- optional IRC/Discord
- and probably some more stuff I missed
And all of this stuff is much more configurable than it would typically be on other services. It is ripe for creative integrations. Oh and the whole thing can be interacted with through an API. Pretty cool for $20. Definitely not the same as "just getting your own domain."
https://bw.omg.lol/
It's not $20. It's $20 per year. I know that might be semantic for some people, but for much of these services, I wouldn't want it going away after 1 year if I'm unable to pay that cost again. And for that reason, I think it's worth noting.
These are ongoing services so a once off payment doesn't make sense for the business. The alternatives are self-hosting and free services, self hosting is great. If you are using free services though, they could disappear too, and you have to question the business model of anyone givingyou something for nothing.
At least if you are paying for it you are entering into a contract of service from the provider which gives you a lot of legal recourse and leverage and also supports the business so that they do keep providing you the service.
Domain registration has to be renewed, either per year or per <x> years if you buy a bunch of licenses up front. So what's the alternative to this then? A lot of domains can cost around $20 per year.
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My domain is 26 per year. This is cheap af and I'm reconsidering ditching my domain in favour of this.
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Worth noting many of the services on omg.lol support custom domains, e.g. https://zwe.st/omglol is on the URL shortener.
I extensively use the API for pastebin and URL shortener. It's very much a selling point for me -- love being able to control things on the command line with a few simple scripts.
Great package of tiny little web apps for a good dollar amount and a great author.
https://zac.omg.lol/
I love the service, I hate the name. It's got too much cute/whimsy for my taste, and it just makes me feel like the "hello fellow teenagers" guy. If they had the same everything but it was a "short and easy to spell/pronounce" domain service, I would 100% go for it.
It doesn't have to be entirely boring, but less... cute. Also I think that meme language has a high risk of drifting into the cringe zone, and then that will feel bad too. I would have the same problem with lit.lol or yeet.lol.
Am I alone in being willing to pay more for less whimsy? Give me the $30/year plan where I can pick bucket.web or tiny.star or something less of the moment.
I'm sorry for the quality of this comment, but boo hoo.
oh same. I'm not sure I'd want this with anything other than my own domain name anyway, but definitely I wouldn't want "omg.lol". I hate that internet-ass humor.
You can use your own domain, you're not tied to omg.lol
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That's actually a shockingly decent list of provided features for $20 a year. A more than fair price, and worth every dime as long as the servers are at least semi-reliable. I pay $12 a year for a domain, and another $5 per month for a VPS to host services on that domain, and even that's totally worth it to me, so $20 a year for all that they're offering (even if it is only on a subdomain)? Quite good indeed…
And Fastmail. Fastmail is to programmers what Superhuman is for salespeople.
What is so great about fastmail? I keep hearing people talk about it but haven’t “gotten it” yet.
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I've been a happy omg.lol subscriber for years, originally as a fun little joke but it's actually pretty useful and I use my profile as my "link in bio" for twitter and other social sites.
The founder, Adam, is a genuinely good dude. He just keeps adding more features and the service gets better and better.
It seems like a very nice service. It is great to hear that they are already around for quite some time.
And remember: if you’re not paying, you are the product. This seams both very reasonably priced and also priced high enough that if you take a little care at running things well it can be sustainable
> if you’re not paying, you are the product
I guess you could also be both though, no?
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> I've been a happy omg.lol subscriber for years
Interesting, how many years would you estimate it's been around?
I see their Mastodon server is pretty new (since last July) and wayback doesn't have the homepage archived at all. Can't think of another way of checking.
The domain was registered in 2019 and work started later - as they say on their "About" page. So "subscriber for years" where years <= 2.
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This is around for years and the chewbacca.omg.lol and the lukeskywalker.omg.lol are still available to snatch?! Omg!
There are also plenty of two letter subdomains left, so I guess it just never got that popular.
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Felt like making an account here just to say how much I've been enjoying this service.
I got a lifetime license awhile back and love how it just keeps giving. The shortened email is cool enough, but all the extra goodies are just really tasty icing on the cake. The simple status social media site is fun because it's so low friction, you don't worry about anything other than just creating a stream of little updates.
I'd love to see this entire concept become the new way we web. Like instead of giant conglomerate companies trying to do everything, we have a bunch of smaller little services that interact with each other (a la fediverse or something similar) and they occasionally add a new little set of tools. Feels very "old-web" like. Like a modern BBS.
Great work so far Adam! Keep it up :) Much love from spencer.omg.lol
Oh man, I just tried to see if spencer.omg.lol was available and it looks like I'm already too late! This was my first time hearing about omg.lol, so congrats on beating me to the punch :D
haha yoink! Sorry fellow Spencer, looks like I'm king now.
...Also your lifetime account is basically worthless if more people don't sign up and pay. As there is no reason for the owner to lose money giving you services
Is that not the same situation as with every other service out there?
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I expected to hate this and walked away thinking it was a pretty ok idea. Good job!
The idea of curating alternate services together and offering it as a product feels novel - does anyone else do this?
I'd love to see hosting offered for curated open source services that are interoperable. Sort of like all those WordPress hosts of yore (and today!).
Edit: omg.lol, is it AOL?? :D
Edit 2: The price is even the same! $19.95 vs $20
> The idea of curating alternate services together and offering it as a product feels novel - does anyone else do this?
It's a different but related concept: Framasoft in France (https://framasoft.org/fr/). It's a non-profit that provides open-source alternatives to common cloud services. They also teach people how to install and configure these tools on their own server instead of relying on providers reselling their data.
> provides open-source alternatives to common cloud services
This includes, among other things, PeerTube.
PeerTube is a federated alternative to YouTube.
https://joinpeertube.org/
I love PeerTube. Been running an instance of it of my own for a few weeks.
I currently have only two videos on it so far.
The subject of the videos on my instance are computing and music.
My instance does not allow others to sign up, but I would like to invite other creators to host videos about computing and music on my instance. I tried to reach out to one person that was currently using YouTube and who was making videos about computing to ask them if they wanted to host their videos on my PeerTube instance instead. Didn’t hear back from that person yet.
I would like for about ten to one hundred people who have a history of creating videos about computing or music to join my instance. The goal being that we would be enough people on the instance so that every week there is 1 to 2 new videos posted, while still being few enough people so that we are not flooded with many videos, and while also maintaining a strict focus on videos whose topics are restricted to one or more of the following three:
- computing (by this I mean programming, software engineering, computer science and such)
- music (includes music videos for music created by the person, as well as videos about music theory and videos about music production)
- electronics (meaning things like microcontrollers, soldering, PCB design, etc)
Essentially, to create a small and focused community.
Still not sure how to actually get other people to join though. For now my strategy will be to continue making videos of my own, and occasionally reaching out to others to ask them personally if they want to join the instance when I see someone that makes content of a similar nature as the kind that I host on my instance.
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They also used to host quite a lot of stuff before they decided it went both beyond their means and contrary to their goals.
Two common types of services are bundling and unbundling. Either compiling multiple existing products or services into one, or offering one focused part of some overbundled service. It's the circle of life.
> I expected to hate this and walked away thinking it was a pretty ok idea. Good job!
Same here.. Though the services aren't bad, but the decent API made me feel like there's really some love put in.
The main thing that put me off is the two acronyms that I barely hear anymore.. haven't seen lol in a long time and omg has certainly decreased for me, I'd feel awkward using it. Maybe if they had an additional re-branded version that was less 'hip', I'd be up for it :D
You can use your custom domain :)
Yunohost is a framework to do that . It curate open source packages and allow the user to pick and choose
> The idea of curating alternate services together and offering it as a product feels novel - does anyone else do this?
There is also https://librem.one services.
> The idea of curating alternate services together and offering it as a product feels novel - does anyone else do this?
I think Mozilla is trying to do this, although not super successfully.
> Edit 2: The price is even the same! $19.95 vs $20
$19.95 per month vs $20 per year.
You are correct
> does anyone else do this?
maybe Zoho for business apps?
Setapp for Mac and ios apps seems to be doing quite well, providing a plethora of great indie software for a reasonable price.
aol.omg.lol is still available.
Ha. I used to own paste.lol. So funny to see it used for something fun after I stopped paying for it.
Thats awesome- made me chuckle. Man I needed a little "old web" today.
Slow loading times, 8 bit images, animated gifs, crazy colorful pages, pages optimized for a screen resolution, for a special browser,... no thank you, i stay on the new web ;-)
Slow loading times, 8 GB images, animated gifs, crazy dull pages, pages optimized for mobile, for a special browser,... no thank you, i stay on the old web ;-)
This looks like fun, reminds me of SDF but with an ability to provide more services due to the annual fee.
edit: now that I revisit it, SDF does appear to provide more services, though probably with less commitment to reliability than omg.lol
SDF was an inspiration when I first found it. I think that it’s hard to capture what was so magical about it in a land of beige Windows boxes.
But what’s really amazing about it is that people still host things on there. And on top of that there are active message boards where people actually talk. It’s a weird little corner of the universe.
In a way I wish they had modernized a bit. But also I think if it turned into another PaaS system it would lose its charm. It is better off with the “weird” constraints that it has because it keeps it interesting.
Thank you for reminding me that SDF still exists. I just logged into my account there for the first time since 2005, and it still works.
Wow, and I was embarrassed to log in again after ~3Y. Awesome that it still works. I have been meaning to check in again, so this thread is a great reminder.
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could someone explain what is SDF? i genuinely tried to search but where i live it means "homeless" I also know about "signed distance functions" and while they are so cool indeed i doubt you're talking about it ?
Edit: oh ok i think i found it: SDF.ORG ?
Yes, it's http://sdf.org
What is SDF? I found it (sdf.org) but still unsure of what is the practical use. It reminds me of hashbang.sh, of which I also have an account but never found a use for it.
There really isn't any practical non-hobbyist use, just a community built around being a user in an old-school multiuser remote computer and basic web services.
SDF also has paid memberships. I've had one for a while.
Ahh sdf. I think I still log in occasionally even. Never did anything useful.
I set up an account and made a small donation for the 'verified' account thing.
I can use my sdf email address for email newsletters and such. I also log in (as another poster mentioned) and use the text mode browser for checking on Web sites from outside my local and national network.
Finally the system is a nice example of netbsd in action.
I have not joined in any of the forums &c yet. I might play with gopher and gemini for lutz
How do these email addresses do against spam filters? In my experience trying to send an email from any domain on a non-standard TLD (regardless of properly configured SPF and DKIM) gets heavily penalized and almost always ends up going straight to the recipient's junk mail folder.
They don't. Because new TLDs are default on many blocklists, not necesarily blocked but you're one or two mistakes away (shouty title, short body) that you'll be thrown on the blocklist eventually.
If anyone wants a miserable domain to use as the anti omg.lol, I have fullofcr.app.
I wouldnt use it myself, but definitely have ideas of people I could offer a new email adress to.
Yeah. I was thinking politicians, corporate customer service departments etc. Put a header on each email saying "This email was sent to [politician name]@fullofcr.app"
I don't love that 100% but the general theme has potential. I can imagine choosing to go with something that's not quite as twee as omg.lol, etc
When you get an email address from someone, you need assurance that they'll be around in 5+ years. Hotmail and Gmail aren't going anywhere.
When Gmail launched, people were writing this exact same comment about how Yahoo and Hotmail aren't going anywhere.
Anecdata: My Yahoo and Hotmail address are still up and running.
Google was a $23 billion at the time they launched Gmail.
Not sure why an email service from Yahoo or Microsoft - which were not the primary focus of either company's business - would be more likely to persist.
My Hotmail account from the 90s is still receiving emails
If this was positioned as "20usd/year mastodon account on our cool instance and - BTW - you get free webpage and email forwarding" would get much closer to the audience.
I sense the point of this funny domain is the community, and community is centered on mastodon instance which btw, is not cheap to run as soon as it grows beyond a few hundred people. (I'm including potential moderation costs)
I think you are overestimating how many people care about Mastodon
I think you could be underestimating it. I’d guess there’s a simmering level of interest among a lot of people, especially those more conscious of moving away from big tech / corporate platforms. FWIW, this tipped me over the edge into setting up a Mastodon account — it was very painless. We’ll see whether I actually start using Mastodon, but it’s a start.
I think you're probably underestimating how many people are going to care about Mastodon.
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They have grown from 300K monthly active users to 2.5M in December. Nothing compared to social networks at large, crazy numbers compared to the omg.lol user base.
If it was advertised as mastodon I would close the webpage. I have 0 interest in it and I don’t know anyone in my direct tech circle who is on it.
You really have no interest in the concept of a non-corporate / non–billionaire-controlled Twitter? Not trying to bait you, but genuinely curious on your stance.
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I don't use mastodon but would love all the rest of it.
All of it is already available on the web, often on a variety of hosts, though
The service has been around for years, the real die-hards are actually on the IRC (which recently got a tie-in with a Discord server for those who want to chat on there without having the technical knowhow to use IRC).
I personally got it for the webpage, to use as an online business card, and have been loving all of the other stuff that surrounds it like the new Weblog feature
I would have no interest if it was "mastodon-centered"
Have been using this for 7/8 months and its honestly great. The community is really wholesome, the admin is very helpful and the product is far more than just a silly webpage. Glad to see it getting attention on HN!
Signed up last night. Where / how do I find this community..?
Either on the social.lol mastodon or the IRC https://home.omg.lol/info/irc
A refreshing project. I hope this does well. We need more of these to succeed.
How do you maintain a site like that today? Won't it need an army of moderators?
Had a mate starting some sort of a pastebin / blog site and it wasn't long before people started posting questionable content and he had to be on top of it so that the hosting provider doesn't suspend his account. That took majority of his time and he basically couldn't get time for anything else and site wasn't bringing enough money from ads to hire staff. On top of that common theme was someone posting adult content and then reporting to Google so that they would block ads.
I guess having paid accounts keep people who are up to no good slightly at bay.
Moderation must be ripe for AI.
Actually pretty neat, but it would be substantially nicer with a lifetime account option, even if it was expensive.
Having to renew is inconvenient, and makes it possible to lose your name.
Looks like lifetime memberships (mentioned in sibling comments) are a special offering.
https://home.omg.lol/info/lifetime-addresses
I love it. Well done, hope you make a mint
I'd have some concerns about the idea of a paid Mastodon or IRC account, in that it kind of produces a perverse incentive for moderation; if you have a misbehaving user who's paying you, well, what do you do?
Though, doing the SomethingAwful approach ($10 one-off membership fee, extremely strict moderation, if you get banned that's another $10) would be an interesting experiment!
Bought one for my kiddo.
He’s just a baby but still needs a unique email for me to create him accounts (eg frequent flyer, global entry) and I had previously been using a +variant on my gmail.
Having a vanity email alias seems more fun.
A lot of services don't let you change your email address. Could cause some pain if this service doesn't exist in 20 years.
And even if they did, some need your old email address to approve a change of email address, essentially locking you out. DocuSign is one.
Interesting. Can you name an example of a service that doesn't permit an email change?
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I saw the same need, but I've actually purchased domains for all of my children, so that when they get older, I can transfer ownership to them.
10-18 years is a long time window, so I felt that purchasing a domain was more appropriate than setting up an address at a service which may or may not still be available in decades.
Thank goodness for services like Purelymail[1] and Forward Email[2] that offer free or cheap forwarding from various domains!
[1]: https://purelymail.com/
[2]: https://forwardemail.net/
their status page is https://broke.lol/ . This is great.
How reliable is the `lol` TLD? What if the DNS records go down, or any of the application services provided by omg.lol go down?
Considering that .lol is a gTLD, it's going to be owned by one of the big registries. It's very unlikely that something will happen to it
Unlike what extention? Dot kiwi?
Owned by Uniregistry who is in turn owned by GoDaddy. Like all gTLD registrars, they have to meet all of the ICANN accreditation requirements.
Author: Edge displays:
https://home.omg.lol/ is displaying unsafe content from https://social.lol/@adam/109186339855398190/embed
Edge is flagging the social.lol mastodon instance, the owner already submitted a reclassification to Microsoft
It's in fact a really nice service. I think addressing the portability issue with a bring-your own DNS might appease some people (and still bill $20, or even more). BUT, if I had a Product Owner hat on, this is not something I would prioritize as a one-man show.
Surprised nobody brought up an alternative to set this up yourself.
I guess it may not exist or it's called managed hosting and the feature set and complexity is too overwhelming?
I'm sorry to ask this, I am on a 5 minute break at work where was this that you got what sounds like an amazing deal? I would love to tinker around a bit.
Honestly, for a good personal homepage, a full suite of managed open source / self-hosted apps, and a decentralized social network I’d pay $20 per MONTH.
That’s pretty cool, glad to see good old internet services being sold in a neat package without hiding them down behind proprietary APIs and things like that.
Does omg.lol support any indieweb features like webmentions?
Would be a great fit since every user already gets a (sub)domain and homepage!
IME custom TLD emails get marked as spam a lot, especially when received by anyone with a data protection policy.
These comments seem very GPT to me
The fact that "they/them" is the default user frustrates and saddens me.
The "code of conduct" is also quite offputting.
LOL. I like it. I paid for it. Well worth $20 / year for the fun of it.
gives me the tripod/myspace feels (in a good way) :)
Damn, like.omg.lol was already taken.
You can get whatever.omg.lol if you want ....
rly.omg.lol is still available though (as of now :p)
Just subscribed. Looks useful!
Wait, this is really cool.
Someone tried to make Geocities meets Wordpress meets early Facebook
The negativity here is bizarre. This looks just about exactly like the first steps we need to create good spaces for social networking and publishing online. The guy is already taking feedback about subdomains and looking at selling domains, which obviously would give people a little more control and assurance they can own their stuff.
The readership of this site is for some reason primed to immediately surface negative feedback for almost anything creative that gets posted. It happens for basically every “Show HN.”
Which is why we have special rules for "Show HN" threads (this thread isn't one of those) that forbid that behavior.
The real price isn't $20, it's the cost of everything you lose when the service shuts down
You mean, like every other service anybody stands up ever? The ones that charge money are the ones that stand any chance of surviving.
https://archive.is/7LxAh
The longer something has existed, the longer it is likely to continue existing. Going with Gmail or a custom domain is a really safe bet. There is no way I’d use an email service that’s less than 10 years old now.
My gmail account from when I was a kid is still active and working while most of the vanity/foss/privacy focused ones I signed up for have since died.
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There is a sad irony behind that link…If I had to pay for bookmark management, it’d be Pinboard. What are the advantages?
I agree. I trust this one more than if Google would launch a free, customizable "start page" service like it. They're killing their free services like no tomorrow.
I'm generally in favor of owning your data and domains so yes. There is so much good open source stuff now.
It's unlikely that Gmail will shut down though so there are a lot of reliable exceptions
Sir, this is not a Google-branded service, nothing to worry about.
The average Google-branded service lasts way longer than the average ShowHN, memes be damned.
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<rant>
Idk why but why are people getting mad at stuff that literally affects every other type of services online (like the chance of it shutting down)?
20$/year also doesnt sound all that expensive, thats 1.6$ per month! I rarely ever pay for things online, but I know damn well that anyone who pays for this service and then not use it would probably forget that they are paying because its so cheap!
Sigh Hacker News moment I guess. Criticising harshly for something thats suppose to be fun.
The difference here is you are sharing email addresses, domains, feeds, networks, etc. none of which you will ever own if the service shuts down.
Other services can shut down but this type of entrenchment isn't there when my cloud notes shuts down, or when my hosted collaborative kanban shuts down. They can give me my data and I can go elsewhere. I don't have to get the world to update contacts and bookmarks and other stuff like that.
You can bring your own domain.
I would kill to know how many people converted despite these comments.
I suspect much like reddit the ratio of link lurkers to commenters on HN is about 19:1 like reddit.
I think that’s way too high (for commenter count).
Lurkers are 90%, 10% have accounts, and 10% of those with accounts comment. This was the breakdown of some major subreddits maybe 6 years ago.
I did. It's fun and offers cute little things that I wouldn't pay for individually (a hassle) but use often enough to appreciate.
I created an account and I consider shutting my own low traffic, personal homepage and blog. I think I belong to a sort of target demographic there. I also chose this to finally get a "start page" on the web with links to my social network profiles to find me. There are many others like it but they usually don't offer the same value and bonus feature sets at all.
That it's $20/year is very little but also significantly raising the likelihood it'll stay around for years. The author is also intelligently creating relatively low maintenance but high value services so this actually looks workable in the long term.
As per the founder's own post in Mastodon, 600+ sign-ups on account of the link in HN. (https://social.lol/@adam/109642813277235626)
Add me to the list. I just think it's neat.
I didn't, omg lol is really not my style. Besides that, I already have a fun domain name that I use as an email alias. I pay $10 a yearly and it gets a laugh every time I give it to someone.
Other than hosting a basic web page, the other features are not useful to me.
I did. I am completely not a omg lol guy, but I can become one!
I did https://maxbain.es
I did!
over 600: https://social.lol/@adam/109642813277235626
i 100% did. it's super hard to find a good domain with my name, so i got it when i found it was available.
I did!
This is a great idea and I absolutely love it.
The only thing I don't like is the branding. It seems to have some political undertones to it.
I think combining this with a product like crypt pad is a great start towards creating a more independent Google workspace competitor.
(and I'm flagged lol, way to prove my point)
Where do you pick up political undertones? I'm genuinely curious. I read the whole landing page and it is all lighthearted and friendly, and I pick up on nothing that makes me think otherwise.
The example profile includes pronouns.
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This says more about you than the branding.
It's hard to notice anything these days without getting in trouble.
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I hadn't heard of Transhumansim before so I looked it up. Wikipedia says:
> Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.
Is that the word you meant to use? It doesn't seem to fit with the rest of your list/comment.
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It took me 10s to load the homepage. How long would it take to forward an email?
Don't mind the wasm plan9coin miner, you're web3 aren't you?
loaded up instantly for me
$20 for a subdomain? absolutely no. some have mentioned the mastodon instance of omg.lol but who cares about that? it's a desert with only 500 people.
I own a shorter domain that this one. Only if I knew how to make a multi-tenant sub-domain registering application.
Did you know that Mastodon has federation?
okay so whats the point of joining omg.lol's mastodon instance if i can already access contents from another server? whats the special?
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There are a lot of negative folks in the comments here but I think this is kind of neat. I helped a buddy set up a little art boutique site using a .lol domain and the overall feedback was that people liked the whimsy. Combine that with the fact that that TLD was heavily discounted on porkbun at the time and it all made reasonable business sense!
I hope this works out for you and your users.
$20 a year for a subdomain I can't control (dns records), sounds like a great deal.
the linked page says you can control DNS records
can confirm: you can
why would you buy a subdomain for $20/y instead of a regular domain?
It's not just a subdomain. It's the landing page, an email address with forwarding, creation of a Mastodon account on their instance... there's a lot there.
$20/year is actually a bargain as it would likely cost you more than that each month to run all of that yourself
That's great until they get bored of running the service and you've now lost all of the aforementioned which are dependent on their domain.
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Many DNS registrars offer very similar sets of value-add services for free for real TLDs people buy through them. Web "parking pages" and vanity email forwarding are table stakes.
What wouldn't be table stakes, would be if each of these was its own Mastodon instance, or something else like that that actually had an OpEx cost.
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A DNS server, landing page and email can be had for free. For the rest there are free alternatives like twitter, pastebin, etc.
I get it, but $20 still seems rather high for that. Anyway, it's a cool website.
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I can see a lot of potential here as an alternative for people like me who don't have or want social media accounts. Sometimes I do want to share a profile with people without linking to my business website. But managing a separate domain / server / registration / email / etc. for that purpose hasn't seemed worth it. $20 a year is pretty reasonable.
I think the one thing that would stop me from taking up on a service like this would be the "omg.lol" - it's just a little too off-brand for a guy who wears all black and hates texting. But I can see how a lot of people might be into it.
Honestly the dichotomy of that personality type with an "@omg.lol" email is pretty great to me, personally.
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> it's just a little too off-brand for a guy who wears all black and hates texting.
I'm in the boat with style but I threw 20$ at it because I know I'll get a few interesting looks. Might even add it to my "recruiter" resume.
Bummer that .nil and .null are not available.
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The hostname is pretty fun sounding, seems to offer a basic profile page and email forwarding. Assuming the setup is noob friendly I wouldn’t call it a very unfair price. Yes you can do it for cheaper in gandi but seems more daunting a task.
The eTLD stuff they mention are interesting, still trying to understand what it actually means though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List
I bought <my-name>.is.gay, because lol (nothing derogatory, I just used it as a link shortener). About 6 months later it stopped working because apparently reselling subdomains isn't allowed for .gay :(
How much were they selling subdomains for, out of curiosity? (Was it like a single person, or a company?)
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Why would pay you $20/y for a regular domain that doesn't do anything until you spend more money (and time and money) to make it do something?
The main reason is you have more protection and guaranteed continual ownership of the thing (depending on the TLD you choose, of course). Whereas if this service shut down in 12 months time ... well it wouldn't be buckling any trends by doing so.
And if they shut down and let the omg.lol lapse or sell it, someone could then redirect all the subdomains to who knows what.
Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
Domains are easier to resell. I don't think there will be a secondary market for omg.lol and if you sell you business based on an omg.lol it will be a red flag vs. a top level domain.
On the other hand if you intent is a personal CV / bio type page, with email (you need fastmail too) and so on, the $20 is a great deal.
But I would rather just use a xyz.netlify.com for such a project, then couple that with a free email service.
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Because of the ToS [0], in particular articles 3.1 and 3.2.
[0] https://home.omg.lol/info/legal
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because you can't get omg.lol, it is obv taken. Not saying it is great reason, but that is the reason since you asked.
Am I dreaming? There seems to be something weird about this post and its comments.
The service itself is interesting. The branding…is not to my taste.
I think that some people may be able to get behind the service by virtue of its usefulness alone, and either are unbothered by the branding or are even attracted to it.
And then there are some people who are totally put off by the branding for various reasons, be it because they perceive certain political/ideological undertones behind it or just think that it’s immature and are even aghast that other HN users (who are predominantly middle-aged men, presumably) find it appealing.
To criticize the branding, puts one’s self in a position where one can either make a statement that can either be perceived as “politically incorrect” or insensitive, or reconciliatory (“I understand why people like it, but it’s not for me, I should’ve kept my opinions to myself and let people have their fun.”)
It defo screams astro-turfing. This post is filled with sock puppets who think this weird service is worth $20 and are completely ignoring all the downsides.
It's 20$ per year, I would assume you make more in half an hour, at least an hour.
For me it could be worth it just to explore what's available, how it works.
If you live in poverty then it might be too steep. I'd recommend checking out eu.org for free domains.
Are you implying AI-generated astroturfing? We’re rapidly approaching the scenario depicted in XKCD 810 [1].
Edit: OK, on actually reading the comments I agree. Something weird. Hmm.
[1] https://xkcd.com/810/
"Buy it for $20" omg lol no
They definitely should have a free version, limited of course. A sneaky one would be free for the first year, pay $20 thereafter to secure it.
That sounds like a nightmare with how many spammers you'd get. For $20 fee, that solves the vast majority of the spam problem.
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^ this would have been the right move
why not register omg.motorcycles yourself for a discounted $14.99 per year?
because .motorcycles is boring and .lol is fun... what that a real question?
motorcycles.lol?
Don't tempt me!
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Gen Z is probably asking why there’s no .yolo domain suffix yet.
I thought YOLO was more of a millennial thing.
It’s probably somewhere in the middle. When YOLO became popular a decade ago, most millennials were already in their mid-twenties, and the way I see it, new internet slang always “belongs” to the youth, and that was Gen Z at that time.
Anyone remember hey.com from a couple of years ago? Offered a chance to get a email at a 3-letter domain dot com....yeah and how many people are still using their hey.com email today?
This is also similar to about.me links people were posting from a couple of years ago.
A difference I think is that this site has a kind of personality to it. The others seem quite generic. I think it is actually quite a differentiator
So, people have quit using hey.com ?
It’s not what the 37 Signals guys are saying…
hey.com is $99/yr, this is $20/yr
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lol wat?
The "neoliberal" thing again. I remember that article on HN about Iran's firewall using that word, and the confusion in the comments.
huh?
What kind of strange conspiracy rabbit holes have you dug yourself into? Take a step back and get out asap. It's just a fun subdomain to have... do you _really_ expect this is some secret initiative to start new social platform to rival "twitter/parler/etc" full of only "neoliberals"? oof. Where in the description did you infer this was in any way attempting to become "the ultimate fix for online discourse"?
it is obviously on the front page because people are running away from Twitter, now that the dominant, extreme left has lost control of the narrative there.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34270258
On another note, what about this caused all these haters to crawl out?
> Is this the new nadir of snake oil grifting?
The A16Z crypto fund announcement must be open in another tab
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Seems cool except I refuse to use the "omg" acronym, you're all free to, but for me I don't find it very tasteful. Even "lol" is pretty dated, it's the complete polar opposite of a domain I'd put next to my name. Will you still like this domain in 20 years? It's like getting a batman tattoo.
omg is ~40 years old, lol ~30; chances are they'll be about as cool in 20 as cool (~90) may be.
Cool isn't an acryonym but I get your point, I'll probably not be using it in 20 years either. It's still not something I'd put next to my name. It just comes down to being "not my style", there's a target market for this and it's not me.
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