Comment by sccxy
13 hours ago
That must be worst website ever made.
Zero information available on mobile.
I thought it is some kind of portfolio site that does not work on mobile.
13 hours ago
That must be worst website ever made.
Zero information available on mobile.
I thought it is some kind of portfolio site that does not work on mobile.
Not a mobile issue. I am on desktop and had no idea what this service was because nothing on the initial UI explained what we were looking at. I went and double-checked when people here were talking about pricing and VMs. From the home page, I figured it was some text-based game or experiment and closed the page.
It looks like some people who work there are watching this thread, so to them I say: You have got to explain what this is, not just say "the disk persists..." and expect people to dig deeper. Most aren't that curious.
It's odd to see how people are not accustomed to plain websites anymore. You click the 'About' link in the footer, and get a direct explanation of what it is, pricing and the entire documentation.
why do we need to click anything? Why wouldn't the relevant information be there in the initial view?
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You truly, honestly believe that to be the real problem? Come on. You don't need to do whatever this is.
>From the home page, I figured it was some text-based game or experiment and closed the page.
Same, my first thought was that it's some pentesting game where you're given a VM and your task is to somehow break it. The line "the disk persists. you have sudo" sounds like game rules.
The website has a huge `ssh exe.dev`, so I'd expect that running that works, but:
Why put an SSH command in a huge banner if I have to go around and register before I can use it anyway?
you don't need to register the key. just have some sort of key.
I thought it was one of those game sites where you had to "hack" it every step of the way to advance the next level.
It's kind of funny our experiences are so diffent. I almost immediately surmised it's some sort of on the fly generated vm you can access via a ssh jumpserver. Which it is! It's actually really neat. It's quite obvious that the authors want us to just ssh into it and try it out first.
> I almost immediately surmised it's some sort of on the fly generated vm you can access via a ssh jumpserver
How? It just says `ssh exe.dev`. Unless you are clairvoyant.
"ssh exe.dev" is exactly the Linux command you would use to connect there via ssh. And it's stylized like command prompt.
15 replies →
You are not the target audience if "how" was not apparent to you
5 replies →
Yep, with no privacy policy published.
Exactly.
I was confused too. I first thought I should open up my terminal and just enter `ssh dev.exe` and this would be some kind of ssh-based interface? Honestly my first thought is that it would be one of those cool dev hack / art projects like the old starwars traceroute to 216.81.59.173
It didn't read as a company with products at all to me from the front page. Just a cryptic " The disk persists. You have sudo." with links to "Login" and "About * Blog * Discord" --- no pricing link, which made me think it was a weird hobby / art.
ssh exe.dev works
Agree, I finally found information via
Homepage -> blog -> docs -> "all docs" button:
https://exe.dev/docs/list
Which has an about and pricing etc.
That is very counterintuitive to just find out what this is.
The exact text on mobile is
> ssh exe.dev
> The disk persists. You have sudo.
I've seen enough of these kinds of services in my lifetime that I also immediately knew what it was, for example sdf.org, which is one of the OG services, and various "tilde" services like tilde.town.
I thought the same, but it’s not quite like either of those things. It has their same benefits but way more flexibility with its VM model. It offers auth, and will forward most ports for developer access.
All this was totally lost on me from looking at the website. “I already have tilde and sdf, I don’t need this.”
If I hadn’t looked into the comments I would still think that.
I wouldn’t go that far but some link to pricing and documentation would be useful. I have absolutely no idea what the offering is here without those pieces of info.
Their pricing page says that it's currently a free trial.
https://exe.dev/docs/pricing
Yeah. I managed to backtrack my way to the pricing through the about page.
It's really annoying when you're interested in a product but can't find a price.
This thread seems to reflect how the HN audience has shifted — less commenters know what `ssh example.com` does and more commenters concerned about privacy policy.
We know what SSH does. What we don't know is what the purpose is of SSH'ing to some random URL, without a proper explanation of why we'd want to do that. For example, I've seen projects where you need to SSH to a site to find vulnerabilities (as a game). This looks very much like one of those: "the disk persists, you have sudo" sounds like a set of game rules (the disk persists, you have sudo, and now try to break out of the VM!). You can do lots of things with SSH (for example, I recently experimented with VPN over SSH). I think you're trying to say that people on HN are now less technical. I think it's quite the contrary: if you know many uses of SSH other than what's offered on exe.dev, it's not immediately clear what exactly is being offered.
And a privacy policy is a must for any professional work. I'm not going to pay fines if it violates, say, GDPR.
I love the idea and the implementation, we're just trying to help: a better, less confusing landing page can attract a wider audience.
That as my first thought too. Landing page may as well be an empty page
I can see
> ssh exe.dev
> The disk persists. You have sudo.
on mobile
It is showing non-stop loading blink but nothing happens.
And cannot open keyboard if that is needed. It is like big CTA but does not do anything.
Very strange landing page for maybe cool product.
It’s not a loading blink, it’s just some text telling you what the service is
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Hyperbole much? I'm on mobile and think it's great. I wish more websites were like this. Just straight to the point instead of all the regular marketing fluff you need to decipher.
pricing information and what it does/how it works is not marketing fluff
It is not ”to the point”.
Agreed. Target audience will understand instantly
I thought it was a web game.
i'm not sure what you mean; the demo runs with the ssh command in the centre, there's an 'about' link at the bottom, and that links to a docs index
it's fiine i think
Come on guys, it literally says 'ssh exe.dev'
Yeah, and it really is not I would want to do, just like diving into unknown water that sparkles weird.. It's an instinct, can get past it but to get more info about the service... nah.
That's okay, you're not in the target audience is all.
It would be funny if it was literally the best website I've seen in like a year...
... which it is.
Did you try clicking one link into "about" and reading one paragraph of text?