[HN Gopher] World's Highest Website
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       World's Highest Website
        
       Author : kretaceous
       Score  : 116 points
       Date   : 2022-07-05 09:48 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (worlds-highest-website.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (worlds-highest-website.com)
        
       | sodimel wrote:
       | There's Borjomi's "deepest site" that shares the spirit of this
       | site: https://thedeepestsite.com/
        
         | jacobevelyn wrote:
         | Or this one: https://neal.fun/deep-sea/
        
         | danuker wrote:
         | I find it nowhere near as accessible. The browser's scrollbar
         | is disabled, for example. Ctrl+Home/End doesn't work either.
         | 
         | It may share the idea, but not the spirit.
        
       | LocalPCGuy wrote:
       | I also thought it was going to be highest hosting location, which
       | reminded me of the StackBlitz "we're going to host your site in
       | space" talk they gave at ngConf. Wasn't sure if it got launched
       | or not, but does not appear to have been yet per the website.
       | 
       | https://deployto.space/
       | 
       | Manifest still shows it in queue:
       | https://www.interorbital.com/Launch%20Manifest.php
        
       | mrb wrote:
       | It took me less than 2 minutes of scrolling to reach the bottom.
       | This implies I'm scrolling at 568 kph or 353 mph ! This seems
       | impossible. Either this site is not really 18.94 km long, or
       | Chrome on Android implements scrolling acceleration to such
       | speeds which I don't believe it does.
        
       | idleproc wrote:
       | Not to be confused with: https://worlds-longest-website.com/
        
         | hanniabu wrote:
         | I'm not sure I understand the difference between longest and
         | highest here
        
         | bmacho wrote:
         | I don't get it. When I grab the scrollbar, and move slowly, the
         | scale moves according to it, but it writes that I moved
         | kilometers.
        
         | dalmo3 wrote:
         | About 15 times longest than the tallest one. Best five minutes
         | I've ever spent scrolling (on mobile).
        
         | martinsebastian wrote:
         | authors thank you ;-)
        
       | Vaskerville wrote:
       | In 2008 I made onemilescroll.com with Daniel Eatock. It was a fun
       | project where we allowed users to post things at whatever height.
       | It wasn't nearly as rigorous as WHW. Eventually it required
       | updates...
       | 
       | https://web.archive.org/web/20160303050135/http://www.onemil...
        
       | HidyBush wrote:
       | It would be interesting if this website's height corresponded to
       | the average daily length of a person's infinite-scrolling on
       | their phone
        
       | m_st wrote:
       | Did someone already print it to verify the claimed height?
        
       | cellover wrote:
       | This reminds me that I have a habit of recording notable
       | altitudes in my commit messages ^_^
       | 
       | For instance:
       | 
       | git show 47d8c02bdbec91f8e0ce4b4453010ea9b7b241ef
       | 
       | commit 47d8c02bdbec91f8e0ce4b4453010ea9b7b241ef
       | 
       | Author: txxxxxxx <txxxxxxx@users.noreply.github.com>
       | 
       | Date: Sat Nov 30 17:25:32 2019 +0100                   Drop name
       | field from user table              Fixes: #2102
       | Altitude: 2336m
        
       | oboes wrote:
       | I thought it was going to be the website whose hosting location
       | is at the highest altitude. I wonder what that one would be now.
        
         | HWR_14 wrote:
         | I believe the ISS intermittently hosts a website. I would
         | certainly imagine there is some space-based website with long
         | ping times.
        
           | TylerE wrote:
           | Ping time to ISS would not be bad at all. Worse case it would
           | be like talking to a server in Australia plus a bit
        
           | MarcelOlsz wrote:
           | How funny would it be if someone 0day'd the ISS because of
           | some XSS bug on a 1995-tier homepage?
        
             | HWR_14 wrote:
             | I'm sure the ISS's public facing comms (I believe they host
             | a public HAM repeater as well) are isolated. Also, there's
             | no reason that something added well after Twitter (the
             | first ISS direct communication was a tweet - before that
             | tweets were related through a ground station) would be done
             | in an obsolete way.
             | 
             | But lastly, unless they're hosting a forum, XSS is kinda
             | irrelevant and 1995 predates XSS issues (and for most of
             | the year JS)
        
               | MarcelOlsz wrote:
               | Daily self-reminder to never post jokes on HN.
        
           | adrianmonk wrote:
           | Does the ISS fit within the definition of "the world's"? It's
           | outside the atmosphere, so maybe not. But it's in orbit, so
           | maybe so.
        
         | aaron695 wrote:
        
         | bricemo wrote:
         | Right, I think this is world's tallest website, not world's
         | highest
        
           | sshine wrote:
           | I just tilted my screen.
           | 
           | Now it's the world's widest website!
        
         | sAbakumoff wrote:
         | I thought that it would be a hosting location in a room where
         | someone regularly smokes weed.
        
         | elif wrote:
         | Certainly a satellite in geosync
        
           | ben_w wrote:
           | No longer "in the world" ;)
           | 
           | (If it was, would a website hosted on Olympus Mons (Mars) be
           | higher or lower than one hosted on Everest? Closer to its
           | plant's core, further from the sun, not sure about total
           | relative gravitational potential...)
        
         | petercooper wrote:
         | If you discount random experiments hosted on someone's laptop
         | or something, there's probably _something_ in La Paz, Bolivia
         | which would get us to around 4000m elevation. Chile has a data
         | center at 5000m elevation but it 's for a supercomputer. Some
         | Googling indicates China thought they were on to something with
         | a data centre in Lhasa at around 3600m elevation:
         | https://www.passionateinmarketing.com/china-to-build-the-wor...
        
           | josephwegner wrote:
           | I had an interesting discussion with my 8yo recently about
           | the highest mountain. It had never occurred to me, but
           | "highest" does not have an agreed upon definition. There are
           | actually a few competing definitions[1]:
           | 
           | There's Muana Kea, which is the _tallest_, meaning the
           | furthest distance from the mountain's base to its peak.
           | 
           | There's Mount Everest (which I had assumed was the agreed
           | upon "highest"), which has its peak at the highest altitude.
           | 
           | Chimborazo has the most unexpected definition of "highest",
           | which is a peak that is furthest from the center of the
           | Earth! We don't live on a perfect sphere, so some mountains
           | can be "shorter" but still further from the core!
           | 
           | Would be interesting to see if the "highest websites" differ
           | for each of these definitions!
           | 
           | [1]: https://geology.com/records/highest-mountain-in-the-
           | world.sh...
        
             | mngnt wrote:
             | You're thinking about a peak's prominence. A lot of people
             | put a lot of thought into that, which is summed up by
             | Wikipedia [1], including a list of talles peaks by
             | prominence. By definition, Mount Everest wins again, as
             | there is no col to be considered it's parent.
             | 
             | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_prominence
        
             | yissp wrote:
             | > There's Muana Kea, which is the _tallest_, meaning the
             | furthest distance from the mountain's base to its peak.
             | 
             | I had thought Denali in Alaska held this honor, but
             | apparently the base of Mauna Kea is considered to be the
             | ocean floor which makes it taller. Interesting.
        
             | puffoflogic wrote:
             | The Muana Kea claim is highly questionable. The only
             | complete and sound definition of the "base" of a mountain
             | would make the height the same as topographic prominence,
             | and by definition the highest peak must also have the
             | greatest prominence (whereas other peaks will vary wildly
             | in ordering).
        
             | petercooper wrote:
             | I share a propensity for getting interested in things like
             | this more than I perhaps should(!) In most cases, Everest
             | doesn't really look _particularly_ impressive given its low
             | prominence _in relation to its neighbors_ , although
             | Wikipedia seems to treat sea level as being its true "base"
             | as a sort of special case so it still comes in at #1 on htt
             | ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mountain_peaks_by_prom..
             | . !
             | 
             | Chimborazo is a fun one and I would accept a strident
             | enough argument for it to be #1. It truly looks like a
             | magnificent mountain too, indeed perhaps the archetypal
             | 'mountain', if we can take aesthetics into account ;-)
        
               | frabert wrote:
               | I think the Matterhorn looks even more like an archetypal
               | mountain, even if a bit tobleronish :)
        
               | CrazyStat wrote:
               | > Wikipedia seems to treat sea level as being its true
               | "base" as a sort of special case so it still comes in at
               | #1
               | 
               | This is due to the definition of prominence, which is
               | roughly "how far down do you have to go from the summit
               | before you can go up to a higher point." This is
               | undefined for the highest mountain, since there is no
               | higher mountain to go up to, so height above sea level is
               | used instead.
        
               | hervature wrote:
               | You make it seem that something funny is going on with
               | Everest's prominence. That's just the definition of
               | prominence:
               | 
               | > prominence measures the height of a mountain or hill's
               | summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling it
               | but containing no higher summit within it
               | 
               | By definition, this means that the highest mountain's
               | height is its prominence.
        
               | petercooper wrote:
               | I don't think there's anything "funny" logically ;-) It's
               | hard to explain, but I just don't find it very
               | _gratifying_ as a measure given Everest is surrounded by
               | almost equally tall mountains with small prominences
               | (Lhotse 's is about 600m) and the way Wikipedia refers to
               | a "special definition for Everest" just illogically
               | raises my hackles much in the same way as 1 not being
               | considered prime does and at least that's _useful_ ;-)
        
               | colingoodman wrote:
               | Prominence is a weird property. Consider Grays and
               | Torreys in Colorado, two 14,000ft mountains that are very
               | close to each other. Both are some of the tallest
               | mountains in the country and almost the same height, but
               | because Grays is about 3ft taller than Torreys it ends up
               | having 5 times the prominence (2750 vs 560).
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | mbostleman wrote:
               | I live in Teton Valley, Idaho (6,500 feet above sea
               | level) and I see the Grand Teton (13,775 feet) everyday
               | (looking at it now actually). That's a prominence of
               | 7,275 feet. I have also been to the base camp (13,550
               | feet) of Annapurna (26,545 feet). That's a prominence of
               | 13,000 feet or almost double what I'm used to seeing -
               | and that difference is stunningly obvious. I've mentioned
               | this to people often - that just standing in the Himalaya
               | creates a feeling of majesty that is (literally) not
               | possible to experience anywhere else unless something
               | like Mt. Rainer were a couple thousand feet from the
               | Pacific coast (instead of 112 miles) or unless the oceans
               | were drained.
        
             | rr888 wrote:
             | Nice. I tried to think which of Everest or Chimborazo has
             | the thinnest air. I'm guessing the atmosphere bulges at the
             | equator too so it'd be Everest?
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | I can put my phone in my plane later today and host a website
           | from 6 km if it'll work, though mobile antennas don't really
           | aim high so they don't work well at altitude.
        
           | MarioMan wrote:
           | Surely we could do better by hosting something in orbit. I
           | found an interesting case: the USS (Unix-Space-Server)
           | Langley, launched in 2015:
           | https://spaceflight101.com/spacecraft/uss-langley/
        
             | rendall wrote:
             | We could definitely do better, but could something in orbit
             | truly be considered "highest in the world"? I'd probably
             | not credit a website as highest in the world unless it were
             | actually _on_ the world, say, on a mountain, or maybe
             | arguably inside the atmosphere.
        
               | chrisshroba wrote:
               | The ISS has to periodically correct for atmospheric drag,
               | so it is _technically_ in the atmosphere ;)
        
             | petercooper wrote:
             | Perhaps an interesting way to further qualify "highest web
             | site" might be to demand it's available directly from the
             | broader Internet. While even a permanent TCP/IP based
             | device in space would be pretty cool (and, I imagine,
             | actually exists) the cost of the connection is probably
             | onerous to make it open to public use(?)
             | 
             | So perhaps if someone could rig up a microwave link to a
             | solar powered Raspberry Pi Zero hanging off of a weather
             | balloon or something.. we could have a truly publicly
             | accessible Web server at above jet-liner height? :-D This
             | feels like something Tom Scott might try..
        
       | halotrope wrote:
       | That's great. But why can't it show the current altitude while
       | scrolling?
        
       | smcleod wrote:
       | I half expected it to be https://snoopdogg.com
        
         | mft_ wrote:
         | I was thinking /r/trees was leaking...
        
         | NoGravitas wrote:
         | Or https://willienelson.com/
        
           | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
           | I have a site called https://www.thehighestcritic.com that
           | fits the bill.
        
       | Foomf wrote:
       | I love how the div id for the bottom is #hades
        
       | reimertz wrote:
       | Firefox crashed
        
         | Tao3300 wrote:
         | They do mention a Firefox issue at the bottom:
         | 
         | > Gecko-based browsers like Firefox show an interesting
         | behavior when trying to make the site any higher than 18.939583
         | kilometers, "shrinking" or "collapsing" the main container.
         | 
         | Not necessarily related to what you're seeing.
        
           | tgv wrote:
           | Mine doesn't crash. It does give the wobblies another
           | commenter mentions.
        
       | iammjm wrote:
       | Each time I see something like this I think to myself that just
       | because you can doesn't mean you should...
        
       | KingMachiavelli wrote:
       | Hmm, I think I've opened some log files that might be longer.
        
       | htk wrote:
       | For those on mobile, here's the end of the webpage after all the
       | scrolling:
       | 
       |  _Awesome. Restart? Scroll up (we'll wait for you), use the
       | elevator, or press Ctrl and Pos1. For everyone else there's some
       | fine print.
       | 
       | This website is a CSS experiment. Due to its experimental nature,
       | there are some accessibility limitations.
       | 
       | The technical and design principles of this site are simple:
       | 
       | one HTML container;
       | 
       | pure CSS styling;
       | 
       | no workarounds, filters, or hacks.
       | 
       | Known issues
       | 
       | Gecko-based browsers like Firefox show an interesting behavior
       | when trying to make the site any higher than 18.939583
       | kilometers, "shrinking" or "collapsing" the main container.
       | 
       | Internet Explorer has problems following internal links, and it's
       | unclear whether the container actually is said 18.94 kilometers
       | high (or long, or tall).
       | 
       | If you do come up with fixes or an even higher element whose
       | formatting is broadly supported, email info@worlds-highest-
       | website.com. There may be a reward.
       | 
       | WHWS is presented by web artist Jens Oliver Meiert and the secret
       | "Flying Standardistas Club."
       | 
       | Design: Alessandro Lettieri.
       | 
       | Contact: Jens Oliver Meiert (Hamburg, Germany) * info@worlds-
       | highest-website.com * +1-754-400-0999._
        
       | Retr0id wrote:
       | The font rendering in Firefox on macOS (2x dpi scaling) is all
       | "wobbly" - the glyphs are on inconsisent baselines, varying by a
       | few pixels (but only the text at the bottom, not at the top). I
       | suppose this is due to floating point precision/rounding errors,
       | which is interesting to see.
       | 
       | Also, the "elevator" back to the top only takes me about 80% of
       | the way there, which is probably due to something similar.
        
         | Tao3300 wrote:
         | True on Android too. I was wondering if that was on purpose.
        
       | bilekas wrote:
       | document.body.scrollHeight + 1 .
        
       | meigwilym wrote:
       | Surely tallest? Or longest?
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | (2006)
        
       | oefrha wrote:
       | 1. No idea why 100cm * 2840 is 18.94 kilometers;
       | 
       | 2. I can increase 2840em to somewhere below 5000em no problem on
       | both Chrome and Firefox. Beyond that Firefox hides the element
       | and Chrome cuts off at some point. Not sure if it's dependent on
       | vram or something? Another interesting thing is Firefox's Layout
       | tab shows a wrong, capped height in the Box Model diagram;
       | currently says 8947820px for me, but it even changes from time to
       | time.
        
         | martin_a wrote:
         | My Firefox has a height limit of 4734em. That's where it breaks
         | and collapses to null.
        
           | oefrha wrote:
           | Same as mine.
        
       | kbrannigan wrote:
       | I thought the air of the server room was infused with
       | psychoactive smoke.
        
       | smalldick wrote:
       | MX Master: "Finally, a worthy opponent"
        
       | abhayhegde wrote:
       | Jokes on them, I have Vimium (vim plugin for browsers) and used G
       | (Shift + g) to skip scrolling.
        
         | lordgrenville wrote:
         | Ditto, with Tridactyl :)
        
         | _jstreet wrote:
         | Or you could use the browser/windows(?) shortcut
         | Ctrl+Home/Ctrl+End, or Ctrl+Up/Ctrl+Down. OR just use the 'take
         | the elevator' link on the page itself.
        
       | butz wrote:
       | This website clearly illustrates the importance of scrollbars,
       | why they are very useful and should not be hidden by default on
       | desktop. Appropriate scrollbar width is important too.
        
       | fredley wrote:
       | "Although mathematicians suspect that there may be even larger
       | numbers"
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J9MRYJz9-4
        
       | throwaway413 wrote:
       | Just scrolled a quick ~10 miles, now to do 3 sets of 10 like-
       | presses...
        
       | sto_hristo wrote:
       | This is something that even my Logi MX Master mouse is unable to
       | handle.
        
       | hooby wrote:
       | This site is very, very old. I believe it predates Google Chrome.
       | 
       | It's based on a rendering limitation found in Firefox back then.
       | It never really worked in Internet Explorer - and Firefox (as
       | well as Chrome) can render much higher websites these days.
        
         | prox wrote:
         | Make the worlds highestest website!
        
           | culi wrote:
           | Seems like a somewhat pointless exercise in the days of js-
           | driven websites... We can easily make an infinite website
           | 
           | Actually you don't even need js
        
             | prox wrote:
             | The-infinite-website.com
        
       | shagie wrote:
       | A bit more interesting content - If the Moon were only 1 pixel -
       | a Tediously Accurate Scale Model of the Solar System
       | https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem....
       | 
       | I suggest clicking on light speed scrolling.
        
       | zhte415 wrote:
       | 100cm * 2840em = 18.94km?
       | 
       | I don't get this. Could someone not missing something explain?
       | 
       | Edit, to make the question clearer: The CSS of the 'spacer' div
       | has:
       | 
       | Font size: 100cm;
       | 
       | Height: 2840em;
       | 
       | How does this result in 18.94km?
        
         | bigDinosaur wrote:
         | I don't get it either. This is like one of those trick
         | questions designed to prove that one can never actually be
         | _certain_ of something in CSS.
        
         | kretaceous wrote:
         | I posted this on HN hoping to find an explanation. I tried all
         | sorts of calculations, including measuring my screen size to
         | find how many centimetres 1 pixel is but couldn't make sense of
         | any it.
        
           | trinovantes wrote:
           | Hovering over the <html> tag shows the site's height is
           | 10735200px                   10735200 px / (37.8px / 1 cm) =
           | 284000 cm
           | 
           | Based on a 96dpi standard monitor (96px/in or 96px/2.56cm)
        
             | roelschroeven wrote:
             | Small nitpick: an inch is 2.54 cm, not 2.56 cm. That makes
             | the html element 284035.5 cm high, which I guess is the
             | height of that "whws" div plus the height of text and
             | margins above and below.
             | 
             | In any case about 28.4 m is a long way of from 18.94 km.
        
       | WaffleIronMaker wrote:
       | You might also enjoy http://endless.horse/
        
       | chanandler_bong wrote:
       | https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/04/05/the-... ?
        
         | chanandler_bong wrote:
         | A more 'traditional' datacentre:
         | https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/china-sett...
        
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       (page generated 2022-07-05 23:01 UTC)