[HN Gopher] You Are Atlas, You Hold Up the Sky
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       You Are Atlas, You Hold Up the Sky
        
       Author : retrocryptid
       Score  : 104 points
       Date   : 2023-07-30 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (youareatlas.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (youareatlas.com)
        
       | booleandilemma wrote:
       | I'm just going to shrug.
        
         | charles_f wrote:
         | I had to come back to this post to upvote it, 5m later, after
         | letting out an audible "aaahhhhhh" in the kitchen
        
           | xeonmc wrote:
           | Such a great title, wasted on such poor writing.
        
         | benatkin wrote:
         | -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
           | balaji1 wrote:
           | a shrug and an upvote from me
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | If nobody sees the sky falling, it doesn't fall.
        
         | Tao3300 wrote:
         | It's the web equivalent of the light inside your refrigerator.
        
           | si1entstill wrote:
           | Schrodinger's refrigerator light.
        
         | melx wrote:
         | That's why we have timezones, so that not all humanity is
         | asleep at the same time.
        
       | cpersona wrote:
       | I feel disincentivized to hold up the sky. What's my motivation?
        
         | lijok wrote:
         | Motivation is your motivation
        
         | umanwizard wrote:
         | So that it doesn't fall.
        
         | Joeboy wrote:
         | You don't need motivation, you need discipline.
        
         | joot82 wrote:
         | Same motivation as forwarding chain letters. Being
         | superstitious and hope for invisible internet magic helping
         | those poor orphans in need out. Just that you hold up the sky
         | here.
        
       | parentheses wrote:
       | scaling this would make a great system design interview question.
       | rather than building a larger system, build something that takes
       | consistency, availability and fault tolerance to an extreme.
        
       | thepaulthomson wrote:
       | Would be interesting to see a "high-score" gamification loop that
       | tells us what the longest stretch of the sky not falling has
       | been.
        
       | boopmaster wrote:
       | TIL: do read the comments before opening the subject URL.
        
       | praptak wrote:
       | I remember something with the same mechanics, it was about an
       | astronaut who dies when the number of people playing (connecting)
       | drops to zero.
       | 
       | Can't find it though.
        
         | doersino wrote:
         | https://ludonaut.xyz/projects/impetus.html
        
         | janoelze wrote:
         | More info: https://www-spiegel-
         | de.translate.goog/netzwelt/games/online-...
        
       | brmgb wrote:
       | This reminds me of the Button [1] experiment Reddit held in 2015.
       | The interplay between the effect of the countdown reaching zero,
       | the badge associated with clicking and the single use mechanics
       | were quite interesting to witness. It was quite popular for a
       | surprisingly long time.
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Button_(Reddit)
        
         | abra0 wrote:
         | >It was quite popular for a surprisingly long time.
         | 
         | Hah, that's a blast from the past. One reason it lasted as long
         | as it did was the Knights of the Button, users who collaborated
         | to keep it alive. I implemented the Zombie-presser, 1k+ donated
         | accounts automatically pressing the button when no one else
         | would. We kept it alive for a more then a month before the most
         | embarrassing bug of my career finally killed it :D Good summary
         | here [1].
         | 
         | Fun times! Thank you for the reminder :D
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/08/reddits-m...
        
           | teaearlgraycold wrote:
           | What was the bug?
        
             | abra0 wrote:
             | https://www.reddit.com/r/Knightsofthebutton/comments/38q9x5
             | /...
        
             | Jarwain wrote:
             | > The final point of failure was even less spectacular: a
             | co-ordinated attempt to keep the button alive by
             | automatically pressing it with donated accounts when it got
             | too low had been working on overtime, but a fatal flaw
             | meant that no-one bothered to check whether the anointed
             | account actually could press.
             | 
             | > The bot queued up the account, attempted to press the
             | button - and found that the account had been registered
             | after 1 April.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | wardedVibe wrote:
       | Lemme just throw this on the pile of a hundred tabs I have open.
       | It seems perfectly content to be a background tab
        
       | quickthrower2 wrote:
       | Looking in the network tab, there are a lot of 406 responses.
       | What is that all about?
        
       | thirdplace_ wrote:
       | _shrug_
        
       | charles_f wrote:
       | I am Nike, the sky is holding me
        
         | dalmo3 wrote:
         | I am standing. Adidas is holding me.
        
       | johnnyworker wrote:
       | > There are 0 other users online. > The sky has fallen 0 times.
       | 
       | courtesy of uMatrix ^^
        
         | Jowsey wrote:
         | > I disabled JavaScript on your site that conceptually requires
         | JavaScript to function and now it doesn't work as expected
        
           | johnnyworker wrote:
           | That wasn't meant as a complaint, more like a "cheat". I also
           | didn't disable JS, it's just uMatrix blocks third party stuff
           | by default.
        
           | predictabl3 wrote:
           | It seems like given the tricks I've seen with long-http
           | requests and browsers, it might be possible to implement a
           | version that doesn't require JS.
           | 
           | I think that would also have the effect of being able to
           | easily curl it. Could just add a lil nixos module and quietly
           | deploy it to a few servers. Gotta keep the sky up, of course.
        
       | supportengineer wrote:
       | I let the sky fall, but the counter did not increment when I came
       | back
        
         | withinboredom wrote:
         | Probably because your browser still has a background connection
         | to the server.
        
       | dmvdoug wrote:
       | Joke's on him. It's really turtles all the way down.
        
       | benatkin wrote:
       | Sponsored by Atlassian.
       | 
       | The actual word for _pertaining to Atlas_ :
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantean
        
         | bobmaxup wrote:
         | Maybe they chose that name a disambiguation so as to be only
         | associated with the god Atlas, and not the city Atlantis or its
         | suggested founding leader Atlas (son of Poseidon).
        
       | happyasday wrote:
       | -shrug-
        
       | RedNifre wrote:
       | This would be interesting as a one-off thing, like reddit's "The
       | Button". Having it say "The sky has fallen 989 times." makes it a
       | bit meaningless.
        
         | float4 wrote:
         | Or at least show us how long the sky's been up currently? I
         | have no idea if this page is 2 days or 2 years old, and I'm too
         | lazy to check archive.org.
        
         | surfpel wrote:
         | For me it says "There are 0 other users online. The sky has
         | fallen 0 times." which is less believable right after I refresh
         | the page
        
           | eastbound wrote:
           | But if the sky falls while no-one is here, does it make a
           | sound?
        
         | Jarwain wrote:
         | I'm confused I've seen two other commenter's say fhe sky's
         | fallen 989 times, but it only says 981 for me
        
       | umanwizard wrote:
       | If there were only one person holding up the sky, how long would
       | the developer keep his Supabase instance up for?
        
       | RivieraKid wrote:
       | Yawn. Yes, I'm not fun at parties.
        
       | pmontra wrote:
       | If the sky falls do we see what's above it or will it fall upon
       | us together with the sky?
        
       | highwaylights wrote:
       | Well it's not about to fall for a _while_ now is it?
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | "The sky has fallen 989 times."
         | 
         | Use this for A/B testing of ads?
        
       | uka wrote:
       | Just another page counter in the 90s - a game in 21st century ...
        
       | paulpauper wrote:
       | looks like another novelty page meant specifically for getting to
       | the front page of Hacker News, which in a year will be abandoned
       | or turned into seo fodder. .
        
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       (page generated 2023-07-30 23:00 UTC)