[HN Gopher] Show HN: Horizon - Private alternative to Imgur
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Show HN: Horizon - Private alternative to Imgur
Hey HN, I'm James, a 17-year old full-stack engineer from Canada
with a strong passion for building software. During the day, I work
for a California-based startup, and in the evenings, I enjoy
working on side projects[1][2]. For the past 3 years, I've been
building and iterating on a product I called Horizon Pics, which is
a file hosting service, similar to mainstream services, like Imgur.
Horizon allows you to quickly upload and store all types of files,
from images and video, to PDFs and other documents. The biggest
differentiating factor is that Horizon's incentives are much more
aligned with you, the end-user. Unlike Imgur, Horizon has
absolutely no ads, doesn't sell your data, has built-in security
and privacy controls, and is fully focused on your file sharing
needs. No social media or other bloat. This past week, I've
launched a rebrand of Horizon which features a brand-new desktop
app called Alpine[3], which serves as a local companion to Horizon.
With it comes the capability to auto-upload screen captures and
upload your clipboards as shareable pastes. For extra privacy,
clipboard sharing can be automatically deleted after one view, or
end-to-end encrypted with AES-256-GCM client-side. The desktop app
is completely free to use! It's powered by Tauri using TypeScript,
SvelteKit, Sass, and Rust. Horizon offers a free plan with limited
storage and upload sizes, while the paid plan offers higher limits.
Let me know what you think about the landing page[0]. Does it
provide enough information as a new user? [0]:
https://horizon.pics [1]: https://httpjames.space [2]:
https://github.com/httpjamesm [3]: https://horizon.pics/alpine
Author : sweca
Score : 283 points
Date : 2024-07-15 22:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (horizon.pics)
(TXT) w3m dump (horizon.pics)
| agersant wrote:
| Incredible timing, I was just looking for somewhere to store and
| share my video game clips. This looks more appealing (cheaper)
| than Streamable.
|
| I love that there is a Linux Appimage but does it also work with
| just a browser?
| sweca wrote:
| Yes, absolutely! You can use the built in uploader[0] on the
| web dashboard which works in parallel and supports large files.
|
| [0]: https://horizon.pics/help/articles/start-uploading-files
| agersant wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Some feedback after using it for a few minutes:
|
| - When clicking the "+ create" menu, left-clicking whitespace
| on the page does not close the dropdown
|
| - Home page takes very long to list videos (even with a
| single video). Updates after moving videos/deleting
| videos/creating folders also feel unresponsive.
|
| - On home page or inside folders, videos do not have
| thumbnails (just a generic camera icon)
|
| - While a video is being moved to a directory (spinner be
| spinning), the delete/move options under the search bar are
| still present
|
| - Would like an option to apply resize/compression settings
| to videos on upload to help manage storage space
|
| - When failing to upload due to size limit, the UI does not
| say what the size limit is
|
| I think this is a promising service so I'll upgrade and hope
| the quirks improve over time!
|
| Edit:
|
| - Trying to upload 30-ish 100-200MB videos at the same time
| in the web UI, many error with `Unable to mark session as
| finished`.
| sweca wrote:
| Thanks for upgrading! And sorry that you ran into some
| speed bumps.
|
| 1. Good catch. Will improve on this.
|
| 2. I'm not sure what could be causing this. My account with
| thousands of uploads loads in less than one second.
|
| 3. Thumbnails are not supported due to compute and
| processing considerations, but will investigate this.
|
| 4. Good catch.
|
| 5. Compression can be compute intensive, but will
| investigate this further.
|
| 6. Will add that in.
|
| 7. Hopefully this isn't too ubiquitous? I'll investigate
| what's happening - but from preliminary analysis, it looks
| like a chunk may have failed along the way.
| agersant wrote:
| Re: 7 I think in the end all the videos did upload
| successfully, but the client UI stopped reporting
| progress at some point.
|
| A couple more suggestions:
|
| - Would like a select-all button instead of clicking
| videos 1 by 1
|
| - An option to switch from grid view to list view could
| be useful
|
| - Home UI shows 25 items per page but the grid has 3
| columns so the last row is never full - which makes it
| seem like there are no further pages.
|
| - When moving items, the item count in the title of the
| destination-selection dialog keeps increasing for every
| move operation. I think items are not deselected after
| moving?
| sweca wrote:
| I've added a new redundant check that will ensure all
| chunks are uploaded before marking the large upload as
| finished. Hopefully this resolves the issue you were
| facing. If not, please do send me an email at the address
| listed at https://horizon.pics/help.
|
| As for those files that failed but still show up in the
| dashboard, it means they're stored incomplete, and as
| such, will be automatically purged in 24 hours. I will
| work on hiding them in the dashboard.
| agersant wrote:
| Thanks for the great support <3
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If for whatever reason, you don't find traction, and/or get bored
| of running it, I'd be interested in acquiring it into a nonprofit
| entity and running it in some sort of public good fashion. But
| put your heart into it first. Looks great, really well done.
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you so much! Your compliments and generosity are very
| much appreciated.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Very cool! Congrats on the launch!
| jml78 wrote:
| Congrats, it looks great, love that you have Linux app support.
|
| Question, have you done the business analysis to know how long
| you can afford to run the system when giving away 500MB? Even
| your paid model seems really inexpensive. Do you have enough
| margin to immediately not go broke?
|
| I am not trying to throw shade, I am just curious because it
| almost seems too good to be true since you aren't running any ads
| and your price is free and/or cheap
| sweca wrote:
| Yes. Over the past 3 years I've been researching and re-
| iterating different monetization strategies. While I don't want
| to divulge exact operating costs, I can tell you that it's
| sustainable to provide free storage and the amount on the paid
| Everest plan.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| What kind of backup and disaster recovery plans do you have
| in place, if any? Are they tested?
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Congratulations and best of luck. I've a feature request - custom
| domains. As the images can be shared, I'd with to share with
| https://mydomain.foo.bar/nice.jpg
| sweca wrote:
| These are already supported on the Everest plan! Please see the
| help article: https://horizon.pics/help/articles/can-i-use-my-
| own-domain.
| newcool1230 wrote:
| This looks pretty cool, does it work with ShareX? Where you can
| directly screenshot and upload the images from your desktop?
| sweca wrote:
| Yes! While Horizon Alpine isn't ready for Windows yet, ShareX
| support is built in. Simply sign up, visit Settings, and
| download the configuration files under General > App
| Configuration. There are configurations for both files and
| links/pastes uploads.
| scubbo wrote:
| Impressive stuff - especially for a 17-year-old working in their
| spare time! Best of luck, not that it looks like you'll need it!
| devnull212 wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! But, something that stops me from using a
| number of services is the sale of fixed size plans where I'll
| typically either under utilize them (e.g. do I have 100 GB of
| screenshots to upload) or I'll over utilize and might not have an
| upgrade path immediately available for more storage.
|
| I tend to toss my photos in backblaze or S3 for this reason -- UX
| is severely lacking but I pay for what I use. I'm curious how you
| landed on the subscriptions you chose + whether you'd consider
| usage based plans?
| sweca wrote:
| I understand where you're coming from.
|
| Most people do not have 100 GB of media on hand, nor will they
| probably in the next 5 years. As a result, it's _basically_
| unlimited from a reasonable usage standpoint. Before adding a
| 100 GB cap, I actually experimented with having "unlimited
| storage", but this can go wrong in many ways. I've spoken to
| companies in the VPN and cloud storage industries and having
| unlimited anything can go very wrong, especially if your
| service is promoted in a problematic context. e.g. unlimited
| cloud storage in a data hoarding community. By at least adding
| a cap, I can calculate a maximum cost for every user to
| influence my financial decisions and restrict abuse.
|
| As for pay-per-use, no plans for now. Kagi's CEO had a really
| nice discussion about this on their forum and on HN. Simply
| put, for the demographic I'm targeting, which is quite broad,
| the typical user would likely get turned off by a pay-per-use
| model.
|
| I've also priced Everest lower than other paid services, such
| as Vimeo and Gyazo, while including extra benefits.
| uuuuuquu wrote:
| > Most people do not have 100 GB of media on hand, ...
|
| I have over 130 GB of media and really just started taking
| pictures two years ago. My mother for sure has way over 100
| GB of media. My gf too. My father also has over 100 GB of
| media. And we all are not photographers or people who must
| take pictures of everything. 100 GB is not that much really,
| especially since everybody cat take 4K pictures and record 4K
| videos. Who do you mean by "most people"?
| sweca wrote:
| By the term "media", I was referring to OP's potential
| usecase of Horizon, like their screenshots and screen
| recordings.
|
| I think you're framing Horizon as potential photo backup,
| in which case, it is not designed nor meant for that.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I've really liked Cloudflare's R2 for this usage myself. YMMV
| of course.
| xyst wrote:
| Very clean and easy to use.
|
| 90% of my coworkers with "decades of experience" and "senior" in
| their titles would not even be able to build something like this
| in their full time. Let alone part or spare time.
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you! It took quite a few iterations to get here. This
| time I tried to focus on reducing friction as much as possible,
| learning from other successful apps along the way.
| 6bb32646d83d wrote:
| Not to diminish the work of OP (the website looks really
| clean), but I don't think I know any serious experienced
| engineer who couldn't create an image sharing website
| samM_ wrote:
| Wow, super impressive. I wouldn't even have dreamed of making
| something like this at 17.
| tjbiddle wrote:
| Should add the names of your competitors under the logos. I'm
| sure they're very famous, I'm assuming Imgur and something else -
| but I don't recognize either of the logos.
| sweca wrote:
| Good call! The second one is Gyazo.
| metadat wrote:
| This will be a solid display of confidence.
|
| That'd be cool if the self-hosting use-case was supported in
| addition to your main public site.
|
| Throw a writable path or s3-compatible bucket in a config, set
| an admin password, and away..
|
| Other folks could finally stop rewriting the basic aspects of
| image upload hosting. Wouldn't that be a nice gift?
| tyingq wrote:
| Looks great, and clearly a lot of time and thought invested. Not
| news to you, I'm sure, but these sites typically only last for a
| while. Because nobody has really hit on a way to subsidize a
| reasonable free plan enough to pay for the bandwidth it
| collectively consumes, and to implement enough spam protection.
| Especially once it hits a certain adoption curve. So they either
| die or find a way to push ads, like imgur did. This is so nice
| though, I'm really rooting for it to find a way.
| sweca wrote:
| Thanks! It's been operating for the past 3 years without any
| ads or third-party trackers, and I don't have plans to shut it
| down for the forseeable future.
| fragmede wrote:
| No one ever starts these things with plans to shut them down,
| the question is how much money do you have for this right
| now, how much money is it burning per unit of time, and how
| long will that last if no one pays for a paid plan. I'm not
| asking you to answer those questions, but pointing out the
| reality of the economics of the situation. If an image goes
| viral, can you pay a 10x or 100x hosting bill? For how long?
| How much are you commiting to spend before shutting it down
| becomes an attractive option?
| sweca wrote:
| These are good questions to ask. Right now, the
| monetization strategy is profitable.
|
| If an image does go viral, which has happened before on
| popular Reddit posts that hit the front page, the
| infrastructure should be able to handle it for a while, and
| it should not be costly.
| airtonix wrote:
| you should protect yourself from free plans going viral
| and costing you more than you'd like with rate limiting
| rules of some kind.
| sweca wrote:
| I see your point, but the business model can sustain a
| large influx in free signups. I will keep this in mind
| though.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Exactly; I still remember reading the imgur announcement post
| on reddit which had all the same descriptions. They were ad
| free and they were aiming to be great forever. Now though
| they're the "big bad".
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c...
| fsckboy wrote:
| In 2016, Imgur raised $40 million in funding from investors,
| valuing the company at around $500 million. In 2021, Imgur
| was acquired by the media company, MediaLab, for an
| undisclosed amount, reportedly around $200-300 million. Alan
| Schaaf, the CEO and founder, reportedly owned around 40% of
| the company at the time of the acquisition, which would have
| netted him a significant amount, estimated to be around
| $80-120 million.
|
| why does everybody here think that imgur is a failure in
| light of OP's stated goals? His stated goals are the same as
| imgur's stated goals. The imgur outcome is the stated goal of
| most of the people here.
|
| Think a little bit more inside the box.
| phito wrote:
| So the goal is to make another unsustainable business, make
| everyone use and love it, then sell it to someone who will
| make it uterly shitty with the hopes of squeezing at least
| a bit of money out of the people who now rely on it, before
| it inevitably dies?
| latexr wrote:
| The goal is to make "fuck you money" then tell everyone,
| including users, to go fuck themselves. The specifics are
| up in the air.
|
| Don't forget to talk about the "wonderful journey" it has
| been when announcing the sale.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| > sell it to someone who will make it uterly shitty
|
| Imgur is still good. It's just not great anymore, and
| it's a long way from shitty.
| mrsilencedogood wrote:
| "why does everybody here think that imgur is a failure"
|
| Because what everyone on the internet wants is a place that
| will just friggin hold images and respond to HTTP requests
| with that image
|
| "in light of OP's stated goals"
|
| because op seems to want to build a sustainable business,
| but at a certain scale it just becomes unsustainable
| because you become a CDN that is paid for per-seat. So they
| will inevitably need to either not scale (which makes them
| not what the internet wants), or scale by either becoming
| Cloudflare or becoming a social networking site, so that
| they can either pay their bills via usage-based-billing or
| pay their bills via sweaty VC money.
| corobo wrote:
| The cycle of image hosting continues
|
| https://drewdevault.com/2014/10/10/The-profitability-of-
| onli...
|
| I've swapped to using the app Dropshare hooked up to a
| Cloudflare R2 bucket myself
| stavros wrote:
| I found a way, pay me: https://imgz.org/
| jchook wrote:
| The spam protection is worth repeating.
|
| I made one of these back in 2005 and it was inevitably
| gangloaded with questionable content like p*rn, malware,
| software license keys, copyrighted material, etc.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I remember a few years ago when some starry eye coder on
| Reddit made a page that would load and display the latest
| uploads to Imgur as tiles.
|
| It soon became apparent that this is _not_ ideal.
|
| Same thing with tools that would try to archive Imgur, the
| results basically need manual review because the resulting
| dataset is a loaded gun.
| metadat wrote:
| How is it private if you can't self host?
|
| (I'm hoping I missed something :)
| loteck wrote:
| Privacy and security here are being commingled under the banner
| of AES encryption at rest, which is apparently disabled by
| default.
|
| I always wonder, if your marketing pitch involves security
| features, but those features are off by default, aren't you
| technically pitching your _lack_ of security?
| metadat wrote:
| And if $company controls the keys.. what happens once funding
| dries up? Yeah.. nothing personal but we've seen it
| previously.
|
| In the meantime, OP and Co. could create an open standard for
| image hosting, and have a lasting impact on the order of S3.
| Wouldn't that be something?
|
| Here's to hoping.
| sweca wrote:
| Encryption at rest is disabled by default because many users
| do not want to keep track of all of their encryption keys,
| which are not stored by Horizon when that setting is enabled.
|
| There are also other security features, like end-to-end
| encryption for pastes, but like mentioned before, not
| everyone wants to lose the ability to preview their content
| in the dashboard.
|
| By giving the user a choice, I can cater to both crowds: one
| that prefers convenience, vs the other which prefers the most
| security.
|
| Edit: To clarify, all files are already encrypted at rest
| with a key I control. But with Encryption enabled (capital E
| to distinguish the feature name), it is encrypted again with
| a key Horizon won't store.
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Clear and concise. Well done. Impressive for a 17 year old.
| Lammy wrote:
| If you (or anyone else) are looking for a self-host option,
| check out Lutim https://framagit.org/fiat-tux/hat-
| softwares/lutim
| GaiusCoffee wrote:
| I have always wondered how "hosting" sites deal with malicious
| actors, like sharing of copywritten stuff (like movies), xxx
| stuff or worse (cp).
|
| Is there content moderation at the backend of Horizon?
| sweca wrote:
| For privacy reasons, there's no scanning. I rely on user
| reports to determine whether to take content down.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This is a legally...risky strategy. You built a cool thing
| but unfortunately when you put cool things online they get
| used for the worst possible purposes.
| sweca wrote:
| Yes, I understand there is an unfortunate risk. However, I
| oppose file scanning, and so do many users, as we've seen
| with the Apple scandal.
|
| If any content is uploaded that violates the terms of
| service and is reported, they will be deleted as soon as
| possible, and that user will almost certainly be
| permanently banned.
|
| The terms of service also limits my liability.
| shawndrost wrote:
| I don't believe it is feasible to run an image hosting
| service with your intended CSAM management plan.
|
| Based on this comment thread, I fully expect your site
| will soon host CP/CSAM, if it doesn't already. Other
| image hosting services devote extensive resources to
| engineering a solution to this problem (one that is more
| robust than user reporting). I would not expect you will
| be able to avoid this work, and avoid liability.
|
| Edit: I just noticed you're quite young. Congrats on all
| the great work. I think this CSAM thing could bring
| misery your way so I hope you find this comment helpful.
| Good luck out there.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The terms of service cannot shield you from federal law.
| Not sure if you're in the US or elsewhere but similar
| laws are prevalent around the world - in the US federal
| law prohibits the production, advertisement,
| transportation, distribution, receipt, sale, and
| possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
|
| This is an issue that could _ruin_ you. The only reason
| it hasn 't already is that the service isn't big enough
| yet. You undoubtedly already have CSAM on your network
| and any reasonable person with experience online would
| expect that, which is an important standard for you to
| consider. You're starting your own projects online at 17.
| You will do a lot of cool stuff in your life. Don't let
| this kill that inertia.
|
| My 2c.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| I have some experience helping previous jobs block bandwidth
| abuse from user uploaded content. That lead to inadvertently
| finding some pretty bad content. I would figure out some way
| to have someone else review the content or at least some kind
| of automated scanner you can use to pre-check the reported
| content before reviewing it yourself.
|
| Some stuff is hard to unsee.
|
| Edit: I wonder if a local LLM (to help with privacy concerns)
| would be a good option or not to at least identify anything
| obviously bad. Wish I had more concrete suggestions.
| sweca wrote:
| You absolutely have a point. But for me, I'm not sure how
| to balance privacy and safety. Is my service really private
| at all if I'm handing off user files to a third party to do
| who knows what to scan for bad content, and potentially
| risk users through false positives?
|
| Edit: A local model could work, but that can be quite
| compute intensive and therefore expensive.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| I meant it only for the reported content so that is, to
| me, a proper balance because that's kind of your legal
| requirement[0] to take down content which is reported.
| But since that's ripe for abuse the proper way is to
| basically first hide the content, review+confirm it's
| bad, and then take proper action.
|
| So I would try asking around or thinking of how best to
| handle the specific reported cases without exposing
| yourself too directly.
|
| [0]: I am not a lawyer
| electroly wrote:
| There's no balance to be had--you must prioritize
| legality over privacy. You _will_ be storing CSAM if you
| don 't do something. You may _already_ be storing CSAM.
| This is no joke. This is real and something every image
| hosting site deals with. You need to take it seriously.
| This is a "you could go to jail" concern, not a "this
| project might not work out" concern. The ability to store
| and share media privately while knowing it won't be
| scanned for abuse is begging to be used for CSAM and
| other illegal activities--that's the sort of site you'd
| set up if your explicit goal was to attract CSAM.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| Why don't you have cloudflare caching enabled on the images?
| sweca wrote:
| For privacy reasons, it's kept out of Cloudflare's cache. But
| one could argue that it doesn't matter since traffic is flowing
| through Cloudflare anyways. What do you think?
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| Yeah it's going through CF anyway. I also don't live near
| Europe or North America and noticed even small images take
| over a second to load, would be nice to have images cached
| locally after they are opened for the first time
| sweca wrote:
| Got it. Thanks for your feedback. All servers and user
| content are hosted in the EU, so for some parts of the
| world, it may not perform as intended. I've also thought of
| creating replicas for latency reasons, but it does
| introduce extra costs.
| electroly wrote:
| It's not a real option. You'll eventually get banned or
| forced to pay for an enterprise plan if you try to use
| Cloudflare's CDN for an image hosting site where the origin
| is outside of Cloudflare. They require you to use R2 or
| Cloudflare Images.
|
| From their terms: (emphasis mine)
|
| > Unless you are an Enterprise customer, Cloudflare offers
| specific Paid Services (e.g., the Developer Platform, Images,
| and Stream) that you must use in order to serve video and
| other large files via the CDN. Cloudflare reserves the right
| to disable or limit your access to or use of the CDN, or to
| limit your End Users' access to certain of your resources
| through the CDN, if you use or are suspected of using the CDN
| without such Paid Services to serve video or a
| _disproportionate percentage of pictures_ , audio files, or
| other large files. We will use reasonable efforts to provide
| you with notice of such action.
|
| https://www.cloudflare.com/service-specific-terms-
| applicatio...
| sweca wrote:
| Good catch. Forgot about this terms of service clause.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| Are you not using R2 for storage?
| jmuguy wrote:
| Maybe stupid question but can video files uploaded be played in
| the browser? I'm always frustrated when I want to share a game
| clip with friends and it seems like the options are YouTube which
| is overkill and a few services like streamable that are too
| expensive for just casual sharing
| sweca wrote:
| Yes! Supported file types can, such as MP4. Other video formats
| are not currently supported for streaming (can still be
| uploaded for download) due to browser restrictions and compute
| considerations.
|
| For supported video types, Horizon is optimized in the sense
| that it recognizes videos and allows viewers to stream it in
| chunks for seamless watching.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Why not have the user's machine do the encoding into whatever
| format is cheapest/easiest for you to support? Could even
| divide user payloads into chunks and p2p it, bittorrent
| style. No compute needed, beyond a tracking server that can
| be very cheap to run
| sweca wrote:
| Transcoding client-side still has considerations:
|
| - What if the user's hardware is not performant?
|
| - Transcoding is intensive, so their machine will become
| slow
|
| - Even wasm based ffmpeg will not be as efficient and has
| its own issues
|
| - Takes a very long time
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| 1. Then setup a worker thread with a very high nice
| value, like 19. Limit your throughput with tick-based
| compute (sleep if you're using too much compute)
|
| 2. Not if you do as proposed
|
| 3. Efficiency is not your problem, as you've stated with
| the previous 2 requirements. Your algorithm doesn't have
| to be maximally efficient if it takes a while to compute
| (eg you're using sleep in it)
|
| 4. Doesn't matter, most users of this service will only
| be taking a few photos or videos a day. Offer a paid
| service upgrade for heavy users who cant handle the
| upload times.
| mkmk wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why did you name the paid plan Everest?
| sweca wrote:
| If you didn't notice, the logo has a mountain inside the first
| "o". "Everest", as in "Mount Everest", follows the theme of
| mountain metaphors. Mount Everest is also a high point, which
| symbolizes the fact that the plan gives you higher
| powers/limits.
| t1c wrote:
| So... it's an S3 bucket with a CDN?
| pratio wrote:
| It's an impressive lot more. There's a desktop app for mac and
| even a beta version for Linux.
| RIMR wrote:
| So it's an S3 bucket with a CDN, and a file upload client...
| AvieDeckard wrote:
| For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself
| quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally
| with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted
| filesystem.
| remram wrote:
| "Full-stack engineer" is usually a job title or career, I find it
| weird to introduce oneself as a "17-year-old full-stack
| engineer". Is it just me?
|
| You certainly have the skills but can one be an amateur
| professional?
| sweca wrote:
| I do have a job as a software engineer in the professional
| world. I do both professional work and amateur side project
| work. Did I miss something?
| remram wrote:
| Nevermind then! I assumed 17 was too young to have a full-
| time high-skill job, if I assumed wrong then apologies.
| iddan wrote:
| You obviously did
| peterldowns wrote:
| Extremely impressive. Very nice work.
| synthoidzeta wrote:
| Just wanted to applaud you -- I'm over twice your age and would
| not be able to create something like this.
|
| Can I ask when you started programming/building things? Was it a
| natural interest or did you receive encouragement from someone in
| your life?
|
| Wishing Horizon all the best, excited to use it!
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you so much!
|
| I started programming at around 9 years old in MS Batch. By
| making TUI apps, I learned the fundamentals, like variables,
| logic, functions, etc.
|
| The interest actually stemmed from gaming. I was playing
| Minecraft and I was like, "hey, why can't I make cool stuff
| like this?" Spoiler alert: I did not remake Minecraft lol. My
| father was an early adopter of tech, like when he purchased the
| first Macintosh, so he also encouraged me into the field.
| kukasmog wrote:
| Great work, and portfolio looks great too. Most professional devs
| can't get a product out, so you're on the way.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Hosting user generated content is one of the quick ways to run
| into awful content.
|
| You have to take the necessary precautions, both legal and
| technological, to prevent awful content from becoming
| problematic.
|
| Also according to your own terms of service you cannot access the
| website yourself, that is odd.
| sweca wrote:
| Under the Adult Content section, yes, if there is adult
| content, the user must be 18 years of age or older. I see the
| irony in this.
|
| However, for other usage of the site, the privacy policy says
| that the minimum age is 13 years old.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Just a quick note. That you have pricing up front is such a big
| thing. Places like Imgur and photobucket before it were out to be
| exploited merely for their free bandwidth.
|
| There is a clear means of funding this and that instills
| confidence.
|
| One other note, I also am a lot more likely to jump onto a
| service if there is an easy escape plan. While you don't want to
| loose customers, having an easy out allows people to exit on
| amicable terms.
| sweca wrote:
| Yep! Having limits and sustainable pricing was at the top of
| mind prior to launch - didn't want to dig myself into a hole.
|
| For exports, there are currently 3 export options:
|
| - file download URLs (encrypted content is undecryptable by
| Horizon, therefore will not be downloadable without the correct
| key, which is not stored by Horizon)
|
| - all your short links
|
| - all your paste content (encrypted content is undecryptable by
| Horizon, therefore will show up in its ciphertext form)
|
| These exports are all in machine-readable JSON.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| I love it! These are the awesome kind of projects I like
| seeing. No hype about "what could be" but a case of "Here it
| is! Go for it!"
| motles wrote:
| Do you do all the design/UI/UX yourself?
| sweca wrote:
| I designed mockups in Figma, and then realized them into code.
| At first, there weren't any fancy animations, so I enlisted the
| help of my friend Rens (info linked in the footer) to help
| bring it to life!
| KerryJones wrote:
| Great work!
|
| 2 questions:
|
| 1) Do you support RAW images?
|
| 2) Do you have larger paid plans?
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| 1. Images that are natively previewable are supported in the
| browser at the moment. RAW is unsupported for previews, but
| should still be able to be uploaded for file sharing.
|
| 2. I haven't seen any demand for larger paid plans yet. If this
| arises, I'll be sure to explore new pricing.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Unlike Imgur, Horizon has absolutely no ads, doesn't sell your
| data, has built-in security and privacy controls, and is fully
| focused on your file sharing needs. No social media or other
| bloat.
|
| Why and how is your service's financial future secured? I took a
| quick glance, and your free tier is perfectly adequate for most
| people.
|
| >Horizon allows you to quickly upload and store all types of
| files, from images and video, to PDFs and other documents.
|
| Can I easily upload something from any of my computers (desktop,
| laptop, phone, tablet) in basically one or two easy steps?
|
| One of the reasons I don't use imgur anymore and instead use
| Discord (yes, Discord) for my image hosting needs is because I
| could not upload anything to imgur from my phone or tablet. Yes,
| an image hosting service that won't let me upload from the most
| prevalent computing devices of our time.
|
| I don't care if imgur is spamming me with ads or torturing me
| with a terrible UI, an image hosting service that won't let me
| upload is literally useless to me.
|
| On Discord I can upload anything by just clickdragging or
| copypastaing into the client. Dead simple, dead easy, dead quick,
| dead done. And it's not even an image or file hosting service,
| it's a bloody instant messaging and voicecomms service.
|
| >The desktop app is completely free to use! It's powered by Tauri
| using TypeScript, SvelteKit, Sass, and Rust.
|
| Don't care about any of that jargonsoup, is it lightweight and
| fast with a UI that respects humans? Also, why is there no
| Windows client?
| sweca wrote:
| 1. Maybe it's a matter of perspective. I actually find the free
| plan to be quite restrictive, especially for long term use. The
| current model is designed to be profitable. The free plan is
| sustainable.
|
| 2. Yes, you can. Just open the web app, click Upload Files, and
| select what you want. More details here:
| https://horizon.pics/help/articles/start-uploading-files.
|
| 3. Yes, it's lightweight, fast, and user-friendly. It's quite
| minimal looking, and I've tried my best to make it as easy to
| understand as possible. Whether that's through clear and
| concise instructions along the way, tooltips or intuitive
| action button colour hierarchy. There's no Windows client
| because I just haven't gotten to it yet. There's ShareX, which
| is compatible with Horizon.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Maybe it's a matter of perspective.
|
| Definitely! I think 500MB is more than enough, even as a tech
| guy, for a rolling storage with oldest giving way to newest.
| Most people aren't going to upload files as big as 75MB
| either. Unlimited bandwidth is icing on the cake.
|
| While on the subject, $45 for 100 GB of cloud storage a year
| is a rip off (no offence). I can (and do) pay $70 for a year
| of Microsoft 365 Personal which gives me 2TB of cloud storage
| and the industry standard office suite. I can (and do) pay
| $20 for a year of Google One which gives me 100GB cloud
| storage and thus Google Drive and Photos space.
|
| Your pricing by comparison isn't competitive, at least to me.
| Between an uncompetitive product and a free tier that is
| (read: should be) more than adequate for most users I'm still
| curious how secure your financials are.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Hey, dude, your site is pretty sick. Great job. Optional email! A
| minor gripe: the blue on green for your "Sign in with google" is
| kind of hard to read on my iPhone. Black or white perhaps might
| be better?
|
| How do you make the economics work? Cloudflare in front? R2 for
| storage?
|
| Holy balls and a desktop app in Tauri?! Dude you are a skilled 17
| yo. You've been doing it for 3 years? Haha the kids are going to
| be all right. Good shit, mate.
|
| Screenshot:
|
| https://i.horizon.pics/jtlZYhVxzb
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you! I work hard to impress with all of my sites.
|
| Looks like the "Sign in with Google" text is only blue on iOS
| Safari. On other browsers, it's white on green. I'll
| investigate further.
|
| Cloudflare is indeed in front. The pricing model has been tuned
| to allow for one paid subscription to subsidize many free
| accounts. Horizon uses Backblaze B2 as the object storage
| provider.
|
| I'm always eager to learn new technologies!
| tzfld wrote:
| >Unlimited Bandwidth*
|
| >Keep on sharing with peace of mind that your files will always
| be accessible for those who need them.
|
| What about sharing them in a forum post which may become viral or
| may be targeted by a ddos attack?
| sweca wrote:
| That's ok! Horizon should be able to handle it.
| isatty wrote:
| It's a great service and forgive my cynicism but how, without
| losing money?
| sweca wrote:
| I've worked out the economics! The cost of the free plan is
| negligible.
| MzHN wrote:
| Monetization and abuse has been mentioned a bunch as things to
| consider as you gain more users, but I'll add a couple more I
| think are relevant, at least once the service is big enough.
|
| Your payment processor. Payment processors might get triggered by
| the fact that adult content is pretty much explicitly allowed.
| They might also just generally deem you "high risk" and kick you
| out. I think this is one of the biggest risks you run. For
| example Stripe, according to their legal docs, prohibit
| "Cyberlockers, regardless of whether they host adult content",
| whatever that means, but it sounds a lot like file sharing in
| general is a prohibited business.
|
| Ever-tightening think-of-the-children laws. You may not want to
| implement expensive and privacy invasive scanning (note that even
| local scanning may be privacy invasive[1]), but you might be
| forced or face a fine. You could always do like Google and budget
| it in as an expense, love that "fines" line in their reports.
| This may also be relevant to the previous one, since payment
| processors might deem you higher risk if you have no scanning.
|
| Getting blacklisted for hosting malware. Specifically the support
| for non-media files. You could end up being blocked by browsers,
| search engines and whatnot. See for example Google Safe Browsing.
|
| [1] https://rys.io/en/173.html
| isatty wrote:
| This is very well done, congrats on the launch and I am extremely
| impressed by your decisions (to keep this as simple as possible,
| to avoid scanning, and to provide apps). I am equally, if not
| more, impressed by your replies to comments here and criticism.
| Keep up the good work!
| sweca wrote:
| Thanks, this means a lot!
| cntrmmbrpsswrd wrote:
| This is quote nice.
|
| One of the things I've always liked about imgur is the ability to
| paste images from the clipboard as well as drag and drop onto the
| page.
| sweca wrote:
| Thanks! I'll be sure to add both soon.
| 9dev wrote:
| The attention to detail on the landing page is amazing. The
| Apple-style feature boxes, the animations, the subtle blur effect
| for content at the bottom, the button shadows... I love it.
| You've got an amazing career ahead of you.
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you. Apple was a big inspiration! Rens (info in footer)
| helped me out with the animations.
| reportgunner wrote:
| So if I upload a pic and send a link to that pic to my friend
| does my friend also have to sign in ?
| sweca wrote:
| Nope!
| p2hari wrote:
| Is there some kind of API support? Could not find anything about
| ability to use API instead of clients.
| nathants wrote:
| congrats on the launch! this is very cool.
| gizmo wrote:
| This looks really great. Impressive work, especially for your
| age.
|
| I think the bottom half of your landing page is much stronger
| than the top half. Why talk about encryption before explaining
| what the actual features are? "Sharing" is pretty vague and
| describes many apps. It might be better to lead with the actual
| features or usecases. Note that you went with a different pitch
| in this HN post: "it's a file hosting service [...] like imgur".
| That indicates your hero message needs some work.
|
| You also have essentially two calls to action. "Get started" and
| "Download for mac". One call to action is better. Your sign up
| form also looks a bit busy and only has the text "create your
| horizon account" which conveys no useful information when instead
| you could explain why people should sign up and point out that
| it's free forever, which your users wouldn't know if they clicked
| through to "get started" right from the landing page.
|
| At the bottom of the landing page you have a "sign up" in the
| paid plan but it links to the same sign up form. Why make people
| choose between paid and free when it later turns out the choice
| isn't real? That's a wasted opportunity. You should have only
| sign up button in the pricing plans section if there is only one
| sign up page. Alternatively, ask for credit card details if
| people show interest in the paid plan.
|
| If you make $40/yr for a pro user then you'll need 25,000 pro
| users for each million in revenue. This is the kind of business
| where you're gonna have 200 free users for every paid user so
| about 5 million free accounts for each million in revenue. If 20%
| of site visitors sign up and 30% of those continue to use your
| service you need drive 75 million visitors to your landing page
| to get 1 million in ARR. Not impossible, but pretty difficult.
| imgur got large because reddit didn't want to do images
| themselves. Nowadays imaging hosting has become a lot easier
| because of AWS and Cloudflare, so you'll have to work a lot
| harder at getting traction.
| efilife wrote:
| Where do you host it? I see that nsfw is allowed, what vps does
| allow it?
| cptcobalt wrote:
| This is HN, is asking about a VPS a bit quaint, when we're in
| the era of container orchestration/etc?
| efilife wrote:
| I wonder, is this information so confidential the creator
| doesn't want to answer this?
| sweca wrote:
| I'm not sure what to answer here. Cloudflare allows this type
| of content, and the VPSes aren't storing the uploaded
| content.
| efilife wrote:
| Not sure what to answer? I asked where do you host it.
| Where do you store your data, (quite obviously) user
| uploaded images. That's why I asked about nsfw
| sweca wrote:
| All data is stored in the EU. As mentioned in another
| comment, Backblaze is the object storage provider.
| r0ks0n wrote:
| i mean, there's already puush, pixeldrain and tens of other tiny
| chibisafe/pomf/uguu/jirafeau instances that play well with sharex
| instead of bothering with their own app, but having another
| mirror can't hurt.
| account42 wrote:
| Image hosting is not a viable business.
|
| Source: every image host that has ever existed (note the past
| tense)
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Charge for storage and bandwidth. Providers like AWS S3 are
| doing fine with that model.
|
| E: not bandwidth, data transfer
| sweca wrote:
| And this is exactly why S3 is meant for developers. The
| average person does not want to think about limits they
| cannot control, like a burst in viewership for an image they
| uploaded.
| dizhn wrote:
| > Unlike Imgur, Horizon has absolutely no ads, doesn't sell your
| data, has built-in security and privacy controls, and is fully
| focused on your file sharing needs. No social media or other
| bloat.
|
| This is exactly how imgur started. It was a reddit user,
| providing a service for fellow redditors. I am not being snarky.
| As others have said, media hosting can never really be free.
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| if this was decentralized it would still have meaning but this
| project is going to run into the same limitations imgur did
| progforlyfe wrote:
| one potential difference is that it already offers a $5/month
| paid version, not sure how long it took for Imgur to do that.
| so at least it has the potential to not need ads ever, but
| fully dependent on whether the revenue from the paid version
| can pay for the costs of the free version (500 MB offered for
| free users).
|
| Edit: but indeed I am usually annoyed by the "Privacy first,
| no ads forever!!!111" marketing. Unless it's some bitTorrent
| like technology that decentralizes the load, it's not really
| possible forever.
| RIMR wrote:
| The marketing says that this is an Alternative to Imgur, but the
| product doesn't feel like an alternative to Imgur, it feels like
| an alternative to OneDrive. It shares more features with Gyazo,
| the other product you compare it to, but I don't see it being a
| solid upsell.
|
| Is marketed to Imgur users as a better alternative for broadly
| sharing memes on the Internet, and if so why is privacy and
| encryption important? Couldn't privacy be a limiting factor,
| since Imgur is first and foremost a social network? Wouldn't the
| limited space of the free plan be a dealbreaker for someone
| happily using Imgur in an unlimited capacity for free?
|
| Is it marketed to business users that actually prioritize
| privacy, and if so, aren't you worried that comparing it to a
| Social Network like Imgur would betray the privacy angle? Where
| are the enterprise options that allow me to onboard people with
| SSO/MFA and protect sensitive files from people outside of the
| organization? There are too many security holes in this product
| to trust it for business use, especially copying the full URL to
| every shared object to the clipboard where it can be accessed
| with anyone with the URL...
|
| If someone actually wanted to use this service to store and share
| large files, you only offer 100GB for $5/month, and limit file
| sizes to 10GB. For $2/month you can get 100GB on Google Drive
| with roughly the same capabilities, and for $10 you can get 2TB
| on Google Drive or MEGA, with the latter being encrypted by
| default. $10 from Office 365 gets you 6TB of cloud storage with
| sharing capabilities. The pricing for Horizon storage is
| outrageous by comparison to every competitor's offerings.
|
| Furthermore, you have to read through the pricing page to
| discover that encryption at-rest isn't default, and you have to
| turn it on for files you want encrypted, and it doesn't even tell
| you what kind of encryption or how the recipient decrypts it.
| Alternatives like MEGA still have you beat in that regard.
| sweca wrote:
| You're comparing Horizon to cloud storage services, which I
| think is unfair. Horizon is focused on the sharing aspect.
| Uploading to Google Drive and OneDrive is not as effortless as
| Horizon and won't provide the same frictionless viewing
| experience for whoever you share the links to.
|
| Horizon is actually cheaper than alternatives, including Gyazo
| and Streamable, as said in another person's comment.
|
| Global encryption is enabled at rest for every file, but with a
| key that I control. Toggling the Encryption feature (capital E
| to distinguish the feature name), encrypts the file again with
| a key not stored by Horizon. This info can be found in the help
| center.
| RIMR wrote:
| >You're comparing Horizon to cloud storage services, which I
| think is unfair. Horizon is focused on the sharing aspect.
|
| I think the closest competitor you have is MEGA, and they are
| not a Cloud Storage service, they are a File Hosting service
| like Horizon is. There is plenty of overlap between the
| offerings of Cloud Storage and File Hosting services, but if
| sharing files with others is a central feature, the service
| is generally understood to be a File Hosting service, and
| that would definitely include services like OneDrive and
| Google Drive too.
|
| >Uploading to Google Drive and OneDrive is not as effortless
| as Horizon
|
| How specifically is it easier? Create an account, upload
| files, optionally with a client. API for uploading
| programatically. Sharable URLs for giving access to others.
| It seems fundamentally equal to other platforms in ease-of-
| use.
|
| >Horizon is actually cheaper than alternatives, including
| Gyazo and Streamable
|
| Gyazo's entry tier costs the same as your's, and also offers
| an Enterprise tier with SSO/MFA that is going to be a
| operational requirement of any business customer that cares
| about privacy and security.
|
| Streamable's entry tier may cost twice as much ($10/month),
| but it comes with 5x the storage (critical if you're sharing
| 4K HDR video), and the guarantee of a highly available CDN.
| It is marketed towards a specific need, instead of the broad
| social/business product you have created, which is
| superfluous to anyone who just needs reliable video hosting.
|
| >Global encryption is enabled at rest for every file, but
| with a key that I control.
|
| As good as unencrypted if this key is hot and used to decrypt
| all files shared without user encryption.
| sweca wrote:
| Gyazo does not cost the same. You're comparing monthly
| prices *billed annually* to Horizon's month to month term,
| which is an unfair comparison. Horizon is $3.75 a month
| billed annually, while Gyazo is $4.99.
| RIMR wrote:
| Gyazo offers actual security features though.
|
| Regardless, I will note that you could not answer the
| questions I asked about your product.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > You're comparing Horizon to cloud storage services, which I
| think is unfair. Horizon is focused on the sharing aspect.
| Uploading to Google Drive and OneDrive is not as effortless
| as Horizon and won't provide the same frictionless viewing
| experience for whoever you share the links to.
|
| Yeah...
|
| It's nice that you get a business opportunity out of this,
| but one of my first thoughts was how easy it used to be to
| host images on Dropbox. But they made it bad, and the other
| big syncing services have the same bad experience. They
| clearly don't want to be image hosts.
| fragmede wrote:
| Not even Open AI, which arguably has the resources to
| programmatically "look" at images and know if they are
| okay, wants to do image hosting. That should give you
| pause. What do their lawyers know that you don't?
| sweca wrote:
| I'm not sure why OpenAI would. They're an AI research
| company. You're confusing scope with their legal team's
| considerations.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Why would they want to?
|
| Also these services still make it easy to share a folder
| of images, they just make embedded uses a pain.
| sebstefan wrote:
| It was surprisingly easy to configure ShareX to work with
| Horizon! Handles deletion and putting the URL of the uploaded
| file in the clipboard and all.
|
| Hopefully you guys could collaborate to become a default
| file/image destination uploader that actually handles logging in
| and logging out of an account.
|
| https://i.horizon.pics/35dwiVGxz8 <-- Uploaded via ShareX.
|
| ```
|
| // Uploader import string { "Version":
| "16.1.0", "Name": "horizon.pics",
| "DestinationType": "ImageUploader", "RequestMethod":
| "POST", "RequestURL": "https://api.horizon.pics/upload",
| "Headers": { "Cookie": "token=YOUR_SESSION_HERE"
| }, "Body": "MultipartFormData", "FileFormName":
| "file", "URL": "{json:.data.fileLink}",
| "DeletionURL": "{json:.data.deleteLink}", "ErrorMessage":
| "{json:.message}" }
|
| ```
| sweca wrote:
| Hey, please don't do this! Your cookie token is actually
| ephemeral. You have a permanent upload key assigned to your
| account. Download the ShareX config from Settings > General >
| App Configuration.
| sebstefan wrote:
| Wow. So you already provide a ShareX Custom Uploader
| configuration file on your website. I wasn't expecting that.
| I expected it so little that I didn't even bother searching.
|
| So it works basically the same as mine but instead of the
| shitty cookie workaround I did, you have a header called
| "Authorization": "Bearer xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-
| xxxxxxxxxxxx" that won't blow up in my face every few weeks
|
| Very nice
| jappgar wrote:
| A cool demonstration of your skills but not a viable business
| unfortunately.
|
| Others have said this, but t bears repeating: When you reach the
| size where you can actually make good money your site will be
| hosting plenty of malware and other illegal content.
| tidyread wrote:
| Privacy and security are important considerations for file
| hosting services, and Horizon seems to be addressing these well
| with its built-in controls and encryption features. The desktop
| app integration is a nice touch that could make the service more
| convenient to use.
| sweca wrote:
| Thank you. I try my best to balance both privacy and security
| and functionality.
| jiangplus wrote:
| It looks so awesome! Is it related to Ente?
| sweca wrote:
| Nope! Not related, but I have worked on Ente. Ente's CEO is
| actually the person who told me to try launching on HN.
| sirjaz wrote:
| Are there any plans for Windows App support? There are more
| Windows 10 and 11 users than all iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS users
| combined
| sweca wrote:
| There's ShareX for Windows which Horizon supports. You can
| download the configuration files in Settings > General > App
| Configuration.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Are private domains allowed on the free plan?
|
| https://docs.hrzn.cool/pics/add_private_domain
| bangaladore wrote:
| > This feature is exclusive to Horizon Everest users. If you
| are not subscribed to Horizon Everest, you can do so in your
| Dashboard by clicking the Upgrade button in your navigation
| bar. [1]
|
| [1] https://docs.hrzn.cool/pics/add_private_domain
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Thanks. Another question. So this does not only images but
| any file or text file or functions as a pastebin etc? If so,
| is there a way of interacting with it as such as a pastebin
| and or uploading other type of files, other than the webui?
| Eg a command line tool? I see you made hrznsc but it seems
| for screenshots only, so perhaps just need to use some sort
| of api method for the command-line/scripty sort of pastebin-
| like and other files interaction/functionality that many
| users might be after?
| sweca wrote:
| Yes, there's pastebin as well. You can use ShareX on
| Windows or Horizon Alpine on macOS and some Linux distros
| (not 100% compatible with all, but Ubuntu seems to work
| just fine).
|
| No command line tool yet, but the paste API is pretty
| simple to understand through network inspection.
| LouisContant wrote:
| Hi,
|
| A bit late to the thread but was wondering where you got your art
| for the top of the page? They're useful little diagrams I'd love
| to hire person who made those
| sweca wrote:
| Can you please clarify which art? The mockup was done by
| myself. The mock images in the mockup are from Unsplash.
| LouisContant wrote:
| Hi!
|
| I love your product page and was wondering where you got the
| vector art for the core features card. I've been looking and
| can't seem to find a good source for them
| sweca wrote:
| Thanks! I hired someone from Fiverr several years ago, and have
| been rocking with their art ever since.
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