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dang
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/265340/horsechat-horsechat-h... gives background.
thieving_magpie
I hope nobody read that and still thought it might be real.

Some of the tagging they did was funny at least:

keyvalues: "tag=do-horses-dream-of-electric-oats"

keyvalues: "tag=90s-horses-will-remember-this"

dang
Mea culpa—I thought it might be real, but didn't have time to look at it.

Are .horse jokes a thing now?

thieving_magpie
Apparently! I was fooled at first but then started thinking how odd it is that the OP knew their whole company history and downfall.
iraphael
If you are as confused as I was and, like me, you came to the comments first instead of reading the page, I got you fam: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/265340/horsechat-horsechat-h...
petercooper
I'm guessing it's deliberate but if there were any page to push the ardent anti-adblocker over the edge to installing an adblocker.. that's it.
personjerry
Is this site for real? One of the ads literally redirects me so I can't see the article at all
BorisMelnik
Fun app but RIP your server, there are about 100 ppl in there right now pasting books of text.
katkit
It's getting heavily spammed currently, yeah. All i'm seeing is "TREE SUCE DES BITES". I don't even know what that means
hamhamed
afaik it means 'trees suck dicks' from french.
eterm
It looks like it uses socket.io for connectivity.
Confiks
Okay. So this is a chat application surrounded by a 'not so' elaborate hoax concerning floppy drives someone supposedly found in a vacant lot. It's made pretty obvious though; a screenshot of an Instagram photo with over nine-thousand likes and comments shop't.
650REDHAIR
I don't understand how this is getting so many votes... It's all clearly fake and the website isn't any good. Solid spam.
GauntletWizard
I'm never certain what to make of 'Found footage' type art projects like this. There's certainly value in building with a retro style, and I see the fun in pretending it's an artifact of the retro time it comes from. I'm just not certain what to do with it. Perhaps that's the point; It's a toy that excites some and bores others, and like-minded people can collaborate and chat about the toy that has excited them.

I'm also sort of expecting a flood of bronies on said chat soon. I'm not certain if that will create more or less shitposting than HN.

isthmus_
traceroute bad.horse
mercora
if someone ever wondered why ipv4 address space is exhausting so fast: this is part of the reasons ;D
TazeTSchnitzel
If they were considerate they could've made it IPv6-only.
killnine
bad.horse

bad.horse

bad.horse

bad.horse

he.rides.across.the.nation

the.thoroughbred.of.sin

he.got.the.application

that.you.just.sent.in

it.needs.evaluation

so.let.the.games.begin

a.heinous.crime

a.show.of.force

a.murder.would.be.nice.of.course

mercora
if you increase the ttl it goes on much further (27 hops in 162.252.204.0/22)
maemilius
bad.horse

bad.horse

bad.horse

he-s.bad

the.evil.league.of.evil

is.watching.so.beware

the.grade.that.you.receive

will.be.your.last.we.swear

so.make.the.bad.horse.gleeful

or.he-ll.make.you.his.mare

o_o

you-re.saddled.up

there-s.no.recourse

it-s.hi-ho.silver

signed.bad.horse

EDIT: that's what I get for cp'ing out of Emacs. :/

hamhamed
Code to spam:

  var $ci = $('.chat-input');
  var str = "spammy string";
  setInterval(function() {
    $ci.value = str;
    document.horse.whinny();
  }, 50);
jeddawson
Their broadcast method rate limits you to 1 message every 500ms. It also looks like they're actively changing it to cut every message to 500 chars now too.

Some kind of infinite backoff based on how quickly you're trying to send messages would probably slow the spam down and make room for human pace messaging to occur.

teen
ha, i took it down with: setInterval(function() {io.connect().emit('join') }, 10)

but it looks like they hot patched the messages out within a few mins : ) well played

Elepsis
The active spam happening there right now is if anything a fabulous demonstration of just how terrible anonymous people on the internet tend to be, and how quickly potentially fun things can go to crap as a result.
pantalaimon
There is also a button dedicated for nothing else but making horse noises in the chat.
Marqod
I coded this, didn't think it would be so popular! Just added more robust spam blocking to reign it in during the stampede!
personjerry
it doesn't appear to be working, according to all the neighs I'm seeing