HN Explorer

64 comments

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6stringmerc
For now, the sun, later, the moon.
orky56
It's all coplanar in the solar system so let's go with the traditional answer, "the sky."
6stringmerc
Truth be told that was the original response I was going to go with, and it just felt a little off. However, it is indeed quite accurate. 5 year old me would approve.
percept
WaaS
andrewstuart2
"We used to spend time thinking about uptime and hardware costs for our silly test pages. No more!"
asimuvPR
Who would I contact to make a nasa related html5 game for that page? Anybody from nasa here?
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noobermin
Why did they bother to wrap it in a <div> tag but have no body or even html tag?
dennisnedry
Because it's still somewhat structured instead of not structured?
capote
Why not a <span> or a <dingleberry> then? I think this is the key thing to discuss here.
Ambrosia
><dingleberry>

Now that's semantic html

tyingq
Prompted me to do a little experimentation with google query parameters. Some potentially concerning stuff out there...

This one seems offline, but a typical example:

ftp://asapdata.arc.nasa.gov/incoming/BOB/HyspIRI/data-bob/00_README.MASTERweb_updating.txt

  3. Login to MASTER database:
    http://asterdb.jpl.nasa.gov/log/dbstart.asp

  a. User: eric; Password: Upd8t3r
davesque
Maybe it's on their intranet? It doesn't seem to be accessible.
davesque
Nevermind, just got to it :P.
chris_wot
Are you sure that's a good idea? This seems to be something to do with flight paths and the Ames research centre...
davesque
Didn't log in. Don't want to. Just wanted to see if the URL returned anything.
mpnordland
Seems like it's working to me, what do you mean by offline?
chris_wot
And all of a sudden the FBI has a lot of IP addresses to follow-up...
mpnordland
I should note that I did alert the sysadmin and he told me he was taking it down and would figure out how to secure it.
koolba
Ha! My initial reaction at the combination of "Whatup" and .gov TLD[1] was that this is a government sanctioned WhatsApp replacement.

[1]: That is before realizing that it's nasa.gov

soperj
That would be one without encryption...
koolba
Oh I'm sure it'd have encryption. Heck it wouldn't even have any backdoors either. Only sidedoors ...
kevando
So I have the same testing plan as astronauts?
chris_wot
Only if you are developing in space.
PaulHoule
Whohoo! NASA makes a web page that is smaller than the software that took Apollo to the moon.
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faide
Can someone explain the purpose of this page? I'm feeling a little out of the loop at the moment...
capote
whatup
chris_wot
No, really... what is the point of this page?
Kluny
Probably someone testing their server configuration and forgot to remove it.
chris_wot
It seems like it's not really all that interesting...
Kluny
Interesting enough for you to spend 5 minutes of your life commenting. I agree that it's a bit low on nutrition though. Funny to see stuff like this once in a while, but I wouldn't want the front page to get clogged up with this kind of nonsense.
chris_wot
Yeah, but only because I thought there was something to it, and also it was a Friday night :-)

It did lead to some interesting discussions, so I'm not criticising - just a little disappointed!

capote
Did you really need someone to explain the purpose of a file called test.html? Seems like the filename explains it.
chris_wot
Why is that so interesting?
capote
Why does it matter how interesting it is? It's humorous and we had some fun with it.
chris_wot
You just answered my question. Cheers.
Forbo
I'm sorry you received downvotes for asking a question.

Based on the url (test.html), I would imagine this was just someone's quick one-off attempt to see if something worked that ended up getting left behind.

Edit: Looks like this was already answered downthread in the time that I took reading the comments. Whoops.

freyr
The closest point in a comet’s orbit to the Sun is called “perihelion”. The most distant point is called “aphelion”.
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hawkice
Now it 404s. Good while it lasted.
ebel
ah, they just changed. 404'd now.
kornish
Bummer, looks like they took it down.
chris_wot
Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine!