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Why motherfuckingwebsite.com is in my bookmarks

8 points by Kluny ↗ HN
When I try to log into the wifi at Starbucks or the grocery store or whatever, usually it will send me to some internet portal to sign away all of my rights.

Usually the portal doesn't work correctly, which looks like 5 bars of wifi signal, and a privacy error when I try to visit any website.

I go to http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ because it's delivered via http with no security cert, so I can get redirected to the shitty internet portal and continue using the free wifi.

This seems like a kind of sophisticated trick, and I can't imagine that the average soccer mom is doing that.

So what do most people do to get on the store wifi? Is there another trick that's better? Is the world full of people complaining that the wifi is broken when it's not? What do you guys do?

7 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 25.4 ms ] thread
rajacombinator
I usually just go to a “new” site that isn’t cached by my browser, that seems to do the trick. But I agree it’s an insanely bad user experience and an absolute disgrace that a better solution hasn’t been implemented yet.
nlawalker
neverssl.com was made just for this purpose.
g82918
I think example.com should also work. I believe in HTTPS as almost a goal in itself, but having HTTP work is useful.
dhruvkar
i use Firefox which gives you a button to redirect to the sign in page when it detects a portal,
polyterative
my last submission was flagged because it contained swearing. Why this is fine?

I am liking this content, just trying to understand

Tomte
Flagging is very, very random "at the edges".

People repeatedly flagged a submission of mine, and I suspect that was because they thought it was total bullshit (woman has child despite having no vagina). They didn't read the article, I think, because there was a peer-reviewed paper in a reputable journal referenced in it.

What I mean is, take flagging as an opportunity to think about whether you misjudged the value of a submission (I sometimes find that people are right in flagging), and if you don't think so, re-submit a few days later.

Other eyeballs, other flagging decisions. With things like swearing it obviously depends very much on who the first people to see the submission are.