nowhere: an entire website encoded in a URL

70 points - today at 10:44 AM

Source

Comments

foltik today at 11:57 AM
> The internet promised freedom. Platforms delivered permission.

> Private through physics. Not through policy.

Goodness, LLM really convinced itself this was groundbreaking.

You could describe a .html file sitting on your computer with all of the same marketing bluster.

Someone has to send it to you all the same, and you might as well not rely on some random internet service to render it??

bronxpockfabz today at 11:46 AM
> hosted nowhere

> present everywhere

> Still here when the internet isn't

I'm afraid the OP may not have full understanding of how internet works. This is either some kind of a post irony, or some vibe code fever dream.

Either way, I'm deeply confused.

pdyc today at 1:34 PM
I did a showhn with similar idea(got a whooping 1 point and was flagged as spam which was later removed by mods), you paste your html and it encodes it into url, you can share the url without server involvement. I even added a url shortener because while technically feasible encoded url becomes long and QR code no longer works reliably. I also added annotation so you can add your comments and pass it to colleagues.

https://easyanalytica.com/tools/html-playground/

wateralien today at 11:56 AM
Igor_Wiwi today at 12:03 PM
I am using similar method to share Markdown files as one big URL like this: https://mdview.io/#mdv=N4IgbiBcCMA0IBMCGAXJUTADrhzWOAtgnjgMQ...
giancarlostoro today at 1:38 PM
You have to fish around to figure out how to make your URL, only to find out it is some browser extension.
nmoadev today at 12:42 PM
Interesting thought to explore but overblown claims. For the privacy claims to hold, a fundamental conceit is that you trust and use the nowhere app / domain. The source is open, so let’s imagine that you individually can be satisfied.

Now, the idea that entire apps can be shared via a link in a Signal chat or a QR code on a flier is a fascinating bit of compression and potential for archiving.

Imagine games shared on paper QR codes at a meetup.

Oh but here’s the rub, do you trust the arbitrary code you just scanned off of a QR code? TLS has become a proxy for trusted authorship. “Well if it’s really coming my bank then it’s probably safe”

toyg today at 11:37 AM
If I understand correctly, when a nowhere URL is pasted in a browser, what happens is:

1. the browser downloads generic JS libraries from the main site

2. these libraries then decode the fragment part, and transform it into the UI

If that's correct, someone still has to host or otherwise distribute the libraries - hence why you need the app to use it while offline (it ships the libraries).

This is not criticism, I'm just trying to get my head around how it works.

zane__chen today at 11:52 AM
I don't see any demo.

But would this mean encoding the entire dist folder after build step?

csmantle today at 12:44 PM
This resembles some serverless pastebins. Data is serialized into the fragment part, and client-side JS deserializes them. The only practical difference is that this app sets them as HTML while those set them as text.
anonymous1e today at 11:41 AM
Where is the URL???? any example/demo.
hyperific today at 1:15 PM
fainpul today at 11:57 AM
Similar to mdview.io (markdown only, not offline) and a suggestion I made a while back:

https://tinyurl.com/mrpas5dc

Velocifyer today at 12:58 PM
Why don't they just use a data: URI?
anonymous1e today at 11:58 AM
This is cool and fun, but the sites created by this wouldn't be accessible through search engines as its not hosted anywhere.

So, its just like sending your sites link through email/whatsapp or any other channel. I don't know what the real usecase for this idea could be!!!!

oleggromov today at 12:42 PM
If you could only send a text message...
hoppp today at 11:56 AM
Could just share a file then?
cagenut today at 11:49 AM
similar enough that i'll share, I think i learned this from an HN comment, you can put the code for a page in the url (with obvious limits):

this works as a "url" in both chrome and safari:

  data:text/html, <html contenteditable><head><title>notes</title></head><body><textarea rows=36 cols=140></textarea></body></html>
halfcat today at 11:57 AM
Was this forked from the nocode project?

https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode

deleted today at 11:35 AM
Markoff today at 11:26 AM
How it works

A URL fragment is the part after #. The HTTP specification prohibits browsers from sending fragments to servers. The server that delivers the page never receives the content, never knows which site you are viewing, and has no way to find out. No content is collected, stored, or logged. The privacy is structural.

A site that was never put on a server can never be taken off one. There is no account to suspend, no host to pressure, no platform that can decide your content should not exist. Each copy of the link is a complete copy of the site data.

Site creators can encrypt the URL itself with a password. Even possessing the link reveals nothing about what is inside.

https://github.com/5t34k/nowhere

ivanjermakov today at 12:01 PM
LLM agent discovered plain text and base64 encoding?
d--b today at 12:46 PM
also known as the html file.
ajsnigrutin today at 11:41 AM
What's the point?

You still have to share the link somewhere, why not just share a block of text (invitation, campaign, whatever) directly instead?