Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Yes, they did, they actually thought it was quite funny. They even cached the actual download once they realized we wouldn't be able to deal with that either. The software was the first version of the public peer-to-peer webcam software I wrote:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000510010712/http://www.camarad...




Oh my! This is a blast from the past. I was a kid, probably 10 years old or something, and I had a LEGO MovieMaker webcam. I was trying to set it up as a sort of security/monitoring camera for the back door of the small business my parents ran. I remember using this software and supposedly getting it working.

I invited my parents to come see what I had done, and somehow typed the website wrong and ended up on a spanish-language porn site. I could not hit the back button fast enough. Possibly one of the most embarrassing memories of my childhood.

I have no idea what my parents thought I was up to.


Heh. Hilarious story, thank you! Camarades.com had just about everything, from people being born to people dying and everything in between. It was a pretty honest (sometimes brutally honest) slice of life.

One of the most popular cams for years was an old person that was extremely ill and that rarely moved but he had pretty big fanclub and he thought it was quite funny that he was more famous on what eventually became his deathbed than he had ever been while he was still active. After he died his family asked to remove all the images and close the account which of course we did. Makes you wonder if all those people wishing him well over the years kept him going a bit longer. What is interesting is that if you did this today I'm pretty sure the jerks would drown out the nice people by a considerable margin, of course there were jerks back then as well, but on the whole the internet seemed to be a much nicer place to hang out than it is today.


Not sure if you're aware, but it's interesting that you mention Lego as the person you're responding to once accidentally bought literally tons of bulk Lego and later designed an automated Lego sorting machine. It's a fun read:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/


Haha I know that pain.

When I was a kid I asked my mom to print me out Grand Theft Auto cheats from Gamewinners.com while she was in work.

Somehow I got the address wrong and she wanted to know why I wanted to print out pages and pages from a site dedicated to men cheating on their wives. Got there in the end though and I still have some of those GTA cheats memorised.


Your mom might have another family in the Greater Toronto Area now, just so you are aware!


My then-wife was watching over my shoulder once as I typed something into the address bar. “Freshmeat.net” auto-completed, drawing a suspicious look from her.


Beautiful. The internet was a truly different place back then...


With 100K visitors / day or so we were in the top 30 websites world wide in 1998. The really big boosts came from the Space Shuttle webcasts and an Yves St. Laurent fashion show webcast from Paris.

Hard to believe now, a typical blog post will already pick up 30K visitors without too much trouble.


I could listen to stories of the Old Net all day.


Enjoy:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom/

And apologies for the non-working images.


Sweet, looking forward to reading.


Serves you right for hotlinking ;-)


Yes, but at least it was my own domain :)

I didn't see that consequence coming when camarades.com shut down. I really should dig up those images and repair the blog but the todo list isn't really getting any shorter on this end.


How is this on the Wayback machine?!


You can click "about this capture" for more information

> Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.


Fun fact: Amazon's home assistant was named after Alexa Internet. Amazon owns Alexa Internet.


it's not named after it, it's just amazon is so massive they have to reuse brand names. AWS has exhausted not only the supply of IPv4 addresses but also the supply of 3 letter initialisms.


What's an embargo period?


A period during which someone who knows something or has something does not release it to the public.


As pioneer of "<something> On Internet", do you regret not turning out like Russ Hanneman? ;) (OR DID YOU???!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzAdXyPYKQo&ab_channel=yate5...

https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Russ_Hanneman

I'm just glad I didn't turn out like Erlich Bachman! (OR DID I???!)

https://www.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/4jmlv9/wh...

https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Erlich_Bachman


I've finally gotten around to watching this series, and it's disturbing how many moments I've watched that were more familiar than they should have been, and too many characters I could instantly put a real name to....




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: