piemadd

sounds like a markov chain going berserk

1. it is xterm, xterm.js to be sepcific 2. uses no-vnc. if you own the repl theres a way to set the vnc server password and access from your own client, but i forget how. probably on the replit docs/blog

A few weeks ago, I published Amtrak.js, an NPM package which allowed for easy access of the Amtrak API. If you know anything about the API, it is not a simple process fetching data.

I expected that apps and websites would pop up using my library (and the rehosted API at api.amtrak.cc), but none ever came. As my uni classes cooled down from the start of the year, I decided to take it upon myself to make a train tracking app.

My main intention here was to have it use quite a bit less data than Amtrak's official website while also being less clunky on mobile. Why? Well, trying to track your train on 3G and the page happily munching through 10MB of data as fast as possible is, well, not ideal.

I should probably make a more technical writeup over how all of this works at some point in the future, but feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer!

Nope. Go to https://maps.amtrak.com/services/MapDataService/trains/getTr... and let me know how readable the data is lol, though I have also made an API based off of this library (and integrated it into the library) which you can read on the docs: https://api.amtrak.piemadd.com/docs

Some people have theorized it wasn't Amtrak who wanted the bs encryption (also probably why the keys haven't changed in 3 years and they've made no effort to prevent people from grabbing this data) but actually some sort of National Security jargon.

I actually came across an old hackernews thread where you mentioned you built the site, I guess you have a library to do it for you now lol

The thing is, you're probably right. Over time they've been restricting items for bots in over 100 servers. Right now its to see the users in the server and also to see the statuses of these users.

> Though Lively was a project at YC Research in 2016/2017 and replit is a YC 18 company I think.

You're right about Replit going to YC after Lively, but Replit actually started much earlier (2009ish)

Touché

funnily enough, thats exactly what the lengthener is doing!

Only problem is that i'd have to pay 700 dollars lol

my wallet weeps

Well I made the URL lengthener so you should obviously hire me /s

so what you're seeing is the creation of a zero width space. When you combine an \x20 and an \x0b, it makes a zero width space, which your browser ends up ignoring. Only reason these are in there are to ensure the URLs are at a minimum length. Who wants a mere 20 character URL when you can have a minimum of 250 characters.

I added a little desc to the footer. TLDR its simply to see num of users and i've made the dashboard itself public so you can see for yourself.

I think you were accessing the site while I was working on some changes haha! I think whats happening in the one while goes in an endless loop, your URL legitimately got too long for browsers to comprehend so some data got cut off

Really all I'd need to do is change the minimum length, which i could totally do right now without consequences, which I think i will do.

Not tracking actual users, but more general metrics. Genuinely wanted to see num of visitors but since the site is static this was probably the most privacy-oriented ones I could think of. Trust me, i'm not sure what data i'd be able to sell from this legitimate joke of a site lol

That video and tom mentioning base65536 was actually the initial inspiration for this

oh wow thanks!

Well, I use Replit as an ide and just hitting the run button meant my fix was immediately deployed. didn't have to push to git or wait ssh into a machine to pull from master and restart

doesn't work anymore >:)

with the pure speed of replit i went from issue opened to closed in like 20 minutes