(slightly off-topic) i wonder if one of the HN admins can update the rules for the domain shown in parentheses beside the title. it would be nice if sr.ht URLs included the username like github URLs do.
Dan is quite friendly, so I'd recommend emailing hn@ycombinator.com and suggest it. I'd guess the odds are high since gitlab.com links appear to behave the same way as github so there's precedent
I don't understand the use case for this software. Is the primary value that it will redirect to an alternative FOSS service if the requested FOSS service is offline?
I can kinda understand the value of redirecting from a non-FOSS frontend to a FOSS frontend, but if someone were inclined to share a link to a FOSS frontend in the first place I'm not sure why you'd go to the extra trouble of putting the link behind this service.
I don't think it's meant to be primarily used as a link sharing tool. I think it's supposed to be a tool you can use to redirect to a FOSS front end when you are using a user agent that doesn't support extensions or plug-ins to automatically redirect you
One use case that jumps out for me is that a link sharing site can help users connect to a more functional site. Bypass paywall, login, etc. HN used to have a "web" link that did this, but it was removed. Now you'll often see comments that manually link these sites.
I've actually been looking [1] for an alternate HN front-end that does this (I'm not a fan of the extensions). Farside looks like an optimal way to do it.
I like that this has the ability to be used as a prefix on a service's url. I don't need an extension.
I also like that this daemon (for lack of a better word), tries to keep its list of redirect targets fresh by pinging them. I have libredict[0] installed, but it is all but removed at this point. More often then not the instances I would be redirected to would respond with 4xx and 5xx errors. Not useful. :(
This is a really clever idea. I have very little energy to behoove myself to get started on fediverse/FOSS platforms, but am always happy if a friend or piece of media provides a link to nitter or otherwise. Making that easier is a good thing.
