Where is everyone?

Valar_Dragon · Post by **Valar_Dragon** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:04 am

Where is everybody? This site looks like it used to be super active! It seems that almost noone has come in the past two years though. Is it still active? I can't really tell from the forums. I've been here for about two weeks and have been having fun solving these challenges, but I just wanted to ask what happened xD, why is it a ghost town now!

Sat Jan 17, 2015 10:49 pm

Well, there used to be updates and new challenges on this website, but this is not happening any longer. If you want to, you can send a mail to the owner of this site: adum at adum dot com

Maybe if you ask him nicely, he'll return and start again with the updates

CodeX · Post by **CodeX** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 1:07 am

It looks like 2009 was the heyday of this site judging by the Most users ever online was 793 on Fri Oct 02, 2009 3:44 pm on the index page and distant memories, around two years after the site started up (15 April~15 May 2007).

I guess this site has been stagnating on Google for these past 6 years (one letter away from tears :'(), I don't think there's been any apparently new content in this time aside from Crossflip and some posts that aren't going to have content people are would stumble accross (I can't guess/work out what the answer is, are there any vague hints I can get?) - and there's only so much content and activity to keep people around once they arrive.

I suspect one of the greatest contributing factors to the lacking continuation of success on this site is the unlocking of challenges which limits the content available to visitors (which may also be one of it's strengths to certain users), although I appreciate it probably appeals to a generally different audience, projecteuler.net looks to be going strong unlike dear old hacker.org which is at 1,092,028 vs. 38,821 on Alexa.

hackthissite.org looks to be going fairly strong, it has some sequential challenges but broken up into separate distinct categories which may be a contributing factor - maybe this site (hacker.org) appeals more to individuals with a broad skill set or a lot of determination/stubbornness/time; that said, I suspect the ongoing articles on HTS are probably one of the greatest contributing factors to it's continuing success - osix.net has a plethora of articles, but both it's content stagnation and varying quality didn't help it succeed (it went belly up pretty quickly in some time around 2009).

I don't think there's a whole lot of hope for a revival of the forums (which would probably be helped just by getting new blood), but the site probably makes (more than?) enough money from the adverts on here to keep on ticking by without any intervention from the powers that be - although maybe it's just a fondness that keeps this site going?

In summary: if you want a site like this to thrive then having new indexable content that people may search for and stir up interest, along with a fairly low or non-existent barrier to getting rolling then hopefully you will be off to a good start. Failing that, throw in some ripped videos and e-whorey content and see how things go.

waffle waffle waffle

Valar_Dragon · Post by **Valar_Dragon** » Sun Jan 18, 2015 1:44 am

Thanks for replying, its great to know that people still check up on hacker.org!
I actually found out about hacker.org after doing project euler for awhile!

Yeah I'l try asking adum if I ever have any ideas if he could update the site! I think you're right codeX, the best way to keep the place alive is to have more active people! Challenges unlocking I think is one of the coolest parts about the website, but some indexable content would definitely be nice!

helly0d · Post by **helly0d** » Sat Feb 28, 2015 4:05 pm

Hi guys,

Sorry for being late to the party.

I was wondering the same thing... what happened with this place? I feel like i am still solving challenges but in post-apocalyptic world.

I would like to know if we could gather 5 - 10 of us and bring this place up again. New design, one-page application. New API for the challenges system and for the games.

Also @CodeX, projecteuler.net or hackthissite.org are not good enough for me. hacker.org offers a combination of challenges and of games that can't be found on these sites. I would really be glad to help bring hacker.org back to its glory.

avrrobot · Post by **avrrobot** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:19 am

I haven't got any time in the next 3 months, but after that, I would love to do something like that

Sun Mar 01, 2015 10:58 am

helly0d wrote:I would like to know if we could gather 5 - 10 of us and bring this place up again. New design, one-page application. New API for the challenges system and for the games.

And how exactly would you install this without adum being involved?

helly0d · Post by **helly0d** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 1:00 pm

AMindForeverVoyaging wrote:
helly0d wrote:I would like to know if we could gather 5 - 10 of us and bring this place up again. New design, one-page application. New API for the challenges system and for the games.
And how exactly would you install this without adum being involved?

I am sure we can track him down. I would prefer to first have the 5 guys and then we could knock on his door, get him out to have a beer and discuss. Ok, i now I sound very weird and like a creep, but when you do want to do something there is always a way.

lvhao945 · Post by **lvhao945** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 4:01 pm

I'm still learning & solving tasks...I like the website...hope adum will come back... I had send some emails to adum .... not received a response...

avrrobot · Post by **avrrobot** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 5:06 pm

I hope you dont't mean literally knocking on his door,
because we are scattered all over the world and I don't even know
in which country adum lives.

helly0d · Post by **helly0d** » Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:19 pm

@avrrobot I hope that adum will remember about this place and he will get back. And i meant that literally because i would like to meet him in person and talk face to face about this. I mean really wouldn't you want the same ? To be able to at least have a beer with some of us? Let's call it a summer vacation where all we could meet.

avrrobot · Post by **avrrobot** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:43 am

Well of course I would like to do that. However it might be quite difficult to do.

helly0d · Post by **helly0d** » Mon Mar 02, 2015 11:15 am

Well, it seems that we can reach adum. If there is someone from Scottsdale Arizona you can even actually knock on his door. These details were found by a simple whois search.

I am from Romania, but I am planning on going to HOPE in 2016 (if there will be a HOPE in 2016) so maybe we will meet there. Who knows.

Valar_Dragon · Post by **Valar_Dragon** » Wed Mar 04, 2015 1:17 pm

Lol, why don't we make an idea for some new challenges or the system, then email adum about it rather than going a roundabout and creepy way and trying to track where he lives to grab a drink.

My Ideas:
First lets get bitwar and wormaggeddon on a script that runs once every 24 hours.'
Second Lets make a new hacking game, those are fun!
Third make a hash breaking challenge. Similar to the one that adobe had a long time ago. It would show to importance of salting your hash. http://xkcd.com/1286/
As CodeX said I also think we should have some indexable content too.
I like the map and sequentiality of the challenges, but also not having that would be nice too. It would be cool to have a web section of challenges, independent of the map, and a coding challenge set, and etc that are independent of the map.

Thu Mar 05, 2015 12:38 am

I think at this point, it might be a more realistic option to create a new website. This new site could take hacker.org as an inspiration, and provide similar challenges and games.

I sent a mail to adum in April of 2014, asking him if he could find the time to do some maintenance on this site. His reply was "yes, some maintenance would be appropriate. i'll try to find some time to do that."

The last time I tried to contact him via mail was on 21.02.2015. I haven't got a reply so far.

It would certainly be awesome if adum were to come back, but unfortunately it does not look like this is going to happen. I would be happy to be wrong here.