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I had to kill a free service that I absolutely loved due to similar issues.

Couldn’t find a way to monetize, running an old version of node. Upstart vs Systemd, a niche database (rethinkdb) that fell out of favor and upgrading was too painful.

It wasn’t nearly as popular as SSLPing, but it was mine and had a following.

Thanks for writing this note: it’s OK to shut something down if it causes you agony.



RethinkDB. What a blast from the past. They were such a compelling product, but they just never got the attention they deserved. Mongo by comparison was strictly worse, but they never got out from under Mongos shadow.


Hey! SSLPing creator here... I feel your pain, deeply, inside me at the moment!


What was the service?

Getting broken things going again can be kinda fun...


It was a game called Kriegspiel hosted at krgspl.com

More info on the game here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)

It worked really well at first, but didn’t scale due to some tech decisions. Maybe at some point I’ll fix it and rerelease it :)




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