logoalt Hacker News

01HNNWZ0MV43FFtoday at 2:19 AM1 replyview on HN

"Award-winning journalist on Fox News" and the padlock with an American flag really sells it for me.

Maybe I should get in on this grift. Curl American Patriot Gold Marine Corps Never Forget 9/11 Edition for only $200. Loads _any_ URL.


Replies

ErroneousBoshtoday at 11:14 AM

> "Award-winning journalist on Fox News" and the padlock with an American flag really sells it for me.

About 20 years ago I worked on backend stuff for the sales site for a well-known UK retailer that advertised their spiffy new web store on TV.

Part of the TV ad had a couple of smiley young people with Techie Girl typing on a computer, and a big animated padlock swooping in and clicking shut and Mumsy Middle-Aged Manager smiling happily, and cut to Hacker Guy typing furiously in a darkened room as a big padlock pops up on the screen and "SECURITY LOCKED" popping up, as he scowls at the screen. The VO was something like "and it's safe to buy online - our site has Security Built In" <fx: heavy padlock clunks shut>

This sequence - the animation and filming this part right their in our own web dev office - cost over five grand of mid-2000s money to make, most of which being the padlock animations. The clunk was my bike lock.

£5000. Five Thousand Pounds.

I can tell you they spent well under 1/20th of that in developer time to actually write the security code for the site. It didn't even use HTTPS, which was kind of a requirement even in 2006.