cURL me, bro

$ curl kingsley.sh

Copy the above cURL into your terminal and run it.

Try it yourself

Paste the command below, or just click here to run it.

How

A Cloudflare Worker reads a header and serves the .nfo or index.html depending on the what was requested. cURL sends Accept: */*, so it gets the text .nfo, whereas browsers and crawlers (mostly) send Accept: text/html, so they get the HTML version of the site.

I made it look more like a bash script (e.g. ./hello.sh) by opting to remove the auto-https redirect. If that were enabled, that means curl kingsley.sh would return

<html>
<head><title>301 Moved Permanently</title></head>
<body>
<center><h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1></center>
<hr><center>cloudflare</center>
</body>
</html>

So, by disabling auto-https, I'm able to use a shorter curl command: curl kingsley.sh and not be forced to do curl https://kingsley.sh to avoid the 301 redirect message.

You can force either version yourself: curl -H 'Accept: text/html' https://kingsley.sh. Over plain http that same header gives you the 301. I created a Cloudflare Redirect rule that upgrades only the requests that accept HTML. Browsers get https, cURL gets http.

Why

I used to love the 8-bit/ansi/ascii graphics and sounds from the 90s/00s warez scene: pre-AI, all crafted out of love & by hand (well, mouse & keyboard). Unzipping 10-30 .zip/.rar, to re-build 1 big .zip/.rar to extract a .iso, or an .exe (and hope it wasn't a virus), & .nfo that contained the cracker group's cool artwork, numbered build/install steps, and signing off with "greetz". There was just something special about growing up in that era of the internet, it was just such a fun (and wild) time.

Check out this cool documentary on the early ansi art scene: Safe Crackers:The Art of Warez.