🕰️ The Bitcointalk Time Machine: Share Your Memories!

[crwth]

🕰️ The Bitcointalk Time Machine: Share Your Memories!
Launch Time Machine | Main Project Thread

Did you find a forgotten gem using the ForumLabs Time Machine? This is the place to share it!

Whether it's your very first post from 2013, a legendary high-merit debate, a historically awful price prediction, or just a funny snapshot of how different the crypto world used to be, we want to see it.

How to share:
1. Go to timemachine.forumlabs.org
2. Enter a Bitcointalk username, UID, or profile URL and click "Travel back".
3. Explore the memories using the "Throwback", "This Day", or "Firsts" tabs.
4. Go to the post link using Read on Bitcointalk, the date, and the link to the original topic and paste it below!
^{(You can screenshot it and link it as well, it's up to you!)}


💡 A quick note on loading times: I have pre-cached the histories of several well-known members so their memories load instantly. However, because the forum contains millions of posts, I couldn't cache everyone's history immediately due to server storage limits.

📝 If you search for a user who hasn't been indexed yet, the Time Machine will take a few moments to fetch and organize their history in real time. Once it's done, it will be cached and load instantly for the next person!
^{(This has limits on the amount of accounts to be cached to prevent abuse)}

🛠️ Suggestions & Feedback: Have an idea to make the Time Machine better? Notice a weird bug while traveling back in time? Feel free to drop your suggestions and feedback in the project thread, along with your memories!


What did the Time Machine dig up for you? Drop your links and screenshots below! 👇

[crwth]

Reserved

[LoyceV]

What did the Time Machine dig up for you?

It reminded me how much of a n00b I was back then

Drop your links and screenshots below! 👇

And see me talk about shitcoins and faucets? Let's not do that

[bitmover]

What did the Time Machine dig up for you?

It reminded me how much of a n00b I was back then

Drop your links and screenshots below! 👇

And see me talk about shitcoins and faucets? Let's not do that

A decade ago... We all changed a lot. Bitcoin also changed, it isn't a shady internet money anymore, it is already mainstream, I see about it everyday in many different newspapers.

Sometimes I think about how my behavior changed in the forum a long those years.

Nice website!

[crwth]

Let me start sharing mine first here

For the throwback


For the Same day post from May 9 and the previous years


Time flies so fast, and it's nice to see that you can update old threads if you have any updates on them.

What did the Time Machine dig up for you?

It reminded me how much of a n00b I was back then

Drop your links and screenshots below! 👇

And see me talk about shitcoins and faucets? Let's not do that

We have all been there. There are some cringy posts that I dare not go back to!

Sometimes I think about how my behavior changed in the forum a long those years.

Nice website!

Any post that struck your interest?

[lovesmayfamilis]

Looking through the history of posts on that day, I saw the topic of a really real beginner at that time, who adhered to confidentiality from the very beginning, and someone who was in no hurry to get ranks or merit but achieved everything on his own, thanks to his knowledge.

The account celebrated its five-year registration on the forum yesterday, on May 8, and created its first post on May 9.

Greetings to you all Bitcoiners,

Despite being a long-time lurker of Bitcoin Talk, I never took the chance to create an account myself.  Some of you older forum users seem to be enjoying the lifestyle of daily posters for real, and I cannot lie!  It does seem to be pretty fun hanging around here sometimes.

I would like to introduce myself as a privacy and security advocate, although an amateur one, and so my top priority today is getting my profile up and running with maximized privacy settings.  For this reason, before I start my Bitcoin Talk adventure, I would like to politely ask for some tips concerning my forum account settings.

To the present time, I have restricted the forum IP logs and hid my e-mail address and online status from my profile.  If there is any other setting I may have missed, your suggestions will be met with a lot of appreciation from my side and hopefully merits from other readers who currently own some spendable ones.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

And yes, he's modest enough to talk about his merits, although it's worth it.

I'll take this opportunity to congratulate you, @PrivacyG, with five years of experience on the forum.

[PrivacyG]

And yes, he's modest enough to talk about his merits, although it's worth it.

I'll take this opportunity to congratulate you, @PrivacyG, with five years of experience on the forum.

I woke up to this today and I could not believe it.  Five years!  How in the World does time fly so fast lately!

You know what.  Five years ago I would have never imagined I would ever become a member someone else would even think of, let alone congratulate.  I really appreciate this and I thank you for reminding me.  This definitely made my Sunday!

-----

As for the Time Machine.  This sounds great and it does look like it is a place people already find fun visiting.  I can not visit it myself without Java Script unfortunately but this was apparently not even a requirement to make my day a much better day.  Thank you crwth!  Thank you Loyce.  Thank you lovesmayfamilis and everyone else who showed me appreciation and understanding along these five years.

It was a journey sure damn worth it and I do hope I left some notable replies here and there for others in the future to see.

[ryzaadit]

These are quite interesting for me, especially to see myself again over the past few years.

Anyway, appreciated for the cached times information. A bit of a question for this matter, do you know actually the time frame catches the process time? Like 10-second progress loading can index catches around 100 posts or something.

Also these kinds of things can be developed more for something like learning without everyone needing to research a site or search for a topic. Using the same function "Throwback" but the difference is from a whole forum. Example, a button "Historical" moment in the site and the site shows one historical moment history on the forum like: The first bitcoin transaction in real life, 10,000 BTC for two large pizzas.

These is mine, but in my Local Forum:

Did you use some AI to pick a random post like these ?

[crwth]

Anyway, appreciated for the cached times information. A bit of a question for this matter, do you know actually the time frame catches the process time? Like 10-second progress loading can index catches around 100 posts or something.

It depends on the number of posts because for 32k posts, it might take 25 minutes for the lookup on the account. I have set limits to flush the DB every 500 posts, so it won't overload memory.

Also these kinds of things can be developed more for something like learning without everyone needing to research a site or search for a topic. Using the same function "Throwback" but the difference is from a whole forum. Example, a button "Historical" moment in the site and the site shows one historical moment history on the forum like: The first bitcoin transaction in real life, 10,000 BTC for two large pizzas.

I'm thinking maybe it could just live check the data in the forum, so I don't need to store the data. It might be a great idea for the next project in forumlabs.org. Maybe I can integrate it into the next tool I'm creating.

These is mine, but in my Local Forum:

Did you use some AI to pick a random post like these ?

I didn't use AI with this because it would take computing power and a different deploy if with AI capabilities. It's just a randomizer for getting old posts with slightly weighted posts on those that got merited. If I get funding for this, I can proceed; for now, databases, lookups, and fetches are sufficient.

[LTU_btc]

Nice tool, it's always interesting to go through history and remember cool things from past. Your website reminds me one feature of Google Photos app when it gives throwbacks with old photos that you made in past.
Here is my random memory, though it's far from my most memorabe posts

It took maybe 10 minutes to scrap all my posts, but I'm not complaining. Almost 14k posts is a lot, I guess it's resource consuming to go through all of it.

[satscraper]

Is there any incentive ^{besides one’s own vanity} to use this tool when one can simply go to  user’s profile and sift through their posts in chronological order?

To test the OP’s tool tried it using satoshi’s account and found that the speed of sifting was markedly lower than when using the forum’s built‑in gear.

Beyond that, the posts are deprived of the context of the whole thread.

Found not useful for me, sorry.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Is there any incentive ^{besides one’s own vanity} to use this tool when one can simply go to  user’s profile and sift through their posts in chronological order?

To test the OP’s tool tried it using satoshi’s account and found that the speed of sifting was markedly lower than when using the forum’s built‑in gear.

Beyond that, the posts are deprived of the context of the whole thread.

Found not useful for me, sorry.

Probably none beside to see your own post few years back. Yes it doesnt have much utility but its the same like a memories pop up on facebook about your older post when you tried to use the OP website.

Some might find this interesting to see what kind their older post be like, a reminscing event for them. Its gonna be useless for others like you sir but for others this kind of thing is quite a nice tool.

[crwth]

Nice tool, it's always interesting to go through history and remember cool things from past. Your website reminds me one feature of Google Photos app when it gives throwbacks with old photos that you made in past.
Here is my random memory, though it's far from my most memorabe posts

It took maybe 10 minutes to scrap all my posts, but I'm not complaining. Almost 14k posts is a lot, I guess it's resource consuming to go through all of it.

Thanks for sharing your memory. It is inspired by that kind of feel and a sense of remembrance. It could trigger memories as well with what you are going through at the time or something.

It does take a while, and I'm trying to limit memory usage to prevent the service from crashing. Thanks for being patient and waiting through it!

Is there any incentive ^{besides one’s own vanity} to use this tool when one can simply go to  user’s profile and sift through their posts in chronological order?

It's for entertainment purposes only. It's not chronological order though, it's randomized posts from the past and the ones that have merit posts would slightly have an edge to show as the throwback.

To test the OP’s tool tried it using satoshi’s account and found that the speed of sifting was markedly lower than when using the forum’s built‑in gear.

Can you enlighten mo on what the forum's built-in gear is? Like when you check the post of a person?

Beyond that, the posts are deprived of the context of the whole thread.

Found not useful for me, sorry.

Thank you for your comment. It's meant for the person's post only, not the topic as a whole. As this is a throwback to your past postings only.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

A decade ago... We all changed a lot. Bitcoin also changed, it isn't a shady internet money anymore, it is already mainstream, I see about it everyday in many different newspapers.

I agree--never would I have thought mainstream financial publications (not to mention the average news broadcast) would be reporting on bitcoin other than to give an example of how volatile it is, or used to be.  But that did change, and its daily price gets reported right next to all of the currencies and commodities that have filled columns in papers like the WSJ for decades. 

Sometimes I think about how my behavior changed in the forum a long those years.

Yep, that too.  In particular on the forum, I used to be one nasty hothead that teetered on the fence toward trolling.  I think I've cooled down a lot with time and have been more accepting of people trying to earn bitcoin here--though I still would like to see every shitposter gone and the Bitcoin Discussion section purged to the point where every thread is coherent and contains nothing but non-trivial topics.

Pretty sure that last part is never going to happen, but at least things have gotten better since the merit system was implemented....hey, there's a date I ought to look up, and the day before it, too.  Things were on fire all over the forum.

[satscraper]

It's for entertainment purposes only.

Thanks for the honesty. Just as I expected, it’s an entirely pointless landing on this site, except for getting thequestionable one‑time fun. In my view, users who value their time will forget this tool soon, but of course you’re free to support its maintenance. Good luck.

Can you enlighten mo on what the forum's built-in gear is?

With my pleasure:

[robelneo]

Thanks for creating this tool, brother. I wish I could create something like this. With over 16,415 posts, I have no time to manually check my post from a decade ago on a given date.
I recommend that members use this tool to see how they have evolved over the years.

[aioc]

I will be using this tool from now on to check what I posted ten years ago. This is a fun way to reflect on and check your memory from a decade ago, how we have changed and grown, and whether we are different from ten years ago today.
We only have a few tools for Bitcointalk, and it's good that one of my fellowmen contributed.

[Decimetre]

If this Time Travel was a movie, it will be called "See you Yesterday", it's fun and random. Even if there's no point visiting when you can not use a precision search for any posts of interest, I would visit for the fun, bumping into posts you've already forgotten. I have spent a couple of moments browsing through my posts anyway.



If there's improvements, at least it should give the actual merit number of the user or does that have a pattern?

[LTU_btc]

Is there any incentive ^{besides one’s own vanity} to use this tool when one can simply go to  user’s profile and sift through their posts in chronological order?

To test the OP’s tool tried it using satoshi’s account and found that the speed of sifting was markedly lower than when using the forum’s built‑in gear.

Beyond that, the posts are deprived of the context of the whole thread.

Found not useful for me, sorry.

I doubt that many would go through posts in chronoligcal order. Randomness or on this day things is what it makes fun. For me it's interesting what I wrote 5 or 8 years ago exactly, or get some random memory.
Not everything has to be useful. And even if it's one-time fun, maybe it was useful for OP to improve his developper skills.