I previously used pastebin/filesharing sites to send code and images over IRC. However, I no longer do; after piecing together my own.

The code to run the pastebin is small; it would be even smaller if I were more practiced in shell scripting:

One script on my laptop accepts a file name and an optional time specifier in hours. It generates a new file name with a few random characters piped out of /dev/urandom, concatenates it with a dash - character, and a unix timestamp representing CURR_DATE + USER_SPECIFIED_HOURS. It then uses scp to copy the given file to a public-facing directory on the remote server with the generated name (the directory listing itself cannot be viewed in a browser, though, since the pasted files are meant to be relatively hidden).

The second script on the remote server simply scans the directory every hour for files that are expired (based on the file name) and removes them.

Of course, hosting your own pastebin is a relatively common idea if you have a webserver and the need, (I even found some tools which set up an entire netcat server if you need a full web service). However, I myself had not yet seen anyone use filenames to get almost all of the functionality of file-hosting sites like 0x0.st. I reused the idea from Protesilaos Stavrou's Emacs 'denote' package, which also showcases the power and simplicity of embedding metadata in file names; since it remains very accessible to filtering with standard CLI tools.

I like being able to upload my files and share them from a space I still control. I only remembered to finish writing about this idea since it already had appreciated benefits in unexpected places; allowing me to share my University work through a link to my own site, rather than the suggested use of services such as google drive.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that browsers can play raw video or display pdfs when directed to a video file.