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Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

rachelbythebay.com

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#21

> they didn't want to pay for storing all of those recipe and cooking videos twice...videos are big and space is expensive... And yet... from people who never pay the bills for anything, all I ever hear is 'space is cheap, computing is cheap, blah blah blah'. It's all 'cheap' until you have to pay for it.

Well. Videos are orders of magnitude larger than many other common web content formats. And there are probably several codecs available on a CDN. It's reasonable to call that expensive and still claim that cloud computing is cheap overall. It is amazing to store gigs of photos for cents per month on AWS.

But I would guess bandwidth dwarfs storage costs here, so it does seem odd.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#22
>Even inside the company, the internal tech support is essentially gaslighting the employees who report this problem, by saying things like "it never existed"

It's mind-boggling that this happens but having experienced it myself, it sucks. Attempting to address an issue that sure seems to be due to another team's system is already difficult, so when they respond "it's not us" you're not only left holding the bag but questioning yourself for doubting that system.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#23
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the cloud should be used as a secondary backup, not a primary device. Using it as the latter is no better than you keeping everything in one place at your house.

> Using it as the latter is no better than you keeping everything in one place at your house. Not their house. Their neighbour's house. How long ago did this xkcd came out? https://xkcd.com/1150/

Dec 21, 2012

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#24

> they didn't want to pay for storing all of those recipe and cooking videos twice...videos are big and space is expensive... And yet... from people who never pay the bills for anything, all I ever hear is 'space is cheap, computing is cheap, blah blah blah'. It's all 'cheap' until you have to pay for it.

Well. Videos are orders of magnitude larger than many other common web content formats. And there are probably several codecs available on a CDN. It's reasonable to call that expensive and still claim that cloud computing is cheap overall. It is amazing to store gigs of photos for cents per month on AWS. But I would guess bandwidth dwarfs storage costs here, so it does seem odd.

But that's another good point, if you're storing multiple encodings, storing a single backup is less than double the cost, because you only need to back-up one encoding.

Slow-to-retrieve backup services like S3 Glacier are usually much cheaper, too.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear HN, This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question. If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. If you can’t think of a reason that positively…

Hmmm. Inclined to agree if you replace the company in this argument with a person. Very disinclined in actuality, since this is a company providing a service to people who have handed over custody of their personal data (It sounds like very high-value data! Cooking videos aren't easy to make!) under the assumption that they will get something out of the deal, i.e., the videos would be hosted and they would be warned…

[deleted]

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#26

Anyone know what product she's referring to?

Dear HN, This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question. If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. If you can’t think of a reason that positively…

> Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so.

To prevent people from getting ripped off.

Doxxing is the wrong metaphor here because it implies someone being put in a vulnerable position because of their private activity. It isn't "doxxing" to name the restaurant in town which persistently fails health department inspections, or the contractor who can't install shingles competently. Why? Because that's business, and business is in the public sphere. Providing bad reviews prevents those bad actors from harming other members of the public.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#27
post #9

> someone who really gave a damn got their hands dirty Although this person is the hero of the story, I feel obligated to point out that in today's JIRA-driven "what have you done for me lately" close-the-stories what's-your-velocity we're-about-to-downsize-so-you'd-better-prove-you're-valuable culture of "efficiency", the person who did this either had a LOT of job security (as in, compromising photos of the CEO in…

Or they work in a sane company that values individuals taking initiative? Okay, maybe not a sane company, given the story, but there are plenty of places without the toxic culture you describe above.

You mean a company whose management can tell the difference between working on something complex and not working at all? Sadly, very few exist, and those end up being bought by the evil kind.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear HN, This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question. If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. If you can’t think of a reason that positively…

I respectfully disagree. It should be public record when a product or service fails to perform to the expectation of the customer. This is why we have outlets such as Yelp and Amazon reviews. There is no incentive to improve the product if they aren't put on blast.

“Public record” is not equivalent to “in the tech press”. If there was a central registery of IT operational errors, where data was carefully reported by all public and private companies, then your stance would be absolutely understandable. But in today’s press climate, the focus would be on dragging their name through the mud for clickbait, rather than on interviewing them about their plans to improve going forward and evaluating _those_ claims for technical and business veracity.

ps. Happily, I haven’t a clue who they are, not have I tried to look.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#29

Anyone know what product she's referring to?

Dear HN, This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question. If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. If you can’t think of a reason that positively…

Seems relevent to know the company so we can avoid them in the future.

Re: Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers

#30

Anyone know what product she's referring to?

Dear HN, This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question. If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. If you can’t think of a reason that positively…

Please explain to me how a corporation can be "doxxed", because I don't understand how that's possible.
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