A thread from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20586005
AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#22Url changed from https://github.com/aol/moloch, which points to this.
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#23As the n95 masks are going on, other masks are coming off.
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#24This gets posted once in a while and I always, without fail, think of Ginsburg.
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#25Not the greatest choice of name: Moloch[a] (also Molech, Mollok, Milcom, or Malcam) is the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Perhaps they were going for an association with Allen Ginsburg's Howl ( https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl ) instead?
which is the same referent, and begs the same question: "What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?"
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#26AOL github account's location is Dulles, VA. Thinking of what this does, the name's meaning and its location in 'the corridor' is giving me the creeps
AOL's location has been there for a very long time.
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#27This is cool, thanks for sharing! I'll be honest, I didn't think AOL did anything...interesting...but this is interesting to me! What are some open-source alternatives / analogues to this product?
Sorta like https://www.wireshark.org/. But Moloch is a very active project, used by many, and used internally at Verizon Media. Aol is part of Verizon Media (which brought AOL and Yahoo together). Open source is very active here. ;-)
Compare also to https://enterprise.verizon.com/products/security/advanced-th... (formerly known as Protectwise), which is not open source.
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#28Not the greatest choice of name: Moloch[a] (also Molech, Mollok, Milcom, or Malcam) is the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Why not? That's a pretty metal name. Don't tell me anyone still has appetite for yet another saccharine cutesy-wutesy "yay software squee " name.
There’s always room for more cute in software.
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#29Not the greatest choice of name: Moloch[a] (also Molech, Mollok, Milcom, or Malcam) is the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Interesting, newer knew the word is of biblical origin. In German the word Moloch is in somewhat common use to refer to an abstract merciless, all-consuming or all devouring power. E.g big cities might get referred to as molochs the way they eat into nature around it or suck people into its anonymity
I was thinking the same. In German Moloch is mostly used for groteskly big/growing cities. But thinking about it, the "eating into nature"-theme aligns well with the biblical "eating into kids"-theme.
For me at least, because of the city-context, Moloch matches: The moloch could stand for the amount of activity in a system that is humanly insurmountable to get a better-than-superficial understanding of.
Re: AOL Moloch: open-source, large scale, packet-capturing, indexing database system
#30Not the greatest choice of name: Moloch[a] (also Molech, Mollok, Milcom, or Malcam) is the biblical name of a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, through fire or war. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Naming open source projects is a challenging task. The team hears this all the time, but hey, open source is about code you can use, a community you can join to make the code better, and the pride that people around the world want to use your code. If you are on a blue-team, you'll want to look at this project. If you are making lists of names that distract attention this goes on it.