271–280 of 414 posts
“Cloudflare apparently fat-fingered a routing update and sent all of their global traffic to a single POP, vaporizing it almost instantly.” Made me chuckle, as it gave me the image of a large server in some massive server farm glowing red, then bursting in a massive burst of light as dozens of bearded Sysadmins run out of the building screaming.
In my experience the sysadmins would be running in the opposite direction.
Cloudflare is horrible for blind people. Screen readers, the programs that use synthesized speech to tell us what's on the screen, cannot read images. Good captchas usually have audio equivalents (which come with their own set of problems), but this one doesn't. If you're blind and flagged by Cloudflare for some reason, you're cut off from accessing half the internet, potentially critical banking/governmental/medical…
Thank you for sharing your experience. Cloudflare switched to using hCaptcha a couple months ago, I think and I only just noticed that they do not offer an audio-based captcha. However, hCaptcha integrates with Privacy Pass[0], and you can top up your tokens by solving a captcha at [1] and [2]. What you could do (and I realize this is far from ideal), is getting a sighted friend to solve a couple of captchas so you h…
The problem is hcaptcha, the solution is stop using hcaptcha. Not placate and evade with work arounds you wouldn't even suggest to non blind people.
Also this ask a friend solution is like telling someone in a wheelchair to ask a friend to help them up those steps instead of just installing a ramp.
You don't get to take over half the internet and just ignore social responsibility.
Cloudflare is horrible for blind people. Screen readers, the programs that use synthesized speech to tell us what's on the screen, cannot read images. Good captchas usually have audio equivalents (which come with their own set of problems), but this one doesn't. If you're blind and flagged by Cloudflare for some reason, you're cut off from accessing half the internet, potentially critical banking/governmental/medical…
I use audio captchas. Google will usually only let you do 2 or 3 before banning you and making you do image-based ones. I'm pretty sure the button is just there to make it seem accessible.
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Off topic, but any regrets on getting involved in content policing? It always sat with me as wrong and a disturbing precedent that an internet backbone service such as yourselves would make it their business to shut down unsavory yet legal speech.
Why is it a precedent? Nobody was under the illusion that it isn't technically possible for them to shut down some customer they don't like. Nor was/is there any debate about the legality of doing so, So the only reason for continuing to work for/with violent anti-semites was that they wanted to. Until, at some point, they changed their mind. HN has a strange infatuation with this idea of avoiding responsibility by p…
Precedents aren't limited to the legal system. Their actions changed the expectation (ie established a new precedent) for their behavior going forward.
> So the only reason for continuing to work for/with violent anti-semites was that they wanted to.
Or entertaining broader ideals surrounding freedom of expression? Or perhaps seeing the inherent dangers of living in a society dominated by public outrage? Or something else entirely?
> Until, at some point, they changed their mind.
Due, by their own admission, to financial concerns. Concerns which wouldn't exist if they and all their competitors were legally required not to discriminate based on otherwise legal content.
> HN has a strange infatuation with this idea of avoiding responsibility by pretending to be powerless.
I don't see that anywhere in this comment section? Rather, I see people objecting to actions which are legal but which they feel should not be.
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Thank you for sharing your experience. Cloudflare switched to using hCaptcha a couple months ago, I think and I only just noticed that they do not offer an audio-based captcha. However, hCaptcha integrates with Privacy Pass[0], and you can top up your tokens by solving a captcha at [1] and [2]. What you could do (and I realize this is far from ideal), is getting a sighted friend to solve a couple of captchas so you h…
This is such an out of touch dev response. The problem is hcaptcha, the solution is stop using hcaptcha. Not placate and evade with work arounds you wouldn't even suggest to non blind people. Also this ask a friend solution is like telling someone in a wheelchair to ask a friend to help them up those steps instead of just installing a ramp. You don't get to take over half the internet and just ignore social responsib…
Honest question: I've never really understood the back of the napkin math of how Cloudflare functions economically, which I feel would go a long way towards my understanding of why/how they were able to become such an integral and generally positive part of the Internet. Did they have some crazy in to get cheap bandwidth? Did they bet big on bandwidth prices falling? Did they figure something else out that nobody saw…
Cloudflare is a relatively cheap "lite CDN" for developers who want caching without putting in any work. This becomes a gateway drug for Cloudflare's more expensive plans once you outgrow the free plan. It quickly adds up; I worked for a company that wasn't even on an enterprise plan and was spending hundreds of dollars a month on Cloudflare just because they had a lot of domains. My reservation with Cloudflare is th…
If you press F12 in your browser and navigate to some major sites, you'll notice anywhere between 1-5 different CDN domain names that aren't directly related to the original host in any way.
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II love cloudflare. It has really helped out with several sites/projects that I have worked on and the service is top notch. I am also an investor. I tend to invest in stuff which I use a lot or trust/respect the employees. Weirdly what made me really invest is the level of geekiness on the company. I remember seeing you guys using a lava lamp wall to generate entropy and just thought "that's awesome". I just wanted…
> I remember seeing you guys using a lava lamp wall to generate entropy and just thought "that's awesome". To be sure (and for the sake of internet rando completenessism), it does look like CF waited until the original SGI patent on the technique ran out. :) https://patents.google.com/patent/US5732138
As ever, innovation was brick-walled until IP got out of the way.
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No. The reason why freedom of speech (or freedom of expression, if you're Canadian like me) is important in a government context is because the government (in theory) has a monopoly on violence. Businesses and private individuals should not be expected to uphold and enforce freedom of speech because requiring them to do so puts them at odds with themselves. An employer expected to uphold freedom of speech must then r…
> The reason why freedom of speech ... is important This view is (IMO) far too narrow. Freedom of expression, particularly political expression, is absolutely essential to the functioning of western society as it currently exists. Personally, I also see it as an ideal to be pursued in and of itself regardless of any functional need for it. Government regulation has a high potential for abuse for a number of reasons (…
Can you identify any government regulation that is enforceable where that enforcement isn't rooted in the monopoly on violence? Note that violence doesn't just mean capital or corporal punishment, it also depriving individuals of their possessions (for example, fines, asset forfeiture, etc), or their freedom. Each case where government can impose regulation carries the full weight of the threat of violence. If not for that threat of violence, the regulation would have no meaningful impact.
> However there may well exist cases where broader freedom of expression requires (...) protection against private entities.
I agree with you, but I don't think the answer here is to give government a mandate to dictate a policy of freedom of expression, I think the correct step is to evaluate whether a business has grown sufficiently large to constitute a threat to expression in society, and I think the model of being a monopoly is close to that. Disney is a stellar example; they don't own all of the movie studios, but their enormous size and ownership of the intellectual property rights to such a huge swath of cultural history for the last century, and the way they use those rights is growing increasingly harmful. I don't think it's right for government to say that Disney should start distributing adult films, but I certainly think it's appropriate to introduce regulations governing how a company like Disney can negotiate for, or more practically, dictate terms to movie theatres and retail outfits to carry or distribute their products.
> Broadly, I think you are tending to conflate infrastructure providers with social networks (and similar end user sites)
I do, but that is a separate discussion around the way that major platforms, cloud service providers, content studios, transit providers, and online retailers have become interconnected through acquisitions and competition that it has gotten to the point where I treat any online service as a "temporarily disenfranchised critical infrastructure". This is largely due to the idea that for many online services the end goal is to either achieve enough market share to become a competitor to another internet company, or to be acquired trying.
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Provided by the government.
Nazis also shop at Macy's and drink at Starbucks. Cloudflare was purely acting out of market based fear, there wasn't a hint of moral impetus. Literally he said: "I don't want people saying they won't work with us" - which is giving into the mob. Where is the ACLU on this? We were all screaming for Net Neutrality just a couple years ago. It's up to communities and governments to make decisions on content, it would ac…
IIRC, the reason DailyStormer pissed off CloudFlare is because the users claimed (lied) about CloudFlare was somehow participating / sponsoring the site/activities. Sports teams have non-disparagement clauses; I don't see this as much different.
The only thing I'm not clear about is if it was just a rando user on DS that said the thing or some moderator/admin who can reasonably be said to represent the organization that runs the site.
Also, Macy's and Starbucks are allowed to deny their business to individuals at their discretion (subject to Equal Rights and Americans with Disabilities laws). Last I checked, being a Nazi is not a protected status (perhaps I'm wrong).
> We were all screaming for Net Neutrality just a couple years ago.
Different concept. This is about who a vendor chooses to allow as a customer. Common Carrier status is perhaps a closer comparison, but I think AT&T is allowed to drop a customer if they violate the AT&T ToS / contract.
Also, the CEO of CloudFlare went out of his way to publicize that this was a problem for the health of the internet and to start a conversation. Society didn't walk away from CloudFlare (eg. "vote with your feet/wallet") and Congress didn't choose to create any laws.
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Thank you for sharing your experience. Cloudflare switched to using hCaptcha a couple months ago, I think and I only just noticed that they do not offer an audio-based captcha. However, hCaptcha integrates with Privacy Pass[0], and you can top up your tokens by solving a captcha at [1] and [2]. What you could do (and I realize this is far from ideal), is getting a sighted friend to solve a couple of captchas so you h…
This is such an out of touch dev response. The problem is hcaptcha, the solution is stop using hcaptcha. Not placate and evade with work arounds you wouldn't even suggest to non blind people. Also this ask a friend solution is like telling someone in a wheelchair to ask a friend to help them up those steps instead of just installing a ramp. You don't get to take over half the internet and just ignore social responsib…
My personal opinion is that it's better to use hCaptcha. I wasn't aware that they don't support audio. I think a better approach would be requesting hCaptcha to implement the missing bit.
Giving less control to Google is better. Given the widespread tracking they have access to right now.