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Ground control to Major Trial

virtualize.sh

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Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#141

Post by cogman10 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #112
cogman10 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd have to see the ToS, but I'd suspect the lawyer that wrote it didn't say email, they said individual. Further, I suspect there's a clause in there about commercial usage.

Then you need an explicit check box "I have read and accept the T&C" and those T&Cs allow you to block an account, which is often the most effective option against abusers. If you go legal every time someone abuses a free trial you might as well give up free trials. As things stand there is no point in going legal. Either let it slide or block them and use it for PR with a blog post and an HN submission (wait a minut…

> If you go legal every time someone abuses a free trial you might as well give up free trials.

What silly "all or nothing" thinking.

You don't have to "go legal" on every free trial abuse, just the egregious ones. Here we have a company that's been abusing the free trial for 10 years and 1000s of instances. Vates rightfully can claim millions (~40M to be exact) from this instance. The company, in particular, can't claim they didn't know this wasn't allowed because they automated creating fake email accounts to abuse the situation.

It's particularly more egregious because Vates allows companies to build and maintain the software directly without support for free.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#142

Post by neilv »

Assuming this telling is pretty accurate, I'm wondering what the thinking was on both ends.

On the freeloader end: Did they think they were within the rules? How far up was the approval to keep doing it this way? Did someone try to pay, but get blocked? Did someone tell their boss they did this all in-house, and now doesn't want to admit they outsourced and exposed the company? Did it go to the top, and a lawyer told them to put the company name and a real person each time, and that they were covered on good faith if they only did that?

On the provider end: Seeing this locked-in enterprise user for 10 years, how was a salesperson not all over that that slam-dunk sale? How did they let this go on for 10 years without tweaking their policy to stop the freeloader and any others who might emulate them? What did the business people say about this over the years when it came up? Was business so good it wasn't worth the time to convert the freeloader to a paying customer?

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#143

Post by dylan604 »

Totally tangent: What's a 30-day Rial? GenAI poster art with no spell checking I guess. Yet all of the pages of paper are spelled correctly. So now I'm wondering if there was a typo in the prompt used to create the art, or if the genAI is just unaware of the same text being used repeatedly while making a slight change in one place?

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#144

Post by slippy »

You realize that you just gave hacker news gave enough details to commit some satellite controlling backdoor into their system... It's not like some of us aren't going to be like: "Yeah, let's get 'em!" Not me. I'm the ethical type, but some people might think:

Step 1: Modify OSS repository to gain control of satellites Step 2: ... Step 3: Profit!

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#145

Post by keeganpoppen »

dylan604 wrote: post #143

Totally tangent: What's a 30-day Rial? GenAI poster art with no spell checking I guess. Yet all of the pages of paper are spelled correctly. So now I'm wondering if there was a typo in the prompt used to create the art, or if the genAI is just unaware of the same text being used repeatedly while making a slight change in one place?

until openai’s recent updates, this was a very common issue with genai art… sometimes you could not even beg it to spell it correctly haha. in my experience, o3’s generation is much, much better in this regard.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#146

Post by [deleted] »

reconnecting wrote: post #30
bradleyankrom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ creator of Tirreno

Thank you. I'm still not sure if this should be mentioned. On the one hand, I don't want to overly promote the tirreno, but on the other hand, when I see an issue such as trial abuse that could be easily resolved, I can't resist. My bad.

[deleted]

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#147

Post by thunkingdeep »

Complete assclown behavior throughout. It would be one thing if this had been going for for a month or two, maybe a quarter or two… but ten years?! They’re clearly fucking you over out of either malice and/or incompetence, and by allowing it to go on, you’re politely enabling them to do this bad behavior to someone else’s business.

If you feed stray dogs, you end up with a neighborhood full of dogshit everywhere you step. Bill them; if they don’t pay, talk to an attorney.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#148

Post by zamadatix »

voidUpdate wrote: post #85
garrettjoecox wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One bothers people like you, one has the potential to waste people’s time and energy. Unless your job involves critiquing the header image of people’s personal blogs I don’t think these are equivalent.

The both imply a similar lack of care to me. Like, not even being bothered to check the words, and if they make no sense just click the magic "generate image" button again, or fix them in photoshop or just erase them...

You're probably right in that they didn't really care if the header image was top quality. The codebase or security reviews, understandably, will have a different need for quality.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#149

Post by mytailorisrich »

cogman10 wrote: post #141
mytailorisrich wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you need an explicit check box "I have read and accept the T&C" and those T&Cs allow you to block an account, which is often the most effective option against abusers. If you go legal every time someone abuses a free trial you might as well give up free trials. As things stand there is no point in going legal. Either let it slide or block them and use it for PR with a blog post and an HN submission (wait a minut…

> If you go legal every time someone abuses a free trial you might as well give up free trials. What silly "all or nothing" thinking. You don't have to "go legal" on every free trial abuse, just the egregious ones. Here we have a company that's been abusing the free trial for 10 years and 1000s of instances. Vates rightfully can claim millions (~40M to be exact) from this instance. The company, in particular, can't c…

Guidelines:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#150

Post by pnathan »

stickfigure wrote: post #127

Tell them that their free trial is over and their company will no longer receive free trial keys. You can do that. It doesn't require a lawyer and it doesn't require threats. Just "We're glad you like our product! Unfortunately we can no longer support you with free trials." Be polite. If they secretly keep getting free trials by pretending to be unaffiliated, then escalate to 1) blocking the fake ones when you disco…

If it was me, I'd have- at the least - a little routine in the trial-signup logic on the backend which would check the company name and known aliases, and return "not eligible for free, but sales would love to talk! Have a nice day!" message.
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