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Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

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Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#301

Post by amazon_not »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #241
gnarbarian wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way cheaper. Amazon is a middleman for hardware. Even at smallest scales the cost of buying a server pays off within a year. In exchange you get convenience and the ability to scale up on demand without buying more hardware.

I'm sure buying the server pays off, but what about running and administering it? What's the minimum commercially you'd spend to get cross-continent redundancy on hardware you manage in-house. Just the accounting cost of paying wages for technicians in two countries probably means you need to be a quite large company. There are middle grounds, managed co-location say, but then you're not likely to save much over usin…

Even managed co-location is cheaper than AWS when you factor in the egress bandwidth charges at scale.

Another way to do it is to use dedicated servers. The datacenter will take care of repairs and remote hands functions and all you need is to manage the server from the OS level upwards. No need to have technicians in multiple countries, everything can be done remotely.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#302

Post by amazon_not »

vegardx wrote: post #289
sgk284 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at Amazon's cheapest posted bandwidth tier you're paying $50+ per terabyte for bandwidth. Any dedicated hosting company (OVH, Hetzner, etc...) will cost less than 3% of that (and that's on the high end). Bandwidth is cheap, but AWS marks it up roughly 30x-50x what you'd pay in a dedicated environment.

But you don't have to store and serve all the content from Amazon or your own platform. You can easily set up aggressive caching, in a network you control, backed by S3. And you pay premium for premium bandwidth. You can't just assume that all your users will have a good experience if you buy hardware and bandwidth from the cheapest providers around.

Amazon bandwidth isn't particularly premium. It's just expensive.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#303

Post by joshdickson »

fs111 wrote: post #292
joshdickson wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Daring Fireball does it" has to be the worst possible comparison imaginable. Gruber has super differentiated, high editorial value content that folks will pay a premium to put their message next to. Imgur is about as far away from that as possible. They have to try to make money, it's crazy to sit here and think you know better than they do on this. Don't you think if they could make enough money doing what you thin…

> Gruber has super differentiated, high editorial value content Oh, you mean: "Apple products are the best! Google sucks!" Yes, high quality content indeed...

Gruber has done more to get high-level Apple people talking publicly answering unscripted questions than maybe anyone else in the media. Read him, learn from him, and like him or not, that's up to you, but at least respect what the guy has done.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#304

Post by amazon_not »

MasterScrat wrote: post #187
sgk284 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at Amazon's cheapest posted bandwidth tier you're paying $50+ per terabyte for bandwidth. Any dedicated hosting company (OVH, Hetzner, etc...) will cost less than 3% of that (and that's on the high end). Bandwidth is cheap, but AWS marks it up roughly 30x-50x what you'd pay in a dedicated environment.

Then why isn't anyone running an AWS-like service focused for bandwidth-intensive applications hosted on "OVH, Hetzner, etc..."?

It depends on how you define AWS-like services. Lots of VPS providers cater to bandwidth-intensive applications and are hosted on cheap dedicated servers.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#305

Post by dominotw »

makecheck wrote: post #274

Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function . If you can’t easily see an image as soon as you click on it — on mobile or otherwise — then the image service has completely failed. The sad thing is, they could have added non-intrusive ads. DaringFireball does it; write a single line of text such as “This ima…

> Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function.

Imgur is my main form on entertainment and the app currently lives on my homescreen. Mindless fun and good vibes unlike reddit which makes me angry/sad/depressed.

Imgur would have been dead with this Reddit move if they had not evolved, they obviously saw it coming. Building an image hosting site is not hard; building a fun community is. And Imgur did a great job with it. I love imgur.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#307

Post by onli »

incongruity wrote: post #290
onli wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not mine, it is the definition. Have a look at http://darkpatterns.org/ , the video and the library, to see how it is defined.

Masters degrees, card carrying, secret-handshake knowing designer here. I remember when the notion of dark patterns was first discussed and differentiated from anti-patterns and I think this current discussion is quite ironic. It's ironic because it is hinging on a narrowly constrained definition of "user interface" design - one that has been appropriated by web/app designers in recent years. UI goes well beyond what…

Guess in what my masters degree is ;) Design of everyday things is one of my favorite books, and definitely the HCI book I enjoyed reading the most.

I'm aware that you can think of many things as being an interface. I even agree that heuristically switching the result page is deceptive. But there is a difference, though it gets hard to pinpoint it. The manipulation is on another level. It is not the same type of thinking as pre-selecting a checkbox in an installer [0]. I don't agree that it is an UI manipulation in the normal sense. I don't see which psyhcological effects are used, where the manipulation is. There is a deception if a .jpg link does not go to the image, but how manipulates that? Is the ending .jpg a something prone to be clicked on? I don't think so.

Still, while I still value the difference between a dark pattern and any random deceptive behavior, at least I understand a bit better now why people persist on mixing up the term.

[0]: http://darkpatterns.org/java-update-february-2014/

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#308

Post by Shog9 »

MichaelGG wrote: post #113
Shog9 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, Stack Exchange buys image hosting from Imgur; images are hosted on a separate domain and don't get any of the cruft folks are complaining about here. This relationship has been in place for years and has been mostly pain-free for a involved. Source: I work for and use Stack Exchange.

Wow that sounds strange coming from StackExchange. It seems hard to believe imgur would have a cheaper way to host images than what SE could get, and it's not like an image upload page is that difficult right? I suppose it's one less thing to deal with does it make that much sense? (Honest question, not trying to "weekend project" imgur.)

Images aren't exactly a core requirement; if someone else can handle that without a significant down-side, then why not free up people to work on other things?

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#309

Post by makecheck »

joshdickson wrote: post #283
makecheck wrote: post #274

Imgur forgot its roots as a dumb image host, rapidly crufting-up its service with things that were not only annoying but interfering with its basic function . If you can’t easily see an image as soon as you click on it — on mobile or otherwise — then the image service has completely failed. The sad thing is, they could have added non-intrusive ads. DaringFireball does it; write a single line of text such as “This ima…

"Daring Fireball does it" has to be the worst possible comparison imaginable. Gruber has super differentiated, high editorial value content that folks will pay a premium to put their message next to. Imgur is about as far away from that as possible. They have to try to make money, it's crazy to sit here and think you know better than they do on this. Don't you think if they could make enough money doing what you thin…

I was referring to the way that DaringFireball does ads. I was not talking about any other aspect of DaringFireball.

If Imgur wants ads, there is a way to make ads sane and still make money.

For what anecdotes are worth, DaringFireball’s method is about the only form of ads that has ever worked on me. I actually read what he says about these companies, and I often am curious enough to go learn more. And he’s charging a lot for these ad placements for a week.

Whereas, I have never, ever been interested in something that tried to use trickery to pop up in my face, play audio, play animations, steal my clicks or otherwise force me to acknowledge its existence before continuing. I can’t even remember what those products were; I can only remember the speed at which I searched for a black "X" button to close the things.

Re: Reddit launches image uploads, ditching alliance with Imgur

#310

Post by onli »

sbarre wrote: post #263
onli wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not matter. An URL alone does not entice users to do nothing. You need more to get a proper dark pattern, to get the "convincing the user to do things" part of the definition of what makes something a dark pattern in the first place. Please, look as well at the website http://darkpatterns.org/ to see what a dark pattern is about.

So you're saying if it's not on that website it's not valid? Come on.. If I see a URL that ends in JPG, my understanding is that I am about to load an image. If the site then shows me a page full of ads with my image somewhere on there, that's exactly what you described . The site is tricking me into doing something that is to their benefit and to my detriment. Showing me a URL that looks like a link to an image is a…

One last try. I'll stop then.

If you are really arguing that you are inherently more likely to click on the direct link, and it is this click impulse that is used to manipulate you, and that going to a page containing that image plus ads instead is the big negative outcome, then I understand why it is a dark pattern for you.

I did not see that direct link have a higher affordance (that might stretch the term a bit too much) to be clicked on. I still don't – but if you think that there are people that are conditioned to click on those direct links, but would not click on the normal link, then I'll have o give you the point that the heuristically changing of the result page might be a dark pattern for those people.

I'm not aware of that effect, but I can't be sure that for example on reddit for people without adblocker or on mobile for some time the direct link wasn't a positive click signal that conditioned them.

I think that explains why I'm arguing. Dark patterns are a manipulation, and simply showing another page is not something I can count as a manipulation – it is not the same thing as in a window making people click on the wrong button (even though I understand that there is a similarity if you follow a specific line of thinking).

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