[HN Gopher] Cloudflare Beta (2009)
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       Cloudflare Beta (2009)
        
       Author : O__________O
       Score  : 119 points
       Date   : 2022-09-20 14:59 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.projecthoneypot.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.projecthoneypot.org)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related, I guess:
       | 
       |  _Matthew Prince: CloudFlare Was Inspired by Project Honeypot and
       | the DHS_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21071978 - Sept
       | 2019 (1 comment)
       | 
       |  _Project HoneyPot: The Web 's Largest Community Tracking Online
       | Fraud and Abuse_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7614182 -
       | April 2014 (1 comment)
       | 
       |  _1 Billion Spammers Served - Deep Insights into Spam_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=996698 - Dec 2009 (13
       | comments)
        
         | divbzero wrote:
         | HN has become not only the front page of tech news but also a
         | repository of tech history.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | I hope it can get more that way over time, and that we can
           | build better tools for accessing it.
        
       | lupire wrote:
       | > Provide the service at no cost... because you shouldn't have to
       | pay to ensure your website is protected.
       | 
       | Was that a lie?
       | 
       | https://www.cloudflare.com/ddos/ says "Contact Sales"
        
         | dkersten wrote:
         | Are you ignoring the part of that page where if you click sign
         | up, you can create an account for free, and get protection and
         | services for free? Sure, its not everything they offer is free,
         | but enough for most users is.
        
         | throwawayKiwi9 wrote:
         | It also says "Sign Up". With a very comprehensive free tier of
         | services.
        
         | cj wrote:
         | No. Basic DDoS protection with Cloudflare is free.
        
         | saghm wrote:
         | I don't think it's terribly surprising that there might be
         | companies out there who charge for things that they think
         | should be free because they can get away with it. That said, in
         | this case it sounds like pretty standard marketing speak, and I
         | tend to be skeptical that anything sounding like that is a
         | genuine profession of values rather than a catchy tagline
         | (which probably explains my lack of surprise at the first thing
         | as well)
        
       | jgrahamc wrote:
       | Huh. Oddly enough I'd never read this.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | That's funny, I figured they would have shown it to you for
         | recruiting purposes. :)
         | 
         | I remember Matt always talking about how Cloudflare was his
         | ultimate vision for the honeypot project -- a way to block bad
         | actors on the internet by aggregating information.
        
           | jgrahamc wrote:
           | He tried to recruit me very early on although I don't think
           | in 2009 (I believe it was the year after) and I wasn't ready
           | to go to the US and they weren't ready to have someone in
           | London.
        
         | ranger_danger wrote:
        
           | O__________O wrote:
           | Didn't down vote you, but generally bad form to hijack a
           | thread just to pop a question about a completely unrelated
           | topic; both from the thread and post itself.
        
         | LinuxBender wrote:
         | I contributed some VM's to this early on in the project but
         | then pulled out of it. There were no stats to show how my nodes
         | were contributing and I was concerned that I might lose my VPS
         | account since I could not tell how this was being used. I liked
         | the idea.
        
         | O__________O wrote:
         | Realize (now) you're Cloudflare's CTO, but might be worth
         | pointing it out when you're replying to Cloudflare related
         | topics; you obviously have been around HN awhile so guessing
         | it's unlikely to make a difference, but in my experience on HN
         | people generally appreciate the clarity.
        
           | jgrahamc wrote:
           | Yeah, but I worry about:
           | https://c.tenor.com/a_NihQtSKK0AAAAC/anchorman-ron-
           | burgundy....
        
             | stingraycharles wrote:
             | FWIW I agree with that approach. HN audience recognizes you
             | anyway which gathers the upvotes, and if it's really
             | confusing someone will point out you're the CF CTO anyway.
        
             | yencabulator wrote:
             | Think of it more as a name tag & uniform a franchise
             | restaurant makes its employees wear, so you know who works
             | there. Takes away the prestige pretty quick ;)
        
             | O__________O wrote:
             | In my experience, better to mention it, but understand your
             | experience might say otherwise.
        
           | wahnfrieden wrote:
           | I just flagged/downvoted as content-less/off topic (as it is)
           | and move on. No need to simp for online execs
        
             | O__________O wrote:
             | Don't agree about the flagging/down voting, since normally
             | community agrees it is appropriate; also, how would the
             | user even know that was an issue.
             | 
             | Do agree there appears to be degree of simp like behavior
             | going on, which is interesting.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | hombre_fatal wrote:
           | They have it in their bio which is the HN norm, not
           | announcing one's creds at every turn.
           | 
           | But I think these "HNers would appreciate it!" community
           | spokesman kinds of comments are kinda lame. I don't think
           | HNers need to be spoon fed "I'm Cloudlfare's CTO btw! :^D"
           | every time the guy rears his head. Especially just to say he
           | never read TFA before...
        
             | O__________O wrote:
             | Said the user with "this account is a GPT-3 bot" in their
             | profile.
             | 
             | Like I said, pointed this out 100s of times over years and
             | my experience says otherwise; not my first account, nor
             | will it be my last. Also, not dang, not trying to be dang,
             | but also firmly believe HN is a community and important for
             | the community to express themselves, but also would be more
             | than happy to respect dang's wishes.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | > They have it in their bio which is the HN norm, not
             | announcing one's creds at every turn.
             | 
             | No, appending something like "(disclaimer: CF employee)" is
             | absolutely the norm anytime it could even remotely be
             | construed as a conflict of interest. It might be fine here,
             | but this is an edge case.
        
               | googlryas wrote:
               | Can you share for me some concerns you have about this
               | disclaimer not being present on jgrahamc's post?
               | 
               | Do you feel you have been mislead by his post?
        
               | O__________O wrote:
               | To me, it's about the easy of connecting a comments
               | relevance to the post, assuming CTO was on the founding
               | team, so makes sense that them posting they had never
               | seen the post adds value to the thread; anyone else
               | posting comment like that would have likely been down
               | voted.
               | 
               | To me, fair to assume everyone does not know everyone
               | else, though they might be familiar with a subset of the
               | information, for example, knowing who Cloudflare is. If a
               | user appending affiliation to a comment adds context, to
               | me it makes sense to add it - and not assume or expect
               | users to click your profile, other users point out who
               | you are, etc.
        
               | googlryas wrote:
               | But even if you didn't know the user was a cloudflare
               | exec, the comment just becomes a boring throwaway comment
               | from some luser on the internet telling you their
               | thoughts, like posting 'Me too!' like some braindead
               | AOLer.
        
               | O__________O wrote:
               | Sorry, but do not understand references or generally what
               | you were expressing; highly suggest reading all my
               | comments in thread to avoid forcing me to unnecessarily
               | repeat myself.
        
               | googlryas wrote:
               | My point is that adding a disclaimer about your employer
               | only matters if the post has a possibility of being seen
               | as astroturfing if the reader doesn't know about the
               | relationship between the poster and the company.
               | 
               | For example, if jgrahamc said "I never knew that.
               | Cloudflare is such an amazing company, everyone should
               | apply for a job there!", then okay, request a disclaimer.
               | But if someone just says "I didn't know that", then the
               | comment goes from mildly interesting (if you know who
               | they are) to boring (if you don't know who they are). The
               | failure mode here for lack of disclaimer is the post just
               | becomes a boring, low-effort comment.
               | 
               | I think jgrahamc adding "I'm the CTO of cloudflare, and I
               | didn't know that!" might have been reasonable context,
               | but no disclaimer is required, because the reader didn't
               | need to be protected from the post. There was no conflict
               | of interest in the post.
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | I disagree that every comment you make in a community has
               | to stand alone and reintroduce yourself lest a newcomer
               | flies off the handle without knowing who they're
               | responding to.
               | 
               | That is just annoying. Nor do I think it's a convincing
               | point coming from someone who suggests they aren't new
               | here.
               | 
               | imo people new to a community could slow their roll esp
               | in a debate.
        
               | jjulius wrote:
               | >I disagree that every comment you make in a community
               | has to stand alone and reintroduce yourself lest a
               | newcomer flies off the handle without knowing who they're
               | responding to.
               | 
               | I think it's circumstantial. For instance, I don't really
               | think it's necessary for the CTO to have said,
               | "disclaimer: CF employee/CTO/whatever" in this thread.
               | But in _this_ thread[1] from yesterday, I think it would
               | 've been helpful.
               | 
               | [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32912075#32912276
        
               | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
               | Alright; I've been on HN for 5 years. Since we're all
               | friends who know each other so well, how about you tell
               | me about myself? I'm reasonably active and I have an
               | extremely recognizable username, so you should of course
               | remember me quite well.
        
       | benzible wrote:
       | Unspam, Prince's company before Cloudflare, which created Project
       | Honeypot, had a slightly unsavory (to me, at least) business
       | model of lobbying state legislatures to pass laws requiring "no-
       | contact" registries with requirements that were tailored for
       | Unspam. Looks like they succeeded in 2 states and some version of
       | the company exists: https://www.unspam.com Prince gave up on it
       | and got an MBA at Harvard but he's still listed on the company
       | website.
        
         | lupire wrote:
         | Benjamin Franklin called that "doing well by doing good" when
         | he lobbied for a national postal service.
        
           | Xeoncross wrote:
           | 2 second explanation: https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc?t=156
        
       | radicaldreamer wrote:
       | I think one interesting thing about Cloudflare is that once
       | enabled on a domain, it can be used to serve different versions
       | of that domain to different audiences, enabling things like
       | selective censorship and propaganda.
       | 
       | Cloudflare has also taken investments from the intelligence
       | agencies (at least in the US).
        
         | cj wrote:
         | To be fair, the ability to serve different content to different
         | users was (is) a primary feature of essentially all web
         | servers. This has been the case for multiple decades.
        
           | radicaldreamer wrote:
           | The difference is that this is a man-in-the-middle where you
           | don't need coordination with the web server at all.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-20 23:01 UTC)