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Disappearing videos and disappointed grandmothers
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- commandlinefan 8y ago> someone who really gave a damn got their hands dirty Although this person is the hero of the story, I feel obligated to point out that in today's JIRA-driven "what have you done for me lately" close-the-stories what's-your-velocity we're-about-to-downsize-so-you'd-better-prove-you're-valuable culture of "efficiency", the person who did this either had a LOT of job security (as in, compromising photos of the CEO in a public bathhouse job security) or did this on their own time while spending their "working hours" closing tickets and attending conference calls.
- lkbm 8y agoOr they work in a sane company that values individuals taking initiative? Okay, maybe not a sane company, given the story, but there are plenty of places without the toxic culture you describe above.
- commandlinefan 8y agoYou mean a company whose management can tell the difference between working on something complex and not working at all? Sadly, very few exist, and those end up being bought by the evil kind.
- burkaman 8y agoYou really need to find a new job. I don't know anyone who works for a company like you describe. Just ask questions like "How long have you worked here?" and "How do you handle tasks that run over their time estimates?" during interviews.
- twojerbs 8y agoI have two full-time jobs like he described
- burkaman 8y agoWhy?
- twojerbs 8y ago$$
- burkaman 8y agoNo, why this type of job? Why not quit one of your jobs for a couple weeks and spend that time looking for better ones? Everyone is hiring.
- twojerbs 8y agoBecause I guess I have more drive to maximize my income than I do integrity. I'm able to do these two simultaneously for the most part.
- bartread 8y agoI did 8 months contracting for $large_uk_enterprise and it was exactly like that. I tolerated it for so long because the money was good and I thought I might be able to learn some useful lessons. I got told off more than once for showing initiative and pushing something forward that wasn't on the approved list for the sprint even though I had time and there wasn't anything left to pick up. Yes, mobbing fans, I know, I could have jumped in on a story that already had people working on it. This is what management there said to me as well. Nevertheless I'm rather old fashioned so I have two comments to make: 1) Too many cooks... etc. 2) Adding more people to a project/story that's not going to deliver on time will only make it later. (Here I'm obviously paraphrasing Fred Brooks.) And if it's going to deliver on time then why add more people instead of enabling those people to work on something else that's useful? In the end I gave notice without any plan about what to do next but had three opportunities lined up before I'd worked my notice period and have been much happier since.
- ComputerGuru 8y agoI’ve never worked at companies where using Jira was synonymous with bug quantity over quality. There will always be buglets, bugs, Bugs, and then BUGS. On the flip side, every once in a while in the fish-shell GitHub repo we get an idiot that files an issue titled “is this even maintained?” because there is a non-zero number of opened issues (or I file a bug on GH and the the repo owner closes it immediately as “will revisit later” so the issue count doesn’t go up). It’s not a technology problem. It’s a people problem.
- userbinator 8y agoOn the flip side, every once in a while in the fish-shell GitHub repo we get an idiot that files an issue titled “is this even maintained?” because there is a non-zero number of opened issues (or I file a bug on GH and the the repo owner closes it immediately as “will revisit later” so the issue count doesn’t go up). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
- setquk 8y agoIt’s always a people problem. You have to force people to own every ticket or they will just rot.
- darioush 8y ago#closing-tickets-and-attending-conference-calls #ctaacc (read like SEA-TAC) I promise I'm sober
- nkrisc 8y agoRemember: your users are people, not faceless lab rats.
- domador 8y agoSounds like another outrageous case of digital sharecropping, where the value of the service was primarily provided by the users and the community they formed, yet such value was not respected, and people's work--a cherished part of their lives--was casually thrown away. My more noble and magnanimous side would wish that unnamed service's owners and developers success in the face of such an awful mistake, while my harsher side feels like failure would serve them right for not respecting their users and not valuing things that should be valued.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- itronitron 8y agoMaybe we can file a patent application for a business process that discovers product features by learning behaviors within an online community. Even if we have to narrow the claims to product features that alienate the community I think we would still be able to find investors. Full disclosure >> posting this here to establish prior art
- mgkimsal 8y ago> they didn't want to pay for storing all of those recipe and cooking videos twice...videos are big and space is expensive... And yet... from people who never pay the bills for anything, all I ever hear is 'space is cheap, computing is cheap, blah blah blah'. It's all 'cheap' until you have to pay for it.
- fossuser 8y agoIn this case they destroyed the company instead of just saying 'space is cheap' and paying for it. It isn't free, but it's certainly cheaper than killing your entire company.
- saagarjha 8y agoWell, they clearly didn’t realize that they would end up deleting their original data because they had tried to skimp on storage…
- fossuser 8y agoI think that's the point though - you never realize this kind of failure until it's too late. That's why you're better off biasing towards just paying for space and being careful with added complexity unless you really need it. Being cheap about this is just likely to lead to more bugs and cost in debugging later anyway. There are tradeoffs and exceptions, but there's a reason the saying exists.
- myhf 8y agoIt's not just about the cost of file storage. Storing information can be a legal liability. This is why businesses that deal with information need staff who are able to reason about the lifecycle of information.
- fossuser 8y agoTrue, but in this case they were storing what was the core value of the site and what the users were using the site for. It’d be different if they were just collecting all PII forever because they didn’t want to think about it.
- farnsworth 8y agoAnyone know what product she's referring to?
- floatingatoll 8y agoDear HN, This post goes out of its way to avoid naming the site in question. If you know the answer to the above question, think carefully before providing that name here or anywhere. Ask yourself how invoking their name specifically contributes value to this story. Ask yourself why you consider it right to shame them by name, when OP did not consider it right to do so. If you can’t think of a reason that positively improves the world for us all, and all that you’ve got is “we should hold them up as an example for others to avoid”, this post already does so and without doxxing them. If you truly feel that it’s necessary, proceed, but I think honoring the author’s clear intention to avoid naming them is the appropriate decision here as well.
- mechnesium 8y agoI respectfully disagree. It should be public record when a product or service fails to perform to the expectation of the customer. This is why we have outlets such as Yelp and Amazon reviews. There is no incentive to improve the product if they aren't put on blast.
- floatingatoll 8y ago“Public record” is not equivalent to “in the tech press”. If there was a central registery of IT operational errors, where data was carefully reported by all public and private companies, then your stance would be absolutely understandable. But in today’s press climate, the focus would be on dragging their name through the mud for clickbait, rather than on interviewing them about their plans to improve going forward and evaluating _those_ claims for technical and business veracity. ps. Happily, I haven’t a clue who they are, not have I tried to look.
- briandear 8y ago
- irrational 8y agoThis is why I don't trust my own videos/photos/documents/notes/etc. to "the cloud". How many examples like this have there been where peoples stuff just disappears one day with no way to bring it back? More than I can count. Though, saying I don't trust my files to the cloud is not the same as saying I don't use the cloud. I keep two copies of all of my files in 2 physical location. However, both of those physical location are within 10 miles of each other, so I also mirror everything to the cloud. That is, I always have 3 copies of all of my files, 2 in physical location and 1 in the cloud. I know so many people that have all of their important videos and photos in one location (their phone, the cloud, a hard drive in a drawer, etc.) I can't imagine how they sleep at night knowing everything could go poof at any time. I've tried explaining this to some of them, but they think I'm paranoid.
- overcast 8y agoExactly, the cloud should be used as a secondary backup, not a primary device. Using it as the latter is no better than you keeping everything in one place at your house.
- tzs 8y agoI need to add cloud mirroring. What cloud service are you using? I was about to give Backblaze Personal a try, but stopped because I don't like how they handle encryption. If I'm understanding their site correctly, restoring requires giving them your key. I'd prefer something where decrypting for restoration is client side. I'm currently contemplating Backblaze B2 or Amazon Glacier using Arq or Duplicati[1] or something like that. (Or maybe using something I write myself which can better adapt to my specific needs). Also eyeing OneDrive, since I have 1 TB of that from my Office 365 subscription, and am only using a whopping 300 MB of it. Hmmm...could I make a large disk image and store the .dmg file on OneDrive, and then mount that image and use it as a Time Machine volume, thereby getting a cloud Time Machine backup? [1] or duplicity or duplicacy...I'm not sure which of the three similarly named backup programs I'm thinking of! Edit: looks like the answer to that last question is no. Time Machine does not seem to allow using a mounted image as a Time Machine volume.
- cuddlecake 8y agoThat's sad
- castlecrasher2 8y ago>Even inside the company, the internal tech support is essentially gaslighting the employees who report this problem, by saying things like "it never existed" It's mind-boggling that this happens but having experienced it myself, it sucks. Attempting to address an issue that sure seems to be due to another team's system is already difficult, so when they respond "it's not us" you're not only left holding the bag but questioning yourself for doubting that system.
- perl4ever 8y agoSome companies are caught in a cycle where they're not charging enough to their customers, much less enough for tech support, and as a result their policy seems to be to frustrate you as much as possible by denying everything if you contact them with problems, while refunding you store credit if you persist. Please send photos - you send photos - "we don't see anything wrong." A refund doesn't actually solve the issue! Obviously, sympathy is limited for a free service, but I've encountered this with a paid service. And a few weeks later they announced broad based price increases, which made for a clearly implied backstory. Not enough money for labor costs.
- ex3xu 8y agoAnother even more egregious example -- around 10 or so years ago, I was a big proponent of the writing website Urbis. It was a site where you could submit a piece of writing and get feedback from other users. You can still see its activity on the Wayback Machine. It was an interesting site still without equal as far as I can tell. From what I understand, one day, the creator decided that the site wasn't making him any money and shut it all down. I foolishly didn't back anything up and all my prose was gone. Granted, my teenage writing wasn't about to win any awards or woo any publishers. But some of the stuff I wrote was meaningful reflections on experiences at the time, meticulously edited and reviewed, and I still wish I would have been able to read them now. What really irks me is that all he had to do was give me one day and I would have been able to save all my stuff. I have very little sympathy for any company that does anything like what Rachel describes here.
- corey_moncure 8y agoDid you at least get your money back?
- leetcrew 8y agoi'm assuming it was an ad supported service.
- tlrobinson 8y agoI'm assuming (maybe incorrectly) that was corey_moncure's point.
- ex3xu 8y agoThis was 2008, only a few years after Facebook had come out and well before the "People are the product" conversation that would come to dominate the discourse around monetization. Free services like Gmail and Livejournal had set a precedent for my naivete in expecting a decent product to be available for free. I've certainly learned my lesson from that experience.
- bdr 8y ago
- JoblessWonder 8y agoThis reminds me of the issue that came up recently with Twitter (I think?) re-using image IDs that were very old. A lot of professional sports teams ended up with very odd/cryptic posts. Here is an article with NSFW examples: https://deadspin.com/this-is-probably-how-the-cubs-ended-up-with-porn-in-an-1829312053 https://deadspin.com/this-is-probably-how-the-cubs-ended-up-...
- emayljames 8y agoThanks, I laughed very much at that article.
- brennebeck 8y agoWow. I was not expecting this. Ha, thanks!
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoDaily reminder that there’s no “cloud”, just other people’s computers.
- gammateam 8y agooof gaslighting
- anigbrowl 8y agoAdd to this youTube's annoying habit of leaving placeholders for deleted videos in my playlists but not telling me what it is that got removed, thus preventing me from ever finding it again. I fail to see what purpose is served by deleting the metadata as well as the possibly-copyright-infringing content.
- chocolatkey 8y agoYes! If it at least said "xyz was removed due to a copyright claim by abc", but no, instead there are just blank spaces in the playlist. I leave them there on hope of this feature someday being added.
- pmiller2 8y agoMaybe the metadata is deleted on purpose to prevent you from finding the deleted video again?
- abtinf 8y agoYouTube is inconsistent about how it reports the video name. IIRC I noticed that on Roku, it will show the name in a playlist or if you try to play the video.
- pandapower2 8y agoIf nothing else deleting/hiding the metadata makes it less likely that someone outside of youtube will figure out a way to accurately determine how many times a given piece of content has been uploaded to youtube. Instead they hide it all and pretend like it never happened.
- thsowers 8y agoI discovered this recently: If the uploader themselves deletes the video then it will also be removed from your youtube history, as well as your Google account's history @ myactivity.google.com
- dabernathy89 8y agoYou can always almost find out by just Googling the video ID, especially if it's been submitted to Reddit or a similar link sharing site.
- garganzol 8y agoI spotted Facebook does this on more than several occasions. "Videos are big and space is expensive and we are cheap". Not only videos, but images would also spontaneously go for some users.
- chungy 8y agoCan someone explain what this "moments" concept is? I'm unfamiliar.
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoSurely there (should be) a duty of care over other people's data - and the loss here is actionable and costly. I am a great believer in regulation through being sued to smithereens
- kbenson 8y agoThis is reminiscent of the Reply All podcast's episode about a photo storage service that had major problems. If i recall correctly, some photos in that story were actually recovered, but it took a while. ...Okay, I did a little looking, and the followup to this episode was about a month later[2], and actually some pictures were able to be recovered after another company bought out the first and tried to save the photos. In any case, it's an interesting case study of an incident that shares someof the same themes. 1: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/71-the-picture-taker#e... 2: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/77-the-grand-tapestry-of-pepe#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/77-the-grand-tapestry-...
- noonespecial 8y agoJust another reminder that if its not on your disk drives(1), you don't have it. (1) Yes, that is plural.
- ap46 8y agoI make it a point to Dropbox critical files(non-media) & do monthly backups of my phone & Mac to 2 physical drives. I'd love for something which does this daily of specific folders on my phone & Mac & makes sure there are no duplicates etc. And then on a monthly basis archive them to 2 or more different cloud storage vendors.
- picsao 8y agoClouds pace costs money - most users data is actually redundant. Hamsteed cat pictures and the likes of them. So why not save space by having a original and all those users just having a hash. Of course, if theire stuff... Is not theirs.. And theirs alone.. The users shall never know.. The omerta compels you.
- SZJX 8y agoNot sure if the "moments" stuff is that "14-years-old". I'm not sure about the Snapchat implementation but the things on Instagram and FB etc. surely have people of all ages using them. Though yeah that's not the main point of the article I know.