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Indeed. Once I finished the article I sat there and had to think: "what am I supposed to be feeling after reading this?". I think they want us to be angry that

Indeed. Once I finished the article I sat there and had to think: "what am I supposed to be feeling after reading this?". I think they want us to be angry that EasyList is only maintained by 4 people. Or maybe just be angry that EasyList exists. I'm not really sure. My takeaway was that it's pretty impressive they still respond to exclusion requests in a timely manner.

x0x0 7y ago
I was surprised it was that hard to change a route on autotrader. The article kept mentioning hundreds of thousands of pages, like they had some person editing each page in textmate.
- randomstring 7y ago
  Maybe Autotrader has hundreds of thousands of template, CSS, and JS files with those paths hardcoded. Imagine the hell it would be to work on that website. Even so, you could fix everything with a one line Perl command.
  - dilutedh2o 7y ago
    I would love to see an example of something like this. Please.
    - therealx 7y ago
      I've seen backends that were that horrible. Updates were often done via regex's.
      - dilutedh2o 7y ago
        That's basically half of my day to day at the moment, that's why I'm wondering
- mfontani 7y ago
  I do wonder why they couldn't "just" support both old and new URL paths using something like this: RewriteRule "^/+new_path/+(.+)$" /advert/$1 [L] ... for each "new url path" (as, granted, they had quite a few which matched "advert". ... but that's also something they could again fix with another RewriteRule, I guess? RewriteRule "^(.*)/+new_path/+(.+)$" $1/advert/$2 [L] ... would've worked just as well?
- cat199 7y ago
  why should an e-commerce focused site do anything at all to avoid the term 'advert' in the first place? anyone there is ostensibly interested in commerce/advertising.. list maintainers should be responsible regression test their lists for normal content and not do dumb things this is also a problem with bad/unscrupulous spam listings which list domains based on unsubstantiated requests, etc
  - Nextgrid 7y ago
    You can choose to buy things online without being exposed to the cancer that is advertising. I am against advertising and marketing and yet spend a considerable amount of money online, and I’m confident most of HN does the same.
- xorcist 7y ago
  It's probably not that it's hard to type sed -i but that they can not change URLs so easily. It might be price indexing engines, external partners authorized to edit certain paths, and any number of other things. If parts of your audience blocks ads then it's probably a good idea to test your web site with uBlock installed, just as you already test with Safari and MSIE. It's specifically not a good idea to rely on the block list maintainers who will have a hard time separating earnest bug reports from all the bogus ones who think they've found a clever way to avoid blocklists.
skybrian 7y ago
Isn't it a bit disconcerting that we're so used to articles telling us what to feel that, when they don't do that, we get confused? Maybe it's good just to have a reminder that much of our infrastructure is maintained by volunteers. Sometimes important policy decisions get made by whoever showed up and started doing the work in a way that looks competent to others.
- ziddoap 7y ago
  I don't think its disconcerting at all. Articles are supposed to have a point, a goal, etc. The goal might be persuasive, it might be to establish facts, it might be to argue for a specific change or against one. It's up to the reader to agree or disagree with what the article has laid out. But we need something to agree or disagree with. In this case, I had no idea what the point of the article was (beyond a vague feeling that the author doesn't like EasyList).
  - radisb 7y ago
    Why does an article necessarily have to have a point? Why cant it just lay the facts and let the reader process them and judge them and feel about them how ever the reader wants?
    - ziddoap 7y ago
      In your example, the point of the article would be to "establish facts", which was an example I gave.
      - radisb 7y ago
        It supposedly did though
donarb 7y ago
Here's the forum thread in question. The suggested fix from EasyList was to rename a folder on AT's server from /advert/. As AT explained this folder was part of the URL for hundreds of thousands of cars and that the URL was used not only by the website, but other systems as well that move data around. In the end of the thread, you can see that the problem was fixed between EasyList and Autotrader. https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=43148 https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=43148
- swinglock 7y ago
  Sound like a job for 301 Moved Permanently or just keeping both the new and old URLs valid but change to the new on the user facing pages.
auslander 7y ago
> .. it's pretty impressive they still respond to exclusion requests They responded and removed amp-analytics. I'm not that impressed. https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/8311 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/8311
- ziddoap 7y ago
  Impressed that they respond in a timely manner, as per the article. The part you excluded from the quote is sort of the crux of my statement. I made no comment to the how they respond.
  - auslander 7y ago
    It wasn't my intention to exclude it, fat fingers.
OrgNet 7y ago
makes me want to avoid Autotrader... where did this /advert/ come from anyways...
- jarofgreen 7y ago
  I haven't looked, but I'm guessing ... When you list a second hand car for sale, that's an "advert". Sometimes the adverts are the content you want :-)
  - OrgNet 7y ago
    so they probably could have used /vehicle/, to be more specific

x0x0 7y ago

I was surprised it was that hard to change a route on autotrader. The article kept mentioning hundreds of thousands of pages, like they had some person editing each page in textmate.

randomstring 7y ago
Maybe Autotrader has hundreds of thousands of template, CSS, and JS files with those paths hardcoded. Imagine the hell it would be to work on that website. Even so, you could fix everything with a one line Perl command.
- dilutedh2o 7y ago
  I would love to see an example of something like this. Please.
  - therealx 7y ago
    I've seen backends that were that horrible. Updates were often done via regex's.
    - dilutedh2o 7y ago
      That's basically half of my day to day at the moment, that's why I'm wondering
mfontani 7y ago
I do wonder why they couldn't "just" support both old and new URL paths using something like this: RewriteRule "^/+new_path/+(.+)$" /advert/$1 [L] ... for each "new url path" (as, granted, they had quite a few which matched "advert". ... but that's also something they could again fix with another RewriteRule, I guess? RewriteRule "^(.*)/+new_path/+(.+)$" $1/advert/$2 [L] ... would've worked just as well?
cat199 7y ago
why should an e-commerce focused site do anything at all to avoid the term 'advert' in the first place? anyone there is ostensibly interested in commerce/advertising.. list maintainers should be responsible regression test their lists for normal content and not do dumb things this is also a problem with bad/unscrupulous spam listings which list domains based on unsubstantiated requests, etc
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  You can choose to buy things online without being exposed to the cancer that is advertising. I am against advertising and marketing and yet spend a considerable amount of money online, and I’m confident most of HN does the same.
xorcist 7y ago
It's probably not that it's hard to type sed -i but that they can not change URLs so easily. It might be price indexing engines, external partners authorized to edit certain paths, and any number of other things. If parts of your audience blocks ads then it's probably a good idea to test your web site with uBlock installed, just as you already test with Safari and MSIE. It's specifically not a good idea to rely on the block list maintainers who will have a hard time separating earnest bug reports from all the bogus ones who think they've found a clever way to avoid blocklists.

skybrian 7y ago

Isn't it a bit disconcerting that we're so used to articles telling us what to feel that, when they don't do that, we get confused? Maybe it's good just to have a reminder that much of our infrastructure is maintained by volunteers. Sometimes important policy decisions get made by whoever showed up and started doing the work in a way that looks competent to others.

ziddoap 7y ago
I don't think its disconcerting at all. Articles are supposed to have a point, a goal, etc. The goal might be persuasive, it might be to establish facts, it might be to argue for a specific change or against one. It's up to the reader to agree or disagree with what the article has laid out. But we need something to agree or disagree with. In this case, I had no idea what the point of the article was (beyond a vague feeling that the author doesn't like EasyList).
- radisb 7y ago
  Why does an article necessarily have to have a point? Why cant it just lay the facts and let the reader process them and judge them and feel about them how ever the reader wants?
  - ziddoap 7y ago
    In your example, the point of the article would be to "establish facts", which was an example I gave.
    - radisb 7y ago
      It supposedly did though

donarb 7y ago

Here's the forum thread in question. The suggested fix from EasyList was to rename a folder on AT's server from /advert/. As AT explained this folder was part of the URL for hundreds of thousands of cars and that the URL was used not only by the website, but other systems as well that move data around. In the end of the thread, you can see that the problem was fixed between EasyList and Autotrader. https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=43148 https://forums.lanik.us/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=43148

swinglock 7y ago
Sound like a job for 301 Moved Permanently or just keeping both the new and old URLs valid but change to the new on the user facing pages.

auslander 7y ago

> .. it's pretty impressive they still respond to exclusion requests They responded and removed amp-analytics. I'm not that impressed. https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/8311 https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/8311

ziddoap 7y ago
Impressed that they respond in a timely manner, as per the article. The part you excluded from the quote is sort of the crux of my statement. I made no comment to the how they respond.
- auslander 7y ago
  It wasn't my intention to exclude it, fat fingers.

OrgNet 7y ago

makes me want to avoid Autotrader... where did this /advert/ come from anyways...

jarofgreen 7y ago
I haven't looked, but I'm guessing ... When you list a second hand car for sale, that's an "advert". Sometimes the adverts are the content you want :-)
- OrgNet 7y ago
  so they probably could have used /vehicle/, to be more specific