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Unfortunately, Stavros has some issues keeping his services up. I was a user of his https://historio.us https://historio.us long-time ago, a paying one, and he

Unfortunately, Stavros has some issues keeping his services up. I was a user of his https://historio.us https://historio.us long-time ago, a paying one, and he just killed the service and lost all my data. Some time later, he restarted the service and gave my username to somebody else. Don't put anything meaningful and valuable into his services! Hello, I'm afraid I couldn't find your backup file :/ It looks like your account may have been one of the older ones to be reclaimed, when we hadn't added the backup functionality yet. I'm sorry about that :/ Thanks, Stavros

stavros 5y ago
That's a bit of a liberal retelling. You had a free account, the system sends you one (or two, I forget) emails if your free account is inactive, and if you don't log in for a few months it deletes the data to make room for others. There was a period where I didn't keep backups of the data on free accounts, but people complained, so I added that. I think it's a bit unfair to expect me to keep account data around forever for free, even after notifications that the account is inactive and will be deleted. Also, wasn't this more than half a decade ago? EDIT: Also, your account isn't even deleted, only the pages are, so your username should still be there, no? EDIT2: Also also, paid users don't get deleted, so something must have happened there. Maybe your payment method failed when renewing, or you didn't have a paid account? What's the username? EDIT3: I found the thread: You: Why did all my bookmarks disappear from my account? Me: We only delete the links of unpaid accounts, as they take up too much space. We do have a backup export of your links I can send you, though. You: Can you please? I will upgrade to a paid account if you restore my links. Me: Sure, but it will have to be tomorrow, as I'm not at the computer right now. And then what you posted above. So it wasn't a paid account, this was seven years ago, your username wasn't given to someone else, and I didn't kill the service or lose your data.
- kragen 5y ago
  It seems like there's a dispute of fact, whether this person was paying you or not: you say "You had a free account," and they say they were a paying customer. I don't think "half a decade ago" is a reasonable time horizon after which to consider accusations of outright fraud irrelevant. If this person is telling the truth, then not only did you defraud them a few years ago, but you're lying about it now; this seems like an important thing for potential users of your new service to know about you. (Presumably your character has not changed much in the last five years, whether it was good or bad before.) If you're telling the truth, they're lying, presumably in order to hurt you.
  - stavros 5y ago
    I found and posted the email thread where he admitted to not having a paid account. He also managed to get into his account fine (that's how he saw that the data wasn't there), so the stuff about the username isn't accurate either. I can look at payment records, but I've literally never had a single complaint of paid users' data being deleted by accident. I don't think he wants to hurt me (who cares about me or my service anyway?), I just think he's misremembering stuff from seven years ago.
    - buryat 5y ago
      > I don't think he wants to hurt me in their HN profile they wrote about themselves: Provocateur extraordinaire. So malicious intent cannot be ruled out
      - stavros 5y ago
        Eh I'd rather assume the best, he seems like a nice guy.
        nikolay 5y ago
        I just paid for one year of Historious. I did like the service - that's why I was using it back in July 2010! I hope you have time to keep it up.
      - nikolay 5y ago
        Next time you get years of data deleted without any warning, let's see how you're gonna react to it!
        stavros 5y ago
        I mean, it's not "without any warning" when you didn't see the warning. It was there.
        5y ago
- debarshri 5y ago
  The fact that you are putting customer chats in public forum without their consent is just terrible.
  - stavros 5y ago
    Oh man, if you're angry at my posting emails, wait until you see what the other guy posted!
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    It's absolutely fair game to post customer chats/emails that contradict a false and damaging narrative. Maybe the OP misremembered, maybe the OP has an axe to grind, either way the issue is firmly resolved now.
    - awsthro00945 5y ago
      >It's absolutely fair game to post customer chats/emails that contradict a false and damaging narrative. Eh, not really. Most half-decent businesses have a privacy policy/TOS that explicitly makes this a no-go, and would be grounds for a lawsuit if a company posted a customer's conversations with said company. It doesn't look like Historious has such a policy, so legally it might be okay, but it's still scummy IMO. Posting your side of the story is fine, but using communications that are expected to be private usually isn't, and you should be able to correct the story without posting private info (we don't even know if the transcript that Stavros posted is true.. he could have completely made it up for all we know). With all that said, it made me curious to look at the TOS for IMGZ, and... yikes... https://imgz.org/help/terms/ https://imgz.org/help/terms/
      - normalocity 5y ago
        I see humor in the entire project, and am okay with this. Given Stavros' clear intent to be funny and make it abundantly clear what _isn't_ being promised, it's pretty great. I mean c'mon - have a little fun. At any rate it's classic absurdist marketing, and I approve. Besides, I don't read the TOS of most other services. Why would I start now?
- nikolay 5y ago
  Do you want me to provide you with the email trail? I remember paying for the account. EDIT: Did you warn customers that their data (maybe a couple of megabytes) would be deleted? Did you offer me "upgrade to keep your data"? You simply disrespect our data. Also, your service was down for months if not years! EDIT 2: Yes, you did say free accounts would probably get deleted after just 2 months without logging in. My email thread [0] starts with me being certain I've paid for the account - that was 7 years ago and my memory back then was outstanding. Your free account had a limit of like 500 links and I had thousands and my account was paid for sure, but I was one of you first users and probably it was deleted by mistake or some flawed data migration. Please, respect customers' data, it should be sacred - even if they are not paying customers! It didn't cost much to store links, even back in 2010! [0]: https://nikolay.docdroid.com/H4ZYmsS/gmail-password-reset-on-historious-pdf https://nikolay.docdroid.com/H4ZYmsS/gmail-password-reset-on...
  - stavros 5y ago
    > Do you want me to provide you with the email trail? I remember paying for the account. The question is whether it was a paid account at the time of the deletion. Paying for a year in 2010 obviously still makes the account unpaid in 2014. > Did you warn customers that their data (maybe a couple of megabytes) would be deleted? Yes, you get an email that this will happen. > Did you offer me "upgrade to keep your data"? Yes, it was in the email, it also tells you you can log in to keep it. > You simply disrespect our data. I don't know how many times I need to say that this is incorrect. > Also, your service was down for months if not years! When was this? I don't recall this, and I use it pretty regularly (and have monitoring).
    - nikolay 5y ago
      Here's the email with the innocent subject of "historious hasn't seen you in a while!": Hello! We noticed that you haven't logged on historious in a while. Is there anything we can do to help? Please don't hesitate to reply to this email with anything you may need. To refresh your memory, historious is a new kind of bookmarking service which creates your very own, personalised search engine of things you like. Just as a reminder, our address is http://historio.us/ and your username, in case you have forgotten, is "nikolay". Please note that, if you do not log in or historify something for two months, the data in your free account might be removed to ensure that our service always remains fresh. If you are not using historious, you can safely ignore this email. If you would like to prevent this, just log into historious or historify something in the next month. If you are a subscriber, you don't need to do this, as we will not touch any of your data. Thanks! Team historious It says "the data might be removed". Typically, you get multiple warnings before your data gets deleted, because people forget, and the warning is alarming. All these emails were unread - we all get a lot of spam and lots of informative emails and many of us just read the subject. If the subject is not suggesting that action should be taken otherwise there will be dire consequences, people might just read the subject and not open it.
sieabah 5y ago
Well in the disclaimer it quite literally states. > Service comes with no guarantee, not even guarantee of service. Paying us money doesn't entitle you to anything except owning less money. So if you go into this service paying money expecting images to be hosted you're gonna have a bad time. Still humorous though, finally a payment page that states what every big company wants to state.
awsthro00945 5y ago
Well good news for you, he pretty much explicitly states all of that in IMGZ's terms of service! https://imgz.org/help/terms/ https://imgz.org/help/terms/ >This is my project, and I make no promises at all, even though you're paying. I'm not even promising I'll host your images. I don't believe in stealing your money or compromising your privacy, but even those aren't promises either.
- mrmuagi 5y ago
  TBH, I would avoid this service on the grounds it seems to be run by one person (to what extent its just clever self promotion hinges on charitable interpretation) -- this blurb whilst humorous is on line with the Discord cutesy error messages. It really hammers home this is not in the big leagues (or the minor leagues rather) and if you are using this service, you should be fine with that. However charging customers for it is interesting since that's a sure source of customer pressure via expectation.
  - normalocity 5y ago
    I haven't been this entertained for the mere price of $12 in a very long time. I think it's worth the price of admission even if I never even try to upload an image.
    - stavros 5y ago
      Oh no no no, that won't do. Please send your SLA and NDA for me to sign, we can't be spending $12 willy-nilly! We could have almost bought one movie ticket to Cats for that money!
      - normalocity 5y ago
        I bought a movie on Amazon Prime just yesterday for $14 and it didn't make me as happy as this comment section.
        5y ago

stavros 5y ago

That's a bit of a liberal retelling. You had a free account, the system sends you one (or two, I forget) emails if your free account is inactive, and if you don't log in for a few months it deletes the data to make room for others. There was a period where I didn't keep backups of the data on free accounts, but people complained, so I added that. I think it's a bit unfair to expect me to keep account data around forever for free, even after notifications that the account is inactive and will be deleted. Also, wasn't this more than half a decade ago? EDIT: Also, your account isn't even deleted, only the pages are, so your username should still be there, no? EDIT2: Also also, paid users don't get deleted, so something must have happened there. Maybe your payment method failed when renewing, or you didn't have a paid account? What's the username? EDIT3: I found the thread: You: Why did all my bookmarks disappear from my account? Me: We only delete the links of unpaid accounts, as they take up too much space. We do have a backup export of your links I can send you, though. You: Can you please? I will upgrade to a paid account if you restore my links. Me: Sure, but it will have to be tomorrow, as I'm not at the computer right now. And then what you posted above. So it wasn't a paid account, this was seven years ago, your username wasn't given to someone else, and I didn't kill the service or lose your data.

kragen 5y ago
It seems like there's a dispute of fact, whether this person was paying you or not: you say "You had a free account," and they say they were a paying customer. I don't think "half a decade ago" is a reasonable time horizon after which to consider accusations of outright fraud irrelevant. If this person is telling the truth, then not only did you defraud them a few years ago, but you're lying about it now; this seems like an important thing for potential users of your new service to know about you. (Presumably your character has not changed much in the last five years, whether it was good or bad before.) If you're telling the truth, they're lying, presumably in order to hurt you.
- stavros 5y ago
  I found and posted the email thread where he admitted to not having a paid account. He also managed to get into his account fine (that's how he saw that the data wasn't there), so the stuff about the username isn't accurate either. I can look at payment records, but I've literally never had a single complaint of paid users' data being deleted by accident. I don't think he wants to hurt me (who cares about me or my service anyway?), I just think he's misremembering stuff from seven years ago.
  - buryat 5y ago
    > I don't think he wants to hurt me in their HN profile they wrote about themselves: Provocateur extraordinaire. So malicious intent cannot be ruled out
    - stavros 5y ago
      Eh I'd rather assume the best, he seems like a nice guy.
      - nikolay 5y ago
        I just paid for one year of Historious. I did like the service - that's why I was using it back in July 2010! I hope you have time to keep it up.
    - nikolay 5y ago
      Next time you get years of data deleted without any warning, let's see how you're gonna react to it!
      - stavros 5y ago
        I mean, it's not "without any warning" when you didn't see the warning. It was there.
        5y ago
debarshri 5y ago
The fact that you are putting customer chats in public forum without their consent is just terrible.
- stavros 5y ago
  Oh man, if you're angry at my posting emails, wait until you see what the other guy posted!
- stickfigure 5y ago
  It's absolutely fair game to post customer chats/emails that contradict a false and damaging narrative. Maybe the OP misremembered, maybe the OP has an axe to grind, either way the issue is firmly resolved now.
  - awsthro00945 5y ago
    >It's absolutely fair game to post customer chats/emails that contradict a false and damaging narrative. Eh, not really. Most half-decent businesses have a privacy policy/TOS that explicitly makes this a no-go, and would be grounds for a lawsuit if a company posted a customer's conversations with said company. It doesn't look like Historious has such a policy, so legally it might be okay, but it's still scummy IMO. Posting your side of the story is fine, but using communications that are expected to be private usually isn't, and you should be able to correct the story without posting private info (we don't even know if the transcript that Stavros posted is true.. he could have completely made it up for all we know). With all that said, it made me curious to look at the TOS for IMGZ, and... yikes... https://imgz.org/help/terms/ https://imgz.org/help/terms/
    - normalocity 5y ago
      I see humor in the entire project, and am okay with this. Given Stavros' clear intent to be funny and make it abundantly clear what _isn't_ being promised, it's pretty great. I mean c'mon - have a little fun. At any rate it's classic absurdist marketing, and I approve. Besides, I don't read the TOS of most other services. Why would I start now?
nikolay 5y ago
Do you want me to provide you with the email trail? I remember paying for the account. EDIT: Did you warn customers that their data (maybe a couple of megabytes) would be deleted? Did you offer me "upgrade to keep your data"? You simply disrespect our data. Also, your service was down for months if not years! EDIT 2: Yes, you did say free accounts would probably get deleted after just 2 months without logging in. My email thread [0] starts with me being certain I've paid for the account - that was 7 years ago and my memory back then was outstanding. Your free account had a limit of like 500 links and I had thousands and my account was paid for sure, but I was one of you first users and probably it was deleted by mistake or some flawed data migration. Please, respect customers' data, it should be sacred - even if they are not paying customers! It didn't cost much to store links, even back in 2010! [0]: https://nikolay.docdroid.com/H4ZYmsS/gmail-password-reset-on-historious-pdf https://nikolay.docdroid.com/H4ZYmsS/gmail-password-reset-on...
- stavros 5y ago
  > Do you want me to provide you with the email trail? I remember paying for the account. The question is whether it was a paid account at the time of the deletion. Paying for a year in 2010 obviously still makes the account unpaid in 2014. > Did you warn customers that their data (maybe a couple of megabytes) would be deleted? Yes, you get an email that this will happen. > Did you offer me "upgrade to keep your data"? Yes, it was in the email, it also tells you you can log in to keep it. > You simply disrespect our data. I don't know how many times I need to say that this is incorrect. > Also, your service was down for months if not years! When was this? I don't recall this, and I use it pretty regularly (and have monitoring).
  - nikolay 5y ago
    Here's the email with the innocent subject of "historious hasn't seen you in a while!": Hello! We noticed that you haven't logged on historious in a while. Is there anything we can do to help? Please don't hesitate to reply to this email with anything you may need. To refresh your memory, historious is a new kind of bookmarking service which creates your very own, personalised search engine of things you like. Just as a reminder, our address is http://historio.us/ and your username, in case you have forgotten, is "nikolay". Please note that, if you do not log in or historify something for two months, the data in your free account might be removed to ensure that our service always remains fresh. If you are not using historious, you can safely ignore this email. If you would like to prevent this, just log into historious or historify something in the next month. If you are a subscriber, you don't need to do this, as we will not touch any of your data. Thanks! Team historious It says "the data might be removed". Typically, you get multiple warnings before your data gets deleted, because people forget, and the warning is alarming. All these emails were unread - we all get a lot of spam and lots of informative emails and many of us just read the subject. If the subject is not suggesting that action should be taken otherwise there will be dire consequences, people might just read the subject and not open it.

sieabah 5y ago

Well in the disclaimer it quite literally states. > Service comes with no guarantee, not even guarantee of service. Paying us money doesn't entitle you to anything except owning less money. So if you go into this service paying money expecting images to be hosted you're gonna have a bad time. Still humorous though, finally a payment page that states what every big company wants to state.

awsthro00945 5y ago

Well good news for you, he pretty much explicitly states all of that in IMGZ's terms of service! https://imgz.org/help/terms/ https://imgz.org/help/terms/ >This is my project, and I make no promises at all, even though you're paying. I'm not even promising I'll host your images. I don't believe in stealing your money or compromising your privacy, but even those aren't promises either.

mrmuagi 5y ago
TBH, I would avoid this service on the grounds it seems to be run by one person (to what extent its just clever self promotion hinges on charitable interpretation) -- this blurb whilst humorous is on line with the Discord cutesy error messages. It really hammers home this is not in the big leagues (or the minor leagues rather) and if you are using this service, you should be fine with that. However charging customers for it is interesting since that's a sure source of customer pressure via expectation.
- normalocity 5y ago
  I haven't been this entertained for the mere price of $12 in a very long time. I think it's worth the price of admission even if I never even try to upload an image.
  - stavros 5y ago
    Oh no no no, that won't do. Please send your SLA and NDA for me to sign, we can't be spending $12 willy-nilly! We could have almost bought one movie ticket to Cats for that money!
    - normalocity 5y ago
      I bought a movie on Amazon Prime just yesterday for $14 and it didn't make me as happy as this comment section.
      - 5y ago