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> taking advantage No. 100% wrong. If you advertise and sell "unlimited" then you should deliver unlimited. If you don't build in acceptable use limits into th

> taking advantage No. 100% wrong. If you advertise and sell "unlimited" then you should deliver unlimited. If you don't build in acceptable use limits into the contract, then that's your fault, not the customer's.

licomo 3y ago
OT, but this is why I am skeptical of Cloudflare right now. Am I right to be concerned?
- andygeorge 3y ago
  you're only skeptical of CF now? They've been garbage for years in terms of service and support
  - licomo 3y ago
    It has just seemed like people are big fans of the "free, unlimited" plans here. I use a provider that is pay-per-usage personally, which seems more sustainable. Support is part of the cost that is rolled into that pay-per-usage fee IMO.
    - andygeorge 3y ago
      I've worked at multiple places that unfortunately paid for CF services (and support), and have consistently had trouble with them. And that doesn't include just general CF service instability for end users.
      - JimDabell 3y ago
        Ditto. We got locked into a long-term Cloudflare contract and regretted it immensely. So much stuff that’s beta quality, broken promises, terrible support. Looks great on the surface, until you need to actually rely upon it.
- skywhopper 3y ago
  Yes. They will flip on their customers sooner or later. It might be years. And so long as you are prepared to bail when the time comes, you may as well keep taking advantage. But if it's critical infrastructure, make sure you have a failover plan ready.
- pton_xd 3y ago
  Cloudflare covers this in their terms of service: Content Delivery Network (Free, Pro, or Business) Cloudflare’s content delivery network (the “CDN”) Service can be used to cache and serve web pages and websites. Unless you are an Enterprise customer, Cloudflare offers specific Paid Services (e.g., the Developer Platform, Images, and Stream) that you must use in order to serve video and other large files via the CDN. Cloudflare reserves the right to disable or limit your access to or use of the CDN, or to limit your End Users’ access to certain of your resources through the CDN, if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files. We will use reasonable efforts to provide you with notice of such action. In other words, if you serve HTML / CSS / JS you'll be fine. Too much of anything else and at some point they will ask you to pay. I've experienced this first-hand and they're pretty fair about it. I believe they asked me to upgrade to Enterprise once I was serving something like >10-20TB per month of images / audio files (this was several years ago though!)
  - CodesInChaos 3y ago
    R2 has similarly misaligned pricing, and I don't think it comes with comparable ToS limitations: You pay per request, and not proportional to data egress. So theoretically you could use it to distribute huge files very cheaply. Assuming there is no maximum request duration, it could even be used with a long running connection to download a video as it's being watched.
  - licomo 3y ago
    This is the part I don't like > if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files Lots of sites have images. When exactly can I start to expect paying? Will this unspoken limit change in the future? Will I be notified when it is? As-written, it doesn't seem that way since it's opaque.
    - fennecfoxy 3y ago
      Why do you think CF owe you an explanation of when you start paying? You're not paying them; they don't owe you anything. I imagine it pretty much comes down to "did this one thing that an individual is free hosting suddenly become popular or are they constantly taking the piss/running a biz off free".
auggierose 3y ago
Sounds like you just made Google's case for them. They provided the service. They cancelled it. Not their problem what happens with customer data afterwards.
nox100 3y ago
I challenge you to go to any restaurant that has "unlimited refills", back up a tanker trunk and fill your truck. I don't think any court would enforce "unlimited" for that situation. I'm not sure this storage one is all that different
- boringg 3y ago
  In fact all you can eat buffets ban people from showing up after they completely break the system.
  - buttercraft 3y ago
    All-you-can-eat is not the same as unlimited.
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      So should cloud providers offer all-you-can-store in the future because by your logic that's not the same as unlimited?
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    An all-you-can eat might ban you for getting more food but they won't pump your stomach to undo all the food they already gave you. Google already let him store that data, if they regret that they should ban him from storing more. Deleting his data after permitting him to store it is completely over the line. No buffet in the world runs like that, not even those owned by literal gangsters.
- precommunicator 3y ago
  I feel like this isn't the best example, such restaurant can say that its only unlimited if you drink it in-house, in plain view. You almost never can take out food or drinks in all-you-can eat restaurants.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  But restaurants explicitly ban doing that. Even all you can eat restaurants don't let you take out food. Google never hinted at having a maximum limit. Theres no reason to believe or expect that unlimited actually means some arbitrary limit that google just came up with after you signed up. Your analogy would've been better if the journo tried hosting a file share service using his drive account as a back end or something but that's not what happened
TehShrike 3y ago
Agreed. Contrast this "unlimited" with how gmail was rolled out – gmail didn't offer unlimited email storage, it just offered a number orders of magnitude greater than everyone thought was realistic at the time.
ufmace 3y ago
I really disagree with this type of literalism. Everybody knows nothing is really unlimited. It's marketing aimed at the naive. I have no problem with banging on Google for offering "unlimited" things without telling you what the limits actually are. But at some point, you have to expect some level of knowledge and sophistication from the users. I think accumulating 237Tb of data is well past the point where you should not just take "unlimited" at face value, ask hard questions about exactly what the limits of what they're offering are, and move to a better supported service, even if it costs some money. It's probably also time to re-think - do you really need 237Tb? That's a huge amount of data. Is this like raw 4k HD video of every interview you've ever done, uncut? Maybe it's time to cut down on things a bit.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  In HN people have low expectations for google so a limit seems reasonable to us. Google behaving shitty doesn't surprise anybody here. But what about with the normies? Google has deliberately cultivated an image of extreme technical capability with the normies. Google have deliberately convinced the general public that Google are basically internet gods who can do things no other company can, using their computer wizard magic. A normie can therefore reasonably believe that google could store a petabyte for them, when more technical people should reasonably know that google has limits. These aren't contradictory. If Joe Blow's computer shop down the street offered "unlimited storage" then normies would understand that to be bullshit. But when Google gives that offer, it's taken literally because Google. And this is Google's own damn fault, their PR teams built Google's reputation to impossible heights deliberately.

licomo 3y ago

OT, but this is why I am skeptical of Cloudflare right now. Am I right to be concerned?

andygeorge 3y ago
you're only skeptical of CF now? They've been garbage for years in terms of service and support
- licomo 3y ago
  It has just seemed like people are big fans of the "free, unlimited" plans here. I use a provider that is pay-per-usage personally, which seems more sustainable. Support is part of the cost that is rolled into that pay-per-usage fee IMO.
  - andygeorge 3y ago
    I've worked at multiple places that unfortunately paid for CF services (and support), and have consistently had trouble with them. And that doesn't include just general CF service instability for end users.
    - JimDabell 3y ago
      Ditto. We got locked into a long-term Cloudflare contract and regretted it immensely. So much stuff that’s beta quality, broken promises, terrible support. Looks great on the surface, until you need to actually rely upon it.
skywhopper 3y ago
Yes. They will flip on their customers sooner or later. It might be years. And so long as you are prepared to bail when the time comes, you may as well keep taking advantage. But if it's critical infrastructure, make sure you have a failover plan ready.
pton_xd 3y ago
Cloudflare covers this in their terms of service: Content Delivery Network (Free, Pro, or Business) Cloudflare’s content delivery network (the “CDN”) Service can be used to cache and serve web pages and websites. Unless you are an Enterprise customer, Cloudflare offers specific Paid Services (e.g., the Developer Platform, Images, and Stream) that you must use in order to serve video and other large files via the CDN. Cloudflare reserves the right to disable or limit your access to or use of the CDN, or to limit your End Users’ access to certain of your resources through the CDN, if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files. We will use reasonable efforts to provide you with notice of such action. In other words, if you serve HTML / CSS / JS you'll be fine. Too much of anything else and at some point they will ask you to pay. I've experienced this first-hand and they're pretty fair about it. I believe they asked me to upgrade to Enterprise once I was serving something like >10-20TB per month of images / audio files (this was several years ago though!)
- CodesInChaos 3y ago
  R2 has similarly misaligned pricing, and I don't think it comes with comparable ToS limitations: You pay per request, and not proportional to data egress. So theoretically you could use it to distribute huge files very cheaply. Assuming there is no maximum request duration, it could even be used with a long running connection to download a video as it's being watched.
- licomo 3y ago
  This is the part I don't like > if you use or are suspected of using the CDN without such Paid Services to serve video or a disproportionate percentage of pictures, audio files, or other large files Lots of sites have images. When exactly can I start to expect paying? Will this unspoken limit change in the future? Will I be notified when it is? As-written, it doesn't seem that way since it's opaque.
  - fennecfoxy 3y ago
    Why do you think CF owe you an explanation of when you start paying? You're not paying them; they don't owe you anything. I imagine it pretty much comes down to "did this one thing that an individual is free hosting suddenly become popular or are they constantly taking the piss/running a biz off free".

auggierose 3y ago

Sounds like you just made Google's case for them. They provided the service. They cancelled it. Not their problem what happens with customer data afterwards.

nox100 3y ago

I challenge you to go to any restaurant that has "unlimited refills", back up a tanker trunk and fill your truck. I don't think any court would enforce "unlimited" for that situation. I'm not sure this storage one is all that different

boringg 3y ago
In fact all you can eat buffets ban people from showing up after they completely break the system.
- buttercraft 3y ago
  All-you-can-eat is not the same as unlimited.
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    So should cloud providers offer all-you-can-store in the future because by your logic that's not the same as unlimited?
- lupusreal 3y ago
  An all-you-can eat might ban you for getting more food but they won't pump your stomach to undo all the food they already gave you. Google already let him store that data, if they regret that they should ban him from storing more. Deleting his data after permitting him to store it is completely over the line. No buffet in the world runs like that, not even those owned by literal gangsters.
precommunicator 3y ago
I feel like this isn't the best example, such restaurant can say that its only unlimited if you drink it in-house, in plain view. You almost never can take out food or drinks in all-you-can eat restaurants.
mardifoufs 3y ago
But restaurants explicitly ban doing that. Even all you can eat restaurants don't let you take out food. Google never hinted at having a maximum limit. Theres no reason to believe or expect that unlimited actually means some arbitrary limit that google just came up with after you signed up. Your analogy would've been better if the journo tried hosting a file share service using his drive account as a back end or something but that's not what happened

TehShrike 3y ago

Agreed. Contrast this "unlimited" with how gmail was rolled out – gmail didn't offer unlimited email storage, it just offered a number orders of magnitude greater than everyone thought was realistic at the time.

ufmace 3y ago

I really disagree with this type of literalism. Everybody knows nothing is really unlimited. It's marketing aimed at the naive. I have no problem with banging on Google for offering "unlimited" things without telling you what the limits actually are. But at some point, you have to expect some level of knowledge and sophistication from the users. I think accumulating 237Tb of data is well past the point where you should not just take "unlimited" at face value, ask hard questions about exactly what the limits of what they're offering are, and move to a better supported service, even if it costs some money. It's probably also time to re-think - do you really need 237Tb? That's a huge amount of data. Is this like raw 4k HD video of every interview you've ever done, uncut? Maybe it's time to cut down on things a bit.

lupusreal 3y ago
In HN people have low expectations for google so a limit seems reasonable to us. Google behaving shitty doesn't surprise anybody here. But what about with the normies? Google has deliberately cultivated an image of extreme technical capability with the normies. Google have deliberately convinced the general public that Google are basically internet gods who can do things no other company can, using their computer wizard magic. A normie can therefore reasonably believe that google could store a petabyte for them, when more technical people should reasonably know that google has limits. These aren't contradictory. If Joe Blow's computer shop down the street offered "unlimited storage" then normies would understand that to be bullshit. But when Google gives that offer, it's taken literally because Google. And this is Google's own damn fault, their PR teams built Google's reputation to impossible heights deliberately.