4 ms·

The situation is interesting, and self-hosting is indeed a very nice solution often. However, I wanted to comment on the article itself - it seems to be very he

The situation is interesting, and self-hosting is indeed a very nice solution often. However, I wanted to comment on the article itself - it seems to be very heavily AI-edited. Anyone who has spent time with LLMs will easily see it. But even that's not the issue; the main issue is that the article is basically a marketing piece. For example, the "Bridging the Gap: Why Not Just Docker Compose?" section is a 1:1 copy of the points in the "Powerful simplicity" on the landing page - https://disco.cloud/ https://disco.cloud/ And this blog post is the (only) case study that they showcase on their main page.

AstroBen 1y ago
heh my first instinct was to go see how they're making money. Guess that's coming soon
gregsadetsky 1y ago
You're absolutely right! Here are some three points why: - ... I'm kidding :-) Our library is open source, and we're very happy and proud that Idealist is using us to save a bit of cash. Is it marketing if you're proud of your work? :-) Cheers
- colechristensen 1y ago
  There's a tone issue. Marketing should be marketing and clearly so. Tech blogs are about sharing information with the community (Netflix Tech blog is a good example) NOT selling something. Marketing masquerading as a tech blog is offputting to a lot of people. People don't like being fooled with embedded advertising and putting ad copy into such pieces is at best annoying. https://netflixtechblog.com/ https://netflixtechblog.com/
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Nah, people are stupid. Including me. It's all marketing. Netflix's tech blog is marketing to engineers to want to go work there and to promote their product. If you want to see things though the lense that all advertising is bad, you'll make your life miserable because it's all advertising in one way or another.
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      What you've done is taken something I've written, redefined a core term in a way I obviously didn't mean, and then told me I'm wrong because of your redefinition.
      - fragmede 1y ago
        When you put it that way, you make me sound like an ass. Is that how I'm coming across? What did I redefine? I'm refuting the fairytale where some content is pure and untainted by marketing. Netflix writes posts that make engineers want to work there and people think, "hey, that's smart!" That’s marketing.
        ashirviskas 1y ago
        I think a big difference is when someone is pretending to be all about something else and tries to sneakily market to you. One thing is getting a free water bottle with an ad, another thing is when someone is inviting you to a "party" with free food and drinks and it turns out to be a MLM "party". Netflix is giving away free water bottles (I hate them, but I use their fast.com super often to test the speeds), another is pretending to be a blog post, but actually being an ad (if that was the case here). You just feel lied to. You cannot take anything seriously you read there, as it will probably be super biased and you cannot get your time back now.
        colechristensen 1y ago
        Maybe not an ass, that's too strong, but it's a common online pattern where someone transforms your point into an entirely different meaning and then disagrees with that transformation. It's annoying. I'm complaining about thinly veiled ad copy wearing the mask of shared technical notes. This is seen as a bad faith effort by the publisher of such notes and a dirty trick played on the reader. Advertising should announce itself for what it is. I'm very clearly making a distinction, I like A, I don't like B. You're taking that, saying I must actually hate both A and B, and by the way C through Z because nobody is 111% pure of heart and everybody must have at least some motivation for doing something and nobody is entirely altruistic.... which is just this crazy extreme that it's clear I don't believe at all. I like the incentive structure that leads Netflix to produce objectively high quality articles sharing with the community in a way that really seems to be entirely untainted by the motivation. Ad copy in tech notes does seem to taint the motivation and quality of them, it can be innocent but it doesn't seem like it and is generally irritating to a lot of people. Dislike of a certain kind of advertising doesn't mean I'm sitting around miserable because nobody is truly altruistic as you suggest, and that the issue. My lines of thinking aren't taken to a silly extreme. A lot of disagreements these days are people reinterpreting their opposition as exclusively extremist and that's a problem.
cirrus3 1y ago
This isn't the first time an article is also marketing. Besides, what is wrong with marketing something via a use case article? This is a fairly tame example of it and I found it an interesting and useful read, knowing full well it was also marketing.
jdprgm 1y ago
It's funny they have this marketing blog post based on competing on price yet don't disclose any of their pricing on their site only a schedule a meeting which is just about the biggest RED FLAG on pricing there is.
- gregsadetsky 1y ago
  Our library is open source, the price is 0!! :-) Haha We're actually mostly talking to people (that "schedule a meeting") to see how we can help them migrate their stuff away (from Heroku, Vercel, etc.) But we're not sure of the pricing model yet - probably Entreprise features like Gitlab does, while remaining open source. It's a tough(er) balance than running a hosted service where you can "just" (over)charge people.
tasuki 1y ago
> But even that's not the issue; the main issue is that the article is basically a marketing piece. Why is that an issue? Is it forbidden by HN guidelines? Or would you like all marketing to be marked as such? Which articles aren't marketing, one way or another?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

AstroBen 1y ago

heh my first instinct was to go see how they're making money. Guess that's coming soon

gregsadetsky 1y ago

You're absolutely right! Here are some three points why: - ... I'm kidding :-) Our library is open source, and we're very happy and proud that Idealist is using us to save a bit of cash. Is it marketing if you're proud of your work? :-) Cheers

colechristensen 1y ago
There's a tone issue. Marketing should be marketing and clearly so. Tech blogs are about sharing information with the community (Netflix Tech blog is a good example) NOT selling something. Marketing masquerading as a tech blog is offputting to a lot of people. People don't like being fooled with embedded advertising and putting ad copy into such pieces is at best annoying. https://netflixtechblog.com/ https://netflixtechblog.com/
- fragmede 1y ago
  Nah, people are stupid. Including me. It's all marketing. Netflix's tech blog is marketing to engineers to want to go work there and to promote their product. If you want to see things though the lense that all advertising is bad, you'll make your life miserable because it's all advertising in one way or another.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    What you've done is taken something I've written, redefined a core term in a way I obviously didn't mean, and then told me I'm wrong because of your redefinition.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      When you put it that way, you make me sound like an ass. Is that how I'm coming across? What did I redefine? I'm refuting the fairytale where some content is pure and untainted by marketing. Netflix writes posts that make engineers want to work there and people think, "hey, that's smart!" That’s marketing.
      - ashirviskas 1y ago
        I think a big difference is when someone is pretending to be all about something else and tries to sneakily market to you. One thing is getting a free water bottle with an ad, another thing is when someone is inviting you to a "party" with free food and drinks and it turns out to be a MLM "party". Netflix is giving away free water bottles (I hate them, but I use their fast.com super often to test the speeds), another is pretending to be a blog post, but actually being an ad (if that was the case here). You just feel lied to. You cannot take anything seriously you read there, as it will probably be super biased and you cannot get your time back now.
      - colechristensen 1y ago
        Maybe not an ass, that's too strong, but it's a common online pattern where someone transforms your point into an entirely different meaning and then disagrees with that transformation. It's annoying. I'm complaining about thinly veiled ad copy wearing the mask of shared technical notes. This is seen as a bad faith effort by the publisher of such notes and a dirty trick played on the reader. Advertising should announce itself for what it is. I'm very clearly making a distinction, I like A, I don't like B. You're taking that, saying I must actually hate both A and B, and by the way C through Z because nobody is 111% pure of heart and everybody must have at least some motivation for doing something and nobody is entirely altruistic.... which is just this crazy extreme that it's clear I don't believe at all. I like the incentive structure that leads Netflix to produce objectively high quality articles sharing with the community in a way that really seems to be entirely untainted by the motivation. Ad copy in tech notes does seem to taint the motivation and quality of them, it can be innocent but it doesn't seem like it and is generally irritating to a lot of people. Dislike of a certain kind of advertising doesn't mean I'm sitting around miserable because nobody is truly altruistic as you suggest, and that the issue. My lines of thinking aren't taken to a silly extreme. A lot of disagreements these days are people reinterpreting their opposition as exclusively extremist and that's a problem.

cirrus3 1y ago

This isn't the first time an article is also marketing. Besides, what is wrong with marketing something via a use case article? This is a fairly tame example of it and I found it an interesting and useful read, knowing full well it was also marketing.

jdprgm 1y ago

It's funny they have this marketing blog post based on competing on price yet don't disclose any of their pricing on their site only a schedule a meeting which is just about the biggest RED FLAG on pricing there is.

gregsadetsky 1y ago
Our library is open source, the price is 0!! :-) Haha We're actually mostly talking to people (that "schedule a meeting") to see how we can help them migrate their stuff away (from Heroku, Vercel, etc.) But we're not sure of the pricing model yet - probably Entreprise features like Gitlab does, while remaining open source. It's a tough(er) balance than running a hosted service where you can "just" (over)charge people.

tasuki 1y ago

> But even that's not the issue; the main issue is that the article is basically a marketing piece. Why is that an issue? Is it forbidden by HN guidelines? Or would you like all marketing to be marked as such? Which articles aren't marketing, one way or another?

deleted 1y ago

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