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Just please don't start adding molly-guards to your software. The concept only makes sense in the physical world, e.g. where the "important button", that you mi
by fainpul 7mo ago
Just please don't start adding molly-guards to your software. The concept only makes sense in the physical world, e.g. where the "important button", that you might never have to press, needs to be in reach all the time. In software, there are better solutions.
- fragmede 7mo agomy favorite Debian package is Mollyguard so when you shut down a server remotely via SSH it just checks the second time to make sure you really wanted to shut down that server and not your laptop.
- fainpul 7mo ago"Are you sure?" type guards are not suitable for actions which the user does regularly. If a user repeats this action regularly, they quickly automate the thought process (i.e. don't give it any thought anymore) and it becomes useless.
- selfhoster11 7mo agoWhich is why that's not what it does. It asks you to input the hostname instead, just like deleting a repo in Github does.
- fainpul 7mo agoI know how it works. Please don't nit-pick. It's an interruption that forces the user to confirm. That's what I meant. I discussed this also here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845740 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845740
- fragmede 7mo agoIt's not nitpicking. The nature of the interruption being different is material. I've lost files to automatically answering yes to rm -i y/n confirm. Typing the hostname itself is different enough to get me, at least to stop and go wait, hold on. And snap me out of doing the wrong one. Especially an SSH gateway machine.
- sixhobbits 7mo agoReminds me of this Matt Levine >> At 08:56 a ‘Trade Limit Warning’ pop-up alert appeared within PTE. This presented the trader with 711 warning messages, consisting of hard block and soft block messages, listed in a single alert where only the first 18 lines of alerts were immediately visible unless the person who received the alert scrolled down. The trader did not appreciate their inputting error and overrode all of the soft warnings in the pop-up. > You get 711 alerts, you only see 18 of them, you are like “ehh 18 alerts is pretty much the normal number,” you override them all without reading.
- kqr 7mo agoI agree. Fortunately, molly-guard the software can be configured with automated checks to allow safe actions (e.g. shutting down servers that don't receive significant traffic) without pestering the user. This means a properly configured mollly-guard is invisible for routine actions but kicks in only when a genuine mistake is suspected because the operation would cause some sort of meaningful loss. That way, users aren't trained to ignore it.
- fainpul 7mo ago> can be configured with automated checks to allow safe actions (e.g. shutting down servers that don't receive significant traffic) That's clever. This is what I meant when I wrote, that software allows for better solutions.
- devnotes77 7mo ago[dead]
- hrmtst93837 7mo ago[flagged]
- fainpul 7mo ago> In software, there are better solutions. You missed the point. Most things can be solved better. For example with undo or "fake undo" based on a delayed action or many other solutions, depending on the individual problem. Just asking "are you sure?" or forcing the user to jump through some hoops is the laziest and least user friendly way.