Spamhaus, GitHub Pages, and good error messages
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Last week a bunch of my websites went down... well, kind of. It wasn't just mine: thousands of sites were down, including github.io itself. And they weren't down for everybody... just for quite a lot of people in the UK. Let's figure out what happened.
- Розваги
I think many people have stories regarding unreadable and unhelpful error messages. One I've been through was with Netflix throwing a raw number on my screen, and it took me a while and a bit of educated guessing to realize my smart tv had the wrong time zone
I think the Netflix app didn't expect that to ever be an error so when the network library or some other library threw that error, the app just spat it out not knowing what it is
I think the issue big service providers have with helpful messages is that a) writing them costs the providers time and money and b) it empowers their users. Back in the 1990s, internet was by geeks and for geeks, so services like Demon Internet were ideologically in favor of leveling the player field with their consumers. Nowadays, big tech doesn't want their users to do anything but mindlessly consume whatever it puts in front of them, and wait quietly if something breaks. I don't think this was a conscious decision by someone, but rather emerged out of the dynamics of computational power concentration and agglomeration over the past three decades.
I'm gonna change all my errors to 418 if the request origin is you 😂
I never had a daemon account back in the olden days.... but I always considered it the abode of the cool kids.
Great stories we can all identify with! The other peeve of mine is calling them error messages to begin with. It's a word that has been so overused in the computer biz we are not aware of what it really means. It means a mistake. So to a lay user seeing the word ERROR can seem like an accusation. "You have ERRED!". Punishment must soon follow. I much prefer the sites that say "Something went wrong", followed by, as you so correctly propose, as much information about the problem as you can find. When you see this a) you know it's not your fault, and b) you can have an intelligent discussion with support people.
Hi Dylan, are you the lead singer with Henge?
Not to the best of my knowledge…
@@DylanBeattie OK, but if you had a twin this guy would be him. Are you familiar with the band? I've only just been made aware of them. I swear the lead singer is a dead ringer for you. LOL
but dns tho
I worked in an ISP call-centre, with actual access to DSLAMs while talking with the customer, and:
1. The people working there are not the most motivated to learn about the products their line supports. Usually they are in-between jobs.
2. It is really expensive to train staff about products, mainly, highly technical products, mainly, staff with low levels of motivation. It's easier to just give them one-size-fits-all scripts.
Agree on all the principles here... but I'm curious. How would you suggest the error message you present at 7:54 actually be accomplished? Because in thinking about what the probable chain of causation for the error message you _did_ get is, I'm having trouble thinking of a way to effect a different sort of behavior that would allow the message you want, without causing other errors (e.g. TLS validation errors, assuming your browser is assuming https) that would get in the way of it. Thoughts?
In this situation with TLS, it can't without breaking the security of TLS the same way we ended up revoking all of DigiCert's root certificates. Basically, you would have to reroute to your own webserver instead of the target one, then the ssl handshake starts up and one needs to provide a valid TLS certificate for that domain name and automatically generating certificates in such a case, well now you can automatically generate in all cases and allowing that would have all sorts of governments wanting to do this to attack each other, do censorship and mass surveilance stuff right down to evey byte sent/recieved.
@@EwanMarshall Indeed. I feel like there might need to be some sort of protocol for side-band meta-communication about status or something. Or, effect real-time blackholing type efforts at a different layer (closer to the application), maybe?? Though in a true DDoS or whatever, that might not be good either. I dunno. Seems like a hard problem to solve, period, and potentially impossible with our current sets of technologies and solution-space... gonna need some out-of-the-box thinking, I guess? And maybe GNUnet???!? (Just heard about this recently, haven't wrapped my head around it, it may or may not have anything to offer here.)
@@DavidLindes Even with out of band, I can see ways to missuse it, especially by attackers and government actors, basically that side channel is bypassing the TLS security then.
@@EwanMarshall I think that may depend on exactly what is going on, but it's certainly a risk worth considering, yes.
traceroute... if more hosts didn't ignore ICMP
Hey Dylan! Really enjoying these weekly videos nowadays. I am always excited to see you at a conference, but getting a weekly video has been a real treat!
Users want remedy messages, (ie how do I fix this?) not error messages.
Users can find out remedy with well written error message. Generic error won't allow that.
Nice T-Shirt... took me a while to get it and then I groaned... this is the required result! ;)
What's the joke? I'm afraid I don't understand it
It’s the Def Leppard logotype, but it says DEVELOPER. If you’re not familiar with Def Leppard start with the song “Animal” from Hysteria. 🤘🏼
@@DylanBeattie Ahhh damn it that's clever 😂 Thanks for the suggestion!
@@DylanBeattie I've just spotted your "Metadata" one in a conference talk... these are absolutely superb!
I need to go back to your video where I THOUGHT you were wearing a Guns 'n' Roses T-Shirt and pay a little more attention. :)
@@edgeeffect Glad you like 'em. The T-shirts are all custom prints for the moment, but if you'd like a set of stickers with the complete set of designs, drop me an email with your mailing address (dylan@dylanbeattie.net) and I'll get some in the post :)
You should reconsider how you title your videos. The titles always seem far less interesting than what you actually talk about.
“CHECK OUT THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK DEVELOPERS DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!” - that kind of thing? 🤣
@@DylanBeattie Please, not that. 😅
His titles are apt. Not everything needs to be TikTok-ified.