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b1temytoday at 6:16 AM4 repliesview on HN

Is "clown GCP Host" a technical term I am unaware of, or is the author just voicing their discontent?

Seems to me that the problem is the NAS's web interface using sentry for logging/monitoring, and part of what was logged were internal hostnames (which might be named in a way that has sensitive info, e.g, the corp-and-other-corp-merger example they gave. So it wouldn't matter that it's inaccessible in a private network, the name itself is sensitive information.).

In that case, I would personally replace the operating system of the NAS with one that is free/open source that I trust and does not phone home. I suppose some form of adblocking ala PiHole or some other DNS configuration that blocks sentry calls would work too, but I would just go with using an operating system I trust.


Replies

jraphtoday at 6:28 AM

> Is "clown GCP Host" a technical term I am unaware of, or is the author just voicing their discontent?

Clown is Rachel's word for (Big Tech's) cloud.

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rausrtoday at 9:45 AM

> Is "clown GCP Host" a technical term I am unaware of, or is the author just voicing their discontent?

The term has been in use for quite some time; It is voicing sarcastic discontent with the hyperscaler platforms _and_ their users (the idea being that the platform is "someone else's computer" or - more up to date - "a landlord for your data"). I'm not sure if she coined it, but if she did then good on her!

Not everyone believes using "the cloud" is a good idea, and for those of us who have run their own infrastructure "on-premises" or co-located, the clown is considered suitably patronising. Just saying ;)

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seethishattoday at 12:41 PM

Also, sometimes, we use the term 'weenie' rather than 'clown'. They are interchangeable.

user_of_the_wektoday at 2:04 PM

The circus left town, but the clowns are still here.