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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

> it's a program for managing physical hardware running on my hardware.

That's not what the article suggests. The article suggests an ad on a page with an ubiquiti url.

While it may be the same software under the hood, I agree that seeing an ad when I'm on someone else's hosted page is (somewhat) acceptable unless I'm a paying customer, but seeing it on my own machine isn't.

In the end since those are two entirely different things and the article seems to be discussing their hosted version, It's important to keep those things apart

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> That's not what the article suggests. The article suggests an ad on a page with an ubiquiti url.

It's both. UniFi is product line of network hardware which is managed by a central controller. The controller is available as a software download, and Ubiquiti sells a few devices that are pre-configured to run it (the "Dream Machine" from the ad, and their "Cloud Key", which is just a PoE-powered mini-appliance that runs the controller). The controller's UI can be accessed either directly, or via a Ubiquiti-run cloud service. The tweet shows the latter, but having recently upgraded my controller, I can confirm that the ad also appears when directly accessing the UI. What's worse, there's a link offering to go back to the "Classic Dashboard" on my install, but it doesn't appear to work.

On my install, it worked when I went to settings and found "Use new interface in all pages" or something like that. Disabling that option kicked the UI back to the non-insane version.

> I can confirm that the ad also appears when directly accessing the UI.

This is vital information. This is definitely not okay for practical reasons.

They removed local management apparently.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26631513

I don't understand how can you keep things apart when it's the same software?

If I can self host it expect no ads (ie when I see that interface on an url that says 192.168...). If I pay a subscription for a service I expect no ads there.

If I buy a gadget and use the manufacturers’ cloud service “for free” (apart from the hardware purchase) then I expect anything.

I wouldn’t want to use a cloud service to access what’s on my own hardware. Apart from ease of configuration, what’s the point of it? Why wouldn’t I rather go to my own server?

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