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Comment by zalew | Hacker News Reader

"On Windows, you’ll want to use putty [...] criminals often try to guess the root password using automated attacks that try many thousands of passwords in a very short time. This is a common attack that nearly all servers will face."

yet another tutorial I wonder who's the target audience. if somebody doesn't know the term brute-force or how to open a terminal app and connect with ssh, IMO they are not supposed to set up their own servery by themselves.

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Every sysadmin in the world once set up a server for the first time; every sysadmin in the world once heard the term "brute force" for the first time.

Some of these sysadmins were lucky to set up their first server when telnet was still considered acceptable to leave open.

"they are not supposed to set up their own server..."

What about people setting up a server for the first time? How else are they supposed to learn?

I built my first site when I was 14 and moved to a VPS when I was 17. Until I moved to Linode, I never had a reason to open Terminal.

> What about people setting up a server for the first time? How else are they supposed to learn?

oh wow. well, I'm kind of old fashioned, but maybe they could start with learning basics of how the internet works, what is ssh, what the hell is linux, and by then somebody will know why you need to open that wierd terminal where there is only text and no cute rounded cornered buttons.

I don't get why[1] some tutorials try to cover everything almost from 'first, turn on your computer' to 'deploy your scalable social dynamic api-driven mumbo jumbo architecture web app', and there have been a few around here. there is a place for basic education and there certainly is a place to help somebody kickstart in a particular tech when he's got the basics covered - what's the point of mixing the two?

[1] actually I do. clickity click.

I used feross tutorial abotu 18 months ago when I first started learning about Linux while I was also setting up my Linode for the first time. His tutorial was very helpful as I was not that much an ignorant, but still not that familiar with a terminal.

There's a need for tutorials like that, where people don't want to learn all the layers of internet, of ssh and the architecture of Unix only to setup their Linode box. Actually, BECAUSE I setup my Linode, I learned a hell of a lot in the last 18 months, about internet, ssh, Linux and Unix and a lot more.

Everybody has to start somewhere, and "to start" doesn't mean starting full bottom-up. At some point, to get something done, you need to use abstraction and then iterate over that when you have to get a more complete understanding about what you did a few months ago.

I'll ask again, Hacker News. I've been on this site for three years. I've derived an incredible amount of knowledge from just being here and reading. Lately though, I'm enjoying it a lot less.

I'm not sure if my tolerance for snarky, dipshit comments like this has gone down lately, or if there are a lot more snarky dipshits on this site now. The only thing I know is that for some reason I am unable to down vote these comments - my only active recourse.

Is this a bug or is there some magic karma threshold that I still haven't hit?

Well, since you already know about the karma threshold, which is apparently 500 right now (it has risen over time), and you're getting downvoted for asking about it, let me tell you that downvoting other people isn't all it's cracked up to be...

Meanwhile, I'll steal this from a real HN veteran... I know there's been a lot of talk about the quality of comments or about the increased negativity, but I still really subscribe to this theory, which I take no credit for.

          Quality of Hacker News Comments Over Time

   |                   . .
   |                  .   . 
  q| . .             .     .
  u|    .           .       .               . . .
  a|     .         .          .           .       .
  l|      .       .              .      .           .
  i|       .     .                  . .               .    
  t|        . . .                       you are here -->. .
  y|                                      (that's all)
   |________________________________________________________
    J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4365778

Is there some sort of source on this graph or is it a prove-a-point type thing. Just wondering, because if there was some way to measure quality of posts over time (up/down vote ratio?) that would be a really neat metric.

It's a reference to the notion of Eternal September, from usenet lore. To summarize from memory perhaps incorrectly, usenet used to be great but get worse qualitatively when school would start in September. Its quality would increase throughout the year as people learned to communicate appropriately. One year, however, it just never got better...

... when AOL started offering access to Usenet.

(In reality, Usenet was pretty great through most of the '90s; warez killed Usenet, not newcomers).

Is there some sort of tool to generate Ascii graphs out there?

> I'm not sure if my tolerance for snarky, dipshit comments like this has gone down lately, or if there are a lot more snarky dipshits on this site now.

there are, I just spotted one.

heh, i saw the same thing myself and i had the same sort of reaction but i think it's more an issue with the writer misjudging his audience (you can see this if you've ever taken a continuing education class or the opposite problem if you read lots of technical documentation).

But in any case, everyone starts somewhere and everyone's entitled to post their own 'linode post-mortem' especially if they're beginners and want to ossify their hazy thoughts somewhere. i don't begrudge the guy for just wanting to keep some record of his process and maybe some day he'll look back and edit the document to keep up with his level of knowledge at the time.

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