We've reached 1,000 users! (Page 1) - Announcements - Free UNIX Shell Accounts

1 Topic by Kayla 04/26/10 9:41 PM

Kayla
Idea Gardener
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From: Orlando
Registered: 03/16/10
Posts: 73

Topic: We've reached 1,000 users!

Today was another exciting day for Devio.us. An article published by Undeadly.org about our service sent many seasoned and curious OpenBSD users to our website.

Once that article was passed along to Hacker News, we started to receive a lot of unique sign ups from HN readers as well.

We welcome all of our new users and look forward to getting to know you. For those who are still not activated, we're sorting through your amazing application commentary as quickly as possible.

From a recent application:

Ever get separated from your laptop, and you just need the morale boost of seeing uname -s returning "OpenBSD" in ksh? Don't you ever feel dirty when you get stuck in Linux and just need some BSD love? Ever have a crazy idea for a shell script when you're on the bus and just *have* to try it out? How about just staring at $_ for a long period of time?

Furthermore, all 1,000+ of you have found us in less than two weeks. We love a fast-paced crowd.

2 Reply by cook 04/27/10 1:58 AM

cook
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Registered: 04/14/10
Posts: 22

Re: We've reached 1,000 users!

Who's the 1000th sign up?

3 Reply by Jared 04/27/10 2:02 AM

Jared
Czar
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Registered: 03/25/10
Posts: 15

Re: We've reached 1,000 users!

The user that was our 1,000th used his firstname as his username. As such I don't think it right to disclose that information [edit] to the entire 'net [/edit].

Sorry cook :<

4 Reply by cook 04/27/10 2:35 AM

cook
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Registered: 04/14/10
Posts: 22

Re: We've reached 1,000 users!

Maybe if that user sees this he can say who he is
Anyways, awesome job on the amazing growth!

5 Reply by darshan 04/27/10 4:34 AM

darshan
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Registered: 04/27/10
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Re: We've reached 1,000 users!

It seems worth noting that all of us who have an account are trusting each other with the contents of /etc/passwd. This means:

If you're really curious who the 1000th user is, that's the place to look. (It might not be exact, but since human uids start at 1000, the 1000th user should be approximately uid 1999.)
If you do look in there, don't abuse the information it contains.
If you're really paranoid about privacy, you could try asking one of the sysadmins to remove your real name (provided you used your real name when you signed up).

I considered not posting this, but it seems to me that this is such basic information that most of us (and certainly anyone with malicious intent) knows it anyway. My aim is educational.

6 Reply by Daniel 04/27/10 9:51 AM

Daniel
Professor
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From: Orlando
Registered: 03/19/10
Posts: 92

Re: We've reached 1,000 users!

Darshan,

You're absolutely right - there is no reason you couldn't have posted this. It's a public system, so names will be available at all times for anyone on the system. If they are too paranoid to have their name disclosed, then maybe a public shell is not what they are looking for.

Daniel's Website