Uber.gov – It's Time to Let the Government Drive - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@blakeross/uber-gov-29db5fdff372 <comment><USER2> Company-owned marketplaces are wonderful for the 95% of people who never run into problems, and some people such as Blake Ross may wonder why we don't just retire the publicly regulated markets. What he is missing is that there is no due process on company marketplaces. If you happen to have a streak of bad luck, or you are targeted or discriminated against and you get too many bad ratings, you are kicked off with no appeal process. Uber does not care whether the complaints are legitimate. Similar problems happen to a small fraction of users on Google Adwords, eBay, and other company-owned marketplaces who ultimately care about their own profit instead of justice. As public markets are replaced with private marketplaces, I think the loss of due process is not something that we should give up without some forethought.

<comment><USER3> Perfect is the enemy of good. What you're describing happens just as frequently in regulated markets (the police works fine for a certain sector of this country and not so great for another...), its just that regulated markets offer the false promise of perfection. At the end of the day there's no magic, its people at the end of all these services. So what's important, as Milton Friedman used to like to say, is not finding the right people, but getting the wrong people to do the right things.

The people that visit Las Vegas don't vote in Las Vegas, so what incentive is there AT ALL for the government to protect the customer? This is basically the worst edge case for a regulation: the regulators only receive votes from one side of the arrangement, so who do you think they'll bias? Unless taxi abuse got so bad that it actually affected tourism, then I assure you it will always slip between the cracks. On the other hand, a business that cares about solely this problem will actually figure out a way to solve it.

<comment><USER4> "its just that regulated markets offer the false promise of perfection"

No: it is just that regulated (I prefer the name public but anyway) markets offer the possibility of legal defense _by definition_. Thus, the customer is not left defenseless.

However, this applies possibly much more to Roman-law derivative States than to the US.

<comment><USER5> "It is just that regulated (I prefer the name public but anyway) markets offer the possibility of legal defense by definition." \- I think you may be forgetting an _entire area_ of the judicial branch: Civil Court. You can, in fact, sue a business for: representing their product incorrectly, providing service other than described, not sticking to the contract you signed, etc, etc.

We could just as easily simplify, streamline, and reform the civil tort system to allow people to file and address legitimate issues quickly through organic, judicial means. But instead, people, for god knows why, believe it is easier and more effective to have politicians appoint a bunch of crony farts to pass hundreds of thousands of pages of regulation that make the 95% case of good business operation harder, while most often failing to catch/fix the 5% of time things go wrong.

Le sigh, I digress.

<comment><USER6> Civil court is a venue in which action based on existing laws and regulations are pursued. It does not substitute for actually having the laws and regulations which provide the bases for actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just had my first Las Vegas cab experience, it was at 11:30pm. The taxi driver picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel 30 minutes away. He was pretty helpful and seemed to know the area quite well. Then we got to our destination and he demanded that I pay cash, even though the taxi had a touchscreen terminal behind the front passenger seat for paying with card.

He said that he needed the $55 fare in cash because he needs to take some money home and it is midnight. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable, he was apologetic, explained he needed the money and so, to save trouble, I went into the hotel and got out the cash for him because I just got off a few hours plane ride, I didn't want to deal with this nonsense at this time of night.

I told the man behind the desk at the hotel and he explained that it happens all of the time. He said a lot of the drivers pocket the cash for themselves which is why they demand cash. He then advised us not to hire taxis and to use a hotel recommended private driver service that is the same cost (no doubt a nice referral fee for them). An ulterior motive there, but I don't doubt that this happens all of the time.

This experience, other experiences from colleagues and friends as well as online paints a picture of a pretty broken and corrupt taxi system in Los Angeles especially. While I am not a big fan of Uber (ethically) I do like the idea of ridesharing and the rating system. If Lyft, Uber and other companies were operating here, perhaps things would be different.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious, what's your ethical problem with Uber?

<comment><USER9> Ha, have you not been paying attention?

<comment><USER10> This is a useless comment, I'm not saying Uber is ethical but saying "Ha, have you not been paying attention?" adds no value. I think artursapek poses a valid question to be answered with facts and sources not an off the cuff reply that expects everyone follows everything that happens. People have questions, why do you have to pretend they are stupid for not know every last detail?

<comment><USER9> Fair enough. I should have included some links.

Uber's playbook for sabotaging Lyft: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8229081)

Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8622003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8622003)

Uber rival accuses car service of dirty tactics: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7115177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7115177)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As long as the laws prohibit Uber from operating, why is it strange that the government would take steps to ensure that?

Perhaps the laws should change - certainly Uber wants them to. But flouting the law isn't often the best way to make that happen. They're not protesting injustice, they're jamming a foot in the door of a multi-billion dollar industry with technology that is still very new to regulators. The "we're just an app that connects people who want a ride with willing drivers" dodge is disingenuous, and the alternation between wounded and scoffing attitudes is grating. I don't like Uber as a company, and personally I hope it fails and the next guy picks up the torch and does these things with a bit of tact. Neither driver nor user will care.

<comment><USER12> The purpose of law should be to benefit the public. Uber and Lyft empirically demonstrate, in most cities, that taxi regulations-- _a textbook example of regulatory capture for decades_ \--do not benefit the public when they protect taxis against competition.

Some people have an authoritarian worldview--laws are handed down to us by our betters, and we'd better follow them no matter what. I prefer a democratic worldview--laws are an artifact created by the people for the benefit of the people, and once they hinder that purpose rather than promote it, there's nothing sacred about continuing to follow it to our own detriment.

<comment><USER13> In many cities acrozs the world there is both comprtition and consumer- oriented regulation. London is like this. Uber's business model isn't even novel there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think even Uber's star system pales in comparison to a better solution: calculate fares in advance (maybe based purely on distance and average travel time).

We have GPS, we can estimate costs before the trip. If we do so, the only incentive for the cabbie is to get your service completed as efficiently as possible.

And it's weird that it's one of the only services where we can estimate the cost in advance fairly accurately in 99% of cases, but there's no price transparency. Cabs and medical services, maybe. There's no reason cab drivers should need a "billable hours" system of payment (at least not since gps mapping technology was invented).

I'd settle for that much. But my more controversial rider is that costs shouldn't vary by the time of the trip.

The risk of traffic flows should be borne by the party that will experience all the variations enough to be able to average it out. In consumer goods, if you buy a the one out of ten thousand products that are broken off the shelf, (or explodes in your hand), the merchants accept the loss, because they can even out this loss across all of their sales. In cabs, if there's suddenly an accident a mile ahead of you, and you're just stopped in a parking lot doubling your cost, that's your fault.

On an individual level, maybe just underpay if you've been jerked around. If the cabbie complains, tell them to bring the cops so you can both talk about the route and they can decide what's fair. If that behavior became widespread, taxis would lose the incentive to cheat in this way. (Though you'd probably get a few people shot in the street. I strongly prefer the "pre-calculated fares.")

<comment><USER15> I get your traffic jam problem, but in big cities its more complicated than that. There are supply demand imbalances and a traveling salesman type problem.

Technology could solve some of these issues but I don't see it happening in the near future.

<comment><USER14> Oh, sure, on supply demand imbalances, I'd be ok with surge pricing if that's what you mean. I don't need prices to be constant for days, I'd just like them to be fixed at the moment both sides agree to the transaction.

It seems like that should be doable with current tech, without even affecting the price of many transactions (except the ones where drivers are going intentionally slowly).

The inputs for Uber's pricing are time, distance, and the demand multiplier. Google maps does a pretty good job at giving an expected time and distance for a driver taking the ideal route. The driver / Uber can toss in a demand multiplier. If we agree that the Google Maps (or some other mapping service) time estimate is "close enough," then we should be able to calculate the fee before I sit down.

The driver can then feel free to take a scenic route, but it comes out of their pocket, not mine, so they probably won't.

Or we can do nothing. I'm just really tired of cabs missing my exit "accidentally." Three of the last four times I came back from the airport. The last trip I directed every lane change from the backseat. I feel like I shouldn't have to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's amusing to point out the failures of government bureaucracy, and while it's admirable that they're trying, I think we can all agree that the people responsible for these measures aren't exactly blessed with an overabundance of competence.

That said, this article completely ignored the very significant failures in Uber's rating system: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what- ar...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-are-we- actually-rating-when-we-rate-other-people/)

Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple. In my opinion, an example of this done well is Ebay's reputation system.

<comment><USER17> It seems to be working sufficiently for Uber and their happy customers. Uber is a premium service. Drivers should be fired if they don't know their way around, have a dirty or smelly car, or otherwise request things of me as a customer beyond my destination address. I routinely give out two and three star ratings, knowing it could well get people fired. 5 stars is for a perfect trip that could not be improved.

<comment><USER18> I wish the 5 stars system worked like that. I love UberX, but I don't like the negotiation at the end of the ride over ratings. It hasn't been as bad for me as in the Forbes article, but there's a definite read-between-the-lines of always giving 5 stars.

I'd much rather give my feedback/rating in private once I'm out of the cab, and for the driver to do the same with me. I really don't need/want to know how they rated me. The "I gave you 5 stars, now you rate me" conversation is always awkward.

<comment><USER19> Whoa, that's insane. I've never had a driver ask me to rate them, and I've taken a lot of ubers (though more recently, lyfts). (This is in SF.)

<comment><USER20> I have - dude asked for a five-star rating.

There is no criteria for a five-star rating. Did he get me where I needed to go at the expected price? Pretty much - that seems at best to rate average.

I don't even know what a five-star rating would be.

I gave him one because I really didn't feel the need to spend the time figuring out exactly what I should give him.

However, the problem I have, in retrospect, is this:

DON'T FRICKIN' ASK FOR A FIVE-STAR RATING WITHOUT A GOOD REASON.

<comment><USER19> They shouldn't ask, which I would explain; if they persisted, I would give a low rating for that.

In terms of stars, drivers get dropped if they are below around 4.5 on average, so 5 stars basically means "keep this driver" and anything less means "fire this driver".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You know, I really wouldn't put it past Uber to game HackerNews. If they're willing to dig up dirt on journalists, can you imagine that they'd have a problem with 'employee advocacy' on HN?

<comment><USER22> Either you didn't read the article, or I am totally misunderstanding it, because it appeared to me to be a criticism of Uber.

<comment><USER23> I believe you are misunderstanding it. It appears to be satire in the "A Modest Proposal" vein.

<comment><USER22> Yep, you're totally right, I skimmed the middle section when the author was really laying it on thick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's funny, but people think there is something inherently inefficient about government, but inefficiency and unresponsiveness are usually more a function of incentives, as well as obvious stuff like organization size and structure.

Medicare is on average more efficient than private health care, for example. Health care might be a situation where profit incentives don't create the best outcome. In the case of the Nevada officials, there is no incentive whatsoever to actually fix the problem.

<comment><USER25> Medicare is NOT more efficient that private health care. Ask any doctor.

<comment><USER26> I think parent meant efficiency in terms of health care provided / $, not efficiency in terms of paying doctors quickly...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Something I recently learned in Vegas; if a taxi driver picks you up from a casino on the strip and offers to take you (or does it anyway) the "quicker way" to your destination [also on the strip] via taking some off-strip highway, reject him. A bit of traffic on the strip is nothing compared to how fast the meter flies upwards when a taxi is speeding along a highway via a long detour and it's going to result in you paying a lot more for the journey.

<comment><USER13> Surely the decision at that point comes down to time vs money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wait. Uber does more than just use the star ratings. They actually look at the route the driver took and compare it to the GPS recommended route...

<comment><USER29> You missed the sarcasm.

<comment><USER28> Whoosh! Yup, I thought that part was serious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm surprised one of the smaller ride share companies hasn't pivoted into licensing/partnering with municipal governments. Share revenue and let them control the processes for accepting drivers and regulating them. Tada you're partnered with a entity that can legislate your competition out of business.

<comment><USER25> Companies already do that; they're called "Taxi Companies."

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'll naively give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume there are good arguments for being anti-Uber/Lyft. What are they? I'm curious to know if there are valid reasons besides dollars being shuffled into the right pockets. I'll assume preventing disruption is not a valid argument.

<comment><USER32> The best reason I can think of is labour protection for the drivers. Even though the US is pretty laissez faire when it comes to employee protections, Uber and similar completely strip all rights from drivers. The almighty Rating determines who gets fired, with zero transparency and zero second chances. Imagine working as a waiter, but if your tip percentage drops below a certain threshold, you're fired and banned from the restaurant business forever, even though you might just have gotten a bunch of asshole customers in a row.

Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.

All of this is good for the consumers, they get a lot of power over the drivers, they can threaten to give them a bad rating and so on, but there should probably be a balance.

Then again, it's not like the existing taxi cab unions and medallion systems and regulations are a guarantee of a good environment.

And on the third side, this profession is going to be eradicated by self- driving cars within fifteen years, so who cares?

<comment><USER33> >Also, if the bar to entry into the profession is simply to have a car and a smartphone, it will quickly become a race to the bottom in terms of wages.

If that's all that is required to be an effective driver, why should cab drivers be overpaid?

<comment><USER32> As a software engineer working in California, I (and many others here) enjoy the labour protection of non-competes being unenforceable here. That drives up the cost of hiring software engineers, i.e. we are being overpaid.

This is why we have labour laws, to shift the balance, to make work suck a little bit less for everyone.

(In principle. In practice in the taxi-cab case, I can't say that the various regulations and systems improve things for anyone, it's mostly captured by the rent-seekers anyway, so everyone gets screwed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why should Uber get to flaunt the law just because they're big enough to get away with it?

What about the little guy who can't afford the fines he'll have to pay if he operates a cab without a license?

Sure a lot of the regulation is overburdensome, but the solution is to change the law, not encourage companies to break it.

<comment><USER35> You may be familiar with a thing called: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience).

It's a crazy theory that, if you are intelligent and believe that laws and civil arrangements in your society are against logic and moral reason, the best way to change them is to break them, to help raise awareness so that more people realise their perversity.

It helped end British control of India and racial segregation in America. Cool huh?

<comment><USER34> We're talking about a large company making a profit, not a lunch-counter protest.

Uber isn't doing this because of some deeply held belief, they're doing it to make a profit. I don't want corporations breaking regulations they don't agree with and claiming it's "civil disobedience".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically > speaking, one of you is about to get ripped off by a cabbie. And it'll > probably be you, the imbecile who chose the middle seat and paid $15 for > plane wifi.

Just a side-note: I wouldn't open an article with brazenly insulting the reader.

<comment><USER37> I think it's just a fair warning as to the tone of the rest of the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > The signs are done now, and I doubt they'll ever need to be updated: Vegas > is a sleepy town, and the dollar is a stable currency

This is a sarcastic remark, but: the US dollar is, in fact, a stable currency, and inflation is currently very low. Cab fares are regulated. If getting from point A to point B takes $20 in 2014, it will not be difficult to determine how much the fare should be in 2020, and to send some people around with new signs or price stickers.

I'm surprised at how many of these points seem to treat the low-tech methods used by the Nevada state government as patently absurd. I guess it comes from a mindset that technology is the obvious solution to society's problems, which is something I do not find to be obvious. It took me a while to catch on to the sarcasm as a result of that mismatch.

<comment><USER39> I can agree that the Gov's solutions are not absurd - at least not half as absurd as this post makes them out to be - but the overall point that the Uber rating system is superior to advisory signs stands strong.

I found the sarcastic writing style a pleasure; it was enjoyable humorous and obvious in intent to me.

<comment><USER38> Uber has the benefit of employing the drivers, handling transactions, and controlling pricing. This allows them to refund unfair fares and to punish drivers for poor ratings. The technology is secondary.

As is so often the case, much of the expense and inefficiency of the government regulatory apparatus here stems from an aversion to intervene directly in markets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Up until the last few months when Uber came in and put the heat on the local Dallas (TX) taxi market, government was driving at the behest of the largest taxi company via local council and board members pushing ordinances[1] that squeezed smaller cab companies. What a shit show that's been...

[http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/judge-dfw- airport...](http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2014/04/judge-dfw-airport- board-was-within-its-right-to-put-natural-gas-powered-cabs-at-the-front-of- line.html/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Leaving aside the pro-Uber aspect of the piece, the criticism of the existing solutions was spot on.

If you add a huge amount of friction before you can offer feedback, the only people to do will either be normal people who had truly horrific experiences, or incredibly entitled and annoying assholes who complain about everything.

In practice, it's really difficult for the government to be as nimble as a private company, but even people who support strong government regulation (like me!) have absolutely no ground to stand on when defending that particular status quo.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if the next step in the evolution of public transport is something akin to Uber. It may be more entropic come the day self driving cars come along.

Given that each car heads to its destination without a transit route where passengers are buffered would be good.

Additionally, since the road is shared unlike the subway, it may be more efficient on resources.

Perhaps when the option becomes available, the government of some affording country may be able to pilot such a thing.

<comment><USER43> The big problem is scale. You can replicate the capacity of a smaller bus route with efficient self-driving cars, but bigger routes and higher-capacity transit move tens and hundreds of thousands of people per day to a destination, and loading/unloading capacity near those destinations is just not going to fit.

Demand is already centralized both geographically and time-wise, with business districts, downtowns, rush/peak hour. Self-driving cars might replace feeder networks but they'll only strengthen the case for high-capacity trunk transit.

<comment><USER43> Some numbers for context because I was thinking about it. Let's say it takes a person five seconds to get in a robocar at an organized terminal area (car pulls up with door already open, people are lined up - getting in on the street in front of a building would be slower). Let's say you can weave five terminal lanes into one traffic lane, so cars can leave the terminal at about 1 car per second per lane. In five minutes you can ship out about 300 people per lane.

In those same five minutes, a Calgary C-Train would have pulled in, loaded, and departed with capacity of about 700 people. Or three Skytrain trains, each with capacity of about 500 people. Or two Victoria Line trains, each with capacity of about 1000 people (non-crush load). Or two double-decker RER trains, capacity over 2000 people each. You'd need a lot of robocar terminals...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Let me rewrite the first paragraph:

"Flying to Vegas? Look to your left. Now look to your right. Statistically speaking, everyone of you is about to get ripped off."

<comment><USER45> Lots of us fly there on business (usually conventions) and spend very little time in the casinos. But yeah, the restaurants can be a ripoff if you eat on- strip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> From my experience, long-hauling complaints are handled quite effectively. You just go here: [http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/](http://taxi.nv.gov/Complaints/Complaints/) and spend ~5 minutes copying info that is present on your receipt.

Did this three years back. Within days, the offending cab company called me and issued me a complete refund.

<comment><USER47> From my experience, long-hauling complaints are handled quite effectively. You just spend ~2 minutes filling out the text box Uber asks you when completing a ride.

Did this three days back. Within hours, Uber emailed me and issued me a complete refund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I always wonder about micro-long-hauling anytime I go to new areas of Brooklyn or visit new cities. I pretty much know where I am, but if they went a little out of the way I would not notice.

If you drive a cab for 40 years, do 25 fares a day and "reroute" 4-8 extra blocks (~=$1.25) you'll see an extra ~$30/day or even if he/she does every other fair $15/day.

<comment><USER49> Depends. The starting fare means that if you have a decent chance of getting another hail (which is the case in many parts of NY at most times of day) it's actually more profitable to get to your destination as efficiently as possible and be able to pick up another fare than to draw out the one you have. There's a reason cabbies hate sitting in traffic even though the meter is running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The advantage of a cab over Uber is that you don't pay until the end of the trip. If you know you've been ripped off, get out of the cab and walk away without paying. Tell them to call the cops and explain why you aren't paying. What are they going to do?

Of course, this requires that you know you're getting ripped off.

<comment><USER51> There is plenty of circumstances where people are not willing to fight for $10.

* You may be on holidays and may want to avoid arguments with strangers.

* You may be after a long flight, jetlagged and/or simply too tired.

* You may be running late for a plane or train and have no time to wait for the cops.

* You may not speak the local language.

On the other hand, leaving a rating or review is a lot simpler and more commensurate with $10.

<comment><USER50> I don't think you need to actually fight, just walk away. I'm thinking specifically of Las Vegas, and you've taken the cab from the airport to your hotel. Is the cab driver going to run through the lobby of the Bellagio and tackle you? No. Who is the hotel staff going to side with, their customer or a cab driver where they _know_ cab drivers routinely rip off their customers?

The cab driver is exploiting your reluctance to make a fuss to get a small amount of extra money. You can turn right around and exploit the fact that by breaking the law they've removed any recourse they have for getting you to pay. If enough people did it, eventually the scam would not be worth trying anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Living in Amsterdam makes me wonder... only $10 extra? Seems like a fair deal. On average it's more than 30 euro extra over here.

To be fair: we have signs displaying cost & travel time for bus, car, taxi and train. Train (for once) is the clear winner by being cheapest & fastest.

<comment><USER53> The issue isn't taxi vs other modes of transit, it's that taxis take intentionally longer routes to squeeze higher fares out of tourists.

<comment><USER54> Is that really the taxi's "fault" though? I mean it is in everyones best interest to get paid the most. And in the end you arrived at your destination. Sure you don't want to pay more. But I don't know if it should be illegal...

I mean there are tons of companies/people who "do stuff" to make more money from you...

<comment><USER3> That's kind of the point right: with Uber, there was a solution that didn't involve making anything illegal. Customers were allowed to easily express unhappiness with their ride, and Uber is able to provide customers better service. Seems like an ideal solution that, as you put it, simply balances everyone's best interests.

Uber is making the _decision_ to get rid of drivers that take advantage of their customers, not the government forcing anyone to abide by some law. Its the same as how a restaurant _can_ take action against a waitress if they provide bad service. Personally I think that system is way better than trying to create a series of laws that make it illegal to be a bad waiter.

<comment><USER45> But I don't quite see the solution to the problem here.

The Vegas scam is that they are taking tourists _with no idea of the traffic layout_ on a longer trip than an experienced driver would take.

If an Uber driver takes this longer route, the passengers still don't know that this happened. They got to their hotel in one piece and everyone is happy.

The only levelling factor is that the Uber ride is a fixed price, so it's in the _driver 's_ best interest to take the shortest route.

If the Vegas cab authority mandated fixed prices for the rides, this would all go away on their end as well.

<comment><USER55> Uber emails you a map with your route on it and a final price after each trip. If you are unhappy with the route, you can complain and uber will refund whatever you overpaid compared to optimal trip. They can also easily implement algorithm that checks if driver uses optimal route and fire/warn drivers that don't.

Biggest difference between Uber and any taxi authority is that Uber is interested in providing good service while taxi authority does not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Sounds like Las Vegas could use decent train service running between the airport and the city.

<comment><USER57> When they built the Monorail, that was the idea. Taxi companies put a stop to it. The Monorail could still be extended from the south end to the airport.</comment></comment>


Make your website super fast with Asset Pipeline, Sprites & Cloudfront - <AUTHOR> http://blog.railsonfire.com/2012/05/18/Assets-Sprites-CDN.html

<comment><USER2> This is a nice useful blog post, but it does lead me to question to state of Rails -- is it me, or is it incredibly complicated these days to build a production ready Rails site?

I still love the simplicity of developing with Rails, but all these things you need to remember to deploy give me cold sweats.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. I'm not doing Rails anymore, I'm working with Cuba + gs + dep + Ohm + mote, and I find it easier and less bloated than what Rails has become.

Rails 3.x, though with a couple of good ideas, it's not as easy as it used to be to start developing an app, less say deploying it. Too many helpers and technologies to learn, IMO completely unnecessary.

<comment><USER4> _> Cuba + gs + dep + Ohm + mote_

I thought I'd heard of everything, but I haven't heard of a single one of these. Any chance you can write up a blog post about building websites with them and post it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> May slightly OT: The best naming scheme for page name I've ever seen is to use body#controller.action then put CSS relevant to a single controller in Rails- generated controller_name.css.scss. It helps preventing crashing while keeping file count to minimum. Extra bonus, it also provide ability to reuse certain CSS within same controller. For example:

        # articles.css.scss

        body#articles {

          /* We display title in LARGE RED TEXT in articles controller. */
          h2 {
            font-size: 24px;
            color: red;
          }

          &.index {
            /* Oh noes we don't really want LARGE RED TEXT here. */
            h2 { font-size: 16px; }
          }

        }

All my projects now started this way. It's very maintainable.

<comment><USER6> I love this method and have almost the exact setup. I do the same for JS too.

In the footer of every page:

        $(document).ready(function() {
          if (V.Views.orders_index) { V.Views.orders_index(); }
        }

Where "V.Views.orders_index" is basically "${controller}_${index}". Thus you just need to actually define that function in an included JS and voila, thats your calling hook and your JS is invoked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It should be noted that while this is written with Rails in mind, the techniques can be applied to any web language.

<comment><USER8> You are absolutely right. Will add this to the Header

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Won't Cloudflare help by caching static stuff and providing the CDN?

<comment><USER8> I haven't looked into Cloudflare a lot, but it looks like it would solve that as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> THIS IS THE MOST USELESS SERVICE I HAVE EVER SEEN. it is the equivilent of the dicks gem for serivices (<http://bit.ly/bfQji6>) but wait no... dicks is funny and this is just sad. like a clown dying. with cancer. of the ass.

<comment><USER11> Comments like these make me wish I had the ability to downvote.</comment></comment>


Attritional interfaces - <AUTHOR> https://samgentle.com/posts/2015-12-25-attritional-interfaces <comment><USER2> 4chan and 8chan, by this article's definition, have attritional interfaces, to a greater degree than Reddit. Threads are moved to the top of a board when posted on; when this happens, all other threads are pushed down. This happens so quickly that, effectively, threads are ordered by their activity. When a thread hits the bottom of page 10, it is deleted, and depending on the board's settings, threads with more than N replies are "bumplocked" and cannot be moved to the top. Further, one may use the keyword "sage" in the email field to intentionally reply without bumping.

This means that, without constant activity, threads will eventually die. Third-party archives exist, but the chans do in fact delete old threads.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want your RSS reader to work for you, restrict yourself to adding only the feeds of individual people and not those of major news sites or aggregators.

An individual person is naturally limited in the quantity (and quality) of their output, so the end result is a daily shortlist of original insights, essays, and articles that are manageable and worth reading. As a bonus, you no longer have to check up on individual sites, since everything will show up prominently in your feed.

<comment><USER4> I add both kinds, but keep them in separate categories. In fact, I have three kinds: a few feeds which I read in full, a few more which I decide based on skimming the titles, and the rest which are just for when I feel like it.

This is why - despite having accounts in both - I follow Twitter and Tumblr feeds on my RSS reader. The sites are simply too limiting.

<comment><USER5> What RSS reader do you use?

<comment><USER4> Tiny Tiny RSS: [https://tt-rss.org/](https://tt-rss.org/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The fireworks continue at eBay/Craigslist trial with cross-exam of eBay exec - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202436215251&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Law.com&pt=LAWCOM%20Newswire&cn=NW_20091210&kw=Counsel%20for%20eBay%20Endures%20Fiery%20Cross-Examination%20by%20Craigslist%20Lawyer

<comment><USER2> Background:

<http://www.craigslist.org/about/press/ebay.stake>

Note the following:

"When he originally gave a stake in Craigslist to the executive that sold his shares to eBay, Mr. Newmark said, he never expected them to be worth anything. "I made a gift of some equity in craigslist to a guy who was working with me at the time," Mr. Newmark wrote on his Internet blog (www.cnewmark.com). "I figured it didn't matter, since everyone agreed that the equity had only symbolic value, not dollar value."

</comment><comment><USER3> Read Ina Steiner's live tweets for coverage. It's exceptional: <http://twitter.com/AuctionBytes></comment>


Trump Replaced Pandemic-Response Team with Jared Kushner - <AUTHOR> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trump-fired-pandemic-response-jared-kushner-coronavirus.html <comment><USER2> >> _"I have all this data about ICU capacity. I'm doing my own projections, and I've gotten a lot smarter about this. New York doesn't need all the ventilators," Kushner announced_

Trump:

>> _'I like this stuff. I really get it. 'People are surprised that I understand it.

'Every one of these doctors said: "How do you know so much about this?"

Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.'_

We're so lucky, as a nation that these two branches of genius merged.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had accepted in my heart for a while we live in a simulation. Then it all makes sense and it is outrageously funny.

<comment><USER3> If only Vonnegut was still around to spin a tale about our current predicament.</comment></comment></comment>


By endurance we conquer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/by-endurance-we-conquer <comment><USER2> OK, so here's the real question: how do you know when what you're doing can be called 'endurance' and not foolishness?

You work on your product; initially everything's great, there's a feeling of 'nothing is impossible'. As the months go by without any traction, you begin to have a few doubts. Finally, after you've spent quite a lot of time and got nowhere, you're really pissed: on the one hand, you 'invested' so much of your time into it. It might need 5% or even 0.1% more effort to become successful. But, how do you know when to stop? How do you know that you're not going down a dead end?

<comment><USER3> That is a hard question. Probably the best you can do is ask people who've seen a lot of similar situations.

<comment><USER4> I'd imagine that you have some sort of spreadsheet to keep track of your predictions, both positive and negative.

I'm curious if your educated conclusion beats a random walk (similar to mutual fund managers for example)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this who we want to take inspiration from? Reading <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton> I see:

 _Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security, he launched many business ventures and other money-making schemes, none of which prospered. His financial affairs were generally muddled; he died heavily in debt._

Yup! Sounds like he fits right in the startup world! (Not necessarily as a model to emulate...)

<comment><USER6> People can be inspirational without being perfect. Despite his failings later in life, Shackleton acted honorably and courageously on the Endurance mission.

On one of his expeditions, after their ship got stuck in the ice, Shackleton basically saved the lives of every single man on the mission through excellent decision making. I have read accounts of several 'Heroic' exploration missions, and in too many of them, the leader sacrifices the lives of his team mates to "win". Shackleton seems to have been the exact opposite of that.

"Shackleton's concern for his men was such that he gave his mittens to photographer Frank Hurley, who had lost his during the boat journey. Shackleton suffered frostbitten fingers as a result."

"Shackleton immediately...set to work to organise the rescue of the Elephant Island men. His first three attempts were foiled by sea ice, which blocked the approaches to the island. He appealed to the Chilean government, which offered the use of Yelcho, a small seagoing tug from its navy. Yelcho reached Elephant Island on 30 August, at which point the men had been isolated there for four and a half months, and Shackleton quickly evacuated all 22 men."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton#Loss_of_Endur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton#Loss_of_Endurance)

<comment><USER5> People are inspirational because we're impressed and gratified that people like that exist. But we do not necessarily want to be like them.

That said, the characteristics that in one person lead to repeated failure can in another lead to success. My mother had a book called _Cradles of Eminence_ which was basically a retrospective study of what kind of childhood lead to great fame later in life. One of their many interesting findings is that the fathers of many eminent people tend to be failure-prone. But not failure-prone in any way - failure-prone in that they dared too much and it didn't work out.

The reason why my mother had this book is that she was curious whether deliberately creating the circumstances that lead others to success would lead to success for her children. There is no way that I could summarize the result of her experiment - nor would I suggest that anyone else try her techniques - but I do have 2 half-sisters with Oscar nominations...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this other quote by Sam better: _startups: growth solves nearly every problem, and if you don't have growth nothing will solve your problem._

(Ref: <https://twitter.com/sama/status/289918007151583232> )

Corollary: if you don't have growth, endurance will not solve your problem.

<comment><USER8> Except when it does. Many/most startups experience the trough of sorrow ( [http://andrewchen.co/2012/09/10/after-the-techcrunch-bump- li...](http://andrewchen.co/2012/09/10/after-the-techcrunch-bump-life-in-the- trough-of-sorrow/) ). Hard to know when to throw up the white flag... But the ones that win certainly refused to do so when all/most of their data showed them that they should.

tl;dr irrational (at the time) perseverance is a necessary but not sufficient trait for startup success.</comment></comment>


Studentsell.co.uk - <AUTHOR>

Studentsell.co.uk (www.studentsell.co.uk) is an entity designed to act as a medium that enables students in Scotland to trade physical items and share information with each other and could be considered as an electronic version of the ultimate student notice board.
The main objective of the business is to create a vibrant niche trading community for the Scottish Higher Education marketplace and from this develop Studentsell.co.uk into a name synonymous with further education in Scotland, followed by the rest of the UK.
Studentsell.co.uk does not incorporate a 'bidding' system used by auction sites - there is no reserve pricing, auction end times and last minute sniping. Instead members are offered items at a set price for immediate purchase.
The website has the potential to develop into an integral part of College and University life for students all over the country and although the work to Studentsell.co.uk has only recently been finalised with our website developers (Alienation Design – a Glasgow based award-winning company) there are already over 1500 registered members and this could easily be turned into several tens of thousands following a successful marketing strategy.
The student population is commonly regarded as one of the easiest markets to target because students are easily located. Further to this due to the fact that they live, work and socialise together positive user experiences will generate positive word of mouth and this should result in the website becoming very well known in student circles within a very short space of time. Websites with very high levels of traffic, particularly with such a specific consumer base coupled with an extensive and accurate customer database have the potential of selling for several millions of pounds. Successful online trading communities can sell for vast sums frequently in the eight and nine figure regions. The following links are two recent examples of this phenomenon: http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-1264250/Trade-Me http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4502550.stm <comment><USER2> _"... Studentsell.co.uk (www.studentsell.co.uk) is an entity designed to act as a medium that enables students in Scotland to trade physical items and share information with each other and could be considered as an electronic version of the ultimate student notice board ..."_

eBay for students? Is their a question or are we supposed to ask?

 _"... The website has the potential to develop into an integral part of College and University life for students all over the country ..."_

Here's one for you, how are you going to do this?</comment>


Introducing code search in Sourcegraph - <AUTHOR> https://text.sourcegraph.com/introducing-code-search-in-sourcegraph-5944a3b75df7 <comment><USER2> Sourcegraph CEO here. We are excited to ship this. Happy to answer any questions folks have.</comment>


Hostnames - <AUTHOR> http://seriss.com/people/erco/unixtools/hostnames.html <comment><USER12> There's an RFC on that, too.

"Choosing a name for your computer" [http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1178](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1178)

Shades of colours, for example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_blue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_blue), are a good, safe source of names.

<comment><USER13> Any Category: page on Wikipedia is great. I've been using [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_foresters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_foresters) for a while now.

<comment><USER14> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Categories](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Categories)

<comment><USER15> These names, of course, could only be used for VM hosts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We use Pokemon.

There's something super memorable about Blastoise, Slowbro, Squirtle, Ninetales, Jigglypuff...

I also color my tabs the color of the Pokemon for fast reference.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is freaking brilliant. I grew up with that game and never even considered using them for hostnames.

<comment><USER17> I always had the idea, but never enough machines to name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Or simply have a naming convention for hosts. I realize that only makes sense for sufficiently large setups, but once your setup is large enough, it does make things easier.

At $work we maintain setups for customers, and our FQDNs are roughly <function><counter><environment>.<customer>.<ourdomain>.tld. So the second database server in the testing environment for customer "nasa" (hypothetical, of course) would be called db02t.nasa.<ourdomain>.<tld>.

It does make it pretty obvious from the FQDN what the used is being used for.

<comment><USER19> I agree with this. Call servers after their purpose. I don't grow attached to servers anymore — especially in the cloud.

<comment><USER20> It looks like there's two types of answers in this thread, and the difference between them is whether their infrastructure is cloud-based or running in a datacenter:

\- Cloud: "Who cares? Name them after pokemon or dinosaurs, you can always reprovision and they won't last very long."

\- Datacenter: "But what if the name doesn't make sense 16 months from now??"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> First rule of running a farm: don't name your animals. You'll get too emotionally attached when it comes time to put them down. Yes it's funny and cool et cetera. But, and I say this with love and twenty years' experience, for fucksake: take the time to plan a sensible ontology and stick with it. Hostnames should describe the purpose, capabilities, and disposition of your assets. Nothing more and nothing less.

<comment><USER22> This approach "Hostnames should describe the purpose, capabilities, and disposition of your assets" requires you to rename your servers when you repurpose them. And that's an equally bad idea.

<comment><USER21> Nah, renaming during a reprovision is fine. You gotta stuff that information _somewhere_ , and it might as well be in the name of the thing. Also remember that a machine / IP address can have as many alternate names as you want in the DNS system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Periodic table: hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon... and shorthands... h.yourcompany.net, etc... :)

<comment><USER24> This is my favorite one. For extra awesome, you can use the atomic mass of each element as the last octet of the device's IP address.

<comment><USER25> Nice - but don't you mean Atomic Number, not Atomic Mass? The atomic numbers (i.e. the count of protons in the nucleus) are the nice non-overlapping integers 1-118, whereas the masses are all over the shop, and has overlap with isotopes of other elements.

<comment><USER24> Yep, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've used roman emperors (caligula, augustus, nero, otho, etc.).

Also notable is that of my ISP - they use words ending in "less", for example: "priceless" is the accounting system, "thankless" the support ticket system and "clueless" the customer login.

</comment><comment><USER27> After working in a few pretty large environments I have some pretty strong opinions about hostnames. I've seen everything from cute theme based names to function/role based names to meaningless uuid based names.

Usually you see the theme based names in much smaller environments, though I've seen it up to hundreds of machines. One problem I have with this approach is that people begin to personify machines, excusing their behavior. "Oh that's just akira being akira." This is counter to actually understanding and diagnosing problems. You're also relying on potentially faulty/emotional memories rather than having an actual stored account of issues. Not to mention, once you have a sufficient number of machines you're going to need a decent service database to know what runs what anyways.

Function/Role based names are what I have the most historical experience with. CBS Interactive, CNET, YouTube, and Dropbox all went this route. This often seems like a great idea and can get you really far. Most configuration management allows you to define classes/nodes/etc based on regular expressions. Sudoers has built in support for hostname globbing. It's also easy to tell what a machine's role is when you get an alert. So why wouldn't you want to go this route?

This method has some pitfalls that become increasingly burdensome as you grow into a larger amount of machines. You might have many types of services that run on a single hardware class. This introduces overhead whenever you need to update a machines role. Imagine it's Saturday and your mobile-web pool is suddenly under provisioned. Well, we have plenty of capacity in our web pool. Just need to rename the host in the machine database, update DNS, update DHCP, etc. While this might not seem like a lot of effort it definitely adds up. When I worked on a fantasy sports product we were constantly renaming hosts as various seasons came around. Same thing with just keeping spare/provisioned hosts around. How do you know how to name the host so that someone can just grab it when they need it? You also eventually get the boxes that serve more roles than the box describes itself as. You'll end up with a box call misc or admin and no one remembers that one day someone set it up as your static origin.

Another fun problem is the inability to describe more in depth what a box does. mysql255 doesn't tell you if it's a master/slave, which data is on it, should it be backed up? I've actually seen places that encoded all of this in a hostname. This is the extreme but it does happen.

The interesting thing about both theme and function/role based names is that to use them effectively in a large environment you already need good tools for managing the roles because the hostname is not effective enough.

At Dropbox, they started with functional/role based names but we decided to move to positional hostnames. These encode the dc, rack, position, and chassis. One immediate benefit we saw with this was quickly identifying when a rack or quad goes down. It's very apparent in monitoring just at a glance. We also have a service database that maps hostnames to tags/roles and those tags appear along-side alerts so you can tell right away which service is affected. We get benefits in easy preprovisioning and reprovisioning. Our configuration has become more generic and easier to comprehend. We can run multiple roles easily on one machine and it's easily discoverable what machine serve what role. In puppet we use an External Node Classifier rather than regex. We only have to worry about base config when a rack is initially installed.

That's not to say this method is flawless. One of the biggest drawbacks to this approach is that machines become harder to talk about and typing them is more difficult. I'd argue that you shouldn't care about specific machines unless they're a problem and in that instance copy/paste should always be used to avoid typos. There's some cool things you can do with PowerDNS' Pipe Backend to get dynamic resolution to service names. Another problem with this approach is it just requires a lot more tooling to get started. Obviously not everyone has the time to build all of the infrastructure around this ideal.

Anyways, sorry for the rant, but everywhere I've worked we've started with role based names and regretted it in the long term. Now that I've finally been able to live what I've long dreamed of, I couldn't imagine choosing another solution.

Obviously hostname conventions are a contentious issue so I won't say anyone is wrong, but these are my experiences.

<comment><USER28> One of my biggest pet peeves is when people name a host after a product, say 'mysql-prod-101', then later they decide to switch from MySQL to Oracle. I worked in an environment where a number of hosts contained 'tomcat' in the name but they were all running weblogic. Better to name based on the role, as you say, so the mysql-prod-101 would be better named db-prod-101. However, I've come to think that nowadays with configuration managment it's not really necessary to give hostnames at all. People usually don't like that suggestion when I bring it up, but if you are using something like puppet's 'facter' to run actions only on hosts that match certain 'facts', what do you really need hostnames for?

Edit: I just reread your paragraph about using positional hostnames. This seems like a good use, because the main problem I see with role based hostnames is that hosts can take on multiple roles. But in general the hostname seems unimportant if you are tagging your hosts with roles.

<comment><USER29> Ya, all our dev tools servers are named after the product they're running. (Well, most of them; one is named after a mythological being; one is named after its function.) As a user, this is frustrating because rather than remember what _function_ I'm trying to access (e.g. mail, wiki, bugs, etc.) I have to remember what Atlassian decided to name their product that implements the function I want.

(Fortunately some entires in /etc/hosts + a local Apache server set up with RedirectRules fixes this annoyance, at least for myself…)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cute naming conventions are fun when you're small and have no intention of growing the network. If you're planning to scale, you may as well start with practical names that give some context for the location and purpose of each box. Your team have more important things to remember than which country mario lives in and whether pluto is an app server or a database.

<comment><USER31> I agree, and even if you're small I think having more sensible names is probably a better sign of 'maturity'. On my home network I'm moving back to naming new devices and VMs by type and purpose (e.g. server01, raspberry01, htpc01) rather than continuing the naming convention I had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> My ISP in the 90s had fruits for hostnames. The main Cisco router was called 'passion'.

Shortly after setting it up, I pinged it from a Solaris box. The response was 'passion is alive'.

I tell this story every time there is a 'what do you call your hosts?' discussion!

<comment><USER33> At my CCNA class the teacher used local politicans names for routers/switches, I remember it was election period and routing classes usually ended up with discussions about politics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> After many, many nights spent tracking down servers named after:

Indian food dishes (30 of em! "where is jalfrazie?") Great US mountains (ugh.) 'win2003' the Sun box (ugh again. don't name the box after the OS running on it...)

...i'd say my favorite was 'appname-colo- number#-rackunit#-rack#.airportcode.yourdomain'. This way, the db server in your new york colo JFK1 is easily found in rack unit 20 of rack #5 (db01-20-5.jfk1.example.com).

Once you have +200 servers, having physical location and role mapped to the hostname is a game changer. Even better would be having just a six digit hex hash that you could look up in a noc dashboard.

Note that all that other cutesy stuff is fine as a _CNAME_ , but the FQDN might as well be made significant since it needs to be unique anyway.

<comment><USER35> I can see mapping physical location to hostname being a problem though, especially in a virtual environment.

Even if you're not doing any of that, it only takes one move and you have to rename your systems, a process that is varying degrees of tricky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Setting up a standard naming convention for hostnames is more logical, efficient, and scalable. Include useful information in the hostname, so you don't have to map random lists of names to functions. "What does server 'Foo' do again? Oh, it is a database server. Was that production, dev, or test?" Do you (or one of your operations team) want to be figuring that out at 2AM when you get an alert? Depending on your setup, something like this may be appropriate: <location>-<notation of physical/virtual>-<function>-<#> (e.g. bos-xen-mysql-005, being a virtualized Xen-based MySQL server in Boston). If you have multiple environments (dev/test/prod), add that too.

</comment><comment> lost-theory Cute server naming schemes are one of my pet peeves. In my experience the only two logical choices are: sequential numbers (e.g. foo1, ..., foo100, ... if your company name is Foo Corp.), or hashes / uuids (like amazon instance IDs, e.g. i-977a24e3). If you want to give a server a memorable or cute name, use DNS or some kind of alias.

<comment><USER37> Read the aforementioned RFC - with sequential numbers you are not naming them. I can imagine how thrilled your colleagues are if they have to ssh into i-977 what was the rest of it?

<comment> lost-theory The RFC seems to back me up:

        You might as well just call them "1", "2", and "3".  The only time this kind of
        naming scheme is appropriate is when you have a lot of machines and there are
        no reasons for any human to distinguish between them.  For example, a master
        computer might be controlling an array of one hundred computers.  In this case,
        it makes sense to refer to them with the array indices.

When you're starting off with your cute naming scheme, how do you know how many machines you'll manage in the end? Most places I've worked at have hundreds of servers. Using a simple, easy to follow, don't-make-me-think standard from the beginning is the only thing that makes sense IMO.

To give a server a meaningful name, use DNS.

edit: Also, to take your complaint about "i-977.. what was the rest of it?" and turn it around - imagine this scenario: provision 20 new app servers named foo40..foo59 OR provision 20 new app servers and think of 20 cool names to match our existing cool naming scheme of leonardo donatello michaelangelo raphael master-splinter shredder blah blah blah :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38>
      python -c "import random; print random.choice(open('/usr/share/dict/words').read().split())"

Nerd factor: really, _really_ high.

P.S. you're still allowed to exercise the power of veto.

I've managed to convince others to let me use this technique to form a team name in a couple of Uni projects.

<comment><USER39> That is really neat. Never even through of that.

"protonymphal" \-- I think I want to call my new band that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I like to use elements. Bonus if you're working with the first half of a /24, last octet = atomic weight. 10.0.0.1 = hydrogen, etc.

</comment><comment><USER41> How about this site ([http://namingschemes.com](http://namingschemes.com)) for hostname schemes? Honestly, though, I prefer hostnames that tell you what a machine does.

</comment><comment><USER42> I stepped away from naming hosts the year I learned to use Puppet. After being able to create an infrastructure based on code, the idea of naming hosts just seemed pointless.

<comment><USER43> Can you elaborate on that? My company uses Puppet, but we've configured it to determine what to set up based on the hostname of the machine. (I have no idea if that's ideal, but it's what we've got.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Quoting from memory:

 _«We used to treat our physical machines as home pets, having few of them, giving them proper names, caring about them individually.

Now we treat virtual machines as cattle on a large farm, marking them with numbers, denying them any individuality, and killing them when we don't need them any more.»_

</comment><comment><USER45> At ITECS, our Systems division uses practical names like engr-ras-201 for servers. However, we have a bit more fun with workstations. My machine was named "waytso." I asked my boss what it stood for once, and she said that after the machine that used to sit on that desk had died, Desktop Support sat down an old Dell Dimension to hold us over until they could get a newer machine ready.

It ended up taking a few months, and one day, they called her and said, "Hey, we're ready to image the new Webteam workstation. What should we set the hostname to?" "Waytso." "Waytso? What does that mean?" "Why Are You Taking SO long!?"

</comment><comment><USER46> I've seen myself searching for a compilation like this one time ago.

I miss some other traditional in other locations of the world, but still for me it's a great compilation I just saved for "the next time I see myself searching for it".

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER47> My lab uses painters. We have DaVinci, VanGogh, Munch, and others. What's cool about these hostnames is that we can find out other painters and learn stuff about them, such as name pronunciation, paintings, etc. When we have a new machine, we search for another painter, we look at their paintings. This is good to learn new stuff. Another good category would be rock 'n' roll bands:

\- "Hey, I will run some experiments on zeppelin tonight. Is she free? Thank you." \- "All our computers play a song from its hostname band. Except pinkfloyd. No one had patience to listen to a song for 20 minutes."

</comment><comment><USER48> The morons in IT department in my current company have accomplished an amazing feat with the host names. We have one host name that I have been using for 2 years almost every day and I still have not memorized it! I am having to cut and paste it every single time.

The host names were invented so people won't have to memorize IP addresses. IT morons here with their "functional hostnames" have managed to defeat the purpose of hostnames, so that they are now harder to remember than IP addresses!

Please please please get a clue, use geography, mythology, Simpsons, anything but stupid "bisappjmpthatthislakdh000283".

</comment><comment><USER49> I recently designed several themes for a website. To simplify my naming process, I decided to find, like OP did, an already defined list of names and ended up using Paris' Métro stations [1].

Some examples:

      - <USER2>
      - <USER3>
      - <USER4>
      - <USER5>
      - <USER6>
      - <USER7>
      - <USER8>
      - <USER9>
      - <USER10>
      - <USER11>

As a bonus, you can use the Métro lines' color to visually identify your themes (or hostnames).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Paris_metro_stations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Paris_metro_stations)

</comment><comment><USER50> location-service-type-number

      accting-ws-01
      email-server-01
      building1-upstairs-switch-01
      eastgroup-noc-router-01

Why go cutesy when you can actually define what they do and where they are?

<comment><USER31> Perhaps the question 'how do you name your servers?' should be added to tech interviews, the more cutesy the response, the less mature/experienced the interviewee possibly is (i.e. having not been burnt by the obfuscation of such as scheme)?

<comment><USER51> I don't buy this logic.

Renaming machines is a pain, and they inevitably end up with more/different stuff on them than was originally intended, then your "helpful" name like pukweb01 (production, uk, web, 01) is worse than "pikachu" (as it's incorrect).

the correct way to do this is to give the machine a name with no meaning (maybe pikachu, maybe box005) and have a list of the services running on each machine, and use DNS for those (say www1/ns1 that CNAMEs to the actual hostname).

personally, I'd argue that anyone that calls machines things like "pukweb01" has had little to no experience with a rapidly evolving system...

<comment><USER52> If you're repurposing the machine anyway you might as well totally wipe and reprovision it, right?

<comment><USER27> Definitely. But why add the overhead over updating DNS/DHCP?

<comment><USER53> To always start with a clean environment. Who knows what crud is leftover.

A new job for a machine calls for a new OS install/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is ridiculously unnecessary, and very confusing for new team members and devops. Hostnames should be descriptive and help describe the machine's location and responsibility in the network topology. Like webserver01a (nginx, first machine in LB, us-east1a).

Sure it's not cutesy as "pikachu" or "bobasaur", but it will sure make your nagios/copperegg dashboard make lot more sense. And when shit hits the fan you won't think your servers are cute, despite their clever names.

<comment><USER55> I (somewhat) disagree. Every _machine_ should have a unique hostname that has nothing to do with its function. It should be in DNS and should be the name you use to remotely manage it. Descriptive names should also be assigned in DNS as functions are assigned to the device (either as additional A/AAAA records or CNAMEs). This is flexible and scales well.

Many years ago, I originally assigned descriptive names to machines as I deployed them, but this didn't scale well as we wanted to move services (and their related hostames) to other machines. So I started assigning unique names to machines, using famous figures born on the day of configuration (as in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_12#Births](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_12#Births)). That was 'cute' for a while, but now I just generate random 4-letter words and pick the ones I like. The namespace is large enough for my purposes, the names are short enough for easy typing (ssh fang), and everything aligns nicely in text (zone files, inventory, etc.). In some cases, I've even replaced descriptive names with TXT records in DNS associated with the unique name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> <function>-<environment>-XYnn.<DC Airport Code><Number>.company.com

foo-prod-1101.sea1.company.com foo-dev-1201.sea2.company.com foo- test-2101.ord1.company.com

'foo' is whatever, and 'mysql' is bad while 'corp-db' is better as other commentators mentioned.

for XYnn match X to the airport code of the datacenter, match Y to the sequence number of the datacenter, and 'nn' is a 2-digit code for the number in the cluster.

all short names are unique this way. all datacenter can have a mix of prod/int/dev/test. you can use DNS name resolution search path to lookup services like 'ldap' in your local datacenter.

don't use serial numbers. foo-123456789 is annoying for humans to use and will get truncated with interesting results. i had a discussion one time on chat with another engineer where i was looking at box '123' and he was looking at box '789' and we were both getting real confused because it seemed like we were on the same box... because we were...

also only use "company.com" as your domain for every server and desktop in your company. if you need "company.co.uk" then it should only host websites "www.company.co.uk" that points at VIPs and the servers behind that should all still live in company.com. if you have windows boxes then setup a domain for AD "ad.company.com" or "win.company.com" and let your domain servers own that and setup proper DNS delegation from the parent.

</comment><comment><USER57> What is a hostname for?

We have IP addresses. They are unique numbers that will always resolve to one unique machine, on which a network service exists that we want to talk to. We use the hostname to refer to the unique instance, and a URI's protocol name to refer to the service we want.

smtp. ntp. www. ftp. These are all short names that work great at expressing both _what_ and _where_ the service you want is, under your domain. But what if you have more than one? is it www2? ntp4? ftp3? which host/service do I want?

Context is everything. Your hostnames should be a representation of what you want to access, assuming a service with a default port. Instead of www2, www- devel. Instead of mysql255, mysql-qa-dev-ext. These are contexts that are specific to what you want, not just random identifiers you can use to pinpoint an exact thing.

Renaming hosts is a pain. It should be minimized, which is why CNAMEs are useful. If you can, try to give teams DNS control over the records pointing to the hosts they manage, so they can control them without waiting for the DNS admin to put a change through in a week. Make DNS changes work automatically and immediately (trust me, it's perfectly doable even in large environments). In most cases, you don't really need a host's name changed, you just need a CNAME to the new host you want to use.

</comment><comment><USER58> In my company we're using musical instrument names for machines. Bass instruments are servers, treble instruments are laptops, and medium ones are desktops.

</comment><comment><USER59> A well-known compute cluster at Berkeley created hostnames after types of disasters:

      -tsunami
      -apocalypse
      -famine
      -avalanche
      -hailstorm
      -lightning
      -heatwave
      -locusts
      -tornado
      -fallingrocks (<-- my favorite)

Interestingly, though run on a shoestring, this proved to be one of the most reliable set of servers on campus. I guess the disaster naming was a sort of a reverse jinx.

</comment><comment><USER60> To add a little counterweight to the 'should you give cute names' discussion - there is at least one reason why cute names are a good idea. I work for a web host, and our servers are named after musicians. It's a lot more likely on the phone that if I ask a customer which box they're on, they'll remember Hendrix or Prince or Buckethead over web-london-534.

</comment><comment><USER37> Imagine that some mystery virus has taken down or infected several boxes on your network and management want to know exactly what has gone on. In this scenario things are pretty sober and you really don't want to have anyone asking why the computers are named after some characters from a TV show or pretentious Greek myth characters. They won't see the funny side of it (if there is a funny side).

It is therefore much better to have important network machines and kit named in a logical manner, e.g. location-purpose-number.

As for what people have on their own desks, some people might detest whatever your cutesy name scheme is and be irked at having to use a machine called 'jigglypuff' just because they really never liked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They might also not really take to their workstation being impersonal, e.g. 'ldn-gfx-23'. Hence, on the desktop let people have a machine name of their choosing.

<comment><USER52> Or the desktop hostname could be "employeelogin-desktop".

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> If I may put forth a slice of my personal philosophy, it's that silly host names have ruled naming conventions long enough. I much prefer boring but logical descriptors that help my network self-document: whether simple codes useful in small environments (like "file01") or more complex schemes suitable for large-scale computing (e.g., "masip150ntvirt" or "cin-me-exch-01"). With the right scheme, 15 characters can tell you a lot about the location, ownership, configuration, and purpose of a particular computer. The cutesy naming conventions do nothing to help admins do their jobs or - in my opinion - actively get in the way.

</comment><comment><USER62> Transformers.

AlphaTrion is the PDC, A-3 is the BDC/SDC. Iacon is the SQL machine (VectorSigma is the name of the LVM pool). OmegaSupreme/Metroplex/FortressMaxiums are the gateways. Gestalts (Defensor, Computron, Superion) are used for the SANs and any other clusters.

Considering we try to be good guys, we only allow Autobot names for workstations. Starfire, Starscream, Punch-Counterpunch, and other fence sitters are not allowed. I lobbied for Wheelie to be included in that list, but was overruled by others.

[EDIT] I could see how this might have limitations on scale, but we haven't hit those limits internally, so it doesn't affect me yet. :)

</comment><comment><USER63> I use elements. Machine with IP 192.168.1.x gets the element with atomic number x as it's hostname. :)

[http://computernamer.com](http://computernamer.com) is good too.

Routers are named after species of penguin!

<comment><USER64> You can set up CNAMEs for their atomic symbols, too, to save typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Amazing!

At my company: For machines where usually you should NOT log in we use:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distilleries_in_Scotlan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distilleries_in_Scotland)

That is because they are so hard to spell! You really need to put the effort into it (e.g. Bruichladdich)

For the ones you should be logging into we use the most popular out of:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Home_appliance_brands](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Home_appliance_brands)

Which also fits in well with what the machines do... number crunching!

<comment><USER66> Ha! Brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I work for a large company that has multiple locations and sub business and many buildings have multiple data centres. By looking at the name, we can tell if its a prod / dev or a test server, location of the server ( city/building code and DC number), generic function ( DB -database could be any type of db , FS- file server, etc ) and unique number. Pretty good to pinpoint the location of the server globally but useless when you need to find out the exact function. While our inventory system is kind of OK, keeping it updated is a pain.

</comment><comment><USER68> An interesting tidbit; the list is compiled by Greg Ercolano, author of the render queue software Rush[1], for which he received an Academy Award in 2011[2].

It's a great piece of software for the VFX/post-production industry, and he's by far the best software vendor I've ever worked with.

[1] [http://seriss.com/rush/](http://seriss.com/rush/)

[2] [http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2011/20110107.html](http://www.oscars.org/press/pressreleases/2011/20110107.html)

</comment><comment><USER69> What a great set of lists! I had a sudden flashback to the days of the "Beowulf Cluster of X" meme, but in all seriousness, my favorite used to be towns I've lived in or visited, but that too is a bit cumbersome to remember in a pinch sometimes.

These days, I go with colors - I usually get a handy 7 right from the start - so I don't need to dig in too much. I've also gone with desserts or sweets and I'm sure Android was a big inspiration (albeit subconsciously) for that.

</comment><comment><USER70> My habit is to name machines after Star Wars planets /characters. But despite fact that I already have a established pattern it's often struggle to come up with a name.

</comment><comment><USER71> I think I've gone full circle on hostnames. Cute -> functional -> boring semi serially assigned.

It doesn't matter is my conclusion. where I work we have the remnants of about 5 different naming schemes living side by side (very big environment) and we're not missing out our gaining a thing.

We always resort to some external db (Sometimes just a spreadsheet) to lookup particular hosts based on whatever today's criteria is.

TL;DR it's a distraction. Don't waste time on it.

</comment><comment><USER72> We used to use Marvel characters until our setup got too big. Now it's (datacenter)-(type (web, proxy, db, etc))(number). So, sfo-proxy1, for example.

<comment><USER73> Outgrowing Marvel characters is a sign of good growth. Marvel says they have 7000 characters, and that count might exclude characters that just had one minor appearance.

<comment><USER72> We reached a point where it was just becoming painful to keep track of them - what a server did and where it was located. When you only have a handful of machines at one location, it's not a big deal. But once that number grows, and especially if spans multiple data centers, cute or geeky naming schemes tend to fall apart.

"Wait, was Magneto the master DB or the NFS server? Did we move DB off there? Is it in Atlanta, or San Francisco, or Phoenix?"

Eventually we reached a point where we had a spreadsheet mapping hostnames to architecture functions and physical locations. We realized that, even though our naming scheme was cool, it wasn't going to scale much further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I use European mountain passes, like Stelvio [1] or Veleta [2].. I don't have many servers.

At work though it's all business; purpose, environment, number, etc.

[1] [http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=passo%20stelvio](http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=passo%20stelvio)

[2] [http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=pico%20veleta](http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=pico%20veleta)

</comment><comment><USER75> Viruses were a favourite for a while (Hanta, Ebola, ...)

We had a 'bad idea' theme once which included:-

        port23
        dotat

But my favourite for one of our build machines and appeared in -version output of our product was sigsegv.

I've settled on the elements with atomic number as last octet and the handy shorthands, but that's for home dev network.

For company stuff they get named by function/env/counter.

</comment><comment><USER76> Ah, but that's obviously outdated: 'Nine planets and their moons'.. The RFC linked in the current top comment looks neat though!

</comment><comment><USER77> Sweet list. Phonetic Alphabet is a good one - it has the typing superpower of striking first letter then <tab> for instant autocomplete.

<comment> lost-theory Until you have 27 hostnames.

<comment><USER78> That's when we go Greek, say hello to α.

<comment> T-hawk But you get a collision right on the first element. Alpha leads off both the phonetic alphabet and Greek alphabet. Delta also collides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I posted about the hostnames topic in detail showing the difference between ephemeral and persistent hosts. See the post here: [http://padgeblog.com/2012/10/28/hostnames-in-the-dynamic- inf...](http://padgeblog.com/2012/10/28/hostnames-in-the-dynamic- infrastructure-world/)

</comment><comment><USER80> My old university used birds (Round Robin access via the "aviary"), noble gasses, music genres.

Myself, I use types of alcohol.

</comment><comment><USER81> I've always liked the ElasticSearch node names, they tend to be quite interesting and fun: [https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/blob/master/src/main/resources/config/names.txt)

</comment><comment><USER82> In the book "The History of Farting", an A-Z of different farts are described. Great for a laugh, but I doubt they would make good hostnames. You would be too busy laughing at the fact that the "J-curve fart" only exists theoretically, while your co-workers would be attempting to ignite theirs.

</comment><comment><USER83> At my university, we had a small Beowulf cluster set up for when what we wanted was to play with distributed processing (there was another, much more powerful and better managed, cluster for jobs that actually needed to get done). Naturally, we used names of kings and heroes from Beowulf.

</comment><comment><USER84> I don't typically manage hostnames, but I use planets from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for removable drives.

Unrelated: if you use the time measurement list for hostnames, or anything else that other people have to type, please for the love of God spell "millennium" correctly.

</comment><comment><USER85> Planets mentioned in Star Wars is a good source (if you include books) although some can be hard to spell.

<comment><USER86> In Ancient Times, Industrial Light and Magic was on Usenet, and maybe the Internet, via a system named dagobah.

I worked in a computer graphics group that used artist names, like vermeer, escher, davinci, etc. My system was bonestell. In another group I was in, we used names of dances, like bolero, foxtrot, tango, etc. The guy who suggested bolero was thinking of Bo Derek, but I took the idea of dance names and ran with it. My system was tarantella, which was hard enough to spell that people stayed off of it.

At home, I don't follow a pattern, but I have used names from "A Wrinkle in Time". My first quad core linux system was called tesseract and my Windows box was camazotz. I've always like the names of the earliest computers like ENIAC, EDSAC, UNIVAC, etc., so I named my Mac Pro prozac. I've considered naming my two raspberry pis colossus and guardian...

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> An admin in a research lab where I was an intern had used negative emotions as a naming scheme. Anger Despair Fear etc. until someone on his day off created a machine called 'lol'. I think I noticed all the previous hostnames in his face when he found out about that one...

</comment><comment><USER88> I've been using names from the Mr. Men series of books, so e.g. tickle, grumpy, topsyturvy, daydream. Easy to remember because the characters are each so unique and different, and gives each machine its own personality: "Oh crap, grumpy is acting up again", etc.

</comment><comment><USER89> I've been naming mine after Asimov's Foundation Universe planets. Solaria, Trantor etc.

</comment><comment><USER90> I used to go with "theme" name like wine oriented (chardonnay, merlot...) But after a while it gets confusing to remember which machine does what and switch to more "functional" names like "worker01, worker02, db01..."

<comment><USER91> If you're geeky enough about your theme, you could use theme-based names that are also functional. For example, all the wines are application servers, all the beers are DB servers, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Google Sets might a good way to automatically generate a list like this,

[http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-sets- still-a...](http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2012/11/google-sets-still- available.html)

</comment><comment><USER93> Famous cyclists names here! Gilbert, ulrich, and armstrong (we replaced armstrong recently)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's unfortunate. Despite the way that Armstrong situation went down there's no doubt he's still an excellent cyclist and athlete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> I once worked for a telecommunications company that used condom brands for internal server host names. Makes me wonder if there are any other major companies that use somewhat inappropriate names for their non-client-facing equipment.

</comment><comment><USER95> Might use this in future! I wrote a script to generate mine when they are provisioned: [https://github.com/andyhmltn/frosty- meadow](https://github.com/andyhmltn/frosty-meadow)

</comment><comment><USER96> I like using weird names but having them also be unique by first character.

</comment><comment><USER64> Both runes and letters of the tengwar were patterns that I recall Pair Networks used in the 90s, and I always thought those were cool.

I do love the idea of elements though, with their atomic symbols as CNAMEs.

</comment><comment><USER97> We use Breaking Bad references.

* Heisenberg is our Hypervisor server. Running everything.

* Combo is our MySQL database.

* Ehrmantraut is our Git server.

* Skyler is our build server.

Basically that. It's a bit of fun. There are 5 of us in the web team who all watched BB.

</comment><comment><USER98> My university used to have their CS lab machines named after breakfast cereals, soups, and pastas. Last year they switched to Unix commands, programming languages, and design patterns.

</comment><comment><USER99> I use the house names of westeros (game of thrones) for all my hostnames in my home network. Its a lot more fun mounting a drive from winterfell or streaming movies from kingslanding.

</comment><comment><USER100> I've been using elements myself for my home network.

(With one pseudo-exception: my first laptop was protium, my previous deuterium, my current tritium. Next one will probably be hydrogen.)

<comment><USER63> Nice! I use elements but I pick the element based on IP address and atomic number.

So 192.168.1.30 is zinc. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER101> Another idea: sunken ships. Comes in handy if a server is down.

</comment><comment><USER102> I like Harry Potter characters. There are lots of names in those books and the lists are readily available. Lots of them are unambiguous in English which is nice.

</comment><comment> cupcake-unicorn Nice! I did this without being aware that it was a good thing to do, and with a small network. I chose Finnish goddess names, some of which got pretty unwieldy...

</comment><comment><USER103> I remember recognizing at CMU that the many of the computers were named after Phish songs. Always enjoyed working at 'weekapaug'

</comment><comment><USER104> We used to use palindromes. It was a terrible idea.

</comment><comment><USER105> For sports fans -- historic player names for a particular team. Like the Phillies.. ashburn, bunning, carlton, dykstra .... incaviglia.

</comment><comment><USER106> I've always used demonic names: belial, azazel, asmodeo, belcebu, astarot, kali, oni, behemoth, baal... (they are spanishized).

</comment><comment><USER107> Lord of the Rings?

<comment><USER108> Where I work, the number of tickets filed about the speed of 'Shadowfax' always makes me chuckle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Someone should try to use these a source for guessing of subdomain for a large number of domain (probably fetched from Google).

</comment><comment><USER110> I use philosophers on my personal machines: thales, aristotle, plato, etc.

On VPSes I like names like London<optional digit>PROD/DEV.

</comment><comment><USER111> My personal machines are named after characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest: Caliban, Prospero, Miranda, Ariel, etc.

</comment><comment><USER112> I typically use favorite cars from the Gran Turismo series; yellowbird, trueno, skyline etc. or characters from Quake 3.

</comment><comment><USER113> I know RethinkDB guys give every node in a cluster a name of one of Dota Heroes. That's something I can remember :)

</comment><comment><USER114> My personal machines (including phone, tablet etc) used to be called Snake, Zero, Ocelot, Boss.

Guess which is my favourite game series.

</comment><comment><USER115> I believe it was the Disqus team who described using StarCraft names divided into either races or units vs. buildings.

</comment><comment><USER116> I use characters from Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Roland, Eddie, Jake, Oy, Susannah, Cuthbert, Alain, etc.

</comment><comment><USER117> I,be seen IKEA furniture as hostnames. Advantage: Easy access through IKEA website and continuously new names.

</comment><comment><USER118> Days of the week could get a bit confusing and possibly creating a "Who's on First" situation.

</comment><comment><USER119> I use locations from the Zelda universe.

my current machines are

lakehylia, lostwoods, termina, koholint, skyloft, deathmountain, minishwoods

</comment><comment><USER120> I use Star Trek ship classes and names: enterprise, defiant, voyager, galaxy, sovereign, intrepid etc.

</comment><comment><USER121> We've been using Seinfeld characters. It makes me smile when I ssh to Peterman, Puddy, Morty...

<comment><USER122> That could bite you if you happen to start to work with someone with that name. Therefore, RFC 1178 recommmends not naming hosts using names of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> We use character codenames from the Metal Gear Solid universe. Ocelot, Octopus, Raven, Wolf, etc.

</comment><comment><USER124> I like using the chemical elements.

</comment><comment><USER125> For my home (laptop, three towers, an rpi, NAS, and mobile devices) I use four letter foods.

</comment><comment><USER126> we use periodic table elements for releases, we even have "isotopes". version numbers perfectly match to atomic numbers, and they all have abbreviations. it's a great way to learn the periodic table as well.

</comment><comment><USER127> The place I'm currently at uses Dakota words, but that's a local thing.

</comment><comment><USER128> We use Japanese food names... unadon, maguro, gyoza, yakitori, tonkatsu... mmmmm

</comment><comment><USER129> I have used names from fantasy books. Shire, Mordor, North, Dorne, Vale ..

</comment><comment><USER130> Characters from Firefly, for my home network. All short and memorable.

</comment><comment><USER131> eh. I had that at a previous employer. I used volcano names because there's a fair number of them and they sometimes explode. ( the graphite server was called seismograph... ).

</comment><comment><USER132> scientists make good hostnames, e.g. Sagan, Feynman, Darwin, etc...

</comment><comment><USER133> Someone decided to name ours based on specs. DUAL2800, DUAL3000...

</comment><comment><USER134> `kill -l` gives a nice list. I'm writing this from sigsegv.

</comment><comment><USER135> (Sid Meier's) Alpha Centauri character and city names.

</comment><comment><USER33> Any slackware fan using darkstar-1, darkstar-2 and so on?

</comment><comment><USER136> I'm a big fan moons, with planets as subnets.

</comment><comment><USER137> I personally use elements of the periodic table.

</comment><comment><USER138> Godzilla monsters

</comment><comment><USER139> Easy one: Star Wars planets

</comment><comment><USER140> I use World of Warcraft's server names: [http://www.wowwiki.com/Realms_list](http://www.wowwiki.com/Realms_list)

Like Aegwynn, AeriePeak, Alterac, Arathi, etc.</comment>