Top all-time · #6030
Michael VanDeMar
Personal blog · smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.comprogrammingweb
Michael VanDeMar writes Smackdown!, a personal blog at smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com about programming and web. Since 2008, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “GoDaddy apparently uninterested in fixing their security hole”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Michael VanDeMar's posts exposing spam and security problems: Mahalo's autogenerated pages and disappearing noindex tags, GoDaddy and Rackspace mass hacks, and Google search spam.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
On programming, search engines, and general web development
Most-linked posts?
- GoDaddy apparently uninterested in fixing their security hole2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-05-13
- Mahalo's new spam is worse than old2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-03-08
What Hacker News says?
And yet Mahalo is still tolerated, somehow. E.g., this query -- "travel agent vermont" (which I got from this post complaining about Mahalo spamming the web and Google not enforcing its own qc standards http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/03/08/mahalo-com-m... ) still returns a Mahalo result in the top 10.
Comment linking /2010/03/08/mahalo-com-meet-the-new-spam-worse-than-the-old-spam/
on “Google search and search engine spam”Submitted Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags as a story · 193 points
HN discussionSorry I did not answer your question earlier. I used that particular page in the post because it was an example of how these autogenerated pages come into being in the first place, from a post I did back when I first called Jason on the practice. It was the actual page that I had seen the noindex tag on after Jason added it. You can get to any of these autogenerated pages by running a query on Mahalo itself. It was…
Comment linking /2010/02/22/apparently-jason-calacanis-knows-hes-spamming-he-just-thinks-its-no-big-deal/
on “Mahalo's disappearing noindex tags”Submitted Jason Calacanis Knows He's Spamming Google, He Just Thinks It's No Big Deal as a story · 157 points
HN discussionI am definitely moving away from GoDaddy. I had some small sites on their shared servers that just got hacked again.. If you are not following, this is the 3rd mass hack at godaddy in just a few weeks: http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/05/13/hosting-with... http://blog.sucuri.net/2010/05/found-code-used-to-inject-mal...
Comment linking /2010/05/13/hosting-with-godaddy-might-want-to-rethink-that-decision/
on “GoDaddy out of control - Sites hacked again”Submitted Mahalo's new spam is worse than old as a story · 130 points
HN discussionYep, sure as hell is. He's hosting at Rackspace Cloud based on his DNS servers: http://whois.domaintools.com/bothsidesofthetable.com They have a rather large security issue at the moment, he is simply one of many: http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2010/06/14/rackspace-ha...
Comment linking /2010/06/14/rackspace-hacked-clients-check-your-databases-wordpress-wp_optimize-backdoor-in-wp_options-table/
on “Mark Suster's Blog Gets Hacked”Submitted Jason Calacanis’ Backup Plan For Replacing Content: Steal It From Wikipedia as a story · 105 points
HN discussionSubmitted A guide to the latest Mahalo spam techniques as a story · 81 points
HN discussionSubmitted Maybe Jason Calacanis isn't being totally honest about Mahalo? as a story · 78 points
HN discussionSubmitted GoDaddy apparently uninterested in fixing their security hole as a story · 57 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is Google Referrer Spamming Too Now? as a story · 27 points
HN discussionSubmitted Scientology Suspended from Twitter for "Strange Activity" as a story · 22 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Matt Cutts Used Stack Overflow/Hacker News In Redefining "Content Farms" as a story · 21 points
HN discussionSubmitted Woops Looks like WordPress Itself isnt 100% GPL Either as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Another Reason Not To Use Network Solutions as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Google Censors Torrent Sites – Except The Pirate Bay as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Was The Google Mayday Update A Complete Failure Then? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Hack (and widget) to Comply with Google AdSense Privacy Policy as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
