Maintenance window - Thursday Dec 1

[denise]

There will be a maintenance window, with some downtime, on Thursday, December 1, starting at 10AM EST/7AM PST/3PM UTC, for server maintenance and upgrades. To err on the side of caution, we're calling it an 8 hour window (so, until 6PM EST/3PM PST/11PM UTC), although we don't expect that the site will be in maintenance mode for the whole time.

We'll remind you Wednesday night, and again when the site is going into maintenance mode.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

\o/

[jazzyjj]

Thanks for the head's-up. I might be gone anyway during that time and unable to get online anyway.

[moem]

Yay, maintenance. Thanks for letting us know!

If I may ask: where in the world is Dreamwidth hosted? Any chance of getting it hosted in a privacy-friendly country, with regards to recent political developments?

[denise]

Our servers are located in the US!

[mark]

This is a good question and one warranting further discussion as the future unfolds.

I'm not sure that locating the servers anywhere else buys us much, FWIW, simply because as a US citizen living in the US I'm subject to whatever the laws are here -- no matter where the servers might be. (But I'm not a lawyer and would be interested in learning more about this area if anybody has reference material.)

[moem]

Oh, yes, that is a very good point. I hope someone can give you some pointers. Thank you for taking this seriously!

[denise]

Yeah, we'd fight any subpoena or government order to turn over user content, especially if it had a gag order associated with it, as a matter of course, but we're limited by the fact that we're US citizens living in the US and the company is registered in the US -- having the servers themselves outside the US wouldn't get us much. (Especially since I don't actually know of any hosting companies located outside the US, in a jurisdiction with stricter privacy laws than the US, that doesn't cooperate with US demands to turn over information.) And really, I'd hate to give people an impression that things were more secure than we could make them, which I think is what "the servers aren't in the US!" would give -- if someone's afraid of what the US government could do with what they'd posted to DW, just having the servers located elsewhere doesn't do anything for other methods of getting to it. People who would be endangered by somebody getting their hands on their data need a level of operational security that's hard to get unless the service is specifically designed for it, and often not even then (cf the evidence that the FBI has a Tor exploit they were deploying earlier this year).

(In terms of general "I don't want my personal data collected" privacy, though, you already get a huge benefit on DW over many other sites in that we don't have advertising! We don't collect behavioral data or have tracking cookies or the various things that advertisers do to try to sell to you more efficiently. Which is something, at least!)

[moem]

Substantial replies like this, from the folks who run the place, are a big part of the reason why I <3 Dreamwidth. You people actually think about this stuff, and care about it. Again, thank you!

(And yes, that certainly is something.)

[dragondancer5150]

WHERE'S THE LIKE BUTTON!? I need a big, honkin' LIKE button for this!

Really, though, THANK YOU THANK YOU for all that you do! From upgrades to heads up on upgrades, to taking the time to explain things like this, and so much more.

*MASSIVE HUGS all around the team!*

[triadruid]

A very reasonable reply.

[turlough]

Good luck!