Gyrovague

My two bits of advice are: 1) always try to be the dumbest person in the room (i.e., surround yourself with smart people from whom you can learn), and 2) remove the phrase "it works for me" from your vocabulary when dealing with others. The latter may not be something you utter often, and if that's the case, then feel free to ignore it. :)

The first should be pretty obvious, but the second is a little less obvious. But think about it this way: if it worked for me, I wouldn't complain about it. Agree?

So there are two possible choices: either I'm wrong or your code is wrong (assuming you're an engineer). As a member of a startup, it is generally in your best interest to assume that the complainant is right and your code is wrong.

Assume that your code is wrong. Investigate it. Ask for more information if you need it. Track down the problem. If it works for you, then think of all the reasons it might not work for someone who doesn't know how it works. Think of all the edge cases. Clear the cookies. Bust the cache. Make sure it's not Wednesday (http://gyrovague.com/2015/07/29/crashes-only-on-wednesdays/). Whatever it takes to figure out why it's not working for the user (which may or may not mean it works for you!).

Maybe the code is wrong -- if so, fix it. Maybe it's a feature -- if so, explain that. Maybe the user made a mistake -- if so, identify why and fix that.

Only after identifying the problem and potential solution do you go back to your complainant and say,…

Jani Patokallio who runs gyrovague.com published a blog post attempting to dox the owner of archive.today.

Jani justifies his doxing as follows "I found it curious that we know so little about this widely-used service, so I dug into it" [1]

Archive.today on the other hand is a charitable archival project offered to the public for free. The operator of Archive.today risks significant legal liability, but still offers this service for free.

[1]: https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-a-ddos-attack-against-my-blog/#:~:text=I%20found%20it%20curious%20that%20we%20know%20so%20little%20about%20this%20widely%2Dused%20service%2C%20so%20I%20dug%20into%20it%2C

It's weird to see people getting fixated on the DDoS, which is obviously far less nasty than actually attempting to dox someone. The only credible reason for Jani to publish something like this is if he desires to cause physical harm to the operator of archive.today

Or are we just looking at an unhinged fan stalking their favorite online celebrity?

People were critical of the Banksy piece, but this is much nastier. At least Banksy is a huge business, archive.today does not even make money.

Actually, the team behind archive dot today in at least spiegel.de has premium accounts, I presume bought with anonymous credit cards.

You can see artifacts when their servers are at queue load and you see the URLs, a few resources have the JWT with the account details in the URL. IIRC the clearname of the account in the token is Masha Rabinovich, with an email account masha@dns.li, an identity that has cropped up in various investigations [1][2].

[1] https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-of-the-mysterious-guerrilla-archivist-of-the-internet/

[2] https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/145817/who-owns-archive-today-and-archive-is-and-where-is-it-hosted

Gyrovague here, author of the targeted blog post:

https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-of-the-mysterious-guerrilla-archivist-of-the-internet/

In the past week or so, I have received a GDPR takedown attempt of the archive.today blog post (which my hosting provider rightly rejected), a politely worded request to take it down (which was sadly eaten by my spam filter), and now this (thanks to the HN reader who tipped me off).

Given that the proverbial cat has been out of the bag for 2.5 years at this point, I'm genuinely puzzled as to what they're hoping to achieve, but this does not seem like a very good way of going about it.

>This is great. Journalists are impeding the preservation of the historical record by blocking archivist traffic while simultaneously manhunting those archivists who find ways around their authwalls.

You are deliberately misrepresenting the situation. The journalists who block archivist traffic are not in any way connected to the blogger who was attempting to investigate the creator of archive.is. You have portrayed them as related in an attempt to garner sympathy for the creator of archive.is.

Here is an account of the facts: https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-a-ddos-attack-against-my-blog/

> Another private investigation from 2024 comes to a different conclusion. It names a software developer from New York as the alleged operator. According to this investigation, following the trail to Eastern Europe proved to be a red herring.

Any pointers to what this "private investigation" is? The other linked blog pointing to Russia (or at least a Russian) seems pretty convincing:

https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-of-the-mysterious-guerrilla-archivist-of-the-internet/