Cancelling Dropbox Pro is hard - <AUTHOR> https://www.useloom.com/share/8d148b2be54444909e8408398ab07f83 <comment><USER3> If it's harder to leave than it is to join, then I'm not using your stuff. It's mildly condescending and very transparent and so I don't want/need to deal with it. If you believed in your product, you wouldn't do it.

I subscribed to the New York Times with a simple one-step "put in your credit card deets". One year later I was going to leave the country so tried to cancel it. After several steps of forms you get the _phone number_ of someone to call to cancel (remember phone calls?!). They put the hard sell to stay.

My plans changed, I stayed in the country. I really loved my NYTimes subscription (I miss my crosswords) - but ain't no way I'm signing up again until they make it equally easy to leave as it is to join. I apply that to every company I deal with now.

<comment><USER4> The NYT at least lets you use PayPal. When I wanted to cancel I couldn't even get through to a rep, so I just switched my payment method to PayPal and then deauthorized the recurring payment from PayPal.

<comment><USER5> So much this. I LOVE paypal as a user because of it. All my subscriptions go through it and if it isn't offered via paypal, I'll reconsider.

I love to see a list of all my subscriptions with the ability to unilaterally cancel my subscription at any time via PayPal... I never even contact the companies I 'unsubscribe' from... I simply remove their access to my paypal.

<comment><USER6> Just be careful with this. Some companies will treat this as if it were a bounced check and keep your debt going.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't put it past they NYT to do it. They could say that for privacy reasons the billing department can't view the last time you were logged into your account, and boom, they can argue that if they didn't pursue payment, you could be getting features from your paid account for free.

<comment><USER8> Most recurring billing APIs provide some sort of notification or query about the status. They could reasonably do "for each payment we got yesterday, extend the expiration date of the associated account."

<comment><USER9> Sure. They could also let you easily cancel online. But they don't want to. And if you refuse to pay for a subscription contract you entered, but didn't cancel, you owe them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Retain with pain..

The other day I tried to delete my udacity account. No button in settings, I mailed support, they asked my to mail legal (apparently they don't fwd mail..). From legal I received the following response:

Hello,

We are in receipt of your request to delete your account. We are sorry you want to leave the Udacity family; you will be missed.

Before we can proceed with fully processing your request, we need to verify your information. We take these steps to minimize risk to the security of your information and of fraudulent information and removal requests. Specifically, we ask that you provide the following pieces of information:

\- Username and email address associated with your Udacity User Account (if different from the one you provided in your initial request);

\- Online Courses currently or previously enrolled in;

\- Approximate date of User Account registration;

\- Country of residence; and

\- A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account.

If, after you have provided the above information, we are unable to verify your identity and/or authority to issue the request, we may reach out to you for further verification information.

As a reminder, any deletion actions we take in response to your request are not reversible and may result in Udacity (or you) being unable to retrieve information about your account, enrollment, and records of completion. Please also keep in mind that all removals of such information are subject to requirements to maintain certain data in our archives for legal or legitimate business purposes.

If you have any questions about this request please see our Privacy Policy or let us know.

Thanks for your understanding.

Udacity Legal Team

<comment><USER11> > A statement under penalty of perjury that all information in your request is > truthful and that this is your User Account or that you have the > authorization to make the request on behalf of the owner of the User Account

That strikes me as really extreme. If I had an Udacity account and someone tried to delete it, I would be annoyed, but I wouldn't seek to press criminal charges against them.

<comment><USER12> Their concern is probably someone deleting _somebody else 's_ account, along with all record of courses completed, etc. Is it possible to have an Udacity account if you're not actually paying them? If so, "account removed" and "unpaid account" are very different things and the transition between them is one-way.

<comment><USER11> > Their concern is probably someone deleting somebody else's account

Yes, that's what I meant. If some stranger deleted my account, I don't think I would be angry enough to attempt to press criminal perjury charges against them.

<comment><USER12> It may depend on the real-world relevance of the courses you've taken.

What happens if you're taking part in the Georgia Tech/Udacity online Master's in Computer Science, and suddenly all of your course history on Udacity is gone? Are you then stuck with remotely trying to access records through whatever GA Tech has retained for MOOC students in a degree program? Does it prevent you from signing up for additional courses because there's no record of you completing the prerequisites? Does their platform have a provision for overriding those prerequisites, and what would that have to be based on - <USER2> from a professor who taught a MOOC, has never seen you or your work and probably depends on Udacity's listings?

A similar situation could arise if the platform is being used for mandatory continuing education credits in fields that have that. An industry that has CE requirements would often be well-served to partner with an established and stable online learning platform rather than building their own. If you're required to take X hours of CE annually to retain a license but the only proof you have is a PDF certificate from someplace that says "We've never heard of this person," do you qualify or do you end up in licensing/certification hell?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Years ago I needed to cancel a fax service. They refused to allow me to cancel unless I called them up, which I wouldn't do.

In the end I just changed all my details to some variation of the phrase "cancel account" except the billing details (which I couldn't change) then did a chargeback every time they charged me.

It took them a couple of months to finally get round to cancelling my account (I think it was actually the bank who intervened). It was more effort than just calling the fac company, but I sure as hell wasn't playing their game.

<comment><USER14> I think it costs them a transaction fee from the credit card company each time too and affects their future ability to use the merchant network when they get too many chargebacks.

<comment> munk-a Unfortunately it can also really seriously effect your credit rating, but then again anything can do that and credit ratings are silly.

<comment><USER15> Can it? There shouldn't be any obligation implicit for monthly subscriptions outside of loans.

<comment><USER16> You can absolutely be sent to collections for not paying for a service, it happens all the time. As soon as that happens they will report it to the credit bureaus.

<comment><USER15> Why can't I send them to some other service?

<comment><USER17> Send who, the debt collector? "Oh, no, I switched from Dropbox to backblaze. Go get the money from them." I guess you can say that, but I doubt it works.

<comment><USER15> It's not debt if you've just been automatically renewed. Agreeing to pay X in Y payments is not the same as paying Z for 1 term of use.

<comment><USER9> Why do you think that? You entered a legally binding contract with an obligation to pay. You refuse to pay without canceling the contract. Why should the fact that it's a recurring payment change anything here?

<comment><USER15> Modern subscriptions are little more than saved payment information. Merely having someone's payment information does not give consent.

<comment><USER9> No, merely having payment information is not giving consent, but you signing up for a subscription service was giving consent to a recurring subscription. That's a totally different situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazon is the same. I just cancelled Prime yesterday. It took me four or five confirmations that yes, I want to lose the benefits.

The buttons were jumping around. Sometimes the left one was for cancelling, sometimes the right one, sometimes it was a few centimeters lower.

I love my Kindle, but without that my Amazon account itself would be in real danger.

<comment><USER19> Oh, heads up, you're in for a treat. Amazon will try to tack on a Prime subscription on every order you try to make from now on. They do this with a permanent full-page interstitial (not a pop-up) for ex-Prime users before the order confirmation page whose big green 'continue' button automatically one- click charges your account for a full year of Prime. You have to read down and click the tiny 'no, I don't want these benefits' blue text link in 8px font size to file your order without Prime.

I no longer shop from Amazon. The more we accept these kind of indignities, the more they will be forced on us. Let them starve, that's the most powerful message one can send.

Edit / More data points:

\- One more trick up their sleeve: they will default to two-day paid shipping even when you have free shipping available, just so that you'll feel the pain (i.e. the 'worth') of Prime every time you have to pay attention in the last page, and check the right 'free shipping' radio box for every shipment in your order.

\- For me, the last thing that broke the camel's back was that they were specifically sending shipments to arrive on the _last_ day of the shipment window. As a real example, I ordered a display on Jan 7 to arrive between Jan 14 and Jan 18. They shipped it Jan 17. This is what made me notice this, and it made me look at my past orders. Turns out, they have been doing this consistently, for a while.

The purpose of a shipping window is to allow for some slack in the case shipment gets delayed, it is for _shipment_. If they shipped it a few days before the window, that would be fine. If they shipped it right at the beginning of the window, that would still (arguably) be fine. If you ship in a way that is aiming for as late as possible delivery, that's pretty obvious what you're trying to do.

If you're not a Prime customer, your orders might arrive as late as they can make it. They are likely doing this on purpose.

<comment><USER20> Pro-tip: Sometimes you can get lucrative deals on Prime during checkout if you don't have prime.

For example, I've gotten multiple 1 month free trials, and also the '1 week for 1.99' which you can immediately cancel after placing your order for a $1 refund (if you immediately cancel, not at end of the week).

I don't shop at Amazon often, but I've gotten many (read: > 10) Prime shipments over the last year, probably paying a grand total of $3 or so.

If I don't have any good Prime offers upon checkout, I'll go to Ebay, find the product, soft by lowest price, and it's usually the same price, or within a dollar or so, and ships a LOT faster than Amazon.com's standard shipping (usually ends up coming from Amazon anyways proxied by the Ebay seller with Prime).

I've gone through the Amazon cancellation pages many times. They always keep tweaking it and expanding the process.

<comment><USER21> I quit shopping at Amazon completely. Counterfeits are mixed in with legit. If I want cheap shit, I hit eBay or Ali. And if I want legit I go to the store or order from local box stores and pick up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually went through exactly this with Dropbox a couple weeks ago. It took me two tries, the first time I mis-read / fell into one of the dark patterns. I'd made up my mind long before I ever went to the website to cancel and all this did was make me grumpy and justify my decision even more. Clearly it adds to their retention numbers somewhere or it would be dropped, however I will not use dropbox again in the face of such blatant disrespect. It was a great service, but with so many other options out there I have no need to use one that thinks I need to be tricked in to staying.

<comment><USER23> What are you looking to use next? I've thought about a raid NAS but have not brought myself to going through with it.

<comment><USER24> Syncthing is designed for decentralized syncing, but I've forced it into a hub-and-spoke model by running one instance on a cheap VPS, with my client machines configured to connect to only that with all the discovery/relay features turned off. It's been painless to administer so far - the "server" has been running without restart since I set it up 18 months ago and I've had to fiddle with "client" settings maybe once or twice in that time. Then again, I don't put it under much stress - mostly documents and source code, no multimedia.

<comment><USER25> Is there a one-click docker image or other VM one can run as the announcer/tracker for Syncthing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ha, not as hard as I expected but still like 4-5 steps with a bunch of dark patterns (highlighting the buttons that don't downgrade, etc). The screen that's like "OK, you want to downgrade, but tell us _why_ " gave me flashbacks to that nightmare Comcast cancellation call[0].

[0] [https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic- service](https://soundcloud.com/ryan-block-10/comcastic-service)

<comment><USER27> At what point can you just state something like the following?

> I am recording this phone call. I am terminating our service contract, and > have communicated this by mail as well as verbally as we speak. Any further > attempts to charge me for this service I have cancelled shall be disputed > and reported to the police for attempted fraud. Good day.

<comment><USER28> Possibly at the point where you actually bothered to print, sign, and mail a physical letter (by registered mail so you can prove it).

At that point, there's no need to state it, go straight for the chargeback and attach a copy of the cancellation letter and registered mail receipt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This looked a bit like someone being overly picky, but the the number of times Dropbox presented a deceptive ui got more and more funny. 3 different confirmation pages in a row, and a weak confirmation that you actually cancelled the subscription.

I wouldn't put is as "very hard", but they could probably drop the last confirmation page since any value you get by having these pages dramatically falls off after the first.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anytime I can cancel online, in under a minute I'd consider that easy. Yes, ideally they wouldn't put all those hoops in the way, but far better than most companies that require you to call a phone number during a certain time where you have to spend forever talking to a person who has to read from a script and may get aggressive with you or have to transfer you, or call drops or they say they have cancelled but didn't go through. Like MyFico, Sirius and other big names. Hopefully Dropbox improves but I assume their pages get enough people not to cancel, than the amount of people so angered by it that they decide to never come back that it makes sense for them.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is how my old gym was (Crunch Fitness), at least several years ago. I moved cities and had forgotten about the subscription until I checked my bank statement - so I called them and asked to cancel. They said I needed to do so in person, or physically mail them some form (wasn't exactly clear on where I get this form from...). Even after being pretty irate and asking for a manager, I got those canned responses.

I suppose it was lucky that I was visiting that city the upcoming weekend, so I did end up cancelling in person - but my experience sounded and felt illegal.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'll take that flow any day over a company that makes you call or email to cancel.

Recently had a horrible experience with Full Contact. You can sign up with a couple clicks, but you need to email them to cancel. Then they'll sit on your request so you get billed for another month while they're processing it and then they'll kill your plan right away for the month you just paid for. Horrible!

<comment><USER33> Constant Contact — same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Annoying sure. "Very" hard? No, not in the slightest and is disingenuous to title it that way. Sure their confirmation buttons were the primary action color, and they really drag the process but it was straight forward, just involved reading to make sure the button you were clicking was the right one. It's a bad process definitely, but not very hard or even moderately hard.

</comment><comment><USER35> This seems like standard fare at almost any company. Cox communications offered me $10 lower per-month Internet when I was cancelling. I told them if they retroactively paid me the $10/month they were over-charging me for years I would stay. This finally ended their attempts to change my mind.

<comment><USER36> Cox is the worst. The prices magically increase every few months and it always takes a phone call to get them back down to what you originally thought they were.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is why I prefer to handle my app subscriptions through Apple's App Store: easy, transparent (un)subscriptions.

Plan B is to use virtual credit card numbers, such as [https://privacy.com](https://privacy.com) preferably with a bogus name.

Too many tech companies are shady.

<comment><USER38> I have long wished someone, ideally Apple, would successfully implement micropayments for news.

<comment><USER39> Google Contributor [1] was an attempt, but it never really seemed to have taken off.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Contributor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Phone employees must be given drop-dead quotas or something because they _really_ resist not being able to do their won't-you-please-stay spiels at cancellation time, no matter what you say.

Once when cancelling an AmEx card, I _TOLD_ the agent immediately "I am cancelling my card, and I decline _in advance_ any offers you make to keep me on this card"; she _still_ couldn't seem to resist interjecting about 3 or 4 time-wasting counter-offers. It was extra annoying when she started prefacing them with "I know you _said_ you just wanted to cancel BUT...". (Really?!? That means you _know_ I don't want it and you _know_ you are wasting my time, yet you choose to waste it anyway! Is your manager behind you or something?)

I have seen this with everything from cards to cable companies. All I can figure is that these companies simply have too much power. There just aren't that _many_ cable choices or card choices for example, so how exactly am I going to storm off and never return?

<comment><USER41> The agent is probably required to walk you through them. The people who have taken away the agent's power to actually make your customer experience a happy one will never directly encounter the consequences of their decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> They wont quit pestering me to upgrade. I've never uploaded a single file, but collaborators have shared folders with me. Apparently that means my drive is full and I need to upgrade...

</comment><comment><USER43> That's what happens when you have a huge growth team.

Thanks for posting this.

I've never signed up for Dropbox Pro but this is off-putting because their product seems pretty well rounded in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER44> That looks super annoying (seems like a really good way to get zero return customers), but does anyone remember how difficult it was for people to quit AOL in the (early?) 2000's? Just search for "cancel AOL" on youtube and you will find some pretty incredible accounts of people being straight up harassed by AOL reps to keep their accounts. For some people it took hours arguing with a rep over the phone before they would agree to cancel.

<comment><USER45> Exactly. If you're able to document your cancellation process using only screen recording software, you're still in the top 10% of convenient cancellation experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you live in the USA, Email their support and declare that you've canceled your account with them and refuse to pay anything further. Then contact your credit card company and initiate a charge back. If your CC company wants proof, send them a copy of the email you sent.

Every chargeback a company gets costs them money, on top of the money they aren't getting from you. If a company gets a high enough charge back rate, their credit card processing vendor will revoke their services. Fraud/Chargebacks are a MAJOR issue for any company accepting credit cards.

If you've made it clear you wish to cancel and are in no other way violating a contract (ex: You signed up for a 1 year subscription billed monthly with Adobe Cloud, ya gotta pay them for the year), then you are free and clear.

</comment><comment><USER47> Yeah, I actually by accident retained my account by not clicking the last of several "are you sure" type buttons.

I had a yearly plan and had moved everything off to my own NAS in the last month before subscription renewal.

Was very surprised to see an additional year billed to my account!

Well annoying, and quite ugly.

</comment><comment><USER48> I signed for Dropbox pro through their iOS app, which means canceling is super easy because the payments are handled by Apple. You can cancel your account by staying entirely inside iOS system preferences menus.

And ironically, it may lead to 1 or 2 more clicks than what was shown in the video, but at least there are no dark UI patterns.

</comment><comment><USER49> I use Privacy[0] for all internet subscriptions. I mentioned this on HN before but it gives me purpose-generated cards for specifics d services like Netflix and Google. When I want to cancel, if the process is even marginally difficult, I just turn the card off — which I was going to do anyways.

[0]: Referral link: [https://privacy.com/join/S5U7B](https://privacy.com/join/S5U7B)

</comment><comment><USER50> Don't use the form. Use the legal way to quit any contract in your country. For instance that means sending a paper letter to their offices with the postal service confirming that the letter was received. If your contract has a quitting period pay the 3 months or what. Then stop and ignore all the annoying emails and letters they send you. They will not sue, because they would lose.

Might cost you $5 for the special letter type, and might cost you 3 more monthly fees than you would be willing to pay otherwise. But this is 100% save in all countries with a working legal system. Of course if they come after you with baseball bats or car bombs, then you probably can't quit their "services" anyways. ;)

</comment><comment><USER51> Eeeeeesh. Let's continue this tradition - companies need to be shamed for pulling this crap.

Nice work, OP.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm starting to use privacy.com with all my online accounts. If I really have trouble leaving deleting the vendor locked credit card I used to sign up is an easy way to go that gets the job done.

</comment><comment><USER53> Audible seems to do memberships right. Cancel at anytime, resume when desired. Works a treat and I frequently go back an rejoin if there's something I'm interested in.

</comment><comment><USER54> A little over a year ago I spent days and days trying and failing to sign up for a Dropbox Business account.

The "Start free trial" button on the website literally did nothing. If I clicked it enough times, I eventually got a poorly worded error asking me to try again in 24 hours. This happened in multiple browsers. I tried many times over the course of several days with no success. I had coworkers try in case it was something specific to my machine or network. They got the same error.

I opened a support request and asked if they could help me manually open a Dropbox Business account. No, they couldn't. The best advice they were able to give me was to try clearing my browser cache and cookies (I did; it didn't help).

Finally I dug around and managed to find a link directly to a billing form, and was able to sign up by having them start billing me immediately instead of going through a free trial. I signed up for annual billing, naively assuming the per-user annual fee would be pro-rated (like Slack and most other good per-user services do) if our small company hired or lost any employees.

During the course of that year I did end up removing two users from our Dropbox Business account. Since we had already paid for the full year up front, I expected the next annual charge to reflect a pro-rated charge. But nope! The automatic renewal paid no attention to the _actual_ number of users on our account, and Dropbox charged us as if those users still existed.

Turns out the number of licenses you're billed for has to be managed manually. If you have 10 licenses and 10 users and then remove two users, that doesn't affect the license count. You have to remove two licenses manually. And if you pay up front for a year but remove two licenses halfway through the year? Too bad. No pro-rated reduced charge next year. Better be sure to predict your exact staffing numbers a year in advance next time.

Want to add a user halfway through the year when you're already at your license limit? It'll just fail with a cryptic error until you finally realize you need to first go to a different page and manually add a license. And sometimes (like literally as I type this) the Billing page you need to visit to do this is completely broken and just serves up an error that says "Oh hello. Sorry for this little hiccup."

Dropbox's core functionality works well and I have no complaints about it, but everything related to billing is so unintuitive and so frequently broken that I wonder whether they even care about it.

So yeah, I guess it doesn't surprise me that canceling is hard too.

<comment><USER55> Calendly also works this way. I guess I can understand it making development a bit easier (not having to tie each charge to an individual user) but they should have a warning that when you delete a user that you should also remove a license if that is your intention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Call your CC, claim inability to reach business to cancel and request chargeback.

This is my action plan #1 when vendor start irritating me with their support or policies.

<comment><USER57> Seems like a great way for the vendor to send you debt to collections.

<comment><USER58> I'm not familiar, but this seems unlikely to happen for something as small as a Dropbox bill. Debt collection is a 'regular' business - it's simply uneconomical for a business to pay people to pursue your $9 Dropbox debt.

<comment><USER38> They can sell a $50 debt though.

(No idea what the low end is but I've had $25 debts sold when I lost track of a medical charge.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is infuriating!!! I wasn't planning on cancelling, but seeing this shit now makes me want to cancel. Thanks for giving me a reason.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't think this is hard, it is possible online, no phone calls nor paper communication. In Germany if you want to cancel anything, you need to send personally signed letter three full months in advance. And most of the things run as two year long contacts. If you miss the the date three months before your contact ends you get another two years automatically.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think the real solution is to use a one time use credit card number which you can deactivate if its too hard to cancel a free trial.

</comment><comment><USER61> This was very similar to my experience when cancelling my Amazon Prime account a week ago. It was at least five pages of trying to talk me out of it and the 'continue cancelling' was similarly the more obscure/non-obvious button.

It makes it feel like a very shady process without being outright deceptive.

</comment><comment><USER62> The process is quite convoluted, but at least they didn't offer 50% discount when you tried to cancel.

<comment><USER63> Hulu used to do this, but they'd give a free month. All I had to do was remember to find the cancellation flow once a month and I got it for free for almost a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The ONE good thing about Bank of America, and it was only available on their credit cards but not debit cards, and I don't even know if they still offer it: You could generate new credit card numbers on demand, and set a hard spending limit on them, and their expiration date could be set by you.

This was pitched by their marketing as a way to make online shopping safer, because even if they did get the card and the expiry date and everything, they couldn't spend more than the limit which you likely already hit when you bought your item. But the hidden feature was it made cancelling difficult services a breeze, because you could just log in to your banking portal and kill the temporary card you made for that service.

<comment><USER65> The three big banks that offer virtual credit card numbers are: Bank of America, Capital One, and Citi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> It's annoying as hell. Dropbox deleted 50,000 files on our dropbox business account once. I had to go in an manually undelete each folder. There were hundreds of folders. Poof, suddenly gone. After that we were done, had to go through these hoops to cancel.

<comment><USER67> Dropbox deleted my honeymoon photos on my wife's account. They also deleted my account a few months later. I wouldn't trust Dropbox with a swap file.

<comment><USER68> They have an undeletion button (and they send you a notice about bulk deletions). They also retain and let you recover accidentally deleted files for 30 days. Without more detail it's hard to find these claims credible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> It's almost always harder to cancel. But even worse is if you want to delete your account.

I had a subscription that was not lapsed on NORVPN and I wanted to delete my account. Of course I had to contact customer support and after 2-3 emails confirming that yes I actually want to delete my account even if it has an active subscription that I had paid for and no there is no particular reason for it except that I don't use it they actually removed me.

It wasn't the end of the world but I would really like a button.

Funnily enough their customer service is called "Customer success team". I had to laugh out loud at that.

In any case, the worst offender here is probably facebook with their probation pattern.

</comment><comment><USER70> Also difficult - deleting all the files in your account. It took me days to do it through their web UI, as the delete operation would repeatedly fail after some amount of time. Very poor feedback on what was happening, how long it would take, etc.

</comment><comment><USER71> If you think this sucks, have a go at deleting your Facebook account.

Worse... WhatsApp. When you change phone numbers it prompts you to notify all your friends. But when you delete, it just keeps letting friends message you without letting them know you aren't there, and all you get are notifications that people on WhatsApp are trying to contact you -- but it won't tell you anything more unless you sign up again. Before I had WhatsApp, people couldn't message me through WhatsApp, but once you had it, there's apparently no way to delete it. What if I change my phone number? Is any number in the system just forever in the system. Cool, cool cool cool.

</comment><comment><USER72> Just thought I'd point out that a lot of the reason companies make it so hard to cancel subscriptions is that it literally is a more "brutal" change for them when it comes to accounting, and what they have to report back to investors.

Recurring income is more highly valued than one-off / extraordinary income. Most traditional companies (telecom, banks, even gyms) have been this way, backing off only when forced to by regulation. It's sad, but not surprising to see the newer breed of companies also adopt these practices.

</comment><comment><USER73> I have been working as a ux consultant for 15 years now, there are two things that are serious problems: 1\. Forcing your users into actions they don't want to take (dark patterns) 2\. Having users delete their accounts and data because you didn't install enough hurdles on their way to the delete button

I am actually not very sure what we see here, is it a dark pattern? It could be, but at the size of Dropbox I could easily imagine the problems haveing a way of cancelling to easily could cause. Especially if we are talking about a file space.

<comment><USER74> > I have been working as a ux consultant for 15 years now

> ...

> I am actually not very sure what we see here, is it a dark pattern?

It sounds like you've been in the grey/black side of the UX industry for too long, and have become a bit institutionalised.

eg You're not see things clearly.

If possible, maybe take a break from the UX space for a year or so, and do something else? Might help to regain your sense of things. :)

<comment><USER75> I'm not an UX consultant and what _justinclift_ said makes sense. Maybe the downgrading process could be a bit more streamlined, but, since you're dealing with data, erring on the side of caution does not seem too bad of a strategy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> This one wins points for comedy, but I've seen worse. NY Times forced me to open an IM chat window with "customer service" and request my cancellation interpersonally through them.

</comment><comment><USER63> That's definitely over the top (particularly the second "please look at this list of things you're losing" after what looks like a feedback collection page), but it's orders of magnitude easier than cancelling a typical cable/phone/internet subscription or gym membership.

My concern is that companies like Dropbox will eventually learn that the reason the companies that are famously hard to end a relationship with are that way is because, in the end, you make more money that way.

</comment><comment><USER77> I cancelled Dropbox for Business a few days ago and it wasn't as bad as this video.

\- I went into settings

\- Pressed the button to cancel the plan

\- ~75 words about what would happen to the individual accounts created with the Dropbox for Business plan

\- One more button saying I still wanted to cancel my account

\- Three checkboxes confirming that I understand my data would be deleted from Dropbox

\- Now I could finally cancel

It might sound like a lot, but I appreciate that they didn't have any "No I don't wanna be awesome anymore and have 10TB of Dropbox storage" like they did in this video.

</comment><comment><USER78> Since they solved the problem of "what if file sharing didn't suck?" they now need to solve the problem of "what if cancelling a subscription didn't suck?"

</comment><comment><USER79> There are even worse services where there is no UI to cancel subscriptions. You have to instead email customer support and spend another week explaining why their service sucks.

Example: Willow TV

</comment><comment><USER80> Mealpal doesn't have a cancel subscription option on their app. You have to email them for them to cancel your subscription. Who even does that, smh.

</comment><comment><USER81> To add to the ancedata pile, cancelling spotify was refreshingly easy and nice. A+ would resubscribe again, once they have homepod support.

</comment><comment><USER82> Note: this is a video; should have [Video] in title.

</comment><comment><USER83> These dark patterns are not good. but this submit is good PR for Loom. At first, I thought someone who works at loom complaining about it.

</comment><comment><USER84> Just disable automatic payments from your paypal account and/or bank or card issuer and they'll cancel it for you! EASY! /s

</comment><comment><USER85> We should get a list going of companies doing it right. I recall quitting Basecamp in like 3 clicks and and thank you page.

</comment><comment><USER86> Got this email from them a couple days ago:

We've noticed you haven't used your email@example.com Dropbox account in over one year and have closed your account for you. Devices connected to this account have now stopped syncing. Any remaining files in your account will be subject to deletion.

Sincerely, \- The Dropbox Team

There goes my files. Fuck dropbox. Stick to google drive.

</comment><comment><USER87> Similarly, trying to disable google services on your account is a gigantic pain in the ass. Thank god for Lineage OS.

</comment><comment><USER88> As a counter example I recently cancelled a subscription to premiersports in the UK, iirc it was a two click process.

</comment><comment><USER89> I don't mind Dropbox' effort for trying to make users change the mind (I'm biased as an ex Dropboxer) and maybe the pattern is a little Grey but it only takes you 45 seconds to unsubscribe.. in contrast I has a much much worse experience with "I Done This" (idonethis.com) where I subscribed for me and one of my colleagues but somehow other people in my company that I didn't know or work with (without me really knowing clearly - not sure what happened) were somehow able to become part of my "team" license and I got a big fat bill from them.. we didn't even use the product and there was no negotiations whatsoever - not even an invoice section/download option in the product so no way I even had any kind of "receipt" for expense claims - the customer experience and cancellation process was the worst I've seen in a long time!! I'm pretty sure I had to email them to cancel in the end as well. Biggest issue was bill shock by new accounts being added to my subscription though. At least with Dropbox if you've subscribed in error or have very good reasons they're usually not too strict on refunds - they try and go the extra mile unlike idonethis.com

</comment><comment><USER90> When I tried to cancel Britbox, I went to account settings, where I saw a message that said "Please cancel your subscription using the device you used to sign up." I saw this message on my iPhone and my iMac. Who knows or cares where I signed up? I had to phone to cancel my subscription.

</comment><comment><USER91> ExpressVPN also has a cancel screen like this. It's particularly insidious since they make it look as if the cancellation is confirmed, even though you need to press another grayed-out button to finalize it. They've squeezed 2-3 months of extra payments from me this way.

</comment><comment><USER92> Dropbox is a publicly traded company: [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DBX/?guccounter=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/DBX/?guccounter=1)

What do you expect?

It's legal obligation to make as much money for the shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER93> Eww so they have a landing page when you want to cancel. Pretty slimy. If it's too annoying just give them a chargeback, heck do it the next month if they don't stop. That will fit the attention of at least their payment processor.

</comment><comment><USER94> Does the cancellation involve loss of data? If so I think making it hard is fair.

<comment><USER95> It doesn't involve any loss of data, but it could degrade your data safety. If you cancel your subscription, your quota is reduced and, if you're now over quota your desktop client stops syncing. It may also prevent Camera Uploads from working on your phone. So you might delete a photo from your phone assuming it was uploaded to Dropbox but it wasn't because you were over quota.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> As bad as this is, I'm OK if I don't have to call or fill out a form.

</comment><comment><USER97> This is the reason why everyone should use privacy.com.

No need to cancel anything. You just shut down the payment card that is paying for the service lol. Once they see your card getting declined they will just close the account.

<comment><USER38> Others have pointed out that services are allowed to send you to collections. You're still a subscriber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> Is there any way to know about this type of thing beforehand?

I've always wanted to have a site that showed me "moral" alternatives to websites and such but this type of information is difficult to normalize :)

</comment><comment><USER99> What's a good alternative to Dropbox? I have been on pro (plus?) for a few years and was happy with it, but the constant nagging to buy a more expensive plan is really annoying

</comment><comment><USER100> It's nothing compared to G2A:

[https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-to- cancel-g2a-shield](https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-to-cancel-g2a-shield)

</comment><comment><USER101> I just cancelled my Dropbox Pro subscription and was, frankly, taken aback by the many steps I had to go through. It should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER102> There might be some value in a service where you pay someone else to sit through all the phone calls and jump through all the hoops when canceling another service.

</comment><comment><USER103> For someone who really wants to quit, it's annoying as hell. For someone who might want to stay, it helps retain them.

Which do you think the company cares about more?

</comment><comment><USER104> It took four clicks.

<comment><USER105> Yeah, that's the point. Not the dark patterns where there were 4 options presented way down a page to the user and only one would allow them to continue to something they had already indicated they would like to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> A bit off topic, but as we usually have [pdf] in the title for pdf submissions, can we get [autoplaying fucking video] for autoplaying videos?

</comment><comment><USER107> Try moving a domain off Network Solutions. 3 days to send me a computer generated code so I can transfer.

</comment><comment><USER108> Recently, I have noticed that I use the colorless buttons more often than those '.primary' ones. Especially when it comes to GDPR layers.

Next time it might be better if the lawmakers would ask someone to design a proper API for them and the browser vendors should care of the GUI instead of the website providers. Otherwise, we will end up again with this superb user experience where every website tries a new pattern to convince you to take their tracking cookies.

</comment><comment><USER109> This is one of the reasons I try to pay for most things with prepaid credit cards. Not only does it mitigate the risk of me having to change credit cards when their data is stolen, but it makes it very easy to cancel services, simply because there is no money left on the card for them to take.

</comment><comment><USER110> This is an ad for useloom.

<comment><USER108> In fact, I found their service quite interesting, but for me, it doesn't work without a Firefox version of their extension...

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> dhouston ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)) anything to say?

</comment><comment><USER112> Stamps.com requires a PHONE CALL to cancel. PHONE. in 2019.

</comment><comment><USER113> if it takes more than 30min to cancel a service/account i just call my bank, explain the situation and reject all future transactions from that merchant.

<comment><USER114> Can you run into legal issues with this? If the company still thinks youre using the product/service but not paying? I would like to know because i want to use this strategy.

<comment><USER113> merchants are always notified of chargebacks and penalized. if a certain percent of your transactions have chargebacks you can have your merchant account cancelled.

this may not work if you have a contract, but if the business doesn't make it easy enough to cancel a service agreement they have no right to my money and i'm going to make sure my response affects their bottom line so they pay attention and cancel my account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Hard" is a stretch. Annoying maybe.

</comment><comment><USER115> in other words "while you are leaving, let us make sure you will never come back"

</comment><comment><USER116> privacy.com breaks the back button in my browser. How do they do that?

</comment><comment><USER117> 1\. Cancel payments

</comment><comment><USER118> I was expecting a 500 server error.

</comment><comment><USER119> Stupid shit like this is the reason I moved everything to my own Nextcloud instance. It's completely free, open source and surprisingly have a BETTER user interface than Dropbox. Rclone can sync to the WebDav interface.

[https://nextcloud.org/](https://nextcloud.org/)

[https://rclone.org/webdav/#nextcloud](https://rclone.org/webdav/#nextcloud)

<comment><USER108> By the way, for those who don't want to use one of the existing providers [1] and don't want to operate their own server either: Hetzner started their Nextcloud as a service recently:

[https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud](https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud)

I haven't tested it yet, as I am running my Nextcloud on my own server, but I found their offer quite compelling.

[1]: [https://nextcloud.com/signup/](https://nextcloud.com/signup/)

<comment><USER120> Interesting. Makes sense at the low end I guess. The more expensive ones are quite similar to their dedicated servers, which gets you compute as well. So you'd be better off rolling it yourself.

<comment><USER121> yes, you can get 130TB RAID6 of 15 disks for 269 a month. But in case you need less...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> The NYT at least lets you use PayPal. When I wanted to cancel I couldn't even get through to a rep, so I just switched my payment method to PayPal and then deauthorized the recurring payment from PayPal.

</comment><comment><USER123> Very funny indeed. :)</comment>


Evernote CEO: 'We let our users down' with privacy policy change - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3151390/privacy/evernote-ceo-we-let-our-users-down-with-privacy-policy-change.html <comment><USER2> I've been half-heartedly looking at moving my notes to a self-hosted solution for some time. I'd have a look, play with a few approaches, then give up because there doesn't seem to be anything quite as polished as Evernote out there. Even when I switched to Linux as my primary OS, it only compelled me to drop to the free tier, because my use case rarely involved the desktop client anyway.

Now, I think the time has come to finally make a move. It's not so much the half apology - "We really tactically communicated in about as poor a way as we could" doesn't sound like "This was a really bad idea and we're not going to do it anymore" to me. It's more about my belief that, when a company suggests something like this, there's already a cultural belief that this is OK, and once you've made that belief public, you can't really backtrack and still keep my trust.

<comment><USER3> What are you planning on moving to? I'm not currently aware of anything (except maybe OneNote, which can't be self-hosted, isn't open source, and doesn't work on Linux) that has a similar feature set to Evernote. Particularly for what I tend to use it for: capturing web pages so I never lose certain content, "scanning" documents into it, searchable OCR, and available no matter what I'm using (iOS, website for Linux, and desktop client for Windows. my use case is probably a bit more ecletic than a lot of people though...) being the primary things.

If you find anything that can fit what I use Evernote for, I would love to hear about it. At this point in time, I'm willing to trade the potential privacy issues for the convenience of what is offered. Especially since, right now, even if an employee of Evernot could potentially look at notes of mine, they've still said that my notes belong to me and they aren't selling off data mining rights to other companies.

<comment><USER4> I have been using [https://meemo.minimal-space.de/](https://meemo.minimal- space.de/) . Obviously, no where close to evernote functionality but it covers the basic 'remember the milk' case.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Army Engineer School Commandant's Reading List - <AUTHOR> http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/reading_list/29-u-s-army-engineer-school <comment><USER2> A strange story to make it to the front page. I'm a US Army Engineer officer who went through this schoolhouse so this made me chuckle. Commanders'/Commandants' reading lists are almost always excellent. It's usually a mix of military history, area studies, professional development, and leadership books. I think every young officer who likes to read dreams of making up his or her own reading list someday.

<comment><USER3> I was an NBC officer and we had a similar list. Lots of WWI and Roman history. I think the OCS reading list was pretty good too; despite not having any time to read them all. I think the biography of Shackelton was the only one I remember actually being able to complete other than the typical FMs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I started the site about 8 years ago because 1) these lists have lots of great selections that you might not come across otherwise (e.g., "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat) and 2) .mil web sites tend to get reorganized regularly and older content seems to get swept away. So I hope this site helps to preserve some things that might otherwise be lost.

FWIW, for an overview of all the lists, there's a "map" page:

[http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/map](http://militaryprofessionalreadinglists.com/map)

<comment><USER4> "The Cruel Sea" was also made into an excellent movie with some genuinely shocking moments for a film made in 1953.

However, I am particularly fond of Nicholas Monsarrat's "Three Corvettes" his non-fiction account of his wartime experiences, one of the few books that has moved me to tears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting list. It's also interesting to see compare the lists for different ranks and see how the focus changes.

e.g. Enlisted get a lot of books about courage and valor, higher up guys get recommended books that seem more like cautionary tales.

<comment><USER6> Seems a shame that the cautionary tale theme doesn't seem to have reached/imprinted the highest levels of civilian government, at least during the idiotic Bush administration era.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love that the list includes GS grades for DoD civilians.

There's some really interesting books in these lists. I already had Washington's Crossing queued up.

Seeing PowerPoint in the title of a GS-14/15 recommendation gave me a chuckle.

</comment><comment><USER8> Useful list - I just added Cobra II to my Audible Wish List. My 6th grade teacher read Captains Courageous to us - it made a lasting impression.

<comment><USER9> Probably also good (better even, perhaps) to add his "Endgame" \-- a truly definitive study of the entire war.

<comment><USER8> Thanks - just added Endgame as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The Goal" is both wonderful as a teacher, and terrible as fiction. And I don't think Goldratt cares about the latter.

</comment><comment><USER11> Glad to see Thucydides down there on the list.

<comment><USER12> Truly proof that there is nothing new under the sun. Between Pericles's justification for why Athens had to expand to the unexpected agony of the plague, the decision to undertake the Sicilian expedition, the capture of the Spartiates, etc. etc... war hasn't really changed in millenia, only the technology has.

Even today, war in the end almost always devolves to questions of fear, honor or interest, just as described by Thucydides.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprising to see so many books on ethics, foreign cultures and critical thinking skills on that list.

<comment><USER14> Why? Those are core subjects for a military officer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe at least one book about what to do after you dropped tons of bombs and killed thousand of civilians would help to prevent the usual collapse of civilizations and rising of warlords. But of course I do understand that there is more money to make with a collapsed nation.

<comment><USER16> that would be a job for the politicians, who directed the military to act.

<comment><USER15> Are soldiers replaced by politicans after the surrender of the enemy?

<comment><USER17> Soldiers are directed by politicians at all stages. The decisions on what to do after surrender is entirely made by politicians. Basically an army's job is to break things and kill people. The politicians' job is to know what to do with such a powerful tool as an army. In my experience, precious few of them do.

<comment><USER15> The order from the politicans for the soldiers for e.g. Abu Ghraib was to behave like some drunken animals?

<comment><USER12> No, but what's your point? Should we require computer programmers to read books explaining why murdering people is wrong in case there's another Hans Reiser or Ross Ulbritch?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Some papers of Per Martin-Löf - <AUTHOR> https://michaelt.github.io/martin-lof.html

<comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this! Incidentally, I came across this a few nights ago when I was desperately searching for Martin-Löf's article on verificationism. A very handy collection!

It might be an interesting exercise, if someone can get his permission, to re- typeset some of his older articles so that they are searchable and more legible.</comment>


Python coding standards - <AUTHOR> http://bhavaniabtechie.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/python-coding-standards/

<comment><USER2> This article makes no mention of flake8: [http://flake8.readthedocs.org/en/2.0/](http://flake8.readthedocs.org/en/2.0/)

which is the up-to-date python style checker built on top of pep8 and pyflakes.

<comment><USER3> Some of the stuff in PEP8 is pretty subjective. What's the state of play for fixing that with an automated tool? Does is spit out advisories, or has some effort been put into the Small Matter Of Programming of interpreting the intent of code? I presume nothing can be done about

        x += 1    # increment x

<comment><USER4> You can pass flags to pep8 to ignore specific errors. For our project, we have:

\--max-line-lenght=120 \--ignore=E128

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Limits all the lines to a maximum of 79 characters" \- what am I, a farmer with an 800x600 VGA CRT?

<comment><USER6> No, but you might be someone who has two windows of code open at once, or code & a spec sheet (or algorithm description, or help/man page) open side-by-side.

(That said, I prefer 100 columns: two 100 column files fit _perfectly_ next to each other on my screen.)

<comment><USER7> I had a professor set the line limit at 109 for our assignments, specifically because that's what would fit side-by-side on his monitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can vouch for Pylint, it's _very good_ at finding errors in your code.

Now, all tools have some "pedantic" error reporting, like "function is too complex", thanks, who decided function complexity is me, not some arbitrary determination that functions longer than N lines are "too complex"</comment>


Make Yourself Uncomfortable - <AUTHOR> http://hellosorld.com/personal/2009/10/29/make-yourself-uncomfortable.html

<comment><USER2> Step out of your comfort zone.

This is fundamental to start change.

If the change is positive this is another story.

<comment><USER3> I have one rule that has served me well.

"When in doubt, go out."

If I ever find myself asking whether I should go to an event/party/meeting and the alternative involves staying home, I go out. It's always the right choice.

<comment><USER4> Last year I was in a place where I hated going out. I wanted to go out but hated the available options. This year, I found something interesting: While I go out much more than I did last year, and always find something or other to occupy my time, I didn't instantly become a partier. Today I left the social gathering I went to early, and avoided a wilder party and a late-night movie. Partly it's just that I really don't like being around people for long periods of time. I'm not comfortable with most people I meet, and while I can handle mixed company, it's always with a bit too much cynicism and negativity and I don't like being the person who's known for knocking other people down.

There's a difference between being scared/incapable of going out and choosing deliberately not to. Some people, myself included, prefer our own company to those of others.

<comment><USER3> I hear you loud and clear. I'm an introvert myself and believe that people like us 'recharge' through quality time alone.

That said, I think it's a real handicap that can be overcome, like any other, by consistently pushing ourselves to go out and be social in some appropriate way, on a regular basis.

If you're making something truly cool, I guarantee there are people out there who might not be your target audience, but might know someone who knows someone who is. You'll never make that connection unless you go out. It sucks but extroverts have a big advantage in these areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I started my company I asked my boss from my internship what hints he had for me, he said; "You need to have way too many expenses, it keeps you on your edge." Ofcourse he didnt mean that as, buy $100 lunches, buy overpriced crap. But buy the equipment, rent an office, buy what you need to buy, if you are afraid where you'll get the money for the next months rent you'll work that much harder to earn it.

<comment><USER6> If I cut off my right hand, will I enjoy my left hand more, or will I just be a cripple?

(This sounds the same.)

<comment><USER7> That's probably taking it a bit too far; but if you fund yourself by borrowing from someone who will cut off your right hand if you fail to pay him back, you just may work harder to make that money.

This is an old idea. From the Art of War: "At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him. He carries his men deep into hostile territory before he shows his hand. ... He burns his boats and breaks his cooking-pots."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I left my day job, I expected to be in a uncomfortable zone and I am luckily still in an uncomfortable zone :)

Only thing I would like to add is that uncomfortable zone is not for everyone, I think you need to be a certain personality type to actually enjoy the uncomfortable zone.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is perhaps true. But how would you ever know? Maybe there are people coasting along thinking "I'm not the type of person who enjoys being uncomfortable and I don't need to be" when in reality they're just boring or not changing much.

<comment><USER9> What's so inherently wrong with being boring or not changing much?

<comment><USER8> Not that I know much about psychology, but like Buddha said Change is the only constant in life. Even as children, exploration is at the root of all our instincts. Tell a child not to touch something or go near it, and he/she definitely will. As we get older, generally most people lose this exploration aspect of their daily lives in the face of jobs and careers. But the joy of exploration is always there and it always comes out when you learn something new or visit a new place, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well PG said that there are 2 types of pain. Similarly there are 2 types of uncomfortable. One needs to recognize the difference.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm writing a blog post. I'm going to entitle it "Set Yourself On Fire". It's gonna be all about how warm it is when you set yourself on fire.

Seriously though, isn't there a difference between taking a risk and taking a risk that might pay off? If you're going to make yourself uncomfortable don't do it on blind faith, have a reason for it.</comment>


Andreessen And Horowitz Are Donating Half Their VC Income To Charity - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/25/andreessen-and-horowitz-explain-why-the-firms-partners-are-donating-half-their-vc-income-to-charity/

<comment><USER2> Though I'm not religious, there's a specific set of bible verses I think of when I see news of someone being publicly charitable:

1 Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.

\--Matthew 6:1-4

I think it means that the spirit of charity is purest when it is anonymous.

<comment><USER3> No doubt about it, but the people on the receiving end probably don't care.

The intentions of Andreessen And Horowitz are good, so lets be positive about this.</comment></comment>


Roger McNamee: "Facebook Is Terrible for America" - <AUTHOR> https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/roger-mcnamee-facebook-terrible-america <comment><USER2> I would love to see Facebook, Twitter, and (much harder but maybe even) YouTube replaced by distributed systems, so they would be more like email, RSS, or the web. You would have many different options for hosts, including self-hosting, and you would subscribe to the feeds you cared about that would be passed around via an open protocol.

You would get the "addresses" of other participants the way you get their email addresses today, and various directories would probably spring up to allow you to put your address on a list of people willing to be found. Your own apps would format your content for the feed and draw from the various feeds to construct your "timelines".

I think that for Facebook and Twitter, the value due to network effects is far more important than the benefits that result from centralization. Everyone wants to go where everyone else is more than they want whatever specific features might require centralization.

<comment><USER3> This is already happening: [https://github.com/solid/solid- spec/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/solid/solid- spec/blob/master/README.md).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > McNamee is particularly outraged by the ease with which a New Zealand > terrorist used social media to broadcast his shooting attack on a mosque on > March 15. As a result, he says, there may need to be a kill switch to shut > down social media in an emergency.

This sounds like moral panic, and not a well thought out argument. I absolutely agree any live streaming of such a despicable event should be targeted for take-down as quick as possible. And we could impose fines, for a lack of serious immediate response.

But really a kill switch? Twitter/facebook/youtube are down for the next hour because there is some objectionable content we don't want you to see...

I mean just the Streissand effect on its own could actually make it that more people go and then watch the video, on some unknown site, which isn't set up/or inclined to remove the video.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its really easy to not have a Facebook account, especially now that most realize how horrible it is for society.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use Facebook. I can't help myself, it lets me see what people are up to, especially those that live far away.

But it's a swamp of virtue-signalling, one-upmanship, and best-foot-forward deceptions. It's like high school all over again, except more so.

I wish it weren't available.

<comment><USER7> Once you step away from it long enough, you won't be missing it at all. I stopped posting anything 2+ years ago and then also stopped consuming content after the elections...</comment></comment>


:wq - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?q=%22%3Awq%22&ref=cmdform&type=Code

<comment><USER2> For you Emacs users, here's a search for Control-X Control-C.

[https://github.com/search?q=%18%03&type=Code&ref=searchresul...](https://github.com/search?q=%18%03&type=Code&ref=searchresults)

<comment><USER3> which obviously does produce not source files from which the poor vi users tried to escape, but binary files where the codes should be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First thing: The ":wq" search brings back "wq" results as well, so the results contain any instance of wq (crypto libraries, android kernel, variable names, wq.io framework, etc.) rather than just accidental vim writes.

Second thing: Most all of the ":wq" are in redundant bogus files, many authors knowingly leaving the accidental insertion in. "asdfasdfasdf:wq"

Edit: 6 million of the 7 millions results are in C language - mostly all variable names and library names. In actuality, it seems like only the first 34 pages have any relevant results.

Even if the author forgot to escape insertion mode before issuing the command, they would have realized that vim did not close and that a new line was created.

Anyone jumping on the "this is why vim sux" bandwagon here is biased or incompetent. If this was really an issue for individuals, they could just configure a key combination to to save no matter what mode your in.

HN seems to be becoming pedantic and ignorant in many ways.

<comment><USER5> What really rustles my jimmies is these posts in general. Who gives a shit what editor people use? We are all programmers typing text into a damn box. Who cares what kind of box? The outcome is the damn same.

And for every person who accidentally committed ":wq" I'll show you some sublime user writing python using tabs, not spaces, for spacing.

Either way, these editor posts are a waste of everyone's time. Use whatever editor you want to use... the community shouldn't bash you for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder why people can accidentally type ":wq" in insert mode and save it. What are example use cases that make people accidentally save ":wq" document?

I often use vim and so far almost never accidentaly save ":wq" file.

<comment><USER7> I had that problem lately on a new box where "set -sg escape-time 0"[0] was not set in tmux. It feels so different and annoying I kept mashing the buttons.

[0]: [http://superuser.com/questions/252214/slight-delay-when- swit...](http://superuser.com/questions/252214/slight-delay-when-switching- modes-in-vim-using-tmux-or-screen)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the many reasons that I think it's important to develop a healthy distrust of insert mode. Staying in normal mode as much as possible also encourages good use of navigation commands.

</comment><comment><USER9> Pages 34-100 of the results are all from the android linux kernel, so actually just consider relevant results to be about 1/4 the reported size.

<comment><USER4> Looks like most results up to page 34, the ":wq" was left in intentionally or the file is just bogus so the author didn't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, I do not get it?

what is :wq ?

<comment><USER11> Write and quit on vi/vim, its quite hilarious to see them actually on code :)

<comment><USER12> Happens to me all the time if I'm in an IDE for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find :wq in my code commits more often than i like. It's most always when using IDEAVim, and I imagine it would be the same case for any other partial vim-emulator. For some reason, I'm just more prone to not hitting the escape sequence correctly in those editors.

</comment><comment><USER14> Lately, I keep accidentally creating files that are named ":w" and I don't even know how I do it.

<comment><USER15> :w:w would accomplish that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know what :wq is, but what is... this?

<comment><USER17> Supposedly a listing of accidental commits of the text ":wq" and variants where the coder really meant to save the file in vim and quit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the exact reason why I switched to Emacs about a year ago. Sure the transition was difficult. But never regretted it!

</comment><comment><USER19> why not :x ?

<comment><USER20> Or ZZ.</comment></comment>


Stannard Rock Light - <AUTHOR> https://www.amusingplanet.com/2020/01/stannard-rock-light-loneliest-place-in.html <comment><USER2> The hermit in me wants to scoff and say "I'd love to be so isolated for weeks at a time", but (aside from the fact that its the "isolated together" problem) the sheer inhospitable nature of that environment as well as the somewhat _involuntary_ nature of the isolation (you may sign up to go, but you can't choose when to leave) is sufficiently daunting for me that I'll stick to more Walden-esque hermitages.

<comment><USER3> Much easier at Walden where your mum can come and do your laundry.

Being stuck in confined space with six others, hearing (and telling) the same jokes over and over... _shudder_

<comment><USER4> but what if they were 6 mathematicians from the same disciplines, or 6 musicians, or 6 politicians (or 6 sociologists if you prefer that)? might be fun to see what people that share a common background can come up with when they have that much time to "waste". the idea of being left alone with a few clever humans and nothing else to do or to go is actually quite interesting. not the next big brother, but hey...

<comment><USER3> Having done some multi-week blue water sailing and multi-week backcountry trips, I can tell you that silence is golden. I prefer to go with my dog who is delighted when I have something to say and perfectly satisfied when I want to be quiet.

* yes I know that "Lassie" is not a documentary and if I got in to trouble the dog could not rescue me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live near this and have visited several remote lighthouses; they're spooky places. I have been involved in some restorative work to this one: [https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=731](https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=731) \- there are crazy entries in the logbook of the Manitou island and Gull Rock lights.

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope to make it out to this lighthouse someday to get photographs. I'm trying to get as many photos of Michigan lighthouses for an app I'm building. [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/explore- michigan/id1024621444](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/explore- michigan/id1024621444)

</comment><comment><USER7> More detailed article with photos of the interior of the lighthouse:

[https://www.lakesuperior.com/the- lake/maritime/333-stannard-...](https://www.lakesuperior.com/the- lake/maritime/333-stannard-rock-lighthouse-the-loneliest-place-on-the- continent/)

<comment><USER8> Another interesting article from the same site, about one of the men who survived the 1961 explosion and returned with his family in 2015:

[https://www.lakesuperior.com/the-lake/maritime/54-years- afte...](https://www.lakesuperior.com/the-lake/maritime/54-years-after-tragic- explosion-coast-guardsman-returns-to-stannard-rock/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think we can draw some interesting parallels with the first colonists on Mars and what they may experience.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this kind of isolation different than the one astronauts experience? The record space stay is over 437 days, way over the 99 of the lighthouse: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri_Polyakov)

<comment><USER2> I think the two most important difference would be that the astronauts are basically in constant communication and are also extremely busy.

It might also be slightly different in that I'm pretty sure that astronauts _could_ leave whenever they want (in that I'm pretty sure the ISS always has a capsule ready in case of an emergency). Granted, it would be _bad_ if an astronaut just whimsically decided to land, and you do need to be "rescued" once you land, whether on land or sea, but that's more than the lighthouse keepers had. Just knowing you can or can't leave, if you really, really want to, makes the psychological difference between "a remote place you are choosing to stay" and "a prison".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like a similar setting to the lighthouse in the 2019 documentary: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lighthouse_(2019_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lighthouse_\(2019_film\))

<comment><USER12> It does seem similar, but it's an original film, not a documentary.</comment></comment>


Almost a Third of World's Top VPNs Are Secretly Owned by Chinese Firms - <AUTHOR> https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466203/Top-VPNs-secretly-owned-by-Chinese-firms <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20367422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20367422)

</comment><comment><USER3> Conversely, Lantern [0], one of the most popular VPNs in China is funded by the CIA. Their privacy policy makes for a very eerie read [1].

Snippets:

> Personalize and improve the Services, including to provide or recommend > features, content, social connections, referrals, and advertisements.

> (We may share information...) With vendors, consultants, marketing partners, > and other service providers who need access to such information to carry out > work on our behalf

> When you use our Services, we collect information sent to us by your > computer, mobile phone or other access device. The information sent to us > includes, but is not limited to, the following: data about the pages you > access, computer IP address, device ID or unique identifier, device type, > geo-location information, computer and connection information, mobile > network information, statistics on page views, traffic to and from the > sites, referral URL, ad data, and standard web log data and other > information. We also collect information through our use of cookies and web > beacons.

> Device Information: We may collect information about your mobile device, > including, for example, the hardware model, operating system and version, > software and file names and versions, preferred language, unique device > identifier, advertising identifiers, serial number, device motion > information, and mobile network information.

> Log Information: When you interact with the Services, we collect server > logs, which may include information like device IP address, access dates and > times, app features or pages viewed, app crashes and other system activity, > type of browser, and the third-party site or service you were using before > interacting with our Services.

> We may transfer the information described in this Statement to, and process > and store it in, the United States and other countries, some of which may > have less protective data protection laws than the region in which you > reside

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10126667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10126667)

[1] [https://s3.amazonaws.com/lantern/LanternPrivacyPolicy.pdf](https://s3.amazonaws.com/lantern/LanternPrivacyPolicy.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> The original article has a lot more details including lists of companies and how they figured this out.

[https://vpnpro.com/blog/hidden-vpn-owners- unveiled-97-vpns-2...](https://vpnpro.com/blog/hidden-vpn-owners- unveiled-97-vpns-23-companies/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I occasionally think about subscribing to a vpn to protect my behavior information from my isp (Spectrum). But, everytime I get to considering it, I get sketched out that the low cost vpn providers will sell my data just as indiscriminately as my ISP.

This article suggests trust is hard to come by. Who can recommend a quality and secure vpn?

</comment><comment><USER6> What does "secretly owned" mean?

The #2 company on the Fortune 500 is Exxon-Mobil. Who owns it? There are some limited disclosures in various places, but this is the same as Chinese firms. Exxon-Mobil is "secretly owned". What hypocrisy these western magazines have. Computer Weekly, owned by Reed Elsevier RELX makes a small fortune privatizing publication of publicly funded research. Who is behind that? Who knows? It is as much "secretly owned" as any Chinese company.

<comment><USER7> Huh, no it's not?

[https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/xom/ownership- summary](https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/xom/ownership-summary)

[https://www.marketscreener.com/EXXON-MOBIL- CORPORATION-4822/...](https://www.marketscreener.com/EXXON-MOBIL- CORPORATION-4822/company/)

<comment><USER6> As I said, there are limited disclosures, just like the Chinese. In this case meaningless - I ask who owns this and you say "Blackrock" and "Northern Trust" as if you've answered the question. "Northern Trust" is not a who, it is just another layer of "secret ownership" to use the magazine's phraseology. I still have no idea who owns Exxon-Mobil - it is a secret, to use their phrase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've used TunnelBear for many years but just found out they sold out to McAfee. Why do they sell their souls to parasites such as McAfee?

<comment><USER9> Easy exit for $$$$ _

<comment><USER10> Perhaps "Never use a VPN that is a startup" is s good rule of thumb.

(I might extend it to "for-profit," but if it's a for-profit company that has a clear revenue source other than the VPN, it might be fine.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we have a list?

That article is garbage.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this surprising? Chinese people need VPNs more than anybody.</comment>


KDE's Plasma 5.17: Smarter notifications, improved Settings, increased usability - <AUTHOR> https://kde.org/announcements/plasma-5.17.0.php <comment><USER2> This update brings a lot of improvements. Probably not yet the year of the Linux Desktop, but we are getting where. Thanks to all the devs for their amazing work.</comment>


Setting Up an Ad-Blocking VPN with WireGuard and Pihole - <AUTHOR> https://drexl.me/guides/wireguard-pihole-vpn-setup.html <comment><USER3> I found DNS ad-blocking solutions to be pretty lackluster and lots of ads were still getting through. With uBlock Origin only sites ahead of the curve were getting their ads through (porn sites, facebook, etc.). Couple this with Bypass Paywalls[1] browser extension and the web is pretty usable.

I also tried to go one step further and setup mitm-proxy to man in the middle all of my traffic to see if I could do more invasive but thorough ad filtering. Certificate pinning from the likes of instagram, facebook, apple, and google really stymied this approach. So all in all, I don't see much benefit from DNS adblocking instead of ublock origin.

1 - [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls- chrome](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome)

<comment><USER4> I count my site to be ahead of the curve in a different direction in that we sell and host our own advertising (static jpgs) and do not use any 3rd parties for ads. This helps us control the ads content as well as get to keep 100% of ad revenue.

The only 3rd party thing we use is Google Analytics and a Google font, but the site still works fine when users block them.

<comment><USER5> This is the best thing for the web, I think. It's doesn't seem as good for advertisers in terms of utility for targeting, but on the flip side, I for one am more willing to support sponsors when they have a direct relationship with the content provider.

<comment><USER4> You don't really need advanced targeting analytics when your content is narrow enough and draws a particular type of reader.

In our case, readers are likely interested in office design/office furniture products because all we do is publish office design project images and information.

I have an idea I'm hoping to work on in the coming years which aims to move the web back in this direction now that I've had some years of experience doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The rationale stated for this work is preventing ISPs from being able to monitor and potentially sell information about Internet usage, which is reasonable and worthwhile. But by hosting a VPN with a third party, haven't we simply reassigned the same responsibility to someone else rather than absolve it? Is Digital Ocean more trustworthy than, say Cox Communications? How is this risk to be calculated, especially by a layperson?

I believe low-latency anonymizing networks like Tor might be a better more suited for accomplishing the task of obscuring one's own network traffic. In fact, I'm typing this comment from Firefox with uBlock Origin configured to use a Tor SOCKS proxy which is always running locally - eliminating ads and making little attributable netflow in my wake.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > Is Digital Ocean more trustworthy than, say Cox Communications?

Dunno about Cox, but I promise you I trust Digital Ocean far more than I will ever trust Comcast or AT&T. Even if they didn't have a history of being bad actors (and they do), a lot of people have exactly one choice of ISP but dozens of choices for hosting in the cloud, so the incentives are much more favorable.

<comment><USER7> Most of these residential ISPs that people hate are also major (T1/T2) upstream providers for companies like DO. If not already, at some point, these providers are going to just sniff VPN traffic straight off of their backbones.

Say your ISP is Comcast... If Comcast knows your are connected to some VPS via VPN, it's likely that anything coming out of that VPN is yours. And if Comcast (or some subsidiary or partner) is also the upstream provider for that VPS, they could pretty easily make some correlations.

<comment><USER8> This isn't really true. The wholesale networks are operating at speeds that make _this kind_ of sniffing impractical. I'm not saying they don't ever siphon traffic for LEO or other reasons, but not for privacy-violating/ad- targeting reasons. DO probably is running 40gbps alone with each transit provider, plus sending traffic over peering circuits, so it's just way less practical.

So what you are suggesting isn't actually true, and it's hardly hypothetically even possible.

<comment><USER9> Maybe I misunderstand by why is this considered impossible? Network processors read data from a packet, make decisions based on that, and then rewrite arbitrary parts of the packet. All on the fast path. This sounds doable if you had the custom firmware that did that. It'd just be a huge waste of money considering your very, very expensive network box.

<comment><USER9> Ahh so maybe it's because the packet, once out of the VPN and heading to it's destination, is (normally - it is 2019 after all!) TLS encrypted so you can't just modify the payload like I said. Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tangentially related: The best feature of FireFox Focus for iOS is that it also works as a free, local-only (no VPN routing) ad-blocker for Mobile Safari. So, you can install it, never actually run it, and it makes Safari so much more usable.

Probably works similarly for Android

<comment><USER11> No Safari on Android, so no ad-blocking doesn't work like on iOS :-)

Firefox Focus itself works all right on Android Pie. You can even set it as default browser for opening links in place of Android Web View.

Android Pie has DNS-over-TLS for both WiFi and LTE so I am ad-blocking via my private DNS server and blacklists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seemingly every other week for months now a Pihole post makes the front page on HN. Every time I wonder why. IMO, it's just a DNS black hole with a slick interface.

Before adblockers came along I had a script that updated my hosts file. I then moved to a DNS black hole but it's been more than a decade since I've used either solution.

Do you people have that many hostile IoT / Smart thingies connected to your networks? Are you just unwilling to pay for the ad-free versions of apps. Are you using apps/services on these devices that don't offer an ad-free option, if so why? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER13> > IMO, it's just a DNS black hole with a slick interface

This is why it gets to the front page.

It's a DNS black hole with a slick interface.

You run it and it does great by itself, manages the updates, and when it does do something you don't want (or vice versa) there's this really slick interface for figuring it out and correcting it.

We underestimate how much slick interfaces are worth, especially when they make a chore that was almost entirely CLI driven and making it a non-chore for a bigger audience.

<comment><USER14> This is a thing a lot of engineers don't seem to get. Slick interface is the most important thing for public, no one wants to use terminal or advanced settings to actually do anything related to your product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pihole is run by people who have no idea what they are doing.

[https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/issues/2704](https://github.com/pi- hole/pi-hole/issues/2704)

[https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/pull/2706](https://github.com/pi-hole/pi- hole/pull/2706)

<comment><USER16> Downloading a dns black list over http instead of https is not that big a deal

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use [https://github.com/dan-v/algo](https://github.com/dan-v/algo) fork which has Wireguard VPN and PiHole combined. It takes minutes to spin up a Digital Ocean VPN and have it working on all my devices. I'm very happy with this setup.

<comment><USER18> What does Algo use as default ad blocking if you select it in the setup?

<comment><USER19> It doesn't really integrate the Pi-Hole distribution itself, but by default it uses two hosts file (see [https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/blob/master/config.cfg](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo/blob/master/config.cfg) at line 72).

<comment><USER18> Interesting, have you tried the default and pi-hole and would be able to compare the two?

<comment><USER17> Pi-hole dashboard is quite useful to see what's being blocked and add new domains/lists easily. For example, I also add all facebook domains ([https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...](https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all)) and sometimes Hacker news when I want to be productive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> algo is great for an automated setup of a secure Wireguard(and IPsec) server with ad-blocking capabilities. DNS adblocking is necessary to block tracking in iOS apps. Content Blockers only work with Safari.

</comment><comment><USER21> I setup a similar system but with IPSec ([https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup](https://github.com/jawj/IKEv2-setup)) and Pi-Hole on DO. The best part is that the linked IPSec setup is trivial to install and also generates profile files that leverage the OS VPN capability in any iOS device without needing to install extra apps (and also force VPN connectivity by default so you don't need to remember to enable it)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wrote a couple of bash scripts to easily configure WireGuard server and hosts. Automatically generates keys and puts them in correct configs. Adds client info to the server config as an option. As a bonus it can configure some iptables to enable NAT, vpn tracking, etc.

[https://github.com/SirToffski/WireGuard- Ligase](https://github.com/SirToffski/WireGuard-Ligase)

</comment><comment><USER23> I did something similar by installing Wireguard as part of Streisand and then PiHole on a VPS. One caveat was this combination accepted public DNS queries by default. You would need to block it on your own. Otherwise the experience was good for various connection scenarios and adblocking was a breeze.

Now I am using Algo + Steven's hosts files for the similar idea. No complaint thus far yet.

</comment><comment><USER24> I setup PiHole and removed it about 2-3 days later. UBlock Origin is perfect for laptops, but I wanted to see if it'd block YouTube ads and similar on my Smart TV and mobile devices - it didn't. If anything it just caused me grief by interfering with non-ad web services, so I canned it and everything started working again.

I need UBlock Origin as a remote proxy.

<comment><USER25> > it'd block YouTube ads and similar on my Smart TV and mobile devices - <USER2> > didn't

thats because you need to tell DHCP to use the pihole's address as primary DNS

<comment><USER26> Even if you do that, there's some devices (Chromecast, Google Home) that have Google's DNS hardcoded and ignores the servers passed by DHCP.

<comment><USER27> What happens if you set your firewall to block 126.96.36.199 and 220.127.116.11?

<comment><USER28> You can use an iptables rule on your router to rewrite the address to your custom server, which I have done specifically because Google devices were ignoring DHCP.

Something like...

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 -j DNAT --to x.x.x.x:53

...should work, and repeat for tcp

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does it bypass "Please unblock or you won't see any content" type of web behaviors?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm using this setup as well (I have Ansible to do it), but for some websites those use Akamai CDN will block you if your exit IP is from well-known networks like VPN providers, AWS, DO, etc.

<comment><USER31> Yes this has been my trouble as well, to the point that sometimes I switch off the VPN with piHole and just rely on a commercial VPN that rolls IPs + adblocker software for those occasions. Imperfect, and expensive comparatively

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I'm surprised that commercial vpns don't offer an ad blocking option; from their perspective, it's not only a great feature to market, but it reduces their bandwidth costs.

<comment><USER32> To be perfectly fair, a good chunk of VPN providers primarily see P2P/bulk downloading and streaming traffic.

Ordinary web browsing probably isn't a significant part of VPN traffic when you think about it.

Agree it would reduce bandwidth costs, but there's also a cost to maintaining such infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Also was hyped about the setup and did Cloudflared + Pihole + Wireguard via dokku.

Wireguard is super cool. Hoping for an official windows client and then all the platforms I use are covered :)

</comment><comment><USER34> With a VPN, you also have the option to do IP blocking, though I guess the blocklists are not as well developed.

</comment><comment><USER29> Which VPS provider(s) offers the best cost/speed/bandwidth ratios?</comment>