Banned for Life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sgehrman/banned-for-life-c62f2404f66 <comment><USER3> The author used other people's content, packaged them into an app, and then repeatedly submitted the same app (with one minor modification -- the use of someone else's content) to the Play store. 'Beta' apps or apps that you write for close friends/family can be distributed via other means than the main app market.

This article admits that he ignored all of the warnings he was given, and now accuses Google of unfair business practice. I don't buy it.

There's a lot of logical contortion going on to dump the blame for this back on Google. "The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company" is followed quickly by "Well since Google was silent about the exact reason for suspension..."; he even admits to intentionally ignoring the warnings he was given because "if I thought a human at Google was giving me the warning, I might have listened more carefully."

That is, at best, negligently poor reasoning. At worst, it's a contemptuous disrespect for the other party you're engaging in business with, which is pretty good grounds for them exercising their option to terminate that business relationship.

Google, Amazon, etc., are for-profit commercial service providers. If you're going to violate their policies, they will stop working with you, regardless of the impact on your business. Anyone who depends on a third party supplier for anything, in any business context, should keep that in mind -- they have no duty to you beyond whatever contract you have signed (if, of course, you have signed one).

<comment><USER4> Judging by the names of the apps/wrappers (if they were same in the store) from here [http://distantfutu.re/page/portfolio.html](http://distantfutu.re/page/portfolio.html) he is lucky to not get sued at the same time as well. He's even argumentative about trademark infringement in his post. I don't think he fully understands what he really did wrong.

<comment><USER5> Agreed - the whole thing reads like a giant whine, to me. The author has zero concept of what he's done wrong, which is astounding to me.

<comment><USER6> The question is, was the punishment proportional to the crime?

The 'whine' was about being banned for life because of novice mistakes made without bad faith. How is one supposed to learn the ropes? It's like learning to drive in a country where driving schools didn't exist and the full extent of traffic laws applied to you. How possibly _could_ the author learn what he was doing wrong?

<comment><USER7> The majority of the post was "it's their fault that they didn't stop me!"

When his first app was suspended, Google should have given a better response when he asked what he did wrong. But to just continue forward doing the exact same thing he was doing before was asking for trouble. If Google wouldn't give him a clear answer, he should have asked his friends or the community.

<comment><USER6> According to the timeline, all the applications that got his account suspended were already in place when he got the first notice. So it's not as if he _continued_ doing the same thing - he was sacked by inaction, and the warnings didn't contain sufficient notice that more action (removing the other applications, which hadn't got a warning yet) was required on his part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author used others people's content and spammed with play store with official sounding apps, then ignored warnings to stop. Got caught and punished for it, now Google won't let him do it again.

Honestly, it just sounds like Google were doing the right thing and protecting it's users from low quality spam apps.

<comment><USER9> The author didn't use other people's content. He simply used the YouTube APIs for exactly what they're there for -- remixing the YouTube experience to match a specific use case YouTube has not yet accommodated. What else are APIs supposed to be used for?

The original uploader of that content still retained all control over the content. If the original uploader didn't like his content being reskinned, he shouldn't upload it on a provider that gives users that ability through an API.

The potential problem is in the implication that the mark's owner endorsed the application. The post claims that the the author made significant effort to indicate he was unofficial. It's arguable whether this continued to constitute infringement, and for that reason I think the guy should've at least been given a polite human touch and a direct, non-automated opportunity to correct the _specific_ issue, which was never directly elucidated ("Impersonating how? I'm just using the YouTube APIs that Google published for me to use...").

I'm not saying that the author has great judgment. I'm just saying that Google's actions aren't really proportional, that the author's actions are not at all as illegal as everyone is saying, and that Google should recognize that they have a social responsibility to at least follow-up on things like this _with a human_ to clear up any potential miscommunication. An expectation of care in account deletion is one of the side effects of knowing and doing everything about and for everyone. It's a big deal to lose big chunks of your Google account.

<comment><USER8> So using YouTube's API to use other people's content isn't using other people's content? I don't follow the logic there.

Yes, he was not banned simply because he used other people's content. He was banned because he was using other people's content to create low quality apps which (even if unintentionally) imitated official applications. Taking someone else's content and serving it up in a way that looks like it's official is just asking to be banned, especially when the thing you're imitating is YouTube and the app is on the Play store.

If someone is, for all intents and purposes, spamming your app store with imitation apps, why should you waste time giving them a "polite human touch"? If this had been a Chinese company rather than someone with a sob story would you still expect Google to offer a polite human touch?

<comment><USER10> >So using YouTube's API to use other people's content isn't using other people's content? I don't follow the logic there.

It's not using it _without permission_. That's what the API is there for, to let you use the content in certain ways such as what the app did. The only issue was branding, and this is a severe overreaction to a branding issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >1 app, 2 apps, 10 apps? Did it matter either way? I could have posted 50 apps if I wanted

>So I was using the app store as my beta testing platform.

>I was planning on taking all these apps down in a few weeks anyway.

>I thought I could get maybe 20-30 apps suspended without repercussions

>In this age of Google, it's now "obey or face an instant lifetime ban." This is progress? What does the future hold if we are forced to strictly obey and understand every legal gotcha in Google's terms of service? I believe in freedom, not blind obedience. I made some mistakes and would have removed all my apps if I had known the true consequences.

He spammed the Google Play store with multiple unfinished versions of the same applications for "beta testing", received warnings which he chose to ignore and then got banned for his gross abuse of the service.

Instead of "I messed up, here's a warning to others" it's a case of "why don't Google let me mess around with their service as much as I like? This is oppression, this is America goddamnit, where's muh freedom?!?"

Zero sympathy. Well done to Google on taking down one of the many people spamming the Play store with junk.

<comment><USER12> Getting banned from publishing apps to the Play Store is reasonable and proportional. Getting banned from all Google services whether related or not seems a bit much imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Anyone using my simplistic beta quality app would know instantly that this > is not "official"

A silly assumption that both generalizes the audience and is ignorant of copyright laws, imo. Not a valid argument in a court situation either. I could make the crappiest Geocities site out there, but as soon as I put a Google logo somewhere, people may assume it is an official Google site or affiliated with it.

> One of my apps contained the channel id for Vice.com. Since the length of > the app name is so limited I decided on "Vice TV"

Yup, there you go. Using a brand name, showing a brand's video - intent isn't the issue here, the author was impersonating Vice.com there.

The author is guilty of being naive and lax about copyright and trademark laws, imo.

<comment><USER14> So you complain about being ignorant about copyright laws then demonstrate complete ignorance of them. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER15> The apps contained icons taken from third parties and then utilised to advertise these apps. So copyright is very much in play here, as well as trademark infringement.

As to your jab at the person above, it might have come across better if it was even remotely constructive. For example, you could explain WHY you feel they misunderstand copyright rather than just waving your hands around and claiming that they're "completely ignorant."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sure Google is a private company. Sure this means they have no formal responsibility to this developer. Programmatically, he seems to deserve to be sanctioned: he violated their policies for several weeks with several different apps.

 _I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me any additional information._

But if his story is true, he makes good faith efforts to be compliant. What, if any, is the social responsibility a company has that owns half the market of mobile development platforms to people that could potentially make a living using their platform? Monopolies/duopolies throw a wrench in the invisible hand, and I'm not sure there's a clear answer.

<comment><USER17> A good faith effort would be reading the terms & conditions. He obviously didn't, because they are quite clear about not being able to put other companies' names in your app name.

If the article was about someone that had this happen, and they read the conditions and didn't see anything that they had violated, and then asked Google - that would be a different story. This guy just can't be bothered to put the effort in himself.

<comment><USER18> Yeah because I'm sure the T&C is only a page or two long, not like say 50k words.

[https://play.google.com/intl/en_us/about/play- terms.html](https://play.google.com/intl/en_us/about/play-terms.html)

The idea that you should have to scrutinize that entire document to determine what you did wrong is crazy.

Ostensibly someone on the Google side of things determined what he did that was not OK right? I mean they don't just ban people for the hell of it right? He had to do something SPECIFICALLY wrong, and that might correspond to some portion of the T&C. Is it so unreasonable to ask WHAT section you're violating?

I get that everyone on HN thinks the guy is a douche and deserves what he got. But to refuse to even say what? That's douchey too.

<comment><USER17> It's _not_ crazy. Guess what, sometimes publishing an app is more than just writing code. I've had to dig through them before too. Compared to what the iOS team has to deal with I consider it a pretty lightweight process.

If you just want to hack around with some code, then post the APK somewhere and tell your friends to download it. If you want to _publish an app_ in an app store, that is a fundamentally different thing. It's not even engineering. This is what product managers and legal teams deal with at companies. If you are a solo app publisher, you still have to deal with it. You don't get to opt out of these costs just because it's not fun.

Those aren't even the right T&C. These are the developer ones, and they're even shorter.

[https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution- agreeme...](https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution- agreement.html)

[https://play.google.com/about/developer-content- policy.html](https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy.html)

If you stick both into word, that's only 16 pages of stuff to read. Don't claim to be an engineer if you can't wade through 16 pages of specs. And the relevant part for this discussion is on page 1, the 4th bullet point after "Hate Speech", "Violence & Bullying", and "Sexually Explicit Material". It's not exactly buried.

<comment><USER18> If I sue someone for something I don't get to just say "your honor, look at the law and this contract, they're clearly violating it!" and blammo get a judgement against them. I have to enumerate my claims as to what they did wrong. I have to CITE things.

Should we hold Google to the same standard that we hold the criminal justice system? No obviously not.

But if it's so obvious what portion of the T&C he's breaking surely a hyperlink to that portion of the document should take only a second to generate. And if it's not obvious and requires some nuanced thought then perhaps a paragraph explaining would be warranted. And some links.

But to suggest that Google explaining itself would prove some kind of undue burden on Google for their actions is ridiculous! They've already hired people to police this kind of stuff. To suggest that Google couldn't have these human reviewers take a second to explain their decisions (at a fairly lost cost) boggles the mind.

<comment><USER17> _" The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another company, and that this was forbidden."_

 _Impersonation or Deceptive Behavior: Don 't pretend to be someone else, and don't represent that your app is authorized by or produced by another company or organization. .. Apps must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products_

I don't know how Google can be any more clear about that. By the authors own admission, the email used the _exact same words_ as the T&C he violated. If I had to bet, there was a link in there to page. You're arguing here without actually reviewing the underlying documents.

<comment><USER18> "Apps must not have names or icons that appear confusingly similar to existing products"

Okay so then a single extra sentence stating "The icon and name you have chosen are unacceptable because you are not X, Y or Z and constitute impersonation in our opinion" would have cleared up all the problems.

But that didn't happen did it? Nope!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did OP do something wrong? Yes, definitely. Is being banned from all other Google-related activities forever without recourse proportional? No. The response - being the sum of all its direct consequences - is tyrannical, and worse, automatic and faceless. Unless you enjoy being A Perfectly Obedient Citizen (TM), the only real lesson here is to not put all your eggs in one basket. Use Google, use Apple, but beware of letting them have full control of important parts of your life.

<comment><USER20> I use their devices... but my data I own, at least as much as possible. I don't know what I did before ownCloud...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "These warnings to me felt like the warnings on a plastic bag telling you not to put it over your head"

And yet you still put the bag over your head and took a deep breath! Why not just remove the ten apps and use common sense to determine that naming your apps after another company's product is a bad idea??

</comment><comment><USER22> Good. I wish all the people developing crappy and useless apps, flooding the place, would get banned. You publish 10 different apps where the only thing that changes is the youtube channel, and claim you were beta testing? I hope Apple and Microsoft ban you as well.

<comment><USER23> The most amusing thing is that the Play Store has an incredibly easy way _alpha_ test as well as beta test versions that are distributed only to users who have signed up for testing. In fact, when you upload the apk to the store it's almost literally impossible to miss it. The one issue I have with their test mechanism is that test users have to have an account with Google(even if it's just membership to a single Google Group).

What the OP did was publish spammy garbage. Not to say Google couldn't afford to put a more human touch on their customer and developer relations, but the OP is just way out of line on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Google could have, and still could block my gmail"

They have a different revenue generation business model for gmail.

My son's account was blocked, couldn't figure out why, and they wouldn't say. I suspect some kind of data mining thing where watching more than 5000 blitzwinger videos on youtube "proves" you're a kid or a teen. He does like his video games...

He falls into that gap between being old enough to have an account per google's rules, but young enough to not have his own credit card or a drivers license (they'd accept a scanned copy of his DL, but he's not 16 yet) so the only option to reinstate his account was to get Dad (me) to charge 50 cents on his CC to "prove" he's of legal age.

So part of the gmail business model is to hold kids (teens) accounts hostage with a threat of permanent deletion until Dad pays 50 cents. I'm not annoyed at the 50 cents, gmail is worth a large multiple of that. I am annoyed that at a random time long after BAU was initiated, they felt like charging us for fun.

It is possible the gmail biz model of randomly applied fees could be applied to play store / wallet accounts.

Not sure if OP would have flown off into as much of a rage for a $50 reinstatement fee, or if he'd be like me, pissed off at the "business agreement" being unilaterally rewritten at a later date. Either way, the gmail biz model does appear to be superior to the play/wallet/app store biz model, at least GOOG would get some revenue, however little.

I assume based on evidence Google dropped the "don't be evil" motto a long time ago.

<comment><USER25> I know lots of people don't know how to setup an email server. But gmail, as an email account, is worth less than $10/month. And, in fact, your ISP probably includes several email accounts with your internet service. If your child needs an email account, just assign him one...

If you have Verizon, here's how... [8 extra] [http://www.verizon.com/Support/Residential/Internet/HighSpee...](http://www.verizon.com/Support/Residential/Internet/HighSpeed/Email/Setup+And+Use/Setup+And+Use.htm)

If you have Comcast, here's how... [5 extra] [http://customer.comcast.com/help-and- support/internet/adding...](http://customer.comcast.com/help-and- support/internet/adding-new-user-names-or-email-addresses/)

If you have Cablevision, here's how... [4 extra] [http://optimum.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1673/~/c...](http://optimum.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1673/~/creating- optimum-online-e-mail-addresses)

So, in point of fact, gmail - as a 'free' email service - is actually a huge additional COST, considering the payment in privacy. And this is why I do not use it myself...

<comment><USER26> I advice against using your ISP's email service. What happens with your email address when you switch providers? Are you going to mail all your contacts with your new email address and update it at every service you ever registered for?

<comment><USER25> I agree, if the email account is going to be used for long term purposes. However, an email account for someone at the high school level should be fine. Presumably, the kid is going to go to a college somewhere - and will use the college account until such time as the kid graduates and moves on into the 'real' world -- whatever that means. I'm just trying to say that a gmail account for a kid isn't a necessary burden that needs rescuing at even the meager upfront cost of $0.50... plus the massive cost in lost privacy - <USER2> is an ongoing fee into the indeterminable future...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > I continued to be an Apple fan until they announced the "walled garden" and > the app review process for iOS. I am totally against having to get > permission from a corporation to write and sell apps (...). All Apple > products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer > freedom.

> Now my Google play account and Google Wallet account are both banned for > life. I'm no longer able to write Android apps ever again, and my family and > I can't even use Google wallet to purchase from Google Play.

So much for programmer freedom. Apple is at least very explicit about its rules. Google seemingly lets you do whatever you want, but then bans you if you do something that they don't like. Now of course one can say that the ban is justified, as author clearly misused the Play store and didn't follow the guidelines.

If he did try to do that on the App Store his apps would be probably instantly rejected, but he would not be banned. The funny thing is that there's a big chance that he would then write a blog post about how App Store is a "walled garden" and that on Play store that would be OK.

<comment><USER28> The rule is explicit: it's called trademark law. You can't just copy the name and logo of another company, append " TV" and distribute it publicly.

This is an official app of The Verge: [http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Ios&appID=54251...](http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Ios&appID=542512225)

This is OP's unofficial app: [http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c...](http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=com.sickboots.sickvideos.theverge)

It's pretty clear that this is prone to cause confusion, even with the disclaimer.

<comment><USER29> Quotes from the article:

"I emailed Google back and asked them to tell me exactly what I need to change to be compliant with the rules. Is it the icon? The name? The disclaimer? What? Google refused to give me any additional information. So, I just left the app in the suspended state and never attempted to update it since I really didn't know what I needed to change"

"Why didn't you give the apps a different name?

Well since Google was silent about the exact reason for suspension, I didn't know what I needed to do. Was it the app name? Probably, but I didn't know for sure."

If Google does not inform you in detail that it was the trademark that was violated, they have no right to ban you on that reason.

<comment><USER30> But the initial app suspension email from Google _did_ say he was violating trademark.

<comment><USER29> But which one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you ever find yourself making this argument:

 _I didn't think they would mind, I thought I was doing them a favor. Pointing people to their great content. It's free advertising_

then stop. Other people don't want your "free" advertising.

</comment><comment><USER31> Microsoft was known as the Borg, but that was poorly placed. Google has been more of a Borg than MS ever was.

Google has decided to automate everything. There is no way to get actual help across their entire product line. Having problems with your adwords account? It doesn't matter if you spend $20K month, you get automatic email responses to your queries with obnoxious links to the help system that you've already read.

While I agree that author did more wrong than he realizes, he also asked Google for an explanation to their objection, to which he received no response. I guess the Borg NLP engine was down that day and couldn't find the appropriate form letter.

Whatever you think about this author, you can't deny the danger of relying on one ecosystem so heavily. Google is the worst. At least Apple would have denied his app with a reason which he could have corrected.

</comment><comment><USER32> Summary: No sympathy for the blog author, but its still terrifying how broad Google's ban-hammer can be if you run afoul of them.

<comment><USER33> idk, these are a bunch of products I barely even knew about.

I thought google wallet went away around the same time google wave did, for instance.

<comment><USER34> It's the only way you can buy content (apps, music, books etc) and devices from the Play Store. If you use Android, not having a functioning Wallet is extremely limiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> March 25th post that was on Hacker News at least twice already. This is the only article on his blog.

Here is hi github page: [https://github.com/sgehrman](https://github.com/sgehrman) He is still developing. I am wondering what the updated status is on this? Seems that if he is still developing he isn't banned for life?

There already were some petition at [https://www.change.org/petitions/sergey- brin-respect-the-eff...](https://www.change.org/petitions/sergey-brin-respect- the-efforts-of-small-and-indie-android- developers?recruiter=86686242&utm_campaign=twitter_link&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition+via+%40Change)

<comment><USER13> So that petition is accusing one dude in Google of disrespecting 'small and indie android developers' when they're blatantly violating trademark law? Lols.

<comment><USER36> Never underestimate the pariah complex...

While it'd be nice for Google to explain why he was banned, it already sounds like he understands why he was banned but he had a chance to grand-stand so he's on his soapbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I started laughing at the bit about all Apple products being banned in his household to make a statement about freedom, and I just didn't stop.

</comment><comment><USER38> After just skimming through the post, I have a question for OP. Why did you create 10 different apps? Why not just one app, that gave the user the ability to enter a channel name and check out all their videos? I think that's better, both in terms of not spamming — for the lack of a better work — the Play Store, as well as UX.

I'm afraid the actions taken by Google in this case can be justified, since publishing 10 apps a day is a dubious figure. However, I'll give it to you, they could've made the regulations regarding this a little more explicit and visible.

<comment><USER28> _Why not just one app, that gave the user the ability to enter a channel name and check out all their videos?_

According to the article, that's what he was working on after releasing the 10 apps.

 _However, I 'll give it to you, they could've made the regulations regarding this a little more explicit and visible._

It's called trademark law. It's very explicit that you can't copy the logo and name of another company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Has anyone read the list of other developers who've gotten suspended?

> [http://blog.hutber.com/how-my-google-devlopers-account- > got-t...](http://blog.hutber.com/how-my-google-devlopers-account-got- > terminated-with-no-option-to-appeal/)

This guy here writes an app called "Sex Diaries Alpha", and has it rejected because of pornographic purpose. He then assumes that its because he used a picture a cartoon donkey as the icon, so he reploads "Sex Diaries Test" with a picture of a cartoon _girl_ instead.

More repetitions follow. He never once thinks its perhaps the name 'sex diaries' or the stated purpose of the app. Nope, maybe its the fact that this picture has a nipple, or this is cartoon bondage.

> [http://andrewpearson.org/?p=681](http://andrewpearson.org/?p=681)

This guy writes an app and stuffs it with 100s of keywords (as one could see by checking the same app in the 3rd party app store), then he complains he isn't in violation because you could play all those artists through his generic music player, and google didn't cap the number of keywords you could use. So he's not in violation. He knows this for sure, because he's an attorney.

> [https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21searchin/android- > develop...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21searchin/android- > developers/adsense/android-developers/5qBdcAzmE-g/GdvJf4Sv0eEJ)

This guy says that Google transfered $4000 of android sales into his adsense account so they could pay him for non-US sales, but they failed to verify his account since he didn't have $10 worth of adsense budget. Then they disabled the entire account due to invalid clicks on a dead-end blog. If his story is actually true, he should get a lawyer and I feel this is really the time that Google customer service would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER6> ...and thus, the natural consequences of walled-garden markets begin to rear their ugly heads.

It was all love and rainbows while the gold rush held it promise of instant richness and fame, wasn't it?

</comment><comment><USER40> It's an unfortunately common idea that copyright violation is sometimes okay because it amounts to "free advertising" for the organisation whose content you're co-opting. I was disappointed to see that argument made here.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wouldn't call the OP blameless but there is a lesson here: it is dangerous for a professional software developer to become too invested in one technology or platform, especially with a capricious corporate overlord behind it.

</comment><comment><USER42> I understand that an app is content wrapped around a concept. It is common sense not to use a known name unless you are asking for trouble. I could make a news app. Do I want to name it CNN? No, unless I am authorized to use that name. It is naive to think you can use just any name, even if you meant good. You are looking for trouble. Next time call it something else. The video app. Learn by Watching...I mean you couldn't come up with another name?

<comment><USER24> The problem is he specifically tried to figure out if that was the problem and google wouldn't say. Perhaps he got the banhammer for not getting using a (TM) after the brand name in the descriptions. Perhaps he's actually in trouble for not getting permission for some of the content in the screenshots. All of that is probably a good idea. But specifically, he will never know why he got the banhammer and we will never know either.

The problem with whatever-as-a-service business model, is you're never worth more than a penny more to the provider than the cost of sales to replace you when/if you leave. So, people are throwing themselves at google to be an app dev, so I guess he's worth precisely nothing at all to GOOG.

A business relationship where one side is worthless to the other is best described as parasitism and often that doesn't turn out well for the parasite. That is the true lesson for all app developers to learn from this story. An inherent part of the biz model is you can get annihilated and the host (host as in parasite lifecycle model) will not care. Make sure you understand that, when making business decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think the best comment, which was buried in the replies was this:

"There is a guide and it's pretty clear: [https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answ...](https://support.google.com/googleplay/android- developer/answer/2986097?hl=en) \- For example, if your app displays the brand, icon, or title from another app [...] your apps can be suspended and your developer account terminated."

</comment><comment><USER44> Don't believe you

You were a die hard Apple fan boy since '85 even during their darkest times... then you can't provide your users updates within hours so you...

"threw out my macs, smashed my iPhones, switched my whole family to Ubuntu and Android."

[http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/dont_b...](http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/dont_believe_you_anchorman.gif)

<comment><USER45> I'll be a pedant and point out that bit of hyperbole has a bit of an odd timeline issue. It seems to say he jumped ship to Android when the app store was announced. But iPhone OS 2 which introduced the walled garden app store came out before Android 1.0.

Plus, if you're so worried about things like walled gardens, why buy a phone that doesn't officially allow third party native apps like the iPhone with v1.x OS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> A lot of people think that the author deserved the punishment for his stupidity. However, I think he had an important point that needs to be discussed: that he was dismissed without a fair hearing and was banned for life from services unrelated to the one on which he committed the offense.

I think this is a growing problem that more people need to be aware of. We do not have the _right_ to use modern marketplaces (such as the Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Google Adwords, AirBnB, Ebay, Uber, etc.) Instead, we have _permission_ from corporations to use them. If an individual bases his livelihood on sales through one of these and then makes a mistake, the company is likely to ban him, destroying his income. There is currently no guarantee of due process or proportional punishment. When you are banned from the majority marketplace, one often has no real alternative. Can anyone make a living selling his goods on the second most popular auction site?

I think we need to fight for the right to due process and fair punishment online.

</comment><comment><USER47> "I was a die hard Apple fan since 1985 and was an Apple developer all through the darkest days of the Apple death spiral. I continued to be an Apple fan until they announced the "walled garden" and the app review process for iOS. I am totally against having to get permission from a corporation to write and sell apps, and I certainly don't think I should be forced to sell my work through their store and their store only."

Regardless of the merits of this particular authors' case, I'm frankly astounded that more people don't seem to care about this aspect of mobile platforms. I remember the _uproar_ the Microsoft caused in the 1990s with their "trusted computing" trial balloon, and the uproar that locked PC BIOSes continue to create today. Yet you change the form factor a little and nobody cares. Wow.

<comment><USER48> I think you missed the part where Microsoft and Apple had completely different core businesses.

<comment><USER47> I'm talking about how mobile platforms are completely locked down and gated, with app stores taking ~30% of your app revenue and no ability to install what you want.

That sort of thing would _never_ have been tolerated in the PC world, yet in the mobile work nobody seems to care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Would they have cut off his Nest? If google since G+ thinks of itself as a single product, it might not be smart to let them into your house, or to depend on them for anything important.

That being said, these kinds of apps are what make the phone app market a cesspool. Would the iOS app store accept youtube channel viewers?

</comment><comment><USER50> Google's culture of automated customer service continues a long tradition of poor people skills, and disdain for feelings and livelihoods, as well as their own reputation. I was contemplating switching from AWS to the Google Cloud, but it's posts like this that remind me that, oh yeah, I myself have been unjustly banned twice from one of their services.

Google cannot be trusted to handle relationships, whether with developers or companies. It's clear that they don't care and that's fine. They have their niche for providing services to those who don't mind the lack of the human touch. Just not for me.

</comment><comment><USER51> Google is extremely well known for poor customer service in account management. That should not surprise _anyone_ at this point. Automated bans and automated denial of appeal are pretty par for the course from the stories I've read.

That said, I'm not sure I actually side with the author outside of that point of agreement. Looks like the apps were mega shady.

I would advise the author to (1) not place their trust in a corporation again, and to secure their business & personal affairs against single points of failure, (2) not make shady software, and finally (3) consult a lawyer on the implementation of the law and contracts.

</comment><comment><USER52> 1\. Don't repackage other people's content. Especially with their trademarks attached. If they had no role in creating the app, don't be a jerk. If you want to make a video app, make a general-purpose video app and teach your users how to add channels.

2\. I can't help but appreciate the karma angle of someone who tried to repackage web content as apps getting bitten by the gatekeepers of the walled garden.

3\. Ah, Google, the business that would certainly still exist (and be as large and powerful as it currently is) had it been forbidden to ever skirt the limits of copyright law...

</comment><comment><USER53> I don't understand his whole logic. He publishes the same app 10 times for different channels. One after another gets banned and he even thinks this proves that the rest is OK. He says that he made "beta apps written for my kids", but he puts it on the biggest app store in the world. He says an app to display videos is worth 50.000$, 10 times the same app is worth 500.000$. He says it was a free project, but he made it to collect user data for his commercial project.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's pretty clear to me.

First, what the guy did was wrong, and he appears pretty stupid, pretending to be stupid, or both.

Google is generally known for their abysmal communication and "customer service", but in this case they were in fact pretty clear about the problem right when the first app got suspended.

He can whine all he want but Google's decision to ban his Android developer account was not too unreasonable.

 _However_ even with that in mind I do believe that they went completely overboard with the decisions to also ban-for-life his Google Wallet and Google Music accounts. Those are completely unrelated to this matter[0], and escalated this thing out of proportion.

It is kind of frightening they will just take those things as "collateral" for violating a bunch of rules on a completely different service that just also happens to be part of the Google ecosystem. It starts to become and look like a state that way (hello, cyberpunk future), but with a state you should also have clear rules and ways of appeal. Google definitely doesn't have a meaningful version the the latter.

People depend on all sorts of services that Google provides, and the ability to take all or any of them away (there are no laws) because you violated an unrelated rule, is an amount of power that should come with mechanisms that keep it in check.

Indeed what if they instead had taken his GMail account?

[0] unless there is more that the author is not telling us, which is not at all unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER54> The author should also do a quick search (perhaps with bing, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo) on PayPal accounts being blocked. He recommends this as the safe option, trusted option, but I have seen more PayPal banned for life rants than google ones. With PayPal you can loose your account just because your customers are using stolen cards.

The lesson should be that basing a business on _any_ single external resource could be an issue, and you should approach it carefully.

</comment><comment> X-Istence Apple is banned in the household, because walled garden, and yet he doesn't see the Google Play Store as a walled garden... oh boy, this guy is going to go far.

</comment><comment><USER55> "Because I had listened to the leaders at Google say that the open web, open source and freedom are important values at Google, and I fully agree with that ideal."

"All Apple products are banned in my household to make a statement about programmer freedom."

"I believe in freedom, not blind obedience."

This guy comes off as being a bit naive. And/or dishonest in his telling of this story...

</comment><comment><USER56> I stopped reading at "So, I threw out my macs, smashed my iPhones, switched my whole family to Ubuntu and Android." (Because nobody does that, specifically the first two things.) BTW until this line I was relating strongly with the author and especially the stuff about supporting a family.

Never got to find out the meat of the story. Oh well - it was promising and I was looking forward to it, I kind of wish I didn't realize what I was reading. (i.e. a fabrication.)

Basically, I don't find the sentence credible, nor am able to read it in context as an exaggeration or metaphorical, it's presented as fact, and I lost interest.

This is written by a marketer, not a developer. i.e. it's "a paid lie" (if we are cynical), or more generously it's allegory, that I don't have time to read. None of this stuff happened, in my judgment.

Granted I didn't read the 3900 word essay so I could be wrong - I stopped at word 278. It's just my impression that this story takes you for a ride.

</comment><comment><USER57> Google's 'normal' support is horrendous and it takes forever to get someone to even pretend to help you. We had a paying google app engine account for our company... I've dealt with them, and it`s a pain to say the least. Now I can only imagine how they treat people who they consider 'deliquent' (not saying that the author is one)

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm absolutely astonished by the degree of egocentric delusion, arrogance and lack of self-criticism displayed by the author:

* he smashes thousands of dollars worth of equipment because the producer's business model no longer fits his idea of freedom,

* he writes a trivial wrapper app with no original content or behavior,

* he spams Google Play with ten versions of it hard-coding different YT channel IDs in each,

* he values this contribution to the Android ecosystem on about $500,000,

* his apps obviously infringe on trademarks and possibly copyrighted content,

* he ignores multiple warnings and app suspensions, because they don't tell him precisely what to change,

* he considers Google to be under the obligation to handhold him through the nature of his violation of the terms and conditions,

* after all this he continues to think he is in the right,

* he writes a rant and expects to receive sympathy riding on general disappointment in devs community with Google's admittedly lacking customer support.

Wow.

</comment><comment><USER59> The OP made some grave errors with his apps. But is it really a good reason, to not tell him, what was going wrong and instead swinging the big hammer on his head (life-long ban)?

Google once started with the slogan "Don't be evil".

By being the new "Judge Dredd" of the internet, it can just become, what it never wanted to be. All that, just because Google tries to drive technology to its extremes ("customer-service from hell").

This is going to be more and more important, because there exist only very few major app-stores and very few major internet-payment systems (gladly, there the situation could still change to the better). But I know, how much Paypal was criticized because of his behavior and being a semi-monopolist in internet payments.

With our today's trend to centralization -- I don't want to put my fate into the hand of one of these new Judge Dredds.

<comment><USER60> They did tell him, didn't they? They told him 3 times.

<comment><USER59> As much I understood, they did tell him not enough, that he could understand what was wrong. Automated eMails are "customer-support from hell".

<comment><USER61> I have no experience with google customer support as a normal developer[1], but I guess there is a vast amount of this kind of arguably spamy apps submitted every day. On that scale it's probably hard and too time consuming to distinguish naive from fraudulent developers.

For me its difficult to believe, that someone who has been a developer for so long, really didn't think, that using another companies name in an app name, use their logo – and removing their ads(?)[2] – couldn't lead to some sort of serious problems.

The punishment might be too harsh, but defending yourself in this case with 70/80 rebelism and doing them a favor with "free advertisement" is just bizarre.

[1] I've worked in the advertisement team of the biggest swiss news site, and we got decent personal support from google. Unfortunately, i guess it is as always in life: If you're big, others will listen to you. If not, you'll be ignored.

[2] "No ads, no junk, just videos" [http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=c...](http://www.myappwiz.com/home/getapp?platform=Android&appID=com.sickboots.sickvideos.theverge)

<comment><USER62> Googles' model is to allow apps without pre-screening. This model (trust but verify) lends itself to having more spammy apps submitted to it (no proof, just an educated guess). Google is providing a gateway for others to generate income.

The OP stated: 1) They had a disclaimer in multiple places. 2) They reached out explicitly because they weren't sure where the real problem existed. 3) Only one app was notified at a time when multiple apps had been following the same style and none were notified until later. Surely Google would want to investigate whether the developer posted any other apps which might be in violation? 4) Was not trying to nor had any interest in making any money off of this set of apps.

It has been said, the OP was naive and should have pulled the apps after the first notice since they were just beta. But any corporation that is providing business support services really needs to fund a customer service desk with real people. The fact that people use google for businesses like this knowing this situation is really surprising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I knew I'd seen this before. It looks like Medium's wacky URL structure is bypassing the dupe checker. If you search for the hex code at the end[1], you get the previous discussions.

From when this was first posted in March:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7478975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7478975)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7569454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7569454)

From May:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7855337)

[1] like this: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=c62f2404f66#!/story/forever/0/c62f...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=c62f2404f66#!/story/forever/0/c62f2404f66)

</comment><comment><USER64> He wants to know the difference between an app and the web: see Chubby Checker settlement.

</comment><comment><USER65> I used to make Android themes back in the day. I would wait until a game got really popular on iOS and count on Android users checking the Android app store for the same titles. I'd sell an "Angry Birds" phone theme for 99 cents. Many Android users werent that technologically savvy and thought they were buying the actual game. This went on for about 6 months. I was making serious money. Eventually they caught on and I was banned from the store. I was a kid and doing something a bit douchey but I definitely understand banning me.

This guy doesn't quite seem to feel the same way.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is there anyway to call google help directly? I've heard plenty of stories of google automated email support that never adequately explains anything, but I'm curious if you can actually call them.

If anyone has seen the movie "The Internship" there is a scene where they all have to learn how to do phone support. I would find it very weird if that is entirely a lie and it is nearly impossible to call them.

Also he smashed his apple devices because he disagrees with their ideals? That seems kind of immature.

</comment><comment><USER67> He could sell the app outside the Play Store, of course. Nothing can stop him from doing that (trademark issues aside) and collecting payment via PayPal, etc.

</comment><comment><USER68> I had this happen to me with adwords, once you get your account suspended or even before that, it is hard to get anyone to talk to you or have a way to correct issue. If you are fresh at it and clueless you are almost certain you will be banned.

Mostly this is due Google not having customer support, so you are just interacting with machines.

It would be easier if we had more options, this way if you get kicked out by apple and google, nothing else is left.

</comment><comment><USER69> > The suspension email stated that I was trying to impersonate another > company, and that this was forbidden.

> I decided on "Vice TV"

> I didn't plan on trying to sell Vice TV

> I was also secretly hoping I would get a contract job out of this or someone > might say, "Hey, add my blog and Facebook pages and I'll buy the app from > you."

The last quotation isn't necessarily in context with the third one, but nonetheless this guy was either stupidly naive or ignorant.

</comment><comment> mark-r Regardless of how you feel about this particular case, there are two things that are troubling:

1\. Google is big enough to be an indispensable part of your life.

2\. Google doesn't believe in allowing human contact - it doesn't scale. They've put all their eggs into the algorithm basket, and when the algorithm decides you're guilty that's it. No appeal, at least not in any real sense.

It's a story that gets repeated over and over.

</comment><comment><USER70> The escalation from written warning to banned for life is a huge leap to make in one step.

A month long suspension would get the point across.

</comment><comment><USER71> That this guy was banned from Google Play is meaningless. He would have been banned from the iTunes Store as well for apps like this. This post is just getting traction because it's Google and HN has an axe to grind against them.

</comment><comment><USER72> He is wrong. But the technology giants wield way too much power and must be tamed.

</comment><comment><USER73> Yeahh.. I'm finding it really hard to have much sympathy here. Spammy single- content-source apps like this are a plague upon the store.

Furthermore, the author's ignorance of trademark really doesn't win them any points.

</comment><comment><USER74> The ignorance hurts my bones.

</comment><comment><USER75> If he spent even 5 minutes looking at the ios sdk, he'd see that there's no review process involved in distribution of beta apps to customers...

</comment><comment><USER76> Google is a bully to say the least and they are not as open as you might think, i learnt this when my adsense account got suspended.

</comment><comment><USER77> The __TL;DR __should be:

Google suspended my Google Wallet account when they shouldn't have.

</comment><comment><USER78> I love how the tl;dr bit is at the end of the article. If I were too lazy to read the entire article, why would I scroll to the end before closing?

"If one of their algorithms thinks you're a bad guy, you're banned for life."

In his case scratch out "thinks" and put in "knows"

</comment><comment><USER79> TL;DR version "Didn't read the rules, broke the rules, :("

</comment><comment><USER80> Duh.

Honestly, why don't you just use a friend's account?</comment>


Finally, Education Technology based on real research - <AUTHOR> http://anniemurphypaul.com/2013/01/finally-tech-products-based-on-real-research-from-the-science-of-learning/

<comment><USER2> "The amount of information we need to retain is growing rapidly"

Like the capital of Maryland? I would argue that the need to retain that type of information is in rapid decline, not rapid growth.

The likelihood of me needing to know the capital of Maryland in a situation where I don't have access to Google is minute.

Seriously, I have computers and books to offload this type of trivial information.

That said, I learned the state capitals in third grade and do and still remember them. I just question whether that was a good use of my prime learning years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like this author a lot. The original article she cites

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628965.000-app- for-q...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628965.000-app-for-quizzing- your-way-to-being-a-mastermind.html)

was submitted to HN (no comments) a little while ago

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4993060>

after I saw the author post it to Facebook, where she is my friend. We may as well discuss the report here in this thread.

</comment><comment><USER4> Uhhhh... there's a gazillion products based on "spaced repetition" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>

<comment><AUTHOR> "I haven't seen any commercial products that put together _all_ these different things" (emphasis mine). There appears to be more to Cerego than simple spaced repetition, but I can't tell exactly what right now because it is in limited beta.

I used "Mental Case" on the iPhone a few years ago, and it had a simple implementation of spaced repetition, but it did not adjust itself to my progress very well. I would like to find something better; if you know of anything specific besides the Wikipedia article, please post it.</comment></comment>


So Hard as a "Server" - Bella-Xiang https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/12/26/whats-a-server/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's even more overloaded when you include client/server as a paradigm in application development. Sure, the server is still a program usually listening on a socket, dbus name or using shared memory of some sort an and responding to requests but they're also logically part of the same program.

tmux, evolution, mutter, urvxt, tracker, emacs, neovim, etc. are all servers in the right context.

Then there are servers that don't serve requests in the traditional sense. Entities that perform batch operations by pulling data from queues, run reports, etc. are also called servers despite not fitting the call & response model.

<comment> Bella-Xiang I'm a beginner for this field, so I have some questions. Is it spontaneous for the machine/server to pull data from the queue, run reports, and so on to perform batch operations? What is the extracted data used for? Isn't this action responding to a request?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> My definition: a server is a computer that does things for other computers.</comment>


The Civic Labor of Online Moderators (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp-conference/sites/ipp/files/documents/JNM-The_Civic_Labor_of_Online_Moderators__Internet_Politics_Policy_.pdf <comment><USER2> This paper starts out really oddly.

1\. Adrien Chen is a piece of work. He was enabled through Gawker to publically dox a private individual. (Yes, ViolentAcres did moderate scuzzy subs.. but that's an issue for the admins if they want that there or not) Adrian's actions had real-world consequences for the person he decided to go after. He also rubbed salt in the wounds when he did it.

2\. His quote about how the moderators represent the community again is completely unjustified. This guy is a yellow journalist, and his statements have no merit.

3\. Calling Moderating "Emotional Labor" is such a patronizing tone. It's community maintenance. (I'm pretty sure that dang wouldn't consider cleaning up and managing hn as something he does to make people feel better).

<comment><USER3> It is technically emotional labour though. It isn't physical labour, but it is still draining.

<comment><USER2> It's mental labor. If you're a good moderator, there's very little to no emotions in your actions.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Which is WHY it is emotional labour....

From Wikipedia....

"Emotional labour is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job.

More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers and superiors."

The mods are expected to regulate their emotions.

Which makes it emotional labour by default.

<comment><USER4> What are your motivations for arguing this?

By this definition my response to you is emotional labor and you owe me for that.

<comment><USER5> It's not really, no, unless it's your job (or "job") to write this reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand why the word "civic". Most of moderators work for commercial entities. They're there to make sure the entity remains business/customer friendly. There's nothing related to citizenship in the raison d'être of that work.

It's like saying that human resource mangement is here to make the people grow. It's not, growing people is just a side effect.

</comment><comment><USER7> The title of this is extremely amusing to me because I've only ever thought of online moderators as basically the lowest form of life, almost exclusively petty tyrants and ego-tripping jerks who try to flatter and ingratiate the people above them and are heavy-handed despots to anyone beneath them. Their role as "gatekeeper of ability to communicate with people via the medium under their control" is typically done by encoding their adolescent morality into policy and silencing anyone who goes against the grain or threatens their social standing.

It's actually gotten me thinking a lot about distributed moderation. Wouldn't it be better if access to any particular medium of communication (a forum, an IRC channel, a mastodon server) was federated? Democratized moderation would mean that people could then subscribe to whichever style of moderation they prefer, and people with unpopular styles of moderation (e.g. "ban everything I don't like", the style of the vast majority of forum moderators) would cease having so much power over mediums of communication.

<comment><USER8> Speaking as someone who moderated a torrent site forum in my teens, there's unfortunately so much truth in what you said in that first paragraph. Especially the part about adolescent morality as policy.</comment></comment>


Cryptographically Certified Hypothesis Testing [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://sachaservanschreiber.com/thesis.pdf <comment><USER2> This is basically "Do preregistration and put it in a blockchain-like structure".

It's not a bad idea. It adds cryptographic integrity to good scientific practice.

But hardly anyone outside medicine does hypothesis preregistration yet. In computer science it's basically unknown to do it. All the A/B testing you heard about in user studies is almost certainly p-hacked. So the first step would be to convince people that they actually have to do something about p-hacking.

<comment><USER3> Most fields are not accustomed to confirmatory statistical analysis as medicine, psychology or finance are. The poor understanding of p-hacking is a mere consequence of this for most fields.

A good custom and first step for any field would be to elaborate more on the validity of an analysis per se, or to give studies a "reality check" at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Complexity systems researcher, Didier Sornette, did something similar in 2009 for [The Financial Bubble Experiment: advanced diagnostics and forecasts of bubble terminations](0):

• ...We do not make this document public. Instead, we make its digital fingerprint public. We generate three digital fingerprints for each document, with the publicly available (1) MD5 hash algorithm [1] and (2) 256 and 512 bit versions of the SHA-2 hash algorithm [2] [3]. This creates three strings of letters and numbers that are unique to this file. Any change at all in the contents of this file will result in different MD5 and SHA-2 signatures.

• We create the first version of our main document, containing the first two sections of this document, a brief description of our theory and methods, the MD5 and SHA-2 hashes of our first forecast and the date (1 May 2010) on which we will make the first original .pdf document public.

• We upload this main 'meta' document to [http://arxiv.org](http://arxiv.org). This makes public our experiment and the MD5 and SHA-2 hashes of our first forecast. In addition, it generates an independent timestamp documenting the date on which we made (or at least uploaded) our forecast. arxiv.org automatically places the date of when the document was first placed on its server as 'v1' (version 1). It is important for the integrity of the experiment that this date is documented by a trusted third party.

• We continue our research until we find our next confident forecast. We again put the forecast results in a .pdf document and generate the MD5 and SHA-2 hashes. We now update our master document with the date and digital fingerprint of this new forecast and upload this latest version of the master document to arxiv.org. The server will call this 'v2' (version 2) of the same document while keeping 'v1' publicly available as a way to ensure integrity of the experiment (i.e., to ensure that we do not modify the MD5 and SHA-2 hashes in the original document). Again, 'v2' has a timestamp created by arxiv.org.

• Notice that each new version contains the previous MD5 and SHA-2 signatures, so that in the end there will be a list of dates of publication and associated MD5 and SHA-2 signatures.

• We continue this protocol until the future date (1 May 2010) at which time we upload our final version of the master document. For this final version, we include the URL of a web site where the .pdf documents of all of our past forecasts can be downloaded and independently checked for consistent MD

0: [https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.0454](https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.0454)

<comment><USER5> Wonderful approach!

I would just change it to work with notebooks instead of PDF (to include the data and the algorithm and make replication easier) - through the notebooks could certainly generate PDFs.

Then it would bring into publishing the problem of replicable builds: the PDF would not be very helpful if the MD5 didn't match the published signature!

The field seems ripe for disruption, with a new model for scientific research and publication.</comment></comment>


Tropical Breezes, Pristine Beaches and a Domain Name to Die For - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/business/custom-urls.html <comment><AUTHOR> Article is re Anguilla's .ai TLD</comment>


Ask HN: What's a good tutorial for writing a stack-based virtual machine? - <AUTHOR> Eventually I'd like to write my own language like Lua (but stack-based), mostly for fun and partly for practice. But I don't fully understand a lot of aspects of how a virtual machine like that works. Can you recommend a good tutorial on it? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Do a small Forth implementation. Shouldn't take you more than a few days and you'll learn a ton about stack machines VM or otherwise.

Brodie's 'Staring Forth' would be a good point to branch out from. It's fun and it will maybe give you a new perspective on programming.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember this lecture being useful when I was writing a stack machine for my compilers course: [https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/62](https://class.coursera.org/compilers/lecture/62)

</comment><comment><USER4> There used to be one as part of the ANTLR Advanced Tutorial. I used that to bootstrap a fairly complex expert systems shell used as the core of a few things.</comment>


Trademark: REACT (serial no. 86689364) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tmfile.com/mark/?q=866893643 <comment><USER2> The Fine Brothers posted a video statement regarding it: [https://youtu.be/0t-vuI9vKfg](https://youtu.be/0t-vuI9vKfg)

<comment><USER3> is this the background on this:

[http://nymag.com/following/2016/01/youtubers-at-war-over- tho...](http://nymag.com/following/2016/01/youtubers-at-war-over-those-react- videos.html)

[http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/fine-bros-react- world-y...](http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/fine-bros-react-world- youtube-1201688987/)</comment></comment>


Monitoring World IPv6 Day - <AUTHOR> http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2011/06/monitoring-world-ipv6-day/ <comment><USER3> So much ssh for native IPv6. That could only mean we - few tech people - <USER2> more concerned about using it. In the future, with dual stack, I hope people will use IPv6 without knowing it. Maybe someday we will think about IPv4 the way we see IPX today: obsolete, nobody uses it.</comment>


Google's fiber leeching caper - <AUTHOR> http://www.dodgycoder.net/2013/02/googles-fiber-leeching-caper.html <comment><USER2> Everybody who pays @95th dreams of doing something like this the very first time that 95th billing is explained to them. I mean _Everbody_.

What the Article fails to explain, is that there is both a port cost, and a minimum commit. For much less than what it would have cost them for the port, and minimum commit on a 1 Gig connection, they could have simply mailed their data via USPS and had it there in three days.

Also, if we do the math - and presume that they only ran 1 gigabit for 5% of the time - 1 gigabit/second at 36 hours (5% of a month) in terabytes = 16 Terabytes - which barely makes it into the "10s of terabytes" category, and well within the "Just mail an AIT-3 tape. [Edit - cheaper yet, just load up the hard drives that you are going to install anyways in your destination]

Edit 2:

Doh - <http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte> shows that the largest hard drives back then were 20 Gigabytes. We're talking a minimum of 1000 hard drives for "10s" of Terabytes.

Maybe that 1 GigCircuit Hack wasn't such a bad idea after all.

<comment><USER3> You'd trust your hard drives with USPS?

Edit: I'm not implying that USPS is necessarily unreliable, I'm curious to hear if this is common practice.

<comment><USER2> Presumably I'm not sending the originals. Also, powered down, hard drives are pretty robust - their read/write heads are locked up. Remember - those drives have been bouncing around a LOT to get to you through retail/wholesale channels.

[edit] Also - they obviously had to buy hard drives for the destination, right? Presumably, early stage google was all about the open-chassis on plywood slam drives in approach, and wouldn't have been averse to loading up 30 or 40 drives, mailing them out, and simply diffing and resyncing as needed if 1 or 2 drives had issues, which would have been unlikely.

Also, presuming you needed to have one of your people go to the remote data center, there is always the old, _move the datacenter with hard drives in my luggage_ trick. Even in 2000 you could put a lot of data into carry-on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of a loophole Microsoft found in their utility contract:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers- in...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/technology/data-centers-in-rural- washington-state-gobble-power.html?pagewanted=all)

Threatened to waste $70,000 of electricity to circumvent a $210,000 contract penalty (for not buying enough electricity), and thus negotiated their way out of it.

(Note this is MSFT not GOOG, so be sure to interpret this as an act of _disreputable evil_ and not a clever funny hack).

<comment><USER5> I think what's important here is that it's funny.

Google exploiting good faith rules to shirk payment? Funny.

Microsoft blowing $70K in power to meet a contract? Also Funny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article:

> At the end of the month, the top 5% of usage information was discarded, to > eliminate spikes, which were assumed to be measurement errors.

Not actually true. The bandwidth measurements don't have accuracy problems; providers use 95th percentile billing to make connections "burstable", allowing servers to handle an small unexpected traffic spike without a huge bill. And on the flip side, many sites have a traffic pattern of highs during a subset of the day (customers' waking hours or business hours or non-business hours, depending on the site) and lows outside that period (sleeping, etc), for which 95th percentile billing produces a higher bill than just charging for bytes transferred.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing>

Very few customers have the kind of traffic pattern that would allow for using bandwidth during only 5% of the month. And in this particular case, Google could just as easily have saturated a 50Mbps line rather than using 5% of a gigabit line, which would have massively reduced (though not completely eliminated) the bill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, didn't know that, I will update the post to mention Burstable billing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even for a scrappy startup, I consider this to be exceedingly unethical. Somebody paid for that bandwidth, somebody who essentially invested in Google with no opportunity to see a return on the investment.

I can't picture the world where this would not be considered "evil".

<comment><USER8> The rules were set by the supplier and they played within the rules. Don't play the game if you don't like the outcome.

<comment><USER9> Ethics aren't about the "rules".

<comment><USER10> You will always have bad people. The more people that exploit the system, the faster the system will change to be more 'fair', otherwise you're just handicapping yourself. Look at all the patent lawsuits. As they said in my business ethics class: ethics schmethics.

<comment><USER11> (1) It's not clear that acting unethically will lead to better rules and more ethical outcomes, in general [and actually, in some cases the opposite will happen - if you're corrupt it makes it easier for others to be corrupt]

(2) Handicapping yourself is the whole idea behind ethics and morality. Sometimes it's more important to do the right thing than the selfish thing.

Attitudes like yours are so disheartening to read. I totally disagree with your sentiment.

<comment><USER10> Moral != Ethical. I'm guessing you think Foxconn replacing workers with robots is bad too?

<comment><USER11> How is moral different from ethical? In my mind, they are pretty synonymous.

And no, I don't think Foxconn is bad for replacing workers with robots. Why would I?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This "95th percentile" measuring method is still widely used by bandwidth providers, colocation facilities, etc. I am not sure why the article says it was a common billing practice "of the time". More info: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burstable_billing>

<comment><USER13> I'd be curious who still uses this. None of my contracts are based upon the 95th percentile. We also don't bill using this method either.

<comment><USER2> I've never met an ISP that sells Racks in a colo that didn't bill transit at 95th percentile (if you chose to use theirs). Are you hosting bare metal, or is your colo providing the physical server?

If you deal with a Datacenter that is just providing you with a Cage + Power + Cooling + Physical Security, you are almost always going to pay for transit @95th percentile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be impressed at the ingenuity, or disgusted at the dishonesty.

<comment><USER15> Early-Google really fucked moron salespeople at most of their vendors (well, technically the salespeople also got paid, so the only morons were the investors). People sold space with power/cooling included at ratios which were unsustainable, and Google's people were more than willing to sign contracts with the facilities at those prices. Then Google "fully utilized" what they had in the contract, which really screwed their colo providers.

OTOH, this was in the colo/bandwidth/fiber nuclear winter of 2001-2004, so maybe some vendors were happy to have some revenue, but there were cases where the Google stuff was at negative overall margin on variable costs (i.e. the vendor would have been better off shutting down the power plant vs. selling to Google).

<comment><USER16> Using what you paid for is not unethical. Selling what you can't provide is, so if the colo can't keep up it's not Google's fault.

<comment><USER15> It's like renting a hotel room and then running the water/power/etc. 24x7 (and via cable to outdoors to power a factory for your 24h stay).

<comment><USER16> Sure... If hotels advertised unlimited water and power. I similarly don't feel bad for a restaurant that loses money on an all you can eat buffet.

<comment><USER17> There is "unlimited" and there is "reasonable and customary so let's not waste energy metering it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That is a pretty awesome hack, but I wonder why they didn't just use hard drives and ship it instead of wasting months. Cost / benefit seems off there.

<comment><USER19> As mentioned above around that time cost of data on hard drives was $20/gb so that would come out to around $240k at the time. It's crazy how things have changed and we can buy 16gb flash drives now for $5-10. I remember when the first flash drives came out and it was like 128mb for $20.

<comment><USER17> More like 4MB for $20. I have some in my desk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find this a little hard to believe; it has the whiff of an urban legend. Besides the fact of minimum monthlies and the probability that the bandwidth provider is not so stupid as not to notice that they're moving lots of terabytes30 hours a month and nothing at all the rest of the time (especially over a period of months), where's the time saving? you could just do all the copying in the data center, repack the drives and fly them to the east coast. This seems a lot more efficient than trying to do it in chunks of <72 minutes/day.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's insanely brilliant if you ask me. And on a site called Hacker News, mos people should agree!

</comment><comment><USER22> A fair number of bandwidth providers charge little or nothing for inbound datacenter traffic (it's not what they're constrained on), which makes services for which inbound traffic is high, like web crawling, very cost- effective. Google likely benefitted from this as well, though they're hardly the only ones.

</comment><comment><USER23> I completely believe this story, because I've done similar stuff. In 1998 I was working for a company that was using a lot more incoming bandwidth than outgoing bandwidth, which is the reverse of the usual pattern. So when we outgrew our data shack and had to move to a real data center, I badgered my sales guy into showing me the overall bandwidth usage charts for the proposed location.

Unsurprisingly, there was way more data flowing out of the facility than there was flowing in, so I talked him into a substantial discount on inbound traffic. "Hey, nothing else is using that half of the duplex..."

<comment><USER17> That's optimizing for mutual benefit. not the same as stuffing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've just made some corrections to the post. I was going off memory when I originally wrote it. After re-reading the relevant passage from the book again I've corrected the number of terabytes that Google needed to transmit - it was more like 9 TB. And they transmitted the whole lot over two nights in one month, not three nights. Sorry for the confusion.

It was on page 187-188 of Steven Levy's book "In the Plex" and the two people he's quoting are Urs Hölzle and Jim Reese, who were both involved in Google's infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER24> They had a lot of flexibility around when they used the bandwidth. I don't understand why they couldn't just negotiate a deal whereby they would only send data during times of low demand.

</comment><comment><USER25> I call BS. I'm supposed to believe that Google took months to do something that would take Fedex 2 days. I think Google is smarter than this.

<comment><USER2> If, by "10s" of terabytes, they mean at least 20 terabytes, then, in 2000, a "Large" hard drive was 20 Gigabytes. That comes to 1,000 Hard drives. If they had some sneaky way of getting onto a GigE connection, then perhaps this might have made sense...

<comment><USER26> They still had to purchase HDs at the other end. It's not like data just lives in ether. At some point it's got to be written to someone's spinning rust.

How is this any cheaper than copying the HDs, shipping to the Northeast and installing the HDs into waiting servers there?

<comment><USER2> The logistical challenge of swapping 1000+ drives into/out of a small number chassis, keeping track of what data you've copied, would have been painful (but not impossible if stretched over a week)

I think the key issues here would be was moving the data at all time sensitive (is a two month latency not a problem), and, did they really have a "free" 1 GigPort they could sneak under the 5% window with? If it really was free (or very, very cheap) - then maybe it would have been worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe I'm overly skeptical in my old age, but I have a difficult time believing this.

Surely there'd some sort of rental cost for the line in addition to the bandwidth cost (or perhaps a minimum spend commitment)? Wouldn't it have been cheaper, simpler and possibly quicker just to get a smaller line and saturate that?

Has anyone read the book? Does the author provide a credible source?

Smells like urban legend.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised to read this in the book, and even more surprised that it seemed no one had discussed it online yet either, as far as I could tell. Its on page 187 of the book. The author, Steven Levy's source for this story is Urs Hölzle who was the first VP of Engineering at Google. His title now is Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This kind of traffic optimization happens more frequently than you might think. Particularly among CDNs.

CDNs don't optimize solely for performance. They optimize for a balance of performance and cost. That means saturating a given 95/5 link for 5% of the month, and then mapping the traffic away right before it starts to get expensive.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand the "didn't use the connection at all outside that time, they should be able to get some free bandwidth." How or why would Google shut down a data center for that long just to pump some data across the lines? Wouldn't that mean down time? I don't get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The purpose of this data transfer was internal - transferring search index data between west and east coast - and they had a supplier contract just for this purpose.

<comment><USER29> Thank makes sense. Silly me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's common for internet providers who cap to run the 'capping' process in batches, so it's possible to get 'free' bandwidth by exploiting the time period (often up to 24 hours) between reaching your limit and when your provider caps you.

</comment><comment><USER31> So is it that the index didn't change that much in the months the transfer was happening? or the changes were cleverly isolated so they could be copied over last and the switch flipped immediately after?

</comment><comment><USER32> "a good deed never goes unpunished" (95% billing to prevent bursting megabills)

"don't be evil" (except for 3000 exceptions)

</comment><comment><USER33> why not save it on an SSD and fedex it over?

<comment><USER34> The first 3 words of the (short) article are "Back in 2000".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> _At the time, Google was not hugely profitable like today, and were very conscious of costs._

Meanwhile their hosting company was making a trillion in profit /s.

Google plays fast and loose with ethics and definitions, from (shall we call it) penalizing competitors and then releasing a clone to working with Visa and MasterCard ala Wikileaks to cut off the money [http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/02/google-wants-to-stave- pirac...](http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/02/google-wants-to-stave-piracy-sites- to-death/) to sites with "piracy sites." Their PR hasn't worked on me for a few years and there's even a boomerang thanks to it.</comment>


GitHub is down - <AUTHOR> http://github.com <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984775)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I didn't see that when I posted! Didn't mean to spam. (HN usually detects these at post time too, but I guess this didn't work for some reason.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984775).</comment>


Ask HN: When does one become a senior engineer - <AUTHOR> I often see my colleagues put something along the lines of "Senior Engineer" in their job title in LinkedIn etc. Some are working the same length of time as myself, 3 years as a software engineer, and in the same position as myself. I feel like this is misleading, what are people's opinions on this? And when do people think it is appropriate to call yourself a senior software engineer? <comment><USER2> Senior is always relative to the organization you're working in. Don't waste your time keeping up with the Joneses. Just worry about the best version of yourself you can possibly be.

</comment><comment><USER3> When both you and others around you agree on your seniority.

For you it usually happens when you start seeing fresh engineers around you going through issues you've past beyond long time ago. For others, when you start helping them with those same issues.</comment>


BCI2000 Software Lets Your Mind Control Computers - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/02/bci2000-lets-your-mind-control-computers/

<comment><USER2> Of course, to do that you'll need some way to get EEG data out of your head. You could get an Easy Cap (scary website: <http://www.easycap.de/easycap/e/products/products.htm#15> and <http://www.easycap.de/easycap/e/prices/price_list.htm> because Europeans alike to put the price on a different page from the product info) or go to eCrater: <http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4734120> ...where you can also buy a neurofeedback-enabled teddy bear to clutch during compile cycles (for real): <http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4733183>

Unsurprisngly, decommissioned systems are quite cheap on eBay.

Emotiv <http://www.emotiv.com/developers.html> offer a similar (14 electrode) device for $299, but only with a simplified SDK. If you want the full data you will pay more. Much more. Discussion of this, with issues familiar to many on HN: [http://www.emotiv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7](http://www.emotiv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7) I'm not sure why the fuss, given that you can get a lot of other EEG stuff for much less than you might imagine, but the Emotiv product does look good and suitably modern compared to the traditional caps.

I don't like the BCI2000 website much, but here's the list of compatible hardware: <http://www.bci2000.org/BCI2000/Features_Hardware.html> software & sources is apparently free on registration. Windows only for now, Linux and Mac coming soon.

...man, sometime I wish we could mrkup HN posts like on Metafilter...oh well, enjoy!</comment>


Atmospheric Electricity Powers Small Motor [video] - <AUTHOR> http://laserhacker.com/?p=332

<comment><USER2> At one point he refers to someone claiming 300W off of a 2 meter antenna. It seems too good to be true; that'd be free cheap power no one would pass up. It also sounds like something you'd be accidentally picking up all over the place with anything conductive whether you wanted it or not. Has anyone tried this? I find his demo of a tiny, barely moving engine and a 100ft wire much more realistic.

</comment><comment><USER3> I bet it's not the "Atmospheric" power but comes from RF. Same principle of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio)

<comment><USER4> I tried to reed the references, but I couldn't find a complete description of the motor he is using.

The crystal radios have a diode. Does the device have a diode? Does it work without the diode? Does it work if the diode is reversed? (The black thing in the right side of the motor looks like a diode, but I couldn't distinguish the cathode bar mark.)

I'm not sure, but if this were based in atmospheric electricity, this should work even without a diode and don't work if the diode is reversed. If this were based in RF, this shouldn't work without a diode, but it shod work with the diode in the other direction.</comment></comment>


Face tracking on iOS without the user knowing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KrauseFx/watch.user <comment><USER2> That's stupid</comment>


Best of Hacker News in April - <AUTHOR> https://www.dotdotdot.me/Dan-Radliff/Best-of-Hacker-News-in-April-2013

<comment><USER2> Very pleasant looking. But you should have at least a HN link to each of the items so I can read HN's comments

</comment><comment><USER3> Not too much technical articles there, but still impressive what the output of HN over a month is. Perfect reader for the weekend.</comment>


Amazon's new text message shopping--from a brick and mortar, conveniently comparison shop by UPC - <AUTHOR> http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/A/AMAZON_TEXT_MESSAGE_SHOPPING?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

<comment><USER2> Is this based on TextPayMe, the YC company purchased by amazon?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the next logical step for this would be to have the software recognize bar codes such that you could simply use your camera's phone to scan the code, rather than having to type in the UPC.

<comment><USER4> QR codes might work better for low-res cellphone cameras. I have a QR reader (<http://reader.kaywa.com/>) on my phone and it works pretty well, even with only .3 megapixels. I never use it though, since QR codes don't seem to have much uptake (yet?) in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> this could really take off if it remembered my billing info and phone# and brought their '1-click' tech mobile, so that I didnt have to go through the data entry process each time I want to buy stuff

<comment><USER5> nevermind, awesome ! !

From the FAQ:

How does Amazon TextBuyIt know where to ship my item and how I want to pay for my order?

        Amazon TextBuyIt uses your mobile phone number to find your Amazon.com 1-Click default settings for the shipping address and payment method when processing your order. You can manage your 1-Click default settings by going to Your Account on Amazon.com. You can use TextBuyIt regardless of whether you use 1-Click.</comment></comment>