How to terminate your worst enemy's Dropbox account for only $795 - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1KVhGQSYE5B4dF6aNLc0hxYW0qeEVFSR8gx4pJUt4DYE <comment><USER2> Hey guys - Dropbox product manager here,

tl;dr: The scenario described by the OP is now less likely to occur. Since October, individual Dropbox users are encouraged to create separate accounts when invited to a Team and warned that Teams admins will have control over the account.

We want individual and Team Dropbox users to have the best possible experience. Some users want to migrate their personal accounts into a Team. Others are much happier with separate personal and Teams accounts. We've been working to make that choice much clearer for the account holder and the Teams admin.

If users do choose to merge their personal account with a Team, things become a bit tricky. Teams admins want better control of data within a Team, and users want easy access to their personal stuff, but it's not possible for us to differentiate between Team data and personal stuff in the same account.

Here are some thoughts on the points raised by the OP:

* Better support for multiple accounts: Users can quickly switch between using personal and Teams accounts on the web today and we intend to make this better across our platforms.

* Improved messaging to Teams admins: We plan to provide better messaging to admins before disabling an account that was migrated in.

* Disabled accounts are not immediately deleted: We can work with Teams admins and users to sort out account issues and recover users' files.

We've contacted the OP to help resolve his case and are sorry for any pain this caused!

<comment><USER3> > Teams admins want better control of data within a Team

Some admins do I'm sure. We had to cancel Teams because of this. :(

Let me explain: most people at Steamclock sync personal stuff in their Dropbox, and we want to also share a large folder. Upgrading everybody to Teams seemed like a good idea, but the "company owns what's in your dropbox" thinking forced everybody to have two separate accounts, and the "only one account can sync to your computer at once" restriction makes one of your two Dropbox accounts fairly useless.

We can only go back to Teams is when multiple accounts can sync to one computer seamlessly. All the problems around DB for Teams (privacy and TOS issues, personal and company data getting mixed up, weird consequences when people leave the plan) are caused by the lack of multiple account sync.

That said, we'd be happy to just pay monthly for a shared folder that doesn't count against users' storage limits. In the meantime, we have the company Visa on a bunch of personal Dropbox accounts which sucks.

For personal use though Dropbox is great. Merry Chrismas!

<comment><USER4> I'm considering Google Drive for company filesharing. I've always found shared folders on Dropbox are pretty awkward. Hopefully GD will be a bit easier, but only time will tell. The one thing I can be sure of is it won't need to interfere with peoples personal Dropbox accounts.

<comment><USER5> I've found that shared folders mostly just don't work - others can't see the files I put in there - or at least most of them. I don't know what else I could do. (If I share one file with a direct email link generation, that works, so the files certainly are there.)

Maybe I ran into some undocumented antipiracy feature as they were self made AVCHD videos of a few minutes length.

Google drive on the other hand just works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another Dropbox horror story: My colleague lost most of his Dropbox folder last week, and wasn't able to recover everything.

What happened: he had Dropbox synced to 2 computers, but one of them hadn't been used in a while. He turned on the old computer, and apparently, for some reason, Dropbox decided that the fact that many files weren't there was because they were deleted. Of course, the files weren't there because they hadn't been synced yet!

So Dropbox decided, when the old computer was turned on, to delete 10s of thousands of files that were in my colleague's account.

He reached out to them to help restore. It took several days (this happened on a weekend), but they did eventually restore it. Unfortunately, since it was difficult for them to pinpoint exactly what was the start of the event, some files were not recovered (I'm not sure the exact reason this was difficult to do).

I love Dropbox [1], but this was a serious blow to how much I trust them with my files.

[1] Just look at my comment history to see - I've raved about them several times on HN.

<comment><USER7> Down-voted because I think that it is just dumb to have a Dropbox account and forgo local backup of the files on the service. Dropbox is not an extension of your mission-critical local storage and backup.

My approach for Dropbox on both Windows and OSX is to have the Dropbox folder on a drive that will never see development work, even if that means creating a separate partition for it. In most cases the system drive works fine (you do have separate system and data drives on your machines, right?).

This forces a COPY operation rather than a file MOVE if you drag-and-drop files into any Dropbox folder. Which means that everything in the Dropbox folder could be trashed tomorrow and nothing whatsoever would be lost.

On Windows you can also do this by dragging files while holding down the RMB and on OSX while holding down the Option key. This, however, is fraught with issues because it is easy to forget and move something in or out of Dropbox accidentally.

In addition to that, daily system and data backups to external media on EVERY SYSTEM in the office ensures that even if you took a sledge-hammer to any given machine all the data could be recovered to within a 24 hour boundary.

So, no, this is NOT a "Dropbox horror story" as far as I am concerned. At best this is an unfortunate "pilot error" and at worst this is a sign of incompetence.

Sorry, a little harsh there, but, as a student, I lost six months of heavy coding work once in college. That really hurt. And that was probably the best time and place to learn that lesson. That is all it took for me to be completely insane about having backups of backups on anything important. Now, may years later, you will not find any critical system in my office that is not backed-up at least once and usually twice.

These days there's almost no excuse for loosing your work. Don't go around blaming Dropbox, not their problem.

I am not associated with Dropbox in any way other than being just another user.

FEATURE REQUEST: It would be very nice if Dropbox client software could have an option to auto-magically COPY files in and out of Dropbox rather than allowing any files to be moved. The above-mentioned hack works fine but it'd be nice to not have to use it. Also, I'd venture to guess that most Dropbox users don't do this, which opens them to unintended loss.

<comment><USER8> >At best this is an unfortunate "pilot error"

It is in no way "pilot error". If the post you replied to is correct, the dropbox software performed an action it should never perform - deleting files the user did not tell the OS to delete. What's more, every dropbox plan I'm aware of keeps deleted files for 30 days, so if it wasn't possible to recover some of the files, dropbox failed not once but twice.

It's all very well blaming the user for not having multiple redundant backups, but that doesn't change the fact that deleting user data without explicitly being told to do so is one of the most egregious sins software can commit. It's not "pilot error" when the software performs an action that should never occur.

<comment><USER7> The "pilot error" is in not testing the solution before trusting it and in making an assumption that the data would be safe in an untested external system.

Let me put it into a financial context. I did a project that added up to some $800K in cost. Two developers over about a year. Do you think that for even a microsecond I would trust Dropbox as a backup mechanism without extensive qualification and testing? And, would I have that as my sole approach to backup?

Nope.

And this isn't me coming down on Dropbox or suggesting that they are unreliable. I use Dropbox and I am very happy with the service. However, based on experience gotten the hard way, I do not use it for anything that is mission critical. The important stuff is backed-up locally, sometimes with redundant backups.

I don't have any sympathy for an engineer who uses a service and relies on it without the proper testing and qualification phase. Behaving that way is most- definitely, as I said, to be kind, "pilot error".

It is completely unfair to blame Dropbox for anything. This is like the idea of cutting-and-pasting code from the Internet and trusting it with a mission- critical aspect of your application without dissecting the code, testing it and fully qualifying it for what it is you need it to do.

There are tons of examples of this behavior, perhaps the most common one in the web development community is email validity verification. How many careless developers copy a regex like this to validate their email and don't think twice about it:

        ^[a-zA-Z0-9_.+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+\.[a-zA-Z0-9-.]+$

These things are all over the web. And most of them suck. Even some of the most impressive ones will lead you astray.

How many engineers (and, as a result, websites) fail to test and research and end-up with questionable solutions?

Would you blame the regex writer for this or the engineer who chose to use it without doing any testing at all?

It doesn't matter what the regex author claims or how authoritative the website featuring the regex might be, you have to test it before deploying it! If you don't test, deploy and then loose customers because it is a bad regex it is YOUR fault, not the author's. Blaming them is nonsensical.

In case you are curious, here's "the" solution: <http://isemail.info/about>

Not only is it well documented, the author offers test vectors and all of the relevant code and references so that you can take the time to qualify the solution.

So, yes, to be redundant, if an engineer does not do his job I am perfectly happy calling it "pilot error" and even going as far as calling it "incompetence".

<comment><USER9> I'm bummed out that so many people down-voted you when you put so much effort into your post. I think you inadvertently brought out the shitty, immature side of the HN crowd. :)

<comment><USER10> He put in a huge amount of effort to derail the discussion. Pretend that where it says "wasn't able to recover everything" the post said "wasn't able to recover everything from Dropbox, and had to resort to getting external backups mailed to him". Same terrible problem on Dropbox's end, suddenly no need to waste pages arguing about 'responsibility'.

He brought out the part of the HN crowd that wants things to be on-topic and/or useful instead of user-blaming. :)

<comment><USER7> > He brought out the part of the HN crowd that wants things to be on-topic > and/or useful instead of user-blaming

Right. You didn't obviously read my comments, did you? Maybe you just skimmed them and chose to jump on the band-wagon?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4963826>

I'll quote the most relevant and definitely constructive/useful parts here you don't have to bother with the links if you don't want to. If you do, please slow down and read it all. Then think about the idea of loosing, I don't know, a year's worth of work and blaming someone else for it.

Here it is (reformatted because HN does not have a much-needed block-quote markup):

        My approach for Dropbox on both Windows and OSX is to have the
        Dropbox folder on a drive that will never see development work,
        even if that means creating a separate partition for it.

        In most cases the system drive works fine (you do have separate
        system and data drives on your machines, right?).

        This forces a COPY operation rather than a file MOVE if you
        drag-and-drop files into any Dropbox folder. Which means that
        everything in the Dropbox folder could be trashed tomorrow and
        nothing whatsoever would be lost.

Do this TODAY and unless you have massive local loss of data you don't have to worry about Dropbox loosing any of your data at all. Not one bit. If that isn't constructive I don't know what it.

Then I also said:

        FEATURE REQUEST: It would be very nice if Dropbox client software
        could have an option to auto-magically COPY files in and out of
        Dropbox rather than allowing any files to be moved.

        The above-mentioned hack works fine but it'd be nice to not have to
        use it. Also, I'd venture to guess that most Dropbox users don't do
        this, which opens them to unintended loss.

In other words, if Dropbox could implement the suggested approach EVERYONE, engineer or not, would be spared of total data loss due to something going on at Dropbox. Local data loss, of course, is still your responsibility.

And then, trying to understand further, I asked this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4963768>

So, I'll say that overall I've been pretty constructive. If anyone adopts my approach of storing their Dropbox folder in an unused drive they are almost guaranteed that Dropbox can't loose their data. That is worth money.

Please point me to a link or blog post with your immediate solutions to this problem. I'd love to compare notes. Maybe there's a better approach. Always interested in learning. I am sure there are lots of people who, tonight, might be interested in adopting your approach to ensuring that accidental data loss by a remote service of any kind does not mean total data loss locally.

Thanks.

<comment><USER10> I read your posts. The constructive parts are minor compared to the derail, and you easily could have avoided the enormous argument. Also, do you really see no downside to the fact that you have basically reimplemented manual sync on top of dropbox? It throws out most of Dropbox's safety features just because they aren't perfect, and throws out half the ease of use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Intermingling personal and work accounts is almost always a bad idea. I've seen colleagues get their personal accounts subpoenaed, have a firing result in loss of primary email/cell, or have really awkward communications show up in an IT audit.

The overhead of maintaining separate accounts is very small (multi-profile browser, multi-account smartphone, etc.), and more than worth it given the liabilities. Beyond that, I think it's just a lot healthier to know where the boundaries between your work and personal life are.

<comment><USER12> The overhead of maintaining separate Dropbox accounts is pretty high IMO. There's no easy way to switch between accounts on the desktop client, an I'm pretty sure there's no way to be logged in to multiple accounts.

<comment><USER13> At this point, might as well use a competitor. Then you can have 2 different clients installed.

<comment><USER14> very good point. Have to add I run both Google Drive (larger box, 5gb for free, for personal stuff) and Drop for shared stuff never seen them "competing" in any way.

Another thought is that on personal Google account I only keep couple TrueCrypt containers, based on size and open read/write close them any time I need the access. This is necessary because once you unount TC container, entire file is affected so it needs to be shipped back to the cloud. I have couple 50MB ones, some 100MB and some 1GB ones. I know its not the convienent way to access your files, but I dont want Google (or drop box) to have open access to my files.

<comment><USER15> If you're going to that much trouble, you might want to look into Tahoe-LAFS: <https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Had the exact same situation last year. Was interning at a startup for a couple of weeks. I joined their Team-DropBox and some time after leaving the startup, they (logically) revoked my access without either of us knowing what it would result in.

After an email back and forth with both the DropBox-Team-support and the startup, I got my account back in the exact same state as it was in, when my account got revoked. I still had all of the startups stuff but it no longer synced. As I was many GB over the limit of my free DropBox-account I deleted all the files belonging to the startup (which of course is the right thing to do).

I'm glad this is getting some attention, because it is clearly not working very well as it is right now. Hopefully DropBox will make the user experience better.

</comment><comment><USER17> This seems like an issue best resolved through Dropbox support, not through HN Soapbox support.

Edit: My main point is that I come here to read Hacker News, not Some Other Guy's Support Problems. Treating every dropped use case as a public relations crisis is just an exercise in getting yourself worked up for no reason. If this is a _real_ issue that affects _multiple, real_ users, then I'm sure Dropbox will do something about it. For now, I think it's reasonable to treat it as an oversight until we have a response from Dropbox or more information. Unless, of course, you're the type of person that just likes to get pissed off at companies. In that case, I should probably find another community to read "hacker news".

<comment><USER18> Actually, I prefer this be resolved in the public arena, rather than on a case-by-case basis for everyone who encounters this problem. If the OP is accurate, then this is a problematic implementation detail that every corporate user should be aware of.

<comment><USER17> I give some leeway for problems that seem to be bugs rather than intentional features. I doubt Dropbox intended for your account to be deleted in this scenario.

<comment><USER19> You should probably read the article before speculating. It's not even that long. He says:

 _"In case you're wondering, this is not a bug: it appears to be documented (sort of)."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If I were Dropbox, and designing this feature, I'd have created two folders inside the master Dropbox folder. "Personal" and "Teams" then inside the "Teams" folder, I'd have created a folder for each team a person is invited to join. I realize that structure wasn't in-place when Dropbox was first created, complicating the matter - but it seems like it would have provided the cleanest way to delineate what files and access would be revoked when a user is removed from a team.

<comment><USER21> Yes. Hopefully someone from the team reads this and forwards it onward with the subject header: "Implement this now [blocker]"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dropbox does one thing and does one thing well. They've worked really hard to keep feature creep to a minimum. Dropbox for teams is a feature that adds so much over and beyond the initial KISS offering that the cracks in the 'just one folder' model are beginning to show. Ideally you'd have two or more folders marked as dropbox folders where you could associate each individual folder with the team or not at will.

Now your only real solution from what I can see is to create multiple accounts, if you don't want to give the team administrator the chance to nuke your account if he/she feels like it. Warnings about the possible consequences do not really solve the underlying issue and having the original team leader have a say in the unblocking of your account doesn't help at all.

This is a feature that will need some serious work and breaks the simple dropbox model that has gotten dropbox to where it is today.

<comment><USER23> Not just that, but cleaning up (er, creating) multi-sign-on support. We've fortunately decided to only use our company domain emails for Dropbox for Teams, but because I can only be logged in to one Dropbox account at a time, it prevents me from using my personal account on my work computer. Some may argue that's a good thing, but I don't particularly care about that clean personal/work separation[1] for the stuff in my personal Dropbox account.

Arguably by putting the "for teams" content in a completely isolated directory it solves the need for being able to sign in to multiple accounts at once[2], but there's still going to be some weirdness if my personal account is added as a team member of a work directory, since then you'd either start getting work stuff on personal machines or have to do per-device authorization which will be a nightmare for team administrators of even a dozen or so people.

The whole thing gets really nasty when you realize that DBFT adds something like 50-100GB/member. I don't need giant photoshop files from our marketing or design teams eating up all the free space on my tiny little Macbook Air. My dropbox status window says I have over 3TB free (yes, terabytes); by default, I have to micromanage selective folder syncing to prevent my hard drive from being immediately filled after signing in. There seems to be a little disconnect between "team" and "company" in how this is used, unlike say Github where it's just people in a relatively ad-hoc group.

[1] I don't go the other way (work files on a personal machine) however. It would create numerous liabilities in terms of file security and IP ownership, among other areas. Except for my iPhone, I won't even open work email on any of my personal devices. There's just too much potentially-sensitive material, and I don't care for the inconvenience of heavily locking down my personal machines to deal with that when they don't really have anything important.

[2] and avoids the possible problem of people signing up under multiple email addresses for free space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I had an identical experience. I submitted a flurry of customer service tickets without a response. I was damn near ready to walk down to their office since they don't provide any type 1-800 number.

Finally, I got a response from a customer support rep named Todd who explained to me that my account had been deleted when I was removed from the Team. Fortunately, he was able to restore my account and I weaseled an extra 5GB of month for the trouble.

Quite the scare.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am repeating a portion of one of my comments here because I think it could be very useful to many Dropbox users. If you implement this tonight you will, effectively, isolate your local data from Dropbox and any accidental loss at Dropbox will not result in total loss locally. Of course, you are responsible for local backups. If this gets up-voted to the top of the thread it might just help a lot of people avoid accidental loss of valuable data.

My approach for Dropbox on both Windows and OSX is to have the Dropbox folder on a dedicated drive partition. If that is not possible, you can use a drive that will never see development work or any data that will need to be shared via Dropbox (business data, kid's pictures, etc.).

This forces a FILE COPY operation rather than a FILE MOVE operation when you drag-and-drop files into any Dropbox folder. Which, in turn, means that everything in Dropbox could be trashed tomorrow and nothing whatsoever would be lost locally.

For years I have gotten in the habit of having at least two physical drives on every machine: System and Data. If I don't want to create a dedicated Dropbox partition I can usually place my Dropbox folder in the System drive and this will trigger copy-on-drag-and-drop whenever dragging files in from the Data drive.

If you don't have separate physical System and Data drives (highly recommended) you can split a single drive into System and Data partitions or simply split-off a Dropbox partition in order to achieve the same results.

        DROPBOX FEATURE REQUEST:
        It would be very nice if the Dropbox client software could have
        an option to auto-magically COPY files in and out of Dropbox
        rather than allowing any files to be moved.

</comment><comment><USER25> We had this happen over the summer to someone that left and were removed from the team. It was resolved by contacting Dropbox support, so I'm not sure why you've not had luck with that but then it is the holiday period. Dropbox's recent changes to how Teams Admins can manage connected accounts (which in my opinion are a bit excessive) might help with this process. Their ToS explains these changes but an email they sent round in October explains it better: [https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/39bd6ae2-a0b6-41a9-87a4...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/39bd6ae2-a0b6-41a9-87a4-621c9edf9f90/391970b0b9683207a786f3e2f8c1afea)

</comment><comment><USER26> Paging Google and Microsoft. Now's as good a time as any to promote your cloud storage services and help a guy out.

<comment><USER27> This very reason is actually why my company is migrating to Box. No one I work with is the type to jump ship on a company just for one feature, but this is a major liability. I'll still keep DB for my personal use, but my company had ~30 TB of Dropbox storage at the time.

Our account is a blip on their revenue radar, but if Dropbox wants to become a a truly monumental company, they'll need to do something to fix this. Being small business friendly isn't the same as "Enterprise friendly," but Dropbox is neither at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So when joining a startup (or anything else) that uses Dropbox for Teams, you make a new account just for that project? Perhaps startups (and other entities) that require dropbox membership might make that suggestion?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think making a new account just for your Teams access is very convenient. The desktop application is only associated with 1 account at a time.

So (until Dropbox changes something) there does not seem to be a good solution to your question.

<comment><USER29> Have your startup get you a separate computer. Not mixing work and personal life extends to not doing work development on your personal machine or vice versa.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's good personal advice - but it's not really a solution to the problem for everyone.

<comment><USER11> It's really the only solution if you want to maintain some degree of personal privacy, and don't want to incur all your employer's liability on your personal account (and vice versa).

<comment><USER30> That's largely going to depend on where you live and the laws of that place. Remember, it's a worldwide market these days!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can imagine why it is so hard to roll back to your old account once you leave a team. It might be best for companies to advise their employees to create separate dropbox account before joining a team.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's hard it's due to bad design. It could've been possible.

<comment><USER32> Bad design most likely. Looking more carefully at the link in the initial email they sent you: 'confirm_migrate?'. This almost gives it away.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't even notice that until now, and definitely not when I originally clicked the link :)

<comment><USER32> I feel for you. Internet hugs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This should be better communicated when upgrading your account to join a team. Individuals place a lot of blind trust in cloud providers with their life's data.

This would be completely unacceptable, ever to risk my data in any way and I'm a little surprised Dropbox doesn't realize they don't have a business without trust that their data will always be ok.

</comment><comment><USER34> I had the exact same issues as the OP (interned at a startup and used personal Dropbox account for Dropbox for teams), but I was aware of the potential issue upon leaving the Dropbox for Teams account and emailed Dropbox support and everything worked out fine.

</comment><comment><USER35> I am amazed -- but not surprised -- that you would role out the "Team" feature without thinking through -- and solving -- such scenarios.

It seems to be a small minority of people who really do so. And often, they are ignored or even berated, and "slow-tracked", until the shit hits the fan.

If the account is accurate, I have no sympathy for Dropbox on this. This was entirely predictable, and any amount of effective due diligence would have mitigated it.

P.S. Of course, it also goes to say to the "victim": Dropbox is _synchronization_ , not _back-up_. You need to back your shit up to a medium over which _you_ have control. (Said control including taking it off-line where no online activity can affect it.)

</comment><comment><USER36> I've actually been through this twice now (its currently disabled from leaving the second company's Team account, I should have known better but I thought they would have "fixed" the issue by now). First time around they just needed my the guy at my last company to approve it being re-enabled (not sure why)... and waiting for that whole flow to start up again for this second time. I should have known better this time :( I really just don't get the reasoning behind the feature being implemented this way. I would imagine Dropbox would want to discourage signing up for multiple accounts just cause ones personal and one's work.

<comment><USER37> I guess its because by joining a Team you're being inducted into an "organisation" and then have access to all their private data. It'd be no good if every time somebody left a Team (say a freelancer) they take a copy of the organisations data with them. I'd imagine a Team account's data is encrypted too, so there's no way to decrypt it without an account that authenticates as a member of said Team ...

<comment><USER36> Doesn't really work that way though cause I could just copy everything outside of my dropbox account on my personal machine. What I had expected to happen is all the Team priv's like a bigger size limit to be removed (I already had 50gigs before though.. curious if I'll get that back or have to repay) and the shared folders to magically disappear from along side all my personal folders. It really wasn't a huge deal this time around as I learned now to store all my password files and stuff through DB anymore as that boned me pretty hard the last time around.

<comment><USER37> Agreed, point taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> At the risk of stating the obvious, that invitation email ought to be a bit more informative. Maybe, there ought to be an option to create a new account for use with that team.

<comment><USER13> What's sad is that the Dropbox desktop client doesn't support multiple accounts easily, so then you might as well use a different service, so you can have 2 clients installed that sync automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If it's not possible to un-entangle accounts, then Dropbox needs to support being logged in to several accounts, much like Google does.

Also, to not delete user's data.

<comment><USER40> I assume this would work against their model of giving away limited free space. With multiple account access, a user could sign up with multiple email addresses and essentially get unlimited storage for free.

<comment><USER41> That's trivial to solve. Only allow a single free account to be signed into. Multiple accounts are required to be team accounts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd be really surprised if Dropbox didn't have a way to revert this (and to punish the Dropbox for Teams account creator, if identifiable).

<comment><USER43> Revert this how?

Ann has an individual account. She joins a team. She leaves the team, and Bob (the team account owner) revokes her access. Dropbox deletes all her accounts.

What can dropbox do here; set Ann back as a member of that team? Bob (paying a lot of money) is not happy with that.

<comment> john-n No, they just have to remove anns access to any team based information, same as she was prior to joining?

<comment><USER11> How do you do that? Once she joins the team, you have no way of knowing if something Ann created or modified belongs to the team or to her. This is the classic problem with "taint checking." Once you mix data across boundaries you have to assume it's tainted. I agree it's a crappy situation, but I can't see what Dropbox should change, other than make it very clear how this feature works to future customers. As a one-time thing, they could maybe get a PR win by helping this guy recover his data (if possible). However, that's not scalable, or a precedent they'd want to continue forward.

<comment><USER44> They can clearly delineate between team and personal accounts, force team storage to certain directories, and/or not allow users to manage team/personal accounts with the same login.

<comment><USER11> I was specifically responding to the previous comment, to explain why Dropbox can't simply revoke access to team storage files at this point (because they can't guarantee what constitutes team data). However, I'm in agreement with you that Dropbox could introduce new features to prevent this situation from happening in the first place, and had already noted as much in a different comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Lesson here is that the best practice for a backup system is to make it so that two (or more) different entities need to screw it up at the same time for you to lose data. Because entities do screw it up.

Note, the hardest part, here? is that you are one of the entities. It's very hard to design a system where a hostile entity compromising owner credentials can't lead to data loss.

Best I could think of would be a service that keeps your data available in read only mode for a certain period of time (for which you pre-pay) - but I don't know of anyone offering such a service.

I suppose a stack of blue-rays in a safety deposit box would come dang close; I mean, sure if /all/ of your credentials were compromised you are still screwed, but if they can impersonate you in person at the bank... well, that's a worse compromise than most people plan for.

</comment><comment><USER32> I strongly recommend CrashPlan for backups. They may not be marketing aggressively like Dropbox, nor will you find them mentioned N times a day on HN/similar venues, but they provide a damn good product/service.

You will not have such issues with them.

<comment><USER46> Syncing and backups solve different problems, and Crashplan is not an alternative to Dropbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Haven't seen it mentioned here; but I am in the process of switching to Cubby from DropBox. It's new. Seeing as how DropBox's most requested features are mostly ignored on their "VoteBox" part of their site, I noticed disgruntled users on said site suggesting Cubby.

Sync any folder, security keys, don't have to use the cloud, better data retention, more space, better desktop app, more features in general.

<https://www.cubby.com/>

Yeah, almost seems too good to be true. If anyone uses it perhaps they can share some downsides.

</comment><comment><USER48> Local mirrored copies of all files on separate hard drive. Bank safety deposit box with bluray discs of files for long-term storage, things that rarely change (my photography work alone is several TBs). Rapidshare (using 3TB right now for the same $8 a month, I accept it's not the most reliable place if a Megaupload situation ever happened). Skydrive for my important documents and programming work. Small program I wrote makes the Rapidshare/Skydrive backups incremental and encrypted on a regular schedule.

</comment><comment><USER49> Had this happened to me a while back. They don't completely "delete" your stuff, just disable access to it. After contact support and the admin of the account, everything is sugar again.

</comment><comment><USER50> As a dropbox team admin for my company, I recently removed a member from the team. It explains in bright red writing (from memory) that it will remove the members entire dropbox account.

I remember, because I contacted the team member, and got him to back everything up before I procceded.

I then contacted Dropbox support, to explain how stupid this was...

My point is, that admin should have some accountability, ignoring big red writing is usually a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is why I never trust services like Dropbox. It's painful to maintain backups manually but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that the only points of failure are within my control

EDIT: because I realize its not completely obvious, I keep multiple backups with my own servers sitting in different data centers. I don't see how you could trust any external service to store data.

<comment><USER52> Are the backups local? You can't prevent against a flood, fire, or theft. Are the backups off-site? You can't protect against a company going bankrupt, somebody cutting the wrong wire, or your ISP farting.

Backups should be both local and off-site. Which is what Dropbox provides, actually.

<comment><USER51> I have four backups, one of which is local on a hard drive in my office, one on tapes at my house, and two sitting in drives in separate data centers. And yes driving to the data centers is a pain :/

Regardless of the level of replication it provides, it lulls you into a false sense of security (which is probably just as bad as not having backups in the first place)

<comment><USER52> That's interesting. Just random data centers you're renting space from, or are you employed there? If the former, I didn't realize you could just hand off a hard drive and be on your way.

<comment><USER51> My main business is in finance, so I rent data center space primarily in chicago, nyc area (mostly north jersey), virginia and los angeles. The minimum lease is 4RU, but I end up using a 1U server and a 1U 10/40GbE switch (the switch takes up half the depth, so i stick an ethernet router behind it), leaving 2U unused.

I had a failure once (on an iMac with a seagate 1TB hard drive that was later recalled) but since I had a local backup I didn't lose anything.

I started exploring solutions and realized that, since I had space, I could spend a few grand and get a barebones server with a few hard drives and stick it in space I'm already paying for.

This turns out to be really convenient, especially since technicians at the data center can do basic maintenance work (like hot-swapping drives) for you at a reasonable rate (generally 100-200/hr, billable in 15 minute increments; you ship them the drive and they do their magic).

In terms of absolute cost (not counting cost synergies due to leveraging the business space), each 4U lease runs from 100-500/mo with 10Mb internet (which is not bad for backing up small amounts of data; for larger amounts, shipping drives or just driving back and forth is faster and easier). Yes, dropbox is dramatically cheaper, but this way I have much more control over what's going on.

<comment><USER52> Sounds like a good setup. Thanks for the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> almost $800 to slightly inconvience them isn't worth it, now if it deleted every single file of theirs then I have a few people I would do this to!

It does seem silly that they can't simply remove you from a team without deleting your account, I can't think of anything that would stop them from being able to do that other than not having the time or motivation to implement the feature.

</comment><comment><USER54> Who joins a team account from your worst enemy?

</comment><comment><USER55> I've run into this problem as well, for me the easiest solution was to run Skydrive for personal and Dropbox teams for work.

</comment><comment><USER56> I find it outrageous that it takes a story to go public and hit HN for Dropbox support to start doing their job! And so is the pattern for many companies that grow beyond a certain threshold of celebrity. This is a sure indication for me not to trust the company.

</comment><comment><USER14> I dont get it why someone would use Dropbox in the first place? Google Drive is out for a long enough and it never failed for me; it gives 150% more capacity for free (5gb) and its made by folks @ Google (hello?). Just don't see any reason why to use Dropbox...

<comment><USER57> Google has a longstanding history of severe corporate ADHD. I think a given startup's odds of long-term survival are better than the odds of a similar non-cord initiative surviving equally long inside Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why has dropbox not considered a github style context changing feature till now. I am surprised.

</comment><comment><USER59> Don't worry... Guido will fix everything next month ;-)

</comment><comment><USER60> This happened to me, too. Same situation. They were able to fix it after some discussion, but it was pretty crazy that it's set up this way.

</comment><comment><USER61> Would you also be able to get all of your enemies files? or would your enemy have to share all his folders with the team?

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I know you can't get anyone's files if they don't explicitly share them (or put them in the Public or team folder).

<comment><AUTHOR> Correction: It appears I'm wrong and you're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Is it possible to see what clients use this service like you can with other services (dropbox.com/company or whatever)

</comment><comment><USER63> Haha, great read. Still love Dropbox though. Great and fast responses, way to go Dropbox. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER64> Yoni - what's your Twitter handle? Interested to see first hand what Dropbox responded.

</comment><comment><USER65> Mirror? Getting a Google Drive error: "The app is currently unreachable."

<comment><USER66> <http://pastebin.com/bRBkXCGG>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> WOAH! This might be happening to me in about two weeks!

<comment><USER68> Come up with a battle plan and share it with HN if it works, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Yoni - what's your twitter handle?

</comment><comment><USER69> If it's not in their TOS (and the FAQ linked to wouldn't count) then you have a great case of willful negligence against both Dropbox and your previous employer. I'd take it to small claims court and sue them for the time and money you spent trying to recover your account.</comment>


Vaccines work. Period. - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vaccines-work-period/

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing that I liked about this article, from the point of view of hacker interests, almost as much as the article's headline conclusion is how the dataset was gathered and compiled to do the study. I especially like that the researchers have open-sourced the data set and built procedures so that other researchers can improve the data set over time. This is the twenty-first- century approach to science: broad international collaboration, and lots of data-sharing.</comment>


Laid Off ISO vs. NSO Options - <AUTHOR> Hey all,
I was recently laid off from DataRobot.  Womp womp.
Anyways, they gave me the option to extend all my ISOs excercise date for a year, but to do so they will be converted into NSOs.
Is the tax benefit really worth that much more that I should exercise them now?  Could I potentially be missing something else? <comment><USER2> It depends on the spread between your exercise price and the fair market value, and if you own enough to trigger AMT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm I suppose I should figure out the fair market value! (Is this even possible if they are private?). Thanks for the heads up.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the company should be getting a regular 409A valuation. They should be willing to share this with you when you exercise shares.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Proxy JavaScript APIs through nginx? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I have an issue with my site in that I need to be able to maintain anonymity for users. I also use 3rd party APIs such as the Google Maps API - this means that a user's browser directly communicates with Google for map queries.
Simply put, is there a way I can use nginx (or Flask/WSGI) to "proxy" the request, so that the script points to my server, then my server gets the 3rd party script, then passes the results back to the client (thus removing the direct interaction with Google's servers)?
Thanks <comment><USER2> You might consider stackoverflow.com or superuser.com for technically oriented Q&A like this.</comment>


Show HN: Efficiently - shareable online outlines/tasks - <AUTHOR> https://eff.iciently.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I realize there are other entries in this space, but here is mine. Just launched with credit card payments for non-free accounts</comment>


Scientists identify a new kind of human brain cell - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-08-scientists-kind-human-brain-cell.html <comment><AUTHOR> But we're really really close to being able to simulate a brain. Honest. /s

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paper here: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0205-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-018-0205-2)</comment>


Show HN: Find ways to help your community as we grapple with Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://pandemicsupport.info <comment><AUTHOR> As our communities grapple with the impacts of COVID-19, various organizations have sprung up to provide assistance. I wanted to gather together a quick list of local organizations that need help so that those of us that are looking to provide support can do so easily. Additionally, I was struggling to find ways to support local businesses -- donation links, gift card purchase links etc.

All of the information is sorted by proximity to you. Currently it's mostly focused on the Boston area (since that's where I am). However, the tool will work anywhere, I would just need a list of local organizations in that area.

After I created this I also found: [https://giveandgetlocal.com/](https://giveandgetlocal.com/) and [https://www.helpmainstreet.com/](https://www.helpmainstreet.com/), which serve very similar needs.

I would very much appreciate: 1\. Feedback on the tool 2\. Suggestions about how I might source the data for other areas outside of Boston without violating terms and conditions 3\. Names of relief funds or other ways people can support relief efforts

<comment><USER2> Another suggestion: you are asking for data to source.

To help others, also make all the data you have available as Open Data. A good API or data dump (both ideally) and an open license.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done - you can find the database here:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tL6PqwVhj0Aa3COGlmok...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tL6PqwVhj0Aa3COGlmokdjy_QYd6W__HUph1tJRivbI/edit#gid=2069755385)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're in the UK there are lots of Mutual Aid societies that have set up to help neighbours who are self isolating. You can see the directory here - [https://covidmutualaid.org/](https://covidmutualaid.org/)

I'm in one of these in Shacklewell and it's great to see people helping each other on small scale with shopping, prescriptions and friendly phone calls and chats.

It's interesting that most of them are using WhatsApp or Facebook groups. They're not really tools that are suited to this kind of thing but they're the easiest and most available thing we've got.

</comment><comment><USER4> The thing I find most exciting about this is volunteering to volunteer software engineering capacity to NY. I hope you're able to source more opportunities like that.

I have a hypothesis that a _lot_ of young software developers would love to do something like the US Digital Service[1] if they could do it remotely. Some of the young software engineers I work with make enough money in a couple years to take a couple years off (which they then proceed to do) but they are also seeking a bit more meaning than that life can maybe provide.

I dream of helping states create their own USDSs. If anyone has any feedback on this hypothesis, I'd be curious to hear it.

[1] [https://www.usds.gov/](https://www.usds.gov/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I share your optimism about this, I'll see what people submit.

I just found [https://developer.ibm.com/callforcode/getstarted/covid-19/](https://developer.ibm.com/callforcode/getstarted/covid-19/) this morning, going to add it to my directory today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The local business roundup is exactly what I have been wanting. Amazon makes searching for a product so easy, but almost always leads back to Chinese manufacture / business.

Any good sites for buying products made in country of choice? (such as USA)

</comment><comment><USER6> Great idea! I've shared it over on [https://crisis.directory](https://crisis.directory) too (which crowdsources ways for folks to get help vs offer help) :)

edit: fix link</comment>


The Klavins-Piano Model 370 - <AUTHOR> http://klavins-piano-manufaktur.com/e/model370_en.htm

<comment><USER2> Nils Frahm has just released an album recorded on this instrument. It's downloadable at [http://www.pianoday.org/](http://www.pianoday.org/) for free, but donations are said to go into a fund to build the even bigger successor.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is sort of related to Nils Frahms recent release –solo–, which was recorded on the M370, and of which all proceeds are donated to the construction of the Klavins M450 piano[0].

[http://www.pianoday.org/](http://www.pianoday.org/)

<comment><USER4> This is nice so far, but I wish they had found a way to record with less white-static and it would've been _really_ impressive.

<comment><USER5> Are you referring to the hammer mechanism clicks? (They're rhythmic, along with the notes, as opposed to random noise.) I think the exposed mechanism makes that sound more present in the recording. The outer body of a conventional piano serves to muffle that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder whether there is a limit to the size of the soundboard at which the extra amplified overtones start to muddle the cords even played in the middle register and above. Big grand pianos are not particularly transportable and organs have been designed for specific buildings; why is it that larger pianos like this don't exist as a class?

Lower fundamental tones generate more audible overtones; this is why the same cord played in the lower register sounds much more muddy than in the middle. Of course it could be that even with amplified higher harmonics for mid- register.

At any rate, it's disappointing that the performers chosen for their audio/video demo recordings and their recording setup are so crappy. It'd be not unreasonable to suspect the level of the piano designer's expertise is comparable.

And, of course, size of the soundboard alone does not a good piano make.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious as to why they went for putting the keyboard on top, instead of having the soundboard emerge from the base. With the current arrangement, and the overall design, it makes it look more like the front of a massive earth mover than a musical instrument.

<comment><USER8> That's probably to do with where the hammers need to hit the strings.

Different positions = different harmonic mix = different sound.

Of course you could move the hammers with long levers. But a simpler/smaller system is always easier to build and more reliable than a complicated big system.

(And it picks up less dust too.)

<comment><USER7> yeah, I know that part, I was thinking more essentially flipping it upside down. The hammers would hit in the same spot as on the current piano, it's just that the sound board would be above the player instead of below. Essentially, like a grand piano that's had its sound board flipped upward instead of downward like this model.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a keyboard player I'd love to try it out, it's hard to know the difference from just a recording without feeling the vibrations.</comment>


The UAE's secret hacking team of American mercenaries - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spying-raven/ <comment><USER2> > After leaving her job at the NSA in 2014, Lori Stroud worked as a contract > intelligence operative for the UAE. Stroud, now living in an undisclosed > location in America, said the mission crossed a line when she learned her > unit was spying on Americans.

There exists another line between feeling remorseful and doing the right thing to begin with.</comment>


Explaining the browser's event loop, tasks, and microtasks - <AUTHOR> https://jakearchibald.com/2015/tasks-microtasks-queues-and-schedules/ <comment><USER3> I've been trying to explain the JS event loop to a couple of our interns recently and this is an amazing illustration of the basics and the not-so- basics. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm quite surprised that the output of the examples is even supposed to be deterministic!

<comment><USER5> Only because both the timeout and promises are pre-resolved. They both immediately "complete" their tasks, so the callbacks are immediately queued. That means you're measuring event loop queuing order, and ignoring execution time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a terrifying read for anyone doing complex javascript in a browser.

Or just don't use Promises ;-)

<comment><USER7> Terrifying because there are cases with poor interoperability, or terrifying because the metal model is non-trivial?

If you mean the former, that's certainly a pain point on the web (although it's worth noting that some of the specific issues Jake mentioned are already fixed in at least Firefox nightly). For that reason tests like these are being tested in the web-platform-tests project [1], which is part of the Test The Web Forward initiative [2] aiming to create a common, cross-browser testsuite which all vendors can run in automation so that they are able to detect this kind of issue during development and avoid compat-affecting regressions of the kind seen here. Firefox runs (almost) all the web-platform-tests in its CI system already, Chrome runs a subset and are looking to add more, Servo runs the cubset corresponding to the features it supports, and what Microsoft and Apple do is a mystery to me. I believe the Jake is going to look at submitting his testcases, and I hope that in the future web authors will see the value in investing in their platform by submitting tests and bug reports when they run into interop difficulties.

If you just mean that the lowest levels of the web-platform are quite complicated then yes, but it's not that surprising (and the things that are complicated to implement are not necessarily hard to use; document.write is a tremendous pain to understand in detail and implement, but people nevertheless use it with reckless abandon).

[1] [https://github.com/w3c/web-platform-tests](https://github.com/w3c/web- platform-tests) [2] [http://testthewebforward.org/](http://testthewebforward.org/)

<comment><USER8> Do people use `document.write` with reckless abandon? I haven't used it in about a decade!

<comment><USER9> It's weirdly prevalent in ads apparently. Like, to the point that you get a pretty ad-free web by just shipping a browser without document.write. Actually, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Currently working on a list of "important things they never tell you as a web developer" \- this is being added near the top. Thanks for this and fighting the good fight with ServiceWorker, Jake.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pale Moon, x64:

        Test 1: script start; script end; promise1; promise2; setTimeout

        Test 2: click promise mutate click promise mutate timeout timeout

        Test 3: click click promise promise mutate timeout timeout

Interesting that this is so far from Firefox's responses even though it's a FF fork.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fantastic, thank you for taking the time to digest a complicated spec and turn it into a nice walkthrough!

</comment><comment><USER13> Really great article, spending your weekend making the animated step-by-step diagrams was worth it!

The fact that browsers don't get this stuff right by now is pretty worrying. Makes it difficult to imagine the web being the platform of the future and complex applications being built atop it.

</comment><comment><USER14> In fact, the first example gives different results between different runs (clicks) on iOS 8.4.1 Mobile Safari, even without reloading the page.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is something that nodejs should include by default (multithreaded workers).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's not what the post is about, it covers actions scheduled on a single thread. However, you can do multi-process, therefore mutli-thread with node, using [https://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_process_chil...](https://nodejs.org/api/child_process.html#child_process_child_process_fork_modulepath_args_options) or [https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html](https://nodejs.org/api/cluster.html)

<comment><USER15> I know it is not related with NodeJS but I would like to have it with Node. The cluster model is inefficient since it uses processes instead of threads. One unofficial answer for NodeJS is [https://www.npmjs.com/package/webworker- threads](https://www.npmjs.com/package/webworker-threads)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does the spec explicitly tells about how to time tasks vs microtasks? I was under the impression that it was up to the implementation and not relevant.

To add something more, I would really like to see an example where this actually ruins a program execution.

Edit: And this is wrong because... ?

<comment><AUTHOR> These questions are already answered in the post.

Yes, both microtask and task execution is specced by html. Using a task rather than a microtask costs performance by the time it takes to do other between- task things such as rendering. There was an opinion that promises were slow that was really only down to poor callback scheduling.

<comment><USER16> Ok, thanks. Haven't read the spec, that's why I was asking.

>However, the general consensus is that promises should be part of the microtask queue, and for good reason.

That's the only bit I found in the post regarding that. Didn't sound like 'it's in the spec' to me.

Regarding the example, (I'm gonna sound like the SO posters that I hate but) there are other appropiate places where you should hook up that callback. If the one you chose does not play well with Promises yet (because you want to access an object thats at the end of its lifetime and not guaranteed to exist), then ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

I asked for an example where the program breaks because I thought that if you queue up things 'for later dispatch' you shouldn't be worriyng about the order where they dispatch. If you're actually worried, then chain them together with the classic callback stuff.

But, I'm not demeaning your post (I see you're the author), it was really good. The main issue is see is (as you stated in your comment) that Promises as microtasks would increase their performance. It is a shame, however, that we as developers are not able to queue microtasks directly (like when using setImmediate, process.nextTick) :(

<comment><AUTHOR> The spec defines the execution of tasks vs microtasks tightly, the bit that's less clear is how ECMAScript promise jobs interact with microtasks - <USER2> consensus is they're in the same queue, but it isn't explicit.

I agree that we should have an API to queue microtasks, although as soon as promises use microtasks, Promise.resolve().then(func) becomes that API. Some promise polyfills also use mutation events to queue microtasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> great article and a really fun read!</comment>


Domino raises $10.5M in funding for collaborative, reproducible data science - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dominodatalab.com/domino-raises-10-5m-in-funding-for-collaborative-reproducible-data-science/ <comment><USER2> I was expecting to get hit by pizza advertising when i clicked this link

</comment><comment><USER3> Domino? Oh boy, we have run out of names.

<comment><USER4> Good enough for Pizza!

<comment><USER5> Naming seems like the hardest thing now. But yeah, I thought of Pizza too. I was like "Why would a large corporation with restaurants around the country" need outside investors at this point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work here and it's awesome. Check out the careers page, were hiring across the board!

</comment><comment><USER7> Some smart chaps over there...</comment>


Vodafone UK femto-cell rooted - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.thc.org/vodafone

<comment><USER2> Nice password - 'newsys' - all lowercase, no numbers, no symbols...</comment>


China Orders Two of Five Fake Apple Stores to Close - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-25/china-finds-five-unauthorized-apple-stores-in-kunming-city-shuts-two.html

<comment><USER2> Apparently this problem of fake stores isn't limited to just China; others were reported in "...Burma, Croatia, Columbia, Slovenia, Spain and Venezuela."[1]

[1] - [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/25/fake- apple-...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/25/fake-apple-stores- not-limited-to-china)

</comment><comment><USER3> I could wish for more details on why the other 2 were closed, and exactly how Yu's 3 stores looked and branded themselves.

From what little is in the article, Yu seems to copy Apple slavishly and it seems his stores would be a good addition to Apple's official network. He obviously cares enough to get it right.

<comment><USER4> The other 2 didn't have business licenses. As in, they weren't registered to pay tax, employ workers, and licensed to carry out business. That's frowned upon. Their fake "Apple" branding has nothing to do with the story, except as link bait.

Yu's 3 are registered properly with the government, but not with Apple. The Apple-registered stores don't like this (as Yu might be cutting costs, avoiding Apple taxes, and so on), but he's not flagrantly breaking any laws (except maybe a trademark violation, which the local authorities are less vigorous at pursuing). Apple might be able to press charges themselves, but it looks like the local government isn't going to do it for them.

Maybe Yu would argue it is simply fair use (given he _is_ selling Apple goods), or that Apple's restrictive business requirements violate some Chinese antitrust laws (if there are any such laws). Or he might just stall, and hope he's too small a target for Apple to bother suing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They may claim to purchase real iphones, ipads and macs, but anybody with any biz-know-how about China will tell you that knockoffs can be better than the real deal. I would bet that fake stores are selling counterfeit devices, regardless of their claims.</comment>


What is the going hourly rate for an iPhone app developer? - <AUTHOR>

Someone I asked threw out the rate of between $250 and $500 / hour. <comment><USER2> Wow, this is amazing. My startup, which i submitted for YC startup, which focussing on developing IPhone applications, faster , better and cheaper only charges 30 US $ an hour. Might be because, we are an offshore company. www.geniteam.com I am looking for a partner for the VC application, let me know if you are interested. Khurram Samad</comment>


Apple censors a album on iTunes, the cause could be racism and sexism. (pt_BR) - <AUTHOR> http://musica.uol.com.br/noticias/redacao/2015/06/03/loja-virtual-da-apple-se-nega-a-vender-album-brasileiro-com-mamilos-na-capa.htm

<comment><USER2> Automated translation:

"Apple's online store refuses to sell Brazilian album with nipples on the cover"

[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl=en&u=h...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmusica.uol.com.br%2Fnoticias%2Fredacao%2F2015%2F06%2F03%2Floja- virtual-da-apple-se-nega-a-vender-album-brasileiro-com-mamilos-na-capa.htm)

Sounds like they objected to the cover art more than the music.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rucka rucka Ali is on itunes and that's the most racist and sexist music I've ever heard.</comment>


Cipherli.st – Strong copy-paste SSL configuration - <AUTHOR> https://cipherli.st/

<comment><USER2> Given that those instructions if used as-is would render all unencrypted content inaccessible for around 2 years, I'd strongly suggest moving the warning section to the top.

</comment><comment><USER3> That overlay is one of the most annoying features I've ever seen on a website before.</comment>


Sparrow has been acquired by Google - <AUTHOR> http://sparrowmailapp.com/#google

<comment><AUTHOR> I've a feeling the site might go down, if it does here is the text of the announcement-

We're excited to announce that Sparrow has been acquired by Google!

We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience. Now we're joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google. We'd like to extend a special thanks to all of our users who have supported us, advised us, given us priceless feedback and allowed us to build a better mail application. While we'll be working on new things at Google, we will continue to make Sparrow available and provide support for our users. We had an amazing ride and can't thank you enough. Full speed ahead! Dom Leca CEO Sparrow

</comment><comment><USER2> Source code, please.

<comment><USER3> Not on Larry's watch.

Eric Schmidt's Google would have given it to you, though. Fond memories.</comment></comment>


Anyone with a remote job making 80k a year? - <AUTHOR> There are lots of job postings, but they seem either US-Resident-only or 15k a year posts. Anyone  really has a great, remote job? <comment><USER2> I made an aggregator of remote jobs called [http://remoteok.io](http://remoteok.io)

<comment><USER3> Hey, is it legal to scrape a lot of data and put in an aggregator? I ask because I want to do an idea pretty much like yours and this my concern at the moment. I was thinking about emailing the person to ask for permission before posting, how do you handle it (if you don't mind sharing)

thanks

<comment><USER4> I think most people follow: Do it, ask forgiveness later.

<comment><USER5> Seems like if it is public info it is hard to argue against it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes.

I am a US resident though -- and a native American English speaker (which is more important than many realize).

<comment><USER7> Why do people care if you speak Native American English vs. just normal english? I didn't even realize Native Americans had their own dialect.

<comment><USER8> There was a capital letter there that you ignored which changes the context of the statement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/) aggregates remote- friendly and remote-only tech positions.

<comment><USER10> that site is the worst, many of the postings are low quality

<comment><USER11> While I don't disagree in the least do you have any other good suggestions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Working remotely (albeit interstate within the U.S., not internationally) at $100k. Definitely possible. Have seen remote positions up to $180k+ so I imagine there's still plenty of room to grow.

It seems like companies are uneasy hiring people a) for significantly more than they already make or b) for their first remote position.

</comment><comment><USER13> I work at Trello, and the FogCreek, Trello, StackOverflow trio of companies (1) hire remote (2) even non-US and (3) pay US market salaries.

See their respective sites for current openings.

I found this job on Careers.StackOverflow.com (which has a lot of remote jobs and good filtering) -- if you need an invite, my contact info is on my HN profile page.

</comment><comment><USER14> Colleague easily makes 100k, working in the east coast of Canada, while still doing her undergrad. The rest of her team works in Redmond. I'll leave you to guess where she works.

</comment><comment><USER15> $110k/yr from two time zones away. There's a ton of remote Drupal jobs if you know what you're doing. Remote is the norm instead of the exception.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's no reason a role should pay less for being remote. Remote workers that I know get market rates. Especially considering how much more productive a remote worker is not to mention the savings to the employer. I think the key is not for looking for "remote" jobs, but roles which are good fits and asking about the possibility of remote. If they balk, explain how it benefits them.

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't find anything remote. I've been a WordPress and front end dev for about five years but I don't know Angular/React so no luck for me...In my experience, I only see the 15k a year posts too.

<comment><USER18> If you have five years exp. with front end development (inl. js, I hope), picking up ReactJs and AngularJs is pretty trivial. I was able to pick up Angular in about 3 weeks, and React in about the same, though it did take a little while for everything to settle in. Best advice? Take something you wrote WITHOUT those technologies, and refactor it with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was, working in a niche role which you can't find locally. MySQL DB administrator - a role which is grown organically at companies which use MySQL, it's not one which is taught in school.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes, I make 100k+ a year as a Designer, fully remote. I'm Australian.

<comment><USER21> But that's for companies outside Australia, right? My experience has been that Australian companies are not still open to the idea of remote work(Melbourne).

<comment><USER20> Yep, that's right. I work for a US company.

I'd agree with that about Australian companies not being open to remote. TBH, I don't even consider Australian companies anymore.

In my experience, salaries are lower and I feel that we're years behind, both in terms of the projects you work on and the people you work with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yes, I'm outside of the US, making 100k+ working for a US company, using my favorite language (c#). The company hires people from Europe, Asia, South America, wherever there's talent.

<comment><USER23> Which is the company, if you don't mind?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm working remotely making >100k. I was -1hr and now I'm +2hrs relative to the home office and the majority of the clientele. I'm very happy. I'm a US Resident though.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yes. Also a US resident but living outside of the US. Took a 20% pay cut to be able to work fully remotely but still over 100k. I found it on Angellist and interviewed in person.

<comment><USER26> Very cool. What time zone/country do you live in? How often do you meet face to face?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Started at a company locally, then I became remote. I feel that may the path of least resistance if you're looking to make that type of money. US resident here.

</comment><comment><USER28> 80k? Man I would work for 45~50k remote (making 30k ATM with 11+ ex and leading a front end team now angularjs/nodejs) Bio in my HN profile.

<comment><USER29> You sound like you have a solid background, I'm sure you could easily find a job that pays triple if not more than your current position (or do I just live in a bubble?)

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the vote of confidence. The competition is just too high it seems for remote jobs. I haven't had much luck so far.

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately, and you will hear this a lot if you ask, all of the really sweet jobs don't ever make it to job boards, and especially not race-to-the- bottom cesspools like eLance/oDesk/Upstart.

You have to network, and you have to network hard. Not to promote yourself (that's advertising), but to learn what challenges the tech teams at companies need help with _today_. And when you find a mutually beneficial opportunity, they will be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL if you were to mention your skills and leverage them to solve real business needs.

What those needs are, how your skills apply, and how you approach the situation are entirely up to you and the circumstances you encounter.

Upside: Choose Your Own Adventure

Downside: I can't give you any general advice that would help; it's a skill everyone has to cultivate in their own, I think.

Maybe I'm wrong about the downside. I'd love to find out if I am.

<comment><USER28> Thanks, these are great points and I know I need to work on my networking/marketing skills a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yes. I work in Washington state making a six digit salary remotely. Have been doing so for several years.

</comment><comment><USER32> Most definitely, it helps to know people in person rather than applying through a job posting though.

</comment><comment><USER18> I had a 100% remote job (senior level) making considerably more than that. They are out there.

</comment><comment><USER33> Very cool.. here in India even for on premise jobs thats a distant dream

<comment><USER34> on premise 60 k is easy in India 80k is not difficult. Look for captives and most of them give work from home so it is like remote with standard income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yeah, I'm making 100k+ a year working fully remote. US resident

</comment><comment><USER36> where are you based out of?

</comment><comment><USER10> was there any programming interviews? where can you find these type of jobs?</comment>


CoLabel - <AUTHOR> http://downey-n1.cs.northwestern.edu/~northanapon/colabel/ My human computation experiment for an end of the year project in machine learning.  It would mean a lot to me if you could take a look at it! (until you are bored) <comment><AUTHOR> This is my simple human computation experiment for an end of the year project in machine learning. It would help a lot if you all could take a look! (until you get bored) Thanks!</comment>