Sustainability and the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> http://realmacsoftware.com/blog/sustainability-and-the-mac-app-store

<comment><USER2> I think this applies to more than just (Mac) apps. Coupon codes, flash sales, and other deep discounts have a tendency to trigger buyers remorse at checkout.

I was fine paying $ X until I found out that I _could have_ paid 50% less last week. Now, if I buy your product, I feel like the only idiot that paid full price - a price I was __happy to pay __5 minutes ago.

If you aren't able to sell at your current price point, you should evaluate _why_ and either fix the issue or lower your price (permanently) to match what users are willing to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> _The audience on the Mac App Store is not yet large enough to sustain low prices (like the iPhone can, sometimes) – it's just not feasible._

This is also true for niches iOS apps in the app store.</comment>


All-You-Can-Watch MoviePass Brings Netflix Model to Theaters - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/all-you-can-watch-moviepass-brings-netflix-model-to-theaters/ <comment><USER3> _However, the number of people who can go to enough films in a given month to get a good return on their $50 investment is a niche audience, said Wade Holden, a motion picture and home entertainment analyst for SNL Kagan._

Unlimited-use-for-X pricing appeals to people _even when it results in paying more than metered billing._ Look anywhere you care to: cell phone plans, AOL use / the early Internet, SaaS pricing, etc, etc, etc.

For one thing, people will pay to be the kind of people who go to movies several times a month even if they do not actually go to movies several times a month. (You laugh, but the entire gym industry survives thanks to this. Ditto many other aspirational group memberships such as golf clubs, certain tutoring services, classes, etc etc.)

It seems like a pretty much unalloyed good thing for movie theatres, since they're likely going to see what every subscription service sees: large numbers of people who a) pay happily but b) do not consume the underlying service. Movie theatres have less than a 10% margin on ticket sales IIRC, because they have to pay the studio's cut. They will have 95% margins on subscription rebills for someone who was busy in June and simply didn't attend the theatre.

<comment><USER4> I would say I am a huge movie buff / goer in comparison to my friends, but even I don't think I could justify $50/month for this service. Can I opt in/out of this per month based on what I see coming up on imdb.com? There would be very few months where there are enough movies I would like enough to go see 5 movies (say $10/movie * 5 movies a month) which would warrant me going to see in a theater.

Even since AMC even dropped weekly prices to $5 or $7.50 a movie during the week, I have been going more than I ever have before, but I don't see this taking off at all. $50 is just too much of a flat fee.

IMO I don't think you can compare this to gyms, as you can't wait an extra month or two and pirate your local gym equipment in HD x264, like most people do with movies who don't want to spend the money, unfortunately.

The only way this would be viable is if they could stream movies which are currently out to people in their houses at the exact same time in HD to their homes. People do not want to leave their house, or work out their schedule now days to go to the movie unless it is really worth it. There are not enough movies coming out per month worth leaving the house for a flat fee of $50/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many cinema chains in the UK have offers like this. My girlfriend has a cinema card that costs her £15 a month and allows her to see any film she likes (although she has to pay about £1.50 extra to see 3D films). This is an offer that's been available for at least 8 or 9 years. Tickets for 2D films in the UK typically cost around £7.50 (higher in London).

Granted this cinema card is only useable in cinemas belonging to the same chain.

Do any US cinema chains offer similar services?

<comment><USER6> Same in France since years. There are a few big theatre chains; if I remember correctly, at least 2 of them have an "unlimited" card. The UGC[1] one is 20 EUR/month (~30 USD), which is roughly the price of 2 tickets. A lot of people subscribe to the card, and then watch stuff that they would not have watched otherwise — and they are generally happy with it. I cannot tell if they really find the movies interesting, or if they are just rationalizing their experience and refusing to consider the subscription as a waste :-)

[1] <http://www.ugc.fr/typepage.do?alias=carteugcillimite>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> <i>"MoviePass makes spur-of-the-moment movie-going as simple as choosing a film on the phone and checking in at the theater," Spikes said in a press release. "No more waiting in line."</i>

Ha ha, someone is under the impression that "waiting in line" is the least convenient aspect of going to the movies. (For most people, it's actually "leaving the house.")

</comment><comment><USER8> Calling this the "Netflix Model" seems naive. When Netflix initially launched, there were two major drawing points.

1) Access to a large library/inventory. Traditional rentals were limited to mainstream/popular film and newly released films required luck to rent. Netflix made cult films easily accessible (Eraserhead, Cannibal, etc.).

2) Price savings in comparison to traditional Brick-and-Mortar Rentals. Netflix Subscription fees were equitable to two movie rentals a month. Two movie rentals a month seems like a number not outside the norm.

The service they discuss would require seeing approximately 5 movies a month just to equal the subscription fee. That is a large number.

Secondly, they aren't giving access to any more product. Just the same movies that weren't worth watching before. With the exception of oscar season I think watching five newly released movies a month would be more of a punishment.

Their shameless promo integration (pre-selling DVDS, "early access to trailers", merchandise sales) only serves to further devalue the user experience making $50 seem far too high.

As a final note, I do believe the pricing structure/experience of theaters should be re-examined and this is a start. Personally, subscription concessions could be a cool place to start. I would really consider paying $30 a month for 5 large popcorns and drinks (and that would still leave a huge margin).

<comment><USER9> I think AMC's doing something along these lines, where people with their loyalty card get deals on concessions. They probably throw in a free ticket after several visits. I think I remember hearing some doing packages (e.g., tickets + popcorn and drinks).

In any case agreed, anything they can do to push food and drinks is how they can fleece customers more and blow out their bottom line

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So basically, as a customer, you'd have to assume you're going to 4-7 movies per month to break even on this (depending on how much movies cost in your area - $6.50 matinees or $13+ a ticket in Manhattan).

A bunch of mid-2000s polls suggest the average American goes to 4-6 movies per YEAR - probably has come down a bit given structural trends. Not sure what the distribution looks like, but I'd guess it's a pretty thin tail of people who go more than 4-6 times per month.

So either they're hoping people think they go a lot more often than they really do, or are giving a great deal to a small portion of the population.

Pricing seems quite a bit off for this to be attractive to 95% of the populace (though given theaters need to pay a cut for each body that comes in to the distributor, they probably wanted to be on the conservative side)... maybe should have done something like $25-30/month, and hope the users buy enough concessions to make up the difference. Or do the $50, but throw in a free massive bucket of popcorn for every trip, which costs virtually nothing to the theater anyway (and presumably, the customer's usually going to want to buy a drink, which is basically 95% profit).

</comment><comment><USER10> When you can have a 50 inch screen at home for $500 and no people talking or texting, no overpriced snacks, no incorrect brightness, no bad audio - <USER2> only reason to go to a movie theater is for new releases.

But if you ignore new releases and just wait for the six-eight month cycle before they are on DVD or BluRay, you don't need a theater.

Haven't been in one in years and that's even with having free passes on occasion.

</comment><comment><USER11> I take my girlfriend out to the movies almost every weekend because we love seeing good films on the big screen. If I'm not these folks' ideal user, I'm not sure who is. But I'm very much on the fence.

If this allows you to take a guest, it's a great deal and I'd be an avid customer, even though some months I don't see that many movies. If not, the potential for underuse is too obvious.

At least with, say, a gym membership, you can imagine yourself using it enough to justify the cost. A gym membership is also a lot cheaper in the short term and more convenient than the nearest alternative (buying all the gym equipment yourself). There is practically never a month with five movies I want to see. And if there's not anything good in theaters, I can watch unlimited movies for $7 per month on Netflix, or if I want newer movies for my impulse-viewing, it's $1 a night with Redbox (and Redbox is usually more conveniently located than the nearest theater).

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how this All-You-Can-Watch model works with demand fluctuation. What happens if for some blockbuster movies they get more people than they can serve?

</comment><comment><USER13> I go to the movies twice a week. They are going to lose money on me with this deal.

<comment><USER14> Do you purchase food at the theater?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like this idea quite a bit. I sometimes see up to 4-5 movies a months, more like 2 on average. By the time I get the tickets and a bit to eat, I might spend $20 or more. The downside is none of the theaters are the major ones in the city like Metreon or Century.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had a crazy idea to kind of help detour cam pirates. IR lights in the movie screen. Most cameras in use utilize a CCD, which can be "blinded" by inferred. I've seen the technique used to blind CCTV cameras; hoody halo. Why not put a few lights in there to stop these guys? Might save a few dollars in the long run; at least until the dvd-rip hits torrent/newsgroup sites.</comment>


Tesla Woes - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/21/tesla-shares-drop-as-it-reported-another-quarterly-loss/

<comment><USER2> I just read the earnings report a few hours ago. Gross margin did not decrease, it increased from (17)% to 8%. The brackets in the earnings report mean it is a negative number.

Edit: Ok the article is now updated.

<comment><AUTHOR> ^The article states this fact as well.</comment></comment>


Touchable Holography @ Siggraph - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P1zZAcPuw <comment><USER2> this is awesome</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get hired without a programming interview? - <AUTHOR> Few days ago, I was fortunate enough to talk to a person who switched from engineer to a manager position.
Most of the questions that were asked included how to solve project management tasks and conflict resolution strategies. No programming tests were included in the interview.
We see and also personally observe how coding tests do not effectively measure a persons analytical skills. This begs the question, for engineers, can there exist a system where companies can hire them without programming tests in interviews? One seeking a managerial position isn't necessarily asked to demonstrate and perform his skills on spot, are they? <comment><USER2> > We see and also personally observe how coding tests do not effectively > measure a persons analytical skills

I'm not convinced of this. It's not a perfect system but a well-orchestrated coding test is a great indicator of performance. In fact I think that's a huge pain point when hiring for a soft-skill oriented role -- it's very difficult to judge candidates until they've spent ~6 months on the job.

So what do established companies do? They rely very heavily on pedigree and experience. Coding interviews suck but I think they're necessary for meritocratic hiring. Plus, most of the complaints I see here are the result of poorly conducting programming interviews, not necessarily programming interviews as a concept.

<comment><USER3> > It's not a perfect system but a well-orchestrated coding test is a great > indicator of performance.

[Citation needed]

a) I would rather hire someone who needs some guidance but gets along with the team rather than an arrogant coding genius.

b) "Programming interview" = "coding quiz" which means it only measures how well someone can remember something from school or how well they can take tests, neither of which is relevant to any real world job.

c) Successful "coding quiz" by no means indicates one's ability to write software in any capacity outside the given quiz parameters less so as part of a team and even less so among multitude of teams which typically is required to deliver any real life product other than the multitude of *ly.coms or whatever is the trendy naming convention is this week.

<comment><USER4> Citation needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 2014 I was earning ~$60,000 in my developer's salary.

Then I used new (other vendor's) enterprise software developer's platform to build a solution at my spare time.

I published an online instructional on "how to" do "good things" with other enterprise software vendor's offering.

"Other enterprise vendor" found my online instructional and hired me for $164,500 for a management position.

No bullshit coding interviews, no crap. Today I have the best job in the best part of the city with the best manager I ever had. Seriously.

Just sharing my experience with some hints along the way.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've interviewed at a few places without any technical questions. They basically talked to me about my past work and what I wanted to do. It's strange indeed.

<comment><USER7> Which places specifically?

<comment><USER6> That was like a decade ago, I wouldn't remember now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > One seeking a managerial position isn't necessarily asked to demonstrate and > perform his skills on spot, are they?

Actually, they are. That is the interview. As a manager, you need to have social skills. And a lot of the questions asked give a good insight into how you approach problems and social situations.

And that is why the better coder interviews are more about talking through a problem with a bit of whiteboard sketching/coding.

<comment><USER3> Actually, they aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On site programming puzzles are flawed, yes, especially whiteboard programming (as interviewee you're stuck with still doing them, but there's things you can do to make it less awful: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview- puzzles/](https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview-puzzles/))

Other alternatives:

1\. Take-home programming exercise. More realistic, if it's a good task. Biased against people with less free time, though.

2\. Paid take-home real work. DuckDuckGo does this, as does SpiderOak I think. Doesn't work well for people who have current job, but if it ever becomes popular it'll be easier for people to quit during job hunt period.

3\. Pair programming during interview. Somewhat more realistic than whiteboard puzzle, biased against people with interview nerves.

4\. Debugging code during interview. Somewhat more realistic than whiteboard puzzle, biased against people with interview nerves.

Etc..

There's no magic bullet, sadly.

<comment><USER10> I've been anti hw problem given it requires no investment of time by the potential employer. If it was a short hw .. say max of an hour or two followed by a discussion of it (where discussion was the interview) I might be okay with it. I'm definitely not okay with the hw being step 1 of the usual shit process.

<comment><USER11> I'd like style guidance on these kind of tasks. One place got turned off that I put unit tests on a small toy problem.

<comment><USER9> Probably don't want a job that objects to unit tests, if you can avoid it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It used to work that way before Google messed it up. Microsoft was known to have a "difficult" process .. a cakewalk by today's unreasonable standard. Companies didn't try to emulate Microsoft in those days .. I don't know why everyone wanted to copy Google.

<comment><USER3> Same reason many wanted to emulated Microsoft — they don't know any better. Many claim "it works for Google" without giving it much thought (not a surprise in today's world) but does it really? Google, among others, is a hot mess and precisely for this reason — they hire people who are great in passing tests but can barely function socially and professionally.

But hey — it keeps them busy and removes them from competition, so it's not a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I show my app on the app store to the interviewer, shown him a bit of the source code of the app on how I tackled some interesting problem etc, how I handled user complain/support etc. Got offered immediately afterward.

This might not work for most company however.

</comment><comment><USER13> "One seeking a managerial position isn't necessarily asked to demonstrate and perform his skills on spot, are they?"

Yes they are (kind of), they are asked questions/problems which are used to gauge their ability to manage and do the job expected of them; in the 'best' way achievable in a interview scenario. Just like coders are asked questions to try to gauge their ability.

I'm not saying either ways are perfect, but it's not like a managerial interview is easy/non-challenging.

[Edit: Ooops saw a similar reply below, done way earlier...will keep mine here for consistency on my part]

</comment><comment><USER14> You don't unless it's a tiny startup and none of the founders/employees are technical. Which is pretty rare.

</comment><comment><USER15> You'd have to know someone, most likely.

</comment><comment><USER16> Get a non-programming job.</comment>


Every Body's Talking - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062002500.html

<comment><USER2> Can I make the obvious point that there are significant cultural and even personal variations in these things.

Exhibit A: If I lean back and cross my arms while you are talking to me, this generally means "you have said something so interesting I need to sit back, give you space to finish your point, and think carefully about you said". Not, as the dude implies, I don't like you and I feel uncomfortable.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there something more convenient than LaTeX to write math (Markdown?) - <AUTHOR> I used LaTeX during my thesis, it was ok (long learning curve, but ok at the end).
Then I spent years using Markdown for other things (mostly programming/forums, and then document etc.)
Now I need to produce math+programming documents again. But once you have used Markdown, you find it veryyyyyy boring to use

    \begin{itemize}
    \item hello
    \item world
    \end{itemize}
 instead of just (in Markdown):

    * hello
    * world
 But on the other hand, Markdown alone is not enough.
Question: is there a modern mix between these 2 worlds? Something handier than LaTeX to typeset documents?
(the math environment is totally ok: $$x^2 - 1$$, the boring part in LaTeX is itemization, code blocks, inline code, tables, URL links, etc.) <comment><USER2> There is a very comprehensive overview of math support in the different flavors of Markdown here: [https://github.com/cben/mathdown/wiki/math-in- markdown](https://github.com/cben/mathdown/wiki/math-in-markdown)

</comment><comment><USER3> Try pandoc. Pandoc lets you write in markdown, and intersperse LaTeX formatted equations as needed. It does take a lot of the pain of the overall document formatting away, while retaining the concise notation LaTeX provides for equations themselves.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already visited their website, but I don't see how to do chapters, sections, subsections, etc. Should this be done in LaTeX or in Markdown (using #, ##, etc.) or pandoc specific?

Would you have an example of document with chapters mixing Markdown and LaTex?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're writing a highly structured document with sections, subsections, an index, a TOC, and so on, you should look into the more powerful AsciiDoc instead of Markdown. Yes, it has support for LaTeX equations just like Markdown.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recommend the outlines package in LaTeX.

I find it much easier to write:

        \begin{outline}
        \1 hello
        \1 world
          \2 the two indicates a second level.
        \end{outline}

</comment><comment><USER6> LyX</comment>


Start-up Simulator - <AUTHOR> Hi, All! I wrote a start-up simulator game. Where you can test your skills for making start-up.
The objective is to build a company from first sales (ideas) to entering the IPO. Each stage has its own goal, which must be achieved in order to move on to the next stage. At each stage, the player is given a set of tasks, fulfilling which, the player must achieve the goals of each stage and the game in whole. The process of the game is to select the right tasks for the specific time and their implementation.
Help for game – https://medium.com/@daniilkhanin/start-up-simulator-v-1-x-843b7b7fffe2
Game – r/https://uecalc.com/game
I need any suggestions, opinions etc about game and its development.
I test this game in Russian start-up eco-system at more than 1200 startapers, and we had only 22 IPOs! <comment><USER2> Can you link the game directly. As I press the heading and it goes to the game.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://uecalc.com/game](https://uecalc.com/game)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: My Microsoft account has been suspended by Microsoft without details - <AUTHOR> My entire Microsoft account has been suspended, due to the violation of the Terms, by Microsoft, and without any further details. At the time of incident, I was not doing with the account or anything digital, and rather was cooking/eating dinner, when my computer received a notification about a problem with my Microsoft account.
I am not given any other options than to Contact Support about it, which I did yesterday and got an answer today that tells me nothing more than the very few that I know:
> Microsoft disabled access to the account due to a serious violation of the Microsoft Services Agreement https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement. As stated in the Microsoft Services Agreement, you will no longer be able to access any Services that require Microsoft account. For any subscriptions associated with the account, Microsoft will immediately cease charging the credit card on file for recurring charges. [...] Pursuant to our terms, we cannot reactivate your account, nor provide details as to why it was closed. This represents Microsoft's final communication regarding this account.
I hope that I am not violating any other terms by sharing these messages. I do it out of frustration to know what exactly I might have done to deserve this, something more detailed than "you have violated our Terms as you eat your dinner", because without knowing which action of mine caused this, I either;
a) Will be unable to understand my mistake and not repeat it,
b) Will fear out of doing nearly everything and refrain from them, such as using a VPN on Amazon's AWS at Ohio, which I am sincerely suspicious of.
Microsoft's own way of justice is against the legal systems in all the modern countries, which always makes sure that the accused knows their faults, as one of their rights, and for the benefit of the accused not getting involved in such acts for a second time, for that they this time will know. <comment><USER2> This is becoming much more common. A YouTube channel I created to poke fun at rap music was brigaded after I submitted it to a popular group on Reddit. They reported so many of my videos so quickly that before I could finish the appeal of a single community guideline I had 3 strikes and my channel was permanently deleted before I ever received any feedback or appeal.

<comment><USER3> As a network engineer, with 'enable' on a lot of the bare metal devices that actually run the cloud...

This is why I don't put anything that I care about on a service or system I don't control. If I want to host videos I care about staying online, they live on a VM configured for a pretty common LAMP stack which exists on a hypervisor that I own and control down to the bare metal and the contract for the colo rack space and 208VAC power.

Using this example, that same 1RU system has a connection to an ISP that I know and trust. It's not going to go offline unless I were to do something so terribly abusive (in terms of network abuse) or illegal that it would cause them to admin down the 1000BaseT port facing it. Or it could theoretically go offline if I used it for illegal outbound network activity and somebody from the local FBI field office showed up with a warrant to take it (again highly unlikely, because I don't do that shit). Those are just about the only circumstances in which a third party could bring it offline.

<comment><USER4> > Those are just about the only circumstances in which a third party could > bring it offline.

This sounds like a challenge. Does the winner get a bottle of scotch?

<comment><USER3> Well I'm certainly not going to post the IP addresses of its public netblock for anyone to DDoS. Though my upstream, and its upstreams, do have DDoS mitigation services in place.

:)

edit: actually, yes, the winner would get a bottle of scotch. I have had people that I know and trust, with my permission, attempt to gain external access to it, without success. Not claiming I'm any sort of netsec wizard, just that I have a layered defense of most common security precautions for anything that has a public static IP address these days. Nobody has been successful yet. It could theoretically be brought down by:

a) social engineering the ISP it's hosted at (unlikely, they know me, I know them)

b) physical removal (its reverse DNS gives no indication of where it's physically located other than within a major metro area, could be at one of about twenty different datacenters. all of which have reasonably good physical security in place).

c) false legal claims causing some legal authority to bring it down, theoretically possible, but unlikely given the strong EFF/ACLU supporting political stance of the owners of the ISP it's hosted at. They would fight anything short of a court order that they could be held in contempt of.

d) Extensive sustained DDoS. I don't have any enemies that would be interested in wasting a DDoS on this, but its upstreams have a LOT of extra peering and transit capacity to absorb DDoS up to the 150Gbps range.

e) hardware failure, it's not perfectly 1+1 redundant in everything. but I have backups of every VM that can be brought up fairly quickly on a temporary dedicated server in a new, different, geographically diverse location fairly quickly.

f) some terrible unknown zero day exploit on one of the few daemons that listens to the public interface, through which some method of accomplishing a user and then su/sudo root shell might be possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone should take some time to go through their online accounts and ask: "if I were to wake up tomorrow banned from this account, would it be a disaster?"

If the answer is "yes" you should take corrective action right away and make that answer "no." Or at least minimize the number of accounts for which the answer is "yes".

The reality is that this could happen to anyone, for any or no reason. Don't pin your life to an online account you have no real right to.

<comment><USER6> By your logic Apple completely owns me. I have no idea what to do about that. To start with I could run my own email server on my own domain (something I did years ago and have no appetite for in the modern mail deliverability cesspool). That's just email. If they wanted to disable my phone or apps I rely on I'd be equally screwed. Is there a way to live digitially today that isn't at the pleasure of some large tech company?

<comment><USER7> When was the last time you backed up your email? I recently moved off of Gmail to Fastmail just to make it easier to have a backup copy outside of Google's control. I keep most of my photography (500GB) in OneDrive spread across three machines and yet I still have multiple external hard drive copies just incase OneDrive does a complete wipe across all my systems.

For the apps, couldn't you create a new account (sure you'd have to buy the apps again) and be back up and running?

<comment><USER8> It's funny. I go through great lengths to encrypt and back up most things of mine but the one thing I just realized I was overlooking? Fastmail. It exists on their server and on my phone in their mobile app but I never thought to just setup Thunderbird/IMAP and keep a local copy updated every so often. It's easy to overlook something.

<comment><USER9> Does Thunderbird keep a local, accessible copy of whole accounts when using IMAP? Since the traditional way of using IMAP is by keeping the mails on the server and interacting with them via the server, I would think it doesn't.

Personally, I'm using nodejs-notify[1] to watch all mailboxes of all accounts via IMAP IDLE, and have it execute mbsync[2] when it receives an event to sync the account with a local Maildir. I got my MUA (mu4e[3]) configured to use those Maildirs without doing any IMAP itself.

[1] [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nodejs- imapnotify/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/nodejs-imapnotify/)

[2] [https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/isync/](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/isync/)

[3] [https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/mu/](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/mu/)

<comment><USER10> thunderbird can be configured to store mail locally. look at the folder properties /synchronization. has an option for offline use

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a stark reminder about the dangers of signing your life over to saas. If you are in the EU you might want invoke your right to an electronic, transferable copy under GDPR

<comment><USER12> What's especially infuriating is the dark pattern that began with Windows 8 and has become worse in Windows 10: hiding that you can create a local account instead of using a Microsoft clown, er, cloud account.

The more I see things like this happening, the less I want to entrust anything important to MS, Google, Amazon, etc.

<comment><USER13> Yes, not only does Microsoft push their cloud account for login, they also spam ads in their notification bar. Going from memory, exact words may vary:

\- "Install Microsoft Authenticator to log in with your phone"

\- "Sign up for OneDrive to protect against ransomware attacks"

\- "Do more with Microsoft Edge!" (this one shows up when you change your default browser)

I prefer my operating system to not upsell me.

<comment><USER14> There is also : "There must be a problem with your Microsoft account. Click here to fix it" alert on the notification bar.

The only problem with my Microsoft account seems to be that I didn't create one. Not a problem to me, but obviously a problem at Microsoft. |But then I'm only the guy who BOUGHT the computer and deliberately avoided creating a MSFT account. What do I know? Funny how there's no "go away and never bother me again" option on that alert.

more and more, Microsoft makes me feel like a visitor in my own home (computer).

<comment><USER15> > Microsoft makes me feel like a visitor in my own home (computer).

I think it started with XP. If you tried to avoid installing windows genuine advantage (by deselecting it during the update procedure), it would come up again, then come up with increased frequency. Until in my case, it somehow just started installing itself of it's own accord.

<comment><USER16> But wasn't WGA somewhat a part of verifying a given installation of Windows wasn't pirated?

<comment><USER17> You mean that Windows installation that you bought (directly or indirectly), that potentially didn't have this WGA feature on it when you bought it?

<comment><USER17> No clue why am I being downvoted? Maybe it will help to show my point if I say more... Windows didn't always have WGA on it, but people have been paying for Windows for decades. My first Windows license was Windows for Workgroups. 95 and 98 didn't have WGA, and earlier versions of XP didn't have it either. WGA came labeled as a "Critical Security Update."

People paid money and bought computers that came bundled with Windows licenses, and then they paid money for Windows major updates, and then ultimately Microsoft decided to bundle most of the updates for free. But one day in one of the free updates, they added in WGA (how is this not bait and switch of loyal paying customers? My operating system needs to phone home for security reasons?). But you had to opt-in. Then they decided in a later free update that it wasn't such a great idea to allow their users to permanently opt out, and their software got increasingly aggressive about making sure WGA was always enabled. You could opt out, but it tried again. And finally you just couldn't opt out anymore.

Then they used dark patterns to ensure you would think you needed a Microsoft account just to log into their computers. Wait was it your computer? Now this article about someone whose Microsoft account was closed without explanation and they're up shit-creek for it.

Is this not all absolutely part of the same conversation? It's a long history with a lot going on in it. This is not a rant against Microsoft, but a cautionary tale against depending on SaaS and letting it creep into your stack, as that's apparently also what Windows has become now, too.

I was 10 years old in the 1990's and recently I realized that I had actually convinced (or suppressed) in my memory that IE was never really a monopoly, but the historical statistics on browsers tell a very different story. So maybe my memory is not so good about IE, and given that I switched to an Open Source system in my teenage years and didn't look back, perhaps that can be excused, but still most people actually haven't. (Hell, some are still using IE...)

I guess it's true that, with the coming of the Internet, and the possibility that you could easily download and pirate Windows, if everyone knows this and WGA doesn't happen in 2008, then your security is legitimately at risk if Microsoft can't profit off of Windows, because then they won't have any incentive left to provide updates except at cost... and you need updates (we need you to get updates, it's like a vaccine that herd immunity only works to stamp out the disease if most people get innoculated.)

Microsoft is much bigger now than when the internet was new, and I think are not really worried about making a profit off of Windows anymore. But as a Windows user, I think that understanding of the history and assessment of the current state of where we are at with Windows profitability and updates would be troubling, for me.

<comment><USER15> You have absolutely hit the nail on the head, and the way you describe the WGA update is exactly as I remember. I didn't want it installed. Back then resources were a bit more scarce and both startup programs as well as regular ones seemed to significantly slow the boot times. I also didn't want a piece of software that would use both CPU and network resources that was of absolutely no use to me.

The feeling of being given the option to choose, then being coerced strongly (with my resistance) and then being forced upon my laptop gave a strange sense of having been violated.

In a way I'm glad it happened. I was so annoyed / possibly angry? that it prompted me to find a different OS, and my only regret was not finding it earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The takeaway for the rest of us is that you should never depend so much on one big company. Put your eggs in multiple baskets, preferably the smaller players (but not too small, as that might mean incompetent).

E.g. my email, calendar and contacts are at FastMail with my own domain, cloud storage is at Dropbox but looking to migrate to pCloud (after their recent fiasco). For notes I use Evernote, but investigating Standard Notes. I also don't buy DRM-ed books or other products, e.g. I buy DRM-free audio books from Downpour. I have a Spotify account but I regularly buy the music I like. I have an iPhone but I'll be damned if I'll let Apple dictate my web browser therefore I use Firefox and apps that play along with it.

My Google and Microsoft accounts are basically unused. I use Docs at times but I regularly back them up automatically. I don't even use Google's Search anymore. I have some apps purchased for Android but I stopped using Android for now. If they block me for anything, I couldn't care less.

These companies that have products in multiple markets are after lock-in of their users by any means necessary. Don't fall into that trap. The alternatives cost more, but your freedom and privacy are worth it.

<comment><USER19> Fastmail sounds alright, but realistically whoever your e-mail provider is you're in trouble if they go away.

<comment><USER20> Use your own domain at the very least. Preferrably one that is your legal name so that if anyone ever tries to take it (either from just buying it if it lapses, or just attacking it/you) you have some legal protection in the US from the ACPA.

Then it's just a matter of keeping backups of your email.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. I use my own domain and I use my providers email forwarding to a sass email client. If my email provider pisses me off I just change my forwarding to some other provider. I may lose old mail, if the provider goes away completely, but that's not too big a deal for me and backups could solve it if it was important.

Now, if my domain host goes belly up, I'll probably have a somewhat painful process of porting my domains elsewhere. It's still doable but it would probably mean a few days of downtime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A few years ago, google tried introducing a real name policy on google plus. Accounts were being banned left and right. Google removed everything including gmail when they decided your name was wrong on plus.

That was when I realized I could not participate in plus: I realized how important my gmail account had become. I am diversifying and backing up today, but gmail stays a single point of failure.

The result: Even if google drive and a lot of their services sound really nice, I simply do not dare using them. I can't even take the risk of paying them: Anything non-gmail is a chance for them to obliterate my digital life.

Opening a second account is probably a bad idea: One day some algorithm will find out and either merge them or simply nuke both.

Not shooting at google specifically, this AskHN proves microsoft is just as bad. But it sounds to me these companies will have to do something or lose user trust.

<comment><USER23> > Opening a second account is probably a bad idea: One day some algorithm will > find out and either merge them or simply nuke both.

Nuking both would be nuts except in extreme edge cases. It could potentially nuke the accounts of all spouses and parents and kids who share a laptop at home. Granted, everyone has their own writing style and computers seem good at identifying text written by people based on the latter, but that's still a big risk for the tech company.

<comment><USER22> The point is: They are, for all relevant criteria, nuts.

It is cheaper and less risky for them to be completely insane pants-on-head bonkers once in a while than to find out what has happened and tell you. They don't care as they are big, you are small, and unless you annoy them enough to actually notice you, nothing is going to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've got another thing to become suspicious about, which again involves VPN.

I live in Turkey, I use VPN (on AWS at Ohio) not to circumvent anything else than the imposed restrictions of my own country, and not some other countries' or companies'. Along with countless others, Wikipedia and Imgur are some well- known websites that are made unaccessible from Turkey. With Windows 10's VPN client, you don't even recognize that you are on VPN. The overhead is so low (relative to the basic internet speeds), that I don't even notice that VPN is on most of the time. I usually open it when I want to visit some Wikipedia page, and turn it back off after recognizing delay/lag on the games I'm playing online. Not even videos load recognizably slower, not on my VPN on AWS at least.

Within last 10 days, I had encountered the news about Dragon Ball Z - Season 1 being free on Microsoft Store, one like this I just found searching: [https://www.neowin.net/news/first-season-of-dragon-ball-z- no...](https://www.neowin.net/news/first-season-of-dragon-ball-z-now-free-to- download-on-windows-10-and-xbox-one)

I wanted to give both the anime and the Microsoft Store's video section a try, and did nothing more than just opening the Microsoft Store, finding the content, getting it for free and watching the first episode. My guess is that this might have been the problem.

If this really is the case, then I could not possibly know I was fooling Microsoft Store: \- I did not and still do not know if the content was not available, free or paid, from Turkey. There were no indications of the content being unavailable to Turkey on the Store page. \- Microsoft Store did not ask me if I am from Ohio, I never said I was from Ohio. I regularly use VPN for personal reasons, unrelated to this matter. I did not use VPN to make Microsoft Store think that I am from Ohio. Microsoft Store itself may have falsely assumed that I am from Ohio, and granted me the right to watch a content for free. It is Microsoft Store's fault for immediately assuming my location from the way I connect to the Internet.

If my guesses are true, then Microsoft's Microsoft Store is the culprit for being overly presumptuous about my location, not asking me for approval, hence not putting me responsible, and giving me free access to some content as a result. I may not be put responsible for Microsoft's presumptions that I haven't approved.

<comment><USER24> > I wanted to give both the anime and the Microsoft Store's video section a > try, and did nothing more than just opening the Microsoft Store, finding the > content, getting it for free and watching the first episode. My guess is > that this might have been the problem.

I agree. It's very likely that, by using a US VPN, you circumvented geo- restriction in the Microsoft Store. You could test that by creating another Microsoft account, under a fake name, using a commercial VPN service with a non-US exit. Then try to get the Dragon Ball Z episode from Microsoft Store. If you need help, feel free to email me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >"We canno't provide details about why your account is closed and won't reactivate it"

This type of behaviour should be banned by the European Union.

You should be provided with the exact reason of why your account is being closed , regardless of who is the provider of the service.

It's unacceptable that companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Airbnb feel entitle to behave like this knowing how critical the service provided by those companies are for some organization. Plus the fact that those suspensions are usually done automatically by an algorithm powered by Machine Learning or something similar.

This type of mechanism could destroy an entire organization if the account of CEOs , CTOs, CFOs are suddenly locked down without possibility to access their emails , their contacts, their meetings and others business critical information.

This is outrageous.

<comment><USER26> Often times companies are _legally barred_ from disclosing this information. For example, in the financial services sector, if a person's account is linked to certain forms of financial crimes, it is strictly illegal for the company to tell the owner why their account was suspended and/or funds frozen.

The intent is to not reveal that the account had been linked to (for example) financing of terrorist organizations, but in reality I think it causes more problems than it solves. A real criminal who has their account shut down is probably going to be pretty aware of what the reason is. On the other hand, many times something like this can happen due to a mistake by a government agency, an account takeover, or some other situation where the owner of the account has no idea what went wrong or how to fix it, and finds themselves blackballed by multiple financial institutions with no recourse.

I'm not a fan of PayPal by any shot, but I would wager a nontrivial number of the customer support nightmare stories we've all read actually come down to this, and their hands are completely tied.

<comment><USER25> > Often times companies are legally barred from disclosing this information.

You are talking specifically about the financial and banking industry. Working in the banking industry , compliance regulation prevents banks from communicating about why your funds are frozen so the SEC can investigate and determine whether are not a fraud or suspicious activity were committed.

Such thing does not exist in the IT Industry. Microsoft ran their in house auditing tools , determined the account was suspiscious , set a flag "is_suspicious" as "true" in their database and the next day a batch ran and suspsended their account.

IT Audit for GAFA is 100% automated , there is no human interaction unlike Banking , Insurance and Finance.

Hence, the fact that BFA must communicate after the investigation about what fraud you committed to properly charge you in court and banned you from the services( You can even be banned in an entire country from owning a bank account depending on the severity ) but they must tell you why.

That is not the case for tech, it is completely unregulated which is why it's making me this upset.

<comment><USER26> Microsoft is a large company with many services, and some of them may intersect with this type of regulation through law enforcement. The financial sector isn't the only area of business that have these types of restrictions, and it's often significantly easier from a business and engineering perspective to block an account entirely than to cherry pick which services can and cannot be used.

This is particularly true when products frequently gain new features or integrations with other company-provided services, as changes in one system might allow an account that's partially suspended to be able to perform legally-forbidden actions in another (think: something like iMessage gaining Apple Pay support). Yes, you _can_ solve these things with engineering, but not only can that easily cost more than it's worth, but you also open yourself to massive company risk if you fuck it up and regulators catch wind.

<comment><USER27> > The financial sector isn't the only area of business that have these types > of restrictions, and it's often significantly easier from a business and > engineering perspective to block an account entirely than to cherry pick > which services can and cannot be used.

Yeah, I used to work on a fraud detection team for another company, where some guy got some traction online complaining about how his payment account got shut down. All sorts of bluster about how he scrupulously followed the terms and conditions and how he couldn't possibly be doing anything fraudulent and how we were stealing his money, and lots of bad publicity in threads like this.

Turns out the FBI was investigating the guy for hosting child porn on another service using the same account, and we weren't allowed to respond in any way to his complaining online. So we shut down all his accounts and couldn't really do anything to defend ourselves against his complaints.

In my experience, like 90+% of the loudest complainers of account shutdowns are completely full of it, and are guilty of very obvious violations that they somehow fail to mention when blogging about it. I'm not going to say that false positives from machine learning systems never happen, but people who loudly complain about their accounts being frozen don't have a good track record, and since most companies aren't going to discuss exactly why they got shut down in the open, the prevailing narrative seems to be that the large faceless corporation doesn't care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Call them? Escalate, escalate, escalate until you get an answer.

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051701/global- cust...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4051701/global-customer- service-phone-numbers)

</comment><comment><USER29> Exactly the same thing happened to me while using Azure free tier. 2-3 y ago. It was a new account which i only used for a few days. Only to make a few test calls to their geo location api (i think). I needed that for a service that i was building. Then i got this same message. No idea why. I did get two phone calls to upgrade my account (!) but they could not explain why this happened, nor get more details. Very, very strange. I switched to Google and never looked back

<comment><USER30> There are dozens of stories of identical things happening to Google accounts so it's not as if they are any better.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. These giant companies should really only be used as interchangeable infrastructure. I have my own personal domain. At the moment, I use Google to handle my mail. If they no longer want me as a customer, I'll update my domain's MX records and move to another company.

<comment><USER32> What happens if your domain registrar bans you? Is it something they can do?

<comment><USER33> I would be even more worried about DNS/domain hijacking if the HN stories I hear are true. Not only technical issues but social engineering of the domain ownership.

Whatever you do (custom domain or not), you're always exposed.

<comment><USER31> Yeah but I don't really know what to do about that, except for using a domain provider with 2FA.

And of course you're always exposed, I'm not sure why you'd mention that. It's no reason to just give up and do nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> While this certainly is not exactly a decent way of dealing with people and a less than stellar customer experience, Microsoft isn't the judicial system but a private entity. This being a civil law affair there are no formal charges and you're not accused of anything but merely (and potentially ) in breach of contract.

If you sue them they'll have to reveal what they think you did. Other than that you're probably only entitled to access to your data so you can transfer it to another provider, as well as maybe a prorated refund if applicable (and you'd probably have to hire a lawyer for that, too, because they possibly won't answer any further inquiries on your part).

You mentioned a university licence. Many vendors explicitly prohibit usage of such licences for purposes other than educational ones. This might be the cause of your problem, for example if you used your account for hosting a commercial application on Microsoft Azure.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not use my account for any commercial purposes, and I don't have much to say for the rest, read them like "you are a poor customer, who won't be able to afford, and should not afford a lawyer to recover your $100-300 loss, for your own interest". Sad that this is reality, or someone perpetuates this fact in such an acceptant manner.

<comment><USER34> I don't endorse this behaviour at all I'm merely stating the facts (probably as outlined in the contract you've entered with Microsoft). If you feel you've been wronged you should certainly hire a lawyer. At the very least then you'll know what it is they think you did.

Another option would be talking to a consumer organization (not sure if this is applicable because a university licence might not qualify as a consumer licence).

Other than that: Caveat emptor. I know this sounds trite and doesn't really help in your current situation but when you entered that contract you very likely agreed to the terms Microsoft now uses against you.

<comment><USER19> > Other than that: Caveat emptor. I know this sounds trite and doesn't really > help in your current situation but when you entered that contract you very > likely agreed to the terms Microsoft now uses against you.

Yes of course, he should have simply not used e-mail.

<comment><USER35> Or use an email provider that offers better terms?

<comment><USER19> Such as?

<comment><USER24> A few: Autistici, cock.li, CounterMail, ProtonMail, Riseup, ScryptMail, Tutanota, VFEmail.

<comment><USER36> Don't forget self-hosted

<comment><USER24> True. But then you may have deliverability issues, right?

<comment><USER36> Some people say they have that, but I've never experienced it. I even run it out of a residential IP with no issues.

This is probably a good example of YMMV

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > Microsoft's own way of justice is against the legal systems in all the > modern countries, which always makes sure that the accused knows their > faults, as one of their rights, and for the benefit of the accused not > getting involved in such acts for a second time, for that they this time > will know.

Welcome to the modern world.

I read frequently on the /r/androiddev subreddit about Android devs who have had apps suspended or accounts closed for reasons beyond their comprehension.

I frequently read about people wanting tech platforms to start censoring more actively (Twitter, FB, Youtube?) and for them to boot controversial people for using their free speech (even if offensive).

Unfortunately giving "the accused" any sort of recourse doesn't seem to be a priority when the PR machine is going against a tech company - it's easier for them to use the banhammer.

<comment><USER38> Microsoft isn't a government. They can't arrest you, and they can't seize your property (that you haven't already given them). As a private entity, they can define the terms by which they provide or revoke services, within some broad boundaries such as Civil Rights law.

So that can suck, if you don't know why you've been banned or possibly when you are banned by mistake, but that is the risk of using these kinds of services.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This account had been my oldest digital property, which I had been using for probably over 10 years now. I haven't been using it any differently than before, so now I am left absolutely clueless with a sizeable digital property of mine being lost. I could have kept a copy of everything and not got all-in to the OneDrive with the On-Demand feature, but I don't know what I could have done to not lose 3.5 out of 4 years of pre-paid (required) Office 365 University service, because Microsoft simply does not tell.

<comment><USER39> Email the office of Attorney General of your state with a grievance - you paid for it, it was yanked from you, no one is picking up the phone. This is what AG is for - protecting consumers from all kinds of snatch-and-run, big and small.

Now you might think the AG won't have time for you, but the AG is not sitting there reading the incoming email and deciding to act. The AG clerk on duty will check that basic facts and dates are present in your email (make sure to include them), and ask the BigCo for their side of the story; all that before anyone even looks at the merit of the case. The BigCo will now face a choice - continue corresponding with the office of AG (which is billable lawyer time plus a drain on management brainpower), or shut you up by giving you back your stuff (which is free).

<comment><USER24> OP is in Turkey :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does anybody know of a MS feature similar to Google Takeout?

I frequently take downloads of my Google content with Google Takeout but haven't been doing the same for Microsoft. Recently started adding important content to my MS account, and probably ought to start doing the same for that service.

edit: yeah, yeah, yeah all the cool kids don't use Microsoft stuff. For some of us, there may reasons we do, and I suggest this MS service might do the trick. I'm still testing what all is included in this export. _UPDATE_ apparently this tool just exports a json file including usage information of each MS service but not the data contained within those usage sessions i.e. a file I've created in OneDrive Excel. Hmmmm.... going to continue the hunt.

[https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/export](https://account.microsoft.com/privacy/export)

<comment><USER41> I dont think most people have microsoft accounts, or services so there is nothing to take out.

<comment><USER42> I'd wager a guess that the majority of Windows users use a Microsoft online login. Also, Office 365 and OneDrive are both widely used, and there's Skype, Xbox, and Hotmail/Live Mail/Outlook/whatever.

<comment><USER41> Thats forced integration, but logging into windows does not imply you store data on windows services. The only thing that I can see resulting in data storage is onedrive because its forced down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> They can claim that they are following the law, but that doesn't mean they actually are... If you have a university based license then I would suggest you complain about the suspension of service with your university. Possibly the person who manages the business relationship with Microsoft has contacts they can talk to.

Also: keep backups outside of the Microsoft ecosystem.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is my personal over-10-years-old account. I merely bought a university package that is for sale on Microsoft, using this account after getting registered to my university.

<comment><USER44> Are you a current student then?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I have graduated by the end of last Spring semester. I purchased the product while I still was a student last year. I will become Master's student once again in within two months.

<comment><USER45> Could the university have notified Microsoft that you were currently not enrolled, and thats why your account was suspended?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If I know anything about corporations, that's because of a due diligence check. Your name or credit card or face matched someone else, or they thought you have connections to sanctioned countries, or your finances are dodgy.

Even for spam they wouldn't block you like this right weather. It's due diligence.

</comment><comment><USER47> > "Pursuant to our terms, we cannot reactivate your account, nor provide > details as to why it was closed."

Am I correctly interpreting their statement as saying that they're constrained by their own self-imposed policies?

</comment><comment><USER48> Imagine your Github repos gone because Microsoft thought you violated TOS.

Well now that's just an eventually.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been thinking a lot about this (after hearing about the Airbnb guy [1] the other day) as it pertains to the cloud i.e. Azure, GCP. I'd hate to be a company that spends hundreds of thousands moving its infrastructure to the cloud, then suddenly without warning it's all terminated without cause or explanation.

On a side note, as a published author on Amazon, I've heard horror stories in the usual author forums of Amazon doing the same to authors, pulling all their novels off their site without warning and terminating their account. Amazon does have some remediation pathways (unlike the AirBnB guy), and many authors had their accounts restored after weeks or months of perstering support (although the damage is done).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523056)

</comment><comment><USER50> My account got suspended and kicked me off a month ago by simply accessing the forwarding section of my Microsoft account. Tried it on another account and same thing. To this day i am confused about that, and how some of these big companies with the toughest entry requirements make the dumbest crap.

<comment><USER51> Yep. Same thing happened here.

New account banned after changing Hotmail settings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Did you have pirated material in OneDrive? Did you pirate Windows, Office, or any other Microsoft software?

I'm thinking content scanning or Microsoft Account telemetry.

<comment><USER53> I don't think that this matters as much unless you've shared it & Microsoft got some sort of DMCA notice.

By any chance, did you have child nudity (ex: photo of child bathing, etc.) on your OneDrive? If so, I wonder if PhotoDNA picked it up (see [https://www.neowin.net/news/man-arrested-after-microsoft- fin...](https://www.neowin.net/news/man-arrested-after-microsoft-finds-child- porn-on-onedrive-account)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I have nothing useful that I can say here except that this has happened to me. A few months back, I created a new account on Outlook with a username that I wanted to adopt for my communication. When I tried to login the next day, the account had been suspended by Microsoft with a similar reason given. I didn't do anything further because I had just created the account and had nothing associated with it.

</comment><comment><USER55> Amazon does the same thing from experience. Google too from what I've read here. This is the dark side of tech companies. In this respect they are all powerful. Makes it impossible to truly rely or trust any of their services when they did things like this. We're seeing more and more of these cases and without proper regulations, what's to stop these companies from abusing their customers? Nothing. It should really make one think twice about depending on such services, especially for running a business.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yes. Been there, done that.

I was wondering what it was I could have done. I was thinking of all the "grey area" things I may have been up to - then I paused and thought: "why am I concerned they could know so much?" because it's possible.

That was the final week I used Windows.

It will get worse before it gets better, and I'm actually thankful.

</comment><comment><USER57> I hope someone from Microsoft can adress this problem asap. I have office license + 1 tb of onedrive pictures and important documents which have no other backup. Also other online accounts are tied to the microsoft account. If Microsoft shut people down without reasoning I may plan to "decentralise" my services.

<comment><USER58> I strongly recommend you just go ahead and do so. This is like saying: if the burglars don't return this guy's stolen property soon, I might just have to start locking my doors when I go out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Contrary to most of the posters on here, I have had nothing but positive experiences with Windows 10. I don't get served ads in the OS (or don't notice them). I don't see any upsell. I don't get blue screens. Edge is a competent and effective browser, and I often use it over Firefox or chrome, though I still use those for development. I am a happy customer.

I have a paid OneDrive account that stores all my family photos.

Reading this has made me realise it could so easily happen to me. I'm going to make double sure I back up everything locally too, from now on.

MS only has my photos though. Google really has me by the balls. Ten years of emails with friends and customers, and pretty much every login I have is tied to my gmail. If that was taken I away I would be truly boned

<comment><USER60> Windows 10 has been bombarding me with "start your Office free trial" ads for years. I keep disabling the notification, and it keeps coming back when I get updates.

That's my only complaint, but it isn't a small one. Having advertisements so deeply baked in to an operating system is disgusting.

<comment><USER59> Where do these appear? I've honestly never seen them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Were you running any of their cloud servers? If so what were you doing on there?

Were you storing files? If so what kind of files.

You might find there's some kind of activity you've been doing but thought was ok, or you were storing files which got flagged for porn or copyright.

</comment><comment><USER62> I find these stories really disturbing. Are there any services (I'm thinking mostly of email, cloud storage) that explicitly say they will

\- provide a reason if they ban you

\- always let you take out your data (unless not legally possible)

\- have decent customer service ?

</comment><comment><USER63> If you use the account on Win10, do they lock you out from your whole computer?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just tried to see if I am able to log-in using Microsoft account, and I was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Most EULAs I have been reading clearly state that the service provider can recede from the contract at any time without having to provide any explanation.

This is undoubtedly unfair, but I honestly wonder: if this is even legal?

<comment><USER19> If they can force you to agree to mandatory arbitration to use their service (and in the US they can, according to the Supreme Court), this kind of stuff is peanuts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> That's the problem we been talking about for years with regards to dependency on the cloud. Take digital games: you don't own then, when you pay roughly the same amount you did for a boxed game a decade ago now you barely get a license, not a right, to play said game on platforms such as valve for as long as they allow you to.

And it's the same problem with software in general these days, no matter if you pay you don't own it so you don't have a right to use it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Folks, it is high time & rather long enough time that we actually bought domains & setup our own email addresses since now everything is linked with one & random termination of a free-email account & linked data loss is simply unacceptable. But that's what you get when you go with a free service provider.

</comment><comment><USER67> I highly recommend Fastmail. Not affiliated other than customer since 2002. Best email out there IMHO. Paid, but worth it.

<comment><USER39> How is search nowadays? I left 8 years ago them because search was so bad compared to Gmail.

<comment><USER67> Search is great. No issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Search for their support number and call them. While stuck on the phone, research making the jump to free software.

</comment><comment><USER69> Almost makes me wonder if legislation requiring companies to "provide details as to the reason for account closure" is a necessity.

If a company can take everything away from you at the turn of a dime, you should at least be entitled to know why it was done.

</comment><comment><USER70> This is not first time someone has been kicked out of their MS/Google/Apple/Cloud provider with any explanation. Has anyone tried to sue them in order to get the answer to the question "why"?

</comment><comment><USER71> This is a bummer, and not customer friendly.

This is one* of the reasons why I never use single sign on for other services.

* other reasons include:

not wanting SSO to know where I'm going, when I'm going to it. It's none of their business!

Not wanting a cascading breach

</comment><comment><USER72> Once again, this is what happens when you trust some third party organizations for simple things like storing your data, facilitating group communication, or even authenticating your very identity!

Why do we do it?

<comment><USER28> > Why do we do it?

Because these sort of stories represent probably something like one in a million failure rate. That is ridiculously successful. And those "simple things" you say are really not all that simple.

</comment></comment><comment> oval-atom did you originally open the account using an "alternate email"?......and now they have Temporarily Suspended the account...?

But they give you the option to provide a text able phone number and give you 10 minutes to use the texted Access Code?

I have had that happen 3 times......... they after your cell phone number and holding your account hostage to get it.

They will not respond to any other option nor give evidence of what they claim violated any Terms of Use. They just say "Suspected".

</comment><comment><USER73> Did you perhaps leak an API key?

</comment><comment><USER74> MS won't tell you, we don't know. End of story. What more is there to say?

<comment><USER75> Generally when someone posts a story like this on HN it's both as a warning to others about what could happen to them, and also in hopes that someone from the source company touches base or clarifies. It's seldom the end of the story.</comment></comment>