They should be talking to, or hiring people like you. Why be so uptight? Makes them kinda similar to the traditional cab companies who don't like people stepping on their turf.
How I got blacklisted by Uber
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#12They should be talking to, or hiring people like you. Why be so uptight? Makes them kinda similar to the traditional cab companies who don't like people stepping on their turf.
Currently looking for an internship for the summer, Uber would be one place I'd love to work. Unfortunately I'm not sure I'd be allowed in anymore!
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#13I feel like it's a bit harsh to blacklist you without a takedown warning.
That's why I don't understand why Will Evans writes: " I'd love to apologize to Uber [...], but on the other hand I understand why they banned me." I see no reason why he should apologize, nor why he appreciatives that Uber banned him. He only wrote code to interprete the data Uber is sending and even made it open source (the latter makes it public accessible research, which I support even more). If Uber does not wan…
He only wrote code to interprete the data Uber is sending
Hitting their servers with 500 reqs/sec for two hours is a little more than just interpreting data.
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#14Lets be clear here- 600 requests every 1.2 seconds is 30,000 additional requests a minute. Uber is not Facebook or Twitter- the amount of requests per minute they get in a given city is probably in the hundreds, not the thousands. These were also not public API's- they were reverse engineered. That means that this puts real load on them, costs them real money in infrastructure costs, and was not done with anything even resembling permission.
A lot of people seem to say that Uber failed to communicate or were too harsh. If someone throws an order or magnitude (or more) traffic at me without telling me, without communicating with me, and using APIs that aren't supposed to be public, you're damn right I'm going to ban them. Even OP knows why they banned him, which he flat out said.
In this case it does seem like pure lack of thinking, and now that the story is out there I'm hoping someone from Uber notices and removes the ban. I'm also really hoping that Will learns a lesson here, and next time he does something like this communicate with the company before releasing anything that's going to use their resources.
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why I don't understand why Will Evans writes: " I'd love to apologize to Uber [...], but on the other hand I understand why they banned me." I see no reason why he should apologize, nor why he appreciatives that Uber banned him. He only wrote code to interprete the data Uber is sending and even made it open source (the latter makes it public accessible research, which I support even more). If Uber does not wan…
I created the hack to benefit others and to create and visualise some pretty cool data. I know why Uber banned me, they probably don't want people knowing how to access their data. This is not a reason I approve of but I can see their reasoning. The reason I'd like to apologise is because of the above, if they feel I have harmed their service (although I feel it was more beneficial to them in advertising it) then I'd…
You don't need to come up with reasons they banned you; you agreed to those reasons when you signed up for Uber -- you quite clearly and willingly violated their terms of service and encouraged others to do so as well.
"You shall not [...] (iv) reverse engineer or access the Application in order to (a) design or build a competitive product or service, (b) design or build a product using similar ideas, features, functions or graphics of the Service or Application, or (c) copy any ideas, features, functions or graphics of the Service or Application, or (v) launch an automated program or script, including, but not limited to, web spiders, web crawlers, web robots, web ants, web indexers, bots, viruses or worms, or any program which may make multiple server requests per second, or unduly burdens or hinders the operation and/or performance of the Service or Application."
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#16Lets be clear here- 600 requests every 1.2 seconds is 30,000 additional requests a minute. Uber is not Facebook or Twitter- the amount of requests per minute they get in a given city is probably in the hundreds, not the thousands. These were also not public API's- they were reverse engineered. That means that this puts real load on them, costs them real money in infrastructure costs, and was not done with anything ev…
I completely agree with this, I acknowledged this and realised I would probably get banned. It was more a case of letting people see how the Uber api could be used, that's why I've now replaced it with a video so people can continue to see it.
I completely agree with why they banned me, it's a huge load to throw on the server. Although I'd love to be unbanned and use it again, I would be surprised if I was.
Thanks for the advice to communicate before, definitely seems like the correct approach.
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#17Well that is quite interesting. A service that - as far as I can tell - just got itself started by hacking the local travel business, blacklists a dev, who just hacks his way to "expose" their API?
Isn't Uber fighting hard to deregulate a market, after it entered it and turned it upside down - for better or worse?
Wasn't the Uber-CEO the absolute Ayn Rand disciple? [1]
[1] http://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/
Not that these two things have anything in common, but I find it slightly amusing, that one the one hand...
... well, I believe you know, what I wanted to say.
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why I don't understand why Will Evans writes: " I'd love to apologize to Uber [...], but on the other hand I understand why they banned me." I see no reason why he should apologize, nor why he appreciatives that Uber banned him. He only wrote code to interprete the data Uber is sending and even made it open source (the latter makes it public accessible research, which I support even more). If Uber does not wan…
He only wrote code to interprete the data Uber is sending Hitting their servers with 500 reqs/sec for two hours is a little more than just interpreting data.
Then Uber should rate-limit their service.
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#19I guess thats as good lesson as any on "how to scale".
If your product works through remote requests to another site (which is already terribly slow with building up the connection), you absolutely want to do all of that in the backend and repackage the data for users of your site. Especially here, where everyone sees the same data.
Re: How I got blacklisted by Uber
#20Lets be clear here- 600 requests every 1.2 seconds is 30,000 additional requests a minute. Uber is not Facebook or Twitter- the amount of requests per minute they get in a given city is probably in the hundreds, not the thousands. These were also not public API's- they were reverse engineered. That means that this puts real load on them, costs them real money in infrastructure costs, and was not done with anything ev…
I completely agree with this, I acknowledged this and realised I would probably get banned. It was more a case of letting people see how the Uber api could be used, that's why I've now replaced it with a video so people can continue to see it. I completely agree with why they banned me, it's a huge load to throw on the server. Although I'd love to be unbanned and use it again, I would be surprised if I was. Thanks fo…
Yeah, I figured you got it, and my comment was not directed at you. However, in the few minutes this post has been up there's a lot of blame going towards Uber, which is what I wanted to call out.