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418 I'm a teapot

developer.mozilla.org

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Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explicitly telling some junior software developer in China that he can call an API for free an unlimited number of times, then afterwards calling it abuse and him and a-hole dev is definitively a bit of an a-hole thing to do in my view.

There's always an individual with autism-level consideration for what one says, isn't there? No, effectively DDOS-ing a service just because it says it's free and unlimited is a dick move People like those are a big reason for why we can't have nice things

I scanned through the comments and I don't think anyone raised the possibility that the developer might not be aware how many devices their code would be running on.

It's quite possible that a random just contracted to write software for some embedded system, with no context how many thousands or millions of devices it would run on. So they looked up OP's site, sees "supports unlimited requests and is free", shrugs and just writes implements the code.

Or, the dev might be told the system only had a couple thousand users, then somebody else copied the code and deployed it on a million devices.

You don't know the story, and I think the moral here is not to blame a faceless Android dev from China, but to implement quotas and controls and avoid falsely boast on your website that your service has unlimited scalability.

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if someone doesn't undeestand this assumption, then they are an asshole? That's pretty crazy viewpoint.

> So if someone doesn't undeestand this assumption, then they are an asshole? Yes. > That's pretty crazy viewpoint. Companies that make millions of devices while abusing free APIs without giving anything back are assholes. Hmm, let me think? No, it’s not.

You must be living in a bubble if you think that's how companies operate.

Saying that someone is an asshole for using an API in a way which clearly should be possible according to the documentation is a very clear sign of that person being a junior developer who don't have actual real world experience of anything except toy projects. Any developer with some years of experience would understand that this would happen and he should not be surprised over it.

It's very possible that no one involved in this is even aware of this issue, so automatically calling them assholes is somewhat incompetent at best.

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#183
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What does this sentence even mean lmao >if you say something is unlimited I'm going to take your word for it The sentence refers to people like you. It doesn't make you incredibly clever to consider those sentences literally, like small children or those with under-developed empathy and theory of mind often do It just makes you an inconsiderate numpty >Hacker News would be on the complete opposite Yes, there are lot…

> Yes, there are lots of people on the tech scene that just don't get ideas like "don't abuse it", or "considering the consequences for other people" It's not abuse if you say it's free and unlimited and someone uses it freely and unlimitedly! This is why sites have acceptable use policies and terms of service. This is why most sites don't say their tool is free and unlimited. It is what those words mean. It is liter…

>It is what those words mean. It is literal.

>I'm not sure these were needed

The original wording I was gonna use before deciding to be more considerate was "small children and autists"

If you can think of another short descriptor for "people who obtusely take things literally and are unable or refuse to account for other people's state of mind", I'm happy to use those instead

>I hope you got a nice slither of dopamine out of namecalling though in any case

In fact, it was far more than a sliver!

Upon further reflection, I think I got a lot of repressed anger for never having smacked people who can't behave unless they are explicitly told to do so, who actually need the "within reason" clause everywhere, and who are happy to play with technicalities when it comes to justifying their behaviour

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#184
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's always an individual with autism-level consideration for what one says, isn't there? What does this sentence even mean lmao Autism-level consideration for what one says or not, if you say something is unlimited I'm going to take your word for it. If it's limited, tell me the limits. If it's free to a point, tell me the point. If I need to bust out the CC, tell me I need to bust out the CC. Don't say your th…

>What does this sentence even mean lmao >if you say something is unlimited I'm going to take your word for it The sentence refers to people like you. It doesn't make you incredibly clever to consider those sentences literally, like small children or those with under-developed empathy and theory of mind often do It just makes you an inconsiderate numpty >Hacker News would be on the complete opposite Yes, there are lot…

In the context of an ISP, what is abuse in terms of network usage? For instance, I'm sure with console + PC gaming etc. a lot of gamers use around 400GB a month on average. Systems evolve, and it's the ISPs' job to keep up with demand.

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if someone doesn't undeestand this assumption, then they are an asshole? That's pretty crazy viewpoint.

> So if someone doesn't undeestand this assumption, then they are an asshole? Yes. > That's pretty crazy viewpoint. Companies that make millions of devices while abusing free APIs without giving anything back are assholes. Hmm, let me think? No, it’s not.

> Companies that make millions of devices while abusing free APIs without giving anything back are assholes.

If a service is free & "unlimited" and they start using it, and you get mad, then that is not their fault, it's yours.

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a great canary in the coal mine. Anyone who doesn't implement proper handling of 418 gets their general error handling facilities tested (4xx).

What is the correct way to handle a 418? As if it were a 500? A 400? A 403? A 404? A 429?…

418 is a class 4xx error, which means the client erred and shouldn't repeat the request as-is. That is, any unrecognized error beginning with a 4 must be handled as if it were the base error class, 400, "Bad Request".

> the server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (for example, malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#187
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, there are lots of people on the tech scene that just don't get ideas like "don't abuse it", or "considering the consequences for other people" It's not abuse if you say it's free and unlimited and someone uses it freely and unlimitedly! This is why sites have acceptable use policies and terms of service. This is why most sites don't say their tool is free and unlimited. It is what those words mean. It is liter…

>It is what those words mean. It is literal. >I'm not sure these were needed The original wording I was gonna use before deciding to be more considerate was "small children and autists" If you can think of another short descriptor for "people who obtusely take things literally and are unable or refuse to account for other people's state of mind", I'm happy to use those instead >I hope you got a nice slither of dopami…

You do make an aggressively fair point. I've also enjoyed the banter if nothing else :)

I dunno if my mind is changed just yet but if I'm honest with myself adding it to a widely deployed app would be in my 'dick move' category.

Just set your own up, or use a DNS method which comes with the bonus of built in caching.

For what it's worth I've never actually taken anyone up on their unlimited offers, I try to keep my services neat and tidy :)

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#188
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That kind of increase in traffic costs me money I've never had to plan for. https://getjsonip.com/#plus Going further with jsonip Plus With the upcoming Plus service, you get special features and even more information about your users. - All of the free service features - IP geo location - Country and city to within best available accuracy - ISP Info - Time zone data - Full referer data - Browser and OS info https:…

You assumed the issue relates only to compute costs. Even with a small payload, bandwidth fees can add up quickly when millions of clients are polling.

This. It's mainly bandwidth costs that are the issue. Dealing with cpu is easy and cheap. Bandwidth is the mind killer.

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#189
post #59

Many years ago, some person misconfigured their squid proxy and was hitting https://jsonip.com to the point my server at the time was turning green in the gills. I started responding with 418 "You are a tea kettle" or something like that to those specific requests. The originating dev actually paid attention to their error messages and quickly resolved their config issue. Fast forward to March this year. Some fucking…

Unfortunately, this seems to be the pattern that people offering the same service as you experience. Take a look at https://major.io/2021/06/06/a-new-future-for-icanhazip/ , if you haven't seen it already.

Thanks for the link. That's like reading something from a really scary personal future.

Re: 418 I'm a teapot

#190
post #59

Many years ago, some person misconfigured their squid proxy and was hitting https://jsonip.com to the point my server at the time was turning green in the gills. I started responding with 418 "You are a tea kettle" or something like that to those specific requests. The originating dev actually paid attention to their error messages and quickly resolved their config issue. Fast forward to March this year. Some fucking…

Sounds like you’ve built a valuable service that large companies are using in production! Why not start charging for it?

Have been thinking about it for a couple years. People generally don't realize the complexity that gets added when you start charging money for something.
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