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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • There were 3 issues at once, so “trust & safety” is definitely part of it.

    1. Too much traffic use, this is purely a billing issue and CF probably wouldn’t even care (they haven’t for years) despite losing money
    2. Violating ToS with the domains, a minor infraction probably, but enough to cancel the contract
    3. This is the big one: CF uses one pool of IPs for all customers, the IP of a gambling site (like a casino) will get banned by ISPs of various countries (Gambling being illegal, strictly regulated and so on). This is the trust & safety issue, CF is actively hurting by keeping this customer. The enterprise plan they want to push them to has ByoIP (Bring your own IP), which would probably have been one condition of keeping them on. CF could have communicated better (if we got the full story here…), but for $250 a month they’d much rather kick the customer off their service

  • From the additional info I read, it sounds more like the traffic wasn’t the main issue.

    Gambling is forbidden in a lot of countries or heavily regulated. Cloudflare uses a common IP pool for all customers, so a casino customer would possibly get their IPs blacklisted (by various ISPs). The Enterprise tier of Cloudflare has “Bring your own IP (ByoIP)”, which they probably wanted to force onto this problematic customer to protect their business.

    So it’s actually a problem, not just them paying not enough (which is another reason to get rid of them as fast as possible).



  • As I said in another comment: The up-front payment is the only thing that makes sense for Cloudflare. You got a customer that’s costing you money each month. They broke ToS. You offer them a deal still to keep the services running. And their CEO/CFO tells you they are looking at other providers like Fastly.

    If Cloudflare gave them a monthly contract then the casino would simply pay for a month and switch over their services to a competitor in that time. So Cloudflare loses all the money from the past (where the casino used far too much traffic) and will barely recoup 10k (minus the running cost, so more likely 7k at the high end) for a single month. It’s just not worth it.

    So they offer: Stick with us for a full year at least or get fucked. Which is fair.


  • Is there? The casino is on a cheap $250 a month plan they don’t belong on and they broke ToS with the domains. While also costing Cloudflare money each month (as the casino admits themselves, their traffic alone is worth up to $2000 a month).

    It’s absolutely in the right of Cloudflare to drop a customer that’s bothersome. Casinos usually are (regulations, going around country restrictions), them costing them money on top is a massive issue.

    120k a year is a big slap of course, but it’s probably the amount Cloudflare would want to keep them on as a customer. If they leave, so be it.

    I’ve seen it several times before at companies I worked at. They cheaped out and went with a tiny service plan to coast by. Or even broke ToS because it would be cheaper. That usually got stopped by plans getting dropped (GitLab Bronze for example), cheap plans getting limited, or the sales team sending a ‘friendly’ message that we’re abusing their plan and how we’re going to fix it. If you don’t play along at that point you’re going to get the hammer dropped on you.

    It also wasn’t 24h as the title says, the first communication happened in April. At that point they should have started to scramble, either upgrading to a bigger tier immediately or switching providers. And it’s totally normal to go to the sales team when you break the ToS of your plan or you abuse a smaller plan. They’re going to discuss terms, it’s not a technical issue.

    Edit: And I should also say, the whole “paying for a whole year is extortion” is bullshit too. Their CFO or CEO told Cloudflare they are looking at switching providers (as they looked at Fastly). So of fucking course Cloudflare is going to demand a full year upfront. Otherwise the casino could pay for a single month and during that month they switch away to another provider. So Cloudflare would still be thousands in the red with that ex-customer after they used so much traffic the last few years.


  • You do realize most people charge at home? It doesn’t matter how long it takes when the car is just sitting there (you’ll even save time compared to driving to the gas station).

    Manufacturers also give 7+ years warranty on batteries by now, but even after 10 years a battery doesn’t just break, you only lose a few percent of range (if this wasn’t already calculated into the buffer, depends on the car).

    You do know EV sales stall because of that, right?

    In what fantasy world are you living? EVs just hit an all-times sales record last year. This is for the US, but it’s similar all over the world:






  • Both use E Ink’s latest Kaleido color screen technology, which has subtle, pastel-like hues and drops from a 300ppi grayscale resolution to 150ppi when you view content in color.

    I had to check just how bad 150ppi would be when dropping down the resolution for color.

    A 24" Full HD monitor has a PPI of 92. So it’s actually okay.

    I’m still using my old Kobo Aura HD (now roughly 11 years old) and the battery still lasts over a month. The screen was already decent back then, but a bit sluggish. I just checked, the old one has 265 ppi. Maybe it’s not time for an upgrade yet :)


  • Besides: Fuck modern office design. Even in my company in Austria, other departments often have cushy 2-3 employee offices, plenty of space, really nice.

    What do software developers get? Massive rooms with 13 people inside and no seperators for “collaboration”. But while you’re in online meeting A and your colleague is in online meeting B you can’t even focus on your own thoughts.


  • Even Lenovo dropped the ball on their latest Thinkpads. Terrible thermal design, they messed up their BIOS (long boot times, Lenovo support just told my colleague to roll back to an older version, lol. Then the next support call they wouldn’t give support because he wasn’t on the newest version). Overall total bullshit for fully decked out $3000 machines.

    Personally I’d never buy a laptop if I can avoid it, desktop parts are just so much better and cost less.





  • YouTube already has ways to block users with adblock. They just haven’t fully rolled it out yet.

    Lately they blocked playing videos when I had uBlock Origin running, but it was just a warning I could click away. They might also slow down page loading and playback.

    YouTube has the ability to lock users with adblock out, they are just very careful about using it. Mostly starting with trials in smaller countries and getting more bold over time.