Yet Another Hatchery

[osmarks]

Just now, Fuzzbucket said:

They have his ear. And he has told you that the script you were using wasn't OK. Try changing it and showing it to him first ?

All I can really do is:

• Throw out EATW data, attempt to ignore its existence while figuring out formulae again, which will probably get me complained at.
• Throw out EATW data, keep current view rates, make eggs get horribly sick.
• Throw out EATW data, turn down view rates, make hatchery effectively useless since it's low traffic and other options which do basically the same things exist.
• Keep hatchery broken forever.

and also probably only get feedback in the form of being IP-banned repeatedly.

[Fuzzbucket]

I am SURE you would have to ignore/not use anything from EATW. Since you know they were banned, you also know that they broke the TOCs.

 

There's no reason eggs should get "horribly sick". We should be watching out for our own.

[osmarks]

3 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I am SURE you would have to ignore/not use anything from EATW. Since you know they were banned, you also know that they broke the TOCs.

 

There's no reason eggs should get "horribly sick". We should be watching out for our own.

They would get horribly sick if the system used by this hatchery was kept without the view limits.

 

It's not very practical for me to try and work stuff out ignoring EATW, since I've read said data and remembered a lot of it. And I'm pretty sure that you can be banned without breaking the T&C if TJ09 wants it to be so.

[Fuzzbucket]

I'm sure you can. But that isn't the case here.

 

Clearly you need to change your programming not to use the kind of information you gleaned from EATW.

[osmarks]

1 minute ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I'm sure you can. But that isn't the case here.

 

Clearly you need to change your programming not to use the kind of information you gleaned from EATW.

As I said, that would then make the hatchery either useless or worse than useless.

[Fuzzbucket]

Other hatcheries are useful. Why would yours alone be useless ? Basically - it seems - because you want to use info that you now know is against the ToC to make it different from the others..

 

Sorry - but it is up to you to find a way around  this if you want to run the hatchery.

[osmarks]

1 minute ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Other hatcheries are useful. Why would yours alone be useless ? Basically - it seems - because you want to use info that you now know is against the ToC to make it different from the others..

 

Sorry - but it is up to you to find a way around  this if you want to run the hatchery.

Useless because other hatcheries exist with more traffic which would then do the same thing.

 

It's not as if the information itself is against the T&C. The act of getting it is. And that section is horrendously ill-defined.

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[Fuzzbucket]

Using the information is. You have been told this. And more than one person has pointed out that it is reverse engineering.

 

And if it were OK for you to use then it's OK for everyone else. Level playing field. Increasingly  it looks like you'd like to recreate EATW. Not going to happen.

 

I'm out.

[osmarks]

1 hour ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Using the information is. You have been told this. And more than one person has pointed out that it is reverse engineering.

 

And if it were OK for you to use then it's OK for everyone else. Level playing field. Increasingly  it looks like you'd like to recreate EATW. Not going to happen.

 

I'm out.

I have not been told this. It is vaguely implied. And saying something is against the T&C doesn't mean it actually is. The T&C is the T&C and stuff which isn't isn't.

 

Now yes, it might be the reason TJ09 did decide to break this hatchery. Then maybe this should be explicitly said and mentioned somewhere.

 

My position, summarised:

• The T&C is very unclear on reverse engineering.
• If TJ09 actually clarifies what the problem is, I will respect that, by either just removing the hatchery since it might be made pointless or changing it round a bit.
• It would be nice if the process for handling this was better and the terms and whatnot involved were less horribly unclear.

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[HeatherMarie]

I really don't see how this is at all confusing or vague. You specifically said you took code derived from EATW to use in your hatchery. The email you quoted specified that 'You have, through your own admission on the forums, done the exact thing that got EATW banned from the API.' which seems pretty clear to mean that the code you used from EATW is the issue here. So, remove that, and request API access again. I don't understand how that's so hard to understand.

 

Removing certain features/code will *not* make your hatchery 'useless'. Every single hatchery has to abide by these same rules, you aren't a special case, and all those other hatcheries are in fact very useful. It sounds like you may need to tweak something to lower view rates, but again that does not in any way make the hatchery useless. There is also no reason to assume that throwing out code in order to abide by the current rules would make tons of eggs sick, unless the hatchery is refreshing the eggs like every single second. Plenty of hatcheries have fast viewers and very rarely have much of a sickness issue. 

 

While I very very much think that the 'reverse engineering' part of the T/C could be better worded, it's really not all that hard to understand in this case. You deliberately stated that you were using code to do things that aren't readily available in the API, which seems pretty clearly against the 'derive processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations' part in the T/C. 

[osmarks]

It would be useless due to the whole thing of "high traffic needed to make it give enough views, enough views needed for high traffic".

 

I'm not sure if the complaint is the EATW data stuff, scraping, or non-formula-y sickness checking.

[Fuzzbucket]

What part of

 

Quote

You have, through your own admission on the forums, done the exact thing that got EATW banned from the API.

 

did you not understand ?

[osmarks]

46 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

What part of

 

 

did you not understand ?

The bit specifying what it was EATW did and when they were banned from the API? This is somewhat confusing given that they were said to be running until some viewbombing.

 

Anyway, I do not care enough, so the hatchery has now been shut down. Enjoy!

Edited September 8, 2018 by osmarks

[Fuzzbucket]

The viewbombing had nothing to do with the ban. I already told you that. I imagine the owner had found a way to use the API even after TJ became annoyed - or possibly they were negotiating.. I have no doubt it is the mechanics working out how to avoid sickness when the views are high.

 

I don't think TJ has to tell you if/when others were denied API access. TJ said you can submit again - try working out a system of your own and resubmitting.

[osmarks]

11 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

The viewbombing had nothing to do with the ban. I already told you that. I imagine the owner had found a way to use the API even after TJ became annoyed - or possibly they were negotiating.. I have no doubt it is the mechanics working out how to avoid sickness when the views are high.

 

I don't think TJ has to tell you if/when others were denied API access. TJ said you can submit again - try working out a system of your own and resubmitting.

TJ09 certainly doesn't have to, but it would help make the email clearer. And I doubt they could actually access it without TJ09 wanting them to - I don't use the API, but can't access DC stuff, because of my/the server's IP being banned, so unless weirdness was happening it ought to have basically been controlled by TJ09 anyway.

 

As I said, I can either try and reverse-engineer it myself, which was maybe apparently what got EATW banned, basically make it work like a normal hatchery and run into the inability to get views without users and inability to get users without views, or make stuff sick and hope it only gets used on ER stuff. But this is irrelevant, because I don't care enough to spend ages on this and have just shut down the site.

[Fuzzbucket]

Reverse engineering IS banned. You know this; you signed up to it when you opened a scroll. Maybe you didn't read it. Here it is, right from the T&C.

 

Quote

 

Reverse Engineering

Users of the site agree not to reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive any processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations.

 

 

That's pretty clear.

[osmarks]

11 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Reverse engineering IS banned. You know this; you signed up to it when you opened a scroll. Maybe you didn't read it. Here it is, right from the T&C.

 

 

That's pretty clear.

It is not clear in application. That applies to any sort of figuring out anything about the game, and lunar herald calendar makers are fine.

 

Now, in this case, it may be implied that EATW were banned for the egg hatching data figuring. But that's not actually certain, and application of the T&C only when it's convenient is bad.

Edited September 9, 2018 by osmarks

[Fuzzbucket]

The T&C say reverse engineering is not OK. YOU say - even two posts up - that 

 

Quote

I can either try and reverse-engineer it myself,

 

You know from a clear sentence in the T&C - that that is against the rules.

 

Why EATW was banned is none of your business - you have even admitted that. But you do know perfectly well that reverse engineering is not OK, and you know that you did that.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Fuzzbucket
I REALLY need to type more slowly...

[osmarks]

1 minute ago, Fuzzbucket said:

The T&C say reverse engineering is not OK. YOU say - even two posts up - that 

 

 

You know from a clear sentence in the T&C - that that is against the rules.

 

Why EATW was banned is none of your business - you have even admitted that. But you do know perfectly well that reverse engineering is not OK, and you know that you did that. 

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned that reverse-engineering it again would be bad.

 

It's not remotely clear. As I said, it is applied inconsistently. T&Cs do not exist in a vacuum.

[Fuzzbucket]

They exist in whatever way TJ says they exist. No-one else with a hatchery seems to have had this issue. You don't actually KNOW how it is applied; you only know that you fell foul of it by using something gleaned from archival material from a site you knew had been banned.  If it's clear to me, it is likely clear to most people. If it wasn't clear to you you could have asked BEFORE using stuff from a hatchery you KNEW had been banned.

 

You know you were banned for the use of the same reverse engineering as EATW used - the stuff you linked in a post way up.

 

- but - well, as they say these day - whatevs. You can try and start over or move on. Your choice.

[osmarks]

It's not as if no hatcheries were ever affected. EATW was. I assume the reason others aren't is because it's easier to not go around reverse engineering than it is to.

 

Also, I don't exactly know that. It could be for the sickness checking - which just directly pulled the contents from the available page and did not use any calculations - or scraping, or the EATW data thingy. It didn't say.

 

Besides that, the T&C for reverse engineering is very selectively enforced, and this is bad. It is completely unreasonable to ban any sort of figuring out about how the game works. Luckily, this doesn't actually happen - in most situations, TJ09 ignores it. This is, however, very problematic, in that if TJ09 happens to under some unexplained policy disagree with a thing it gets banned with basically no explanation and the justification of some bit of terms which is mostly ignored even by him.

[Fuzzbucket]

How do you know it is selectively enforced ? Prove it.

 

And it isn't unreasonable not to want people to work out the mechanics of a game. Thou shalt not
 

Quote

or otherwise attempt to derive any processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations

 

 

I suppose you could argue that it can't hurt anyone simply to try to work things out - but it isn't OK to use that information to get yourself an advantage, or indeed, to DO anything with the information. You said yourself that without the feature that got you banned, your hatchery would be the same as all the others. You hoped to have a special feature to yours, giving users an advantage over those using other hatcheries.

 

But you are never going to see this as reasonable, no matter what anyone says.

[osmarks]

It's clearly selectively enforced if "working out how many views eggs take to hatch" is handled differently to "working out when lunar heralds come out whatever color". Both arguably give you an advantage (slightly easier hatching of eggs if hatcheries support it or being able to make lineages in a certain color without just picking up eggs constantly until they're correct).

 

This "special feature" of view safety checking or whatever could be implemented by other hatcheries. It'd be even easier than doing it with the data EATW provided, since my code for the entire hatchery is openly available (though admittedly not in PHP). And as I have said, I don't necessarily know what the ban was for, though it's presumably scraping, using reverse-engineered data (the T&C is specifically about getting it in the first place, which nobody seems to care about, though I think that's broken too), or just directly checking for sickness via checking for the "soft shell" and "ill" text on pages.

 

"Isn't OK" as defined by who? The T&C? It just bans any sort of figuring out how the site works regardless of reason, though most of the time TJ09 ignores it. You? Who cares? Information available to anyone (I had linked to the code handling view safety checking, but then removed that link) doesn't produce unfair advantages.

[animatedrose]

Well, RIP this hatchery. It was a fun test while it existed. Back to VB- and VD-dodging in the other hatcheries.

[purpledragonclaw]

Since this hatchery is now gone I will close this thread. Osmarks, please contact TJ if you have any further questions about this.