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Comment by SilverBirch | Hacker News Reader

What is the netiquette of downloading HN? Do you ping Dang and ask him before you blow up his servers? Or do you just assume at this point that every billion dollar tech company is doing this many times over so you probably won't even be noticed?

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HN has an API, as mentioned in the article, which isn't even rate limited. And all of the data is hosted on Firebase, which is a YC company. It's fine.

Firebase is owned and operated by Google (has been for a while).

There's literally a public database

https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/product/y-combi...

What if someone from EU invokes "right to be forgotten" and demands HN delete past comments from years ago. Will those deletions be reflected in the public database? Or could you mine the db to discover deleted data?

They need to issue their demand to whoever is hosting their data. If HN has deleted it, they are not hosting it.

That's an entirely third party project so I doubt they should be listing YC as a partner there.

Huh, yeah that is really misleading. Makes it look like it is by YC.

The question is should we ask them to change it...the thought of embarking into the googlemaze with faint hope of encountering a human being makes me le tired.

It doesn't seem to harm you, trademark issues seem not to be your priority there, and do you really want everyone to mail you asking for permission and/or instructions how to download? I guess the Google thing saves you some trouble.

It would have been nice to coordinate that with you, though.

We've gotten quite a few support emails over the years from people asking us to help them with that product. I always used to wonder why, but now I think I know.

Not to mention three-letter agencies, incidentally attaching real names to HN monikers ?

Well, it's called Hacker News, so hacking is fair game, at least in the good sense of the word.

If something is on the public web, it is already being scraped by thousands of bots.

there's literally an API they promote. Did you read that part before trying to cancel them?

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