[wolfgke]

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 want others to interprete their data they should not provide any service that sends it (and if Uber's business model requires such a service/app: bad luck for Uber).

[icebraining]

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.

[wolfgke]

Then Uber should rate-limit their service.

[icebraining]

They do, OP's rate is now limited to zero.

[kec]

One man's research is another's DOS attack in this case, and is explicitly against Uber's TOS[0]: "You will not impair the proper operation of the network".

[0]: https://www.uber.com/legal

[will3942]

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 apologise.

[katabatic]

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."

https://www.uber.com/legal

[wolfgke]

He mights have violated Uber's terms of service. But on the other hand: I see no reason why you shouldn't despise a company that has such terms of services - even more if it's willing to apply these terms. Especially if it's a company that tries to be popular in hacker circles.

[will3942]

I understand this and know why they banned me.