Abf freight tracking pro number

I initiated an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) with Google Fi support yesterday for a phone covered by insurance. However, I discovered today that they cancelled the replacement without notifying me due to an address verification issue with Google Maps. When I called today to inquire about the tracking number, it took me three hours to complete the process due to technical difficulties and interruptions from meetings. They are now shipping the replacement with 2-day delivery and have specified weekday delivery, which means I will receive the phone on Monday. I asked them to cancel the replacement and process a new one with overnight shipping, but they informed me that it is impossible to overnight it as their system only allows for 2-day delivery. Could this be true?

My build:
Motherboard: ASRock B650E Riptide WIFI
CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU: Palit RTX 4090 24GB OC
RAM: Kingston 32GB 6000MHz CL32 2x16GB
SSD: NVME Kingston KC3000 2TB + 1TB KC3000
PSU: Gigabyte 850W GOLD
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 bit
The benchamarks are actually fine Furmark (Donut) and Cinebench results are in my opinion on par with the results available on the internet.
The issue starts when I am running any game. I am getting far worse results than I should have:
Horizon Zero Dawn:
- 4K 71 vs 147 FPS,
- UWQHD 65 FPS (on my other PC with RX 6800 I am getting 89 FPS).
The menu in this game is the worst - I am getting 8 FPS and the CPU usage skyrockets. I guess the waterfall destroys my PC. The CPU usage in this game is concerning but I have no idea what might be causing that.
Plague Tale: Requiem:
- 1080p 63 vs 149 FPS,
- UWQHD 55 FPS,
- 4K 62 vs 96.
Results from https://www.techpowerup.com/review/a-plague-tale-requiem-benchmark-test-performance-analyis/5.html.
The GPU usage is 99% and CPU usage looks fine.
AC: Odyssey on UWQHD I got 77 FPS (no screenshot).
I have no idea what is going on with this rig. I think I have tried everything. The benchmarks are looking good but the games are running terrible. I guess it was build only for the big numbers in one of them.
I downgraded my Win 11 to 10, but then just installed new Win 10 so the OS is fresh. The drivers are up to date. I also cleared them several times using DDU.
Has anyone here seen issue like this one? What helped with fixing that? Should I disassembly my whole PC? But what then?
Screenshots: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17ASys4oUlCyjAhJLLKT-M7QYTw0UHy\_O?usp=drive\_link

Three days ago, my housemates were alive.
And I wasn't losing my fucking mind.
Three days ago, I awoke to my housemate, Misty, shaking me.
“Get up!!”
Misty was usually the last to roll out of bed out of all of us, so I figured it was something important. My housemate wouldn’t get out of bed for nothing. She valued her sleep—often comparing her bed to a safe haven. Her place of solitude. I was right there with her, until she startled me out of slumber. I opened my eyes to find her face roughly three inches from mine, her expression lit up with excitement I couldn’t justify this early in the morning.
She smelled of toothpaste breath and her raspberry scented body wash. Her thick black curls framing her face were still damp from what I presumed was a shower, hanging in tangled knots in front of wide, almost unseeing eyes. When I first met her, Misty Kang had been my crush for a while. With a Korean father and a Texan mother, she definitely caught eyes when we hung out. We had a thing in freshman year, which quickly fizzled out once we started living together. Never date your housemates.
I will just say that.
Over the last few years, Misty has become one of my closest friends.
When she knew I was at least conscious, my housemate was grabbing my arm and yanking me out of bed. “Get up!”
I was barely awake, and those were the only words I could fully distinguish.
I shooed her away for a moment and swung my legs out of bed, taking a minute to blink sunlight out of my eyes coming through the blinds. “Sam.” Misty was in front of me again.
I don’t think she understood the concept of being half asleep.
She wouldn’t leave me alone, waving her arms wildly. Her shadow under the soft morning light almost reminded me of one of those inflatable tube guys.
“Huh?” My voice was a low croak, and her smile widened.
“Guess who’s just scored tickets for an actual screening of the first five minutes of gameplay for the most anticipated game of the decade?”
“What?” Her string of words wasn’t making sense in my caffeine deprived mind. It just sounded like gibberish to me, initially.
Like we were in some cheesy commercial, she was the lead, and I was the confused NPC with the WTF expression. But when I went over it in my head, words started to slide together like a jigsaw puzzle. Misty didn’t get excited about video games. Well, she did. Though, my housemate was one to get excited on behalf of someone else. After living with her for a while now, I had concluded she was a follower.
By that, I mean whatever others thought or did or said, she copied it. If her Twitter followers were mad at bad takes, she would drop all of her own opinions on said follower and focus on what other people said. We had Korean barbecue for takeout the other day, and Misty clearly did not like it from the creased look on her face, and her very obviously spitting it politely into a napkin.
Jay, my other housemate, liked it.
And so did I. So, naturally, Misty announced she wanted more.
I had to watch her suffer through two more portions before she excused herself—presumably to throw up. Blinking at my housemate who was clearly excited for Jay, I resisted the overwhelming urge to roll my eyes.
“Slow down. What game? What are you talking about?”
I got out of bed and threw on my robe, half aware of the mess from last night on my desk. Another attempt to finish an essay which just wasn’t happening. The monster energy cans and takeout Chinese wrappers were embarrassing. I got a basic run-through as I headed downstairs with Misty right behind me, practically breathing down my neck. From what I understood, there was a Reddit post.
That was all I got from Misty’s squealing. She leapt down the stairs after me with a spring in her step. The clock above the front door told me it wasn’t even 9am. The smell of bacon, however, was quick to arise me from the dead.
Jay was in the kitchen making breakfast. I noticed his laptop was open on the table, and every so often he’d peer at it with wide, almost disbelieving eyes. Jay and Misty were complete opposites, which made them great people to live with. Jay was a quiet book who was slightly on the pretentious side, routinely quoting something philosophical to piss me off.
He had rich parents on the other side of the world, but the guy himself was fairly humble and had mostly detached himself from said family.
My housemate was usually well put together. In fact, I barely saw him in his pajamas, excluding game nights. That morning, however, he was a disheveled mess, still in yesterday’s clothes.
He offered me a grin. I glimpsed sauce from last night’s dinner still staining his chin. Jay hadn’t brushed his hair or even put on deodorant.
I caught a whiff of BO when he ducked in front of me, his gaze glued to his MacBook. It was rare when Jay ignored basic hygiene, so yeah, I was going to guess this was a pretty huge thing. “I did tell her not to wake you up, y’know.”
His slight aussie accent was always refreshing on a morning. Born in Australia and moving to the states when he was ten years old, Jay still had a slight tinge in his accent. I had seen pictures of his family, and the guy had definitely gotten most of his dad’s genes, thick brown hair, and freckles. While his dad was built like a pro wrestler however, Jay was leaner like his mom.
I shrugged. “I was already awake.”
“Liar.” He didn’t look away from his laptop.
Looking closer, I glimpsed the Reddit homepage.
“So, you have won something.”
Jay didn’t answer. I could tell he was excited by the way he could barely keep still, bustling around the kitchen, barefoot. “Coffee?”
His voice was more of a Misty-like squeak, and I half wondered for a moment if they had switched bodies, or he had at least become one with my other housemate through a chemical explosion. In our kitchen, which was yet to be cleaned after a cooking disaster several nights ago, I wouldn’t be surprised if something was living on the countertop. I nodded, slumping into a chair. “What’s going on? Why is Misty freaking out?” I nodded at his laptop. “She said you’ve won something?”
As if my housemate couldn’t hold it in anymore, he nodded, turning his screen towards me. “You know____, right?”
“Yes.” I sipped my coffee, eyeing a toaster strudel sitting on the countertop. "You mean the game which has been coming out for a decade."
He ignored that. “Well, what if I told you one of the developer’s posted on the official sub this morning?”
“For _____?"
He nodded with a grin, and I wondered it this was one of those rare times when Jay was blindly looking through a red flag to see what he wanted. I had heard of these types of scams, and Reddit was a breeding ground for them.
Gamers were pretty intense. I didn’t realize I was pulling a face until I caught his lips curving into a smile. Jay was usually the skeptical one.
“You don’t believe me.”
I downed my coffee to avoid replying. When I had drained the cup, he was still staring at me with amused eyes.
“What?”
“You think it’s bullshit.”
I shrugged. “You said it,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that game isn’t even partway through development. Didn’t Twitter leak a still last year? Also, they’ll be bringing out a new console before that game comes out.”
I leaned back in my chair. “It’s more of a pipe dream, at this point.”
“The leaks were fake,” Even he didn’t look sure. “Anyway, that’s not the point. One of the dev’s posted on the official sub this morning. He asked if we were all excited for the new game, asked if we could post some of our favorite NPC dialogue, and he’ll DM winners.”
“Uh-huh.” I nodded at the screen. I had already checked my phone for an internet meltdown concerning this post, but there was nothing. “And where is that post now?”
Jay didn’t look at me. “It was deleted. So it only reached a certain number of people.”
“Oh, it was deleted?” I couldn’t resist a smile. “What a coincidence.”
When I laughed, Jay scowled, showing me his screen—navigating his trackpad to his Reddit DM’s.
To my surprise, there was actually a message from what I guessed was a throw-away account.
While I was skim reading the DM, Misty hurried in, all dressed and ready for the day. I peeked at her outfit from Jay's laptop. Cute.
Extravagant, but cute. My housemate cranked the radio up before bouncing between us, a toaster strudel hanging out of her mouth.
Misty was a living animated character. Ignoring her wide smile, I turned back to the screen. “Congratulation!!” The DM started with capitals.
It took me reading it twice to realize there was a clear spelling mistake. I sent Jay a pointed look, but he was too busy practically vibrating with excitement. If the guy had any more caffeine, he was going to explode. “Since when did winning DM’s start with a typo?”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Jay curled his lip. “They were clearly excited when typing the message.”
“But this is supposedly an official,” I said. “Surely they would make sure it’s professional?”
My housemate didn’t reply, shooting a look at Misty, who rolled her eyes.
“Wow.” I squinted at the screen. “I am so sorry for caring about your safety. You do realize these types of scam’s usually end up with you being sold on the black market, right?”
I shuddered. “I’ve heard horror stories about underground markets specializing in illegal organ harvesting.”
“Or…” Jay’s eyes were glued to the screen. “You could be happy for me?”
I frowned at the rest of the message, which was just a capitalized freak-out about the upcoming release of the game, before inviting Jay (and a friend!) to a five-minute preview of gameplay, as well as a Q&A. There was a location and a time, which was brow-raising. “10 at night.” I said. “Who hosts a gaming convention at 10pm?” I leaned my chin on my fist. “Unless they wanted to lure as many gullible people as possible, and ship them to some organ harvesting factory on the other side of the world.”
Jay scoffed. “That’s dark.”
“You’re actually considering going to a 10pm gaming convention in the middle of nowhere. I’m trying to wake you up.”
Jay nudged me that time. “It’s real. Relax.”
“And.” I pointed to the screen. “No phones? Why would they ask you not to bring your phones?”
“To stop us filming content,” Misty sang. “Duh.”
I groaned, leaning back in my chair. “You’re on his side? This is clearly shady!” I didn’t get mad unless something was seriously pissing me off, and this was one of those times. Jay was a smart guy. There was no way he was falling for this bullshit. I thought he was joking around when he spent the day tracking the location on Google Maps. I went to class like normal and got updates through text. At lunch, Jay agreed with me and said it was in fact shady, and he wasn’t going. By afternoon classes, he was texting me in paragraphs explaining his own skepticism but had found several “friends” on an online forum who were also going and had changed his mind once again. The guy couldn’t make up his mind. He was driving me crazy.
Misty sent me several videos of Jay pacing the kitchen with his MacBook in his hands. She was broadcasting his mental breakdown via Instagram stories. But then she started to send me pictures of herself in different outfits, asking me for my opinion on each one. At that point, I turned my phone off. My housemates had lost their fucking minds. I did my own research though, just to make sure I wasn’t actually going to lose them to a shady cult.
I searched for the game itself, but just as I thought, it was shown as still in development. Every “update” was just fan speculation.
There were YouTube videos and TikTok’s of fake leaks, but nothing was real. It was either AI generated, or badly edited. By the time my classes had ended and I had turned my phone on, I had a barrage of missed calls and texts.
Most of them were from Misty with her outfit changes, and Jay changing his mind again.
This time he was convinced it was all a scam, his texts full of typos and crying emoji's which he never used. Before it hit me that Misty was most likely using his phone to text me.
I was right. When I walked through the door, I was greeted by both of them sitting on the stairs. Misty was scrolling through Jay’s phone, while the boy had his head in his hands. According to Misty’s last text, he was back to being excited to go.
From the look on his face, eyes shadowed with sleep circles, light brown curls slipping from under his hood, I wasn’t sure what Misty meant by “excited”. The guy looked the complete opposite. His mind had been consumed by the game, and the idea of seeing new content.
When I dropped my bag and folded my arms, fixing the two of them with my best disapproving parent look, Misty jumped to her feet. “Sam!” she waved Jay’s phone at me. “Did you get my texts? We’re actually going now!”
The 100+ texts on both messenger and iMessage said otherwise.
I nodded, my gaze on Jay. “Both of you do realize it’s a scam, right?” I softened my tone despite growing progressively more irritated. We were grown adults, not kids. I could understand a group of teenagers falling for it, but two twenty-three-year-olds?
This time, I ducked in front of Jay. “Hey.” I pulled down his hood, and he groaned, burying his head in his knees. “I don’t want to freak you out, so listen to me, okay?”
I exhaled out a breath. “I’m not saying something bad is going to happen to you, because it most likely won’t—and yes, I admit I’m being paranoid.” When he lifted his head, blinking through bedraggled curls, there was a faint smile on his lips. “But.” I said. “You are most likely going to end up disappointed. Which I don’t want, because you won't shut up about it for weeks."
I was only partly joking.
For a moment, I thought my housemate was going to wake up, and nod, laughing at how crazy it was.
Before shook his head and jumped up.
“I’m going to take a shower, alright? I should start getting ready."
I admit, I exploded at him.
We argued while he was in the shower, and I paced up and down the hallway, coming up with multiple reasons why he was definitely going to die, and only two positives if it was in fact real. In the end, I gave up worrying all together. I didn’t say anything when the two of them were hurrying around looking for shoes and missing car keys. I didn’t realize they were gone until the door was clanging shut, and a text was coming through. I didn’t look at it until an hour later, and I had calmed down.
Jay: 1h ago: Stop worrying, lmao. We’re good! I’ll keep my phone just in case. I’ll make sure to avoid the organ harvesting 😉
Another from Misty a few minutes later: “Love you! Chillll, kay? 😭😭 It’s going to be fun! I’ll take pics!”
…
Followed by: “Oh shit, we can’t. I’ll try to sneak some!"
Attached to the text was a photo of the two of them. Misty with a wide smile and a peace sign, and Jay who looked like he was mid-shout, his eyes on the road.
Those texts were… at least comforting, I guessed. Maybe they were right. I figured I was paranoid, and they in fact would really be okay.
But that didn’t stop the anxious coil in my gut when I tried to force down takeout pizza. I attempted to focus on my essay to distract myself, but I couldn’t stop glancing at my phone, and checking Twitter. There was a hashtag on the DM, which was just “PlayStationGO.” When I searched for it, however, nothing came up.
Sure, it was a private convention and only a select few knew about it, but nothing could escape Twitter.
Somewhere, someone must be talking about it. After scrolling through endless tweets though, I realized I was wrong. There was nothing.
That put a bad taste in my mouth.
10pm came, and I held my breath all the way through a Netflix TV show I was forcing myself to watch, half asleep, slumped at my desk.
I could barely distinguish the plot.
I just had a vague idea of the character names, and some of their motivations.
Midnight passed, and I was struggling to stay awake.
I glanced at my phone.
No messages, just a notification from Spotify reminding me my favorite band was playing nearby.
1am.
Still nothing. I fell back to sleep.
2:48am.
This time, I stayed awake for a few minutes glaring at my phone before my eyes grew heavy.
3:16: am.
My phone buzzed with a text from Jay, but I could barely desipher it: "can't feel help my head hurts Canshdhsn727272_6798mi/!! _&go home please. (Sent from: PlayStationGo™️ BETA)."
3:27: am.
3:54: am. I was wide awake, blinking at a notification which had popped up from an unknown number. I was trying to figure out what number it was, when my phone vibrated again and I almost jumped out of my skin.
After a moment of hesitation, I answered it.
I was trying so hard not to think of the possibility of it being the emergency room, or even worse, the cops.
All of my worst nightmares had come true in a single second.
“Hello?” I whispered in a croak.
“Are they in the house with you?” The stranger’s voice came through in a hiss of interference.
His words sent my mediocre dinner lurching back up my throat. “What?” I managed to get out. “Who?”
“Your friends.” He said, and I leapt to unsteady feet, my gut twisting and turning.
“No.” I found myself taking slow strides toward the window, brushing back the curtain and peering out into the night. “Why? Did something happen to them?” I paused.
“How did you get my number?”
“That does not matter.” His voice rattled in my ear as I rushed downstairs, almost stumbling down the bottom two. “I need you to get out of that house. Now. Get as far away as possible.”
I could hear his rapid breaths.
He was driving. I could hear the rumble of the engine. With my phone pressed to my ear, I obeyed his instructions, pulling open the door and stepping out into the cool night, a brisk breeze grazing my bare arms was just enough to stop my thoughts spiraling.
I was barefoot, in nothing but a robe, staggering down the driveway. The night was calm and silent; our neighborhood was asleep, each window drowned in darkness. I couldn’t breathe, my clammy fingers wrapped around my phone, as this stranger broke down over the phone. “Whatever you do,” he gasped out.
“Do not, I repeat DO NOT remove the PlayStationGo—shit!! He hissed out, static rattling the call. The guy seemingly got ahold of himself, and the wheel, and continued. I started to walk—where I was going, I had no idea.
The stranger lit a cigarette. I heard the click of a lighter and his exhalation of breath. “It was a BETA version, but we had to rush it. This was not my idea. My boss is a greedy man. He wanted to release the game last year, which would have meant widespread infection. Luckily, that did not happen. We did manage to delay it, but only by a year.” His words barely made sense to me as I struggled to get a word in, peering in the dark. “It was supposed to be a virtual experience of the game—a whole new angle of gameplay. But testing was difficult. First, on monkey’s, we lost multiple subjects. Tonight was supposed to be a…well, I guess you could call it out first attempt on human subjects,” his laugh was bitter. “I knew the tech wasn’t finished. And I tried. Believe me, I fucking tried. I tried to blow the whistle, but these bastards know where my parents live."
Something squirmed its way down my spine.
“So my friends were lab rats?” I said stiffly. “You used them?”
I fucking knew it.
I knew it was too good to be true.
“Yes and no. Listen to me, the people I work for are hunting them down. Trust me, I don’t want my bosses to find them because a life of experimentation will await them. Torture. Do you hear me? It does not matter if subjects fail. They don’t care. As long as there is at least a light at the end of the tunnel for them, they will see it as a win, and bring the publication date closer. They will not be treated as humans. Your friends signed a contract before trying out the tech, where the small print stated that, under section 3, player engagement, all subjects must agree to offer themselves as participants in later updates. I silently cursed Jay for always skipping the terms and conditions when buying games." The man stopped to breathe.
“I have told you multiple times, and I won’t say it again. Get as far away from that house as possible. I will take care of them. I will make sure of it." The sound of squealing engines, and I stopped power walking, coming to an abrupt stop. The silence of the night around me, compared to the sound of the highway he was on, traffic horns and the wind rushing through the window was an eerie contrast, a disturbance to the heavenly bubble we were trapped in.
“What do you mean ‘take care of them?” I had to swallow a yell. “Hey! What are you talking about?
“I’m sorry.” Was all he replied with. “I’m afraid it is too late. There was once an opportunity to save the mind during the initial level of the demonstration. However, once the PlaystationGo has been fully attached to the base of the subject, we no longer have control of it. Once integrating itself into the cerebral cortex, the PlayStationGo can only be removed by signing out of the player’s account,” his breath was heavy. “On this unfortunate occasion, however, your friends are unable to navigate the system due to a malfunction which scrambled their brains,” He trailed off. “Which has left them stranded in the game."
I let out a breath. “Right.” I said. “That’s.. bad. I mean, it’s a fucked-up piece of technology, but they’re just playing a game, right?”
There was a pause, before the man laughed.
“Young man, I don’t think you understand,” he said. “The PlayStationGo was created to give the player a full virtual experience of our game. The PlayStationGo is not a physical object. Created with nanotechnology, it attaches itself to the subject’s brain and is supposed to create a personal gaming experience for each player. As I said, however, it is not finished. It is yet to be released to the public, and of course, we are expecting certain ethical arguments due to the controversial—”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, shaking my head. I didn’t need to hear his attempts at trying to save his own skin.
“You need to help them,” I whispered. “Do you hear me? Can you do that? Can you help them?!”
“That is what I am trying to tell you,” He said.
“I know you are upset and confused, and believe me, I offer my apologies. But you need to listen to facts. During initial testing, our subjects were conscious enough to know where their home was. We are unsure why this happens, though we have linked it to territory, as well as the main character of the game heavily influencing their actions. I have been tracking them from the testing facility, and they are incredibly close. Please get as far away from there as possible. If you are no longer in the vicinity of the house, I can end this quickly and quietly before we gain attention.”
I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Maybe start fucking screaming at him, because he was talking about getting “rid” of my friends, after their mistake.
“Do you understand me?” He said, when I couldn’t reply. “Your friends are lost causes!”
Before I could answer, though, headlights were suddenly coming around the corner, and I found myself paralysed to the spot. The car which swerved twice, crashed into several trash cans, before reversing and coming straight towards me, was not Jay’s car. Jay’s car was an old hunk of junk he’d gotten from a scrapyard. Jay’s car had doors which were practically hanging off, and a stereo which exclusively played either static gibberish, or old tapes I had no idea how to use. This car was bright yellow, and definitely had an option to drive itself. When the car came to a stop, inches from careening into me, I lost all control of myself.
I was vaguely aware of my phone slipping from my fingers and hitting the sidewalk. But I was too busy staring at the two shadows in the front of the car. The driver, and the passenger.
And the muffled screaming coming from the trunk.
When the door swung open, a figure stepping out, I did not recognise my housemate.
The stranger told me I wouldn't, but I didn't believe him.
Jay had left the house in casual jeans and a sweater, bearing the game's logo.
Now, I found myself face to face with a man with my housemate's face and features, his smile and eyes-- but something had been severed in his eyes and twisted in his expression. For one, Jay was wearing a suit I knew he couldn't afford, the sleeves torn, collar pulled open, smears of red staining the front.
His pants had cufflinks, and the Rolex on his wrist had definitely been pulled off someone's corpse.
The silver was stained a revealing scarlet. Drinking in his face, he looked like Jay. His curls hung in front of his eyes, freckles speckling his cheeks, but everything else wasn't. It wasn't until I was glimpsing what was moulded into the flesh of his hand, did I remember how to move. But then I was taking all of him in, everything my mind had intentionally skipped, because I didn't want to believe the stranger on the phone. Nanotechnology, the man had said in a hiss.
Fiction, I had thought.
Before I saw the reality of it, a writhing metallic like substance glued to the guy's temple, and slowly, very slowly, inching down his cheek, already forming around the bridge of his ear, a very faint blue light flickering.
Something must have alerted him. His cavernous eyes left mine, and he twisted his head—and I heard the sound of his neck snapping, his head lolling to the left slightly, his eyes flickering. I watched his whole body seem to sway back and forth, ready to fall forwards.
Before the newly formed device on his ear turned red, then green.
It was almost like he was… rebooting. As if coming back to life, Jay lifted his head at an awkward angle, before looking straight through me. The blood vessels in his eyes had popped, rivulets of red beading down his face. He should have been dead, I thought. No. No, he was dead. That… that thing was keeping him alive. “Well, shiiiittt,” he said. I could sense the game dialogue which had taken over him, forming on his mangled tongue.
“I’m a man on a mission.”
In jerking movements, he turned and marched back towards the car, opening the door, and sliding into the front seat.
I remembered how to move, ducking to grab my phone, before something slammed into the back of my head—and I saw stars.
I didn’t remember hitting the floor, only the soft sound of her voice, a seductive murmur repeating NPC dialogue, and her kitten heel sticking into my spine, forcing me onto my face.
Misty. I was expecting her to get it over with. But when she dragged me to my feet, sticking the barrel of a gun into the flesh of my neck—I figured she was still playing the game.
Twisting around to meet her eyes, lifeless and empty, only filled with light from the device which had taken over half of her face, I felt sick to my stomach. This thing wasn’t a games console or a virtual reality headset.
It was an attempt at coercing and programming something you already don’t understand, to do something impossible.
I could see that in the way the things had visibly chewed and eaten through her flesh, devouring her from the inside and out. I could see what was left of the dress she had worn earlier, but something must have gone wrong with her too. Because Misty had thrown on another outfit over the top, a diamond necklace hanging from her neck.
I caught a thin river of red pooling down her right temple, trying to ignore the twitchy way she moved, just like a character. From the way Misty walked, stumbling, I already knew she was gone. My housemate had newly acquired strength, throwing me in the trunk of the car where three other hostages were, and slamming it shut on my attempts to reason with her. She didn’t tie me up or restrain me.
In the dim light I could just make out though passing streetlights, I could see the trunk opened from the inside. Which was too easy.
Still though, Jay was driving recklessly, and every time I tried to throw the damn thing open, I was knocked backwards, rolling into a screaming girl, who was bound by her hands and feet. It took me multiple attempts before I had the trunk open, freezing cold air blasting me in the face. I untied the other hostages, but when I told them to come with me, they just stared blankly at me, and continued begging for their lives—and it only took me glimpsing what was attached to their temples, a familiar writhing metal plate, for me to understand. They too were playing the game. This time, as NPC hostages.
I found myself gingerly touching the trembling metallic flesh of the girl's fingers bound in rope. It had a slimy consistency, and I swore, I felt something bite into me.
No way, I thought.
This thing was sentient, yes. But it wasn't living.
Listen, I wish I could tell you what it was like to jump out of a moving car, but I can’t.
I remember it as lunging out of the trunk, hitting the freezing cold air, before hitting the ground head first, neutron star collisions exploding in the backs of my eyes.
What I do remember is waking up on the side of the road. Hours later. The sky was bright blue, a scorching sun blinding me when I managed to force my eyes open.
The early morning rush hour flew by as normal, and I wondered how ignorant American people had to be to ignore someone knocked out on the side of the road.
It’s not like I was nowhere near civilization. There was a fucking Subway right next to me.
When I had gathered myself, I remembered I had no phone. I couldn’t go home in fear of running into my rogue housemates playing their own fucked up version of _____ in their head. My plan was to try and find my phone, get in contact with the stranger who blew the whistle on my friends being dangerous, and find them. They couldn’t be far., right? And even if they weren’t themselves… someone would be able to save them.
If someone could do this to them, surely they could reverse it.
I felt sick, tired, and I was starving.
So, with some loose cash I’d found in my pocket, I bought a Subway and a Coke.
The woman at the counter smiled widely at me. She leaned forward, with a wink. “Nice cosplay!”
Cosplay?
I didn’t understand what she meant until I swore I felt something… move its way up my pant leg. I ignored it, and it happened again, this time it felt like something was… biting.
A bug, maybe? I had been laying on the side of the road for around six hours.
When I went to the bathroom, though, I found myself staring at an all too familiar glint of silver creeping its way across my temple. Like it was sentient, parts of it sider webbed towards my ear while the rest writhed into my hairline.
I pulled up my pant leg again, and there it was, a fungus-like metal substance which had already formed in two solid metal masses on my knees. I remember grazing two fingers across the thing beginning its slow feast of my flesh. I remember trying to pull it off, hissing in pain when I risked ripping off my own skin with it. I remember shaking my head and being in denial, even when the lights dimmed above me, and the bathroom door in front of me became more of a shadow. When I strode back through the Subway store, I began to see slight flickers of light above each person, highlighting something not quite there yet.
I could see it already starting, beginning to take over my thoughts. Cars which sped past were suddenly highlighted, and at the corner of my eye, if I concentrated, the outline of a map was starting to appear. Even now, when the room is almost completely taken over by shadow, and my thoughts are half my own, and half not—when a metallic device is beginning to form over my eyes—I know if I hold on, this thing won’t take me. I have considered killing myself, but that wouldn’t… be right.
How could I kill myself when there is so much left to do?
This developer was right. I don’t even know where I can sign out. There’s what looks like the beginning of some kind of index when I look up, but it’s not… finished. I can still see entangled pieces of code struggling to load what I’m guessing was log out. Whatever this thing is, it’s taking over me. Fast. Like a fungus, like a virus, it will not stop until it’s dragged me into the game, until it's leeched itself onto me.
I can feel it happening right now. It's been slow.
Almost painfully slow.
But maybe that is the point. Maybe part of the game is to feel my own thoughts beginning to unravel in favor of something else entirely.
Fuck.
Time is going by…. Fast.
Five minutes ago… I was trying to get home. But I can’t remember where I live.
I can’t concentrate.
I can’t think straight.
I have a phone—but I don’t know how I got it. Did I steal it?
Every time I move, the slowly emerging map comes to life at the corner of my eye jerks with my movement. There is a car parked nearby.
I know it belongs to the man with a child.
But a confusing blur of light is highlighting it to be something of importance. Reality is crashing in front of me, replaced with contorting shapes and bursts of color I have to blink through.
I keep hearing... sirens.
Jay is messaging me.
On what, I'm not sure.
But I need to find him.
I’m sure one mission won’t hurt, right?

I am experiencing really strange issue
​
I want to record vocals and after 15min i can see that tehy started to record with latency. I have monitor switched to "off", "Delay Compesnastion" is on, its has nothing to do with buffer size and any other case corelated to regular latency within software or hardware. The case is when i look to my meter of armed recording track i see that the meter is responding to my voice after 0.5 second. As i said, 15 mionutes its fine and then its off 0.5 sec or start to fuk...ing glitch like crazy.
I have Mac M1 Pro 2021 16.2
Motu m4 interface
Ableton 11
All legit software
​
fully deep cleaned and deleted then installed and updated everything
Ableton
MotuM4 firmware and software
​
Still working just fine for 15-30 minutes and then input singal with monitoring off is somehow delyed
​
Any ideas?

the ‘pro’ seems to imply that there will be a regular vision at some point down the line, i wonder what compromises you all think they could make to release a less impressive (but more affordable) headset
in my opinion, they won’t compromise on the below as they are vital to the user experience:

• display resolution/quality
• responsiveness (r1 chip or equivalent solution)
• hand/position tracking array

however, i could see them dumbing down other areas to bring the overall price/functionality down to the average consumer level

• no eyesight (external oled display) maybe a simpler indicator light instead?
• plastic or aluminum front plate instead of glass
• less comprehensive eye tracking solution
• no optic id (touchid on the power button instead)
• no battery pack included in the box (tethered only or 3rd party)
• lower quality head strap

this is all just speculation of course, i’m curious what you all think about this!

I, too, struggle with how to achieve my vision of being a better person. I believe that what has been missing in current solutions is a real connection to our daily actions and mindfulness of their impact. A great example of this solution is a video by Kurtis Baute (I don't want to break the communities rules on number of links so search "How tracking my life changed everything life Kurtis Baute")
In summary, Kurtis Baute started recording everything and compared it against his mood. When he realised something wasn’t benefiting him, he made a change. For example, he reduced his alcohol consumption after realizing he had no real reason to drink it.
Currently, you might set a target to not eat chocolate. However, giving up chocolate can feel unnatural because your own lived experience tells you it was good, never a bad thing. Only when observing chocolate consumption and wellbeing can on a individual basis your true feelings be revealed, allowing for you to make a less emotional decision but a more informed one.
Plug time: My app, available on the Play Store, focuses on improving your wellbeing, not hitting targets. Record anything you wish and track your wellbeing to see the correlation between your actions and mood. It’s easy to see how certain actions affect you on good and bad days.
As per the guidelines, I’m promoting my app which is free. For transparency there is a limited number of ads (10 every hour) but every new user gets a one-week free trial. If you download within one month from today, I’ll give one year of premium access. If this has not been done, DM me. Users can receive rewards to remove ads and access the entire app for free. Alongside the app is a community where I can communicate with users and receive feedback.
Apps’ Google Play link:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rattra.habitual

I recently decided to add night rides to my biking routine. I'll always have somebody with me and we'll only ride easier trails that we know very well. The terrain will mostly be double track with some single track once in a while. Road/pavement will be almost non existent.
My son and I rode a nice trail last Friday and we had enough lumens to light up the trail (SC31 Pro, HS 10 headlamp, and T4 which is floody as hell). I wasn't thinking about what would work the best, just having fun.
I want to enjoy the beauty of the night and have somewhat minimal light (heresy I know). Having said that, I want to be able to have the capability of lighting ir up when needed.
Soooooo, what are the qualities of the light that I should look at? respectively floody? Somewhat tighter beam? Any particular tint (warm, really bright)?
I would like to avoid the whole "headlamp vs handlebar" discussion/arguments if possible. In the end i may run both. One thing I don't like about headlamps is that they are hard to fix them on my helmet (I know that can be fixed with a 3d printed attachment that griz and someone else discussed in an earlier post) and I frequently feel like I need to move my head to get the light on the party of the trail I need to see.
I'm not necessarily looking for a light recommendation, if I have to buy another light I don't want to buy a purpose built bike light and it needs to be affordable ($30-35 if possible).
Thanks all

We are a growing MSP and we are looking for 2 interns. We would prefer to use the State of Texas internship program, so applicants can be 18-24. We are not looking for someone with tons of experience, we are perfectly good with this being your first job and training is included. The internship requires work on site in Hurst, but post the internship, if you are staying on, a hybrid work from home is ideal.
We are small and agile and really wanting to hear new ideas. We may not take every suggestion, but want to give every good idea a fair hearing.
PM me to get the official job listing description and how to get on the internship program.
*****IT intern - prefer someone A+ certified or willing to study to get that certification quickly. If you have certifications or interest in cybersecurity that is also a huge plus.
You will be assisting with documentation of client's IT systems, monitoring scheduled patches and security incidents. You will be first line troubleshooting for client issues, you will have backup from an experienced IT professional.
As the young agile person, you may be called on to take on some of the more physical tasks, crawling under desks and lifting switches into a rack for instance.
We are looking for great ideas too. If you have good suggestions we would love to hear them. Thinking of a way to automate a manual process? We want to hear it. $16/hr up to 40 hours per week. Possibility to convert from intern to full time if the fit is right.
*****Marketing Intern - need someone who really enjoys talking to new people. Never met a stranger sorts are encouraged to apply.
Duties include: plan, manage and send out invitations to webinars and events. Assist in manning a table at trade shows. Hand addressing marketing materials weekly. Follow up on the phone with prospects receiving mailers. Set appointments to get a senior account person in front of a prospect. Some admin tasks as well. Light filing and keeping track of deadlines.
We have a training program geared to take the most inexperienced person and make them successful at setting appointments. You need to just bring a positive attitude and not get too down at being told no.
Additional positive skills to bring are some ability to do graphic work. We have lots of marketing materials available from a large agency, but they all need to be customized with our name, number and logos as well as ideally putting a little more of our own personality onto materials so we do not look too much like a cookie cutter organization.
Pay is $11 per hour up to 40 hours per week. Very flexible schedules available. Move to permanent employment for the right fit.
PM me to get a full job description and info on the internship program.

Had to RMA my year old steam deck sadly due to the 400Mhz bug.
Dropped it off this morning at 8:30am at a UPS Access Point (pick up shop) located inside a newsagents who by all means are a reputable business and have been there many years.
I assumed the tracking wouldn’t update immediately but it did state on the UPS website the cutoff times were 11am for mainland delivery collections from access points.
Fast forward to now at 6:20pm and the tracking number is still stating ‘information unavailable’. I guess I’m worried it might vanish into thin air as I got no receipt (the guy behind the counter just scanned it on an app on his phone) - best I could do was note the time I was in there as I assume they have CCTV. Not to mention the shipping label blatantly states ‘steam deck’ on the side which is a bit of a red flag.
Anyone in a similar position before?

I've had my kayak (Tamarack Pro 103) for a week and only today was I able to get it in the water, and even that was short lived. It started to sprinkle as I pulled into the parking lot to launch, but I rushed a bit to get it in the water to paddle a bit. About 5 minutes in, the rain started to pick up, and between that and the hazy skies in Western NY from the Quebec fires, I decided to not push my luck as I just couldn't tell what the weather was going to do.
I tried to use my "GoPro" to video the maiden voyage, but sadly I'm an idiot and don't know how to use it, so unfortunately no video this go round.
It was enough time to make a couple observations:
1) I forgot how hard it is to get into, and out of, a kayak from a dock (even a low one).
2) I NEED to get drip rings. Oh boy did my legs get wet.
3) a 10' (ok 10' 3") sit on top kayak is pretty short and it does not track like a 14'+ sea kayak (I knew this, but wow)
4) A short wide kayak means slow and steady paddling. It's NOT going to win any races.
5) It floats, and I forgot how much I love being on the water.

Hey all,
It's been an amazing run thanks to all of you.
Eight years ago, I posted in the Apple subreddit about a Reddit app I was looking for beta testers for, and my life completely changed that day. I just finished university and an internship at Apple, and wanted to build a Reddit client of my own: a premier, customizable, well-designed Reddit app for iPhone. This fortunately resonated with people immediately, and it's been my full time job ever since.
Today's a much sadder post than that initial one eight years ago. June 30th will be Apollo's last day.
I've talked to a lot of people, and come to terms with this over the last weeks as talks with Reddit have deteriorated to an ugly point, and in the interest of transparency with the community, I wanted to talk about how I arrived at this decision, and if you have any questions at the end, I'm more than happy to answer. This post will be long as I have a lot of topics to cover.
Please note that I recorded all my calls with Reddit, so my statements are not based on memory, but the recorded statements by Reddit over the course of the year. One-party consent recording is legal in my country of Canada. Also I won't be naming names, that's not important and I don't want to doxx people.

What happened initially?

On April 18th, Reddit announced changes that would be coming to the API, namely that the API is moving to a paid model for third-party apps. Shortly thereafter we received phone calls, however the price (the key element in an announcement to move to a paid API) was notably missing, with the intent to follow up with it in 2-4 weeks.
The information they did provide however was: we will be moving to a paid API as it's not tenable for Reddit to pay for third-party apps indefinitely (understandable, agreed), so they're looking to do equitable pricing based in reality. They mentioned that they were not looking to be like Twitter, which has API pricing so high it was publicly ridiculed.
I was excited to hear these statements, as I agree that long-term Reddit footing the bill for third-party apps is not tenable, and with a paid arrangement there's a great possibility for developing a more concrete relationship with Reddit, with better API support for users. I think this optimism came across in my first post about the calls with Reddit.

When did they announce pricing?

Six weeks later, they called to discuss pricing. I quickly put together a small app where I could input the prices and it would output monthly/yearly cost, cost for free users, paid users, etc. so I'd be able to process the information immediately.
The price they gave was $0.24 for 1,000 API calls. I quickly inputted this in my app, and saw that it was not far off Twitter's outstandingly high API prices, at $12,000, and with my current usage would cost almost $2 million dollars per month, or over $20 million per year.

Why do you say Reddit's pricing is "too high"? By what metric?

Reddit's promise was that the pricing would be equitable and based in reality. The reality that they themselves have posted data about over the years is as follows (copy-pasted from my previous post):

Less than 2 years ago they said they crossed $100M in quarterly revenue for the first time ever, if we assume despite the economic downturn that they've managed to do that every single quarter now, and for your best quarter, you've doubled it to $200M. Let's also be generous and go far, far above industry estimates and say you made another $50M in Reddit Premium subscriptions. That's $550M in revenue per year, let's say an even $600M. In 2019, they said they hit 430 million monthly active users, and to also be generous, let's say they haven't added a single active user since then (if we do revenue-per-user calculations, the more users, the less revenue each user would contribute). So at generous estimates of $600M and 430M monthly active users, that's $1.40 per user per year, or $0.12 monthly. These own numbers they've given are also seemingly inline with industry estimates as well.

Apollo's price would be approximately $2.50 per month per user, with Reddit's indicated cost being approximately $0.12 per their own numbers.
A 20x increase does not seem "based in reality" to me.

Why doesn't Reddit just buy Apollo and other third-party apps?

This was a very common comment across the topics: "If Apollo has an apparent opportunity cost of $20 million per year, why not just buy them and other third-party apps, as they did with Alien Blue?"
I believe it's a fair question. If these apps apparently cost so much, an easy solution that would likely make everyone happy would be to simply buy these apps out. So I brought that up to them during a call on May 31st where I was suggesting a variety of potential solutions.

Bizarre allegations by Reddit of Apollo "blackmailing" and "threatening" Reddit

About 24 hours after that call with Reddit, I received this odd message on Mastodon:

"Can you please comment publicly about the internal Reddit claim that you tried to “blackmail” them for a $10,000,000 payout to “stay quiet”?"

Then yesterday, moderators told me they were on a call with CEO Steve Huffman (spez), and he said the following per their transcript:

Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us."

Wow. Because my memory is that you didn't take it as a threat, and you even apologized profusely when you admitted you misheard it. It's very easy to take a single line and make it look bad by removing all the rest of the context, so let's look at the full context.
I can only assume you didn't realize I was recording the call, because there's no way you'd be so blatantly lying if you did.
As said, a common suggestion across the many threads on this topic was "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal!
The bizarre thing is - initially - on the call you interpreted that as a threat. Even giving you the benefit of the doubt that maybe my phrasing was confusing, I asked for you to elaborate on how you found what I said to be a threat, because I was incredibly confused how you interpreted it that way. You responded that I said "Hey, if you want this to go away…" Which is not at all what I said, so I reiterated that I said "If you want to Apollo to go quiet, as in it's quite loud in terms of API usage".
What did you then say?

Me: "I said 'If you want Apollo to go quiet'. Like in terms of- I would say it's quite loud in terms of its API usage." Reddit: "Oh. Go quiet as in that. Okay, got it. Got it. Sorry." Reddit: "That's a complete misinterpretation on my end. I apologize. I apologize immediately."

The admission that you mistook me, and the four subsequent apologies led me to believe that you acknowledged you mistook me and you were apologetic. The fact that you're pretending none of this happened (or was recorded), and instead espousing a different reality where instead of apologizing for taking it as a threat, you're instead going the complete opposite direction and saying "He threatened us!" is so low I almost don't believe it.
But again, I've recorded all my calls with you just in case you tried something like this.
Transcript of this part of the call: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/a9d00a47c99a4d1d3d16bc19e05419c0 Audio of this part of the call: http://christianselig.com/apollo-end/reddit-third-call-may-31-end.m4a
(If you take issue with the call being recorded please remember that I'm in Canada and so long as one participant in the call (me) consents to being recorded, it's legal. If anyone would like the recording of the full call, I'm happy to provide.)
I bring this up for two reasons:

• I don't want Reddit slandering me to internal employees or public people by saying I threatened them when they reality is that they immediately apologized for misunderstanding me.
• It shows why I've finally come to the conclusion that I don't think this situation is recoverable. If Reddit is willing to stoop to such deep lows as to slander individuals with blatant lies to try to get community favor back, I no longer have any faith they want this to work, or ever did.

What is an API or an API request anyway?

Some people are confused about this situation and don't understand what an API is. An API (Application Programming Interface) is just a way for an app to talk to a website. As an analogy, pretend Reddit is a bouncer. Historically, you can ask Reddit "Could I have the comments for this post?" or "Can you list the posts in AskReddit?". Those would be one API request each, and Reddit would respond with the corresponding data.
Everything you do on Reddit is an API request. Upvoting, downvoting, commenting, loading posts, loading subreddits, checking for new messages, blocking users, filtering subreddits, etc.
The situation is changing so that for each API request you make, there's a portion of a penny charged to the developer of that app. I think that is very reasonable, provided, well, that the price they charge is reasonable.

Claims that Apollo is "inefficient"

Another common claim by Reddit is that Apollo is inherently inefficient, using on average 345 requests per day per user, while some other apps use 100. I'd like to use some numbers to illustrate why I think this is very unfairly framing it.
Up until a week ago, the stated Reddit API rate limits that apps were asked to operate within was 60 requests per minute per user. That works out to a total of 86,400 per day. Reddit stated that Apollo uses 345 requests per user per day on average, which is also in line with my findings. Thats 0.4% of the limit Reddit was previously imposing, which I would say is quite efficient.
As an analogy (can you tell I love analogies?), to scale the numbers, if I was to borrow my friend’s car and he said “Please don’t drive it more than 864 miles” and I returned the car with 3.4 miles driven, I think he’d be pretty happy with my low use. The fact that a different friend one week only used 1 mile is really cool, but I don't think either person is "inefficient".
That being said, if Reddit would like to see Apollo make further optimizations to get its existing number lower, I’m genuinely more than happy to do so! However the 30 day limit they’ve given me after announcing the pricing to when I will start getting charged significant amounts of money is not enough time to deal with rewriting large parts of my app to lower total requests, while also changing the payment model, transitioning users, and ensuring this is all properly tested and gets through app review.
Further, Reddit themselves said to me that the majority of the cost isn't the server, it's the opportunity cost per user, so the focus on 100 versus 345 calls, rather than the cost per user, doesn't sound genuine. At the very least providing even a bit more time to lower usage to their new targets would be feasible if they've historically provided it, and it's not the majority of the costs anyway.

Me: "Because I assume the majority of it isn't server costs. I assume the majority is the opportunity cost per user." Reddit: "Exactly."

Why not just increase the price of Apollo?

One option many have suggested is to simply increase the price of Apollo to offset costs. The issue here is that Apollo has approximately 50,000 yearly subscribers at the moment. On average they paid $10/year many months ago, a price I chose based on operating costs I had at the time (server fees, icon design, having a part-time server engineer). Those users are owed service as they already prepaid for a year, but starting July 1st will (in the best case scenario) cost an additional $1/month each in Reddit fees. That's $50,000 in sudden monthly fee that will start incurring in 30 days.
So you see, even if I increase the price for new subscribers, I still have those many users to contend with. If I wait until their subscription expires, slowly month after month there will be less of them. First month $50,000, second month maybe $45,000, then $40,000, etc. until everything has expired, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would be cheaper to simply refund users.
I hope you can recognize how that's an enormous amount of money to suddenly start incurring with 30 days notice. Even if I added 12,000 new subscribers at $5/month (an enormous feat given the short notice), after Apple's fees that would just be enough to break even.
Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.

So what is the REAL issue you're having?

Hopefully that illustrates why, even more than the large price associated with the API, the 30 day timeline between when the pricing was announced and developers will be charged is a far, far, far bigger issue and not one I can overcome. Much more time would be needed to overhaul the payment model in my app, transition existing users from existing plans, test the changes, and have users update to the new version.
As a comparison, when Apple bought Dark Sky and announced a shut down of their API, knowing that this API was at the core of many businesses, they provided 18 months before the API would be turned off. When the 18 months came, they ultimately extended it another 12 months, resulting in a total transition period of 30 months. While I'm not asking for that much, Reddit's in comparison is 30 days.

Reddit says you won't get your first bill until August 1st, though!

The issue is the size of the bill, not when it will arrive. Significant, significant charges for the API will start building up with 30 days notice on July 1st, the fact that the bill for those charges being 30 days from then is not important. If you hear that your electricity bill is going up 1,000x and the company tells you, "Don't worry, the bill only comes at the end of the month", I hope you understand how that isn't comforting.

What would be a good price/timeline?

I hope I explained above why the 30 day time limit is the true issue. However in a perfect world I think lowering the price by half and providing a three month transition period to the paid API would make the transition feasible for more developers, myself included. These concessions seem minor and reasonable in the face of the changes.

I thought you said Reddit would be flexible on the timeline?

That was my understanding as well based on what they said on a call on May 4th:

Reddit: "If there's an entity who's like 'Hey I'm showing really good progress', you know trying to like we're trying to get a contract in place, we're trying to do all that type of stuff, I don't think you're going to see us be like, you know, like overly aggressive on that timeline. And I feel pretty confident about that point by the way based on conversations I've heard internally."

However when asking about more time, such as a 90 day transition period to make the changes, they said:

Reddit: "On the 90-day transition, remember that billing doesn't kick in until July 1. So you won't see your first bill from July until the beginning of August, and it won’t be due until the end of August (It’s net 30 day billing). You do, however, have to sign an agreement to get paid level access on July 1."

Did you explicitly ask Reddit for more time?

Yes, my last email to them (including Steve) said:

In terms of timeline, what concerns me most is the short nature of it before I start incurring costs. I have a large amount of users at price points that I won’t be able to afford to support with 30 days notice. For instance, users who subscribed for a year for $10 six months ago when I had no idea any of this was coming, amounts to $0.83 per month or $0.58 after Apple’s cut. Even if I’m able to decrease my API usage down to the number in your charts, that still puts me in the red for everyone of those users for awhile with no recourse. A situation like this is one that is legitimately making me legitimately leaning toward shutting down the app, but one that I could salvage if given more time to transition from the free API to the paid API.
In prior calls you mentioned that provided I kept communicating and progress was being made, the timeline wasn’t an absolute.
Is that still the case, or is it now the case that the date is set in stone?

That was a week ago and I've yet to receive any further contact from Reddit.

Isn't this your fault for building a service reliant on someone else?

To a certain extent, yes. However, I was assured this year by Reddit not even that long ago that no changes were planned to be made to the API Apollo uses, and I've made decisions about how to monetize my business based on what Reddit has said.

January 26, 2023 Reddit: "So I would expect no change, certainly not in the short to medium term. And we're talking like order of years."

Another portion of the call:

January 26, 2023 Reddit: "There's not gonna be any change on it. There's no plans to, there's no plans to touch it right now in 2023. Me: "Fair enough." Reddit: "And if we do touch it, we're going to be improving it in some way."

Will you build a competitor? Move to one of the existing alternatives?

I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial.
These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous.

Will you sell Apollo?

Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool and sustainable, but I'd rather the app just die if it would go to a company that would turn something I worked really hard on into something that would ruin its legacy.
To be clear: I am not threatening anyone in the previous paragraph.

Reddit states that the Twitter comparison is unfair

Reddit stated on the first call that they don't want to be like Twitter:

Reddit: "I think one thing that we have tried to be very, very, very intentional about is we are not Elon, we're not trying to be that, we're not trying to go down that same path. [...] We are trying to do is just use usage-based pricing, that will hopefully be very transparent to you, and very clear to you. Or we're not trying to go down the same path that you may have seen some of our other peers go down."

They now state that the comparison of how close their pricing comes to Twitter is an unfair one, and that when they said that above, they were apparently referring not to the pricing, but to the decision Twitter made to ban third-party apps at a rule level, not a pricing level.
I think regardless of whatever their intent/meaning behind the comparison to Twitter was, the result is the same: the pricing will kill third-party apps, just as Twitter did.
I said this to Reddit, and they responded that they don't think Twitter's pricing is unreasonable, and that if anything, if Twitter reversed the rule about third-party apps, they would probably increase the prices as well.
Just to be clear about how wrong and out of touch that is, without naming names, a formerly very, very high up person at Twitter messaged me on Twitter and said:

"The Reddit api moves are crazy. I’m not sure what choices you have but to move to another network. [...] That pricing is designed to prevent apps like yours forevermore."

So to be clear, even this person thinks this pricing is unreasonable. I do too.

Have you talked to CEO Steve Huffman about any of this?

I requested a call to talk to Steve about some suggestions I had, his response was "Sorry, no. You can give name-redacted a ping if you want."
I've then emailed that person (same person I've been talking to for months) suggestions approximately one week ago about how Apollo could survive this, and I've yet to receive a response.

Do I support the protest/Reddit blackout?

Abundantly. Unlike other social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who pay their moderators as employees, Reddit relies on volunteers to do the hard work for free. I completely understand that when tools they take to do their volunteer, important job are taken away, there is anger and frustration there. While I haven't personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don't support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do.
It's been a horrible week, and the kindness Redditors and moderators and communities have shown Apollo and other third-party apps has genuinely made it much more bearable and I am genuinely so appreciative.
I am, admittedly, doubtful Reddit wants to listen to folks anymore so I don't see it having an effect.

Your initial post in April sounded quite optimistic. Are you dumb?

In hindsight, kinda yeah. Many of the other developers and folks I talked to were much less optimistic than I was, but I legitimately had great interactions with Reddit for many years prior to last week (they were kind, communicative, gave me heads up of changes), so when they said they were aiming to have pricing that would be fair and based in reality, I honestly believed them. That was foolish of me in hindsight, and maybe could have had a different outcome if I was more aggressive in the beginning. Sorry. /canadian
(And to be clear, they did indeed say this. They used the word "substantive" and I wanted to make sure we had the same definition of something "having a firm basis in reality and therefore important, meaningful, or considerable")

Reddit: "That's exactly right. And I think, thankfully, the word is exactly the right one. It's going to have a firm basis in reality. I also just looked it up. We're going to try to be as transparent as we can."

Reddit claims they've reached out to developers who were bad users of the API, was Apollo contacted?

On May 31st Reddit posted a chart of large excess usage by some unlabeled API clients, and stated: "We reached out to the most impactful large scale applications in order to work out terms for access above our default rate limits via an enterprise tier."
To be clear, Apollo was never contacted, and I've been told from someone internally that Apollo is indeed not one of the unlabeled API clients.
The only time that Apollo was reached out to by Reddit in any capacity about usage was late last year when we received an email about a 6 minute period where Apollo's server API usage increased by 35% before lowering again. Despite 35% for 6 minutes being a comparatively small blip (the above post references clients that are over by 500000%), we responded within 2 minutes. We offered to jump on a call with Reddit engineers if they needed an answer ASAP, identified the issue within several hours and Reddit thanked us for the fast investigation.
Full email transcript: https://gist.github.com/christianselig/6c71608cf617d2f881cd2849325494c1

Claims that Apollo has made no attempt to be a good user of the API

On the call with moderators, Steve Huffman said:

"I don't use the app, so I'll give you the best answer I can -- he does scraping so that he can deliver notifications faster, but has done NO EFFORT to be a good citizen of the internet."

First off, Apollo does no scraping, it's purely through authenticated calls to the API and has checks in place to ensure it stays within Reddit's API rate limits. I've open sourced the server code to show this.
Secondly, to say we have made no effort is categorically false. I have so many emails reached out to Reddit on multiple occasions expressing concern about and bugs inefficiencies in the API, or ideas on how to improve things, or significant Reddit bugs that made things hard on us. When Reddit has had questions for us, as discussed above, we immediately jumped into action to get an answer as quickly as possible.
Here's an email of me giving a heads up to Reddit of IP address changes on our server:

Me: "With the new change it'll be maybe like, one IP address. This is all obviously still within the API rate limits as the requests are from individual user accounts that have signed in. Again, long story short the result will be more optimized if anything, I just wanted to give a heads up and ensure that it'd be okay if Reddit suddenly saw the server go from a bunch of different IP addresses to a single one which might cause some confusion if I didn't give a heads up."

Me wanting to make sure we were doing everything as best as we could:

Me: "Everything is going well, we just had a few questions about best practices making sure we’re following any suggestions your team has. Is there any way we could poke someone on your team with a few questions we’ve been having and have a tiny back and forth? We were just seeing some elevated response times, and just thought it would be great if we could maybe describe what we’re doing and see if anything seems off/suboptimal."

Me reporting to Reddit that the API has a serious bug in recording rate limits:

We obviously respect the rate limit headers and if a user comes close to approaching it (within 50 requests of the 600 every 10 minutes limit) we stop their requests until the refresh period occurs. However we're seeing some users have very, very weird rate limit headers. Things like "requests remaining: 0, requests made: 17,483, reset: 598 seconds left" which indicates they've somehow made over 17 thousand requests in two seconds which seems hard to believe.

Me suggesting to Reddit improvements that could help improve efficiency of notification API calls:

Me: "So like little stuff like that, where even if there's a streaming client or some way to minimize the calls there, I think it would help us both out enormously."

Further, when making suggestions to your own employees, they themselves have expressed concern about how terrible the public API is:

Call on January 26, 2023 Reddit: "I cannot tell you how painful it is to use our API. [...] The API needs to change. Like it's just unusable. I am surprised that you're able to build a functional app on it to be honest."

Claims that third-party apps are not interested in talking

Steve: "Why not work with the third party apps? Their existence is not a priority for us. We don't use them. I don't use them. It's a part of our traffic but not a lot, and it's a lot of work on our side to keep them alive. If I have to choose where to put our effort, we're going to focus internally. I'm kind of open to it, but I haven't – and I can't convince you, but I don't get the sense that they want to work with us either."

I'm genuinely not sure where Steve has got the impression that I don't want to work with him. Despite reaching out multiple times and him declining to talk, I've stated multiple times on calls, literally saying the words "I definitely still want to talk".

Reddit: "What I'm hearing is like, Yeah, great. We have this disagreement on pricing methodology, etc. But any feasible number that we get to, any number that's even in, the zip code of what we're sharing with you is unfeasible from your perspective financially. So it's like arguing around the edges of that price thing is like, it just won't make any sense to you. And I presume also just given the NSFW stuff and the removal of ads that makes it even more trickier." Me: Yeah. I mean, to be very clear, I'm not saying I'm walking away from the negotiation table and taking my basketball and going home and just gonna kick up a storm. That's not my intention at all. I definitely still want to talk. I'm not asking you to lower the price by a hundred times or something. I don't think – depending on what you mean by zip code – I don't think I'm so unreasonable that I'm requiring you to bend over backwards here."

I've also emailed Steve and the other contact directly stating that I'm interested in talking, and including ideas for how we could come to a solution:

Me: "I understand where Reddit's coming from in this. A free API, while appreciated, is not tenable for you especially heading into an IPO, and my only goal here is to come to a solution where we both feel understood. I also hear you that killing third-party clients isn't actually the goal, and in that spirit have been working on how to address your concerns from my end: [...]"

I don't know how you can say I'm not interested in talking when you haven't my most recent email in a week. To say it once more, I was very interested in talking.
On the other side of things, per the transcript, Steve and the other admin on the call don't even know when the discussions with third-party apps began.

Steve: "When did we start talking with them?" AnAbsurdlyAngryGoose: "What month did you first start?" Steve: "FlyingLaserTurtles? Do you remember? April or May of this year." FlyingLaserTurtles: "Maybe late March? But yes."

Claims that Reddit has been talking to developers for months talking about these changes

Steve: "We've been in contact with third party apps for MONTHS, talking about these coming changes."

When you announce that the API will be charging developers, the most important portion of that conversation is what will be charged, which was not available for almost two months after the initial call. From the time developers were told the price, to the time developers will be subject to the price, is 30 days, not "months". Months would have been very helpful, in fact.

What about existing subscriptions?

I've been talking to my rep at Apple, and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide if they want a pro-rated refund on any existing time left in their subscription as Apollo will not be able to afford to continue it, or they can decline the refund if they're feeling kind and have enjoyed their time with Apollo.
For the curious, refunding all existing subscriptions by my estimates will cost me about $250,000.

A nice send off at WWDC

Apollo got mentioned a few times during Apple's 2023 WWDC keynote, even by Craig Federighi himself, and even during the Vision Pro announcement showing Apollo as one of the existing apps compatible with the headset (I'm sorry I won't be able to see that happen).
I was lucky enough to be there in person and it felt incredible. Some folks asked if there was any deeper meaning behind that, and while that would be cool, in all reality these things are so well produced that they've been done for a while now, so I'm sure it's just a coincidence, even if it's a really cool one.

Extra icons

A funny amount of people have reached out wondering about all the extra monthly icons I had queued up for Apollo. I love them, was so excited for them, and I'll make them available immediately for the short time left, but if you're curious here's a screenshot of all of them: https://christianselig.com/apollo-end/remaining-icons.png
We ended up with well over 100 custom icons created by incredibly talented designers, and I'm really sorry to those designers who didn't get to see their work launched in the app (to be clear, don't worry, I paid them all – there isn't some bs "exposure" agreement – but it's fun to have your icon launch and I feel bad!)

When is Apollo's last day? What will happen?

In order to avoid incurring charges I will delete Apollo's API token on the evening of June 30th PST. Until that point, Apollo should continue to operate as it has, but after that date attempts to connect to the Reddit API will fail.
I will put up an explainer in the app prior to that which will go live at that date. I will also provide a tool to export any local data you have in Apollo, such as filters or favorites.

Thank you

I want to thank a lot of people who have made this last week bearable. First and foremost, the communities, Redditors, and moderators who have reached out in support of third-party apps, making Reddit's gaslighting a lot more bearable in making me feel like at least someone was understanding me and in my corner.
My girlfriend's been absolutely incredible and supportive. This year was our 10th anniversary, and Monday was her 30th birthday. We're down in California for Apple's WWDC and had a bunch of things planned to do for her birthday afterward, and I feel terrible that we're flying home early to deal with all of this instead of making her 30th special. I'll make it up to her.
André Meidoros worked on the Apollo server component with me for the last two years, and it's been an absolute joy to work with a professional who knows so much on that side of things.
The iOS developer community has been unbelievably kind to me over the past several weeks, I've spent the last week with many of them, even staying at an Airbnb with a bunch of them (they ordered me pizza as I wrote this post!), and I've got so many hugs and condolences haha. Specifically want to thank Paul Haddad of Tweetbot/Tapbots/Ivory, Ryan Jones, Brian Mueller, Curtis Herbert, André Meidoros, Quinn Nelson, Paul Hudson, Majd Taby, Ryan McLeod, Phill Ryu, Larry Hryb, Charlie Chapman, Mustafa Yusuf, Adrian Eves, Devin Davies, Jordan Morgan, Yariv Nassim, Will Sigmon, Barry Hershman, Joe Rossignol, Michael Simmons, Joe Fabisevich, my family, and so, so many more.
Also want to thank everyone at Apple who have gone out of their way to be incredibly kind here (I don't know if I'm allowed to name names but you know who you are).

I'll be fine

No bullshit, I'll be fine. Through pure chance last year I spun off my silly Pixel Pals idea into a separate app, and that actually makes good revenue on the side. I also have savings. Recently (like last week) my city had its worst wildfires in history with over 100 homes destroyed. That's brutal, losing an app is sad, but it's been helpful to me to recognize how much worse it could be just literally down the street from me.
Honestly. Apollo had an incredible run, I met the coolest people, by my last count talked with folks over 15,000 times in our subreddit about Apollo, and raised over $80,000 for my local animal shelter through Apollo. I feel incredibly fortunate.
I think I'll rewatch Ted Lasso though.

Supporting my work

I build a second app called Pixel Pals that I spun off from Apollo that's thankfully done pretty well and I'll be spending more time on going forward. If you like the idea of digital pets it's a really fun app to check out. https://pixelpa.ls

Media

If any media/press folks have any questions, please shoot me an email rather than messaging me on Reddit, I missed a few last week because my inbox was blowing up. My email is [email protected]

AMA

I think I covered everything, but if there's any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer!
In the event that this post is taken down or you want to link somewhere else, it's also available at https://apolloapp.io
Thanks for everything over these last 8 years,
- Christian

Liebes kochen,
viele von euch haben vermutlich schon vom Protest gegen die neuen Nutzungsbedingungen der reddit-API gehört. Für alle, die es noch nicht haben, hier die Kurzversion:

• Die reddit Admins haben eine Änderung ihrer API-Nutzungsgebühren beschlossen, derzufolge alle Drittanbieter-Apps wie Apollo, Reddit is Fun und viele andere effektiv von reddit ausgeschlossen würden. Dem Entwickler von Apollo wurden beispielsweise Nutzungsgebühren von 20 Millionen US-Dollar pro Jahr vorveranschlagt, was selbst mit umfassender Monetarisierung unrealistisch ist. Die Reddit API ist kurzgesagt die Verbindung zwischen Reddit und Außenwelt. Dort können alle Daten, die auf reddit so herumliegen, außerhalb von reddit gelesen und beschreiben werden.
• Die API wird keine NSFW-Inhalte mehr zugängig machen. Selbst wenn eine Einigung im Hinblick auf das Bezahlsystem der API erzielt würde, könnten Nutzer anderer Apps nicht mehr auf derartige Inhalte zugreifen. Auch für Moderatoren stellt das ein Problem dar, da als NSFW-Markierte Posts nicht mehr sichtbar wären und so in der App keine Moderation solcher Inhalte erfolgen kann.
• Die offizielle reddit App ist nicht behindertengerecht, was zur Folge hat, dass Nutzer mit schlechten Augen zu Drittanbieter-Apps greifen müssen, um die Seite auch mobil nutzen zu können.
• Spam, Tracking und Werbung. Die offizielle App ist voll davon, Drittanbieter-Apps hingegen nicht.
• Für die Moderation essentielle Werkzeuge, wie Bots und Browser-Addons nutzen die API um gegen Spam vorzugehen und erlauben es den Mods sich untereinander zu koordinieren. All das würde stark erschwert und teils unmöglich werden.

Deshalb wird sich Kochen dem Protest von weit über 1.000 Subreddits und mittlerweile über 500 Millionen kombinierten Subscribern anschließen und auf privat geschaltet für 48h vom 12. bis 14. Juni.
Wir hoffen auf eurer Verständnis und möchten uns für die Unannehmlichkeiten entschuldigen.
Eure mods.