New reader calewithac writes: In an attempt to stop ransomware attacks, the House's security team has banned all apps hosted on appspot.com from being used on its servers. This means that all appspot hosted apps are inaccessible inside Congress. According to Ted Henderson, the founder of the Cloakroom -- an anonymous messaging app for Capitol Hill staffers -- all of his apps are effectively not available to their target audience.

My Heroku diaspora

davewiner

One year ago today Heroku changed their pricing for what had previously been a free tier. It went to $7 a month. Doesn't sound like much, right? But for the year before that I had been creating all sorts of little apps to do little things, and with each one at $7, the bill would have been hundreds of dollars a month. Today the same work is being done, all of it, on a $20 a month server at Linode.

At the time I thought Heroku had a great idea. I was puzzled by the economics, but I know how much they must spend on facilities and salaries, and figured they thought this was a good long-term investment. A way to build relationships (and lock-in) with developers who were smart enough to adapt to their radical idea for software modules. Maybe they still are, and that was just a detour. But I got off their bus and was reminded never to invest in platforms you can't quickly and easily migrate off. The most expensive part of the transition was the time it took away from work I wanted to do.

I was surprised when this post showed up in my Memories on Facebook and it was only one year ago. Feels like much longer.

New submitter loren writes: It is with much sadness that I report that legendary sound designer Jory K. Prum, who worked on more than 120 video game titles, passed away April 22, 2016, at age 41, from injuries suffered in a March traffic accident. (Disclaimer: I am a long time friend of Jory and his family.) Here are some personal recollections from family, friends and colleagues... Also, a list of his game credits are on MobyGames. This post doesn't do him justice, but I found news of his loss conspicuously absent on Slashdot. Back in 2006 a Slashdot article about the game Bone apparently drew a comment from Jory himself ("Funny, I'm recording the dialog for Bone 2 right as I read this!") and in 2004 the same account weighed in on an article about long hours at Electronic Arts. Wikipedia also reports that in 2001 Jory created a voice for Pixar's Oscar-winning short "For the Birds," and in 2014 recovered the aging audio for the classic point-and-click adventure game Grim Fandango.