> This turned out be caused by a periodic (10/hour) function in our code. The main purpose of this was to refresh our route handlers from an external source. This was implemented by deleting old handlers and adding new ones to the array. Unfortunately, it was also inadvertently adding a static route handler with the same path each time it ran.

I don't understand the need of refreshing route handlers. Could someone explain they needed to do this, and also why from an external source?

We refresh periodically as we dynamically deploy new UI code, which can be accessed at new routes. (/home and /homeV2 for example) This allows us to not have to restart our servers or push out new server code just to serve a new UI at a different (or the same) route.

It sounds to me like some kind of configuration/IT-infrastructure-control issue. I wouldn't be surprised if it relates to some sort of "we want a way to toggle this live without an actual code-push" narrative.

I assume this is some kind of continuous delivery-style thing, where they can push up and amend endpoints without bringing down the entire system.

This is the guy who authored TextBlob! https://github.com/sloria/TextBlob

I am confused, why is there so much talk about WhatsApp replacements recently?

It's appealing to some to have messaging that doesn't funnel into a major data harvester. Facebook just acquired WhatsApp.

Whisper systems is owned by Twitter. I'm not sure how it's privacy record compares to that of Facebook.

In this case TextSecure has end-to-end encryption, and supposedly even hides metadata when using the push service (which is hosted on Google Push Framework). Feel free to check the source yourself, or take Moxie's word on it, but I think their "track record" is a bit cleaner overall, regardless of the acquisition of WhisperSystems by Twitter.

I'm pretty sure ownership reverted back to Moxie when he left Twitter.

whatsapp doesn't have end-to-end encryption

I love this! When learning to program, I wrote a clone of a basic java game by Notch:

Mine: http://codelucas.com/pages/island-overlord.html His: https://mojang.com/notch/ld12/breaking/

The code: Mine: https://github.com/codelucas/islandoverlord His: https://mojang.com/notch/ld12/breaking/BreakingTheTower.zip

I also "cloned" a well known python article extraction library (goose) on Github with my own api & new functionality and my repo ended up doing super well (even better than the original).

https://github.com/codelucas/newspaper vs. https://github.com/grangier/python-goose