GPL Enforcement in Apple's App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance/ <comment><USER2> The FSF should take a more active role in GPL violations overall. This is by far not the only one. See for example how Drobo completely ignores requests for source code, while spreading FUD about proprietary drivers:

[http://www.drobospace.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=935&...](http://www.drobospace.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=935&pid=6816&highlight=gpl#pid6816)

I'm not a fan of bashing Apple at every occasion, but a shakedown of phone software licensing would not hurt — it would actually clarify the situation (both for iPhone OS and Android) and perhaps force companies to change the terms of service somewhat.

UPDATE: I double-checked and since my last request they actually posted an E-mail address where you can supposedly request the code. I did request the code and I'm waiting to see what happens.

Also, for those who think this is fanaticism: I'm doing this, because the DroboShare is unreliable and lost my data by corrupting the entire Drobo volume. I need the code, because I want to check whether Drobo actually improved the Linux HFS+ code or not (I suspect not).

<comment><USER3> The Drobo forums are only available to paying customers, but I did come across the following page;

<http://support.datarobotics.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/434>

Seems you can request the code by e-mail. No idea why they'd like to know your company affiliation though.

<comment><USER4> _No idea why they'd like to know your company affiliation though._

Marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What I don't like about this post is that they explicitely say _The primary problem is that Apple imposes numerous legal restrictions on use and distribution of GNU Go through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is forbidden by section 6 of GPLv2._ I'd like to see them enumerate these legal restrictions and explain how they contravene the GPL. Don't leave us guessing.

For reference, a copy of the GPL V2: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html>

Section 6: _6\. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License._

<comment><USER6> I suppose that the _right_ to copy, distribute or modify the Program is not the same as the _ability_ to do so.

Apple could grant everyone the right to redistribute any GPL'ed apps, but it wouldn't make any practical difference because who could I distribute the app to?

<comment><USER7> Isn't this the "Tivoisation" problem that GPLv3 was meant to address?

<comment><USER8> Precisely

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A subtext here not mentioned is that FSF / GNU owns the copyright to GNU Go, hence they enforce their rights. Violations of GPL in other projects should be enforced by the copyright owners

<comment><USER10> Very good point. The cynic in me thinks that if Apple pulls GNU Go, it'll be _solely_ for the copyright issue. (Similarly, other GPL'd apps that may exist in the app store via unofficial ports or forks.)

What's Apple to lose if a user or developer of an open-source GPL'd application mistakenly pushes said application to the App Store? That is, until another a copyright holder or another developer calls foul.

I'm interested to see how this plays out between the FSF and Apple. Some murky territory we're getting into regarding Apple regulation on licensing & copyright claims.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The issue is so much simpler than you all make of it. And Apple is essentially not liable or responsible. The developer is the one who may be doing something wrong.

It goes like this: the developer enters into two separate agreements.

One is with the open source community, as he is re-using code licensed under the GPL. Any modifications and new code that links to that open source code, he must re-publish in source code.

Two, is the agreement with Apple to use the SDK and its APIs. Apple places restrictions on what you can say about the APIs (namely, that you can't say much at all:-).

If the developer modifies GPL code and mixes it with confidential APIs from Apple, he is stuck. He can either publish the source, and Apple can go after him, or he can keep the source confidential, and the authors of the Open Source code can go after him since he is using their code without a license (copyright infringment).

That's it. Apple is not particularly liable for what developers do. Of course, in practice, Apple being the company with big pockets, if I was trying to make a billion dollars from such a case, I'd sue Apple, not the poor Russian developer in their basement.

</comment><comment><USER12> Presumably, the process of getting your app into the app store involves you licensing it to apple on some kind of standardized terms that allow them to sell it on your behalf. Thus, Apple is acting within their rights, and the original developer did something that they weren't allowed to do.

<comment><USER13> The contract with the submitter is not going to protect Apple. The submitter cannot grant Apple the right to distribute code belonging to someone else.

At best, the contract can be used to show that Apple acted in good faith, and thus limiting the damages to be paid to the owner (here, the FSF). But since the FSF doesn't usually demand damages, that is not relevant for this case.

The DMCA safe harbor provision (which protects sites like Hacker News) will not protect Apple either unless the application is free. In which case Apple should respond to a DMCA takedown notice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is anyone aware of Apple going after somebody that distibutes the source code of their iPhone app? My interpretation (IANAL) of sectoin 7.2 of the Apple Developer License is that you are not allowed to distribute your apps anyway other than through the App store. But if you are distibuting the source code, as required by GPL v2, that doesn't seem to be infringing to me. Of course, maybe someone can point to an example of Apple harassing someone that was doing this.

Of course, maybe the FSF is getting all upset about the fact that not just anyone can download code onto an iPhone., only those in the Apple Developer Program? Except I personally find that situation as similar to needing to have a piece of hardware to use software designed for that hardware. If I use GPL code that I have modified such that it will only run on a PS3, I'm not obliged to furnish users with a PS3...

<comment><USER15> Although I think the FSF would love to see all of those things, the actual legal technicality that they have in mind is the requirement that whoever distributes the software (i.e. the App Store) is responsible for making the source code available also - which they just don't do.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if Apple actually counts as distributing the software in that case though. I mean, it wasn't Apple that _used_ the GPLed software after all. I remember seeing Redhat on sale in a box in an electronics store in Australia 10 years ago, and I don't think anyone would hold that store responsible for the distribution of the source code - it was obviously Redhat that was responsible...

<comment><USER16> Not only do they distribute it, they profit from that distribution^. If they were just a "dumb pipe", like an ISP, then no, but they have an active hand in it.

(^ Not that profiting from it is a conflict with the GPL, it just reinforces their status as a distributor.)

<comment><USER14> I don't know that the retailer of a product containing GPL software can really be said to be distributing programs as defined in the GPL. If I buy a Panasonic TV with linux inside it from my local Fry's, does Fry's have to take on the task of furnishing me with the source code of the program in question? It doesn't _feel_ right.

Oh, and just a note - if the application in question is free, then Apple doesn't profit from it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is the app in question ("Go go"): <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/go-go/id300106575?mt=8>

("It's driven by the GNU Go 3.6 engine")

I ran into a similar issue with a GNU Backgammon app. The publisher (who wasn't charging for the app) put up the source (<https://svn.leozide.com/pocketbg/>) after being asked but now that I'm looking at it, it doesn't appear to get linked to obviously on the site (I haven't checked inside the app).

</comment><comment><USER18> iPhone OS already contains GPL v2 code (at least libgcc and libstdc++) so presumably Apple is in compliance on that front.

Is FSF suggesting that it's not enough for the developer to distribute the source code, and _Apple_ must also distribute the source code of any 3rd party applications (which use GPL code) distributed via the App Store?

GPL v2 doesn't contain the anti-tivoization clause that v3 does, so that can't be the problem. I don't know what else they could claim, it would be nice if they could clarify the specific violations.

<comment><USER19> It doesn't appear they're objecting to the source-code distribution (which is allowed to be separate from the binary), but to the app store's license terms for apps: <http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/appstore/dev/stdeula/>

Since GNU Go is under the GPL, they're saying: you can't distribute it under Apple's "Licensed Application End User License Agreement", because that isn't a license the original author applied to the software, and the GPL prohibits you from piling on a new license.

This no-new-license-terms section of the GPL is to keep people from subverting the GPL by tacking on new terms to GPL'd software, which I believe includes EULAs. So, unless you're the original author and copyright holder (in which case you can always add whatever terms you want), you can't tell end users something like: "it's GPL, but here are more rules you have to follow if you want a copy [click yes to agree to these terms]". Since the App Store basically does that---it has an EULA that you have to agree to before you can get a copy of GNU Go---it falls afoul of that provision.

In practice it's more making a point, because Apple probably cannot really enforce any of the additional terms against users of a copy of GNU Go, and it's not clear they'd care about doing so. But it violates the FSF's principle that end-users should be able to modify the very copy of the software they receive, because it tacks on terms that amount to, "you cannot reverse- engineer or decompile this copy of GNU Go", which clearly isn't a condition the FSF itself, as the GNU Go copyright holder, would've added.

A workaround, if Apple cared enough, would be to exempt open-source apps from the EULA terms, because the terms are really mainly aimed at stopping reverse engineering, and there's no point in stopping reverse-engineering of apps which are already open source. (Android's app store avoids this problem entirely by not applying _any_ default EULA, and leaving it entirely up to the app author which EULA, if any, they want to ship.)

<comment><USER20> The App Store allows custom EULAs though they have to meet some minimum terms. I have no idea if the minimum terms are GPL compatible (probably not you'd imagine).

<comment><USER16> Don't those custom EULAs just supplement the Apple EULA? If so, that doesn't solve the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So even if you provide full source for your app, you can't have it on the app store period? Or would this person also be breaking the GPL if they simply uploaded a binary to their site?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is why I never liked the GPL. If someone wants to use GNU GO in their app suddenly they're on the hook for the political restrictions the GPL imposes even if they're making no significant modifications to it? In this case restricting their freedom to distribute their app where and how they want to. Of course you should adhere to the licenses you use it's just an interesting parallel track of software license restrictions. Looking at it purely from the perspective of using outside code, with a license you have no control over, the primary difference here is who dictates the terms to you. Apple or FSF. Either way they _are_ going to dictate the terms.

</comment><comment><USER23> hey guys, look at the Id's DOOM classic for the iPhone. it's GPLed by John Carmack you can download via App Store you can download the full code <http://www.idsoftware.com/doom-classic/>

</comment><comment><USER24> Hang on, if the source wasn't distributed to Apple (it generally isn't), how can Apple be expected to comply? Sounds to me like Apple need to take the app off the store. Any failure here is the fault of the submitter failing to comply with the GPL; Apple is just an innocent victim.

<comment><USER16> The source really isn't the problem. An app developer can put a link on the app page that has the source. I think the problems stem more from things like:

        6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program),
        the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to
        copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.
        You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of
        the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance
        by third parties to this License.

Apple definitely imposes "further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted". I can't copy the game from my iPhone to my friend's iPhone. I can't even use a copy of the source without paying Apple more money for a dev license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > _(...) we want to resolve this situation as amicably as possible._

Have they emailed the author to request that the app be pulled? That seems like the most obvious and efficient way to obtain the goal of getting the app out of the App Store.

<comment><USER26> _..."the upstream developers for this port are also violating the GPL, and we are discussing this with them too."_

<comment><USER25> Ah, that's what I get for skimming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That sucks. So basically, Gnu is saying that nobody is allowed to develop for Apples platform with any GPLed code? That does not seem like freedom to me.

The GPL knows that the software will be removed from the store. So they are basically killing it to support their philosophy. That's not freedom, that's just religious ideology.

If I wrote code 10 years ago under the GPL and I want to release it now on the iPhone platform, I don't want a bunch of people to come tell me what to do or what not to do with the code I wrote. I did not sign up to a cult and have to follow their rules. When I can do what I want with my copy of my code, then that is freedom.

<comment><USER28> They're saying that if you want to use GPLed code, then you have to follow the GPL rules. Clearly the person writing that code decided to use a GPL license, instead of something more flexible like an MIT or BSD license. Thus it makes perfect sense that they force those that use that code comply with the license chosen. If they didn't, they would be doing a disservice to the code authors.

If you don't like the license, don't use code that specifically chose to use that license. There are many alternatives to libraries out there, and as a last resort you can always write your own, original, non-GPLed code that performs a similar function.

It's also my understanding that if the situation is such that you wrote the code, then you can change the license on the code you wrote and continue with that base, however, the original code is still GPLed and would remain open.

[Updated for clarification]

<comment><USER29> yea but most programs have some libraries. it seems unlikely that one entity will own all the code (unless you happen to be the FSF). unless the libraries are less-than GPL licensed and compatible with the App store terms, then you are stuck.

it sounds to me that in many or even most circumstances, the GPL and the App store cannot mix unless Apple makes some allowances. it would be great to hear from the FSF exactly what would be required.

<comment><USER30> As long as the libraries aren't statically linked you are okay there... at least as far as libraries that are part of the stock system goes. (otherwise we'd never be able to build against, say, a differnet libc or anything like that)

"However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: HN Parents - Rate my content marketing / customer development - <AUTHOR>

I've posted before about an app we're working on--basically a personalized risk management and preparation app. We've decided our best customer segment for early adopters would be tech-savvy parents.
I thought it'd be neat to challenge HN to 1) see if our app is findable and 2) see if our unique value proposition is clear and understandable to our target segment.
So, with that, the app is called RiskRef. Have we done a good enough job promoting it thus far (i.e., Can you find it without me pointing you to it)?
And, once found, do you understand what problems its solving and how it's unique (i.e., the unique value proposition)?
Thanks for participating in this little game! I'm sure we'll learn a lot if you can find and understand the app. Also, if you're interested in doing some problem / solution interviews as a tech-savvy parent, please message me your email and we'll follow up!
This community is awesome, I've learned so much lurking here. Happy to finally post something. <comment><USER2> I went to <http://riskref.com> and I think I found the right site (based on your description of it).

However, after looking at the site I found the description of the service a little vague. I'm not entirely sure if "life-changing disasters" refers to things like earthquakes/tornadoes, stolen identities, or perhaps car accidents?

I basically didn't understand what you are trying to do, and all I see is an e-mail entry form which I'm hesitant to fill-in (because I don't know what I'm signing up for).

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you found the site. Your feedback is immensely helpful! We've been struggling a bit by being too general. I think I need to revise the language to be more focused for the tech-savvy parent segment that we're targeting as our early adopters.

Your feedback makes it clear that our current iteration lacks proper customer segment focus and doesn't sell the benefits well enough to compel you to take a chance on signing up.

Thanks for this valuable insight, dadads.</comment></comment>


US economic system unfair, say most Americans - <AUTHOR> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/10/most-americans-say-u-s-economic-system-is-unfair-but-high-income-republicans-disagree/ <comment><USER2> "Life unfair", say most humans; successful humans often disagree.

> _unfairly favors powerful interests_

This just says that to have power is to be advantaged, which is nearly tautological.

How humans are _selected into having power_ in the first place is what isn't fair, and never will be.

Those who have power will, on the whole, tend to act in their own self- interest, even if not all their actions serve that interest.

<comment><USER3> > Those who have power will, on the whole, tend to act in their own self- > interest, even if not all their actions serve that interest.

I would flip this on its' head, and say that those that act in their own self- interest, will tend to accumulate power.

Given that to have power is in your self-interest, the feedback loop follows.</comment></comment>


Stripe Acquires Touchtech - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/17/stripe-acquires-touchtech-updates-apis-to-prep-for-strong-customer-authentication-in-europe/ <comment><USER2> It's quite exciting that stolen payment card details will lose most of their value for Internet purchases in the EEA soon. Long overdue I think, it's practically a backdoor to the whole Chip and PIN security system. (Though so are transactions with signature or magstripe, but those are also slowly being tackled…)

My main bank account is with Nordea, a big Nordic bank, one of Sweden's big four. They are currently quite paranoid about Internet purchases and outright do not permit any such transaction if it does not have that kind of two-factor authentication — if the merchant doesn't support it, you must log in with the app or Internet bank and temporarily turn this off for one hour. But with support for two-factor authentication bexoming obligatory in the EEA, I guess it will only be non-EEA merchants where this is a problem. :)

<comment><USER3> Why isn't Verified by Visa mandatory everywhere? Isn't that enough?

<comment><USER4> Because it would decimate checkout conversion to save a few basis points in fraud losses.

<comment><USER5> Is there any data on how much conversion rates drops when it's used?

<comment><USER6> It depends on the region but it can be as high as 30% from what I've read

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ...well crap. Time to update my side projects to handle this new flow. I wasn't aware this was even coming. Looks like there are a lot of exemptions (my side project costs customers less than 30 euros), but it's ultimately up to the customer's bank.

I guess I'll move to Stripe checkout instead of my custom form.

<comment><USER4> You might be eligible for <30 EUR exemption: [https://stripe.com/en- US/guides/strong-customer-authenticati...](https://stripe.com/en- US/guides/strong-customer-authentication#exemptions-to-strong-customer- authentication)

<comment><USER8> You'd still have to handle the complete flow for the case where the exemption has been used multiple times since the last authentication though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As security practices improves, reducing fraud, does the industry reduce its costs and pass the savings to consumers or is the trend to increase their own profits? I have an assumption as to what the answer is, however I'm wondering if anyone here in the industry may have a solid understanding?

<comment><USER10> Is reduced fraud even creating meaningful savings? The simple fact that these changes are driven by government regulation rather than internal efforts makes me think not. I think the main benefit to consumers is that they don't have to deal with identity theft as often.

<comment><USER11> Every chargeback from a fraudulent transaction costs ~$25 to businesses.

<comment><USER12> For middlemen it can cost significantly more, as they often have to pay the businesses for the service anyway (e.g. food delivery)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hopefully, this will be handled in a better fashion in Europe than in India where online transactions dropped two digits after the changes were enforced.

For e-commerce platforms, refunding fraudulent charges is cheaper than a two- digit drop in transactions.

</comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to Touchtech! Acquisitions are always exciting :)

I'm wondering what this means for multi-factor authentication with regards to payments. Why bio-metrics instead of a physical security key and U2F? Convenience? Customer reach?

If the U.S. implements something like SCA in the future, would it be likely that biometrics will win out over PINs or security keys, given different legal protections for both ([https://pilotonline.com/news/local/crime/article_25373eb2-d7...](https://pilotonline.com/news/local/crime/article_25373eb2-d719-5a6e-b677-656699a50168.html))? What might this mean for future legal precedents regarding biometrics?

</comment><comment><USER15> Always good to hear Stripe are doing well and expanding, their platform and more particularly, their api, is so intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good to see Stripe improving their service even more.</comment>


Common Actions on Messages in a Queue - <AUTHOR> http://blog.iron.io/2013/01/common-actions-on-messages-in-queue.html

<comment><USER2> I like the "back to basics" approach of these kinds of blog posts. My apps use Resque for fairly basic queuing behavior, and it's always nice to read something like this to refresh my imagination about what's possible in a good queue system, and think outside the box that is my code.

If IronMQ was easier to hot-swap as a Resque back-end (or job processor like Sidekiq, if I understand it correctly) then I'd be more strongly tempted to jump over for some of its smarter queueing features that I haven't gotten around to rolling in to my own Resque setup.

</comment><comment><USER3> We needed something like this years ago when I was at Charles Schwab, we had like 3 different engineering groups that all wanted to use their own stack. At the time we were stuck having to all integrate with ONE of the groups SOAP API's, a message queue like this could have helped by providing a common protocol for all of us to pass our messages around.</comment>


The Kindergarten Class in the Forest - <AUTHOR> http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/06/02/beyond-recess-how-to-explore-the-forest-as-a-kindergarten-class/

<comment><USER2>
        Kindergarten teacher Eliza Minnucci got the idea after
        watching a documentary about a forest school in
        Switzerland where kids spend all day, every day, out in
        the woods.

This makes it sound a bit like a singular case. We have this kind of outdoor kindergarten in Germany too. The kids spend all day, every day, out. In summer and winter. Not necessarily every day in the woods.</comment>


PEP 3117 -- Postfix type declarations - <AUTHOR> http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3117/ <comment><USER2> Reeeeeeeejected!

I like the idea though. I wish more languages would use unicode for control structures or keywords. I'm probably one of the few :-)

<comment><USER3> Someone a few years back had an alternate Python syntax with λ for lambda, ∀ for all(), ∃ for any(), and so on.</comment></comment>


Vodafone slams Egypt PM Mubarak over text 'hijacking' - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/mobile-wireless/3259352/vodafone-slams-egypt-pm-mubarak-over-text-hijacking/

<comment><USER2> Just for context, I heard multiple eyewitness reports on Al Jazeera on friday that protestors went through cairo systematically destroying vodaphone stores in response to them suspending GSM access at the behest of Mubarak.

EDIT: [http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/vodafone-confirms-role- eg...](http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/vodafone-confirms-role-egypts- cellular-internet-blackout/)

<comment><USER3> Anyone else feel it is depressing that people have to resort to these tactics due to political oppression?

<comment><USER4> I find it more depressing that corporations conspire with despots to destroy freedom.

By providing material support to the agenda of despots, they identify themselves as enemies of the people. They have taken sides. Let them reap the consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We don't feel like implementing a secure communication system, we want the government to enforce security for us.

Hey! it's not fair that you're using our insecure system in ways we don't want you to.

</comment><comment><USER6> Mubarak is not Egypt's Prime Minister.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It says president in the article, but I couldn't change the name on here (ycombinator)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get a 500 error when clicking the link to the article.</comment>


How to cause utter chaos on Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/968060

<comment><USER2> It all began when a user pasted the value of the _jsText_ variable in the address bar. The script create a new _script_ DOM element and append it to _head_ injecting the malicious links (so that there is no more need to run the bookmarklet-like link.)

The problem here is that the (old) Facebook prompt_page.php page:

<http://www.facebook.com/connect/prompt_feed.php>

doesn't sanitize feed_info[action_links][0][href] allowing _javascript:_ links.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone post an image of what the "Remove this app" picture actually looks like? does it show as part of the newsfeed?

<comment><USER4> <http://i.imgur.com/wljHt.png> Seems to be a decent example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems as though she is more the victim of some asshole that may or may not know her, that is now trying to extract some revenge by making her life a miserable hell while this mess gets sorted out.

</comment><comment><USER6> seems like a better way to cause a dns attack on the file hosters machine no? better title: dns attack from facebook.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Makes a vulgar post on a users wall, if the user clicks "Remove this app" it then post it to all your friends walls.

Reddits reaction thus far <http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/search?q=nicole+santos>

Edit: I think facebook has already taken it down, it lasted about 30 minutes.

<comment><USER7> It was Dropbox that took down the file, though I bet it was taken down by some sort of automatic hotlinking protection system.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Dropbox link went down quite fast, it was mirrored by another site nearly instantly and the hack remained in working condition. Then I'm guessing Facebook took down the App and deleted all the comments that were spread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great, you found a script injection. However, I think you misunderstand "Hacker News"

<comment><AUTHOR> Wasn't me and I don't understand this comment.</comment></comment>


Hey Europe, selected ladies can attend Founder Institute for free - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/founder-institute-deadline-approaching/

<comment><USER2> Go, Founder Institute, Go! :)</comment>


Ask HN: What is your pen and paper productivity system? - <AUTHOR> Checklists, bullet journals etc. <comment><USER2> I have a small, bound notebook and then a tear-away notepad. I jot down initial notes on the tear-away, then move them over to the bound notebook every few days. I do a very, very lite version of bullet journaling whereby I re-go through the bound journal's latest entires from time to time and re- capture relevant tasks and notes as new entries. This gives me the spaced repetition to remember important things and allows me to drop no-longer relevant things.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use whiteboard notecards[1]

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dry-Erase-Index-Cards- Reusable/dp/B...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dry-Erase-Index-Cards- Reusable/dp/B073K3CY52/ref=asc_df_B073K3CY52/) to write down tasks and ideas throughout the day. then I use neodynium magnets and and a 3-meter wide whiteboard to lay the ideas out on a 2-d grid of impact vs. effort.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use this bullet-journal system for tracking habits: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bxIg3M_MHY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bxIg3M_MHY)

Now that I can get a cheaply-bound pad of bullet paper, I use it as my default stationary.

</comment><comment><USER4> A special format printed paper for taking requirements from meetings.

It has a date, time, relevant people as well as project name, actionable points and stuffs to confirm, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Blank printer paper stack and a cup of pencils and markers for primary note taking and highlights respectively.

</comment><comment><USER6> I just write</comment>


Breastfeeding: it's bad for business - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/10/breastfeeding-its-bad-for-business <comment><USER2> There's a special place in hell for anyone who was viciously opposing this at the UN.

</comment><comment><USER3> In Australia its all over all formula products that breastfeeding is better.

</comment><comment><USER4> > I'm told it's delicious

I can't be the only one who audibly laughed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Our baby was born SGA (small for gestational age) at 2kg. We tried using similac formula as a supplement and baby got sick, she lost more weight and for diaorrhea. We instant moved back to just breast milk and she is doing amazing. Weight looking good.

Formula works for some babies. For some, it's close to poison. I learnt it the hard way.

</comment><comment><USER6> Necrotizing fasciitis

<comment><USER7> No, it is necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). NEC is associated with formula feeds and accounts for up to 20% of NICU costs annually. Here is a pubmed link discussing:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357630/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357630/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, not a fan of that "article" format

</comment><comment><USER6> Formula can and does kill many premature babies every day it is called Necrotizing fasciitis, look it up and learn!

<comment><USER9> Definition from the internet:

> Necrotizing fasciitis refers to a rapidly spreading infection, usually > located in fascial planes of connective tissue that results in tissue death > (necrosis).

Neither Wikipedia nor MedicineNet.com (to mention the top two results I got) mention any kind of link between Necrotizing fasciitis and formula. I suggest you give an actual link rather than just asking people to "look it up".

<comment><USER10> It's actually necrotizing enterocolitis, and there is a link. Necrotizing fasciitis is something else entirely.

<comment><USER7> Here is one paper from pub Med discussing NEC:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357630/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3357630/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


I made a rock paper scissors game using socket.io - <AUTHOR>

http://coolfriends.me<p>What do you suggest i should do next? (Thank you :) <comment><USER2> Hey, I just played mit and won 7 times in a row. :) But I didn't get any coins.

You should definitely have a chat with the person option, otherwise there is no opportunity to apply diversion and taunt the opponent.( make sure you ban certain words )

Also a timer would be nice with a countdown would be nice.

History of the matches would be a must.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey deletes, good game :)

The scoring system is not implemented yet.. I wandered if there is a point to do anything on the game.. I also was thinking of a chat system, the timer is sure to come!

Very nice feedback, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made some additions to the game based on the feedback i recieved like: chat functionality, time limit of 5 sec for the games, see who played what after the game, rankings of the current players and matches history.

What do you suggest i should do next?

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool. Might want to show the actual results (who chose what) instead of just telling you whether you won or lost.

Naturally, you can deduce that on your own, but in real life part of the fun is seeing the hands in their final state.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm bh, the guy you just played a few times! (Guessing you're "mit.") Keeping score and viewing a history of your past games with someone would be cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes i am mit, thanks a lot for the feedback :) I am thinking of winning 3 coins for every win and 1 coin for every draw (that may be the score system - the coins) .. And then maybe buy some advantages with the coins like seeing opponent's last few choices..

<comment><USER4> Once you've learned all there is to learn from this project, I'd suggest making a more complicated game. Playing rps with people online in real-time is cool, but what if you could play cards? Poker? Maybe even a new game you've invented?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am open for new ideas of simple and viral games :) I think there is a lot of sites that are for traditional games, so maybe we should think of something fresh and cool :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was ialwayschooserock

Dude that was cool. I think it would be neat if there was a chat.</comment>


What Will Happen to Amazon Without Jeff Bezos - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.in/Heres-What-Will-Happen-To-Amazon-Without-Jeff-Bezos/articleshow/45404573.cms

<comment><AUTHOR> Quoting Jeff Bezos:

The culture is so deeply ingrained at Amazon, that if I wanted to change it, I couldn't</comment>


Software Updates for IoT Devices and the Hidden Costs of Homegrown Updaters [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://mender.io/resources/guides-and-whitepapers/_resources/Mender%2520White%2520Paper%2520_%2520Hidden%2520Costs%2520of%2520Homegrown.pdf <comment><USER2> I've been contracting with an IoT company for 3 years now. It's interesting to see guys who coded exclusively for radio or infrared based remotes get pulled into the software development world.

V1: 5 years ago everything was raw sockets and custom messaging formats with hand coded firmware and all data stored in a custom vector format, builds were distributed on google drive and flashed by hand.

V2: 3 years ago we dragged them kicking and screaming into http and hand coded json apis, firmware was still custom, data still stored in custom vector format but updates were now done on a non secure server with a hash check.

V3: this past year they started on a small box with a micro linux distro, apis are provided by standardized library, data now stored in sql, updates done over https.

Things are better now, except they still expect to sell and support those first 2 options for the next 10 years.

<comment><USER3> Part of what you are describing is exactly why IoT is sometimes called IoS. We've moved from solid, fast, low-latency, low-power hardware to unpredictable, slow, jittery, high-latency crap. Take the Philips Hue bridge for example. Raw binary protocol lighting tech from the 1980s can outperform it in terms of latency, throughput, and jitter.

It's unaccpetable for a button to take action after some random delay between 100ms and 5s. It's even worse if there's a remote https round trip required, as network lag adds another layer of unpredictability.

<comment><USER2> Raw binary protocol lighting tech from the 1980 was stateless, but nobody is willing to accept that nowadays for home automation.

"Turn device on" \- Great I can do that fast

"Turn device off" \- Great I can do that fast

"Is device on or off?" \- Hold on while I poll a serial rf signal device by device while I determine state.

All of the slowdown coming from our tech and others that I've seen is because hardware guys still think these old stateless solution are acceptable and then have to hack something dirty on top to turn it into a stateful solution.

<comment><USER4> > guys still think these old stateless solution are acceptable and then have > to hack something dirty on top to turn it into a stateful solution

Isn't this the foundation of modern web development?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is FUD.

Partition twice the amount of space you need on IOT's fixed media, and trickle-download your update to the empty partition. Once that's finished, verify the download then switch your bootloader. I have to update 500+ field installations with a new OS and this is the approach I'd take if we had the space and bandwidth

(Instead we're sending out an army of techs and account reps armed with USB sticks)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what part you're referring to as FUD - the cost?

I definitely agree with the rest of the comment. It's a good solution. I inherited a software product that worked like this at a past job, and it was great. (And now I'm trying to convince my current job that we want to move to this model for normal servers in datacenters, very much not IoT.)

A couple of complications:

\- You should think about the fact that this means your root partition changes. Either you want to structure your system with separate read and write partitions and bind-mount the relevant directories from the write partition, or you want to make it completely read-only / stateless. Remember that /var/log is traditionally on your local disk, so if you don't do anything special, you'll even get two /var/logs on each device, which may or may not be what you want.

\- You do want a management server, as this document suggests, to track which devices have actually updated and which haven't, so you can manually send people after devices that are just behind a terrible internet connection.

\- You want some mechanism for detecting if the new version doesn't work and rolling back; this is basically as simple as setting a "I just tried partition X, if it doesn't work don't try it again" flag in the bootloader on boot, and clearing it once userspace is up (and when the partition gets rewritten with a new version).

\- The updates should be signed etc. as described in the document. Depending on your threat model, you might want to prevent replay attacks that cause an attacker-controlled downgrade by giving it a higher-versioned filename; either use HTTPS to an update server you control, or use signed metadata files with timestamps.

The fact that you get image-based deployments instead of dealing with apt upgrades from arbitrarily-old versions (and thus inevitably slightly drifting configs on devices installed at different times) is fantastic.

<comment><USER7> How do you handle key and/or certificate storage at the client side? Depending on the threat model, the update verification step can be subverted.

<comment><USER6> You install manually / out-of-band (in my old job, you installed by copying to a USB stick from a desktop machine), and the updater runs within the OS, because you can safely write to the unused partition while the OS runs. So it has the full set of functionality that you ship with your OS - Python, OpenSSL, GPG, whatever. You're not downloading the update from the bootloader or anything (which would take too long).

Once the device has been installed, there is always at least one working partition on the device - the partition that was last booted. So you don't need a minimal recovery partition or anything. (You could build a recovery command-line option in, if you want, but it's just a custom way of booting the normal partition.)

<comment><USER7> How do you protect keys and/or certificates stored on the device from being exfiltrated or replaced by an adversary?

<comment><USER6> For all of my use cases, either physical access counts as game over and is out of the threat model, or we're using Secure Boot for verifying the bootloader and/or TPMs for keeping secrets, at which point this is a problem with known solutions that aren't specific to image-based updates. If you're using Secure Boot with read-only images, one thing to try is dm_verity, which is how Chrome OS solves this problem - it's a Merkle hash of the entire block device that's checked lazily as blocks are accessed. If a block has been tampered with, you can configure dm_verity to either panic the system or return an I/O error for that block. (Or you can just read the entire image and verify it up front at the cost of slower boot time.)

In particular, for all my use cases, there's already some mechanism for the device gaining a secure channel to the rest of the infrastructure, so if you're worried about keeping updates secret (which you may or may not be!), just protect updates by that mechanism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not a full OTA solution, but fwup ([https://github.com/fhunleth/fwup](https://github.com/fhunleth/fwup)) handles the packaging and application of Linux firmware update images quite well. Apache licensed, supports A/B updates (see tomc1985's comment), Ed25519 digital signature verification, and u-boot support.

</comment><comment> jon-wood This is wonderfully timed, I'm currently looking for options when it comes to doing firmware updates on Linux based IoT devices. Does anyone have any recommendations?

<comment><USER9> A friend who is building an Linux appliance is using Yocto: [https://www.yoctoproject.org/](https://www.yoctoproject.org/). He also talked about Mender, mentioned in the other comment. I don't know how much overlap there is between these projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I'm with Mender.io and author of the article.

The Yocto Project is a popular build system for your own embedded Linux distribution.

Mender integrates with the Yocto Project with a layer ([https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta- mender](https://github.com/mendersoftware/meta-mender)), but is a separate project for end-to-end OTA, which includes the client and the management server. Both are licensed under Apache 2.0 thus it is freely available and you're not locked into a hosted-only backend.

Although this is an older blog post, here is how you can port the Mender client to a non-Yocto build system: [https://mender.io/blog/porting-mender-to- a-non-yocto-build-s...](https://mender.io/blog/porting-mender-to-a-non-yocto- build-system)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like mender. It gives me a cheap 80% solution that covers updating and management. That said I would really like something as easy as docker for building devices. Yocto has a learning curve like a cliff.

I really like resin.io's container system, but I want to self-host.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're starting a new IoT project, build the updater first and use that for pushing new builds. By the time you're ready for production it will be rock solid and quick to boot.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how will a Git based client-side agent fit in. Why not use an already proven tech for the rollout, and then use custom installation scripts (also within the git repo) for doing software setup? The "server" here will just be normal git server, with commit ID serving as version number.

<comment><USER13> That's addressed by the article. What about a management server, power/network loss, atomic updates, validation, etc? If you try to write custom installation scripts to do all that it's going to be a lot of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We have 1000s and 1000s of devices and can easily Update them. It's not hard. The devices also has multiple micros and they can individually be updated and rolled back. It's not really hard to implement. Though in our case we had to build a lot of the infrastructure anyways for other reasons.</comment>


Reddit is Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.redditstatus.com/incidents/qkgszq5y8fck <comment><USER2> On the plus side, when reddit is online, being able to filter /r/the_donald is a nice improvement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh no. /s</comment>


Who Cares How Millennials Want to Work? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php/who-cares-how-millennials-want-to-work/ <comment><USER2> Finally: Someone who gets the fact that there is nothing to get.</comment>


Your preferences aren't that unpredictable - just answer five questions - <AUTHOR> http://coding.pressbin.com/124/Your-preferences-arent-that-unpredictable/

<comment><USER2> So, why should I contribute statistical data (or even visit the site), just to be told I'm not unique? I can do that by myself, sitting here. In fact, I just did!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the last line of the post makes that clear. Despite people's preferences being somewhat predictable in the aggregate, Correlated is still able to eek out surprising correlations on a daily basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I'm a bad singer but good at programming. I also think pot should be legalized and I also think the death penalty is ok.</comment>


Show HN: Play – A simple cli audio player - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/roecrew/play <comment><USER2> What does this application provide that the "play" command from sox doesn't already provide?

<comment><USER3> It seems to be macOS-specific, and uses portaudio

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct</comment></comment></comment>


Toys 'R' Us Didn't Have to Die - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-06/toys-r-us-the-world-s-biggest-toy-store-didn-t-have-to-die <comment><USER3> Retailing seems to be dying in US irrespective of the company:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/retail- st...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-17/retail-store- closures-in-u-s-set-for-record)

Couple of years ago, one of my friends bought a store at a strip mall. The store was making a loss. And the previously owners were an elderly couple. So my friends thesis was that they weren't exactly tuned into the digital presence business and it was still entirely possible to run a store in US.

Two years later footfall in the mall has decreased a lot. And in spite of the digital strategy etc my friend's store hasn't worked well. Now he is not only in debt but he is also trying to sell the store. But there are no buyers.

<comment><USER4> What I don't get is there are a lot of empty storefronts and places moving that I see... and retailers say the rents are still sky high for those storefronts.

Is it really worth the property owners keeping them empty?

<comment><USER5> > Is it really worth the property owners keeping them empty?

Yes. It's a tax dodge. [1] [2]

The owners "...hold out for higher rents to increase the worth of their properties because value is based on future income stream...They can afford to forego current rental income, waiting for higher-paying tenants because they claim big business losses. Landlords get a tax loss from negative rental income when no rent comes in, which cushions their lack of cash flow."

There are also perverse incentives structured by the debt instruments securing these properties. [3]

There's some more miscellaneous reasons, like not wanting to hassle with renegotiations from existing tenants who hear about a lower psf/psm rent of a new tenant, not wanting to attract the "wrong" class of tenant, _etc._ , but by and large, the money reasons talk loudest.

High real estate costs preventing affordable, energy-dense and hyper-efficient living and working for most of the world's population are imposing quite significant externalities around the world. Not really discussed much though, as it gores too many oxen. Saliently changing this _status quo_ would require fundamental changes in how real estate and credit interact, and that's not going to happen without some real not metaphorical blood spilling.

[1] [http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/change-math-keeping- nyc-s...](http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/change-math-keeping-nyc- storefronts-vacant-article-1.3932715)

[2] [https://gizmodo.com/full-bank-accounts-empty-storefronts- the...](https://gizmodo.com/full-bank-accounts-empty-storefronts-the- economics-of-1706993230)

[3] [https://commercialobserver.com/2016/09/soaring-retail- rents-...](https://commercialobserver.com/2016/09/soaring-retail-rents-keep- vacancies-high-so-prices-should-come-down-right-maybe-not/)

<comment><USER6> It's easy to avoid taxes by not making money, but as someone states in the third article you link to: "A wise colleague told me that until effective income tax rates reach 100 percent, a dollar of income is worth more than a dollar of deduction".

That's just the apparently-not-so-well-known First Law of Tax: It is always better to have more money than less money.

<comment><USER7> In the UK some people are taxed at >100% on income, but that aside

If you have 100 shops, and rent 11 at $10k a month, and the rest are empty, you get $110k a month

If you have 100 shops, and rent 60 at $2k a month, and 40 are empty, you get $120k a month

Now lets assume a 50% tax

In the first example you keep $55k In the second example you keep $60k

Great, go for the second.

But now if you make the empty shops a tax writeoff, you instead

first example, $110k income, $850k loss. No tax to pay, total income $110k with no tax (and a £750k loss to offset other income) second example, $120k income, $80k loss. Tax to pay on $40k which is $20k, so total net income $100k

This is assume that you can claim that unrealised rent as a loss. I believe there are ways of doing that (charity shops for example)

<comment><USER6> That wouldn't fly, at least in the US: [http://www.habifproperties.com/can- landlords-take-a-tax-dedu...](http://www.habifproperties.com/can-landlords- take-a-tax-deduction-for-the-donation-of-leased-space/)

<comment><USER7> If the landlord donated $50k to a charity, is that a writeoff? If that charity rents $45k of space from the donor does that count?

A similar loophole was being used in the UK a few years back: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16692556](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16692556)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if you read the link I sent. If I give $100k to a charity and they use the money to rent something from me for $100k I won't be paying any less taxes that if I had not done the whole "tax dodging" scheme... [1] Maybe it was possible to deduct "virtual" donations in the UK, but it's not hard to disallow if people abuse the system. I could also donate a stone to a charity saying that it's worth $1bn to get a deduction. Would that count?

Edit: reading your link it seems unrelated to deductions on taxable income. It's about council taxes on businesses, which are lower for charities than for regular businesses or unoccupied stores. So it makes sense for the owner to let a charity use the space rent-free and pay their 20% of the tax instead of paying 100% of the tax for the empty property.

[1] Actually I may end up paying less taxes if my costs raise, because I will be making a lower profit. But that would result in lower after-tax profits, which is probably not the objective of the scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What a trip.

I used to go to the Times Square location with people who came in from out of town, as an attraction for when they inevitably wanted to check out Times Square. The article doesn't really do justice to what a spectacle it was (which is saying something, since the article calls it out repeatedly). The person-sized Lego Hulk they built for that store is _still_ my phone background.

Made this even more shocking to read, since it was always packed:

> In late 2001, Eyler oversaw the opening of a flagship store in New York's > Times Square, with a 60-foot Ferris wheel, a life-size Tyrannosaurus rex, > and a Barbie dollhouse bigger than many Manhattan apartments. Eyler promised > that 20 million people a year would visit, and maybe they did, but the store > never made money.

Of course, thinking back on it, I went several times but rarely bought anything from the store.

Maybe that's the (21st century) story of Toys "R" Us, summarized into a sentence.

<comment><USER9> Yes, visiting the times square location always used to be the highlight of my NYC visit. It reminded me of the toy store showed in home alone 2 (which I watched a lot growing up). Another one which I will miss is the FAO Schwarz store in NYC (which was also owned by Toys R Us).

I feel sad thinking that my son will never experience that joy of going to these huge Toy stores. At best, his experience will be limited to the kids section at Target/Walmart (if they are still around by the time he is old enough to visit them).

<comment><USER10> The toy store in Home Alone 2 was based on FAO Schwarz. I remember going to it as a kid a few times. It was very cool and a big NYC attraction for families. But I don't remember if we ever bought anything there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read the whole article, and I didn't really see a convincing argument that it didn't have to die. Sure, it could have eked out a few more years... but it was living on borrowed time.

Not only do most people shop online now, most toys are also online. I imagine most parents put money into TV shows, video games, iPhone apps, etc.

<comment><USER12> There's nothing about the brick & mortar toy space that's inherently living on borrowed time. It was Toys 'R' Us' own mismanagement that doomed it.

Toy stores can be a destination. Provide a compelling experience for parents and kids alike. It's easy to imagine a space where kids get to play with toys hands-on, and parents get to judge for themselves whether they think they're appropriate in terms of fun and quality—something you can't do online.

Make the adult experience a mixture of café and Apple store, and give the kids a safe "penned in" experience like IKEA does in their kids' section. Parents will enjoy the respite, and kids will beg to go. And of course, once they get there, they'll cajole their parents to spend more money. Never underestimate the power of a child in a store.

IKEA has nailed the brick & mortar experience, even though most of their products could easily be purchased online. Toys 'R' Us merely had to abandon their hubris and old thinking, and they could have killed it.

Instead, they languished with a chain of dirty, disorganized, depressing stores, ill-treated and unmotivated employees, and no vision.

They didn't have to die, but their leadership and strategy did.

<comment><USER11> It's easy to rattle off a list of things on HN, but a lot harder to build.

If people were invited to come play with toys, they'd just do it for free, enjoy the day, and buy it online after. Your other ideas just seem like... free babysitting? It's not like parents are going to shop for toys while their kids are babysat for free.

I agree the stores aren't great now... but they were working with insane debt and a dying business model.

I don't think it's impossible to sell toys (see: Disney), but it's really hard to do it when you're trying to pivot something like Toys 'R Us with no money to spend and nowhere to really go.

<comment><USER13> I'd argue that a toy store, more than any other kind of retailer, is insulated from that, because the store has an little advocate for spending ten dollars extra to buy the product right now with most shoppers. And going to the toy store itself is kind of an activity that I don't think you can replace with online shopping.

<comment><USER14> Anecdote time: I took my cousin (12) to a toy store once. First it was difficult to get him out of his iPad and get out of home. Second he was completely indifferent to anything in the store. We ended up buying some card games and credit for mobile games.

\+ There aren't many kids anymore.

<comment><USER15> Kids. They don't make'm like they used to.

<comment><USER14> And they don't make them in the same quantities. I think what killed Toys R Us was demographics more than consumer trends.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Despite the title and the focus on the form of financing, none of the facts in the article even suggested to me that the company would be in any better shape if it had used equity financing rather than debt. It sounds, rather, like an unprofitable business that no one in their right mind would give any more money.

If someone thinks they can figure out how to make a workable business out of big box toy stores, it sounds like the name is for sale.

<comment><USER17> You're missing the key piece: Toys R Us didn't go into debt for any good business reason, it was bought by a private equity firm and loaded with debt it didn't need. This is how private equity works:

1\. A PE firm uses a combination of other people's money (limited partners a.k.a investors) and debt to buy a company.

2\. The PE transfers the debt to the company's books. This way, if the company goes bankrupt the PE fund isn't liable for that debt.

3\. The PE firm charges millions of dollars in fees for providing management services. This way the PE firm makes money regardless what happens to the business.

Toys R Us was profitable before it was bought and saddled with debt that was essentially used to purchase it's own business.

<comment><USER18> Why is this legal?

<comment><USER19> Free market and all this stuff.

Also a similar "technique" (LBO to be exact) was used to break down a giant company into smaller companies, effectively shutting down monopolies at the expense of a small number of workers, often making big gain for investors. With the failure of RBR Nabisco LBO, investors think twice about this kind of venture nowaday. If Toys'R US failure could cost the investors a bulk of money, maybe this won't happen anymore with big business like this.

Anyway, if you take part of venture like this, you better be the law firm or the executives, especially if your target is a big company.

<comment><USER18> > Free market and all this stuff.

But in a truly free market, I think there should be no protection against bankruptcy. I mean, the government is protecting the PE firm from creditors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Has it died? The sale of the Canada arm was finalized only a few days ago[1]. There is no indication that they plan to shut down any time soon.

[1] [https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/06/01/fairfax- complete...](https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/06/01/fairfax-completes- purchase-of-toys-r-us-in-canada.html)

<comment><USER21> The original US business is dead. The article is about that. It says that operations in Asia are also fine.

<comment><USER22> The ones here in Australia aren't independent and are currently in voluntary administration. For example they stopped accepting their customer loyalty cards, the one next to me seems to have stopped restocking as well. There are however some bidders to take over the entire Asian arm so it could be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The thing that's really lacking to me in online toy stores is, I guess, discoverability. Amazon can give you a list of all the Transformers, or all the Legos, in an instant, and with a bit of prodding it does an acceptable job of showing you the current top-selling toys, but it's impossible to walk down an aisle at Amazon and see something awesome that you've never heard of.

<comment><USER24> I went to our neighborhood Toys-R-Us to be a vulture, and discovered quite a few toys I wouldn't have considered purchasing otherwise. Of course, the 40-70% discounts helped a lot.

<comment><USER25> Same here. I went there to soak in childhood nostalgia one last time before it closed, and I was surprised by a) all the things I saw there that I would have never heard of otherwise and B) all the random things I have vague memories from when I was a kid that are still around.

And it made me feel profoundly sad that that experience will be gone forever soon. Soon, it'll just be the top brand names that anyone will have ever heard of and the random weird stuff will all be gone. I'm talking about the toys that you had growing up that you never knew what they were called but you had because your parents passed by it at random and went "ooh, that looks interesting, I bet [kid's name] will like this".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the more interesting theories I've heard is the link between the housing crisis and the retail crisis. When you live in a tiny shoebox, the last thing you need is more stuff. Back in the days people had comparatively huge houses all to themselves, and could buy crap to their heart's content.

<comment><USER27> Any source on that theory? I think you have something solid there. George Carlin put it quite eloquently: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac)

We're definitely seeing a resurgence to simplicity after advertisers had performed scorched-earth on frontal cortex lobes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> If you are a parent you will feel it did need to die. I went in there years after being a kid and nothings changed, that old warehousey look,the same toys, nothings changed since I was a kid. Worse, is they are all overpriced compared to even other stores let alone internet stores.

<comment><USER29> That's the key. It's not just online or competition lost to Amazon. The same toys were available at Target for a lot less money.

<comment><USER30> > The same toys were available at Target for a lot less money.

True for a relative handful of the most popular toys, but Target doesn't have the floorspace dedicated to toys to cover any but a small fraction of what a Toys R Us would carry. Last time I was in a Toys R Us, the section dedicated to play houses was, no kidding, the size of an entire Target toy section. Target _might_ stock one item in that category in store (though I don't think I've ever seen one in a Target).

It's Amazon and friends, not brick and mortar stores with smaller but discounted toy sections that killed the advantage of having floor space and variety in stock to browse, since people would use the store for discovery and then order from a discount online channel that didn't have the overhead of brick and mortar showrooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Bloomberg made a really nice 80-esque adventure game where you're the manager of a mall: [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall- game/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I worked for a home improvement retailer for a long time, around 2008 they stopped building 120k sq ft stores and moved down to 80k sq ft, Then staff was cut (2010), a few years later (2012) more staff was cut, now they are talking about replacing some staff members with self help robots that have video conferencing to help customers(2014). These traditional retailers are trying hard to stay in the game but i just don't think they can compete and Toys 'R' Us is just another name on the long list of the dead.

<comment><USER33> Things that make me go to a store

>Instant

>Helpful employees

Prices didnt matter if I showed up to the store, but it should be cheaper than shipping to your home. Employees should be knowledgeable and helpful.

Instead most stores have the exact products or fewer online, higher prices, and an empty store.

<comment><USER32> I once tried to stock up on some generator connectors and like electrical items in my department before Hurricane Sandy. My orders were denied because last year sales and previous three week trends weren't enough to justify the order. The shelves stayed empty for almost 2 months.

<comment><USER34> Modern logistics algorithms have massively increased supply chain efficiency, but there should always be a human override for cases like this. The models cannot and will not ever be able to account for everything.

<comment><USER35> But then someone has to be thinking, and doing it before it is reactive. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I dont know the economics of our local toy stores, but the ones that seem to thrive allow you to actually play with the toys. If it was more like a theme park or a playground you would get parents to bring their kids in just to play.

For example, let kids drive power wheels around a track. Have playscapes that they can play on and buy. And sample toys that kids can play with.

<comment><USER37> I remember reading 20 years ago how retail stores need to turn into experience destinations. I think the perceived risk at the time was mail order rather than the internet.

However, even with Apple and the Apple Store there for all to see, few retailers still seem to get this. Without the hands on element, they are really fighting a losing battle vs ecommerce.

<comment><USER38> Apple sells high-margin products that are typically priced the same (or roughly so) everywhere - I don't know that there are interesting lessons for all industries to learn here. Wasn't Ron Johnson's attempt to take some of those lessons to JC Penney pretty disastrous?

Everyone always has the same ideas when retailer struggles come up, and a lot of the ideas would undoubtedly make many stores more pleasant to visit. But people still buy based on cost, and that makes it hard to compete with a company who has a much lower cost model than a physical retail store and has much larger scale.

I don't think retailers will stop the bleeding and start implementing some of these ideas until they can figure out how to solve the showrooming problem. They may never do so, and physical retail in most categories will be a distant memory for most of us.

<comment><USER39> I'm a bit surprised that we haven't ended up with some formal manufacturers showrooms fronting Amazon or whatever. But I guess as long as some big box retailers hang on there isn't the incentive

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Toys R' Us was dead so many years ago. I went there once to buy a present for a kid and it was just so depressing and not at all a fun or cheerful place. When I had a kid of my own I never took her there. I regret it not being what it was when I was a kid but I don't regret it going from its state ~10 years ago to dead.

<comment><USER23> I wonder if what you're actually describing is the change in your adult perspective, not in the store. As a kid, and as an adult who likes toys, shelves piled high with toys are "fun and cheerful" all by themselves. I'm not sure what else you felt was lacking.

<comment><USER40> The kids in the store weren't happy or excited to be there, that's what was different from when I was a kid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Bain, KKR, and Vornado... will end up losing well over a billion dollars combined."

A lot of retail debt will be renegotiated in 2019 as underlying interest rates are increasing, so the pace of these might be set to increase dramatically as delaying reckonings like TRU did becomes steadily more costly.[1]

The article points out that the collapse of this one big name was pretty expensive to lenders, even if lawyers made some money during the unraveling.

I'm curious about the prospects for another financial crisis. How many billion dollar losses happening all at the same time are we looking at? How many can retail financing divisions endure without undermining the stability of larger banks?

It's not my main area of expertise, so I genuinely don't know if there's a serious contagion risk, but Google alerts for retail apocalypse have been a fun ride.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail- debt/](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail-debt/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Begs the question, what kinds of local businesses are structurally safe from being disrupted by Amazon? Some that come to mind:

* Food - restaurants, fast food, pizza, takeout

* Social experiences - bars, cafes, arcades, comedy clubs

* Things that can't be shipped - gas stations, perishables

* Things you want right away - milk, delis, convenience stores

* Things that can't be commoditized - Copying keys

* Services - Barber shops, mechanics

Other ideas?

<comment><USER43> Every single one of those industries can be disrupted by Amazon given the right setup with partners.

<comment><USER44> And any of them thinking they can't be all be the first ones to fall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> and the morale of the story is, dont let your business get taken over by a bunch of vultures fueled by a lot of debt. unless you like seeing it die a slow death, that is.

</comment><comment><USER46> What types of toys are kids buying these days? I've never been a parent of a really young child, my experience with parenting are with my stepsons - <USER2> youngest was 9 in 2010. Besides a bike, the only toys he was interested in were video games, he collected action figures for awhile, and water guns.

All of which could be served better by Amazon or for video games by GameStop - a store with a much smaller footprint.

Even when I was growing up in the 80s by nine, I remember most kids being interested in video games, bikes and sports equipment. All of which were available at Walmart either at the same price or cheaper.

With video game downloads becoming more popular, I don't see how GameStop is going to survive after this round of the console generation.

</comment><comment><USER47> Even with 20% off coupons, Toysrus was often more expensive then Walmart and Amazon...

</comment><comment><USER48> The article mentioned the Irish chain Smyths. This is a company that has grown from one store in a small Irish city to expanding in to and dominating the UK market in just over 30 years. Having shopped in both I can see the difference.

Toys 'R' Us felt like it wanted to be part of the toy experience with their whimsical logo, mascot, jingle and colourful in-store decoration.

Smyths on the other hand is just a toy warehouse. They forego the mascot, jingle and colorful stores instead focusing on making sure they always have what the children want. In other words Smyths knows that the toy is the experience, not the store.

<comment><USER49> Smyths also:

* Tends to be reasonably priced (I've gotten things there the same or cheaper than Argos)

* Is a quick walk from my flat in city centre

Though so far I've only bought baby things there (pram, etc.) not actual toys.

Neither of which applied to any ToysRUs in cities I've lived in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Do anyone know how FAO Schwarz is doing? This is also a huge destination- location in New York that sells toys.

<comment><USER50> Some research suggesting that it's coming back to NYC in 2018

[https://www.cntraveler.com/story/fao-schwarz-is-finally- comi...](https://www.cntraveler.com/story/fao-schwarz-is-finally-coming-back- to-new-york-city)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> [https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall- game/](https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/)

</comment><comment><USER52> My kids love video games, I thought toys don't give them enough kick.

<comment><USER53> Toy's R Us sold a lot of video games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> They would have survived if they hadn't filled all their aisles with stupid star wars and disney princess stuff. There was a severe lack of creative toys.</comment>


Ask HN: How long do you stick to your idea before calling it quits? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
My friend and I have spent a lot of time in the last year building things which we hope will be a good match for the needs of our respective markets. In the same time period (9 months) that I'm still working on one idea (http://www.plentyoftweeps.com), my friend is now on his fourth(!) one.
I've been doing a lot of thinking about comparing our approaches, namely:
1. Taking one idea and running it into the ground, trying every which way to find a product/market fit.
vs.
2. Spending 2-3 months on an idea, releasing it, seeing if it "takes off", showing consistent growth on some scale early on, and if not, moving onto the next one.
I used to think #1 was superior, but at this point, I'm not so sure that I'm in a much better position than had I taken approach #2.
Which approach do you guys prefer? Do you do a lot of experimenting with little projects to see what sticks, or do you tend to devote a long period of time (1 or 2 years, say, in lieu of massive, obvious success) to something before you draw conclusions about its validity as a business? And in either case, how do you know when to quit? <comment><USER2> I've done both.

2-longish term 5+ months incubation/development, and 1 throw it together in a weekend and see what happens.

The thrown together site got much better traction than the well prepared.

I'm launching another 3 day project (hopefully tomorrow), so I'll know more than.

One thing I have found, and I think your language points to it as well, is that when you are completely dedicated to an idea, you're trying to make it fit. Whereas if you are in the mode of seeing if their is a market (re: faster projects), your model of 'success' is if it gets early traction.

I thought that a 5 month project was reaching for minimum viable product. Now I'm realizing that minimum viable may be less than viable as a product. Really more like minimum viable market test.

</comment><comment><USER3> I give my projects a deadline of about 6 months of part-time work. That doesn't mean Google has to buy them within 6 months, but they have to be profitable after that time. Profitability is my ultimate gauge of success and determines whether or not I'm continuing the project.</comment>


Updates to DevTools in Chrome 62 - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/08/devtools-release-notes <comment><USER2> I actually prefer the Firefox dev tools these days. One thing that I really like is the edit and resend functionality[0]. Quite useful when quickly testing API calls. I know you can use other tools in Chrome to do the same, but I like that it's built in. Good to see improvements in the Chrome dev tools nonetheless!

[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Network_Monit...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Tools/Network_Monitor#Edit_and_Resend)

<comment><USER3> I like Firefox too, but chrome still displays JSON objects in the console very nicely. I haven't found a good way to do this in FF yet. Do you know of a way?

<comment><USER4> If it is a GET request, just open it in a new tab. Firefox has a built-in json viewer (no extensions required).

Eg. open this in a new tab: [http://httpbin.org/get](http://httpbin.org/get)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cool but I really wish they'd add more keyboard shortcuts. Like ability to use arrows and keyboard to select a network request and replay it. Or to drill down a deeply nested json without having to make a series of precise mouse clicks

</comment><comment><USER6> They still haven't reverted the dropdown filtering UI for the console, the old style quick access toolbar, like the network panel. It used to be really useful, yet since the change, I barely use it anymore.

There's a long thread about it here, but the chrome developers haven't really engaged with the community feedback

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-chrome- develo...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-chrome-developer- tools/kH3FiDLlsFg%5B26-50%5D)

The dev tools console has also become a dumping ground for repeated browser warnings and the option to turn them off isn't even persistent.

<comment><USER7> Yup, worst decision ever. I've been using Firefox but performance drastically drops when debugging so I go back to using chrome. I just prefix my logging and filter.

<comment><USER6> I filed a bug about that too, feel free to vote for it :) [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1389864](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1389864)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey fellow HN'ers, I recently discovered you can select source in this (windows) terminal-like fashion by holding alt (i.e. [https://imgur.com/a/XnCSd](https://imgur.com/a/XnCSd)).

Does anyone know what is the purpose of this feature? I always disliked how difficult is to select something on windows cmd, this seems like anti-feature for me, but obviously I am missing something.

<comment><USER9> many text editors have that feature, while might be not that widely used or useful, it's still ported and implemented in many of them

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see myself using the Block-level code coverage quite often.

<comment><USER11> Could be used to generate automated code coverage in headless mode?

<comment><USER10> Ah, didn't even think of that, would be awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I continuously struggle with debugging aspx with embedded JavaScript. Breakpoints can't be set on any line and I still haven't figured out the logic why and when stepping through the highlighted line is never the one that is actually running. Even after expanding the code with the { } button. It's just simple JS so no code maps should be needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Starting to think maybe it would be good to have a "DevTools" lite, now that there are literally dozens of tabs and pages. Is there a shortcut to just bring up the console?

<comment><USER14> ctrl+shift+j goes directly to console.

I believe ctrl+shift+i goes to whatever tab you were at last, and ctrl+shift+c goes to the element tab and enables the element selector.

I don't know if there's any other shortcuts but these are the one I use most often. You can also drag the various tabs to order them the way you like.

<comment><USER15> Correct, Control+Shift+J (Windows, Linux) or Command+Option+J (Mac) opens DevTools and focuses the Console panel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> CMD+Shift+4 has always allowed you to take screenshots of any parts of your screen, (including your devtools), so curious why this is a feature in Chrome? Unless it's meant for Windows maybe where it's harder to take screenshots?

<comment><USER17> You can hit printscreen in windows to take screenshots (1 key instead of 3, even easier than mac).

I could imagine it would be useful in remote debugging sessions (such as when inspecting android webviews over USB).

<comment><USER18> Those are two totally different things. Windows take a screenshot of everything visible. Cmd+shift+4 on a Mac allows to select a region to save as a screenshot. Finally, if you are on Mac, this update provides node level acreenshot, allowing you to save an image of a HTML node with just one click, no need to drag the cursor. This is especially useful if the node takes more space than the viewport since before you had to stitch screenshots together.

<comment><USER19> > Windows take a screenshot of everything visible.

For the record, it's still not a region selector but there is also alt + printscreen to take only the visible windows.

<comment><USER20> There's also the built-in Snipping Tool, which allows you to take a screenshot of a selected region. I use it a lot at work.

Apparently, Windows 10 Creators Update comes with a shortcut to capture a region, Ctrl + Shift + S.

[http://www.thewindowsclub.com/snipping-tool-capture- screensh...](http://www.thewindowsclub.com/snipping-tool-capture-screenshots- windows-8-tips)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Valve to open source 'GameNetworkingSockets' for developers, Steam not required - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-to-open-source-gamenetworkingsockets-to-help-developers-with-networking-steam-not-required.11483 <comment><USER2> This is lovely. But if you're developing something on the web:, here's a quick comparison with what you get in WebRTC in your browser: SCTP over DTLS:

      > Connection-oriented protocol (like TCP)  -- yup
      > ... but message-oriented instead of stream-oriented.  -- yup
      > Mix of reliable and unreliable messages  -- yup
      > Messages can be larger than underlying MTU, the protocol performs fragmentation and reassembly, and retransmission for reliable -- yup
      > Bandwidth estimation based on TFP-friendly rate control (RFC 5348) -- I don't think so?
      > Encryption.  -- yup
      > Tools for simulating loss and detailed stats measurement  -- you can use linux's netem on containers to simulate loss; not but you have to collect your own stats.

<comment><USER3> Indenting a line with 4 spaces on HN disables word wrap, making your comment very difficult to read on mobile.

We run into this problem _all the time_. HN really needs some markup for quotes.

<comment><USER4> > HN really needs some markup for quotes.

Italics work fine.

<comment><USER3> Except when you want to keep the italics that are already inside the quote.

It's also clear that people _expect_ some kind of markup, which is why they often mistake fixed-width markup for quote markup.

<comment><USER4> > Except when you want to keep the italics that are already inside the quote.

If you're sure it actually matters you can turn off the italics around the portion that was originally italicized, which isn't typographically correct but it gets the point across. Italics are the happy medium between something perfect which hasn't been implemented (or described) yet and the visual diarrhea people sometimes post.

<comment><USER3> Yes, there are workarounds.

My entire point is that people choose code formatting as a workaround, and that isn't viable. We really ought to _fix_ the problem, rather than complain every time someone uses the wrong workaround. The latter isn't a scalable or effective solution.

HN has a wonderfully succinct amount of markup, but it's really lacking in this one particular area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks potentially delicious. There's some other options out there, but they either felt a little aging (RakNet) or did too much (libuv) the last time I used\evaluated them. Interested to see what this one is like.

<comment><USER6> Probably the most equivalent existing open source thing out there is ENet, which doesn't do encryption or detailed stats. If you've signed the steam NDA (which is free of charge iirc) you can check out the existing docs for the closed source version, which has extra features on top of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll believe it when I see it; the authors are well-known for arbitrarily-long delays on upcoming releases as well as bare-bones git repositories with nothing inside.

Unfortunately, I expect that this reference implementation will be a pile of C++, but hopefully the protocol itself will be sufficiently-well-documented to permit implementation in other languages.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like this would have a use well beyond gaming, particularly in the realms of real-time monitoring.</comment>


Ask YC: Does a database exist for elasticity of demand of products in the market? - <AUTHOR>

Ask YC: Does an open database exist that gives the elasticity of demand for products/services/commodities in the market?
If so, this could be a powerful new use of technology to help companies determine where to set their prices.
The technology may already be used by companies with lots of resources, but an open-source version for small businesses would be awesome.
If you have run across such a service (or the underlying database that would be necessary to run it) let me know. I'd be curious to look into it. <comment><USER2> You mean wall street?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not quite. Wall Street decides the market value of public companies, which is in the same ballpark -- but it's a different ball.

This would be a tool that businesses would use for market research. Right now large corporations spend billions of dollars hiring economists who study data and tell them what the elasticity of demand is for any given product.

This information gives companies a good idea of how much they should charge to maximize revenues. Small businesses don't have access to the data or to money to afford economists. So this tool would provide that service.</comment></comment>


Design by Contract: A Missing Link in Quest for Quality Software (1998) - <AUTHOR> https://www.win.tue.nl/~wstomv/edu/2ip30/references/design-by-contract/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> What makes this a good write-up is you could give it to a project manager as quickly as an engineer. An updated version of this with links to current tech, esp low cost or easy to integrate, might be worthwhile. Other improvements since then include generating tests directly from the contracts, using contracts with automated provers, leaving contracts in as runtime checks while throwing fuzzers at that code, and using contracts for bug repair. They can't do everything but they're a _very high-ROI_ technique with some immediate benefits plus maybe some down the road if your software/company gets bigger.

Write-ups or examples of some of the above:

[https://hillelwayne.com/post/pbt- contracts/](https://hillelwayne.com/post/pbt-contracts/)

[http://www.skein- hash.info/sites/default/files/SPARKSkein.pd...](http://www.skein- hash.info/sites/default/files/SPARKSkein.pdf)

[https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity- Applications-...](https://www.amazon.com/Building-High-Integrity-Applications- SPARK/dp/1107656842/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519403710&sr=8-1&keywords=high+integrity+applications+with+spark)

[https://blog.adacore.com/running-american-fuzzy-lop-on- your-...](https://blog.adacore.com/running-american-fuzzy-lop-on-your-ada- code)

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2012/10/res0099-logozzo.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Tip of my tongue IaaS / Cloud for science? - <AUTHOR>

They had a blog article of theirs posted here not too long ago (less than two weeks). Can't remember what it was about at all. Their homepage is clean and has a slider for cores and talks about storage.<p>Please help. Their domain starts with a p I think <comment><USER2> Depending on what kind of "science" you might be thinking of Rescale. They have interesting tech, wide support of third-party tools, and they're great people; they even gave _me_ (a self declared non-potential customer) a free trial.

[http://www.rescale.com/](http://www.rescale.com/)

<comment><USER3> This is what I thought too.</comment></comment>


How can I get JavaScript to read server HTML and build objects off of it? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22386214/whats-the-best-way-to-convert-server-side-html-into-a-javascript-mvc-on-page-lo

<comment><USER2> afaict, you can't do what you're trying to do. You have annotate the HTML somehow to indicate where the bindings were, reverse-engineer the data out of the rendered template, and build a proper template from that so that you can then use an off-the-shelf js templating engine. You might as well just use standard handlebars and web services instead.

If the extra http request from the web service is a real concern (and not just premature optimization), then you could dump the JSON data into a script tag and send that together with the template.</comment>