Tether loaned USDT to investors and illegally traded in New York, says NYAG - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/7795/investigators-tether-loaned-usdt-to-investors-illegally-traded-in-new-york-ran-an-unregistered-securities-offering <comment><USER3> Tether has been an openly fraudulent enterprise since the beginning. Pretty much anyone with any experience in financial securities and even passing knowledge of crypto was raising red flags, including on this website. Never wanna blame the victim, but kinda feel like anyone with any due diligence here was just hoping for casino rallies and didn't believe what they were being sold.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any proof?

The US authorities have literally shown in court they have vast sums backing tethers. Bifinex itself is a money printing machine.

I'd love to take some serious 5 figure wagers with the people who say this stuff. Because they've been saying it for years now and have been consistently proven wrong.

<comment><USER5> There is no chance it is 100% backed like they claim. I would happily wager $10000 on it if a framework for such a wager existed.

<comment><USER6> The majority of markets don't care if it is 100% backed, like they don't care when their bank does fractional reserve. They care about whether the USD peg will last within their timespan they plan to use tether.

One of the most common advertised applications for tether is arbitrage between exchanges. There it hardly matters whether tether has 100% reserves, what matters if the peg stays within the days that you are doing the arbitrage (buying tether from one exchange, transfering to other, selling it).

<comment><USER5> >The majority of markets don't care if it is 100% backed, like they don't care when their bank does fractional reserve.

Banks are insured, and in general they haven't failed for the last like 100+ years.

I do think what you are saying about usdt is mostly true though, however if(when) usdt does fail the entire market will take a dive off a cliff. So even if your assets are in other cryptos it still represents a systemic risk to the entire system.

<comment><USER7> _> Banks are insured, and in general they haven't failed for the last like 100+ years._

Not sure what you're trying to say here, given Bear Stearns and Lehman just failed ~11yrs ago, and the entire banking system would have imploded if not for trillions in Fed lending support and govt stimulus.

<comment><USER5> Those were not consumer banks. I don't think anyone actually lost their account balances.

<comment><USER8> That's the SIPC for ya ([https://www.sipc.org](https://www.sipc.org))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Curious what HN thinks about Maker DAO. Dai is pegged to the dollar by a decentralized scheme where people loan/borrow an underlying asset. Seems to be floating pretty close to $1 and I wonder if it will replace USDT...

</comment><comment><USER10> oh man, I'm in New York and I've got Tethers. Time to pull the eject cord (on both)

<comment><USER11> Serious question. What is the reason for holding Tethers?

They a supposedly pinned to the dollar, so there isn't much point in holding them hoping they will gain in value. If anything their peg is questionable so they are only likely to decrease in value.

As far as I can see their only purpose is a a way of transferring between other crypto currencies and exchanges, but you would only ever need the tethers very short term while you completed the movement or transaction.

<comment><USER12> The reason is when you have some other crypto holding and you want to close out your position but not have any reportable tax or legal liability.

Of course you're trading one set of liabilities and legal ramifications for a whole new set. Plus a hell of a lot of counter party risk.

<comment><USER11> So to clarify... If you were holding bitcoin, but decided you wanted out because you think it's about to go down, you'd exchange for tether and hold that instead until you decided that bitcoin is ready to start going back up again.

And you accept all the associated risk rather than fully cashing out to real dollars because your jurisdiction doesn't treat crypto to crypto purchase as a taxable event?

Interesting. Thank you.

<comment><USER13> But if your jurisdiction is NY (as it is for OP), then this doesn't really answer your question IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am curious. Has anyone actually tried to redeem a tether?

[https://tether.to/fees/](https://tether.to/fees/)

It sure seems like they would like to just have people trade them on an exchange.

<comment><USER15> So best case scenario you can get $0.996 per USDT, and yet people still choose to buy them for $1 on exchanges...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tether business model is dependent on banks.

Banks are always a huge risk when you deal with crypto. They can freeze your funds anytime.

You need to be on regulators side or they'll attack you on the bank accounts.

That means full compliance with KYC/AML and so on.

</comment><comment><USER17> This would explain the mini Bitcoin rally

</comment><comment><USER18> Quick - someone call the SEC!

</comment><comment><USER19> I know there are a lot of crypto skeptics here, but if you believe in Bitcoin more than Tether at least then you should buy Bitcoin...if Tether does indeed fail Bitcoin will almost certainly spike past 2017 highs.

<comment> grey-area This assumes the price of bitcoin is not manipulated, specifically by bitfinex and tether. Both may go down together when more news of manipulation comes out.

At this point, I wouldn't recommend going near any of the current cryptocurrencies, for any use.

<comment><USER20> What about other coins tied directly to fiat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Loaned USDT" in this context just means created tether and gave it before the wire transfers went through (but presumably these pending wire transfers count as assets, especially considering they can blacklist tokens at will). Not exactly damning evidence.

Also it seems like "illegally traded" just means that NY companies set up foreign shell companies to skirt NY regulations? I don't see how this is iFinex's fault either tbh

</comment><comment><USER22> I still don't see how the State of New York can claim jurisdiction. I mean, it can "claim it" but good luck getting Bitfinex and Tether to comply.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, Bitfinex and Tether won't have anything to worry about...

...as long as they don't want to have USD denominated bank accounts, or transact with USD, or do business with people with USD denominated bank accounts. Which, of course, they do. If you touch the US financial system in any way, or if any of your counterparties do, or if your counterparties want to have _other_ counterparties that do, then you need to care deeply about what the US federal government and the NY state government think.

<comment><USER24> What are your thoughts on Gemini?

<comment><USER25> Gemini and Coinbase are on the forefront of legitimizing cryptos. They go out of their way to cooperate with American authorities, which is a good move for their business model. Contrast this with a crypto exchange based outside of the US that would loose their clientele if they worked with the American government in any way. Why you ask? Do research about Americans trying to open bank accounts in Europe. Basically under the new laws banks in Europe prefer to reject Americans rather than try and go through all the extra reporting involved.

<comment><USER26> Most crypto is traded outside of the US though; most of the volume is on Binance and Bitmex. In this sense they cut themselves off from many customers. The advantage of their business model seems to be that with less competition from other US-law-abiding exchanges (because there are so few of them), they can charge much higher fees: Coinbase fees are higher than most large non-US exchanges, and Gemini fees are insane, something like 1% per trade.

<comment><USER27> > Most crypto is traded outside of the US though; most of the volume is on > Binance and Bitmex.

This doesn't stop US persons from trading on the exchanges, and self reporting accurately to the IRS/SEC, which may do.

<comment><USER28> Actually most don't. The IRS released statistics a couple of years ago, it seems like the number was low 3 figures who actually reported though I don't remember exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> USDT has a strong following in APAC countries. Also for some crypto users part of its allure is that it's vaguely sketchy - it means they are less likely to have their funds blacklisted, a feature which Tether maintains the ability to do but has never enforced as far as I'm aware.

If you are getting into the space now USDC is an audited stablecoin backed by Coinbase and Circle which has the second highest issuance after Tether. Most likely you would prefer USDC over tether.

[https://www.circle.com/en/usdc](https://www.circle.com/en/usdc)

<comment><USER30> "vaguely sketchy"

What does that mean?

That doesn't sound like a positive thing.

<comment> floodyberry- I think it means seibelj works for Circle and is shilling their stablecoin. The irony is that the entirety of "crypto" outside of the people doing the academic work for it is not just vaguely sketchy, but extremely sketchy.

<comment><USER31> Well, don't know for these stablecoins but to me the "normal crypto" meaning bitcoin is very easy to understand and use. It is like commodity nowadays - <USER2> is up to the user whether to use it for scetchy things or for normal things.

<comment><USER32> ROTFLMAO

Are you serious? You need to establish presence at an exchange meaning you need to scan and send your ID to a company which more likely than not -- does QuadrigaCX ring a bell -- is run by scammers. Then you need to buy bitcoin and store it somewhere... and then send it to someone. The sending costs an unknown amount, takes an unknwon amount of time, the receiver gets something but none of you can predict how much that is actually worth by the time they receive it. If they want to do something with it they need to go through the exchange rigmarole. And you call this very easy to use.

Bitcoin was, is always will be nothing more than a novel scam. It's not a Ponzi... it's a novel form of scam. [https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/08/bitcoin_ponzi/)

<comment><USER33> >The sending costs an unknown amount, takes an unknwon amount of time,

This is a downright lie.

>the receiver gets something but none of you can predict how much that is actually worth by the time they receive it

This is just misleading, the recipient gains control of the transmitted bitcoin almost instantly. Confirmation delays are known.

<comment><USER32> I do not lie.

> The sending costs an unknown amount

Here's you can see historic daily average Bitcoin transaction fees both in dollars per transaction and in satoshis per byte [https://bitcoinfees.info/](https://bitcoinfees.info/)

> takes an unknwon amount of time

Here's the average time for one confirmation: [https://coincentral.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/Screensho...](https://coincentral.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/12/Screenshot-2017-12-06-15.35.05.png) here

> This is just misleading,

But it's not, there's a time delay between when you initiate exchanging your real money to scam money and the receiver finishes the exchange back and during that time bitcoin can move in any direction.

<comment><USER33> Fees are _always_ knowable, the real average confirmation time for transactions with appropriate fees is fixed at 10 minutes.

>But it's not, there's a time delay between when you initiate exchanging your real money to scam money and the receiver finishes the exchange back and during that time bitcoin can move in any direction

Well yes, but this is known beforehand. There are many mechanisms you could use to hedge your risk here.

<comment><USER32> > There are many mechanisms you could use to hedge your risk here.

Do you even hear yourself? We started from very easy to use and now we are at hedging strategies...

<comment><USER33> I don't think I've ever said it was very easy. I don't really have all that many good things to say about cryptocurrencies.

I was merely objecting to your false claims. Bitcoin & co. have enough problems as is, there's no need to invent imaginary ones.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Square Has the Credit Card Industry on the Run - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/apple/why-square-has-the-credit-card-industry-on-the-run/ <comment><USER2> I worked in the same building as Dave in 2009 and 2010. Dr. Dave is the quintessential small business. He provides local, intelligent, and honest PC repair and his clients absolutely rave about his service.</comment>


Boost your productivity with Hemingway's hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.secondactive.com/2009/08/boost-your-productivity-with-hemingways.html <comment><USER2> I've seen this kind of advice related to writing before. The idea is you may be working on a scene and it's almost all written/described/finished. You stop before the end and move on to something else. When you come back to the scene, you'll be able to merge it into the rest of the story more easily now - perhaps even because you've realized what needed to happen after the scene (because you moved on to start that part before you had finished the first part). This is supposed to avoid the block of wondering, "so now what needs to happen next?" where your brain starts getting stuck in a loop of endless possibility because the search space has become unbounded.

I do think this is one of those "easier said than done" kind of things, similar to "buy low, sell high." However I've had days where I've done the equivalent while coding. Say, while working on an increasingly large method and then stopping because I need some additional, independent functionality. So I put the big method aside and build that functionality only to come back and notice that I can now factor out some prior stuff in this big method and call parts of the other method I was working on.. and oh if I do that again, look - more things in common! And factoring just kind of happens all before I even knew exactly what the big method originally was going to do in the first place. (In some cases, the big method just disappears entirely and there's nothing left of it.) Of course if I could make this happen all the time on demand, I'd be golden...

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds familiar...this is what I do when I procrastinate.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's always the danger, though, that you will run into Zeno's paradox.

<comment><USER5> Don't aim for 100%. Aim for 120%, then throw the worst 6th away. Basically the same as the advice for runners: aim _past_ the finish line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This advise carries over to software development. To give yourself focus the next morning, leave yourself with a breaking test.

<comment><USER7> Or, more generally, know what you're going to work on next, and have enough context to hit the ground running. If you get to the office / update your repo / etc. and have to spend half an hour figuring out what to work on next, you're not going to carry any momentum over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find a more effective version of this trick is to leave some "gimme" task for the next day. I always try to make sure I leave some easy, 15-minute task for the next day. That doesn't mean I don't complete what I'm currently working on however...

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't know about always stopping when I'm going good, but I almost always leave myself with a concrete "next step" for the next day when I do decide to stop. Sometimes this means getting the task I'm working on to 95% completion, or forcing myself to work a bit longer so that one of tomorrow's tasks is already started and approximately roughed out (tests written or methods stubbed or HTML roughly laid out).

If the day's boundary falls on a major task boundary, the next day starts with me figuring out what to work on next - not nearly as conducive to "getting into the groove" as tying up a few loose ends and _then_ jumping on whatever I need to work on next.

</comment><comment><USER10> do you ever start planning what you're going to code next while you're falling asleep, or when you take a toilet break or walk somewhere? or when you go to a meeting and sketch out that new module or whatever?

reminds me of a hemingway hack. it's hard to sit down to my computer with no specific goal in mind, or just the high level "i have to finish this story" in mind. it's easy to slide into other things.

but if i've been visualizing the code i want to write, or if i have a sketch of the data or algorithm, then i don't waste time.

</comment><comment><USER11> I fail to see how this helps to "avoid being stuck," in fact it seems more likely to result in you sitting looking blankly at half a page somewhere in the middle of the day.

</comment><comment><USER12> So when do you work? I suppose when you don't know what to do?

<comment><USER13> A rough assessment - needs some more thought:

Exactly. This advice might apply more to a creative process, where original thought counts above all else. I imagine being truly creative is an exhausting activity, knowing several professional artists (oil paint). You're basically holding a large set of options simultaneously in your head and try to make unique connections between them. The value is not in how many iterations of connections you go through, but coming up with something unique at all.

Development strikes me more similar to solving cross-word puzzles, or playing mine-sweeper, where activity is more guided, focused along a smaller set of options, with lots of trial and error in the process: it's sort of "focused play"/ experimentation. Here it seems more valuable IMHO to keep on going once you're in the flow. You're not looking for that one special connection, that will make your day, but are solving many little problems that aggregate over time.

I could imagine science-based development work to be creatively exhausting as well, where you're trying to prove some theorem etc. Hemingway's advice might apply itself nicely in this case.

I'd like to see more blog posts on how to solve different types of problems. E.g. I know that walking away from a hard problem after you're exhausted works out well (the subconscious keeps on working on it), or as Hemingway proposes, walking away right before you become exhausted.

My two cents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not sure 'Hemingway hacks' is really a great model to follow given that they include 'shooting yourself in the face. with a shotgun'.

<comment><USER15> His writing is good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading _"Hemingway's hack"_ , I thought it has something to do with alcohol.

<comment><USER17> Reading your comment, I thought it has something to do with cigarettes.</comment></comment>


Hacking my sons ride-on car - <AUTHOR> http://ihackshit.com/blog/?p=101 <comment><AUTHOR> Sucks a bit that i didn't manage to get this post more exposed as i believe the community could have contributed with a lot of feedback and experience i don't have going forward. Not sure adding this comment will raise any more exposure but i am giving it a go anyway.</comment>


Guantánamo's Darkest Secret - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/22/guantanamos-darkest-secret <comment><USER2> Excellent piece. It's positively shocking to see in such minute detail just how quickly, easily, and completely the entire executive branch was able to normalize such obviously illegal and inhumane acts.

<comment><USER3> What is the appropriate response to the illegal and inhumane acts that precipitated the executive branch's own misdeeds?

<comment><USER2> So then where is the line? The executive branch is charged with prosecuting all criminal behavior. What's the minimum act you would consider illegal and/or inhumane enough to justify an illegal response?

<comment><USER4> As far as I know the "inmates" haven't even had a trial, so why would the executive branch have a right to enact punishment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Incredible piece. I have lots of thoughts about US foreign policy and the government's hypocrisy, but on a lighter note, this passage jumped out at me:

> _" Wood suffered a splitting headache from caffeine withdrawal. "Out here, > I'm probably only drinking seven or eight coffees per day," he told me. > (During the layover in Casablanca, he had drunk a Red Bull and twenty-two > shots of espresso.)_

That's an insane amount of caffeine!

</comment><comment><USER6> It's so satisfying a read. That's the great paradox of free speech I think. Somehow by reading this, I am more inclined to endorse the excesses of American exceptionalism than wholeheartedly criticism them. Even if it's all hogwash, the mere sight of this lavish helping of self-directed criticism more than enamors me to their cause, whatever it may be.

Free speech may just be a more effective social control mechanism than democracy.

<comment><USER7> I'm sorry what?

If ever there were a glaring example of the blind extremes of American exceptionalism this comment is it. Exactly which countries are you comparing the US to that would not tolerate similar "lavish helpings of self-directed criticism"?

<comment><USER6> No, you're okay, you just didn't get it the first time, I'm fine with that.

I never said 'tolerate', and I think it's more promotion that tolerance being the plan. The Americans have really become experts at strategic self- criticism.

I remember learning about Italian Commedia dell'arte and how the satire of power was a cathartic mechanism of control, yielding an outlet for pent up feelings, and assisting in the maintenance of the status quo by directing the desire for change to the outlet, rather than to actual change. Could be related, just saying.

<comment><USER8> This is exactly it. These articles offer an ultimately vacant catharsis in place of change. Afterwards, the type of people who read the New Yorker can go about their business, feeling full of rectitude and seriousness and even, perversely, a kind of pride in their country.

<comment><USER9> So, offline outrage culture ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good god. This story is fucking terrifying.

<comment><USER11> Somehow, you being surprised by this, actually makes me a bit uneasy.

 _How_ can you not know that stuff like this is happening?

<comment><USER12> The same way anybody can not know anything. There are a million things in this world to pay attention to, people are bound to miss stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "His mother dated a string of alcoholics and addicts, and took the children to an evangelical church on Sundays..."

Makes little sense to me. I've gone to Evangelical churches for decades and can't imagine this behavior. Do we have addicts and alcoholics? Yes, of course. Do the single women flock towards them, one after the other? Not once in my observation. Evangelicals generally frown upon drinking (and drugs, of course.) There are some who imbibe or use on a regular basis, but these are generally few and far in between. (Not judging, just saying-- who would want to sit in a pew and condemn their own life choices? It's much easier and better on your psyche to go find a church that isn't so uptight about these things. The Catholics, for example, regularly hold parties where alcohol is served. Much easier!) It just seems to me that the New Yorker is trying to paint a picture. I wish they'd stick to straight-up story telling without the gratuitous swipes.

</comment><comment><USER14> USA giving love as always! I hope US citizens can discriminate between their politicians so all these genocides and concentration camps systems don't perpetuate anymore. Just look at central/south-america and the damage your politicians and militaries have done. Maybe USA is the most hated country in the world, and you can make something to stop that.

</comment><comment><USER15> Man, The New Yorker just churns my processor, making the fans crank up. What is it doing, mining Bitcoin? (I'm in FF 60.4, browsing with tracking protection.)

<comment><USER16> navigating the web without Firefox + ublockOrigin is like sex without condoms. lots of people do it, it's great, but you should know better by now.

<comment><USER17> Except navigating the web with an ad blocker makes it significantly more enjoyable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't it's darkest secret the fact that we can't shut it down because the inmates don't want to face civilian trial in NYC and they have nowhere else to go?

<comment><USER19> Where did you hear they don't want to face civilian trial and even if true where did you hear they could refuse to have a trial and also where did you hear they would be tried in new york?

<comment><USER20> I believe it is the US Gov who doesn't want them to go to trial due to lack of evidence / evidence from torture is not usable for all that has gone on to come out in a more public forum</comment></comment></comment>


Unix-Style Permissions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/issues/436#issuecomment-395964366 <comment><USER2> Glad you liked my post. That issue still remains the most popular page, apart from the homepage, for the project on GitHub at 1,436 views over the last couple of weeks. For comparison, The next most popular is the issues page at 814 views. Must still be a lot of developers getting stuck with their permissions.

I have to admit, when I started development I was on Windows and would just 775 everything on my webspace to get it going, or 777 if that fails. It wasn't until using Linux as my primary desktop OS that I really learnt permissions.</comment>


Survival in chessland [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://tom7.org/chess/survival.pdf <comment><USER2> This is beautifully written and worth downloading.

"Ben does not prefer to use the shift key, a typographic quirk I replicated faithfully here even though it burns my eyes:"

The premise is: "if you were forced to be one of the chess pieces, which piece should you choose to give you the best chance of survival?"

The king is the obvious choice, but the author assumes kings will have to be sacrificed under victory conditions or when time runs out. This is lovely:

"Many games also end in a time forfeit, which is like the king's poor diet and lifestyle choices leading to a death by natural causes."

The author uses 500 million chess games from lichess.org to estimate each piece's survival probability, and even makes heatmaps for which squares each piece usually dies on.

For those digging for the answer, it's in figure 3 under 4.1. It differs depending on the game style (bullet, blitz, classical). There's one piece that's common to almost all categories with a 70% chance of survival.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tom7 made a video also: [https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA](https://youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA)

If you haven't seen them his other videos are well worth watching as well.

<comment><USER4> He's a mad genius! I like his compiler that generates executables made up only of printable characters: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16312317)

He's super playful and awesomely smart!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just me or something isn't quite right about the numbers? Intuitively, shouldn't the survival rates of the white and black kings add up to exactly 100% in each type of game, even given the rules and interpretations that the author laid out at the beginning of the article?

<comment><USER6> Presumably draws were counted as both surviving? The author suggested two different ways to count a draw ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fascinating stuff! Sadly Windows only, otherwise I'd be interested in seeing if the results are any different run against KingBase or another collection of mostly GM games.

<comment><USER8> Windows only? Lichess is a web app first, works great on any modern browser. There are Android, and iOS native apps, a few 3rd party clients, and no Mac or Linux official clients, but you're definitely not limited to Windows.

<comment><USER7> I just meant the code behind the paper, it'd need some work to get it compiling in Linux.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Such a chess game actually plays out in the novel "Carrion Comfort" by Dan Simmons.</comment>


Amazon spends $2.4M on AC at sweltering warehouses - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/09/amazoncom-spends-24m-on-ac.html

<comment><USER2> $2.4M!? Poor workers. As a tech company, they should be investing in ways to capture that heat and going more green. But profits are profits...</comment>


Camille Paglia Can't Say That - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/camille-paglia-uarts-left-deplatform/587125/ <comment><USER2> Long live Camille!</comment>


Has The Cupcake Bubble Finally Popped? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/04/23/178612386/has-the-cupcake-bubble-finally-popped

<comment><USER2> I am an internet-famous cupcake chef (see: <http://imgur.com/fFlC5>) and former Czar of Cupcakes at ZeroCater, and I believe the bubble has popped.

You can only charge $4 for a cupcake for so long before the novelty wears off. Maybe now people will stop telling me to quit my job and make cupcakes full- time after they try my chocolate cupcakes w/ sriracha caramel frosting.

And, if you're looking to get in on the next fad sweet trend, donuts are the new cupcakes.

<comment><USER3> Is this just a repeat of the Krispy Kreme craze around the turn of the millenium?

<comment><USER2> Wasn't that just a repeat of the TCBY craze of the late 80s?

<comment><USER4> Froyo is very boom/bust. There's been another big boom (around the tart yogurts from Pinkberry et al) recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A client of mine manufactures frozen yogurt machines. They're making money hand-over-fist right now with the explosion of these new DIY frozen yogurt shops. Mostly because these shops purchase a multiple of machines as opposed to a Dairy Queen that gets by with one.

But the client is convinced that this expansion will end soon. My town alone has 5 or 6 of them (with 2 more slated to open this year) and there's just no way even a town of my size (pop. 50,000) can sustain it.

<comment><USER6> Frogurt's got that bubble feeling, but unlike cupcakes, it actually "crossed the chasm" into the flyover cities where most Americans live.

I definitely see cupcake shops at chi-chi spots in NYC, LA and SF but I've never seen one in a city with < 1M population or in a rural or posturban area.

<comment><USER7> My city of 350,000 has 9 cup cake shops. I can't see how it will last.

<comment><USER8> You might be surprised. Lets say you have to haul in $1K/day to pay labor and rent and just minimally keep open. Sounds like a miserable way to earn a kilobuck, but if you get $5/customer and there's 365 days per year you need: 1000 / 5 * 365 = 74 thousand customer visits per year. So roughly 350K citizens / about 10 shops = 35 thousand customers per shop. That means every citizen needs to visit a mere twice per year. My guess is its more like 1 in 20 are hardcore carb/sugar addicts who visit every week and pig out.

Now a kilobuck a day isn't going to earn you a private island retirement. That's for a hole in the wall in a cruddy area not a giant palace right off the interstate and barely keeping in business and paying the bills. But it is theoretically survivable.

WRT the fad itself disappearing, most small businesses collapse and are replaced by other small businesses so in the long run they'll all eventually disappear, to be replaced with the next new fad at about the same financial and survival stats.

Its been interesting watching financial changes in my town since the housing bubble popped, before the pop the purpose of a small business was to separate a sucker from his home equity loan money, so the landlords didn't care about infrastructure or parking, etc, but suddenly now that the amateurs are gone from the market, once again CRE actually needs to appeal to be rented, parking is not an option anymore, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hate walking into what look like bakeries and they don't have bread...or heck sometimes even no simpler option like corn or bran muffins. ;/ Half the time now I walk in and there's nothing but cupcakes and other sweets.

<comment><USER10> It's amazing that you can walk through Boston, pass dozens of cupcake and frozen yogurt businesses in high rent areas, but finding a baguette from a local merchant is near impossible. It must not be profitable or the demand just isn't there.

<comment><USER11> But a baguette is just a signal to the viewer that the holder has been food shopping. No one actually _eats_ baguettes; they're just visual shorthand -- a stand-in for food.

Right?

Right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure if this story is a satire or a real one. ( not joking. I'm still wondering if there can be a cupcake bubble?)

Replace cupcakes with some technology and you got yourself a technology blog post.

<comment><USER13> The cupcake bubble is all too real. Ask anyone who lived in Manhattan during the 2000s as it finalized its transformation from "Escape from New York" to the NYU/Sex in The City cupcake fantasyland of today. The guys who used to have the cheap bagel and coffee trucks now sell cupcakes instead.

<comment><USER14> What's next? Muffin tops sold by a store called "Top of the Morning?"

<comment><USER13> Macarons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think if you wanted to stay in the same realm as cupcakes/desserts, as far as the "new bubble" goes, it would probably be "Cake Pops". Those are becoming huge now, and only getting bigger. Heck, even Starbucks now carries Cake Pops.

Here is just a general link of what Cake Pops are, if you are not familiar with them: <http://www.bakerella.com/pops-bites/cake-pops/> \- Basically, just a cupcake/cake on a stick that can have lots of designs around it.

<comment><USER5> I'm seeing a huge uptick in upscale donut shops. Chicago has 4 or 5 of them now.

The Doughnut Vault (<http://thedoughnutvault.tumblr.com/>) probably is the most well known with new arrivals like Do-Rite (<http://doritedonuts.com/>) and Glazed and Infused (<http://www.goglazed.com/>). Had to include last that one just for the awesome name.

<comment><USER16> _> Had to include last that one just for the awesome name._

There's a kebab shop in south london called "Halal! Is it meat you're looking for?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Short cupcakes, go long on brownies.

<comment><USER18> I was thinking "Go long on shortbread".

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How much growth is really left in the $5 cupcake market in a country where wages are stagnating? The conventional wisdom is that you have to move up- market in order to make any money, but you're targeting a shrinking customer base...

<comment><USER20> Starbucks has been doing well selling $5 coffee. I don't think the cupcake market will ever be that size, but there is plenty of room for companies like <https://www.heycupcake.com/>.

<comment><USER21> Coffee also has the advantage of a habit-forming substance.

<comment><USER18> I'd say sugar qualifies.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dunno, the trendy one in Beverly Hills still has lines down the street on a weekday afternoon, just as it did the last couple of years. (At least from 6 months ago, last time I was there.)

It's not my scene, but is someone's.

</comment><comment><USER23> I feel so out of the loop, I didn't even know there was a cupcake fad going on.

Either it never hit Baltimore or I just don't go to the trendy parts of town.

<comment><USER24> There was a cupcake shop in Canton next to ETC, but it didn't last long. I went there once and was not impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the real problem with Crumbs cupcakes is that they are actually pretty bad...

</comment><comment><USER26> To think we all laugh at the tulip mania Holland experienced in the 1600s...

</comment><comment><USER27> Am I really the only one reading all this with s/cupcake/bitoin/ ?

</comment><comment><USER28> Bring back Fairy Cakes!

</comment><comment><USER29> Speaking of bubbles, I wonder when food trucks are going to start disappearing or whether it has already started and I'm just missing it?

<comment><USER30> I've been hoping it was just getting started. I expected someone here to create an app that makes it super easy to find good and cheap food from the nearest food truck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> anyone remember flavored popcorn boutiques?</comment>


Programming's Impact on Personality - <AUTHOR> http://www.isaacsukin.com/news/2012/08/programmings-impact-personality#.UDK1mxXSWeU.hackernews <comment><USER2> Great post. Though I'd say that programming DOES make you less fun. Because after having programmed for awhile, you eventually learn that you can't bullshit a compiler. And that immunity to bullshit makes you immune to shitty friends who spew bullshit. So programming makes you less fun to those people. :D

But of course, any hobby changes you on the inside. I picked up running last December, and it's taught me the value of "one step at a time" and "focus on what's in front of you, not the end goal." I think everyone needs a serious hobby that teaches these essential life metaphors.</comment>


Planning Poker plugin for Google Hangouts for remote developer teams - <AUTHOR> http://www.producthunt.com/tech/planning-poker-for-hangouts

<comment><USER2> Great plug to be added.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice!

</comment><comment><USER4> looks good so far

</comment><comment><USER5> great!</comment>


A Meta-Law to Rule Them All: Physicists Devise a "Theory of Everything" - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-meta-law-to-rule-them-all-physicists-devise-a-theory-of-everything/ <comment><USER2> Feynman [1]: "Let us show you something interesting that we have recently discovered: All of the laws of physics can be contained in one equation. That equation is

U = 0.

What a simple equation! Of course, it is necessary to know what the symbol means. U is a physical quantity which we will call the "unworldliness" of the situation. And we have a formula for it. Here is how you calculate the unworldliness. You take all of the known physical laws and write them in a special form. For example, suppose you take the law of mechanics, F = ma , and rewrite it as F − ma = 0. Then you can call (F − ma) — which should, of course, be zero — the "mismatch" of mechanics. Next, you take the square of this mismatch and call it U_1 , which can be called the "unworldliness of mechanical effects." In other words, you take U_1 = (F − ma)^2.

[...]

You continue to write U_3 , U_4 , and so on—one for every physical law there is. Finally you call the total unworldliness U of the world the sum of the various unworldlinesses U_i from all the subphenomena that are involved; that is, U = SUM (U_i). Then the great "law of nature" is

U = 0. (25.32)

This "law" means, of course, that the sum of the squares of all the individual mismatches is zero, and the only way the sum of a lot of squares can be zero is for each one of the terms to be zero.

So the "beautifully simple" law in Eq. (25.32) is equivalent to the whole series of equations that you originally wrote down. It is therefore absolutely obvious that a simple notation that just hides the complexity in the definitions of symbols is not real simplicity. It is just a trick . The beauty that appears in Eq. (25.32)—just from the fact that several equations are hidden within it—is no more than a trick. When you unwrap the whole thing, you get back where you were before."

[1] Feynman R, Leighton R, and Sands M. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Volume 2, chapter 25, page 10.

</comment><comment><USER3> _According to constructor theory, the most fundamental components of reality are entities—"constructors"—that perform particular tasks, accompanied by a set of laws that define which tasks are actually possible for a constructor to carry out._

More generally, we could call these entities "objects", the tasks that they perform "methods" and the set of laws that define the available methods "interfaces".

There, the grand unified theory of object-oriented software design and quantum gravity!

Einstein would never have guessed that the universe is written in Enterprise Java.

<comment><USER4> So, if i understand you correctly, what you're saying is that the arrow of time is defined as the direction in which Oracle licenses expire?

<comment><USER5> yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this essentially the approach Einstein took? He basically added a new "constructor", "the relative speed of light is the same for all observers", to existing physics models and a new more encompassing physics emerged, whose amazing predictions were born out by experiments. He didn't add that new constructor because it made intuitive sense, but because prior experiments indicated it to be reality, no matter how counterintuitive it seems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7802986](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7802986)

</comment><comment><USER8> Wait a second... I think this has been done before: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Jones#The_Grand_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Jones#The_Grand_Unification_Theory)

</comment><comment><USER9> So, not so much a new theory as a new language and set of rules (a calculus) for describing our old theories?

</comment><comment><USER10> A "theory of everything" posted on the non-peer-reviewed arXiv? Color me skeptical.

<comment><USER11> First, Deutsch is a serious field theorist and foundational quantum mechanist. Second, the arXiv is not, as you seem to intimate, for work that isn't good enough to pass peer review, but is, instead, a place to post work so that the physics community can digest it without a 6-month peer-review delay. Articles on the arXiv are almost always submitted to a journal within a few days of being posted.

I should point out: that doesn't mean it's right! But it's not gobbledegook either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of GEB where Hofstadter covers Godel's theory of incompleteness. My personal understanding was that there can be no definite theories that are true of everything in the universe...but that theory is a paradox in itself because it is attempting to make a definite rule that is true of everything in the universe

<comment><USER13> Not quite. There is a lot of mysticism around the incompleteness theorems. The Incompleteness theorems say that you cannot construct a single higher-order logic capable of proving all true higher-order statements. This does not limit our ability to discover truths about the universe. The incompleteness theorem has little bearing on the discovery of universal physical laws.</comment></comment>


Show HN: bashblog, a single Bash script to create blogs - <AUTHOR> http://cfenollosa.github.io/bashblog/ <comment><USER2> > Everything stored in a single 700-line bash script, how cool is that?! ;)

A good rule of thumb:

If your bash script is over 100 (sane) lines it's an indication that what you are doing is probably best not done with shell scripts.

But... to each their own.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree in that a shell script is not the best platform for a blogging engine. However,

1\. It has literally zero dependencies (other from bash, of course) which is kind of the goal of bashblog 2\. If you examine the code you will notice it's clean. The engine is about 200 lines, the rest are HTML and CSS templates. 3\. I don't agree that a shell script should be less than 100 lines, more or less. A single function? Of course. But a whole module? I disagree. As long as the code is clean, understandable and consistent, I don't see why not!

What I'm trying to say is that the mantra of "shell scripts should be used only to copy files and run make" isn't correct. Shell programming _is_ a thing, and I believe bashblog is a good example of that.

</comment></comment><comment> vezzy-fnord See also the (in)famous werc web anti-framework written in Plan 9 rc shell: [http://werc.cat-v.org/](http://werc.cat-v.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> werc is great, I have used it for websites and works wonderfully. bashblog is focused on blogs, and doesn't use templates (though they can be hacked in easily, I do so on my personal page)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a revival of the old nanoblogger ⌘ [http://nanoblogger.sourceforge.net/](http://nanoblogger.sourceforge.net/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right, the ideas are very similar, though the approach is quite different.

Actually, I tried nanoblogger before writing bashblog, and I found its design a bit old-fashioned and too configurable for my needs. It just looks like a Movable Type clone. Ah, and it also used templates, which I didn't want.

bashblog's main feature is that you just need to download a single file, run "./bb.sh post" and write your blogpost. That is it. Ah, it also supports markdown.</comment></comment>


Fed. Government Pays IT Contractors Nearly Twice As Much As Its Own IT Workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com/article/689861/Fed._Government_Pays_IT_Contractors_Nearly_Twice_As_Much_As_Its_Own_IT_Workers

<comment><USER2> One reason that the Fed Gov spends more in the short term on contractors (in addition to all those reasons in common with most private employers, like insurance) is to avoid pension costs.

It is also very hard to fire a GS employee.

<comment><USER3> These costs were included in the analysis, according the project's _Methodology_ page: [http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/reports/contract- oversight/ba...](http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/reports/contract- oversight/bad-business/co-gp-20110913-1.html)</comment></comment>


Mozilla Helps BBC with Fonts - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674335

<comment><USER2> What's particularly nice about this is that there is a category "Tech Evangelism" that this can be moved to rather than just filing it as "works for me" or "not our fault" and washing their hands of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe they can help Twitter with their Hindi?

<http://i.imgur.com/vj79P.png>

</comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone been able to get indic fonts to work on Ubuntu? I tried a while ago to get Punjabi language sites to work but I kept running into problems. They work fine on windows and mac. I think <http://www.ajitjalandhar.com/20110928/> didn't work last time I gave it a shot.

<comment><USER5> That site seems to be using two different methods to represent indic text.

The blue bar on top, and the poll on the left, are displayed as garbage. Looking in the source, they are using iso-8859-1 encoding, with a font named "Satluj" which maps extended ASCII characters to (presumably) indic characters.

The rest of the site, including the central column of text (new articles?) renders correctly in Ubuntu. I've not done anything special to install middle- Asian fonts, as far as I know.</comment></comment>


Condé Nast to shut Portfolio magazine  - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/cond-nast-shut-portfolio-magazine/story.aspx?guid=%7B1DCD02AC-32E9-4BDD-A8C2-6FDE32A41330%7D

<comment><USER2> I read a few issues from a local dentist's office. Didn't really impress me that much. Seems like they ran a lot of ads for very expensive watches and other rich man toys. Oh, and the ads for that weird-looking exercise machine, too.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a subscription and actually enjoyed most of the well written articles, but knew in the back of my mind they weren't going to last, especially in this economic climate. Not even considering the disruption caused by the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER4> They had some good articles from time to time, one down for diversity.

Edit: Also, in moments like this you got to be glad reddit is open source

</comment><comment><USER5> How did the launch cost of Portfolio compare to the acquisition cost of Reddit?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I accept an unpaid internship? - <AUTHOR>

I recently finished my freshman year of college (quarter system = late start/end).  I have an opportunity to work unpaid for a medium-sized IT company, Coradiant Inc., in the Bay area.  They are willing to cover travel costs and I can make arrangements with minimal living expenses.  However, this would require postponing projects I had planned to start this summer (not all of them programs - I'm eager to start learning quantum mech, for example), and having no income doesn't help with student loans.
My assessment so far is that the internship is more resume-friendly and will probably bring positive recommendations later, but an independent project summer will allow me to learn things that are more important/useful to me.
How valuable are internship experiences to entrepreneurs, compared to executing your own projects?  Are there any other factors that should weigh into this decision? <comment><USER2> Seems to me like internships that are just resume padding don't seem like they'd be of much help to someone looking to be an entrepreneur. Internships at a start-up would yield much better results, as you would get to see what happens in a start up first hand and they would probably pay you, and you would learn a lot more then an internship at a big company. Just sayin'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd take it. Experience is paramount.

Keep working on side projects. One day, they might be something and really experience might help you there.</comment>


GraphQL is the new REST - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/apollo-stack/why-graphql-is-the-future-3bec28193807#.u6spd52ox <comment><USER2> I thought GraphQL was another layer between HTTP/REST-APIs and the client?

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't have to be! You can use GraphQL directly with your source data.

<comment><USER2> Ah nice.

I saw a pitch for GraphQL a few months ago and they sold it to me as query language layer between my APIs and clients.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. police may now be able to access online DNA database records - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/if-youve-given-your-dna-to-a-dna-database-us-police-may-now-have-access-to-it-126680 <comment><USER2> In 2019, when we have huge databases that we can search quickly, the Third- Party doctrine no longer fits/works. We share vast amounts of very private information with third parties, it goes way beyond the meta-data of a PSTN phone call.

There is a big difference between asking for the call records of particular phone numbers and searching an entire database for whatever you want. With phone records you are asking for specific details, details that could provide direct evidence of a crime, the database has a perfect match for the search and that is known ahead of time. With DNA DB searches you are fishing for potential links, at least for now the DB isn't likely to have a perfect match and that is known ahead of time. Everyone in that DNA DB becomes suspect. I should not need DNA evidence to clear my name every time someone commits a crime.

<comment><USER3> The third party doctrine was always a disgusting mess. Sharing my information with entity A does not even remotely imply I'm okay with sharing it with B, and even less that A may be compelled to reveal my information against my and their desire. So often we hear that "corporations are people" \- so can people be compelled to inform on others, without a warrant? They're a third party, after all!

<comment><USER4> Your comment looks like it's getting downvotes but the idea seems worth considering. I almost never hear corporate personhood brought up in good faith, it's usually just a rhetorical device these days, but it's worth remembering that the general idea behind it is that Corporations are just organized groups of people and therefore they should (should in the view of the relevant laws) not lose protections (compared to the individuals that comprise the group) simply for acting in a coordinated fashion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if I trust people enough to be using DNA in the legal system of today. Let alone police with the bad actors that are attracted to the career.

The one law protection service I wish would be created is a way for opting-in to have my iPhone track location & record audio 24/7; with the guarantee of privacy for the data and able to be viewed only with consent (whenever being alleged to have committed a crime). It's a work in progress thought I've been thinking about because I've been in a few situations where having a recording could have been potentially life changing in benefiting my recollection of what happened. Police don't even let you audio record interrogations with your own personal phone. Although one should never even speak to the police and just request their lawyer on the spot.

</comment><comment><USER6> I feel bad for all of the suckers that paid for and freely submitted their DNA to these private companies.

I have been saying this for years, but your DNA and health should only be viewed by you and your healthcare providers. With this contract, you are protected by strict federal and state laws (ie, HIPAA)

Using it for vanity bullshit like "I just found out I am 2% Cherokee" is absolutely insane.

<comment><USER7> I did and dont feel bad. Unfortunately, these services will be outlawed or regulated for whatever reasons, witholding people from information they should be able to have. I was lucky enough to have had health reports before it was outlawed. I know how imperfect it is , but i think the bans violated my rights. I now have a file with my SNPs - uncensored- to play with as i wish. (I wouldn't rule it out that these companies will be forced to censor SNPs that some groups don't like in the future)

Also , it is futile to think you re not already affected, after all we re all connected with only 3 degrees of genetic separation: [https://blog.23andme.com/news/make-that-three-degrees-of- sep...](https://blog.23andme.com/news/make-that-three-degrees-of-separation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't it always been 100% clear that police would be able to search online DNA databases easily, through the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third- party_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine) if nothing else?

<comment><USER9> Isn't DNA sequencing my medical information and protected by HIPAA and other privacy laws? Can the police search my medical records without a warrant?

<comment><USER10> Not since Smith vs. Maryland, one of the SCOTUS' truly awful rulings.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/what-...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/what- you-need-to-know-about-the-third-party-doctrine/282721/)

<comment><USER11> The police can ask you for something without a warrant. You can say no. When they ask a 3rd party like the phone company they are free to say yes and comply if they want. I dont think that would apply to data protected under HIPPA though, which by law is not to be shared without the persons comcent. But IANAL.

<comment><USER10> The problem is that the data obtained via a third party, without a warrant, is admissible in court. And IANALE, but HIPAA has exclusions and exemptions for law enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A power database for genetic geneology could be developed just with the DNA of police officers. The government should be providing incentivizes to people who make their DNA information open for genetic genealogy searches rather than resorting to warrants on information people didn't agree to it.

<comment><USER7> It should actually be a requirement for police personnel, in the interest of transparency

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you are a criminal, it might be wise to send them someone else's DNA in your own name. From someone who is not in the register and never gets there, maybe dies soon. When they start to eliminate suspects based on DNA you get dropped.

<comment><USER14> That wouldn't work. If you are already a suspect, the police will retest you, not rely on what's on the database.

What you actually want to do is send your own DNA in someone else's name - preferably someone who is demographically similar to you, but who has essentially no connection to you (better still, someone who is dead)

If none of your relatives use the service then this might work.

<comment><USER15> Suspicion is not always sufficient for a warrant and tapping you for DNA isn't the same as searching your car, which requires probable cause. I don't know how DNA db srach warrants work but if they're blind matches, submitting bad data could be an effective smoke screen. You just have to make sure you submit DNA from someone who isn't going to make you a false positive march later.

<comment><USER16> Most cases are not caught because there is a direct march, but because there are multiple distant relatives that match and allow detectives to triangulate the suspect. Final confirmation is done w/ direct testing after probable cause.

Faking your own dna has little effect on this process of triangulation and can easily be identified as you won't share expected traits with relatives.

Good luck...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think we need a DNA GDPR. The notion that your unique genetic makeup and data derived from your DNA is yours to do with what you will that you can revoke at any time.

<comment><USER18> Who gets the rights when there's identical twins?

<comment><USER6> The term "identical twins" is a misnomer in terms of DNA. If you have two identical looking people, they will still have unique sets of DNA.

<comment><USER18> You are wrong. I'm not talking about "identical looking" people. I'm talking about _monozygotic twins_. They have identical DNA because they're two people spawned from one zygote and therefore have identical DNA.

<comment><USER19> Won't natural mutations give them different DNA after some time?

<comment><USER20> Correct: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/identical-twins- ar...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/identical-twins-arent-so- identical-which-makes-twin-studies-harder-119107266/)

And it starts in utero, even at the embryonic stage: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301568/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6301568/)

<comment><USER18> The markers in CODIS (law enforcement DNA database) don't cover the whole genome. The markers sold by commercial genetic genealogy databases also don't typically cover the whole genome.

The likelihood of the few in utero polymorphisms occurring at one of the covered markers is very low. That means a whole genome would need to be sequenced to determine which twin DNA evidence came from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally I'm glad they are catching murderers and rapists this way. It's fantastic and as far as we've seen there is no downside when this tool is applied within the context of a state that has rule of law. Even in a totalitarian panopticon like China, it's hard to picture exactly what downside a complete dna database would have. I mean we can contrive scenarios. Maybe a resistance cell is busted while everyone is out and the government is able to deduce the members from dna traces. But it seems far fetched. Even in that scenario, traditional policing techniques are likely to be more effective. I.e. wait until resistance members are present THEN attack the cell. Interrogate prisoners to give up accomplices etc.

Dna identification is pretty cool because the vast majority of cases where it's useful are cases where traces have been left at the scene of the crime or on a victim. That fact, the mere existence of a scene or a victim, constrains the use of the tool mostly to legitimate circumstances.

If my dna were used to lock up a relative who commits a rape or a murder I would be sad but I would consider it justified. I'm not going to do either of those things so I am not worried about whether the police would use dna to identify me. And considering the lack of scenarios where DNA could be misused, this is actually one of those situations where the innocent have nothing or next to nothing to worry about.

<comment><USER22> Have you never been in a place where a murder was later committed? Have you never had personal contact with someone later raped?

There's a temptation to compute "1 in a billion" probabilities, have a computer or science wizard process spit them out and for investigators to conclude the person who matches is the one. I'm more worried about the possible lazy or sloppy interpretation and curve-fitting aspects of the tech than I am worried about me flipping out and committing a felony offense.

I am likewise glad for the cases where it is helping to correctly solve crimes, of course.

<comment><USER21> There is always the possibility that you will be incorrectly identified by an investigative technique, dna or otherwise. This is not a remote chance; it happens all the time. In my view, this does not increase that probability very much, but it massively improves the odds of finding criminals. Remember that the mere presence of DNA is not alone grounds for a conviction. There is still the matter of alibis, motives, and all those traditional avenues of forensic inquiry.

As to your questions, as far as I know, nobody has ever been murdered in a place where I've been. Maybe on the sidewalk somewhere, but that is not a scenario where DNA is going to be any help, unless the perpetrator leaves behind blood or skin on the victim or the ground. And I've never had sexual contact with anyone who was subsequently raped, nor anyone who didn't already know me for that matter. But it hardly matters whether those things have happened to me personally. What matters is how often that happens in the world, and what fraction of the time this leads to incorrect prosecution.

<comment><USER23> >Remember that the mere presence of DNA is not alone grounds for a conviction.

That's awful wishful thinking. The general public is of the opinion that DNA evidence is 100% accurate and the government does a great job of continuing to present that farce. I wouldn't want to be the person who has to face a jury of their peers in the face of DNA evidence saying I committed a crime. Regardless of my alibi... I wouldn't trust the lay person to understand or get it right.

<comment><USER24> Then that is what need to be fixed. Either make DNA information more accurate or better inform the general public the current state of DNA evidence.

<comment><USER18> How do you propose to do that?

<comment><USER24> Otherwise you want to stop information ? You want to stop progress of technology ?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Armed Bear Common Lisp 1.5.0 released, Java 8 VM officially supported - <AUTHOR> http://abcl-dev.blogspot.com/2017/06/abcl-150.html <comment><AUTHOR> (Clarification: ABCL is an ANSI-conforming Lisp compiler that compiles to Java JVM bytecode, so the applications run on the Java virtual machine. It also allows calling Java classes/libs from Lisp.)

</comment><comment><USER2> As a person not familiar with common lisp, I'm curious: why would somebody choose a CLISP instead of Clojure to target JVM?

<comment><AUTHOR> Clojure and Common Lisp are different languages, they are not the same (but they are Lisp family languages.)

Clojure makes good sense if you are going to mix your code with a lot of calls to Java classes and objects.

If you are not going to be calling Java at every two lines of code, then with ABCL you can program in CL and be able to interoperate with Java. CL is a significantly more powerful language.

PS: Note that "CLISP" is a particular, free Common Lisp implenentation, not a language.</comment></comment>


Pwning eBay – How I Dumped eBay Japan's Website Source Code - <AUTHOR> https://slashcrypto.org/2018/11/28/eBay-source-code-leak/ <comment><USER2> So if I understand correctly, this was found by scanning the Alexa top 1M for exposed .git directories. It's based on research from 2015 where the authors... scanned the Alexa top 1M for exposed .git directories.

Anyone want to hazard a guess at whether anyone else between 2015 and 2018 also thought to run the same experiment with the same parameters and thus also downloaded ebay.co.jp's production database passwords and Wordpress admin credentials?

Of course, that would only be a concern if the master hacker in question decided eBay Japan's backend data was more valuable than having their name on a website that says "good job thanks".

<comment><USER3> It's beyond me why they don't reward such guy even if they don't have any bounty program in place. 10-100K is pennies to them. It just seems more economic to pay white hats than to deal with effects of black hats actions.

But maybe I'm wrong and in the real world there is not much penalty for exposing data of thousands or millions of users..

<comment><USER4> Before GDPR there actually wasn't much penalty for reckless collection and storage of personal data. Only PR damage had to be considered.

<comment><USER5> Bear in mind though that Ebay Japan does not target EU/no/ch customers, which is a requirement for the "big reach" of the GDPR.

Wikipedia excerpt: "... for all individuals within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA)."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation)

<comment><USER6> I've generally read on Hacker News that having EU users is sufficient to put you within the GDPR's reach, and that for a web service there's therefore nothing that will protect you besides IP-blocking Europe.

The quote that you provide here that supposedly shows that the GDPR is irrelevant to Ebay Japan does not in fact contradict that claim.

Do you have an excerpt or other source that does?

<comment> yc-kraln Amusingly, if a European citizen is not in Europe, they are also covered, so IP banning Europe will not help you.

<comment><USER7> The analysis I've seen from lawyers is that it only applies to EU citizens inside the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For what it's worth, ebay.co.jp is actually not running on their main platform. You can see the difference in the HTML code between ebay.com, ebay.de (both on the main platform) and ebay.co.jp (wordpress based). I actually don't even know if they are showing eBay listings on that website...

Good find though, and embarrassing failure. Especially since most eBay properties have penetration testing and automated scanners being run on them

<comment><USER9> Fun fact: just entering [ebay.co.jp] gives you a "Connection refused". You explicitly have to enter [www.ebay.co.jp]. I don't know what they're doing over there.

<comment><USER10> I had the same issue, I wanted to see the site everyone was talking about, if you append www. or [https://www](https://www). in front of it, it works.

<comment><USER11> for future reference, prepend is the word you wanted.

"If you prepend www. or [https://www](https://www). it works."

<comment><USER10> Ah yes, hadn't had my coffee yet. Prefix is the word I usually use more commonly instead, not sure if there's a huge difference between the two.

<comment><USER12> I think prepend makes more sense as a verb. Prefix is more commonly used as a noun

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What kind of cashless bug bounty is that?

You got their source code, passwords. That deserves at least $10K.

<comment><USER14> What's the legality of saying "I have your source code, but I won't tell you how until you give me x".

If you don't plan to do any harm to the company with what you know is there anything wrong with asking for a reward before you disclose the bug?

<comment><USER15> It's probably still extortion regardless of intent if they say no. How are they to know you won't do anything malicious?

<comment><USER16> how is that extortion? Extortion needs a threat for non-compliance. Offering to sell a company information with no consequences for rejection is an invitation to trade.

<comment><USER17> So they respond by reporting you to the CIA/FBI

They show up and take all your electronics to investigate an extortion claim

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? You might win in the end. You might get jail time. You might have a pretty rough 6 months and get nothing.

Being internet tough and going to court tend to be very different things.

<comment><USER18> If that is what happens, people will start doing it anonymously and asking for Bitcoins.

<comment><USER19> I see what you did there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >No cash reward

Well that just sucks. It was clearly in scope and should have been rewarded. Clear example of information leakage.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wow he totally deserves a reward. I can only imagine the impact of that repo being leaked online by someone with ill intent.

<comment><USER22> At the same time, it's just the source-code for a WordPress (which is already public).

<comment><USER23> um eBay runs on Wordpress?

<comment><USER24> No, ebay as the auction site does not. ebay.co.jp does

<comment><USER25> That seems kinda strange. What business is ebay.co.jp in then if they don't run an auction site?

<comment><USER24> after translating the site, it appears to be purely informational with the intent of helping/convincing Japanese businesses to start cross border eCommerce using ebay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There isn't much going on here, all that happened here was that eBay Japan decided to expose their git directory to the world and also decided to store their wp-config.php file in git... Both not recommended practices. Hilarity ensued.

</comment><comment><USER27> Revealing source code should not be a security problem. Open source is not less secure than closed source. If enough non-evil eye pairs read it and responsibly disclose their findings at least.

However, storing database passwords or password hashes in git (at least inside the same repo) is a major design flaw.

<comment><USER28> I highly doubt this is a off the shelf Wordpress install. In fact, a standard WP is not > 1gb of data, which the post describes.

There will be a massive amount of customization, so revealing source code probably is a security risk. I'm willing to bet a competent code auditor could find secondary vulns in that code.

<comment><USER29> The resources folder containing images/etc was probably checked into git. Happens more than you might think...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Did he actually need to download all of their source code to prove the vulnerability though? It seemed that he could have simply stopped when he extracted ref HEAD. It is this extra exploitation that gets researchers into trouble.

<comment><USER31> Yes, it was necessary to download all the code to prove for example that it wasn't just unrelated data in that repo. Furthermore a big part of this issue is that database keys were stored in the repo. Source code of the site alone wouldn't have been so critical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Their site is misconfigured, idk if it's just me but when I go to "ebay.co.jp" without [https://](https://) or [https://www](https://www). in front of the domain it just says unable to connect.

<comment><USER32> it's not misconfigured. that's intentional. why? idk.

<comment><USER10> It is? What in the world lol I figured they forgot to point that part of the domain to the wrong server or something. Unless it's behind some corporate firewall?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I had the idea that bug bownty programs was to prevent people from selling the exploits to the highest bidder?

<comment><USER34> Yeah, I am not sure if it is in their best interest to not do so.

Other people finding flaws with eBay might be more tempted now to sell it to the highest bidder rather than expose it to them.

(Assuming their morals are already a bit questionable to begin with)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> "Pwning" and "dumping source code" aren't the same. I think code should be written with the assumption that it will be leaked. Getting DB passwords isn't that meaningful if you don't have access to the DB because of firewalls.

</comment><comment><USER36> Interestingly they used to run on IIS, which is why you saw a lot of ebayisapi.dll in their urls.

<comment><USER8> Some more information: [https://www.slideshare.net/RandyShoup/the-ebay- architecture-...](https://www.slideshare.net/RandyShoup/the-ebay-architecture- striking-a-balance-between-site-stability-feature-velocity-performance-and- cost) (slide 10) That ebayisapi.dll was 3.3 million lines of code. Currently it is only still in the URL for SEO/backwards compatibility reasons, all of their main frontend code is Java based (V3/V4)

<comment><USER25> >Currently it is only still in the URL for SEO/backwards compatibility reasons //

Can't imagine ebay having any problem moving to new URLs nor getting any significant boost in referrals from such actions. What other backwards compatibility is at issue, scraping apps?

<comment><USER29> Panda absolutely wrecked eBay's organic SR multiple times. Getting this 100% right 100% of the time is critical to eBay. I was on staff (but not working on this) when Panda 4 happened to them: [https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/05/21/panda-4](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/05/21/panda-4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> it's beyond me why anyone would risk criminal prosecution for reporting a bug for free.

</comment><comment><USER38> Great write-up, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER39> Fuck this website and its rewriting of my keyboard shortcuts, my back button and history.

Fuck this.

</comment><comment><USER40> So the author transferred tons of private data of eBay users to his computer? This seems like a significant crime.

Why didn't eBay alert the FBI or something?

<comment><USER41> He downloaded the source code, not the database, so no user data. Still questionable to some degree, one could demonstrate the problem without a full download

<comment><USER40> Why do you think he "only" downloaded the source ? He wrote:

        I got 1.2 GB of data to go through. The data-set
        contained:

        Wordpress configuration files (yes, they use Wordpress)
        including hashed user credentials for the backend login

        Database passwords for production databases

        Log files

        A lot of PHP source code
        (who could have guessed?!)

        much more …

<comment><USER7> They publicly hosted their .git folder on their web server (which it says in the blog post). They had those things committed to version control (stupid) and publicly served it (stupid). Nothing was stolen.

<comment><USER42> If something is available via HTTP that you didn't want, how is it different than downloading HTML that you did? The protocol knows nothing about your intent.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook's VP of Engineering Michael Schröpfer - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.net/ver2/2009/10/19/exclusive-facebooks-vp-of-engineering-mike-schroepfer/ <comment><USER2> Dribbling out an interview over a series of days is annoying (especially if you don't bother to edit the transcript for basic grammatical correctness). Better to post the entire interview series and then post it as a single article.

<comment><USER3> thanks. The post was too long to post as one interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is part I in a multi-part series. Mike is a good guys. It was great conversation especially on some of the haystack work to how they are hiring.

Other parts coming soon FB Engineering vision Haystack project Hiring integreted engineering disciplines FB as an OS Open source role within FB How to get more out of Memcache and MySql His vision of cloud computing How involved is Mark Zuckerberg in engineering FB buying spree how do you integrate companies Lessons shared from his work at Mozilla and FB

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> John Furrier sat down with Michael Schoepfer, FB's Veep of Engineering, and talked about operations at great scale, and how they've avoided the fail whale thus far.</comment>


Getting To The Bottom Of The Crazy Yahoo-Groupon Rumors - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/16/getting-to-the-bottom-of-the-crazy-yahoo-groupon-rumors/ <comment><USER2> Mike, re-title this article please... I thought by reading it I might actually learn something ... I appreciate the speculation, but i'd like my 2 minutes back lol</comment>


I have been told I Broke Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a massive outage, so far.

[http://downdetector.com/status/reddit](http://downdetector.com/status/reddit)

</comment><comment><USER3> Umm, what? Works fine for me.

<comment><USER2> Can you log in? If not then you're most likely looking at a cache.

<comment><USER3> Apparently I can't: "an error occurred (status: 503)".</comment></comment></comment>


The search for alien life needs a new space telescope, astronomers say - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/8/17831270/space-telescope-decadal-survey-direct-imaging-exoplanets-alien-life#comments <comment><USER2> We would - of course - need to keep these same astronomers around and employed until the new telescope was designed, launched, and operational.</comment>


SecondBar: Making Dual-Monitor Workstations More Efficient - <AUTHOR> http://www.applecasts.com/secondbar-app-for-dual-monitors/

<comment><USER2> Stopped using it since it wasn't compatible with Lion after I did the upgrade (site still says Snow Leopard).

<comment><AUTHOR> Dear Steven,

try using the link provided in the post, as it is actually compatible with Lion. I installed it on Lion and it worked perfectly. Please let me know how that goes!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Picky Pint – Scan beer lists with a photo - <AUTHOR> http://www.pickypint.com/

<comment><USER2> Bravo! The site is beautiful and unusually complete. You've put in a lot of thought and work, and it shows. The press release for today was a nice touch. It's great to see the choice of iOS and Android as well as free and paid versions. I have no idea how many "beer ratings" apps are out there with a menu snapshot feature, but it's a wonderful idea.

Suggestion #1: Describe what we get for the paid "Pro" version. At present, your site only says there's a "Free" version and a "Pro" version, but does not differentiate between the two.

(Note To Self: Do I really want the "Professional" version of a drinking app on my phone? -- Hmmm.... Decisions, Decisions, ;-)

Suggestion #2: Give a bit more information about the ratings and reviews, like where they come from.

Suggestion #3: I know there's a craft brewers association of some sort in the US (I saw it in a documentary I watched a while ago). It might be a useful source of data, particularly for the more esoteric, seasonal, and limited run, brews. I _think_ the following is the group site:

[http://www.brewersassociation.org/](http://www.brewersassociation.org/)

Good Luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, and done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd love to see ABV on the main list (instead of having to go to that beer's individual page). When I'm scanning through a menu, that's one of the primary things I look at.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps instead of a straight quantitative ABV, a qualitative indication of whether a beer is unusually weak or strong? Like you, i always look at ABV - mostly because i don't want to get started on some delicious 8% turbo-IPA if it's a thursday lunchtime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty cool idea. I don't have a beer menu here to test with, but the search is very fast.

One critique: your website doesn't explain the difference between Free and Pro. I had to go to the App Store to find that info, which took a lot longer.

One suggestion: add other dimensions for sorting besides bitterness. There are a lot of things other than bitterness that distinguish different styles.

One feature request: Let me track my own ratings and view them later. This is the first beer app that feels fast enough to use for tracking my own beer ratings. I love tracking books I've read in Goodreads because it makes it easy to find them again. I want to do the same thing for beer, but the apps I've tried (Pintly and BeerAdvocate) have been painfully slow and hard to use.

<comment><USER6> The difference is listed on their homepage, but I agree it's not super obvious. EDIT: maybe it was added just now?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, added it in response to another comment, and the parent comment was posted a minute or so before the fix was sent up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great, now bars will start implementing MITM attacks on their wifi routers to steer you to yesterday's flat keg.

<comment><USER8> You could use a VPN, or Picky Pint could encrypt its connection... does it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You've got to be kidding me - 5 days ago I was looking at a long beer list from random brewers at Porter Ale House in Austin and thought of this exact same idea. The rise of hipster craft brew places with constantly rotating lists and rarely listing ABV makes this absolutely necessary.

Very excited that I can stop dreaming of it existing and use your version!

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't have a menu handy, so I tried taking a picture of the example on your website on my monitor. The first time, it said the picture wasn't clear enough, but the second time, it's stayed hung on "Scanning now..." for over five minutes so far. Nexus 5 running Android 5.0 stock, connected to wifi.

As I was about to submit the comment, it finally finished processing, returning a list of beers that weren't in the original menu image. Not surprised, given the poor quality inherent to taking a picture of a low-res picture on a low-density LCD screen, so the only issue I see here is how long it took to process the image.

Great idea—looking forward to trying it at the pub tonight (hopefully I'll have better success there).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, if you take a photo of a menu displayed on a standard monitor you tend to get a screen door effect on the photo, which lowers accuracy. It does work much better on high density monitors (and other high density tablet and phone screens), though, and of course physical menus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very cool! This is like the beer version of WineGlass ([http://wineglassapp.com/](http://wineglassapp.com/))! They managed to get ratings from CellarTracker via private access to their API (like Beer Advocate they don't offer anything publicly), so from the start that had access to the largest? library of user generated wine ratings on the web.

Are you blending user ratings with the ratebeer ratings in screenshots, or keeping them separate?

Wineglass has a feature I thought was pretty neat -- letting you know whether or not the price was 'fair for a restaurant' given typical industry markups. Perhaps not as applicable to beer, but could be a cool feature. And then you could surface 'bars with the best deals on beers you'll love.'

I'm in online wine media, so not as familiar with the beer space but it seems like lots of areas for collaboration (eg Nextglass, Untapped, BeerMenus.com as a fallback for OCR fails)

P.S. I understand the need to monetize, but having used heavily/played with dozens of apps in the wine/beer/liquor space, both free and paid, its rare to see random iAds (so far Target.com, some casino game install ad, and another casino game install ad. Perhaps the revenue is worth it but feels like there are much more interesting ways to monetize (native ads in terms of featured beers/all sorts of brewery/bar partnerships) than that sort of junky ad...

</comment><comment><USER8> I was not able to find your privacy policy. Are you tracking what beers I'm looking up? Where I am? How long I spend drinking? Are you serving ads generally or are they somehow targeted to me based on my behavior? Do I get more privacy with the pro version?

You will be collecting data that will be useful to other people besides me. I don't care if statistics on all app users are sold but if you want to sell things based on my specific behavior I won't use your app.

All that said I'm excited to give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice job & congratulations on shipping! Some brief feedback before I start field testing :-) this...

\- Would love the ability to save a collection of favorites, maybe add folders or tagging?

\- I often get asked to create list of recommended craft beers and so would like the ability to share these lists easily

\- Your data will be sparse to start with, but I'd be interested in knowing how many other users put beers into their favorites (I find the BeerAdvocate listings a bit tedious to wade through...)

\- Not sure you want to, but the professional brewers I speak to are interested in a lower-cost alternative to Untappd [0] and you might be able to build a business here?

\- Maybe this is an East Coast US thing, but there's a growing trend to pair beers with cheese [1]; maybe that's too specific a request but allowing used to add notes to the beers (meta data beyond BeerAdvocate) might be useful

Good luck!

[0] [https://untappd.com/business](https://untappd.com/business) [1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/beer-cheese- pairing...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/beer-cheese- pairing_n_4849070.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> So, is this a RubyMotion app? (Asking because I'm curious, they recently released Android support in addition to iOS/OS X).

Regardless of whether or not you're using RubyMotion, would you like to share any comments or experiences about developing and releasing the app for both iOS and Android at the same time? I think it's remarkable, it seems like people pick either iOS or Android to launch. A lot of small iOS shops don't even build their Android versions in-house, they will contract the Android version out to an Android firm.

Great work on this app, I love it! Will try it out in the real world later today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Picky Pint is native both ways. I've been making iOS apps professionally since 2011 (in a great consultancy that does native on both platforms in-house), so that part was straightforward. My co-founder and I both are software guys but we hadn't tried a native Android app before, and this was as good of an opportunity as any.

I'm pretty happy with how it came out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you integrate with Beer Advocate or Untappd for your ratings?

Great idea, good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but there's always time in the future :)

<comment><USER15> Purchased! Consider it another vote for BeerAdvocate :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awesome! Can't wait to try this out. Something that I wouldn't mind added would be to keep like a history of all the beers you have seen and the places you saw them at so if I am craving my favorite beer I can quickly see what spots near me i've been to have it, but then you could crowdsource it and search any restaurants anyone has been to to see if they have certain beers. Just a thought.

Oh, and if they are bottles the normal ml in the bottle and the ABV and a score saying best buy for your buck :p

Thanks for making this!

 __* heads off to the bar __ _

</comment><comment><USER17> Very similar to WhatWine App ([http://www.whatwineapp.com](http://www.whatwineapp.com)): ocr menu parsing and reviews / recommendations. Cool! (Not my app, just saw it at a hackathon)

</comment><comment><USER18> So this looked really great and I'm sure it will be. I realize that there are a lot of barcodes, but I happened to see this thread while at Costco. I downloaded the app while here and it only recognized 2 beers from the entire beer isle.

Some were tricky but some were things that you definitely should have (like Sam Adams Winter). This will be really great when it's more complete but there is still some work to do

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, working on it. We get bar code data from BreweryDB, which allows us to improve bar code accuracy without an app update.

BreweryDB takes user submitted bar codes easily with PocketBeer (BreweryDB's app) [http://www.pocketbeerapp.com/](http://www.pocketbeerapp.com/)

<comment><USER18> Cool stuff. Really like the app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome! I just finished a project doing beer recommendations, and I wanted to use the RateBeer data but they put up a notice that they were not giving out API access anymore. We went with BreweryDB and were trying to add some ratings ourselves, which was sufficient for our project.

How did you get the use of RateBeers API?

</comment><comment><USER20> Very refreshing idea! I can't tell from the site if you let users upload their own ratings after trying a pint but I think that would a great feature and also a great independent source of reviews for the app.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cool! would be nice if I could select a photo I have already taken from inside the app. [http://www.sipsnapp.com/](http://www.sipsnapp.com/) has this feature and I use it.

</comment><comment><USER22> I shall download forthwith! I look forward to being able to sort by IBU and screen out anything below whatever my current threshold happens to be (runs between 40 and 80, depending on the day).

</comment><comment><USER23> Similar to SipSnapp [1]. The UI looks much better, though.

[1] [http://www.sipsnapp.com/](http://www.sipsnapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER24> This is really nice work. Good job.

Do you have plans to utilize the data for anything else? That could scare me and excite me at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic stuff! Now all you need to do is train your OCR to decipher the scrawl on the blackboards at the Euston Tap ...

</comment><comment><USER25> What are your thoughts on rolling this out to Windows Phone? A lot of us are stuck (or choose to be) on the platform.

</comment><comment><USER26> Nice! This even sorts by bitterness and rating. It can even filter based on personal bitterness preferences.

</comment><comment><USER27> It would be good if you could flag which ones are vegan, or only show vegan results.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a fantastic idea! Is there a specific requirement for Android 4.2+?

</comment><comment><USER29> What are you using for OCR?

</comment><comment><USER30> What library/API did you use for OCR?

</comment><comment><USER31> Downloaded. Can't wait to try it out!</comment>


Riak 2.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.basho.com/pipermail/riak-users_lists.basho.com/2014-September/015879.html

<comment><USER2> Just had a read through. Overall a pretty impressive new release, I'll have to keep an eye on the feature interoperability/compatibility issues they mention at the end, but overall it's very cool.</comment>


Remote Buddy Display: screen-share Mac from Apple TV, use Siri Remote to control - <AUTHOR> https://www.iospirit.com/products/remotebuddy/display/ <comment><USER2> This is weird. I have a 3rd gen Apple TV and have been able to use screen sharing to have my Mac screen show up on my projector. The siri remote control integration is interesting, but when you're normally using a wireless keyboard and mouse with a mac anyway, it seems a bit odd to reinvent the wheel.

<comment><AUTHOR> A few ways this is different:

With AirPlay, you can't initiate the connection from your Apple TV. With Remote Buddy Display, you can.

With AirPlay, you can't control your apps with the Apple TV remote. With Remote Buddy Display, you can.

With AirPlay, there is a delay between the physical movement of the mouse and the movement of the mouse cursor. With Remote Buddy, there isn't as the mouse position is tracked directly by the Apple TV app on the Apple TV. This kind of WYSIWYG makes hitting small targets a lot easier.

With AirPlay, you'd need a wireless keyboard and mouse. Most Macs sold today are portables, however, where a wireless keyboard and mouse is not commonly used. And then, there's the range problem. If your Mac sits downstairs and the Bluetooth signal is blocked by the floor/ceiling inbetween, how do you control it with these? With Remote Buddy Display, the Mac, keyboard and mouse can stay out of the living room - and the Macs Bluetooth range does not play a role.

I don't think Remote Buddy Display reinvents the wheel, but in general I'm a big fan of reinventing it, because it's the only way to remove limitations of the previous design. Wheels themselves show this quite nicely. The world would still be stuck with this if nobody had ever reinvented it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#/media/File:Roue_primiti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel#/media/File:Roue_primitive.png) ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sweet.

Windows client please :)

<comment><USER4> Would be amazing if Microsoft made a Remote Desktop app for tvOS just like iOS.

Personally, I just like to have a minimum list of apps to install after a clean install of Windows.

<comment><USER5> I mean, if your laptop or phone have Miracast support you don't have to install anything or buy the Apple TV or remote thing. Maybe just a dongle if the tv itself doesn't support it.</comment></comment></comment>


HaXe 2.08 - <AUTHOR> http://ncannasse.fr/blog/haxe_2.08 <comment><USER2> Something about this gives me the willies... It feels like a language designed on indie game forums for non-programmers who can about wrap their heads around the basics of ActionScript. The value it brings doesn't really make sense for a non-trivial project-- compiling for, say, Flash and <canvas> sounds nice, but in what circumstance would I _really_ want the same code to target PHP, AS3, and C++?

Even the name seems to be saying "Using this will make your game cooler!"

On the other hand, when I say that out loud, I probably sound like quite the elitist... it's not doing any harm to me, and getting more people into coding has gotta be a net good. Maybe I'm just not looking at it right as a programmer rather than someone less technical who just wants to get their game out to as many people as possible. Can anyone set me straight on this?

Whoever is downvoting me is _exactly_ who I mean.

<comment><USER3> Actually I know a Flash developer who used to use haXe instead of Macromedia (and then Adobe) tools because the language and the standard library were better, and also because the produced SWF files were lighter and executed faster. He could avoid paying for the professional Flash tools and saved a lot of money thanks to that (so he made a good donations to the haXe project). This was before ActionScript 3 and I don't know if it holds since. But the point is that it is clearly _not_ "a language designed on indie game forums for non-programmers".

Also, I believe haXe is used for every projects of Motion-Twin[1], the company at which Nicolas Canasse works. That means a lot of good flash games which a lot of people are playing daily.

[1] <http://motion-twin.com/?force=1>

<comment><USER2> Okay, that I totally buy. Macromedia's (and Adobe's) tools were pretty abysmal.

And I guess that answers my question in general, too: It's not supposed to be a general-purpose language, and for casual games specifically multi-platform has a lot more cache.

I'd still like to see the PHP use case, though.

<comment><USER4> Motion Twin, I believe, use it to power their websites - the javascript, Flash game code, server side multiplayer and web site code are all written in the same language. That's ridiculously powerful for that specific use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> HaXe is a great platform. I vastly prefer it to javascript because I am a big fan of static typing. The only thing that irks me about their language is that they have both interfaces and class extension but for some reason decided not to have abstract classes.

This irks me because it seems to be a design choice; they aren't doing it because they haven't gotten around to it, they aren't doing it because they don't want to. I just don't get why they would leave this feature off but still have extension. (I am totally fine with Go, which doesn't have abstract classes but also doesn't have extension).

It's only a minor quibble I suppose, I still recommend developing in HaXe if you can.

</comment><comment><USER6> HaXe is the technology behind the great game Hordes (<http://www.hordes.fr/>, French only unfortunately).

</comment><comment><USER7> Apparently there are technologies that can compile this to C++, javascript + CSS, Flash, webOS, and Android. <http://www.haxenme.org/>

I haven't used this, but javascript + types (with type inference) is very appealing.

<comment><USER4> The tools are getting more and more streamlined, thanks in large part to the guy who built that website. And of course Hugh, who made the C++ output and nekonme, ridiculously cool pieces of engineering (nekonme is basically a rewrite of the Flash API so it can run on any platform).

The first port took me a few months - there was a minefield of GC bugs, libraries that had to be written, etc. The second port has taken about two days - mostly revising my code back to the SVN version of nekonme. Port #3 I am expecting to take a few hours at most.

There's a tool being written that simply spits out an XCode project - it's not far away from being as simple as Unity.

On the other hand, Unity is getting a Flash export option - which is the major benefit Haxe has currently.</comment></comment>