Berkeley HS student tried to rig his own election, exposing cybersecurity flaws - <AUTHOR> https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/04/09/berkeley-high-student-tried-to-rig-his-own-election-exposing-flaw-in-districts-cybersecurity <comment><USER2> The perpetrators should be punished by being made to give a presentation on how they automated the process, what poor security practices allowed them to pull it off, and recommendations for preventing a similar incident in the future.

<comment><USER3> Suppose I walk into the neighborhood 7-11, and steal the money from the cash drawer when the cashier glances away. I'm only caught once the tapes are reviewed and they find my license plate. Should my punishment be to give a presentation to the cashier that they should be watching everyone at all times?

Obviously the answer is no. Sometimes, catching someone breaking rules/laws after the fact is sufficient - 100% prevention of a crime before it happens shouldn't be the only way crimes are avoided.

Did the school make some poor choices with their cybersecurity? Sure. But an open/unlocked door does not give permission to steal or break the law, whether that door is digital or physical.

<comment><USER2> Are you suggesting these kids are criminals and committed a crime? Because I don't really see the connection between theft and what this article is about. It sounds like this can be turned into a learning opportunity. Learning seems appropriate for a school setting as opposed to vengeful retribution.

If, as you suggested, you commit theft, engagement with the criminal justice system seems appropriate, but maybe not if you rigged a school election.

<comment><USER3> I'm suggesting the students be punished in the same way as if they had cheated on a paper ballot election. Nothing more, nothing less.

I don't think it's a stretch to think that HS students should know better than to cheat - whether that's on a test, or a school-wide election.

<comment><USER4> That is the kind of busy-body, authoritarian crap that makes children hate school. Kids are there to learn. Given him a talking to, ask him to give up the goods, and move on.

Having been one of them high school hackers, and having been both threatened with jail and simultaneously being given the carrot of "don't do it again, and tell us what you know," the latter is going to produce a better outcome and if the student chooses to pick the former... well you gave them an honest choice.

Most kids doing this aren't malicious, but just trying to learn and have some damn fun. If you just jump straight to the stick, you're just going to end up with a bitter kid with some cybersecurity chops. Not the greatest combination.

<comment><USER5> I don't think I would characterize "attempting to steal a student election via unauthorized use of other students' accounts to commit voter fraud" as "trying to learn and have some damn fun". This was a malicious, dishonest act. Full stop. I think they're getting off easy: just being disqualified from the election and perhaps losing in-school computer privileges. That doesn't seem like it's going to teach them what they did was wrong. More likely it'll teach them to be better at not getting caught.

<comment><USER6> I mean Bill Gates phreaked because it was "fun". The people that do this find it fun breaking into systems. You need to understand who you're dealing with. And understanding the motives of preparators helps in how you should discipline them. At least effective discipline.

<comment><USER5> Obviously I don't know the kid at all, but on the face of it, it appears he wanted to win an election and decided to cheat to get what he wanted. Hardly "just for funsies" or "following the hacker ethos". It's just a morally- challenged kid behaving badly.

<comment><USER7> A student election is absolutely worthless. This is not like stealing money from a convenience store — that has value - it's more like taking home a paperclip from your office once. I see absolutely no reason that someone taking an office supply item home should be treated differently.

<comment><USER5> To kids in school, the election is not worthless. Even when I was in HS that wasn't the case, and the article mentions that with college admissions so competitive now, every edge -- including being elected to a student government -- is important.

Even if it's not _actually_ important, it's the _perception_ of importance to the student that matters. The idea that "it's ok to commit fraud if I think it's something important" is definitely one we don't want becoming widespread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "It just shows that people don't make healthy cybersecurity decisions," said > Stern.

You mean like the administrators of the school? You can set a temp password to immediately expire. What's notable is that even after this incident they still didn't do so, just encouraged students to change the default password during orientation.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. An immediately expiring temp password is the usual workflow for new private-labeled Google accounts. I suppose, though, that somebody thinks middle schoolers can't handle it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Students were casting ranked-choice ballots via a Google Form accessed > through district-provided Gmail accounts

> The investigators were also able to determine that the false votes were cast > from a computer

I bet the real votes were cast from a computer too.

<comment><USER11> Presumably they mean as opposed to s smartphone, which might be the more common way for students to vote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did something very similar to this for my high school's prom queen vote who I wanted to win for teenager reasons. The voting system was just a bunch of laptops in front of the lunch room running a web app and all that was needed to vote was to know a student id. A few hours and some javascript later, I voted more than the entire senior class. It was only discovered after the event.

<comment><USER13> Amanda?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ah, computerized highschool class elections.

I could have rigged the vote to win at my school too, except that I wasn't in the right cliques. It would have been very suspicious if I won, and everyone knew I was "good with computers".

Our program actually saved who voted for who in plaintext. At least I got to see who voted for me.

<comment><USER15> In a situation like this the best action is to install a puppet who you can blackmail. Then use them to push policies you find favorable to you.

<comment><USER16> I don't think student governments get to push policies that can actually help students very much. I don't think school administrations let the student government have any real control whatsoever.

<comment><USER17> It's a puppet puppet.

IIRC, my high school government was very effective at choosing the prom theme and lobbying for a specific brand of crackers in one of the vending machines.

<comment><USER18> The illusion of government power starts young.

<comment><USER19> Government seems pretty powerful. I mean, there's one guy elected by 213k people blocking the entire congress from passing any bills.

<comment><USER16> That may make that one guy powerful, but it makes _government_ pretty powerless...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My HS used birthdate as account password, for both students and teachers, with no option to change! I hope they've updated since.

<comment><USER21> My _bank_ only allows for up to 6 alphanumeric (no special!) characters.

[https://www.bmo.com/olbb/help-centre/en/my-profile/change- pa...](https://www.bmo.com/olbb/help-centre/en/my-profile/change- password.html)

<comment><USER22> Why is this such a common thing? Just about every bank I've used has had one of these issues on their website:

\- Password can't be long

\- Password can't be pasted

\- Password must contain symbols

\- Password can't contain symbols

I even locked myself out of my credit card (AMEX) account 3 times in less than 2 days because they have multiple different password reset forms, but one of them doesn't enforce their password length limit, so I successfully set my password to a password that was too long for the web/mobile login forms.

<comment><USER23>
       Why is this such a common thing?

Short answer I suspect is old systems with complicated dependencies.

<comment><USER24> Even so, you could hash the password somehow in order to produce the number, which then goes into that old system.

<comment><USER23> There are always engineering solutions to such things, but I don't think most of the decisions are made in terms of "it's possible". There is always a risk/reward conversation, and a lot of conservatism in systems currently processing a large number of transaction and/or $ successfully. Perceived risk may or may not be analyzed correctly, mind.

<comment><USER25> You'd think when they have all the money the risk would be really high

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So default password was student ID? Who wants to bet there was a list of names and student IDs available somewhere that made this trivial to automate?

(Or they were sequential with blocks for each class)

<comment><USER27> Or more simply, what pattern do student IDs conform to? I'd be absolutely shocked if they were randomized.

<comment><USER26> I wish there was a name for this kind of thing, because I see it a lot. Something is used a username in one context, then a password/authentication token in another.

(Ex: many libraries use your barcode number as your username)

I suspect the mistake stems from not understanding how passwords are stored.

(Eg: while yes, well set up systems hash passwords, _usernames_ or any other identifier paired w the password are in cleartext, and in many cases huge swathes of the userbase can access them)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm glad to see that it seems the student in question was afforded a measure of process and admitted guilt -- I could easily see the story ending where the weaker opponent casts fake votes for their competition to get them eliminated!

</comment><comment><USER29> The number of responses which go to "...I did this too" are fascinating. I also did stupid things in my past which nowadays would incur severe penalty, as hacking. They felt mild right up to the point I was caught (this is 35 years ago) and then they stopped feeling mild very quickly.

I feel very sorry for people in todays world who don't get the "everybody gets one free pass" on these things we did back in the day. I think we need a clear statute of limitations on some stuff done by minors and near-minors, regarding their future lives. Nobody is going to be eligible for election to senate or the law courts, or to work in federal or state bodies if we don't work out how to deal with this kind of thing.

That said, I am pretty sure rigging an election is a good indication you have need of some ethics. Amusing, but also not a good idea.

This ranks (in my books) with the recurring "we thought we'd make a film about a bank robbery without informing the bank or the shopping mall about it" type cock-up: Actions have (unforseen) consequences.

</comment><comment><USER30> Gosh, I did this back in my high school as a Senior, two years ago. Got myself suspended for two days and ruined my perfect attendance, oh well. It scared the shit out of me when two police officers barged into my U.S. History class and pulled me out.

The usernames of our voting system were our 5 digit student IDs. And the passwords... same as the usernames. I wrote a puppeteer script that looped through 2000 IDs and voted for everyone. They tracked me down through my home IP address -- if there is a next time, I'll definitely use Tor haha.

EDIT: Yeah, the school's VP picked up on it because normally about 40% of the student body actually votes -- but this time it was 100%; plus when student's started signing into their voting accounts, it claimed they already voted. Not my brightest moment.

</comment><comment><USER31> Besides the fact that this "online voting" was immediately hacked, I wasn't fond of the notion that the votes had everyone's name attached.

</comment><comment><USER32> _"When we spotted it, it was incredibly obvious," said Stern, 17. "There were just massive alphabetical votes at random hours."_

Reminds me of an interview question: How would you do a reasonably good job of randomizing an incoming stream of items, while minimizing auxiliary storage?

<comment><USER33> Never heard of this question, how do you do that? Do you mean getting a random sample from an incoming stream, using only O(1) space?

<comment><USER32> I'm thinking of randomizing the entire stream, and getting something that looks "reasonably random" to casual inspection by human beings, using only O(1) space.

<comment><USER34> It's easy if you don't need exact results! For instance if you want 1/2 votes for A, 1/3 for B and 1/6 for C, well you roll a die and vote A for 1-3, B for 4-5 and C for 6 - do this enough times and it'll approximate that distribution!

Things only get difficult if you need exact results OR start doing things to make it "look" random - breaking up long runs of one vote, that sort of thing. (which of course makes it look distinctly nonrandom to someone with a stats background)

<comment><USER32> _It 's easy if you don't need exact results!_\

I didn't mean randomizing the votes. Perhaps I should have written "shuffling." I meant randomizing the order of the stream.

<comment><USER35> Let me see if I'm misunderstanding something about the problem.

1\. The items come in a stream, so you have to accept each one in order.

2\. You have to output a stream too.

3\. You get a fixed amount of storage, much smaller than the stream.

4\. The items are arbitrary and unique, so there is no way to compact n items into significantly less then O(n) storage.

If the stream is large and sorted, you run out of buffer before the input stream gets past 'A'. You're _forced_ to output thousands/millions of entries in a row that start with A. That doesn't look at all random.

It seems impossible if I understand the problem. Is one of my numbered statements wrong? Is there a way to get items out of order? Put items back into the stream? Is there a limited range of items? Getting unique items in order lets me compress the data _very slightly_ , but 25% more storage doesn't fix anything either.

<comment><USER32> _getting something that looks "reasonably random" to casual inspection by human beings, using only O(1) space._

7 (+/\- 2) is the magic number. However, you make a good point. This is highly dependent on exactly how large the data is, and how "casual" the human are.

<comment><USER35> The size of working memory... that sounds like a threshold for taking an already-randomized list and turning it into another one that looks different on casual inspection.

Even with a small size like 200 a shuffler that weak won't do a good job of turning sorted into unsorted, even at a glance.

<comment><USER32> _a shuffler that weak won 't do a good job of turning sorted into unsorted, even at a glance._

That depends on how casual the inspection is.

<comment><USER35> I would expect the most casual inspection to actually be the least affected, since it would be be the most focused on the first letter or two of each entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Schweng said the culture around this election, from the outset, was > different than what she'd seen in the past. There were more reports of > students taking down candidates' posters, and more activity on social media. > Some students suggested to the principal that the stakes felt higher because > colleges are becoming increasingly more selective, and extracurriculars like > student government are consequently more important.

This part was the most interesting revelation in the article to me! It never would have occurred to me as a HS student to "cheat on extracurriculars"! I just did the stuff that was interesting.

</comment><comment><USER37> Nowhere in the article is it mentioned where the student gained access to a mapping of student IDs to student first and last names. As a recent BHS alumni, these ID numbers are not obviously derivable from a student's name (but I do think they are allocated sequentially). Getting access to this list implies some sort of social engineering or threat vector elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER9> Internet voting. What could go wrong?

In my opinion these two have done us all a service by showing what could go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER38> He didn't expose flaws. They caught him.

<comment><USER39> The flaws exposed were of general cybersecurity--they had default passwords comprised of a static string for every student + their student ID, and did not require students to change that default password immediately upon first login.

"If a student does not change the default password, "anyone with access to your student ID number will be able to access and delete your emails, schoolwork, personal documents and anything stored on your Google Drive," Stern wrote in his message to the student body."

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> LOL. Reminds me of LBJ's Senate election in 1948.

</comment><comment><USER41> This kid is going to be fighting off job offers.</comment>


Amazon Prime Will Soon Cost 20% More - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/04/26/amazon-will-jack-up-the-price-of-its-prime-program-next-month/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16936192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16936192)

55+ comments</comment>


A New Business Strategy: Treating Employees Well (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/11/a-new-business-strategy-treating-employees-well/383192/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> Nowadays it seems to me that if Andreesen and other VCs hate the idea, that means it has some merit.</comment>


The Curse of the Honeycrisp Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/the-curse-of-the-honeycrisp-apple <comment><USER2> The article mentions it only in passing, but in 2019 we'll finally see Cosmic Crisps [0] on the market. These are likely to surpass the Honeycrisp in texture, sweetness, and tart. And unlike the otherwise excellent Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisps are not susceptible to sun burn nor bitter pit (brown pits on the apple). I'm excited to try them!

[0]: [https://www.cosmiccrisp.com/the-facts/](https://www.cosmiccrisp.com/the- facts/)

<comment><USER3> I got a couple Cosmic Crisp at a farmer's market this year in NYC. Can confirm they're better than Honeycrisp in every way, albeit they're so sweet and tart that you might not feel like eating that many per year.

I'd compare it to something like a Rebecca's Gold pawpaw, where it's like "this is the best thing I've ever eaten" but you wouldn't really want more than one or two per week during their short season.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this article is about east coast orchards complaining that a plant that was bred to grow in Minnesota doesn't grow as well on the east coast? Well duh. As Karina Gallardo, an agricultural economist at Washington State University was quoted in the article saying "There's a higher investment and production cost in places that are not Minnesota," And yet it seems these orchard still make money off Honeycrisp so I'm not sure why this article was written in the first place.

<comment><USER5> > I'm not sure why this article was written in the first place

It's an inside look, not really news. If you abstract it to "some competitors face challenges meeting changing consumer demands", it's boring. But some people might find the details of the apple market interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have childhood memories of going into the woods around the park to pick blackberries. The flavors to be found in good blackberries are pretty sublime. The other day, I bought a container of blackberries. Somehow, they had been reduced to bloated, flavorless bags of purple sugar water. (I suspect this is why they were a sale item.)

Altering plants for better taste does have a place.

<comment><USER7> November is months past blackberry season, so you are probably buying something picked far away, before it was properly ripened, then chilled and placed in a shipping container for who knows how long.

<comment><USER8> Buying produce regularly, I've been learning exactly this. It's a mindset shift- we're trained that anything can be had any time of year. But the quality difference between in season and out of season is staggering. Except, perhaps, for apples and bananas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just want to say that I spent my childhood eating terrible red delicious apples and honey crisp apples are a revelation and I don't care if they cost $18/pound they're still worth it.

<comment><USER10> The apples I have eaten in my childhood behind the Iron Curtain were so bad I have not eaten any for decades until my doctor almost forced it and then I tasted honeycrisp and I was like "OMFG this is good!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here in Los Angeles your typical store has 6-10 varieties of apple, almost all of them painfully similar.

Braeburn, Jazz, Fuji, Honeycrisp, Gala, Ambrosia, Jonagold, Envy... these are all the same basic apple: overly sweet, hard/dense, not a lot of taste outside sugar. Envy apples are the yellow version of the same thing. Pink Ladies are marginally better.

If anyone knows an LA area market where I can escape the tyranny of obnoxiously "crisp" sugar bombs in favor of Cortlands, McIntosh, Jonathan, or anything out of the ordinary... do tell.

If the Granny Smith wasn't available I don't know what I'd do.

<comment><USER12> Aw man I love the Fuji and never tried a honeycrisp. Are they really similar?

<comment><USER13> I used to work at a grocery store, and actually don't feel the way OP does. Honeycrisp are fairly different, in my opinion. A fair bit tarter, and they have an almost fluffy light crisp texture. They even have a different cellular structure than your average apple, IIRC.

Though I agree that more apple varieties would be good, OP is underplaying the differences between the widely available apples. Growing conditions have a great effect in flavor and texture as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Pink Lady > Honeycrisp (though Honeycrisp is very good).

2\. "The Honeycrisp variety is now so popular, consumers will spend three times the cost of other apples to experience it." Wow, I'm thankful I live in Oregon. Our local grocery store has about 10 varieties of apples on sale and Honeycrisp are usually no more expensive than other varieties.

<comment><USER4> Pink lady better than Honeycrisp? Pink lady's are okay but they are less sweet, not as crunchy and much more dense then a Honeycrisp. Also Honeycrisp are not that expensive if you buy them on sale, just got some for $1.85 a pound in Minneapolis.

<comment><USER15> $1.85 a pound in Minneapolis? Probably cheaper near you because they're grown closer to you.

I rarely see them for that cheap a cost in the bay area. I think I've seen them as low as maybe 2.20/lb but that's it.

<comment><USER16> Just be glad you're not in the Midwest where your options are "red", "yellow", and "green"! Red delicious are truly a crime against horticulture!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _at a certain point the consumer doesn't want to buy an apple the size of a > grapefruit_

Um... yes I do. Is the Honeycrisp itself not sufficient proof that apple growers have had absolutely no clue about what consumers really wanted, for decades? In the same vein, where have all the honkin' big seeded watermelons gone? You remember those, back when they had big black seeds, and _actual flavor_? Don't blame the consumer for not wanting to buy things they can't find in the store any more. The truth is that the apple infrastructure cannot pick and ship fruit that size, so they refuse to try, and then they blame the consumer for their choices.

It bears repeating that the first Honeycrisp tree was _thrown away_ , without anyone ever tasting the fruit. Even now, remedying that error has basically led to just _one guy_ tasting _all the apples_ , to the point where he has to use special toothpaste to save his teeth from the malic acid, and making the clone or cut decision based on that one bite.

> _The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it's all consumers, and > therefore supermarkets, want._

This is patently false. I frequently pass up Honeycrisp for other varieties (Fuji, Gala, Pink Lady), because the latter are $1.29/# and the former is something insane, like $3.59/# . I like Honeycrisp, but not three times more than other firm, tart apples. And I don't want Honeycrisp to be my only option for table fruit.

How often do we have to remind growers that monoculture is stupid? Stop cloning Honeycrisp everywhere just because it's a sure sale, and try out some new varieties. If it fails as a table variety, you can always make hard cider, or applejack, and sell it to Millennial hipsters.

<comment><USER18> Do you have any idea what edible mutualists you could grow with them? I'd bet there is a fungus meant for the rootbed. Having trouble intuiting much beyond that though.

I agree with what you're trying to communicate, I think, but my anecdote from yesterday disagrees with size. I looked at the massive honey crisp on my counter (around a softball's size), but didn't want to have to cut it in half.

<comment><USER17> I want apples that I can fit three in my mouth at a time, that squish like grapes. I want apples bigger than my head, that I can pop into the oven whole, then cut off the top and spoon out the flesh like custard. I want apples that crunch when I bite them. I want apples that splat when I throw them. I want apples that taste like cherries. I want apples that taste like pears. I want apples that taste like different kinds of apple when you bite opposite sides of the fruit. I want apples that stay the same color when you cut them up. I want apples that are already fermenting by the time you get them home. I want apples that shrivel up all winter into little wrinkly apple-raisins, and then still taste fine in spring.

What I don't want is one apple that's one size fits all. Because the last variety they tried for that was Red Delicious, and it is the worst named variety of apple I have ever eaten. The only way to get worse is to try naturally pollinated grown-from-seed apples, and even then you have to be very unlucky with your pick.

Apple farmers tend to graft the variety clones onto dwarfing rootstock, to control for height and branching, so it's likely that any mutual crop would work just as well for any kind of apple. I seem to recall that someone was trying to get truffle to grow in apple orchards, but I don't remember seeing anything about it actually being successful.

<comment><USER19> _Ode to Apples_ <USER17>
HN, 11/18

That paragraph would make a nice children's book with the right illustrator.

The narrator would get older each page until he was eating the rais-apples with no teeth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Variety and regional specialty are good! This article seems to be complaining that things grow well in one place and not another place. Breed your own apples then!

There aren't any apples besides honeycrisp that I __know __I like for eating out of hand. The market wants better produce all around and most things you find these days were bred for qualities that are good for the supply chain instead of the taste and health of the consumer.

If the apples everybody likes don't grow well in your climate, fund research into finding new varieties that do.

There's no "curse". The best things will not suit everybody's tastes or needs. In fact it's a pretty good indicator that you're doing something right if some people really don't like it.

<comment><USER21> >There aren't any apples besides honeycrisp that I know I like for eating out of hand.

Really? I can think of a few just off the top of my head, ambrosia, gala, pink lady, spartan, fuji. I'm not really even that into apples.

<comment><USER22> How did you leave Granny Smith off that list?

<comment><USER23> I remember loving Granny Smith back in the 1990s. Now they just don't have the same flavor. They're pulpy instead of sweet.

<comment><USER24> I suspect it's "improvements" in storage that are to blame. All Granny Smiths are clones from the same tree, and they were grown successfully in many different places, so I don't think climate is the problem. Probably it's some new storage technique that lets them keep longer without rotting, at the expense of taste/texture. I see problems with bananas too that I think have the same cause, where they turn directly from green to brown, and I don't remember that happening ten years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Target has 3lb bags of honeycrips at consistently low prices $2ish/lb. It is because they're smaller apples than what you get in the "pile-o-apples". But this works great for us because we have small kids and they can't eat a huge honeycrisp anyway.

If you really like a big honeycrisp but are more price conscious, I think the Braeburn is a damn close comparison for a much more reasonable price. And they're available at all the stores around me in Iowa. Just stick with the ones that still have a fair bit of yellow/green spackle and not too much or too deep of the red color. Too much red ends up being slightly less crisp with much less tartness. That is kind of true with honeycrisp but it is really true with Braeburn.

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://skillcult.com/](http://skillcult.com/) has an amazing set of blog posts and videos about a whole range of obscure and interesting apple varieties. He's talked about apples that taste like fruit punch, bananas, anise, spice, etc. The range of possible flavors that apples can express is pretty amazing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Personally, I'm a big fan of Fujis. And nothing beats a good Red Delicious if it's fresh. I know that Red Delicious is reputed to be the White Zinfandel of the apple world, but I like 'em, and I don't care what the apple snobs have to say about it. (Or the wine snobs either, for that matter.)

<comment><USER28> You get a couple mealy dry red delicious and it just makes to scared to keep trying them.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, I totally agree. That's why I hedged with "if it's fresh."

You can actually tell the quality of a RD by pressing on them with your thumb. The mealy ones will give. The crispy ones won't.

I suspect even a honeycrisp will get mushy if you let it sit on the shelf long enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Here in Los Angeles (Specifically Sunland Produce in Sunland) Honeycrisps are available nearly year around for 99 cents a pound. Not on sale. It's insane, I've lived all over the place and the price actually shocks me every time i go in.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you're in the Northeast, you should try a Macoun apple. More tart than Honey crisp, it's a cross between a Macintosh and some more crisp apple.

I never had one until I moved to New York but now it's my favourite variety.

<comment><USER31> I just have to second this. Macouns are sublime. They peak in late fall in the northeast. Their fragrance in the cold New England fall air is the definition of November to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just came across Smitten apples and they are also crunchy, sweet and tart like the honeycrisp. [https://www.smittenapple.com](https://www.smittenapple.com) In California even these new apples are relatively cheap, i never pay over 1$/lb Those who complain about red delicious simply do not know how to pick them. I often pass over them if they are not hard with tight skin. Put them in the fridge and they can be great. In fact I put all my apples into the fridge, it extends their shelf life about 2-3x.

</comment><comment><USER33> Pinata apples are my favorite ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinova](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinova))

Honeycrisp have been on sale a lot lately (99 cents a pound a week ago)

Honeycrisp is good, but it just seems sort of hollow and doesn't really leave you feeling any fuller at the end. It also doesn't seem to have much depth of flavor. It's just sweet.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Envy" is my personal favorite.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow sounds like they're talking about JavaScript frameworks.

A few good years then on to new hotness. Think of all those poor red delicious trees.

</comment><comment><USER28> But damn they're good! We're overflowing with honey crisps and fresh cider this time of year, its beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER36> No love for Cortlands here? Incredible.

I'm one of those who don't understand the appeal of honeycrisp, I guess I prefer soft-fleshed apples.

<comment><USER37> +1 I got a batch of local (Atlantic Canada) Cortlands and it was a revelation. They're amazing in salads too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Honeycrisp is fine, but I don't love the trend of Apple varieties that taste like jolly ranchers (super sweet and crisp - see also Pink Lady or Jazz). Old fashioned apple varieties like Macintosh and even Red Delicious can be great in season from local farms - I had a Red Delicious today I would take over any Honeycrisp.

I have friends who only eat Honeycrisp, I feel old when I complain that it's not a real apple and they should try something else.

<comment><USER39> I don't understand how anyone could feel this way. Pink Lady and Honeycrisp are so much better than Red Delicious they may as well not even be the same fruit. I'll never eat a Red Delicious again.

<comment><USER40> It's almost certainly about location. Maybe there's some climate where good- tasting Red Delicious grows.

I find that Fuji apples in the US are fairly bland, but when I was in Japan I had one from Aomori Prefecture. It was right up there with the best Honeycrisp I've ever had. Crisp in the same way, and just as flavorful in a different way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is one of the silliest articles I've ever read.

> _" Though it succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams, along the way it > became a nightmare for some producers, forcing small Northeastern growers to > compete with their massive, climatically advantaged counterparts on the West > Coast."_

> _Prices for Honeycrisps Can Be 2-3x Other Apples_

> _" So why do farmers put up with the hassle? They simply don't have a > choice. The demand for this one apple exceeds supply—it's all consumers, and > therefore supermarkets, want. So growers are planting with almost reckless > abandon, pulling out old varieties, like the tired Red Delicious, and > putting in Honeycrisp trees—even in places where they don't grow well."_

> _" Meanwhile, everyone is nervously waiting for the day when the supply- > demand equilibrium brings sticker prices down far enough that growing the > Honeycrisp no longer makes economic sense. But it's not likely to happen > soon, said Eric Rama, head of agricultural research at MetLife Inc. Even > though production is increasing at a rapid pace, demand for premium apples > isn't waning."_

Farmers need to grow the things that people want to buy? And it seems like this will be the situation for the foreseeable future, so it's low-risk? And they sell for more?

Really struggling to see how this is a curse... instead of sensational journalism at its very worst...

<comment><USER42> It's a curse if you were a small orchard happily growing another apple variety. No one wants your apples anymore so you have to rip out all your trees an plant new one. (Side note: Really you're grafting new branches.) That's a lot of capital investment for a family business that might have been eeking along already.

And, as the article says, who knows when you'll need to switch to the next variety.

<comment><USER3> > Really you're grafting new branches.

Where does the expense come in for grafting? Isn't the only cost basically the parafilm? I'm not a grafter, but my understanding is that you just take some branches from the varietal you want to clone, cut off the tops off your existing root stock, and then connect the root stock with the twig using some grafting tape.

Unless by capital investment you just mean the fact that you're not going to get more apples for another three years or whatever.

<comment><USER43> Apple trees take years to begin producing fruit. A new orchard is very expensive in terms of labor and the opportunity cost of tying up acreage with non-producing plants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Interesting article on the U of M apples:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/theresabeckhusen/2018/10/06/tha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/theresabeckhusen/2018/10/06/thank- minnesotas-harsh-winters-for-your-honeycrisp-sweetango-and-first-kiss- apples/#61618b476241)</comment>


Spread of HINI (Swine Flu) across the United States - <AUTHOR> http://www.ngpharma.com/swine-flu-us-infographic.html

<comment><USER2> I work as an ER nurse in Silicon Valley. We've actually been seeing a number of flu cases the past few weeks. The Santa Clara county health department is saying that 98% of flu cases in the area are H1N1. For the vast majority of people, it's just runs its course as a case of the flu. We have had a hand full of cases of people ending up in bad shape, but it's a small percentage of the total swine flu population.

So, if you have a fever, cough and runny nose and GI complaints, do us all a favor and don't go to work. Instead isolate yourself for a week. But, by all means, come see us in the ER if you're having trouble breathing or feeling really ill. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> How worried should I be that these people can't even get the name of the strain right?

<comment><USER4> Or how about half of the east coast being considered "north west"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those graphics are misleading because it describes the number of reported cases (doesn't include people who didn't come in or who weren't tested), yet they're putting that number next to general estimates of flu strains.

The most recent CDC press briefing is here: <http://www.cdc.gov/media/transcripts/2009/t090626.htm>

Salient point from it:

"As you may have heard yesterday, we at CDC are estimating that those reported cases are really just the tip of the iceberg. We're saying there have been at least a million cases of this new H1N1 virus in the United States so far this year."

Luckily, H1N1 (why does their graphic use roman numeral I?) isn't particularly lethal at this time, but lots of eyes are on the southern hemisphere.

<comment><USER6> Heh. Doste thou hast HVNII?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the many years I spent in Virginia, I've never been accused of living in the Northwest.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised to see the death rate for swine flu is not much different from the regular seasonal flu (according to the stats given).

wow! the avian flu is incredibly lethal, but I guess it kills its host before it can infect many others.

I wonder what is the most dangerous intermediate death rate that maximizes damage by spreading to a wide population and killing many. Any computational biology geeks reading HN who know the answer?

<comment><USER9> > I was surprised to see the death rate for swine flu is not much different > from the regular seasonal flu

Every human flu is actually an avian flu adapted by swine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Neat, but I wish they had per-capita numbers. I'm guessing Wisconsin would look even more interesting then.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone explain why there have been 6031 cases in Winconsin and only 1 death while New York has had 2583 cases and 52 deaths?

</comment><comment><USER12> Why are NewYork etc marked as "NorthWest"?</comment>


Let's talk about journalism ethics – mine and HuffPost's - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tamarhaspel_4162/lets-talk-about-journalism-ethics-mine-and-huffpost-s-3e83de20892c <comment><USER2> Tamar Haspel, Oyster farmer, James Beard award-winning Washington Post columnist and general nuisance feels - I think - treated unfairly by a colleague.

I needed to stop reading his piece after a few sentences. I didn't even make it to "I could go on. (And I do, ad nauseam, in the notes below.)"... which is way to far down for my taste. Yes, he went ad nauseam.

Also, "Medium member since August 2019". Yeah, no. Thanks.</comment>


Ask HN: Why not prepay groceries? - <AUTHOR>

Standing in Costco I suddenly had an idea that seemed like good fodder for a Hacker News thread. To put it simply, why not prepay groceries? I know my food budget each month and I know where I liked to shop. Why not simplify things a little bit? I"ll pay up front each month and maybe in return I get better prices, special programs, etc. Thoughts?
Prepay groceries seems like it could be an ideal solution for grocery stores. They then have predictable fixed income, they eliminate credit card fees which eat away their profits, they increase customer loyalty, and they have the ability to potentially offer more customized and personalized service to consumers. I'd imagine it working one of a couple of ways:
1. I sign up and I setup an automatic withdrawal for 75% of my grocery budget each month ($300). If I don't spend all of the $300 it rolls over to the next month, but I can't get a refund. Funds that roll over could either reduce the current month's withdrawal or perhaps a 5% bonus could be added to the amount as incentive.
2. I sign up for set my $300 withdrawal and the store gives me a bulk buyer discount (say 10% off any prepay purchase).
As additional incentive the company could provide highly customized newsletters (exotic fruit month, come in for free samples and discounts), interactive website, in store and online classes, ask a grocer Saturdays, etc etc. Basically specialize in quality, variety, and geek services rather than marketing and loss leaders. <comment><USER2> I had the same issue which I think is, you don't want to waste time standing in line shopping. I found this (shopping for food) was a huge waste of time in my cooking workflow, so I hired someone to cook for me (won't spam it here, it was on hacker news before when I blogged about it - much to my happiness and genuine surprise)

One thing I have been wondering about is a grocery delivery service, and make it very specific - Costco groceries only, on a certain day a week, and perhaps say no especially bulky items (case by case basis). It seems to me if I could get maybe 5-10 people interested, it would be worth someone's while with a truck (and a couple friends) to go do our shopping while they are shopping anyway.

In my mind, shopping takes time as follows: Driving + Physically walking around store to get items + waiting in line + Payment + load car + Drive home

If one person did all the shopping for multiple people and had a close by rendezvous point (for the clients to pay/pick up their food), both driving times and time waiting remain constant. Walking around the store will increase slightly, as would payment and load time (since more items must be rung up and loaded)

It seems to me though that this increase in time required may be on the order of 10-15 minutes per client. If I am willing to pay 5-10 bucks for this service, you could make an easy 20-100 bucks an hour, or probably ~50ish on average.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the general idea, we shop at the same place every week and would use something like that. Value cards are coming pretty close to all this (including customized newsletters).

People are still trying online, too:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and- save/details/index.ht...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and- save/details/index.html)

<http://www.alice.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> For the budget conscious - having to commit a set figure each month might not be an appealing option (they're already locked into rent, electric bills, etc). For the not-so-budget conscious, the discount might not be worth the effort to set up this system and lock yourself to one grocery store chain (people like variety - one week Safeway, the next Trader Joe's). The grocery- space does need improvement though - who knows maybe it could work?

</comment><comment><USER5> Wouldn't work for me because I shop at different places depending on when I have time to do the shopping: over lunch, after work, on the weekend, etc. Even then, "after work shopping" varies depending on if I go straight home, or have to pick up my son from after school daycare.

The store would have to offer pretty steep discount before I give up that flexibility.

What kind of "geek services" would a grocery store offer?

</comment><comment><USER6> Good idea. Grocery chains love loyalty programs. Though, grocery margins are thin. It would be difficult to profitably give substantial-enough discounts to lure people into the program. The numbers you've cited like 10% are too high.

</comment><comment><USER5> On a related note, how many of you still have value cards? In the MSP/Twin Cities area, they're unheard of from what I can see.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can have pre-set baskets in PeaPod.</comment>


Which sites are down because of S3 outage? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Is It Down Right Now is down

<comment><USER3> How do you know it's not just on your end?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> SmugMug, Trello, Voluum, Basecamp, BackPack, Campfire iCloud Backup, Buffer,

</comment><comment><USER4> Soundcloud was earlier, just some tracks but interestingly not all.

<comment><USER5> I may be able to shed some light on this. During the dyn outage I really wanted to keep listening to soundcloud, so I spent a bit digging up the hostenames/IPs to dump in /etc/hosts. I found that they were fetching data from two different hostnames, cf-media.sndcdn.com and ec-media.sndcdn.com which I'm guessing stand for cloudfront and edgecast. Never dug deep enough to figure out how they sharded the data, and I'm not even sure both were used for songs (maybe one was pictures, one was tracks) but I seem to recall needing both to play all songs consistently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Getting 503 errors and/or timeouts on s.imgur.com

</comment><comment><USER6> Docker Registry

</comment><comment><USER7> The Intercom bubble is also down on websites. Their dashboard works fine though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Amazon - order tracking

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems like my Wolfram databins are all down. Disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hubstaff, lots of Heroku infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER11> Malwarebytes Forum and RedFlagDeals

</comment><comment><USER12> Stocktwits

</comment><comment><USER13> Quora.

</comment><comment><USER14> STOMT was also down

</comment><comment><USER15> Canvas by Instructure

</comment><comment><USER16> IFTTT.com is down.

</comment><comment><USER17> Trello

</comment><comment><USER18> Strava

</comment><comment><USER12> Edgar

</comment><comment><USER6> Heroku

</comment><comment><USER19> travis-ci.org free builds

</comment><comment><USER20> splitwise.com

</comment><comment><USER21> Typeform

</comment><comment><USER22> Typeform</comment>


Product Zeitgeist Fit - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2019/12/09/product-zeitgeist-fit/ <comment><USER2> This article is literally nonsense, there's not a shred of scientific method or financial analysis or empirical observation in it.

Presumably the team over there is having meetings about they are going to rationalize the impending revelation that they've burned hundreds of millions of dollars in people's retirement funds on indefensible cryptocurrency "investments" and those funds aren't ever coming back.

<comment><USER3> There's definitely something to the energy certain ideas have. Like even if cryptocurrency doesn't work, it had a better shot of getting over those hurdles because people wanted to believe in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah Hollywood has been doing this for decades. It's called timing.

They let particular scripts sit on shelves for years until the culturally correct moment to have them be made.

The same can be true for just about any industry, it's just depends on the cultural landscape of that particular industry.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a laboured way to add something to product-market fit. To add some real meat to this essay, how about some concrete examples for the list of 4 indicators?

</comment><comment><USER6> Wasn't the point of Crossing the Chasm (that other favourite of the VC crowd) that nerds using your stuff wasn't enough to have a successful business in its own right and you needed to reach beyond that to a wider crowd to build something of lasting value?

Unless of course your aim was to build something fundamentally useless but where you could sell a small percentage for an insane amount on investor story time to sustain a donkey deca unicorn valuation to look good on a VC balance sheet ... oh

</comment><comment><USER7> Where is the pzf? How do you tell if there is pzf? How do you know if there is enough pzf?

</comment><comment><USER8> just the age old question "Why now?"

repackaged as nonsense

</comment><comment><USER9> tldr: Timing is important when launching a product, there are a few indicators (he calls "tests") that timing might be good:

\- Nerds use it a lot

\- People use the product despite it sucks

\- People wear t-shirts of the product/brand

\- Most people don't undertand why this product is important although it's obvious to you

For me, these are also truism (as he rightfully calls "product market fit" one in the beginning of the article). I'm not sure if this is actionable or even good advice for entrepreneurs...

Edit: Styling.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is almost hilariously bad thinking. It's the VC filter bubble turned into a kooky VC marketing buzz phrase designed to continue the VC filter bubble. Meanwhile, A16Z's numerous investments in 'zeitgeist' fitting blockchain technologies like IPFS suck hundreds of millions of dollars with no visible success.

<comment><USER11> I was with you until you called IPFS "blockchain technology" which it is not. It is true that people interested in blockchain are also interested in IPFS but this is association, not underlying technology.

<comment><USER12> IPFS itself is not, but the VC investments into it are basically all tied to blockchain things around IPFS. E.g. a16z invested into Protocol Labs' Filecoin - which funds IPFS development, but IPFS alone would be uninteresting to VCs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Valid way to look at the world through the VC lens. I recently launched Nocs (nocsprovisions.com) - a styled, branded update on the age old product of binoculars, small and high quality built for the traveler/weekend warrior nature explorer in mind. There was not one pure target market, rather it just seemed aligned with the consensus to disconnect and "go outside and explore nature" vibe that exists in SF and the coastal cities today. Designed product, built brand + product, shipped XXXX, build more! Not in much of ways for scale but a fun adventure in PZF.

<comment><USER14> Just FYI: Your domain doesn't seem to work without www in front.</comment></comment>


Samsung swipes 95 percent of total industry profits earned from Android phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/samsung-collected-95-percent-of-q1-2013-android-profits/

<comment><USER2> Coupled with the recent news of Samsung "buying" popular apps (at least one thus far) to be available only on Samsung phones, this is really bad news for Google as they lose control to Samsung.

<comment><USER3> Speaking of Google... Why do you think they still chose the S4 as the next Nexus model? Appeasement? Hope that people accidentally buy a Nexus S4 instead of a TouchWiz S4? Intuitively, it doesn't seem to make sense for either company.

<comment><USER4> I would prefer a Nexus software S4 to a Samsung software S4.

I can't see any significant way that it is worse for Google for people to have their software rather than Samsung's.

Although neither S4 justifies the price jump from a cheap Nexus 4 for me.

And assuming some people want a high end "Nexus Experience" phone, Samsung gets more customers this way, than if Google went with HTC.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I was taking it as a given that a new Nexus phone would be announced. So my question was more along the lines of: Why would Google choose Samsung and not support HTC, Asus, LG or its own Motorola instead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The chances of Samsung either making an alternative ecosystem for Android, like Amazon did, or a replacement OS that actually replaces more than 1% of their Android unit volume within three years are about nil.

Samsung takes all the profits because they have both vertical integration and scale. That's the same thing they did to the PC business, except Intel keeps the CPU profit.

I don't know what Google can do about that, or, for that matter, why they should do anything about it at all. Where is the rush of OEMs to Windows Phone? Nobody is offering a better technology at a better price than Google.

I hope there are more viable mobile OSs to help prevent stagnation. But I don't see any of the current crop of contenders knocking anyone out.

<comment><USER6> _> The chances of Samsung either making an alternative ecosystem for Android, like Amazon did, or a replacement OS that actually replaces more than 1% of their Android unit volume within three years are about nil._

I wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions as Samsung already have a replacement OS called 'Tizen'. It's already themed like TouchWiz (Samsung's bastardization of Android) and it already supports Android apps. What's more, Tizen handsets are set to hit the shelves this year[1].

[1] [http://www.osnews.com/story/26865/Samsung_s_future_is_Tizen_...](http://www.osnews.com/story/26865/Samsung_s_future_is_Tizen_not_Android)

<comment><USER7> I'm sure they'd like to do this, and it'd be interesting to see. I still think they'd hit an ecosystem problem even if they can run Android apps though, namely that Google won't give them their apps in Tizen's store. They'd be able to sideload them presumably, and there's plenty of Google Apps packages around the internet, but most consumers wouldn't. Google are killing it software wise on Android and iOS, and it's increasingly looking like an OS without first class Google, not Android, support, is going to suffer.

<comment><USER6> I doubt Samsung could side-load Google apps from a legal perspective. From what I understand, YouTube et al isn't free. You have to be a member of Google's Android license or something; and that's on the condition that the OEMs conform to various compatibility and UI standards within Android. Sorry for the lack of precision there, I forget the exact details of te agreements OEMs have with Android. But the crux of the matter is if Samsung switch to Tizen, Google could easily block their access to Google's Android apps.

As to whether consumers would ever make the switch to Tizen: I'd imagine some might without realising it - not everyone is tech-savvy about these things. But I wouldn't like to comment on the masses. I've tried to predict popular trends before and have been wrong and given how fickle the smartphone market is, I really wouldn't like to make any future predictions just yet.

My point was just that Samsung are, at best, attempting to supplement their Android market, or at worst, trying to replace Android entirely. And that they've already reached the point where they're ready to put their competing OS to market.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant solely from a technical perspective, my anecdote being that I use Android on my HP Touchpad and had no problem finding Google Apps to install, and they work great. Legally though, I think you're right that Samsung couldn't provide them, so they wouldn't be available to the average consumer.

I do agree with you though that we can't really predict future trends, and I guess Samsung are really uniquely positioned as producers of mass market big selling Android products to know what works in Android and what doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems to me that the use of the word "swipes" in the headline (which comes from the article, mind you) is utterly unjustified by the article. It implies there is a fixed Android market share which Samsung somehow took. And it suggests they did something unethical to get it.</comment>