WeWork Gets Tax Rebate Meant for Its Small-Business Tenants - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-20/wework-gets-u-k-tax-rebate-meant-for-its-small-business-tenants <comment><AUTHOR> I provided some of the data used in this article (via FOI-request, used at sqwyre.com).

The scale of the number of the hereditaments (taxable units) is remarkable and overloads local tax authorities. We're talking thousands, with regular tenant changes. Even in central London, there are only a handful of municipal staff to deal with all businesses.

What you end up with is equivalent to a denial-of-service attack against rates authority staff. They're overwhelmed.

That's the real risk to communities. If tax relief claims are industrialised, it puts endless pressure on the services those taxes were supposed to pay for. These are local taxes, so that's libraries, community centres, road maintenance, etc.

WeWork may not be a tech company when it comes to what they're selling, but it is when it comes to how they deal with tax.

<comment> munk-a > If tax relief claims are industrialised, it puts endless pressure on the > services those taxes were supposed to pay for. These are local taxes, so > that's libraries, community centres, road maintenance, etc.

I can understand how the existing system may have issues with this - but the total presence of WeWork definitely doesn't qualify for a rebate... and if the filing rate of the company seems absurd then the government should reject all the filings by that company and fine the company trying to abuse the system.

Unlike computer logic where weird edge cases can be exploited due to the speed and complexity of the system... when it comes to taxes this stuff is going in front of human beings and the government can always bring a hammer down.

<comment><USER3> Government works on law not on what makes sense, if the punishment you are describing is not in the law. they can't do it! and have to process all the filings.

<comment><USER4> _Government works on law not on what makes sense, if the punishment you are describing is not in the law. they can 't do it! and have to process all the filings._

I think just about all legal systems have catch-all regulations that allow for fines for abuse.

Moreover, law isn't actually mechanical rules like computer science - <USER2> who skirt the law systematically often find themselves facing serious legal problems and intention is a big consideration in some (but not all) regulations. "Obstruction of justice", "contempt of court" and so-forth are broad statutes that let courts lean on those abusing the system. etc.

The actual problem, I'd note, is that courts and cities are much more hesitant to go after large, monied interests as compared small interests. A local crank doing what Uber, Airbnb or others do could go to jail, these companies just count their money.

<comment><USER5> A banker mailed a building brick by brick via post office. Was cheaper than standard shipping.

[https://www.ksl.com/article/32424611/vernal-bank-built-by- br...](https://www.ksl.com/article/32424611/vernal-bank-built-by-bricks-sent- through-the-mail-mdash-partly-true)

<comment><USER6> If the postage was appropriately priced for the size and weight of his packages then the USPS didn't lose anything from his clever plan.

<comment><USER7> From the sibling link:

> _This massive shipment was noteworthy not only for its size, but also > because it destroyed one of the Uintah Railway Company 's trucks. The > truck's brakes failed and it started coasting backwards after breaking a > drive chain while struggling uphill, loaded with several thousand bricks. > The truck then turned over and caught fire. The driver was not injured, but > most of the bricks were lost._

I imagine USPS pricing didn't account for that incident!

<comment> crooked-v That one's completely the company's fault. If anything bricks should be much easier to balance across trucks than other collections of shipments, because the shipper knows they all weigh the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a massively complicated and nuanced issue that has kicked around the Supreme Court in the UK.

Here's the game:

1) There are taxes levied on business users of commercial office property in the UK.

2) Independent small businesses may apply for tax relief if they rent a space that has a rateable value of less than £15,000. (1)

3) The intention of this relief was to provide small business users with a fighting chance to be able to afford office space.

4) The "total rateable" value" of a massive open coworking space is obviously higher than £15,000 but if you're a business renting 2 desks maybe you should qualify for the small business relief?

5) Coworking landlords figured out that they could qualify for the tax breaks THEMSELVES if they cut their own properties into dozens (or hundreds) of small plots or pieces called hereditaments.

6) Then in effect you have these hundreds of hereditaments claiming the small business tax and collecting rent from a small business.

WeWork is a slightly worse abuser of the game played by virtually all coworking operators in the UK.

The "coworking" lobby has published a study outlining their view (1).

At the core Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs set up a system that didn't count on the inevitable "enterprise" player paying tax attorneys to abuse them, and the two sides should probably sit down and sort out something reasonable.

But instead they're suing eachother to oblivion and employing armies of attorneys :).

(1) [https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/small- busi...](https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/small-business- rate-relief)

(2) [https://lep.london/sites/default/files/The%20affordability%2...](https://lep.london/sites/default/files/The%20affordability%20crisis%20-%20business%20rates%20aren%27t%20working%20for%20london%27s%20open%20workspaces.pdf)

<comment> munk-a Laws are hard and the legal system is complicated but (4) is where it breaks down to me. If there was a company leasing 100k worth of space in total they clearly shouldn't qualify, if the client is leasing 10k worth of space, maybe they should qualify... if that company mostly closes but has time to run out on their lease which they use by sub-leasing the property then still, _maybe_ they should qualify, their sub-leasors probably should qualify assuming the property isn't marked up in the sub-leasing.

Any company attempting to declare stewardship of multiple hereditaments should have the book thrown at them. Anyone using subsidiary companies to distribute their hereditaments should also have the book thrown at them... I'll just assume the UK got into this weird tax system because real-estate investors tend to have an out spoken amount of power in politics and tend to create some of the most absurd tax loop holes... especially since there is a specific coworking lobby.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Any company with local revenue of over $100 million and world wide revenue of nearly a billion should just not be eligible for tax breaks. It's really just that simple.

Frankly just remove tax breaks completely and make the whole system simpler and cheaper.

<comment><USER10> Tax breaks and similar incentives exist to nudge the market in the direction the government would like. I may not approve, as a conservative person, as I always advocate for a simple flat tax on all entities. But I'm not the politicians who decide they want to incentivize various behaviors in the market.

The real point I want to make is in order to simplify the tax structure, you rob the politicians of their main economic design power. No more tax incentives for solar, high efficiency windows, developing in high crime areas, and the like. I'm willing to pay that price, but are you? (The royal you, i.e. us).

The final point, the real crux of the matter, is that politicians cannot predict all the consequences of the tax breaks they create. If tax breaks exist, people should try to get them, otherwise the whole incentive structure doesn't operate. Then some people who were not intended to get the break find edge cases in the legal language to exploit. If the politicians can't predict all the edge cases of the incentives they design (which they can't) then we end up with things that seem outrageous until you read the law and go "oh, that's the loophole. Shitty, but seems legal.". This is why the federal code is so complicated. People making the tax code more complicated over time to try to specifically target the incentives. Just like a legacy codebase, in fact. Except that it's subjective when you evaluate it.

Edit: typos

<comment><USER11> the other alternative is always to collect taxes in a straight-forward manner and hand out subsidies rather than tax breaks. Not that subsidies are not potentially also subject to abuse, but they seem at least somewhat more robust and controllable than the labyrinth that is the modern tax code.

<comment><USER12> The politics of tax reform are poison as well. There will always be winners & losers with any change, so opponents of change will always be able to say, "this proposals raises taxes on ___." Fill in the blank with whatever polls the best.

Of course politics has zero room for nuance, so we shouldn't hope that the tax code will become simpler in the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER10> Politics has vastly more time for nuance when politicians are allowed to do their jobs instead of being Twitter celebrities constantly on the lookout for the next scandal, both defensively and offensively.

I suspect if we didn't hear from our politicians for 2 years, everyone across the country would like the outcome.

<comment><USER12> Eh, politics was devoid of nuance long before Twitter.

<comment><USER10> Shifting the blame through scandal to take attention away from your failure and ignorance is the longest political tradition of humanity.

But in the days of Twitter, you can't take a breather.

Devoid is an overly strong word. There has never been zero nuance, and there isn't zero nuance today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _> The New York-based company that revolutionized the commercial property business_

Has it?

<comment> munk-a Not only did it revolutionize the commercial property business - it also then proceeded to disrupt that revolution with a counter-revolution.

(And no, it absolutely hasn't revolutionized anything, but when you're a tech company everyone feels obligated to give you more credit for some reason)

<comment><USER14> Except they're not really a tech company.

<comment><USER15> Tech adjacent maybe?

<comment><USER16> In what way?

<comment><USER15> A lot of remote work is tech work, and that is who I would assume is WeWork's primary customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My attempt to read this potentially important article on my iPhone X was murdered by four successive layers of popup screens asking for cookie consent, then a subscription, then 2 advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is a common business model. Eg Terminal.io gets R&D credits for the employees it hires on behalf of other startups.

</comment><comment><USER19> WeWork remains woefully insecure [1] -- IP is likely leaking out of it like a sieve -- and with a real-estate structure that's positioned as a too-big-too- fail [2], what could possibly go wrong...

[1] The Cyber-Insecurity of WeWork – Shared Offices and Cracking WiFi with Weak WPA2 Passwords

[https://www.digitaloperatives.com/2018/10/10/the-cyber- insec...](https://www.digitaloperatives.com/2018/10/10/the-cyber-insecurity- of-wework-shared-offices-and-cracking-wifi-with-weak-wpa2-passwords/)

[2] The CBINSIGHTS research report (WeWork strategy teardown)...

"WeWork's $47 Billion Dream: The Lavishly Funded Startup That Could Disrupt Commercial Real Estate"

[https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/wework- strategy-t...](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/wework-strategy- teardown/)

<comment><USER20> Re: The Cyber-Insecurity of WeWork – Shared Offices and Cracking WiFi with Weak WPA2 Passwords

Sorry, but the password complaint is just ridiculous. What's exactly the point of a strong password if it's still shared with a million (or whatever) WeWork members across the globe, and could easily be figured out by simply asking just about anyone (of course, noone actually remembers it, as you only enter it once), or by taking advantage of one of the many ways to get a sample of the offering?

They list [https://www.xkcd.com/936/](https://www.xkcd.com/936/), which is indeed a great one, but what WeWork should reply to them is this, [https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/), which is the truth.

<comment><USER19> Both practices are bad. Sharing passwords and weak passwords is doubly bad. Don't do that. A $47 billion company like WeWork should know better.

<comment><USER21> Yep. If WeWork is pushing free WiFi and framing themselves as a "psuedo-tech company", they should also be heavily advocating VPN usage their "members". Not doing so means they are probably eavesdropping.

<comment><USER20> What you say makes no sense — why would they advocate for you to use a VPN such that a third-party could eavesdrop on your communication, when they already provide a business-quality connection through a business carrier?

I am not aware of any issues using a VPN at WeWork; it works great; I'm sure lots of businesses use it, too. It especially works great because there are no stupid captive or landing pages like you get at so many other places, and the password just works, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So as I understand it, tennants _should_ be able to request the money back from Wework?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. If I were a WeWork tenant and would ordinarily qualify for the Small Business Rates Relief, I'd be asking them about that...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me of when I worked overseas for Lucent; they hired an accountant who tried to file such that they would get a tax deduction that was supposed to go to the employee. Fortunately IRS saw through that shenanigan.

</comment><comment><USER24> Like Theranos, WeWork is a company that just seems to be one grift on top of another, getting away with it by doing it in plain sight.

<comment> munk-a WeWork trying to sell themselves as a billion dollar company seems pretty overambitious, but I don't think it's anywhere near the level of repeatedly lying about actually doing business and the progress of research and development.

If WeWork were filling with S1 never having actually rented out space in practice - then they'd be like Theranos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> there should always be penalties for abuse, e.g. dosing people with GDPR takedowns

</comment><comment><USER26> In return for offering tenants flexible month to month office space at heavily discounted rent, WeWork get's the business tax break. I don't see any reason for outrage.

<comment> munk-a Here's the specific way they're accomplishing eligibility from the article:

> Here's how the tax arrangements work: WeWork divides each of its properties > into dozens or even hundreds of individual areas. Each of those spaces, > known as hereditaments, is then separately assessed for tax purposes.

> That allows the company to claim back the taxes on any area that is empty or > small enough to be eligible for relief if they are occupied by a small > company with no other offices.

I feel like pretty much any company could qualify under these conditions, if you declared your office building a desk access pool and declared income on each segment as an individual employee. It seems super weird that WeWork should be able to consider contiguous office space as separate isolated offices.</comment></comment>


Credit card breach at Kmart despite using chip and PIN technology - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/05/credit-card-breach-at-kmart-stores-again/ <comment><USER2> The HN headline is click bait. Using chip and pin doesn't prevent breach of the payment system. TFA even states the breach most likely only affected mag stripe cards, not chip cards.

Edit: I clicked to see how the chip was compromised and was sorely disappointed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I was trying to convey that Kmart had the upgraded card terminals, which should mean point-to-point encryption of all cardholder data (including mag-stripe), but couldn't figure out a way to fit that into a headline in a way that people not familiar with payment systems would understand. This story is quite interesting to me, because my understanding was that terminals which support EMV must be point-to-point encrypted, so the cardholder data should not have been available to any system between the card terminal and the host/bank.</comment></comment>


Theia: Cloud and Desktop IDE - <AUTHOR> https://theia-ide.org/ <comment><USER2> Theia developers: The Eclipse brand in the IDE/code editor world is toxic to many developers; You may want to disassociate Theia from Eclipse if you're hoping for wide usage or pulling devs away from VS Code.

<comment><USER3> While I understand your point about "Eclipse", as a long time open source web developer, macOS user who has had to work at times with Microsoft servers, I did not think the best of "Visual Studio"

Now I spend much of my day in Visual Studio Code.

<comment><USER4> I worked professionally with VS doing Windows app development in C++ and I found it super powerful, especially for handling our 20 years old gigantic codebase. I don't get the hate, and I spend most of my days in Emacs nowadays (doing more research-y coding). Yes, it's huge, but it's huge because it is full of powerful tools for developers.

<comment><USER5> I think hate for giant IDEs & their corresponding resource consumption will generally come from devs who don't need all the features, or who have the usage of the features forced on them by their org when they may not be needed or there are more lightweight alternatives outside the IDE.

It's kind of an even-more-resource-intensive Microsoft Excel - almost no one needs all the features, but they all need a different subset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think many people are missing the point that this doesn't appear to be a finished product ready for developers to use. It looks like Eclipse's goal is to make a foundation that others can customize for their purposes, building off of what VSCode has already done.

That's not to say this is a good idea or not, but I think all the comments asking "Why would anyone switch to this from VSCode" are missing the point.

<comment> core-questions > I think many people are missing the point that this doesn't appear to be a > finished product ready for developers to use.

It's absolutely a finished product, GitPod is the commercially available (and white-label-able) version, people are productively using this today, including using VSCode addons and writing their own.

> "Why would anyone switch to this from VSCode"

Imagine preparing a Docker image of everything reasonably needed in your dev environment, and then giving your developers one click access to be totally set up with company-standard configuration. The IDE goes from wild-west everyone working their own way, to something that can be supported, where new devs can be brought up to speed in days instead of weeks, something with real consistency.

<comment><USER7> You ever see one VIM or Emacs user try to use someone else's setup? I'd be shocked if there were any productivity gains... this seems like something that managers want to say but is disconnected from reality.

<comment><USER8> I made the mistake of recommending standardization of development tooling at one point. Not one of my finer moments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd really loved this a few years ago; but now VS Code's "Remote" extension helps most of my issues. It's just brilliant that I can do e.g. embedded dev on a physical Linux box while running the IDE on Windows.

<comment><USER10> Same here! I remember I found it such a pain that the embedded toolchains were mostly exclusively for Windows. I dabbled around with cloud9 IDE for a bit, but it wouldn't fit my workflow.

Nowadays the WSL basically made Windows my all-in-one development environment. My stack is WSL, docker and Jetbrains IDEs (but the latter is just a matter of personal taste). I haven't touched my Linux desktop in over a year.

Personally, for my workflow, I no longer see a benefit in running a cloud IDE. But maybe that for junior or aspiring devs a cloud IDE will make it much more easy to get started.

<comment><USER9> WSL doesn't have access to USB device (well, you can make it work more or less, but it's a pain). So the remote extension is great in this case.

<comment><USER10> That is the point that I was trying to make: I used to work on Linux and spinning up a virtual machine to run the Windows tools (USB was also a pain with that).

But now, thanks to WSL I have turned that around. I now run Windows so I can run the windows-only debuggers natively, and still have all the unix tools available through the WSL CLI.

Admittedly I do not do much embedded development anymore, but I'm pretty sure I could launch Windows ICD tools from the WSL CLI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We use this in Hackerrank for workflows for frontend/backend candidates. Theia is a great web IDE, specially with it's LSP based autocomplete, and VSCode compatibility.

You can try out this demo I put up: [http://hr.gs/theia- demo](http://hr.gs/theia-demo)

When in the test, click on the top right: "Use the online Web-IDE" option to see it. It'll be open for 20 minute sessions for the next day. If you see an "cannot provision" error, it may be the rate limiter, so try post a couple minutes.

<comment><USER12> Could you share a demo link where you are not forced to signup?

<comment><USER11> It's something I quickly put together to showcase what's possible with Theia, given we're actively using them. I'm not sure how to enable what you asked.

Youtube also has a few theia videos which could give you a similar idea on the experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Contributors and adopters: <every large company but Microsoft>

Whilst it's healthy to have competition, I'm not sure a rip-off of VS Code is in the spirit of open source. Did they try to work with the team at Microsoft to improve VS Code before forking it?

<comment><USER14> "Hey Microsoft, we're trying to improve VS Code by moving it over to a not- for-profit corporation not under your control and completly removing the Visual Studio brand. What do you think?"

<comment> core-questions It's pretty fair considering Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish was the MS modus operandi for decades and may yet be.

<comment><USER14> I agree. Just wanted to point out why Microsoft wouldn't be on board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there an advantage VS Code? Any reason why a programmer should switch to Theia if using vscode before?

I found on these 3 differences vs vscode on the website, but for a Desktop programmer I see in these differences no reason to change.

"The most significant differences are: Theia's architecture is more modular and allows for way more customizations, Theia is designed from the ground to run on Desktop and Cloud, and Theia is developed under a vendor-neutral Open- Source Foundation."

</comment><comment><USER16> >Theia is developed under a vendor-neutral Open-Source Foundation.

Eclipse Foundation, IBM. When I was still doing Java the only good thing that ever came out of Eclipse was proberly SWT. And I remember every single Eclipse product they were competing with Sun's default option, and failed to gain much traction.

So while Theia is Vendor-neutral and open source, I think Microsoft is a much better bet on this one.

<comment><USER17> I don't find this a fair thing to say.

Eclipse was/is de facto the standard IDE for Java and JavaEE development, not to mention it was/is widely used as an IDE for C development. You can still find prebuilt packages [0] that quickly get you off ground. I've built commercial products with Eclipse RAP [1] that are still used today. Eclipselink [2] for persistence is also a great tool. Eclipse EMF [4] for modeling - and I've used that A LOT when building databases and model structures for businesses.

I have since then moved to other languages and tools, but much of today's software was made possible by the Eclipse team. And I thank them for all their great work.

0 - [https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/](https://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/)

1 - [https://www.eclipse.org/rap/](https://www.eclipse.org/rap/)

3 - [https://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/](https://www.eclipse.org/eclipselink/)

4 - [https://eclipsesource.com/technology/modeling/#emf](https://eclipsesource.com/technology/modeling/#emf)

(edit: added EMF)

<comment><USER16> >Eclipse was/is de facto the standard IDE for Java and JavaEE development

Was it really de facto? Didn't it lost to Netbeans? I remember there was some rivalry between Netbeans and Eclipse ( along with many other things ) and in the end many sided with Sun ( Netbeans ).

But that was a really long time ago so my memory may be a little fuzzy.

<comment><USER18> Netbeans mostly evaporated along with Sun. In my experience, the only advantage of Netbeans over Eclipse in its heyday was in development of AWT/Swing GUI apps (for which IntelliJ and JBuilder were better options anyway).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Theia is designed from the ground to run on Desktop and Cloud"

Which means it's an Electron app - which means between this and Chrome, it sucks down tons of ram and processing power.

Really hoping Nova from panic.com is as good as it looks / native MacOS app.

<comment><USER20> This Electron-bashing is getting rather old - it's possible to write crappy code on any platform.

Yes, some Electron apps are resource hogs, but many are not. VS Code is a perfect example of how Electron can enable development of a _performant_ , cross-platform IDE.

<comment><USER21> _> This Electron-bashing is getting rather old - it's possible to write crappy code on any platform._

It's possible to write crappy code on any platform, but some platforms (like Electron) make writing apps that don't suck impossible.

 _> Yes, some Electron apps are resource hogs, but many are not. VS Code is a perfect example of how Electron can enable development of a performant, cross- platform IDE._

All Electron apps are resource hogs, including VS Code. Just because Slack made it a standard to ignore the fact that not everybody has loads of RAM and that there are other apps running on the system, doesn't mean everybody's standards of performance and UX should race to the bottom.

<comment><USER20> I strongly disagree, and I have to question if you've actually used VS Code.

I use VS Code every day, and relative to it's capabilities, I think memory usage is good. It also starts almost instantaneously, and is very snappy when using.

<comment><USER22> I am not bashing on Electron, but I have seen slowdowns and memory hogging on VS in large projects (Typescript). I end up restarting it every 3-4 hours to get it back a baseline speed.

<comment><USER23> You're not at all alone, working across several teams of devs and infra engineers people are always whinging about electron apps that eat up resources, kill their batteries and slow down over time, slack and VSCode are prime examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a .vscode folder in the repository, suggesting they might not be eating their own dog food yet but are actually using VS Code to develop Theia.

<comment><USER25> Or, possibly, that Theia is based on VSCode and uses the same config files. I haven't had a chance to try it yet (though I am interested!) but it looks like a fork of VSCode visually: That certainly looks like Monaco editor and somewhat similar to VSCode as a whole, down to apparently being compatible with its extensions.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're 100% correct, Theia supports configuration via a .vscode/ directory, because that seems to be a "standard" way to configure your IDE. (Before you jump, yes it also supports EditorConfig).

Also, Theia indeed uses the Monaco editor, and various other open-source components also found in VS Code. The developers of Theia and VS Code actually collaborate on these.

And finally, Theia fully supports VS Code extensions. There is even an effort to make this IDE extension format an open standard: [https://open- vsx.org](https://open-vsx.org)

<comment><USER25> Thanks for showing me OpenVSX, I am now really invested in checking out Theia! Going to be a real game changer for me if I can self-host this, will try it out in Docker ASAP.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome! And yes, both Theia and OpenVSX can be self-hosted. Please report issues if something is unclear or doesn't seem to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've used Eclipse on and off and always found it to be a bit clunky. Unhelpful error messages coming from the fifty layers of abstraction you did not know about before.

Back in the days, I always preferred netbeans - it was just more of a product, less of an exercise in object-oriented abstractionism.

Today, I am a happy user of vim (and vscode, if I need to) - I left behind the heaps of design patterns, thankfully. What this feels like to me is a trying to jump on a train, that's long gone.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand your comment. What does the IDE Eclipse have to do with Eclipse Theia?

<comment><USER28> People don't understand that one project can have more than one product.

<comment><USER29> The same confusion exists between Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code.

Also, Eclipse Theia could be the name of the last version of the Eclipse Java IDE since they named every major release of their IDE until recently.

Maybe they should have gone with Theia by Eclipse, or just drop the Eclipse in the name altogether.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've come to appreciate web IDEs a lot. It's nice to develop in an environment where every computer with a web browser can be used as your workstation. It restores the exact context that you left behind in your last session. And, since it's usually hosted in big cloud providers, you have absurdly fast internet connection. It's cozy.

However, I'm still evaluating managed solutions, since I'm not so motivated anymore to self-host critical parts of my infra. AWS Cloud 9 is great, but it doesn't integrate the editor with version control and Go support is lacking there (the debugger is really clunky). I've tried GitPod (VSCode based) recently and found it very stable and useful. Maybe I'll go with that.

An alternative setup for a web IDE for vim or emacs users would be, in my opinion, an in-browser terminal hosted somewhere that gives you secure authentication and access to your server. A big plus is to implement it in such a way that the machine will turn on automatically when you access your site-terminal, and auto shutdown if it remains idle for a period of time. This makes it very cheap to host on big cloud providers, which usually charge a lot for 24/7 machines. This feature is built-in on both Cloud9 and GitPod.

<comment><USER31> >An alternative setup for a web IDE for vim or emacs users would be, in my opinion, an in-browser terminal hosted somewhere that gives you secure authentication and access to your server. A big plus is to implement it in such a way that the machine will turn on automatically when you access your site-terminal, and auto shutdown if it remains idle for a period of time.

You basically just described cloud console in GCP. It's pretty slick.

I wouldn't use it as an all-day IDE, but it's more-or-less what you just described.

<comment><USER30> Good to know! I've been willing to try using GCP more for my projects. Now I have yet another reason :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> See also: [https://coder.com/](https://coder.com/)

<comment><USER33> Indeed, and they have this tool [https://github.com/cdr/code- server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server) which is pretty much like vscode in a web browser launched through a potential remote server. Is Theia any better?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is it just me or did anyone else feel this was a VS Code on the web?

The UI reminded me more of VS Code than Eclipse (from when I last used it).

<comment><USER35> Yes it is [https://microsoft.github.io/monaco- editor/](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What is Theia better for than Visual Studio code or Atom or any other of this new trend of build-a-bear IDEs? I _like_ Eclipse and the Eclipse foundation (hey, they rocked the whole IDE game back then, and make a decent one nowadays too), but I cannot understand where this particular project sits.

<comment> jagged-chisel In the browser. That's where it sits. VSCode does not.

<comment><USER36> Nothing prevents you from chucking [https://microsoft.github.io/monaco- editor/](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/) on a random page tho. Is the value add the fact that there's a server component behind it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This was discussed a few days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738607), although the submission was a press release.

A bit from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19466001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19466001)

A thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14687858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14687858)

</comment><comment><USER38> I would like to use gitpod but it doesn't let you configure the editor to your preferences. Instead, it's project-based which I think is way less useful: [https://www.gitpod.io/docs/config-editor/](https://www.gitpod.io/docs/config- editor/)

</comment><comment><USER39> When I saw that it was actually called Eclipsed Theia, the first things that come to my mind was some sort of java applet running eclipse in the browser. It is actually better than what it sounds... Hopefully the can grow up on their own outside of the eclipse foundation.

</comment><comment><USER40> I want to try switching to Theia from code-server, since it seems to offer a more polished web experience.

Unfortunately, I heavily rely on the VscodeVim extension, which doesn't work in Theia because it hasn't implemented some commands like "editorScroll" yet.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder which truly free and open-source IDE is a good choice if you want to be able to run it locally and develop in several languages - C, C++, Go, PHP, Python, Jython, Ruby, Haskell, C#, Java, Kotlin, R, ...

</comment><comment><USER42> VSCode finally runs on *BSD!

</comment><comment><USER43> Is there anyone working on advancing CitCs in the open source space? Having some work flow like that would really improve my productivity and the safety of my code/deployment scripts.

</comment><comment><USER44> this thing looks so similar to (and dare I say, a blantant rip off of) visual studio code that to me there is no reason to use this over visual studio code. plus, may i state, that the second i saw eclipse i vomited in my mouth a little. i've had such bad experiences in the past with the entire eclipse family of editors that i just cringe when i even hear the word eclipse, which is disheartening when lunar cycles are aligned.

</comment><comment><USER45> What is the business model here? No sign of seed funding or anything like that; technical leadership team

<comment><USER46> I think it looks like an open source project...

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> So it is also Electron based IDE just like VSC? What is the point in making VCS copy then?

<comment><USER35> They selling it

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> the only advantage this might give teams is remote workspaces. I don't think any developer would set it as the default IDE on dev machine

</comment><comment><USER49> Looks like a complete rip-off of VS Code. They couldn't even bother to use a different color scheme or icons?

<comment><USER50> It is a IDE toolkit. You're supposed to use it to build your own as can be seen in the "Arduino IDE Pro".

They've used monaco[1] which is the editor part of VS Code for their project but Theia apparently is easier to work on a cloud and customize.

[1]: [https://microsoft.github.io/monaco- editor/](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/)</comment></comment>


24 years on - The man who saved millions of lives - <AUTHOR> http://maltastar.com/pages/msfullart.asp?an=15214

<comment><USER2> Here's an interesting list of other World War III close calls: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III#Historical_close_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III#Historical_close_calls)</comment>


Was YouTube down? What happened here? - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/GjbjENL/new <comment><USER2> I've seen this happen like twice or maybe three times before. They always fix it pretty quickly too.

Does anyone even know where to send that error log too?</comment>


How One discovers the API for a COM-exporting application (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/How+one+discovers+the+API+for+a+COM-exporting+application <comment><USER2> The best way is to use Visual Basic 6 and add a reference to the DLL or EXE. Turn on hidden items in the Object Browser and play around!

<comment><USER3> That's convenient. I wonder if pentesters/security researchers know about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just ran across a COM interface in the MOST unexpected of places:

Apple's CoreMediaIO CFPlugIn video capture device plugin interface!

[https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX- SDKs/blob/master/MacOSX10...](https://github.com/phracker/MacOSX- SDKs/blob/master/MacOSX10.7.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreMediaIO.framework/Versions/A/Headers/CMIOHardwarePlugIn.h)

        /*
             File:       CMIOHardwarePlugIn.h

             Contains:   API for the CFPlugIn that implements an CMIO driver for the DAL from user space

             Copyright:  © 2004-2010 by Apple Inc., all rights reserved.
        */

[...]

        /*!
            @method         QueryInterface
            @abstract       The IUnknown method for finding an interface on a CFPlugIn type.
            @param          self
                                The CFPlugIn type to query.
            @param          uuid
                                The UUID of the interface to find.
            @param          interface
                                The returned interface or NULL if none was found.
            @result         An error code indicating success of failure.
        */
            HRESULT
            (STDMETHODCALLTYPE *QueryInterface)(    void*   self,
                                                    REFIID  uuid,
                                                    LPVOID* interface);

BUSTED!

[https://github.com/lvsti/CoreMediaIO-DAL- Example/blob/0392cb...](https://github.com/lvsti/CoreMediaIO-DAL- Example/blob/0392cbf27ed33425a1a5bd9f495b2ccec8f20501/Sources/Extras/CoreMediaIO/DeviceAbstractionLayer/Devices/DP/Base/CMIO_DP_HardwarePlugInInterface.cpp#L98)

<comment><USER5> Apple's CoreFoundation has used COM since 1.3... and CFPlugIns[0] are the ones that implement them.

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/CoreFoundation/Conceptual/CFPlugIns/Concepts/com.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In our company we focused on edge cases where you need to intercept existing or hidden COM interfaces.

You can take a look at the following software (including source code):

RemoteBridge: [https://www.nektra.com/products/remotebridge-automation- engi...](https://www.nektra.com/products/remotebridge-automation-engine-for- java-and-com/index.html)

Deviare: [https://www.nektra.com/products/deviare-api-hook- windows/](https://www.nektra.com/products/deviare-api-hook-windows/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The API of a COM object is described in a Type Library file (.tlb suffix).

This is is not necessarily available for every COM object.

COM objects intended for use with C++ work without it, because the COM interface is based on calling C++ virtual functions, for which you just need a declaration from a header file.

To discover the API of a COM object without the .idl file or type library, you have to do binary reverse engineering: disassemble the functions linked into the object's vtable.

<comment><USER8> Old style COM is defined in tlb files.

Modern COM (UWP) uses .NET metadata and is stored in .winmd files.

C#, VB.NET, JS(Chakra), C++/CX can use them directly, while with C++/WinRT a source file generator was introduced that generates the necessary boilerplate to access the objects in a C++17 friendly way.

Microsoft now calls to COM libraries without type libraries, like DirectX, mini-COM.</comment></comment>


Strongly Encouraging XCode Lets Apple Switch Architectures - <AUTHOR> http://stevecheney.posterous.com/the-genius-in-apples-vertical-platform

<comment><USER3> _This analysis is not yet mainstream_

Good, because it's wrong.

 _but will add tremendous fuel to the fire that perhaps the A4 is NOT an ARM architecture._

No it won't

 _In fact, it's highly possible that the A4 is a dual core Power Architecture_

No it's not.

If you read other articles from that site claiming that the A4 is PowerPC, it becomes clear that the author came up with the PowerPC theory months ago (before the iPad was released - <USER2> [http://markstechchat.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipad-saga- week-3-a...](http://markstechchat.blogspot.com/2010/02/ipad-saga- week-3-a4-processor-trade.html) for example) and is now grasping at any straw to avoid being wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> The part about mandating Xcode allowing Apple to switch from ARM to something else is a good point.

The part about Apple secretly running iPhone apps under an ARM emulator seems a little crackpot.

<comment><USER5> The article seems to insinuate that everything on the iPad runs under an ARM emulator. It would make more sense that OS version 3.2 running on the iPad is already compiled for the A4 (hence the astonishing speed), and only iPhone- native apps were emulated.

But you're right, it does seem a little crackpot. Couldn't someone decompile an iPad executable and see if it's ARM code or not?

<comment><USER6> It is. Even the kernel.

<comment><USER4> Ah, but that doesn't matter, because they're _emulating_ ARM, you see.

<comment><USER7> The jailbreakers are emulating ARM too? The conspiracy deepens!

<comment><USER4> They could be running the iPhone OS as a hardware-virtualized VM!

<comment><USER7> ...and then it's turtles all the way down!

<comment><USER8> You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

<comment><USER7> Hmm. I just looked through my last 170 days of comments and I found the word "Turtle" exactly once. And it's in this thread.

I don't believe I need to explain the joke. +7 kind of hints that some people agree.

<comment><USER8> You're taking that in a way I didn't mean

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unless I'm missing something, Apple _didn't_ mandate that you need to use XCode. They said that you need to "originally write" apps in C, C++ or Objective-C. You can do that without using XCode, and conversely you can use XCode to compile something that's not "originally written" in one of those languages (by using C as an intermediate language).

<comment><USER4> Presumably you still need to use their compiler toolchain.

<comment><USER9> For the DRM signing stuff, yeah I would guess you almost certainly do need Apple's toolchain. I wouldn't be surprised if you can use other tools to do everything else though - indeed, Adobe was just using LLVM to output ARM assembly for their Flash-to-iPhone compiler.

From the legal side, I haven't seen any requirement that you use their toolchain - again, it's just been the "originally written in" stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Valid point but the author misses the mark a bit. Apple probably won't move away from ARM but instead enhance and mutate their own ARM design. The A5, A6 and beyond could retain 100% binary compatibility but also offer many new features. At that point it would technically be an ARM CPU but to be used to its maximum you would need a compiler ready to support all those new features. In the case of a product like the iPad that was unveiled to the public only 2 months before it went on sale it would be difficult for third parties to keep up. From Apple's perspective sharing this type of information publicly on a reasonable time frame to support third parties could take away a significant advantage they have with in-house CPU development. If you're going to tell your competition 6 months ahead of time what you're doing by the time you ship a product they're going to be less than 6 months behind you.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nobody is mandating XCode. You can use any editor you want as long as your code is C, C++, Objective-C, or Javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed the title. I posted this because it made me think that Apple is truly becoming the most vertically integrated company in the world, from Silicon to AppStore.

In the movie, Objectified, by Gary Hustwit, the legendary designer Dieter Rams (of iconic Braun fame, the electric shaver), is asked if there is any company that _really_ gets design _today_. He answers, after a moment's pause, "Apple".

My point here is Apple is integrating design down to lower levels anyone has done before. Some companies talk about corporate DNA but Apple is going to Jurassic Park levels.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBF1rOxWsxg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't get it. As long as an ARM binary or a 'Super-Secret A4 Architecture' binary is produced, who cares? I can write Objective C code in TextMate and then use xcodebuild from the command line to build a fully functional iPhone or iPad app.

<comment><USER12> Adobe cares, because Flash CS5 only generates ARM code, not secret-crackpot- processor code. In theory.

<comment><USER13> If this was their goal, they could just mandate a specific C compiler. You can originally write in Scheme, translate it to C with Chicken and use whatever C compiler you want to compile the result. There would be no affect on any platform-switching plans Apple might have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was under the impression that the A4 chip had been cut up, put under x-ray, etc and looked to be a fairly standard chip... not a C2D or similar.

</comment><comment><USER15> > This incredible foresight will allow Apple to stay agile and maneuver in the > face of what will be unrelenting competition

I mean, there's plenty of arguments on both sides of it — yay Apple can make changes on a whim, boo my custom-baked solution makes me so productive — but calling it "incredible foresight" is a little overzealous. From Apple's perspective, they want an additional element of control, and to call it a huge breakthrough is a bit magoo.

That said, Apple's not quite the type of company to be overly tied-down in the first place. These are the guys that ripped Carbon out from under a lot of people. Sure, it was clear Cocoa was getting all the TLC, but not a lot of companies would yank an established API quite that quickly (particularly with relative giants like Adobe sitting on it).

<comment><USER16> "Ripped Carbon out"? ... well, yes, but they gave people many years of warning, and still support it in 32-bit mode in 10.6.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sound like bullshit. Apple didn't mandate the use of XCode, they mandated the use of C, C++, or Objective C. They also said you _can't_ use a layer that _generates_ C, C++, or Objective C.

If all they want is for you to use their compiler/linker, etc. then there should be no reason you can't use a tool that compiles actionscript, javascript, lua, etc down to C code which you then compile with Apple's compiler.

Face it, there are _no_ credible explanations for the new TOS other than simply blocking a competitor (ie, Adobe) from having access to your platform.

Frankly, I'm more than a little surprised to see such a pro-free market crowd as HN so supportive of the new iPhone TOS.

<comment><USER4> The free markets argument in favor of the new TOS: it's a free market, and Apple should be able to ship whatever product they want.

<comment><USER18> I don't believe we've heard anyone calling for the government to step in and force them to. But people are free to express why they think its a bad idea, for them and for Apple (in the long term), just as you are free to disagree with them.

<comment><USER4> That's a straw man. Nobody's saying you can't have opinions. I'm just commenting about a particularly flimsy opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The itouch had some undisclosed bluetooth in it that was enabled by subsequent software. Could the A4 chip be housing more than one core? ARM, and something else as well, to be activated by software later? They're already taking a bath on the unit as a long-term investment, so anything's possible.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have doubts that Apple is planning to switch to ARM from Intel if for no other reason that ARM is not 64bit and from what I recall it's not in the roadmap. This works fine for small devices but obviously won't work for anything larger. I doubt a PAE-style kernel is a legitimate option.

<comment><USER21> Why would you need 64 bit addressing on an iPad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Basing their OSs on Unix is what enables Apple to switch architectures rather easily. Moving OS9 to Intel would be a huge undertaking, much bigger than the 68K to PPC migration of OS7, mostly because the huge performance gap wasn't there. By that time, NeXT's environment had been successfully ported from 68K to SPARC, HP-PA and x86 (I can't remember if MIPS was in the lot too) running over at least three different kernels (Solaris, HP/UX and it's native kernel ported to x86). The PPC port and the resulting OSX was one more in a series of successful ports (and built on work that ported the Mach kernel to PPC that ran under MkLinux - I used it).

Having a clearly defined architecture-neutral API sitting over a portable kernel is the way to go. In fact, it has been the way to go in the Unix world since about the time I was born. ARM is the winning ISA this week, but betting the farm on it being the winning ISA forever is just silly.

</comment><comment><USER23> What a load of tosh. XCode is an IDE, not some magical tool that spits out some iPhone/iPad compatible file.

Aside from that, if Apple planned to change architecture then having apps running on a translation layer (Flash etc) would actually be beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER24> The iPad crash reports claim to be ARM. symbolicating an iPad crash report with the wrong architecture would produce garbage.

</comment><comment><USER25> s/XCode/Xcode/g</comment>


Simulating the World Cup Knockout Stage - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2010/06/24/simulating-the-world-cup-knockout-stage/ <comment><USER2> This still depends on rankings. What we've seen in this tournament (and many before it) is that rankings are a pretty poor estimate of actual performance -- or at the very least, there are some outlier results which have perhaps gained notoriety due to their outlier nature.

One problem I would suggest is that ranking are primarily derived from past performance. I'm not sure about the Elo ranking, but the official FIFA one is based on results from the last four years (eight years before 2006!) -- in highest-level football that is way too long.

Perhaps another problem is that there are simply too few games in the tournament for this to work reliably. Given 50 games, a team's win-draw-lose count might be estimated pretty reliably, because a string of three bad games can be offset by a string of three above-expectations games. With only 3 games in the group round, funny things happen to probability.

See: Paraguay with Elo ranking 22, Slovakia with Elo ranking 48, New Zealand with Elo ranking 60, Italy with Elo ranking 7, France with Elo ranking 12.

<comment><USER3> The folks over at fivethirtyeight.com (usually a political-statistics blog) have a somewhat more complex simulation model that adds information about teams' average goal-scoring / goal-conceding, an estimate of home-field or home-region advantage, etc. It also uses ESPN's continually updated rankings instead of FIFA's stale ones. Still subject to a lot of the same problems, especially the small-sample-sizes issue, but it's at least an improvement. See the sidebar at: <http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are just too many variables to predict properly a single world cup match. Things you might not think of right away can completely change the outcome: weather, bad referees (even good referees doing just a bad call), combined strategies, bad player changes, to name just a few.

It's part of the taste of watching football, you can't be too sure about what's going to happen and very often even recent history data doesn't match outcome.

Perhaps this teaches how modeling highly unpredictable events shouldn't be taken lightly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course, there was a paper that came out about a year ago that basically said that of all the major sports, football was statistically the least predictable. Basically this means that you need to change the formula used by the ELO rankings so that it is much flatter than the equation that Wolfram has chosen here. Once that has been done, the error bars on he predictions just sky-rocket.

To give a concrete example from this World Cup; Germany thrashed Australia in their first match, 4-0. Germany then went on to be beaten by Serbia in a closely fought match 1-0, and then Serbia was dominated by Australia in the last round of group matches, 2-1. Other groups have had the world champions - Italy, and runner-ups, France, knocked out of the competition in the group stages, yet none of the current models predicted that either. Makes their value quite dubious, in my opinion.

<comment><USER6> It's interesting that football doesn't use series of games to try to cancel out some of the randomness. It works pretty well for other sports. If two teams go to seven games, you know they are pretty well matched.

It also seems like the group stage doesn't do a good enough job of canceling out random chance. Too many ties mean that too many of the groups came down to who won the final games of the group.

<comment><USER7> Keep in mind, ties are sometimes strategic. Many games this world cup have seen teams playing very conservative/defensive because they were intentionally hoping for a tie.

Side-note, the Champions League and Europa League (where the top teams from each European Country's pro league compete against each other) uses a two-game system, one home and one away. The winner is decided by the cumulative score of the two games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The graphics are either misleading or wrong, the tie-ups for the winners are incorrect... the winner of the USA v Ghana game plays the winner of the South Korea v Uruguay game, but this simulation has Ghana playing Argentina in the next round???

<comment><USER9> > (based on the current top two teams in each group)

It must be using standings from a day or two ago

<comment><USER8> The winner of Group A was always going to play the Runner up of Group B _shrug_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> World Cup is very difficult, if impossible to predict. For example, I was watching Slovakia-Italy yesterday, and in around 95 minute, Italia had a good chance to equalize to 3:3, it was a matter if the player will hit the ball correctly - I don't know how something like that could be predicted.

Moreover, no one expected that Slovakia will play better than in their previous matches, and Italy will play worse than in their previous matches. One possible factor (for Slovakia) could be that the coach and players were angry at Slovak media, which all blamed them mercilessly for a poor performance in the previous two matches - and that I think had more influence on the outcome than any previous math statistics about those two teams. They wanted to show that the media were incorrect and that added an extra motivation.

Where I think this math approach can work is in the leagues, where the same teams play against each other regularly.</comment>


Looking for co-founder - r u a hacker? - <AUTHOR>

If u r a hacker and want to dedicate your time for some good chunk of equity then respond here ... <comment><USER2> Enough, please. This is the third time in two days that you've posted this request. Also, "u r" is not inspiring confidence in anyone.

<comment><AUTHOR> my idea is related to what i'm doing here from last 2 days - in a way i'm testing what clicks!

<comment><USER3> not this</comment></comment></comment>


How much you must earn to buy a home and live comfortably in 78 US cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.finder.com/income-to-buy-a-home-in-us-cities <comment><USER2> If we go by the required salary alone, I cant live anywhere on this list... worst of all I reside in CA right now.</comment>


Sauce Labs Adds Support for Testing in Lynx - <AUTHOR> http://sauceio.com/index.php/2013/04/announcing-support-for-lynx-in-the-sauce-labs-cloud/

<comment><USER2> So ignoring the fact that today's April 1st, this is actually not a terrible idea. It's not perfect, but lynx is a pretty good first approximation of how usable your site will be with a screen reader.</comment>


Show HN: Awesome Corporate Hack - <AUTHOR>

Alright so here's the concept:
You take a mouse, gut it, put some ware on it that installs when you plug it in...
Then, you call up corporate IT fixers ("help desk") and be like "oh man my mouse is broken!"...they come, replace your mouse, and you hope they try and diagnose the problem with your "broken" mouse on their machine... <comment><USER2> Any IT department I've worked with would just throw the mouse away...not worth diagnosing a cheap item like a mouse</comment>


Braille Music and Unified English Braille [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.ukaaf.org/wp-content/uploads/Braille-Music-and-Unified-English-Braille-final-23-April-2019.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> More details on UKAAF site[0]

[0] [http://www.ukaaf.org/music/](http://www.ukaaf.org/music/)</comment>


Meitu, a Viral Anime Makeover App, Has Major Privacy Red Flags - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/01/meitu-viral-anime-makeover-app-major-privacy-red-flags/ <comment><USER2> This is article lies at the holy trinity of clickbait-(and-switch), alarmist bullshit, and a potential for actual investigative journalism being passed up.

Meitu does request a puzzling array of permissions [1], most of which are clearly not necessary for what is a face filter camera app, but mainstream apps (despite, as it says in the article, being backed by "well-known company names which we have already trusted our data with") do the exact same. I fail to see why it's implicitly okay for Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and half a dozen other apps to set cookies, run embedded browsers, harvest location and wifi info, draw over apps, request running apps, and use all of it to serve more targeted ads, while we should be wary of a foreign company doing the same.

Though the concern is not unwarranted, their tonedeaf delivery make the whole thing come off as FUD -- especially once they break out wisdom, and say, quote:

 _" But free apps merit skepticism. After all, they're generating revenue somehow. If you can't figure out the business model, the app could well be collecting and selling some of your personal information to advertising services looking to dole out more and more effective ads."_

There was a potential for a very interesting tidbit where they mentioned that Meitu is supposedly in the Sand Hill program, some kind of project by Google Play for apps that may go most viral, but since they published the story without waiting for a response from Google, right now it's just a teaser with no substantive info.

In either case, apps like this just prove over and over again that mobile permissions (most acutely on Android) are still user-hostile, are designed with unhelpful granularity in ways that lump permissions of different utility and severity into one approval category, and are not an effective tool for users to control their data disclosure while allowing app utility.

[1] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mt.mtxx.mt...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mt.mtxx.mtxx&hl=en)</comment>