Amazon can be held liable for third-party seller products: U.S. appeals court - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-liability-idUSKCN1TY2HM <comment><USER2> Doesn't seem like a big deal, because:

> _In Wednesday's opinion, Circuit Judge Jane Richards Roth, writing for a 2-1 > majority of a three-judge panel, said Amazon may be liable in part because > its business model "enables third-party vendors to conceal themselves from > the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct > recourse to the third-party vendor."_

Seems like Amazon can just force third-party vendors to reveal their full legal identity to the customer then?

I don't care who's liable as long as _someone 's_ liable and it's fully enforceable within the US court system.

<comment><USER3> It is still a big deal, because customers are going to be a LOT more hesitant to buy stuff if they realize it's sold by a random Chinese dude and not Amazon.

<comment><USER4> And they should be.

<comment><USER5> Not really. Amazon's entire supply chain is filled with counterfeits.

<comment><USER6> Why do you think that refutes sin7's point?

And, if Amazon's entire supply chain _is_ filled with counterfeits, all the more reason why Amazon should 1) reveal who the seller really is, or 2) be liable for the counterfeits.

<comment><USER7> You misread the comment you're replying to, I think. empath75's claim "Amazon's entire supply chain is filled with counterfeits" is intended to mean that parties _other than_ the seller—such as warehouse employees, delivery companies, importers, etc.—are _also_ inserting counterfeits into Amazon's supply chain, such that even products "sold by Amazon" in the strictest legal sense, can potentially still be counterfeits.

Given this, customers should _already_ have been wary of purchasing from Amazon, enough that finding out that they're often purchasing from third- parties shouldn't further affect their opinion (i.e. they should already have as low an opinion of Amazon as if they had already known that, because of the other supply-chain problems.)

<comment> munk-a Most people don't have that opinion though - things brought through Amazon are viewed as being vetted and high quality when compared to items through eBay or Wish - Amazon has made no effort to disabuse people of this conception and I personally think they've worked actively to downplay the role the third party plays in product delivery.

I've also always been a bit curious if amazon might be liable for defective products shipped through their warehouse by virtue of the transfer of custody alone. This sort of business model is quite new (it's worlds different from a flea market) and there are several interesting commercial responsibility questions around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> People think they buy from "Amazon" and not a "marketplace", as it's how it used to be. Even though it's now more or less just a high-valued ebay clone. Hundreds of duplicates, lots of shitty items.

<comment><USER9> I always thought that "shipped and sold by Amazon" means actual Amazon (except for the group binning issue). And "fulfilled by Amazon" means they're holding and selling some other company's stock.

Is this not accurate?

<comment><USER10> I have found that "shipped and sold by amazon" also involves a very high proportion of defective or counterfeit items.

Even with books, there are many copyright-violating counterfeits, alongside many "printed on demand" copies at horrible quality (but not advertised as such) under some kind of shady deal Amazon forced down publishers' throats.

Unfortunately Amazon has driven many alternative vendors out of the market, so it's sometimes hard to find things elsewhere online.

<comment><USER9> I hear this complaint about quality a lot online. But I've been buying for ten years, hundreds of orders. And not once have I had a complaint. The closest I got was a broken Amazon branded space heater but they recalled all of them last week so that feels like an anomaly. So I'm not really sure what to think.

<comment><USER11> I've definitely noticed a huge drop in quality over the years. Depending upon what you order it's safer to go through AliExpress. I wouldn't buy anything that I value my life or my data for from Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The amount of counterfeits on Amazon these days is astounding.

I was a legitimate seller about 10 years ago and I had a competitor buy one of my products and complained to Amazon that it was a counterfeit. My account was suspended and I had no recourse. To this day, I can't be attached to any seller account without it being put under review and eventually banned.

At this point I had 100% positive feedback and I spent lots of time to please all of my customers. My money was held for 90 days and it nearly bankrupted me.

I learned two things from this:

1) Don't base your entire business on a third-party platform. They become your boss and a single point of failure.

2) Fuck Amazon. I hope they get broken up and destroyed by the US government. They abused their third-party sellers for years and then when they couldn't extract enough profit anymore, they were systematically put out of business and pushed out.

</comment><comment><USER13> In the meantime, the top "recommended by amazon" result for windows 10 is counterfeit software sold for half price (at least in Canada). The whole first page of reviews is people complaining about fakes or licenses not working

<comment><USER14> 4/5 stars, all top reviews are "I was provided with a no cost product for an unbiased review" after the cut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was just on Seller Central yesterday and the only current barrier to committing fraud or selling dangerous goods on the worlds largest marketplace is a $40 monthly fee, a bank account, and enough creativity to make up a company name.

I hope this will help crack down on fraudulent product listings as well. There are a lot of bad actors. Youtube and facebook aren't the only major players with moderation issues

<comment><USER16> Every new account requires proof of identity to be verified.

<comment><USER17> So what happens once you identify as Chinese national/ Chinese business, sent some counterfeits for a bit and eventually get kicked off?

The penalty is just no longer being able to sell, nothing will happen with the products you have already sold unless a customer complains.

<comment><USER18> And you can just pay another Chinese person to use their identity to sign up again and keep sending in more counterfeits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't and shouldn't have to care who the supplier is or what kind of agreement they have with the store; I am conducting business with the store. My contractual interactions are with the store. It process the orders, handle payment, shipping, etc.. I don't get how they can claim otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER20> Meanwhile, I can't ever get Amazon to accept liability for the 3 bits of cardboard and a deck of playing cards I received instead of a £209 SSD that was sold by Amazon directly: [https://twitter.com/JamesMcMinn/status/1144537350602678273](https://twitter.com/JamesMcMinn/status/1144537350602678273)

<comment><USER21> Has anything come of this yet? Did you report it yet?

<comment><USER20> Nope. I am still down £209 and have gotten no further. I have:

\- Sent them a video of me opening the 2nd delivery to find playing cards (Literally from opening the Amazon box through to finding the playing cards inside the Samsung SSD box)

\- Reported the matter to my local police, who phoned Action Fraud on my behalf. I've got me a crime reference number from Action Fraud.

\- Signed 2 affidavits declaring what I did / did not receive

I've phoned them numerous times, and twice now that has involved speaking to someone, being put on hold, and then redirected to my own voice mail.

If I was the only person to have received card and a deck of playing cards I could understand their reaction, however they've removed the item from sale because a number of other people in recent days have received the same things [1].

When I spoke to my local police they were extremely confused by Amazon's behaviour. I gave Amazon the details of the officer I spoke to and the crime reference number, but that got me nowhere other that the same boilerplate email.

At this stage, I fear I'm going to end up taking Amazon to the small claims court here in the UK just to get my money back.

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/product- reviews/B07MBQPQ62/ref=cm_c...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/product- reviews/B07MBQPQ62/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_srt?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=one_star&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=1)

<comment><USER22> Optionally phone them one more time and inform them your next course of action is credit card chargeback.

Phone the card you used and walk them through what happened - they should reverse the payment. They're equally liable with Amazon. Edit: There's no guarantee Amazon will keep your account open after this - then again nor is that guaranteed after a CCJ.

Inform your local trading standards office and offer the same evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If sellers can disappear, that's a problem. Amazon should be liable for ensuring sellers can be tracked down and prosecuted. In cases where they do manage to do that, though, should they still be on the hook?

<comment><USER24> Amazon does the entire sales process, collects the money, overwhelmingly ships and warehouses the products, tightly controls listings.

I'm not sure there is any case where Amazon should _not_ be liable. You buy something "fulfilled by Amazon" and at no point in the transaction is any sort of third party involved.

<comment><USER23> Yeah that seems fair. And like an opportunity for an insurance market. It will raise the price of goods on Amazon, but whatever, safety costs money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's about time. I just finished dealing with one of these vendors and they already had a laundry list of terrible reviews showing EXACTLY what I experienced but for bunches of other people. How in the world were they still a vendor?

<comment><USER26> People like you keep buying from them.

<comment><USER25> Bought an item that was supposed to be Prime and it apparently wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is interesting. Doesn't this make comingling a high business risk activity for Amazon? If the item shipped was from a different third party seller than the one billed, Amazon would get sued instead of the third party seller if it turned out to be defective or fake. Amazon makes a rich enough target that I imagine lawyers would accept cases on contingency whereas they might not against random small third party sellers?

</comment><comment><USER28> Good. Amazon has sold me garbage and dangerous products. Example: I bought a MacBook power adapter from them (not Apple branded). When I went back to review it the product page was gone. In 220 volt countries, it would cause all connected touchscreens and touchpads to become unusable, and I got mild electrical shocks from the aluminum MacBook case. If you touched the aluminum laptop body, it felt like it was vibrating with electricity, even if it didn't shock you. (And yes it was rated for the higher voltage just like the authentic Apple adapter.)

</comment><comment><USER29> Anyone with a legal background can you shed light on the ramifications for other platform plays? Is this just because they say its from Amazon or more any marketplace?

<comment><USER30> IANAL, but this is covered in the article:

In Wednesday's opinion, Circuit Judge Jane Richards Roth, writing for a 2-1 majority of a three-judge panel, said Amazon may be liable in part because its business model "enables third-party vendors to conceal themselves from the customer, leaving customers injured by defective products with no direct recourse to the third-party vendor."

For context, concealment is bad here because co-mingling means Amazon doesn't even know which vendor shipped the defective product (and as mentioned in past posts on HN, they also blame the wrong vendor sometimes.) The fact that in this case the bad actor up and vanished is just unacceptable.

<comment><USER31> If I was Amazon, I would start tracking which vendor supplied a particular instance of a product. Seems less costly than dealing with owning the liability of third-party vendors.

<comment><USER30> You can supposedly opt out of co-mingling now, and I do wonder how much money they really save by doing it. A few expensive legal penalties might be enough to kill the program.

<comment><USER32> They are shifting part of this cost onto sellers with the Transparency program. My company has had a few calls with Transparency reps and will be enrolling in the coming months.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> So who are the wealthy companies that might use their financial might to stop amazon changing this law to their advantage? Is there another way amazon won't get the law changed to suit them?

<comment><USER34> Walmart or Target might see it as an advantage since they tightly control their supplier relationships.

<comment><USER35> Honestly if Target and Walmart get free shipping figured out (like Prime) they could eat away a large part of the Amazon customer base.

<comment><USER36> Doesn't Walmart basically have free shipping? I've never tried it, but according to their web site:

NextDay Our fastest delivery option, available in qualifying ZIP codes. Free on $35+ orders of eligible items—no membership fee!

Two Day Choose from millions of select items online—no membership needed! Free on orders of $35 or more.

[https://www.walmart.com/cp/free- shipping/1088989](https://www.walmart.com/cp/free-shipping/1088989)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've pretty much stopped buying anything over $100 on Amazon after being burned twice. I buy direct or from other competitors. Hope a solution is on the horizon.

</comment><comment><USER38> Good ruling!

<comment><USER39> This is good for consumers, so I like it[1].Amazon has been able to exploit this asymmetry it enjoys compared to Wal __*Mart, so I think this bring them to an even playing field with regard to that.

I'd be happy if they simply stopped commingling inventory.

[1]I guess they could argue the "Platform" angle, but I'm not sure that would hold water for them.

<comment><USER40> Walmart is pulling the same crap on their website now, too. Tons of products lists sold by junk third party sellers.

I get so frustrated every time I forget to add the "available in store" filter while searching. The results are useless otherwise.

<comment><USER41> I would love to find a browser extension that set this type of option for you on various sites, or at the very least alerted you when you forgot to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> 'Bout time someone held Amazon accountable. They have been abusing the system for way too long.

Would like to see some law firms file class actions against Bezos operation.</comment>


Migraines and Eyestrain from Smartphone? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I'm looking for a new Android device (currently using an old Samsung Galaxy S5) and I've found that almost all devices (Pixel 3, Pixel 2, Samsung Galaxy S9, LG G7) cause me severe eyestrain, dizziness and migraine. I can't find a modern device that's usable for me.
I suspect that some kind of flickering, like temporal dithering, is the root cause. Does anyone know if Android phones are using temporal dithering or some other kind of flicker?
I'm aware of PWM flicker in OLED displays, but that seems to not be my problem, since Galaxy S5 is OLED, and it works great for me. I've been to several doctors (MDs), optometrists, opthamologists and neurologists -- and they've all declared me healthy. Clearly something is different about these newer devices that are causing this issue, since when I return to my Galaxy S5, my symptoms will go away. Certainly, there's something different about me, but modern medicine has no answers. So I am desperately turning to the smart folks of HN.
There's a whole community of people like me at ledstrain.org. The only "test" I've seen for temporal dithering is to connect to an e-ink display, as shown in this video's "moving dots": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y-I3hqQgCQ
Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this? I am willing to fund research into this. <comment><USER2> Unfortunately you've provided no contact information, so hopefully you see this reply. What you've mentioned is interesting, and I may have some leads regarding this in the future.

If you see this, please get in touch, my email is in my profile. I cannot promise when I'll respond (or, admittedly, even notice your message), but I can promise definitely will eventually see it, and respond at some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I just emailed you. I'd greatly appreciate any information. I fear this will affect my job and I'll have to learn some skill without computers.</comment></comment>


Letter from China: A Heavenly Palace Moment - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2011/09/a-heavenly-palace-moment.html

<comment><AUTHOR> From the submitted article: "But a key step to getting that space station will be docking with an unmanned spacecraft in November. And perfecting that docking technique became the preferred joke on the Chinese Web on Friday, in a week in which China's great-leap technological ambitions were battered by a subway crash in Shanghai. 'The orbital docking issue was has already been solved by Shanghai subway drivers!' a Chinese commentator wrote."

Some headlines have hailed this launch of an orbiting (and eventually manned) space station module by China as a major technological feat, but it remains to be seen if a manned space station will be just as much of a money pit for China as it has been for the United States, Russia, and their partners in the current International Space Station. Other details from the Chinese press in the submitted article are interesting.</comment>


Show HN: Building a web app in 24hrs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.blackballsoftware.com/2011/04/03/from-conception-to-customers-in-24-hours-how-we-built-a-successful-startup-overnight/

<comment><USER2> Nice work. +1 for .Net!

 _This allows my web layer to have no project reference to my data layer, and forces my developers to explicitly call the logic/service layers every time they want some data._

I totally feel your pain for Linq. I'm a .Net guy myself and when we went full time on our startup we went with C# and I vowed to never fall into the traps and horrible mistakes I saw at past jobs using Linq2Sql and EF. Before POCO was available for EF I was masking the entities with Interfaces so that the web layer had no way to make 'extra queries'. I'd love to learn more about how you used T4/POCO/EF together to clean up this constant problem.

I've also wanted an excuse to use Unity for something... haven't had the chance yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice to see a .net app done quickly in this sea of RoR / django weekend apps.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your story is really inspiring and it's a nice 24h achievement. How did you select the vital functionalities? It must be hard to release only the minimum and to not add any "nice to have" functionality.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Selecting the vital functions was difficult. But actually not as difficult as a "proper" development process. We didn't have to consult a big team of people with divergent interests, we didn't have any research on customer preference to analyze. There were just two people, 24 hours (greatly limits what you can do) and a relatively clear view of the end product (a map that shows the location of people whose FB status is single).

Sure, we could have gone over the 24hr limit and do a few more "nice to have" functions. After all, this is not a commercial contracts where the time constraint is real. But we stuck to our plan, put our pride aside and just accepted that the product will look a bit bit crusty (and people will tell us).

So far, no regrets - while we feel a bit embarrassed when people give us negative feedback, at least the app is out there and criticisms will only make it better.

<comment><USER5> I left a comment already on the post, but negative feedback is bound to happen, the best part is that you can update and iterate based on the feedback since you got it out there so quickly.

Don't be embarrassed. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We would love to get your feedback on our project - thanks!</comment>


Gem takes your git commit history and generates a line item invoice. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies I created a gem that utilizes my git commit history to generate a line-item invoice.  This automates the process of invoicing. No more tedious paperwork.<p>Not sure if there's enough Ruby contractors out there that could utilize something like this as a service?  I'd be interested in everyone's thoughts. <comment><USER2> how do you determine the start-time of a line item?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using the commit time from the git commit. So all of the activity leading up to the commit is the time charged against that line item entry.</comment></comment>


The Facebook Phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8ead4e1a-b86b-11e0-b62b-00144feabdc0.html

<comment><USER2> "We hope to sell millions . . . Anything below millions will be disappointing."

I think they will be disappointed. I can't name a smart phone where it takes more than about 2 keystrokes to do anything you want on Facebook.

<comment><USER3> You have to remember price point and demographics. A lot people don't care for smart phones. Smart phones are only a fraction of the phone market as well.

Lots of people don't want smart phones for various reasons, lots of people buy them and then regret it like I did. The market is pretty varied.

I've gone back to my old Sony because of battery life. I kept forgetting to put my Android on charge every night, next day its flat. Totally worthless phone IMO, gave it away.

That said these types of gimmicks usually do fail pretty hard. So disappointment maybe ahead.

<comment><USER4> Rjd, my feeling is that you're in the minority. I don't have any numbers to back up my statement, and I think it's safe to say we are both speculating here. This is my reasoning:

Even if people don't want smartphones, I would speculate that people who want to be connected to Facebook ALSO want to be connected to other services: Twitter, Google+, etc. Tying a phone (with a contract life cycle of 24 months) to fickle online services with no room for expansion is a letdown waiting to happen. Just my $0.02.

Btw, when the iPhone first came out, battery life was a huge issue, which turned out to be a non-issue for the millions of iPhone owners. Most people have an extra cable in the car or office to charge it through the day. And those that didn't, didn't forget to charge it because they loved their iPhone so much. It was really quite fascinating to watch Apple shrug off the battery life issue so eloquently, which, unfortunately set the trend for shorter battery life (e.g. my coworker goes from 100% to 20% in 4 hours on his LG Revolution). I agree with you that this is pretty abysmal, but what can you do...?

<comment><USER3> Tech crunch says the figures are 28% phones, hence standard phones = 67%. I agree its changing, but I'm not sure how much is forced and how much is through real consumer decision making... you'd need to be a manufacture or a carrier insider to answer that one...

I know I'm an extremely impatient person, which means I loose my cool over things like battery life. That impatience usually does make me a minority as I reject half arsed products (sometimes to early). I'm also very busy, and things like worrying about cell phone battery life are really low on my priority list, often I'm only aware when I get the warning beeps while having a conversation. Having to actively worry about my phone ... when others I don't... makes it a useless product to me, it needs to do its job and not make my life more difficult.

But I can't help looking at the reported 40% return rate for android phones and start to think there is a problem there... and maybe theres multiple issues going on, battery issues maybe for some, carrier apps yo can't delete reported in other threads here, warranty issues, standard Android UI/usability issues no one has ever fixed.

Then theres reports of weird java versions especially compiled for unique chips that aren't library complete/compatible... meaning apps aren't portable. Carriers and manufacturers refusing to supply upgraded firmware, and voiding your warranty if you do it yourself.

Its a real mess, and people are complaining and advising people not to buy them. I advised both my parents to hold out for the iPhone 5 because of this, I've heard a few Android owners I work with regretting the purchases.

Anway I'm prepared to accept I'm wrong ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Vodafones product page for it: [http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vod...](http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/about/what/devices/vodafone_555blue.html#overview)

<comment><USER5> Seems like a pretty half-assed product. "Vodafone 555 Blue", really, that's what you're gonna call it?

Anyone remember the Motorola ROKR? Yeah, exactly...

<comment><USER6> I remember that the first "iTunes" phone was really a stalking horse by Apple to learn and understand the phone manufacturers and carriers... then they released the iPhone 2 years later which took over the world.

If this is the same type of move by Facebook, good on em... sometimes you learn best from failures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was clear they eventually team up with a phone company when they revealed the new messaging system in November of last year. This is a big step to further establish their platform.

That said I would have expected a device with a bigger display and less buttons. This looks like a business phone to manage your spare time.

I hope this is just a mockup of the homescreen as it features icons that look nearly the same (three icons that could mean "contacts" and two that could be for "messages"). Also browsing the web might not be a great experience.

I think they could have lowered the price tag and make browsing on Facebook free focusing more on ad revenue.

</comment><comment><USER8> Imagine a phone built purely for Facebook, which is built to their specs (low battery usage) and uses half the bandwidth of current smartphones when it comes to updating FB status, uploading pictures etc. Facebook could have a winner in a country like India, where bandwidth still sucks and there is a large FB user population.

A cheap subsidized phone, and maybe even with subsidized bandwidth usage (similar to Amazon Kindle and Sprint) built just for Facebook would be a killer. They could certainly grow their user population beyond a Billion, but the question is whether they could monetize on those users.

<comment><USER9> Wasn't this what the Kin was supposed to be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The US version: <http://www.htc.com/us/products/status-att>

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of the ESPN phone: <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/21/bodenheimer-jobs>

</comment><comment><USER12> This isn't anymore a Facebook phone than the INQ stuff

</comment><comment><USER13> Any phone can be a Facebook phone.</comment>


Man who stockpiled hand sanitizer donates it all ahead of investigation - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/487711-tennessee-man-who-stockpiled-hand-sanitizer-donates-17700 <comment><USER3> Totally different scale, but this reminds me of Jesse Livermore, possibly the best speculator of all times.

> _Following the end of World War I, Livermore secretly cornered the market in > cotton. It was only interception by President Woodrow Wilson, prompted by a > call from the United States Secretary of Agriculture, who asked him to the > White House for a discussion that stopped his move. He agreed to sell back > the cotton at break-even, thus preventing a troublesome rise in the price of > cotton. When asked why he had cornered the cotton market, Livermore replied, > "To see if I could, Mr. President."_

A true hacker of the markets.

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

<comment><USER4> In the same vein, Vince Kosuga cornering the onion market in 1955.

[https://www.npr.org/2015/10/22/450769853/the-great-onion- cor...](https://www.npr.org/2015/10/22/450769853/the-great-onion-corner-and- the-futures-market)

<comment><USER3> Yep, that's a great story too. It's so ridiculous that this is still in force:

> _The Onion Futures Act is a United States law banning the trading of futures > contracts on onions as well as "motion picture box office receipts"._

> _In 1955, two onion traders, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, cornered the > onion futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The resulting > regulatory actions led to the passing of the act on August 28, 1958. As of > January 2020, it remains in effect._

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

> _The president of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, E.B. Harris, lobbied hard > against the bill. Harris described it as "Burning down the barn to find a > suspected rat". The measure was passed, however, and President Dwight D. > Eisenhower signed the bill in August 1958. Thus, onions were excluded from > the definition of "commodity" in the Commodity Exchange Act._

<comment><USER5> I am curious, why were onions specifically banned? I imagine they had some reason to believe onions were uniquely susceptible to this kind of marker manipulation in a way that potatoes, garlic, cucumber, etc. aren't. But I cannot think of how onions are unique in this respect.

<comment><USER6> Because the guy specifically tried to corner the onion market and the response was a re-action, not a pro-active one.

<comment><USER5> Weren't they afraid he or a copycat would corner potato market the next year, green pepper the next, cotton the next, etc.?

<comment><USER3> I am fairly confident in the simple interpretation of a mob of angry farmers demanding that something be done right now.

<comment><USER6> And some calmer heads might have prevented the outrage spreading too much?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What about price gouging by drug manufacturers? When will the government investigate that? Why is one type of price gouging accepted as capitalism and another type not?

"In 2001, Acthar sold for about $40 a vial. Today: more than $40,000. An increase of 100,000 percent." [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-problem-with- prescription-d...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-problem-with-prescription- drug-prices/)

<comment><USER6> > Why is one type of price gouging accepted as capitalism and another type > not?

'Price gouging' is not an accepted part of capitalism. Those laws (and customs..) that call out some prices as 'gouging' are bad economics and not 'proper capitalism' either way.

But you are right, that the drug prices are an even more egregious example. And, of course, we get those weird prices because of heavy and incompetent government interference in the drug markets. So we should probably look into scaling back that interference, instead of adding even more.

(And I specifically mention incompetent interference. To give a counter- example, for the most part I am quite happy with the economic policies of my local government. But then, I live in Singapore, where our Prime Minister was the top math graduate of his year in Cambridge, writes C++ sudoku solvers for fun and is looking forward to learning Haskell when he retires.)

<comment><USER8> > we get those weird prices because of heavy and incompetent government > interference in the drug markets. So we should probably look into scaling > back that interference

No, we get it because of the wrong kind of interference (due to regulatory capture and government corruption). I think in Singapore the government interferes heavily too - at the very least posing as a bundling buyer for hospitals to put drug purchases out for tender. Every developed country does this.

<comment><USER6> Hence my addition of the important qualifier of 'incompetent'.

In any case, the medical system itself provides a lot of examples of regulation driving prices in most cases.

Less regulated subsectors like Lasik eye surgery, or elective dental work, or cosmetic surgery, generally improved in quality and dropped in price in the last few decades.

(Another thing to investigate for me would be vet care. The technologies involved are similar enough; but the legal environments are radically different in most jurisdictions. If memory serves right, the evidence was mixed.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cute. Apparently he caused a bit of upset. He's is justifying himself with a mix of contrition and claims of innocence.

> _Colvin apologized for purchasing all of the products Sunday, saying that he > did not realize the spread of the coronavirus outbreak or the shortage of > sanitary products across the country._

> _... I had no idea that these stores wouldn't be able to get replenished._

Right.

I was wondering what law the Tennessee AG could possibly use to stop these guys. The answer is in the AG's press release (sort of):

> _On Thursday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee declared a state of emergency > prompted by the spread of COVID-19, or coronavirus. The declaration triggers > the state's anti-price gouging law which prohibits vendors from charging too > much during a crisis tied to a state of emergency._

> _Under the law, the Attorney General's Office can put a stop to price > gouging and seek refunds for consumers. The courts may also impose civil > penalties against price gougers for every violation. The law applies to all > levels of the supply chain from the manufacturer to the distributor to the > retailer._

[https://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/news/2020/3/15/pr20-10.ht...](https://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/news/2020/3/15/pr20-10.html)

<comment><USER10> I don't think a random guy hoarding bootleg hand sanitizer qualifies as a "retailer" under the law.

If anything, normal penalties for operating without a business license should apply.

<comment><USER11> He's selling things retail, he's a retailer, the fact he doesn't have a license for the retail business adds to the charges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sure there are some important details missed in the story, but I really don't like how fuzzy the line is. It's not like you usually buy the stuff from the manufacturer, the whole world of trading is built on the ability to buy cheap and to sell under the conditions where the price can be (always somewhat artificially) made higher. It's what the resellers do, it's the "free market". Yet when a man manages to predict that the demand (and hence the price) of hand sanitizer will rise during the time of pandemic and to "stockpile" some measly 17 700 bottles of it — he can be prosecuted for that. And I mean, seriously, 17 700 bottles is peanuts, it's not like he was short selling US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling during the time of financial collapse (which he majorly contributed to).

<comment><USER6> > [...] the whole world of trading is built on the ability to buy cheap and to > sell under the conditions where the price can be (always somewhat > artificially) made higher.

Not sure what you mean by 'always somewhat artificially'? Eg retail trading of the kind that Amazon or Walmart do doesn't strike me as particularly artificial: of course, there's going to be a price difference between what the factory gets and what customers pay?

Same for commodities trading. Or even stocks: if Warren Buffett puts in lots of smarts to find undervalued companies and buys them, the rest of the world catching up some time later seems perfectly sensible.

Of course, there might be _some_ instances where the price goes up 'somewhat artificially' perhaps? But I am not sure what that would even mean? My contention here is with the 'always'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _"When we did this trip, I had no idea that these stores wouldn't be able to > get replenished."_

> _"It was never my intention to keep necessary medical supplies out of the > hands of people who needed them," he continued. "That's not who I am as a > person "_

This doesn't follow a modicum of scrutiny. If he's buying to sell them at a markup, it MUST be because it's not getting replenished. Otherwise, people would just go to the store and buy it at retail price. It's a BS apology and shouldn't be accepted by anyone.

<comment><USER14> I beg to disagree, and here's why: (Not saying the guy isn't scum, but I think his statement is plausible...)

He didn't just start doing this last week. This so-called "retail arbitrage" is a normal thing throughout online marketplaces, and has been for years.

Sometimes, someone (like me, as a consumer) won't feel like going to the store, and will happily pay ten bucks for what's usually a three-dollar item, because it's shipped to my door. FedEx is the real winner, but guys like this are making a living enabling my laziness.

In other situations, a product will be weirdly short in one part of the country, but available elsewhere. For instance, in a hurricane, a bunch of unprepared people suddenly decide they want some product, but the local stores are sold out. There's lots of that product _already sitting on shelves_ elsewhere in the country. Those retailers aren't going to pull it themselves and shove it backwards up the distribution chain to be redistributed to storm country -- that's just not how distribution works.

So, folks like this will go buy it, off the shelf, and offer it online. Where again, someone decides it's a better option than going to the store. And the guy doing the shipping is doing real work, I don't see anything wrong with him putting food on his table with it.

In all these cases, the retail-arbitrage folks aren't depriving anyone of anything. They're not clearing out the last of anything, and the stores they shop usually do restock the next day, because their local distributor has plenty of product.

This time was different, and that's obvious to everyone now.

But I do find it at least half-plausible that this guy might not have been thinking of it as different. It looked, from his view, just like every other opportunity where he's been making money the last several years, and which hurt nobody.

<comment><USER5> This is the answer. NPR Planet Money did an episode on this a while ago, long before there were any real or perceived shortages of any goods. Even in good times, this strategy tends to work:

> _Sam Cohen 's business works like this: He walks into a big retail store and > buys a bunch of stuff. Then he sells it on Amazon for more. It's > straightforward and surprisingly lucrative._

> _This is a multimillion-dollar business for Sam — and for lots of other > people who do the same thing. It 's called retail arbitrage..._

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/26/539552579/episode-629-buy- low-sell-prime)

<comment><USER15> Why not buy it directly from the supplier? Why pay tax and a mark-up when it can be obtained for a similar price the department store got it for??

<comment><USER5> I am not sure if manufacturers will be open to selling directly to someone who is not buying a large enough quantities. But even if they are, they probably won't sell them to retail arbitragers.

I cannot remember if it was from the same episode or another Planet Money episode, but I remember them talking to manufacturers who were unhappy with their products being sold online for prices much different than they intended to.

The gist of it is that, if you are for example Coca Cola, you want people to think of your products as an everyday item they can drink anytime, not a luxury to be saved for special occasions. And if you are Apple, you won't want your product to end up in the bargain bin. Pricing is part of a brand's marketing strategy and identity. People who price products way out of the range the manufacturer envisioned are detrimental to their brand image and long-term market share.

<comment><USER16> It wasn't until the 1970s (in the USA) that retailers could determine the price of goods in their store. Before then manufacturers could dictate the price of their goods (laws protected that). So retailers competed on other dimensions (service, location) rather than price.

I learned this (and a lot more) from "Goliath": [https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/Matt- Stoller/...](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/Matt- Stoller/9781501183089)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Glad this is getting widespread attention. Buying up all of the Monopoly: Millennial Edition board games in the state to flip on eBay for profit is one thing but buying up goods that you know will cause a panic is something else altogether. Hopefully this dissuades others going forward.

<comment><USER18> How about buying up housing stock in popular inner city areas only to "provide" housing for people?

Housing is an essential good. Profiting off an essential isn't so great suddenly. Yes people need to rent, but many would buy if prices weren't pushed up.

Are they or the hand sanitizer guy assisting the market in any way here? Or are they parasitic?

People are going to be asking a lot about unfettered capitalism after this.

We are going to see many ugly examples in America before this is done.

<comment><USER19> I've been looking for people to make the connection of how this is a great example of the emotional behavioral reality of actually exercising classical economic models and how people aren't just completely atomized rational agents devoid of collective cultural expectation, but you're the first to make the connection.

It's a clear narrative for people who are looking for it who are deeply suspicious of how real world humans interact in alignment with the hypothesis of the traditional mathematical models, but to those who don't share the suspicion, you'd have to spell it out.

I've had to, it's been painful. People have been penalized for thinking in sociological terms about economic culture all throughout school, because such considerations lead to dramatically conflicting answers.

For instance, the more extreme example is private property markets require buy-in from the participants. If a group decides the rules are simply unfair, the game is called off. As a producer of physical assets I've always been keenly aware of theft and sabotage possibilities and prices are kept fair to keep people from doing such things.

<comment><USER20> There also seem to be differences in underlying assumptions: whether humans exist to serve markets or whether markets exist only because they happen benefit humanity. And a similar question for property itself.

<comment><USER6> Nice strawman you got there. You'll have a hard time finding anyone who thinks that humans are meant to 'serve the market'. Especially any economist.

The market isn't a separate entity, it's made of humans interacting.

<comment><USER20> True, I put the point bluntly.

If the market produces bad outcomes for years on end, which it in some narrow cases it does, do we 1) keep with it regardless or 2) do something else.

I think you will find there are quite a few people who will choose #1

<comment><USER6> The wisdom of this course of action depends on whether that something else produces better outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This article is very low on information. The man is accused of price gouging, and was threatened by the Tennessee AG, but the article says he purchased all his stock before a state of emergency was declared and hasn't sold any since the state of emergency was declared.

He's an Amazon seller, but it doesn't say at what price he was selling. Selling hand sanitizer during a crisis doesn't seem like gouging unless the price was exorbitant.

It may have been exorbitant as his account was suspended. But the article doesn't mention the actual asking price.

<comment><USER22> There's a previous story which got quite famous which you're missing that went into great detail on this: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus- pu...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes- amazon-sellers.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The original article in the Post ended hysterically with him not wanting to be known for this.

It's a pretty shitty thing to do and I'm glad the state's Attorney General started investigating him. I was not aware they were price gouging laws in some states for medical supplies during an emergency.

<comment><USER24> > "But I'm not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the > news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I'm > selling for 20 times what they cost me."

Oops.

I'd love a follow-up. "What, exactly, did you think talking to a reporter would result in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One man's gouging is another man's market at work. Would your opinion of this man change if he had stockpiled hand sanitizer a year ago?

<comment><USER26> It's not the same thing as stockpiling a year ago wouldn't have caused a shortage.

<comment><USER25> So why is the crime the same for both people? Also, if he didn't plan on selling the sanitizer then we wouldn't have any (legal) problem with his actions. You can buy all you want with no consequence.

<comment><USER27> Well the (in my opinion flawed) idea is to remove the incentive for buying that much in the first place.

Say what you want, but someone receiving this enormous an amount of social shaming on top of a painful economic loss, sure is going to disincentivise people from pulling similar stunts in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have been considering the following business thought-experiment:

Price Gougers: a company whose goal is explicit in its name. What you need will always be in stock, but it will always be expensive. It is the kind of company that could ensure that, in situations like this, there might be more N95 masks and hand sanitizer in global inventory.

Could such a company get enough social buy-in to survive in the face of anti- price-gouging laws that appear with every crisis?

If a person/company had stockpiled N95s a year ago, with intent to sell them at a markup in the event of a pandemic, could that entity ever hope to be repaid for its beneficial risk-taking?

(I'll also point out that I'm considering donating most of our few household N95s to our nearby medical center, and am angling to get our research laboratory to do the same. This thought-experiment arises from the fact that investors won't deploy capital to do this kind of thing at scale unless they expect to see a return.)

<comment><USER14> I sort of love this idea. It'd be the perfect test of some free-market ideals.

Similarly, sometimes the government buys product above the lowest market price, because it's produced domestically and it's strategic to prop up the production in case of an event like this. They failed in this case, sadly.

<comment><USER28> Perhaps pre-designated "price-gouging" companies could be allowed to price- gouge (and might be forbidden to buy up remaining traditional supply once an impending disaster is apparent?), but the person on the street could not?

It just seems like there should be some middle ground between, "Price-gouging should be banned!", and "My kingdom for an N95 mask!".

<comment><USER6> What's the point? Just allow people to pay the prices they want to pay and sell at.

Why add more special licences to exclude the person on the street?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This guy is an idiot for drawing attention to himself.

<comment><USER30> Not necessarily for drawing attention to himself.

But you never try a stunt like that with anything the government might reasonably claim to be medical equipment or supplies. You just don't do it.

The best outcome you can hope for in a situation like this is the government comes and confiscates all your supply for redistribution.

The worst outcome? Ask Shkreli.

You're just begging for them to come down on you when you do stuff like this. When you're wanting to price gouge, do it with something the government will never need. Like Monopoly board games.

<comment><USER6> And, if memory serves right, they officially got Shkreli for something completely unrelated to his medical 'price gouging'.

The same might happen to you, even if you carefully try to stay within the laws: they'll find something else to pin on you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Colvin apologized for purchasing all of the products Sunday, saying that he > did not realize the spread of the coronavirus outbreak or the shortage of > sanitary products across the country.

Heh. Isn't that specifically the reason he did it?

</comment><comment> tuna-piano Like any crime or bad ethical activity, let's think about who was hurt and who benefited by his action of buying sanitizer from an area with it and selling it to an area without it.

1\. Consumers of sanitizer in his area were harmed (and those people were willing to spend at least $2 per bottle)

2\. Consumers of sanitizer in other areas who purchased online benefited (and those people were willing to spend $20+ per bottle)

3\. He also benefited financially

Why is it a bad thing to take away the option to purchase sanitizer from someone in his area (presumably from people who don't want it as much - <USER2> they had the option to purchase but hadn't yet) and sell it to people who want it (and don't have the option to purchase it)?

I don't understand why the people in his area deserve the sanitizer more than people in another area - or certainly why that should be a crime.

He wasn't dumping the sanitizer into a fire- he was providing the sanitizer to people who really wanted it!

<comment><USER32> The goal of the supply chain right now is to get supplies staged in geographical regions so that anyone can have access cheaply.

These acts of arbitrage aren't solving market inefficiencies. They're cutting holes in the preventative fabric so to speak. While clearly there are different levels of risk tolerance within the audience of HN and amongst people at large, this was clearly something that struck very few as behavior to be encouraged in any form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> People speak like this is a vital drug that cures people. What is wrong with hand soap and warm water?

<comment><USER34> You can't stick it in your pocket, purse or car for use in situations where a sink isn't available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> May I ask what exactly that sanitizer is and how is it different from soap and/or alcohol, which is abundant in any house? Everyone here comments about it as if it was a bottled water or an irreplaceable first aid medicine.

<comment><USER6> Apropos: bottled water is also easy to make and replace. Just take a bottle and a water tap. You can refill empty bottles, too.

<comment><USER36> No, people stockpile bottled water in emergencies with the assumption that it will NOT be easy to replace, i.e., the tap might stop releasing water.

I've seen way too many comments like "Why would you need bottled water in a pandemic?" with the assumption that municipal water systems won't fail.

My (US) small town's municipal water system fails a couple of times a year in the best of circumstances, usually just resulting in a "boil order" for a few hours until repairs are made.

But imagine half of our six water filtration workers are home sick or caretaking family, or the trucks that bring the spare parts are sitting idle at a depot four states away. Now our town needs 4000 gallons a day just for human survival.

To finish the thought experiment, note that there are over 150,000 water distribution systems in the United States.

<comment><USER6> True.

Though to put this particular crisis into perspective: neither water nor electricity nor online deliveries ever failed even in hard hit Wuhan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> To the commenters here: It's price _gouging_ and not price gauging. The article made a spelling error.

</comment><comment><USER38> The little guy that scalps hand sanitizer on eBay needs to be investigated while the corporation that scalps cancer drugs is praised.

<comment><USER32> The little guy scalping on amazon doesn't have a cabal of lawyers to keep the prosecutor at bay. Frankly, I'd prefer hitting pharma companies hard as well, but you have to make sure the case is bulletproof, or an ineffectual token settlement is the likely result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> They say "his address was posted online" like it wasn't displayed on his own website. Pointing that out hardly counts as doxxing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wonder what value he can attribute to it. Possible that the tax write off exceeds his cost

</comment><comment><USER41> Hand sanitizer is not essential, and nobody was forced to buy from him or pay his prices.

I think it's a real shame that Amazon and eBay shut him down and halted the distribution of his stock to where it was most needed, simply on PR grounds.

I don't think he did a single thing wrong, but the mob sure does seem white- hot angry at him.

<comment><USER42> Hand sanitiser is not essential, however it's an important tool which helps reduce the chance of infection in the general population. If someone is carrying a sanitiser they will most likely use it and that benefits everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Let's say you're desperate for sanitizer because you're caring for an elderly relative. And let's say that sanitizer is available on Amazon for $100/bottle. Would you buy or rather go without?

<comment><USER34> I'd prefer to live in a world where we don't have to face such moral dilemmas.

A lot of people caring for babies are financially stressed as is. Simply having children in the US helps push a lot of people into poverty. We do a lot of things very badly in this country and one of those is we do not have family-friendly policies.

For some people, a hundred dollars is quite a lot of money. It can mean not eating and similar hardships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I hope he kept one bottle for his own use.

</comment><comment><USER45> All it took to curb his inner price gouging criminal and bring out the philanthropist was a teeny weeny criminal investigation. What a model citizen!

</comment><comment><USER46> Mens rea

They should still throw the book at him for trying to profiteer off the misery of others.

</comment><comment><USER47> Akin dropping bags of cocaine in ocean when customs ship approaches the drug trafficer's boat.

Won't help!

<comment><USER44> Out of pure curiosity, why won't it ?

<comment><USER22> because they'll prosecute him anyway since he was price gouging?

<comment><USER44> I thought the OP was saying that the cocaine example won't help the trafickers

<comment><USER48> Yeah, and it doesn't, except now they have two crimes, trafficking and destruction of evidence.

<comment><USER44> Well if they do drop them before the custom ship arrives, what's the evidence for the destruction of evidence, and the trafficking for that matter ?

<comment><USER49> Some really weird behaving fishes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm shocked at how this forum has changed its mind on COVID-19 in the past week. This makes me happy that y'all are taking this more seriously.

<comment><USER3> And also, that the bottom in stocks may be near.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Stop the lynching, it's boring and pretty evil. That is what Reddit is for.

Why not ask the real question, sanitizer is vial, it's soap and a tap you can carry around in your pocket.

It's just alcohol and a jell AND a plastic bottle.

How can we as a society not be able to produce this, People will even pay for it, they will even pay extra for it.

We have failed. Stop blaming individuals. Nothing about C19 was unpredictable.

<comment><USER52> Isopropyl is one of the simplest chemicals in the universe and a big bottle is 1.88 at Walmart. They will never, ever run out of this stuff, even if people start hosing off their cars with it.

The whole thing is a joke. This guy was exploiting idiots and the irredeemably lazy. Big deal.

But what a fool for him to talk to the media. Maybe he thought he'd get sympathy for losing money because Amazon shut him down...?</comment></comment>


Cost of a Join - <AUTHOR> https://www.brianlikespostgres.com/cost-of-a-join.html <comment><USER2> lots of discussion on this same topic can be found here,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17762067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17762067)</comment>


Dropbike: Data Breaches and Free Bike Rides - <AUTHOR> https://ipfs.io/ipns/Qmea45XwFtdwaCGAPLRMxFmoUP5YLnknc2WGCGQ3HnDP6f/post/dropbike/ <comment><USER2> How disappointing that they wouldn't even give a simple "Thank you" for you going out of your way to actually inform them. Don't they realize you could've just harvested the user contact info for a quick buck and sold a cracked version of the app for weeks/months before they realized it?

Okay, good job code monkey. Now move along, we have to get back to focusing on our shitty business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, the guy from support was fairly polite. I cut down his responses a bit for the sake of brevity but I'll clear that up.

For example the initial exchange was:

> Hey Tristan, thanks for reaching out to us about this. We really appreciate > you telling us about this. We don't have a bug bounty scheme, but I've > forwarded your feedback to our software team. Thanks again, Tristan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is super tangential to the content of the post, but can we take a moment to bask in the use of React Native here -- and the fact that it wasn't obvious it was a React Native app until the OP took the app apart?

Solutions like React Native, NativeScript and Flutter are providing real developers alternatives to trudging through bullshit on two separate app platforms just to deliver a similar looking experience to two walled gardens. This makes me happy.

BTW - I'm not even a React fan, I think it's over-engineered/not as simple as it should be. However it is/was a paradigm-shift type project and the divorce from the DOM model to enable support for something like React Native was a great move as well.

<comment><USER4> You can tell it's react native if it lags (at all). No native app should lag on a modern phone.

I wrote an app that locally loops over 5MB of JSON and then sorts it based on a datetime string (which is converted to a date class) - and it does this every few seconds. You can't tell that this is happening though, because the phone doesn't lag. It doesn't even use a significant amount of battery. It just works.

I wrote the same app in React Native + NativeBase earlier, and even though I implemented that in a smarter way, the app still lagged. Even just a general react native app that doesn't do anything weird just feels "off" sometimes.

Source: Wrote the same app 4 times (Swift, Java, React Native, Flutter) - Flutter was the clear winner, and a joy to work with.

<comment><USER5> Not true! Play my game Falcross ([https://www.falcross.com](https://www.falcross.com)) on iOS or Android and tell me if you feel any lag. It's written in React Native. Less than 3% of the UI is native code.

You CAN make highly performant software, even games, with React Native. You just need to take the time to truly understand the platform, and you will reap massive benefits.

<comment><USER4> Cool! I play that game.

Here's a very unscientific test (showing GPU usage) I did on the Note 8 switching between menus really quickly. It's barely noticeable (if at all) for me, but it certainly shows on older phones.

Canvas for Android (Native): [https://i.imgur.com/5mWueG7.png](https://i.imgur.com/5mWueG7.png) Falcross Menu: [https://i.imgur.com/DpKVNDK.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/DpKVNDK.jpg)

(It's also important to note that this isn't noticeable at all on iOS. The app is buttery smooth with a consistent framerate on iOS.)

Other than that, a few nitpicks: The "recently played" icon at the top is clipped for me, the energy/star/circle icons at the top flicker when you switch views, etc.

Things like that basically don't happen if you use "real" native development (or Flutter) with "real" native components.

<comment><USER5> Hi there, thanks so much for the bug reports! Would love to see a screenshot of the clipped icon if you could e-mail it to me at email@example.com.

The flickering when viewing lightbox/modal views is actually due to my navigation library, react-native-navigation, which is otherwise excellent. I believe they're fixing that in their v2 release, at which point those transitions should be indistinguishable from native.

I've also made a ton of progress on Android performance in the past month, including the mindblowing realization that I had set hardwareAccelerated=false in my app's manifest over a year ago. The game should now be very smooth in all views, even on very low-end Android devices :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm going to tip my hand here and admit that I upvoted this before ever reading the post simply because I've never seen an IPFS link in the wild before. :)

<comment><USER7> ... and the page doesn't load for me at this moment.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, ipns links are pretty slow compared to ipfs links.

The best practice is to have a domain using dnslink[0] which always points to the most recent IPFS hash on a gateway with the content already pinned. I believe this is what the IPFS team does for their blog, using a combination of a static site generator and web hooks.

[0]: [https://github.com/ipfs/go-dnslink](https://github.com/ipfs/go-dnslink)

<comment><USER9> I just installed ipfs and noticed this as well - ipns performance is pretty terrible. I tried loading a page that was created (and therefore stored) on my node, and it takes a good 10 seconds to load).

edit: looks like this might be relevant: [https://github.com/ipfs/go- ipfs/issues/3860](https://github.com/ipfs/go-ipfs/issues/3860)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Link without IPNS, for those who hit cold caches: \- [https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTUZvRskteBwACHPAepefPLDKhJctWmY6E2XJG...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmTUZvRskteBwACHPAepefPLDKhJctWmY6E2XJG9v78oij) \- ipfs://QmTUZvRskteBwACHPAepefPLDKhJctWmY6E2XJG9v78oij (with ipfs-companion)

<comment><AUTHOR> The issue with just sharing the /ipfs/ version instead of /ipns/ is that I can no longer update the site and I just made a small edit to clarify some stuff so that link is already out of date.

As an alternative, I'd recommend either my website: [https://fn.lc/post/dropbike/](https://fn.lc/post/dropbike/) or the cloudflare AMP cache [https://fn- lc.amp.cloudflare.com/c/s/fn.lc/post/dropbike/](https://fn- lc.amp.cloudflare.com/c/s/fn.lc/post/dropbike/)

<comment><USER10> You're right - I basically timestamped the then-current version of the name into a hacker news comment :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can't access the link - any one provide a mirror for me?

<comment><USER11> Mirror: [https://fn- lc.amp.cloudflare.com/c/s/fn.lc/post/dropbike/](https://fn- lc.amp.cloudflare.com/c/s/fn.lc/post/dropbike/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is pretty cool. But i feel that there's nothing "show hn" about it.

<comment> DC-3 Doesn't the open API library qualify? Though maybe that should be reflected in the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry if it's not a traditionally formatted Show HN. However, I did write an open source version of their app while doing this.

[https://github.com/d4l3k/opendropbike](https://github.com/d4l3k/opendropbike)

It's not quite production ready, but does most of the basic things.

<comment><USER13> Don't be sorry! This is such a great write up! Thank you for sharing and I hope they realise how lucky they are that you properly disclosed BOTH vulnerabilities with a 30 days notice before public disclosure. I hope they will follow your advice, or else I believe this won't be the last vuln of this scope to hit them if they chose to ignore good security practice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry for the tangent, but I find it highly ironic that an ipfs site does not work without allowing "ampproject.org"…

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a great example of one of the pitfalls of iterating quickly if not done properly.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice work!

Dropbike - send this candidate an email saying "You, sir, are hired".

</comment><comment><USER17> great find. I guess there are so many low sec companies

</comment><comment><USER18> Nicely done friend! Learned everything from your writeup too!

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow what a great write up. I respect your engineering and writing skills.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use Coda for iPad - <AUTHOR>

I don't know why, but I just think a "Coda for iPad" type app would be an awesome. I wrote an article describing some of the things I think you could distill the app down to, most of the parts are very complex, but seem simple when executed in a great app.
The article is here: http://judstephenson.com/2010/04/23/idea-coda-for-ipad/
But the real question is, would anyone use it? <comment><USER2> This is the perfect app to port to the iPad. It's an all-in-one that seems a bit overkill on the Mac, since most of the pieces are available separately, but on the iPad, easy tabbing between functions without leaving the app would be ideal.

I'm convinced that Panic is working on this.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a couple of discussions on the Coda Users list about this:

[http://groups.google.com/group/coda- users/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/coda- users/browse_thread/thread/c1aff684fe928a0c#) [http://groups.google.com/group/coda- users/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/coda- users/browse_thread/thread/3e65f362fa3a0d30/c57f186a14b064e1)

I have a feeling Panic is working on it. They have already been beaten to the punch somewhat by Gusto, however this app is not as full featured as Coda (e.g., no SFTP) <http://horseandtherook.com/gusto/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Clickable: <http://judstephenson.com/2010/04/23/idea-coda-for-ipad/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I would totally use it.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I get a company to stop using invalid email addresses? - <AUTHOR> I've been using Blur from Abine.com for a while. One of their services, migrated from a previous product called MaskMe, generates masked emails that look like this: "email@example.com", and any email sent to that address gets forwarded to your address. Recently (around a month or so), they started using very long email addresses to forward (e.g. 737rfylmhfbayacam6aatijgei5fcahya5qddjaf2ac6achaamqemicmemmtacxaawuaaiaaea<comment>@opayq.com). This has caused problems with gmail, which will sometimes display certain prompts (e.g. "display images") that cover buttons, forcing me to reload the page to click them.
Now, https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5321#section-184.108.40.206.1 states that
The maximum total length of a user name or other local-part is 64 octets.
which the addresses violate. I wouldn't really care, except that it's causing me issues.
Anyway, I don't pay for the service, so I understand I can't demand anything of them as complex as actually complying with RFCs. But I reached out to their support, letting them know the problem I had with screenshots, and also linking to the RFC. I went back and forth a few times, but got nothing more than
"... there are restrictions that keep us from shortening the forwarding address, and reducing the length would take away some of the core functions of masked emails."
Is there anything else I can do to convince them? Or should I drop the issue? </comment><comment><USER2> Get a browser plugin (like Styler for Chrome) that lets you add custom CSS/JS to a page. Then write a line or two of JS to fix the problem yourself.</comment>


Show HN: Jazz up your Python scripts with sound effects - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sangarshanan/jazzit <comment><USER2> "No Copyright Infringement Intended" is a meaningless disclaimer. Either the music is public-domain or permissively licensed and you're fine, or it's not and you're probably not.

If I were you, I'd try and find something that is Creative Commons, CC0 is best (the most permissive CC license). And then you can say in your disclaimer that the audio is CC licensed, which is ideal.

<comment><USER3> It's obviously not supposed to be a disclaimer of any legal value, judging from the sentence immediately after your quote: "I might take down these tracks or add more depending on the number of lawsuits I get slapped with". I don't particularly condone this attitude, but at least it's pretty clear. Either you slap him with a lawsuit/DMCA and the tracks will be removed or you don't and they probably won't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey OP here, the tracks I used are taken from [https://www.youtube.com/user/gamingsoundfx](https://www.youtube.com/user/gamingsoundfx) which is kinda a royalty-free stock audio library, I realise now that my statement that was funny when I wrote it might come back to haunt me dreams so I am gonna update it, Thanks for letting me know

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't describe it as 'royalty-free stock audio library'. It's obvious many sounds aren't free to use, be it rips from games or TV shows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is useful!

Imagine running a long ML training script. Hearing a sound in your speakers when it ends (successfuly or not) is something I considered implementing, non ironically, at my job. Never got around to doing it.

<comment><USER6> Do this sometimes on mac, simply with:

      long_running_command && say "That's all folks"

<comment><USER7> The built-in `afplay` shell command works for mp3s and for the stock aiff sounds under /System/Library/Sounds.

I use this after my long-running Maven builds to play either a happy sound if the build succeeds or a sad (mocking) sound if it fails, based on the value of $?.

<comment><USER8> Love the idea of checking the exit code! Seems I have some modifications to do.

On Linux there's usually `aplay` but you'll need play (sox) or mpv etc. to play lossy-compressed audio... a bunch of sounds can be found under /usr/share/sounds/ depending on what's installed.

`espeak-ng` doesn't have as good voices as `say`, but some `festival` ones come close, although these days I usually use Googles tts, and save the ones I use frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like this. It doesn't take itself seriously and implementing it via decorators is a great choice. Might use it in some hobby scripts!

</comment><comment><USER10> This will go great with my analogue terminal bell! [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24432930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24432930)

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks super cool : ) always loved old school

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In the past, I've used the Mac's text to speech capabilities to help debug async shell prompts. It's hard to relate but using aural cues as clues to execution paths feels quite different from print-based debugging.

<comment> just-juan-post Ok that's a seriously awesome idea. It's kinda like sonar: You know what's normal and then listen for the differences?

Could you explain in detail or perhaps make a youtube video?

<comment><USER12> Not the question you asked, but I bet you find this interesting: [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2771333/the-history- of...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2771333/the-history-of-ping---by- terry-slattery.html) , I'm referencing the part after "The best ping story".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Getting mp3 to play on linux via python for some reason has been a challenge, and I ended up using this abomination:

      subprocess.Popen(['cvlc','--play-and-exit','/home/me/music/trumpet.mp3'])

Going to give your library a try!

<comment><USER14> This doesn't look like an abomination to me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> FYI if you're on a Mac using a Virtualenv, you might need to do 'pip install pyobjc' to get the music to play.

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of a similar but slightly more direct module I wrote named boombox:

[https://pypi.org/project/boombox/](https://pypi.org/project/boombox/)

</comment><comment><USER17> great. now to add benny hill theme to all bulid scripts... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK6TXMsvgQg)

</comment><comment><USER18> Fezzik, do you hear that? That is the sound of ultimate suffering.

</comment><comment><USER19> I just discovered I've always wanted this.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have nightmares of the error sounds from Matlab, not sure if I need this in my python anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is violence.</comment>


You Can't Innovate Like Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/publications/magazine/6/4/you_cant_innovate_like_apple

<comment><USER2> What Apple does is no mystery. If you really want to know how to do good design delve into design methodology; it's the basis of the study Industrial Design.

One of the key factors is creating a rigorous set of criteria for your product, including emotional criteria. Then diverge with a plethora of ideas that meet all criteria. Evaluate each idea, select a number and develop them into concepts. Evaluate the concepts and select a product. Refine the product.

The naive approach to design is starting out with something and altering it until it looks good. However you should start out with multiple designs and improve all of them, then select the best. It's called quality through quantity. Actually this is a method that can be applied to any type of problem, not just design.</comment>


Ask HN: Competitor Snooping and Stealing Our Designs. What Should I Do - <AUTHOR>

I run a young, exciting ad technology startup and today, one of our competitors struck a deal with a very large tech blog. I've never heard of them so naturally I visited their site to check them out.
I noticed that there were many design touches on their site that looked similar to ours. I also dug up an old screenshot of their site and it loooked just like an old screenshot of ours. What the heck?
Should I call them out? The gentleman in me says no. Immitation is the best complement, I guess. Besides, it is essentially my word against theirs so there may be no point. It is just a bit hard to stomach all this plagiarism given that we've been bootstrapping, hustling, making and learning from mistakes and another bootstapper has just bootlegged our work.
Their terms and conditions looks like the old T&C we used with our original business model. We've evolved the business model ever since and of course, they have as well. So right now, their existing T&C doesn't even apply to their business.
Have you ever experienced anything like this? What did you do or suggest we do? <comment><USER3> There isn't much you can do to stop others from copying your work. The only thing that you can do however is to execute better than them... Stay focused and execute better.

</comment><comment><USER4> Never experienced it myself (with my site/business) but i have observed it a little.

My (humble) suggestion: Your product/service/business is likely to thrive (you've already said your T&C has 'evolved' since their copy) and given the ever-changing properties of this tech sphere - change rapidly! Design/aesthetics/marketing material and the like are great, but it's your customer service that's going to keep business - so focus on that. If you update your site design and it's copied again, dont worry. Like you said: it must be good right? The value you offer to your customers is you - <USER2> service, your passion and your values. That can't really be copied - well, not effectively. Focus on the things that matter. Sure it might hurt to be stolen from, but rise above. Your customers will notice.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks medianama, cottsak and Daniel_Newby.

You echo my thoughts. Good customer service trumps everything else. They can't execute better than us if all they do is copy our ideas. It's like an iPhone clone being better than the iPhone. Without the original vision, it'll always be second best.

We'll focus on providing great customer service. At least, that can't be copied. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ignore it. You might have a modest case for copyright violation for duplication of pages. However, prosecuting it would waste money and man-hours that are best spent elsewhere, and also possibly frighten them into aggressive improvement. "Winning" would likely be a net loss.

Your best strategy is to let them coast and hope they are gradually left behind. If they developed a habit of laziness, don't help them break it!</comment>


Help Put Objective-C Back in the Top 10 This Weekend - <AUTHOR> https://objectivechackathon.appspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, OP here.

The actual goal isn't to "beat" any other language - it's just a theme for the event.

Although proprietary, Objective C (and iOS) is a widely used platform. It also has a relatively small ecosystem. There aren't a lot of great libraries, and wheels frequently get re-invented. Our hope is to change that.

<comment><USER2> So, Linus Torvalds showed up in the list of people under the link that says "Join the list -->".

I highly doubt that he signed up for this event. I could be wrong, but if not - why the chicanery? Honesty is the best policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A proprietary language created for a closed, for-profit platform isn't naturally the most popular choice for open source projects.

<comment><USER4> Noob question: is a language proprietary if its only compiler is proprietary or if the main one is? There are open source compilers for Objective-C.

<comment><USER5> Considering that XCode uses a version of clang (which is open source) for it's compiling, I wouldn't say that the main compiler is proprietary either. I think that what people mean is that all of the "usefulness" of Objective-C comes from using it with OSX/iOS development, and all the stuff related to that is proprietary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Let's show the community that Objective-C developers care about open source.

by organizing an event only to boost statistics.

</comment><comment><USER7> The blog post appears to be asking people to fork projects with the sole purpose to bump the stats on github. If it's not on the charts, there's a reason. If someone wants to fork a project, they need a goal other than promoting obj-c. Let's not turn github into a fork graveyard (like sourceforge has become.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Do those stats include private repos or just open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> I assume open source since other elements in that page refer to public repos (github.com/timeline), but I'm not certain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder, I wonder what kind of comments would appear with something like "Help put VB.NET back in the top 10 this weekend".

<comment><USER10> How does anyone suffer either way? Someone is trying to get more open source out which seems like a good thing for any language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a bad idea. What's next, git bots? I'll assume from now on Objective-C ranking is being gamed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why would someone make that their _goal_?

<comment><USER6> This takes fanboyism to a whole new level.

<comment><USER13> Or it's just a hook for catching peoples' interest in participating in the group thing the hosts were organizing. (Yes, it'd be silly to devote your time to an effort like this to try to "help" Objective-C. But I don't expect anyone is really doing that.)

Edit: What the OP said.</comment></comment></comment>


Security Fixes for Libgcrypt and GnuPG 1.4 - <AUTHOR> https://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2016q3/000395.html <comment><USER2> Here's the relevant commit: [https://git.gnupg.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=commi...](https://git.gnupg.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=commit;h=c6dbfe89903d0c8191cf50ecf1abb3c8458b427a)

You'll notice that there are no tests with this commit, and no tests on other commits for the same feature. You can conclude from this that there are no tests at all for correct CSPRNG operation.

<comment><USER3> How would you normally write a unit test for a RNG?

<comment><USER2> It's a PRNG, so you fix the inputs and make sure the output is correct for all possible parameter sets.

Matthew Green has more on this here: [http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/03/how-do- you-k...](http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/03/how-do-you-know-if- rng-is-working.html) ('Known Answer Tests (KATs)' section).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why does Libgcrypt use a nonstandard CSPRNG to begin with? This is a solved problem; why reinvent the wheel?

<comment><USER5> Apparently the vulnerable mix_pool function was added in 1998 in this commit, citing a Peter Gutmann's Paper: "Software Generation of Practically Strong Random Numbers":

[https://git.gnupg.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=commi...](https://git.gnupg.org/cgi- bin/gitweb.cgi?p=gnupg.git;a=commitdiff;h=a6a8f1e706bd7e528262151bc04ebb9409c2eeed)

If you look at random.c before this commit, what it did previously is either return bytes read from /dev/urandom or /dev/random (which is fine) or some fall-back code that used the awful standard C rand(3).

I'd guess that at the time there were some crappy UNIXes that didn't have a working /dev/random, so they wanted to make the fall-back less awful, and accidentally broke the "working" case at the same time? Hazards of writing portable code...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When searching for more information on this CVE, I noticed a duplicate: _Possible XSS Vulnerability in Action View_ [1]. Do duplicate CVEs pop up like this often?

[1] [http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q3/260](http://seclists.org/oss- sec/2016/q3/260) (fetched 07:16:12 21 August 2016 UTC)

<comment><USER7> One of the two projects likely made a typo in their announcements; it will be interesting to see who ends up having been wrong when the CVE details are disclosed for that identifier ;P.

[http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-6316](http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-6316)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is a designer 'technical'? - <AUTHOR>

Always been asking myself that. <comment><USER2> I'm a designer myself and I don't consider myself a "technical" founder (though I will use the term "semi-technical". I feel that in order to be considered a technical founder, you should have mastery of programming and servers and all those super-technical details — HTML/CSS/Design don't cut it.

</comment><comment><USER3> If the definition of technical (in the context of web/tech startups) means knowing how to program, then I guess any designer who can program is technical.</comment>


Ask HN: IEEE membership. Is it worth it? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I attended a conference which was much less for an IEEE member, so I joined some years ago.
They send those fancy newsletters talking about myIEEE, I like some of the magazine's content. They also talk about IEEE member meetings which I never saw in my vicinity. To me it looks like another dull association.
But I hesitate to cancel my membership, yet. Is there some advantage which I miss? <comment><USER2> I've had IEEE/ACM memberships in the past, and while I liked getting printed journal articles, I never got any real value out of it; every paper I've ever wanted to read has been available online, and I generally wouldn't attend an academic conference unless I was presenting at it. So I'd be a "No" vote.

Also bear in mind that funding the IEEE is not an entirely politically neutral act. For instance:

<http://cr.yp.to/writing/ieee.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been an IEEE and ACM member for over 20 years. Although I've cut back on the number of publications I subscribe to, I still find reading them very informative. I can read them on the train/bus/beach. They provide a snapshot of the state-of-the-art. Consider the subscriptions to be part of your on- going professional development. In Australia, the subscriptions are tax deductible so that helps too. As for the myIEEE, I find Google Scholar more useful. But that's when I'm trying to follow a specific topic. The permanent e-mail address on acm.org has been excellent for staying in contact as I change jobs, ISPs, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> For me its worth it even just for their "Financial Advantage Program" -- specifically the insurance plans:

<http://ieeeinsurance.com>

We don't have access to all the plan types here in Canada, and I can't speak for price comparisons between the IEEE plans and those of other providers in other regions; but in Canada the premium on e.g. a group term life T-100 blows away anything else I've seen...

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the tptacek's "no". I had a brief membership during school, which allowed me to attend workshops and read research papers, but neither seem relevant now. There are networking events, but I've never been so I can't comment.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to belong to ACM but dropped my membership, because it wasnt worth the $250 to get the journals I was interested in.

</comment><comment><USER7> I find that you can use 'Google Scholar' to download most papers that are on IEEE

<comment><USER8> CiteSeer is still good too.</comment></comment>


Mozilla software rebranded by Debian - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_software_rebranded_by_Debian <comment><USER2> Read through this and it made me remember Thunderbird :(

The iceweasel Matt bit was neat though.</comment>


Edward Tufte's "Data Analysis for Politics and Policy" - <AUTHOR> http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/dapp/

<comment><USER3> Very nice. I hope political/public policy groups pay attention to the lesson Tufte pushes throughout the rest of his other books which is to avoid presenting the data in way which mislead or obfuscate what the data is.

Political/public policy groups are among the _worst_ offenders of misusing/abusing numbers and statistics to support a conclusion they have already reached rather than as an honest tool.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a link to the full book, apparently, presented as images (ick); the review on the first screen is just a review/summary, don't be fooled. Looks worth reading so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the first page is a list of images, for the intro/review pages. The rest are PDF files for each chapter/section, with each page basically an image...Tufte is kind of a stickler about layout and format and there was probably not much desire in him to make a web-friendly format. You can read about his decision to graciously put the book online for an interested reader here: [http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch- msg?msg_id=00001F)

One of the best revelations I got from a Tufte lecture was that Flash graphics...more specifically, the tendency to hide data with fancy rollover/popup interaction, was dumb.

His philosophy was to lay it all out as much as you can without requiring a click...and that restraint causes you to rethink how to display the data and to be more clever in visual symbolism, rather than requiring the user to click a button to reveal a block of descriptive text.

However, I think overall, he is not someone who has spent much time thinking over web-formatting and display. Most of his work on his site is plain text or images of text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent book. I bought a used copy this summer, and what has been so striking to me is the quotes and examples he uses; I have read most of them before, in one form or another, travailing the internet. It feels like someone modern collated the examples for the book, but Tufte wrote it in 1974! You also get a glimpse of Tufte before he becomes the information visualization guru.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for the great link! Browsing through Tufte's main site, I also saw that he has upcoming classes:

<http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses>

New England next week, then in the Washington D.C. region, then the Bay Area in December...!

</comment><comment><USER7> I love Tufte but most likely won't end up going through 179 pages just on how to present data the "right" way. He should develop some form of a Web curriculum or something more accessible for those only interested in the essentials. He did this already quite brilliantly with his Powerpoint essentials.

<comment><USER8> 'just on how to present data the "right" way'

If you're involved with data and humans, I can think of few things more professional than spending the time to understand how they come together.

It's highly ironic that you're arguing for TL;DR and using the Powerpoint work as an example -- his argument was precisely that deeper thought and attention were warranted than was generally possible given the presentation formats commonly in use.

<comment><USER7> It is probably depending on what importance one attributes to the role of data and humans in this context. What I would be most interested in his how he understands objectivity or what he is going to present as his way of presenting data - especially because I am coming from this "all data is subjective" standpoint. But this is of cause just a personal standpoint.

I don't think that the length-is-quality argument should be here an issue - <USER2> he has demonstrated in the Powerpoint discussion that it is very well (within his philosophy) possible to make an argument within a 3X page booklet. Instead what I was asking for was a similar accessible or solution oriented approach as he did with the Powerpoint subject.</comment></comment></comment>


Is Wagner bad for us? - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n07/nicholas-spice/is-wagner-bad-for-us

<comment><USER2> First good link of the day, thanks.

<comment><USER3> You could at least have _upvoted_ it, like I did. :)</comment></comment>


Google delays Honeycomb tablet OS; what if that was Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/03/29/google-delays-honeycomb-tablet-os-what-if-that-was-apple/ <comment><USER2> I think the writer believes Honeycomb hasn't been released at all (instead of the source code not being released to the public).

<comment><USER3> The title certainly suggests that opinion.

What makes no sense to me is that there WAS a huge uproar. It dominated the tech news for a day or two. "Openness withering" declared ArsTechnica[1]. Did Jim Dalrymple fall into a coma? The tech press DID have a field day with the story.

As for why the mainstream media didn't have a cow over this: come on, Jim. You know why. The average consumer cares as much about Google not releasing source code as they do Apple not allowing DIVX files to play on the iPhone.

I love how he says "Where are the mainstream press articles tearing Google up over this?" and links to zero articles, then two paragraphs later says "The mainstream press already had a field day with rumors that Apple was going to delay the iPad 2." and links to zero articles. Come on, Jim, you can do better.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/03/android- open...](http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/03/android-openness- withering-as-google-withhold-honeycomb-code.ars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google did not delay the release of Honeycomb or any other product. They delayed publishing the source code. How is this remotely the same thing? And they were pilloried in the blogosphere and by Apple pundits for not being "open." Seems like obvious link bait by Dalrymple.</comment>


Anti-Downloading Law Hits Japan, Up To 2 Years in Prison - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/anti-downloading-law-hits-japan-up-to-2-years-in-prison-from-today-121001/

<comment><USER2> _"Music rights groups including the Recording Industry Association of Japan say they have developed a system capable of automatically detecting unauthorized music uploads before they even hit the Internet."_

 _"But to do that they need to be able to spy on Internet users' connections and compare data being transferred with digital fingerprints held in an external database. That can only be achieved with the assistance of Internet service providers who would be asked to integrate the system deeply into their networks."_

More gold from the music industry. Some kind person should mention SSL to them...</comment>


Ask HN: I built a whole team for hire, what to do? - <AUTHOR> I co-founded a startup which I built a team for.
We have moved together to a holiday house and kept hacking for 8 months, so we really got used to working together (and we were friends/family to begin with).
Unfortunately the business turned out to be not viable, and although everyone is capable enough to go and continue their lives I feel like it's a not too imaginative solution for us to just go and work at different companies.
I'm sure someone more business savvy could get more out of this situation. Any thoughts? <comment><USER2> This reminded me of Stripe's "Bring Your Own Team" that I saw on here a while ago. There is an update on the original post though that says it didn't end up working out for them, but still might be some useful info for you.

[https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team](https://stripe.com/blog/bring- your-own-team)

</comment><comment><USER3> You need a technology or skillset to sell. Focus on business to business as that is easier and more stable and pays better.

For example in my city there is a 35 people company that does nothing but Magento projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You need a technology or skillset to sell

Can you elaborate, please?

<comment><USER3> If you want to setup a consulting firm, you cannot sell yourself as experts on Go and Angular. You need to find some enterprise platform that a lot of businesses are already, and become really good at working with it. Then you can sell yourselves as experts on that particular technology.

I already gave you the example of a consulting firm that does nothing but Magento.

<comment><USER4> Great advice. You need to differentiate yourself. Everyone these days pitch themselves as Angular experts or Ruby expert. Those skills are commodities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> why not look into starting an agency or consulting company.

<comment><USER5> 1\. create a company name 2\. create a couple different business cards with things like web design, emarketing, etc. 3\. hit the pavement. find businesses looking for services.

<comment><AUTHOR> That might not be a bad idea at all. Haven't thought about face 2 face selling but might be just what we need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How many folks? Which area?

<comment><AUTHOR> London right now. 3 developers at the moment, we used to have 2 more members (non devs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eaze is hiring for a BUNCH of positions. Have your team check us out, and let me know if you all are interested! [https://www.eaze.com/careers](https://www.eaze.com/careers)

<comment><USER8> Love the mission. Any room for remote?

<comment><USER7> Sadly, not at the moment, but feel free to apply and we might be able to work things out. We don't like one size fits all rules around here :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> could list out your skill sets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, tech wise it's mostly Angular 2 and Go, but we range from infrastructure to product design. We are also into automation testing a lot (nightwatch, protactor).

We have 1 senior developers and the rest mid level.</comment></comment>


Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) Fine Could Be the First of Many - <AUTHOR> http://investorplace.com/2017/06/alphabet-inc-googl-fine-could-be-the-first-of-many/ <comment><AUTHOR> > The action shows that the "halo effect" of America's big tech companies is > completely busted in the time of President Donald Trump. Regulators are > going to treat America's tech monopolies the same way they'd treat Russian > or Chinese monopolies, as unwanted foreign advances.

> If America is no longer Europe's ally, why should Europe go easy on any of > these questions? Europe is American tech's biggest overseas market, so what > are these companies worth now?

Interesting questions in an interesting time.</comment>


Ask YC: good Internet Marketing forums? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone here go to any forums with internet marketers? I'm about to sign up for Yahoo and MS ads and I want to make sure I sign up for the most free money. And I want to lurk and see what the bleeding edge of buying ads on the internet looks like. <comment><AUTHOR> digitalpoint.com is mostly good enough... it at least got me a free $50 for MS ads when I spend $5.

<comment><USER2> agreed, its a little shady, but there is some good info there</comment></comment>