1141
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,158 posts.
1142
A routine gem update ended up creating $73k worth of subscriptions
On November 5, 2021 (a Friday of course), we've deployed innocent-looking gem updates. Minor versions of Ruby on Rails, Ruby Sentry client, Ruby Slack client, http libraries, Puma, Devise, OmniAuth Ruby client, Mongoid, and a few test gems. However, something went very wrong. We saw odd Stripe errors
1143
Tech CEO pleads to wire fraud in IP address scheme
The CEO of a South Carolina technology firm has pleaded guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud in connection with an elaborate network of phony companies set up to obtain more than 735,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from the nonprofit organization that leases the digital real estate to entities in North America.
1144
California Considers Doubling Its Taxes
Practically doubling state taxes—even if the burden is partially offset through state-provided health coverage—could send taxpayers racing for the exits.
1145
Look How Big Is My Team
I'm used to getting asked how many employees work at my startup. For most people, it's a quick way to assess a startup's success. Supposedly, the bigger, the better. But does it really reflect success?
1146
A/B test improved your website's conversion rate? Not so fast
Many internet companies use A/B testing to evaluate the performance of website changes they want to make. A typical metric in such scenarios is the conversion rate (CVR) of a user, i.e. the probability that a user converts (e.g. makes a purchase) on the website. A typical A/B test setup in such a situation would…
1147
Norton 360 Now Comes with a Cryptominer
Norton 360 , one of the most popular antivirus products on the market today, has installed a cryptocurrency mining program on its customers’ computers. Norton’s parent firm says the cloud-based service that activates the program and allows customers to profit from the scheme — in which the company keeps 15 percent of…
1148
Google fined €150M, Facebook €60M for for non-compliance with French legislation
This page is no longer available. Order to comply or sanctions issued by the CNIL may be made public. In this case, a time limit shall be specified in the decision. Once this time period has expired, the organisations that have been given formal notice or sanctioned are no longer identified in the public decision. For…
1149
Crypto: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I dig into what's genuinely impressive about crypto (distributed trust, abuse prevention, true cloud computing) and what's deeply problematic: boundary interactions, governance concentration, transaction cost tradeoffs, and unclear incentives. My conclusion: crypto may only be useful for financial engineering, and…
1150
We handle 80TB and 5M page views a month for under $400
How the heck do we run a massively popular website and asset resource while being funded primarily by donations?
1151
How I took my SaaS from idea to sold in 14 months
I built an MVP in one month and grew the product for a year. But now it’s time to pass the torch. It’s official, I sold Mugshot Bot! Here’s how it all went down.
1152
American Astronomical Society (AAS) journals transition to open access
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) is an international non-governmental organization with a mission to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community.
1153
High beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching
Agricultural economists manipulated data to block Congress from acting on high beef prices and the destruction of independent cattle ranching. Why? Because they think monopolies are good.
1154
Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
1155
Interview with CEO of Flexport: Supply chain crunch, modern logistics
The supply chain crunch, modern logistics, and that famous trip around the Port of Long Beach
1156
The Demise of Scientific American
Scott’s foreword One week ago, E. O. Wilson—the legendary naturalist and conservationist, and man who was universally acknowledged to know more about ants than anyone else in human hist…
1157
1158
Microsoft confirms Exchange Year 2022 problem
[German]Exchange servers (on-premises) have had woldwide a Year 2022 problem since January 1 (00:00 UTC), because mails are no longer transported due to a “date error”. Meanwhile…