skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: ToS+Signature+Mail Solution
My friend owns and operates a small local machine (diggers, lifts, other heavy machinery) rental service with one employee and his dad helping out. Whenever a customer gets delivery of a new machine, they need to be taught how to use it properly, and they need to sign off that they've received the training and that they're satisfied. My friend has been doing this with pen and paper, but now he's almost ran out of the initial print run of these forms, and asked me for a tech alternative.

I said sure, there's plenty of ways of signing documents easily on a phone or tablet. Keep a PDF with a signature field, open that, have the customer sign it using a finger or stylus, save the PDF with a new name and mail it to yourself.

The problem is, this is just too many steps, especially for his dad who is almost 70 and can barely operate the SMS function on his phone.

What they need is an app that they can add on their home screen that:
1. Opens up and immediately shows the ToS/EULA-text
2. Has a signature field / drawing canvas below where the user can draw their signature
3. A text input below that where they enter their initials
4. A button that says "I understand what I'm signing"

(Someone would perhaps say this is not sufficient, but it is in our country, mostly because you're physically there with them when they sign.)

Clicking the button would create a PDF with the text+signature and automatically email it to a preconfigured/hardcoded address (and save it locally with a random name), and the app would be replaced by a large, friendly text that said "OK" in green. Even if the email failed. Clicking anywhere would then kill/close the app.

Anyone know of something that would be close to as simple as this? Or know someone we could pay to make it?
Woah - so it is!

I'm glad Epic are giving this issue so much publicity - I think consumers seeing the pricing effects of the 30% App Store/Play Store cut is the only way to get people to care about this stuff.
> It is so funny how people critisizing Musk assume, he wouldn't understand so simple connections like seats per vehicle and transit density.

Well, he does keep showing renderings of public transit stations full of Teslas and not, you know, people. It's not really a big leap to say that he doesn't understand when he keeps marketing as if he doesn't understand.
I agree. Spreadsheets are an incredible tool that have stood the test of time. Taking that declaration one sentence farther, they are one of the greatest success stories regarding bringing functional programming into the business world in a way that emphasizes simplicity.
Yes, in fact, this is one of the reasons government was created.
Businesses don’t make money by worrying about morality or worrying about hypocrisy.
I wouldn’t want random people coming through my neighborhood taking my recyclables. That’s one step removed from random people picking through your trash.
This isn't accurate for a few different reasons...

1. There will NEVER be a time in which being forced to think about and organize your content to align with customer business objectives will be a bad idea.

2. If you're seeing lower traffic on your site and don't feel like you need to improve the content or do something different, you deserve to be losing that traffic to someone else who does.

3. SEO is not a zero sum game. Just because only one person can take the top spot for a grail keyword, that does not mean longer tailed variants or answer box results are not still valuable at driving tons of relevant traffic.

I'd suggest you take a step back and think more about what users coming to your site, or any site, would need to build trust in a brand instead of telling people to optimize their social media accounts. Followers are a vanity metric. High intent organic traffic is much more effective in the long run at communicating who you are and why someone should trust in your brand.
No, this is a link to a different post about the same change/glitch, not the same article. Is this a weak attempt to drive people to your blog?
WHO urges public to avoid routine dental cleanings during pandemic – FOX 2
I don't think that's true. The reason SEO is hurting is because google is trying to increase their revenue by increasing the space that ads and their own widgets take up. SEO, Social (both micro and macro), Email, Paid Ads are all different viable types of marketing. The best strategy is to find a good balance of multiple items. You can build a large company on SEO alone. You can build a large company on social. The best companies seem to be the ones in multiple channels. The only long term sales channel that really matters at all is word of mouth. Customers directly getting other customers for you. Every other channel is hyper competitive.
Epic: Apple employs anti-competitive, anti-consumer practices, and we're fighting against that!

Also Epic: We'll be locking as many games as we can afford behind Epic Store exclusive contracts since our store isn't good enough to compete with Steam on functionality or price.
If people look for a solution to a problem, SEO is still the number one for marketing strategies. It’s a lot less effective if you just sell another brand of a consumer good item such as coffee or whatever.
> They own the platform

And the users who buy Apple's devices, what do they own? Clearly not the devices, if Apple still decides how they may be used.
But,it's more than that. Not only do I get some security for payment, but I get:

* Some level of guarantee that every app on my phone has been vetted (it's not perfect of course, but is better than nothing). It's unlikely that anything to nefarious makes can make it onto my phone, and if it does, it'll be removed.

* I get a better fit and finish. Apps on the iPhone very often have a better quality to them.

* I get the ability to refund when needed.

* Personally, my support requirements go down. When my nephew calls me with a problem, I know that he didn't go download some random app from instructions he got from a friend.

Clearly, there's also some profit in there.

Edit: Perhaps to get to my point -- these were ALL known when I bought my phone, and for me, were part of the reason I bought it. If I was not ok with this, I would have bought an Android phone.
> The same "you are dead to me" ragers are often knee deep in google account / xbox account / netflix go anywhere accounts etc.

While I am not GP, I am what of these people. I stay as far away as I can from cloud accounts unless I have the option to self host. I self host Nextcloud and I am soon going to self-host Matrix.

I use F-Droid for my phone apps.
It's not just a PM tool. There are hundreds of examples at our company where e.g. developers documented various tasks in Jira tickets including steps to take, commands to run, things to watch out for, that benefited me greatly. Sometimes the original developer is no longer at the company, and yet I can find the information in a ticket. Our Jira installation is more like a shared brain than a PM tool.
No... that would just imply that it isn’t a useful signal. The case where it would be good is if people were good at worrying about the wrong things. I don’t think that is true, people worry about plenty of legitimate things too.
You can shield your kids from your financial problems much of the time. You can't shield them from a communicable disease.
I will state again. I am referencing the obvious financial incentive here. Only someone who is completely lost would not recognize that as an obvious motivation.

It is not misinformation to point out the completely apparent financial motivation for them doing this.

That is the evidence that I am referencing.

I absolutely consider it to be evidence if there is a huge and obvious financial motivation.
If anyone is interested in the paper I mentioned, you can read it here (open access): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632071...

I've worked with Richard and the folks at STE on a different digital imaging survey, they're doing some fantastic work and are really pioneers, despite a lot of push back from the community.

You can also see some images in that paper which show how difficult this job is: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S00063207183183...

Note different gazelle species - of course you'd have better resolution if you were looking in the flesh, but it's really a job for experts.
It is simply an investigation.

There are no plans in place to force Apple, Google etc. to do anything. And it's not even clear what outcome the EU is even seeking.
30% is extremely high by any reasonable standard for any marketplace
But there are other Smartphone platforms with their own store, correct?

I don’t know why people feel it’s their undeniable right to be able to provide an app to iOS users.
Yes, and Mozilla is run out of Mountain View, California, so that's a very specific location where getting tech executives is expensive. Could they get someone cheaper elsewhere? Absolutely. Is it worth it to pay more to get a CEO that's well-connected or, at a minimum, knowledgeable about what's going on in that region? Absolutely.

I'm not saying I agree with it morally — I think CEO's are paid an insane wage and the wealth disparity in the United States is disgusting — but those are the unfortunate economics.
Physical and digital goods are treated differently.
From the FTC itself[1]:

> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...
Google, of course. And they're trying to please both their consumers and customers, but more focused on consumers, because there's always another customer.
We're talking about the desktop computing industry, not the OS development industry. You don't need a PhD in computer science to tell a good user experience from a bad one.
If past cases are something to go by, there is a very real risk here for Apple and they're digging their own regulatory grave by behaving like this.
Technically, yes. Crostini is a WSL-like VM layer that allows you to run arbitrary Linux apps, including Firefox and Epiphany on ChromeOS.

Practically speaking though, this is all command-line heavy and developer centric. Your typical Chromebook user can't/won't.

I'm actually grappling with this issue right now.. I'm a long time Firefox user and picked up a Lenovo Duet ChromeOS device to serve as a replacement for my cheap Android tablet.

Turns out.. I really like the form factor and am using it a lot (typing on it right now!). But the Firefox Android apps are a pretty terrible experience and since I don't plan on using this for dev, I don't want to jump through all the crostini hoops. So here I am, using Chrome..
Why do you think they all had jobs, or their jobs weren't at risk? All it says, afaik, is they asked 1000 parents.
What does it being a general computing device have to do with anything? Is it the only general computing device available? PC's and Androids exist, how is Apple in anyway a monopoly when they don't even have control of the market?
Come back then, we have chocolate.
I would delete my own images to clear up room on dockerhub, but they dont have an api to remove images. the only way is to manually click the x in the UI.
So, in a lot of ways, docker forced us to "abuse" their service and store thousands of images on a free/open source account.
I get this change, and it was inevitable. But its still ironic that you cant delete tour own images. The best way to delete your image is to just stop using it and let docker delete it for you in 6 months.
To the question raised in C, what's the alternative?

I think it's the best strategy. If you have a business, like the celebrity net worth one, you're in trouble. It's worth keeping in mind these days if your business has long term staying power based on the trends we know are currently underway.
Haha, in addition to all the BS in their terms of service, I had a delightful experience the other day where they argued tooth and nail that they aren't subject to CCPA deletion requests if they give your username away, and at this point I've just been stonewalled.

Just speculating, I bet they've decided a lawsuit would be cheaper than figuring out how their spaghetti code works to be able to safely delete a few fields.
+1 for firebug, It really paved the way for skeleton for most of current inspector tools.
It can actually get worse higher up. I used to live in an apartment tower near a busy freeway, and the black dust was pervasive. I had to move because I literally lost the ability to breathe.
It's not for nothing that Snap is considered dangerous by SUSE and is not officially supported. They even fail basic upstream responsibilities.

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3906

> A year later, in the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can’t audit them, hold them, modify them or even point snap to a different store. You’ve as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you.

> First, I’m happy to confirm that Linux Mint 20, like previous Mint releases will not ship with any snaps or snapd installed.
It was an exception granted to streaming video apps starting back in 2016. Amazon Prime is just the newest entry.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/1/21203630/apple-amazon-prim...
On Apple, the minimum price for anything is $0.99.

You can't set arbitrary prices - only price bands.
Given Epic's history, this is entirely them taking the lead and trying to fight for smaller game devs. Kudos to them.
Businesses don’t exist to define a moral compass. They exist to make money. Any large and successful company will happily play the “do as I say and not as I do” card as often as they think they’ll get away with it.

I’m not saying it’s right but it’s pointless being shocked by the hypocrisy of the logic that businesses are run by.
I work on authentication and access control at Datadog - we've recently improved the group mapping through SAML and we have a number of features in the permission model that we're excited about. Eager to show it off if you're interested.
If immigration is the solution then how is China winning? They essentially don’t allow immigration, especially compared to the USA
> Which additional transactions do you wish Apple would take a 30% cut on?

That's not what they said. Apple already handles payment processing via Apple Pay for real world goods (Amazon, Food delivery, Wish), and does not take a cut of the transaction. Some people see Apple controlling payments for many companies as monopolistic and overreaching, but some (like the parent poster and myself to a degree) see it as a safer alternative to having trust dozens of different companies.
Why do you need to be upset that a person passively disagrees with you on a topic?

So what are you implying here? That he shouldn't have written it because it upsets you?

Or are you just complaining to the abyss that a person wrote a thing on the internet that you disagree with?

If you don't like it, maybe you could read something else instead?
You know who has picked up all the research on molten salt we abandoned?

China.

The utter hysteria around Nuclear is the biggest threat to climate change and if you really want to diminish the use of fossil fuels nuclear is the most economically viable path. The majority of costs are either cultural or obtuse regulations that have layered up over time. Micro reactors, molten salt and other really innovative designs don't get traction because of irrational fears radiation spawns in people.

Similar to a lot of hysteria we are seeing around COVID-19. Even if the majority of the population gets infected, it's only a real threat to a small portion of the population - so rather than managing that specific threat we are acting like it affects everyone the same - with disastrous results that are still unfolding.
Maybe you are remembering this?

Matt Cutts answers the question: "Does Google consider SEO to be spam?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3151352
At my new job, the combination of Jira+Slack+Github is the most productive development support I've ever had. Of course, a company-level investment in process and a great PM and TPM help a lot :)
There could be corrosive chemicals in factory exhausts that behave similarly.
Seems to me that would of been an important data point they could of gathered during the survey.
> so if people want to work outside of china, better not get that certificate if you don't want to be held accountable for supporting an authoritorian government. Easy.

The U.S. government killed thousands of civilians in the Middle East over the last decade with taxpayer money.

So if you don't support killing civilians, stop paying taxes?

Sometimes it's not as easy.

> So my guess is that people doing this just for the "prestige" don't even need this kind of stuff...

I get your point, but maybe "prestige" isn't the right word. If it's easier to function in society if you're a member and does not require you to commit anything immoral (at least not directly), would you join? My bet would be on yes.
I have seen this pattern in the vast majority of successful entrepreneurs I know personally. Fail at school, fired at work, fail, fail, fail, something works, focus, convince everybody that they are actually a genius, tres commas. Prior to success, they have seemed indistinguishable from the many others that ended up just plain failing and going nowhere.

Personally I was a reformable failure in that I once had ‘entrepreneur’ potential but succumbed to just enough conscientiousness to chase a traditional career path from behind.

Maybe there is hope that someday I will screw up badly enough in the traditional path to force myself into doing something great.
Question: How is Apple's 30% cut different from the transaction fees that are charged by Visa / Mastercard and payment processors like Stripe? I can see the big percentage but is the argument in favour of removing the entirety of the cut or reducing it down?
React 17 – going BIG where it matters
Random result: https://www.udidregistrations.com/

>Starting at $8.99, we also provide Certificate & Provisioning files that can be used to install any app, including apps you've created and those not found on the App Store.

Looks like they're essentially "sharing" developer accounts.
> That’s one step removed from random people picking through your trash.

If they leave your trash cleaner than it was, what's the problem here?
In what way? If I don't want to use or develop for the app store ... I just don't, I build for Google Play or the Web. Nothing forces me to use Apple Hardware and if I want to use Apple Hardware I have to agree to the terms.
Google Certifies Fuchsia OS’s ‘Sapphire’ Through Bluetooth Sig
> The current software delivery process revolves around pushing decisions down to dev teams and forcing engineers to push status updates back up. This system ensures executives are the only ones who have context and can see the bigger picture while engineers do all of the work.

> This is backwards. It holds us back from building the best product and slows us down from delivering faster.

Thats engineering. If you don't like it then try to make a career move into management or product or start your own company (not advised).

I myself had to come to terms with reality and have been making the transition.

You got one life, no use complaining until the day you die. Move into management and make the changes. If you're ambitious enough, you should have learned all you need to learn from engineering after 6 years and can apply your knowledge in a more strategic role, running circles around non-technical PMs.
That is a fair point. But wouldn't an intrinsic motivation for group conformity be a competitive advantage here, instead of being coerced or convinced for it? For example ants must have high intrinsic motivation for following the group, they don't need to be motivated or convinced. Likewise, humans come with factory settings for many prosocial behaviors somewhat instinctively (e.g. mother-infant behavior), therefore the group benefit and intrinsic motivations being in alignment can be a selective advantage.
Isn’t it the other way around that iOS users should be able to shop in competing stores for their apps?

It’s just very few users have any real ability to affect that sort of change.
> engineer arrogance

And this is the twilight-zone reality that software developers are forever stuck in:

Manager: "I need you to integrate the TPS reports with JIRA for a client"

Developer: "Ok, I can look into that"

Manager: "How long is that going to take? Put some story points on the JIRA task."

Developer: "Well, I've never done that before, so I'll have to do some research and I can't really say for sure-"

Manager: "I need you to say for sure. Knock it off with your engineer arrogance and suck it up and help your colleagues. I'm so sorry that I pulled you out of your 'deep flow' state but we're trying to reach our goals here"

Developer: (heavy sigh) "Well, a week maybe? If I can focus on just this and not all the other things I'm currently tasked with-"

Manager: "No, subtask it out to individual tasks of no more than four hours each. And you'll need to spend an hour every day in a status meeting so you can spend five minutes updating the status of your subtasks and listening to everybody else's unrelated statuses".
I second this. I think you are in a good position to move to AR/VR applications with your background in iOS/Android if you learn this stuff.

Hololens is already out and has some good developer resources. Apple is supposed to have something in the pipeline for release sometime in the next couple years (could just be a rumor). If that happens, I think that would be the catalyst for mainstream adoption. I wouldn't be too surprised if google redesigns and rereleases Glass to compete too.
No, you know that the app might not be available for your new iPhone and accept the fact when you buy it or you just do not buy an iPhone and buy Android/LibreOS/etc instead.
Even when it is. This should be obvious. Not even sure why I'm spelling this out. Say total amount of money an organization has is $X + $Y. Group A is assigned $X in funding. Group B is assigned $Y in funding.

Group A gets $Z in donation with conditions attached so it only gets used by Group A.

Then the organization assigns $X - $Z funding to Group A and assigns $Y + $Z funding to Group B. Group A is happy because it still has $X from the donation and doesn't complain. Group B is happy because it can now spend $2.5 million on the CEO.
many designs have, but few want to have discussions because of the decades of hysterical ranting about how evil radiation is. Radioactivity is neither good nor evil; it's a tool. Yup, it can be used for evil but it can also be used for good.
Paypal does the same thing and charges an order of magnitude less.
Manchester United to Consider Signing Donny Van DE Beek over Jack Grealish
> Apple has removed Fortnite from the iOS App Store.

So this is the hill Apple wants to die on.
It makes sense. 30% of all the apps economy is a lot of money.

I hope that antitrust and other government agencies take note.

The ability to take down the 7th top grossing iOS game without blinking shows the kind of power that Apple has over everybody else.
FWIW brick and mortar stores usually take 40%.
which I very much agree with.