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There is a fun HN tie-in with the Honey controversy. The MegaLag video cites a HN thread from around five years ago as one of the only online discussions of Honey's practice of replacing cookies used to attribute online sales.

New thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42483500
Old thread (from when Honey was acquired by PayPal): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589273

Now under increased scrutiny, the team behind the browser extension is now being accused of stealing GPL code from uBlock Origin and using it in violation of the GPL terms:
An interesting comment from the last thread purporting to describe Honey's business model:
They were always a protection racket against retailers, and I haven't seen any proof that they started stuffing their affiliate code in 100% of the time only recently.
The racket is that they f*k with your campaigns by stealing codes typed by users of the extension, so even users who don't think they're sharing them end up sharing them with Honey. Imagine the fun when someone creates a valuable code for someone trusted and doesn't limit its usage sufficiently, and someone uses it on a Honey-infected machine. Now the whole Internet is getting a possibly loss-making discount!

Honey then contacts the business and says "Gee, wouldn't you like us to stop doing that? Just pay us 3% on every sale any of our tens of millions of users buy and we'll let you blacklist any codes you like!"
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I hadn't thought of that angle (using the extension to aggregate any discount code entered by any Honey user) but dang, that's sneaky if true.
 
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inception_state said:
There is a fun HN tie-in with the Honey controversy. The MegaLag video cites a HN thread from around five years ago as one of the only online discussions of Honey's practice of replacing cookies used to attribute online sales.

New thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42483500
Old thread (from when Honey was acquired by PayPal): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21589273

Now under increased scrutiny, the team behind the browser extension is now being accused of stealing GPL code from uBlock Origin and using it in violation of the GPL terms:
An interesting comment from the last thread purporting to describe Honey's business model:

I hadn't thought of that angle (using the extension to aggregate any discount code entered by any Honey user) but dang, that's sneaky if true.
Click to expand...
For the sake of argument, setting up sufficient usage limits (e.g. tying codes to accounts) seems infinitely cheaper than paying Honey/Paypal a vig on each user's sale. Even if they have to hire outside contractors to set up such a system. So they could tell Honey to get scraped, as they should, and make a big public fuss about the extortion emails.

Not to imply they're not retarded enough to do such a legally dicey thing, but it seems like an easy way to sink their battleship.
 
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y a t s said:
For the sake of argument, setting up sufficient usage limits (e.g. tying codes to accounts) seems infinitely cheaper than paying Honey/Paypal a vig on each user's sale. Even if they have to hire outside contractors to set up such a system. So they could tell Honey to get scraped, as they should, and make a big public fuss about the extortion emails.

Not to imply they're not retarded enough to do such a legally dicey thing, but it seems like an easy way to sink their battleship.
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Elsewhere in the thread, it said that a dialog box pops up asking if you want to share a code, if you enter a new one. That sounds more plausible. Doing it without any prompting would be basically a keylogger.

This would mess up microtargeting to a certain extent. Eg. if you run an ad campaign focused at a particular demographic with a deeper discount than usual, and it ends up on Honey, that could cost you a decent amount of money. But yeah, is it worth 3%? The minimum commission to participate in Honey Gold is 5% per their website.
 
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inception_state said:
This would mess up microtargeting to a certain extent. Eg. if you run an ad campaign focused at a particular demographic with a deeper discount than usual, and it ends up on Honey, that could cost you a decent amount of money. But yeah, is it worth 3%? The minimum commission to participate in Honey Gold is 5% per their website.
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The site I used to buy weed and stuff from would regularly send out single-use codes (e.g. Q93SKJ10P) through email for certain promos or if you hadn't shopped there in a while. Targeting through email while not necessarily hard-linking a code to a specific account. There's no denying there are some seriously retarded business owners out there, but that 3% adds up quickly. Not to mention the fees they already pay for payment processing, logistics stuff like shopify, etc.
 
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inception_state said:
Now under increased scrutiny, the team behind the browser extension is now being accused of stealing GPL code from uBlock Origin and using it in violation of the GPL terms:
Click to expand...
Using GPL'd code is not "stealing". It's a copyright violation, which can at best be remediated in a civil case. More and more companies are finding out that GPL is completely toothless and often applied to things that cannot be copyrighted, such as lists of URLs (it's a collection of facts, which cannot be copyrighted). Even if they're using actual code, most open source maintainers don't have the funds to lead a successful civil case against the infringers. Expect to see more of that in the future.
 
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Kola said:
Using GPL'd code is not "stealing". It's a copyright violation, which can at best be remediated in a civil case. More and more companies are finding out that GPL is completely toothless and often applied to things that cannot be copyrighted, such as lists of URLs (it's a collection of facts, which cannot be copyrighted). Even if they're using actual code, most open source maintainers don't have the funds to lead a successful civil case against the infringers. Expect to see more of that in the future.
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The FSF has a compliance thingy for helping devs go after companies violating free software licenses (not just GPL from what I understand). Though I agree shit like curated URL lists are harder to justify legal enforcement for.
 
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Lmao absolutely based.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42595307 (A)

Screenshot 2025-01-05 at 05.52.18.png
 
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It's fashionable these days for tech-adjacent hyperpsychopaths to be perceived as "anti-woke". A couple of years ago he was a card-carrying anti-racist trans rights defender. After Facebook has scaled down its DEI programs, expect more tech companies and "thought leaders" to follow suit and virtue signal right wing views.
 
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I actually wanted to CONSOOM the Bluray set of Batman TAS but I was put off by it big league because it came with a Funko.

I hope there's a version of the set without a funko that's available for sale. Literally the only Funko I want is Darkwing Duck and then I'd just take it out of the package anyway. Come at me Big Funko, not in a call, but in real life. I am ready.
 
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Kola said:
Using GPL'd code is not "stealing". It's a copyright violation, which can at best be remediated in a civil case. More and more companies are finding out that GPL is completely toothless and often applied to things that cannot be copyrighted, such as lists of URLs (it's a collection of facts, which cannot be copyrighted). Even if they're using actual code, most open source maintainers don't have the funds to lead a successful civil case against the infringers. Expect to see more of that in the future.
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This is wrong. Copyright infringement has statutory damages and is a Federal crime.

Whether violating the GPL is a simple license breach or true copyright infringement depends on the circumstances of the case. Simply not supplying a copy of the source code (as the license dictates) wouldn’t be infringement, but copying code and selling the software or releasing it under some other license would be.
 
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George Lucas said:
This is wrong. Copyright infringement has statutory damages and is a Federal crime.
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It is very, very rarely an actual crime. It's usually prosecuted in the case of outright counterfeit goods (like fraudulent band T-shirts), things like releasing a movie before it's in theaters (like the guy convicted of leaking a Hulk movie screener), or mass copyright infringement, like a guy who ran a piracy site not for profit but for enormous amounts of material who was prosecuted under the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act of 1997, which enhanced criminal penalties for copyright infringement.

Criminal prosecutions for copyright infringement remain rare, and they're generally in the realm of outright theft for profit. I actually agree with most of these, considering that in most cases, bands are getting absolutely jewed out of their money by crooked record companies and have to make the bulk of their money from things like merch sold at concerts, so infringing that literally takes money directly out of their pockets.
 
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Margo Martindale said:
The Hacker News post for the WIRED article about the DOGE engineers being doxxed is of course full of hundreds defending the journalist, and any trying to advocate for DOGE are downvoted or flagged

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Back when 3rd-party apps were banned from Reddit, a lot of disgruntled Redditors went to Hacker News and brought their shitty far-left politics with them. That thread is the result.
 
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