So yeah, it doesn't claim to do the same thing in the description - but it's vague enough that a casual reader might think it does. And the fact that they use the name and the icon makes it pretty obvious that they're trying to trick people who are looking for an iOS version of ClipGrab into paying them money. This is also made evident by the fact that I have received a number of complaints from users who were convinced, they had paid for a "pro version" of ClipGrab that was now simply not doing what they expected.

Which is precisely why I asked if there's a better way to report scam apps that I might have missed. But unfortunately it doesn't seem to be the case and you don't seem to have an answer either.

So Apple should really be taking action on both counts, in my opinion.

Recently, I have been receiving complaints from people who said they purchased a "pro version" of my app for $34.99 on the Apple App Store (for iOS - even though there is no iOS version of our app).

The App Store listing uses our app icon, the exact app name and has even tacked a (TM)-symbol to it. It seems to be AI-generated slop and I'm not sure if it provides any functionality at all.

I reached out to Apple via their trademark complaint form a week ago. All they seem to have done so far is forward my complaint to the author of the scam listing.

So, here is my question for folks who have been in a similar situation: Does Apple genuinely not care about fake apps in the App Store - or is there a better way to report them?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48830439

Points: 8

# Comments: 16

With that being said, it seems like the author received some poor advice from their law firm:

1) If the author mostly does consulting and contract work, a sole proprietorship would have been the better option as many others here have already pointed out.

2) The UG & Co. KG construct is unnecessarily complex for a small company; it does have some advantages but if they really wanted a limited liability company, they should have used the "Musterprotokoll" (standard protocol) for setting up a UG; that would probably have cost less than €500. Lawyers love to suggest GmbH/UG & Co KG though because it means more fees for them.

3) The advice they got regarding the name was almost certainly incorrect. First of all, "case law" is not really a thing in civil law countries like Germany. The company name usually gets checked by the local chamber of commerce (IHK) and while there are some rules (you're not allowed to just call your company the equivalent of "Supermarket Co", "Plenty UG" would have almost certainly been fine. And if the IHK says it's fine, the court will accept it too.

Anyways, now that you have your company, I wish you all the best with it. You have exciting times ahead and the frustrating bit is (almost) over :-)

I'm building an Open Source email newsletter tool and one of the challenges we have is form spam: As soon as a signup form goes live somewhere, bots will try to sign up. This is possibly an attempt to overwhelm the inbox of people whose accounts have been compromised. But it's also bad for the people who run the newsletter as these ultimately unwanted emails reduce their sender reputation.

There was recently a discussion here on HN about this topic [1]. The post author ended up using Cloudflare Turnstile to mitigate the issue. We currently already have support for external captcha solutions like hCaptcha. However, many of our users are quite privacy-conscious and don't like having user data sent to third parties (especially non-EU third parties for our European users).

So now I've been thinking of adding an invisible proof-of-work (PoW) captcha to all signup forms. Possible implementations I've been considering are Altcha [2] and mCaptcha [3].

Now to my question: Have any of you tried using PoW captchas to protect against form spam? What have your experiences been with it so far?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609882

[2] https://altcha.org/

[3] https://mcaptcha.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47739684

Points: 6

# Comments: 10

[1] https://www.scaleway.com/en/glacier-cold-storage/ [2] https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/

Work on the BEAM started in the 1990s, over ten years before the first release of Node in 2009.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46704624

Points: 12

# Comments: 6

This is simply untrue. Independent bodies all over the world regularly test commercially available oils for toxic solvents. While the solvent Hexane is indeed commonly used in the extraction of refined vegetable oils, it is later removed in the refining process.

For example Stiftung Warentest, an independent consumer advocacy organization tested 23 rapeseed oils available in German supermarkets and they all came out clean [1].

A few years earlier, they tested 25 "specialty oils" and found traces of Hexane in only one of them - but still way below the EU threshold of 1 mg/kg. [2]

Here is a study from Japan that tested a bunch of vegetable oils and came to the conclusion that none of the products contained dangerous levels of Hexane. The maximum amount the researchers found was 42.6 µg/kg (again way below the EU threshold) - but in most samples the amount they found was so low they couldn't even get a reading or they didn't find any Hexane at all.

Besides, for cold-pressed oils, no solvents are used at all.

[1] https://www.test.de/Rapsoel-im-Test-1816151-0/

[2] https://www.test.de/Gourmet-Oele-Fast-jedes-zweite-ist-mange...

[3] https://openaccesspub.org/experimental-and-clinical-toxicolo...