143 pointsby minimaxir4 hours ago10 comments
  • ogou3 hours ago
    And that is how you handle things like this. He ponied up and took the hit. More importantly, he gave the back story. After years of reading so many circular psuedo-responsibility posts (by others) trying to squirm out of awkward situations, it's refreshing to see his thoroughness.
  • Aurornis19 minutes ago
    > In an uncomfortable exchange between Beher and Godier on Bluesky, Beher pointed out that Godier’s Dark Hours had the same bug as Beher’s that routed people to “random fields in Mexico”.

    Stealing an open source repo and launching it as your own app is a brazen move. Launching it with the same name as the original repo is just flagrant.

    This guy thought he was going to ride this controversy to some free publicity for himself, using other people’s work. He flew too close to the sun and got caught out on every level.

  • Doohickey-dan hour ago
    One interesting thing:

    > Note: the original version of this post had a section here about an astronomy app I am working on that began as an astrology app and was rejected after having the astrology content removed. App store [sic] review reached out to me and let me know that they had apparently never been given the updated build and that the app should be fine to submit now.

    So did the submitter submit the updated build, but it somehow never made it through Apple's process and thus was never looked at by the app store reviewer? Because that's also a bad look for Apple of "we rejected your app by mistake because we looked at the wrong version, not the new one you submitted".

    • Aurornis11 minutes ago
      Daring Fireball is doubtful:

      > Whether Godier ever submitted a build of “Asterly” to the App Store that contained no occult horseshit and only the hard-science astronomy features that were present in his “Dark Hours” website that was available for the last week, I don’t know. But I have no reason to believe that he did.

      His original submission was an astrology app. He then stole someone else’s open source repo, reskinned it, and tried to pass it off as his own app.

      He is not a trustworthy person. He was trying to manipulate and deceive. I see no reason to point fingers at Apple for this.

      He was trying to leverage anti-Apple sentiment for free publicity for himself and he thought nobody would notice that he stole the app and, brazenly, the name “Dark Hours” from someone’s open source project.

  • springtimesun2 hours ago
    I have not that many things in life that I try to live by.

    One is that when presented with contradictory evidence, evaluate it honestly and, if you evaluate it to be correct, in full or in part, change your belief freely and without apology.

    The other is when you decide you have made a mistake, say so plainly and openly.

    They often go together, but not always. I can’t speak to the author’s belief, but I will file this article under Epistles from Gruber to the internet because it is an inspiration to me.

  • ventana3 hours ago
    This is the right way to handle the situation like that, and kudos to the author for writing the second post.

    This is also a reminder that people lie or just hide some part of the story all the time, and we as readers should question every story if it only presents an opinion of one side, and not the other's.

    That being said, hearing Apple's own opinion is probably not what we could reasonably expect.

  • firasdan hour ago
    This is basically the Bill Clinton move ('is there a relationship' can be parsed differently from 'was there a relationship')...

    Is there astrology in this app? No. Was there..? Yes. And the person complaining skipped mentioning that detail about their app

  • 11235813213 hours ago
    Good retraction. The plagiarism part further down in the article shouldn't be missed. The developer has significant character issues.
  • decimalenough3 hours ago
    Discussion of the original blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49214863
  • DonHopkins25 minutes ago
    As Wiggy Rockstone, teenage cavegirl and astrology enthusiast, would exclaim in her melifluously operatic voice: "Oh, my stars! Starrific!"

    https://flintstones.fandom.com/wiki/Wiggy_Rockstone

  • haburka2 hours ago
    I worry there will be another retraction on this post since it seems like a miscommunication occurred rather than having someone outright lie.
    • Aurornis17 minutes ago
      I doubt it. Did you read until the end where it was discovered that the new web app this person put up was plagiarized from an open source repo? He even used the same name “Dark Hours” as the open source project. The original author called him out on it and identified a unique bug that came from his code.

      This guy appears to be a serial liar.