Hacker News

Top stories

Live mirror
30 storiesupdated just nowView source snapshot
  1. Human brain is two separate organs, Stanford Medicine-led research finds(stanford.edu ↗)
    10comments
  2. San Francisco Onion Futures Company(onionfutures.com ↗)
    48comments
  3. Android 17 is the first since 3.x to add new APIs without releasing to the AOSP(grapheneos.social ↗)
    361comments
  4. If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it(terrytao.wordpress.com ↗)
    1comments
  5. Typesafe-computer-use drives a Mac toward a goal for 1/50th of a cent per step(github.com/awlevin ↗)
    14comments
  6. SDCC – Small Device C Compiler(sourceforge.net ↗)
    15comments
  7. Science Is Open Software(jepedersen.dk ↗)
    25comments
  8. Cloudflare Quick Tunnels(cloudflare.com ↗)
    272comments
  9. Saving another 100TB of RAM(cloudflare.com ↗)
    62comments
  10. Why building a Rust LSP is hard(rust-glancer.github.io ↗)
    21comments
  11. How OpenAI Used Its Own LLMs to Design Its Jalapeño Chip(ieee.org ↗)
    76comments
  12. How to Write with an LLM(sockpuppet.org ↗)
    313comments
  13. NASA-IBM Lunar Foundation open-Source Geospatial AI Model(usra.edu ↗)
    1comments
  14. Ctenophores: Wonders of Biology(quantamagazine.org ↗)
    4comments
  15. Goroutine Leak Profiles(go.dev ↗)
    2comments
  16. You can run Git on object storage if you re-make packfiles(tigrisdata.com ↗)
    4comments
  17. The first new cat species discovered in 100 years(nationalgeographic.com ↗)
    90comments
  18. Show HN: Cactus Needle 3: 8-29MB automation models can match DeepSeek V4 Flash(cactuscompute.com ↗)
    85comments
  19. OpenJev(openjev.com ↗)
    257comments
  20. Photon-Emission-Guided Laser Fault Injection Enables RP2350 Secure Debug(ledger.com ↗)
    66comments
  21. The Farnese letter(simonklee.dk ↗)
    6comments
  22. Cache-to-Cache: Direct Semantic Communication Between LLMs (2025)(arxiv.org ↗)
    12comments
  23. Xcode 27.1 Beta Release Notes(developer.apple.com ↗)
    95comments
  24. Minimal Phone 2(minimalcompany.com ↗)
    208comments
  25. Cyclomatic Complexity in C#(ndepend.com ↗)
    18comments
  26. Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud(ferstar.org ↗)
    97comments
  27. Claude Code now reads AGENTS.md if there is no Claude.md(claude.com ↗)
    219comments
  28. Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)(archive.org ↗)
    47comments
  29. Alibaba open-sources AI model that can detect cancer and nearly 150 conditions(scmp.com ↗)
    11comments
  30. LispBM is a concurrent Lisp for microcontrollers with message passing(lispbm.com ↗)
    3comments

Tell HN: Trivially bot banned from Google Play Store twice in a year

9 pointsby 4y ago
4 comments
How you can help: If you know someone working at the Google Play Store tell them to add warning emails 1 month before bots remove apps!

Story: It's the second time in a year our Android app gets removed from the Google Play Store by bot without warning. 1 year ago we got removed because the Amharic title for the app was not confirming the store guidelines. (Our app is translated in 40+ languages). It had been the same for 4+ years but suddenly someone wrote a bot to just remove all apps that didn't pass that guideline without any email notification. We modified the metadata, appealed and resubmitted and our app was re-added with reviews with a 7 days downtime costing us thousands of dollars in revenues. The level of stress was VERY HIGH. Yesterday again our app was removed. This time the culprit guideline is not providing email/password for the reviewers to use. The app has been the same for 9 years. Someone added that to the guidelines 2+ years ago. And then now someone wrote a bot to enforce that. The bot just removes the apps without any warning.

Let's be clear. I'm not against the guidelines. The problem is there are 100+ pages of guidelines and they get updated all the time. Engineers at the Google Play Store need to STOP IMMEDIATELY this kill-bots that ban straight away without an email notification. Please build in a grace period where you notify developers 1-4 weeks before you are going to remove their apps.

BUT WE WARNED YOU IN THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE CONSOLE... We don't check the Google Play Store Console very often and pretending millions of developers to be on the edge all the time reading manuals of dozens of pages updated monthly and checking compulsively UIs warning that matters once a year is just a cruel dystopia.

Please stop the killbots and add the warn-bots followed by killbots. This bots have seriously damaged the brand of Google in my eyes and have forced us to change marketing strategy from the app stores to SEO/content marketing to be less dependent on the whims of bots developers.