
Great place for hacker recipes - andreyf
http://www.nibbledish.com/
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TrevorJ
This whole meta-discussion about how it's hacking because it's open source
made me realize: Pirating has been around for a lot longer than the internet.
How many grandmothers out there shared copyrighted recipes with friends and
family on 3x5 cards? It honestly never occurred to me till this minute that
that might have been considered copywrite infringement.

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tsuraan
According to the US Copyright Office, recipes aren't generally copyrightable.
Listings of ingredients certainly aren't, and the instructions can only be
copyrighted if they are a "substantial literary expression". I'm guessing that
"mix stuff, cook it at 350 until done" isn't going to qualify.

<http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html> for the real info.

~~~
req2
Going by the law, that's true, but what makes a recipe distinct from sheet
music? They're both simple printed instructions informing appropriately
skilled personnel how to produce a piece to be consumed. "Substantial literary
expression" is a hedge. Many chefs have the same kind of distinctive culinary
traits as writers have literary traits or as composers have distinctive
styles.

~~~
tsuraan
I don't know the real legal reasoning, but in general the score for a symphony
is quite a bit more detailed than the words on your grandmother's recipe card.
IIRC, a piece of music 8 seconds or less cannot be under copyright (can't find
any reference; sorry about that). I would think the typical recipe card would
fall under that line of reasoning, whereas a page or two article on how a chef
makes a complicated dish would probably be a creative work.

~~~
req2
Length is a red herring; compare the copyrightable poetry in 'Haiku in
English' (e.g., "tundra", in full) with signature dishes, like sachertorte or
Waldorf Salad.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_in_English>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_dish>

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xayide
I guess these are more science/engineering than hacker, but I think the
following cooking sites match the title pretty well:

<http://www.cookingforengineers.com/> When I want to make something new and
complicated, I go here first. Great layout, photos with every step, and no
assumed prior knowledge.

<http://www.cooksillustrated.com/> The magazine has more content than the
website, but when I took the time to read a two page essay about how to make
pork lo mein, down to what cuts of meat I could reasonably expect to find in
an American grocery store, I was not disappointed. These are the same people
who endorsed wadded up paper towels as the best turkey lifters after extensive
testing.

Of course, for real recipe hacking, I go to the substitutions section of the
Joy of Cooking to see what insanity I can dig up. My best to date is a non-
dairy chocolate cake that used lots of mayonnaise, and I really want to
experiment with flax seeds as an egg substitute.

~~~
joshu
Cooks Illustrated is awesome. These people are obsessive and I love it.

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Radix
_Please don't do things to make titles stand out... If the original title
begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if
you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14
Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5
Platonic Solids."_

The word hacker here is gratuitous. The words 'open source' give a clear
enough idea of how the site operates. And the site should stand on its own.

(I am amused that TrevorJ managed to think a plausible tie in.)

~~~
icey
Agreed, this is getting idiotic. The site is cool enough, we don't need to
arbitrarily add "hacker" to titles as though it magically means the link
belongs here.

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apgwoz
It actually has been nibbledish for a while now (February, 2009) see:
[http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/05/tsavo-acquires-recipe-
shari...](http://thenextweb.com/2009/02/05/tsavo-acquires-recipe-sharing-site-
open-source-food/)

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jdrock
Recipes + real pictures of the food after it's made = awesome. I am damn
hungry now.

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ohlol
What's up with _this_ recipe?
[http://www.nibbledish.com/people/websolutions/recipes/find-a...](http://www.nibbledish.com/people/websolutions/recipes/find-
answers-to-diffcult-questions)

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wave
I usually don't want to go out and buy all ingredients needed before making
the food. I want a website that tells me the list of food I can make with
ingredients I already have in kitchen.

~~~
maggie
Do you ever have that many ingredients in the kitchen?

That's a valid desire, but I find that 'stuff in the kitchen' amounts to
spices, flour, sugar, and leftovers from previous meals...

So you'd be stuck with baking mountains and mountains of bread related
products, or making soup.

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antidaily
Love the idea, not wild about the design - Anyone else think there were some
ads on the page at first glance?

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discojesus
will there be a recipe for pg's "goop on rice"?

~~~
ericlavigne
pg provided that recipe in the footnotes of his most recent article.

<http://paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html#f1n>

~~~
discojesus
thank you very much.

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rgrieselhuber
Go Japan!

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unohoo
not only is this irrelevant but this news is pretty old too..

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chanux
Well... Maybe it's old. But Food hacking counts in I guess :).

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kingkawn
So is this HN because they had "OpenSource" in the name, or is there another
secret that differentiates this from the other recipe sites?

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andreyf
It publishes the recipes under an open source (well, CC) license ... :-P

~~~
jonknee
Recipes can't be copyrighted, so this isn't exactly a stunning revelation.

<http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html>

~~~
ctbarna
the ingredients list of recipes cannot be copyrighted but "when a recipe or
formula is accompanied by substantial literary expression in the form of an
explanation or directions... there may be a basis for copyright protection."

