frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Multiple Indicted on Charges of Theft and Re-Sale of Restaurant Cooking Oil

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdia/pr/multiple-chinese-nationals-indicted-charges-related-theft-and-re-sale-restaurant
15•737min•2h ago

Comments

alecco•2h ago
Actual title: Multiple Chinese Nationals Indicted...
cyanydeez•1h ago
Because the color of your passport matters in the criminal justice system
petcat•1h ago
It is absolutely material to this story though? These people will likely serve their jail or prison sentence and then be forcibly returned to China where they will immediately undergo their re-education.
georgeburdell•1h ago
It’s site rules to use the exact title, even if there are misspellings
DustinEchoes•1h ago
This is part of a broader trend of increased Chinese organized crime in the US. The Chinese government encourages and profits from activity like this.
pphysch•2h ago
Oh no, not the Used Cooking Oil. Thank you DoJ for keeping our streets safe.

Seriously though, what's the usual lifecycle for those waste oil tanks? Will the owner sell the contents to a recycler when it's full?

colechristensen•1h ago
Read the article.

This is an organized crime thing, apparently there's a chinese mob?

These people were stealing oil from restaurants and selling it to downstream users for industrial uses (making biodiesel is one)

Google suggests at about $0.5 per gallon

SoftTalker•1h ago
Yes, the restaurants have a contract with a waste oil processor. The oil gets picked up and is used to make soap, cosmetics, biodiesel, or other products.

I'm not sure what the restaurant gets paid for it, probably not a lot, they may even have to pay for the service like they do for trash dumpsters. But unlike trash, the oil has a value so they probably do get paid a little bit.

They are also legally required to dispose of waste cooking oil properly. It's not toxic per se, but you can't just dump it down the drain.

joecool1029•1h ago
>It's not toxic per se, but you can't just dump it down the drain.

That's what the gutter is for: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zrv78nG9R04

tbrownaw•1h ago
> but you can't just dump it down the drain

The search keyword is the day is "fatberg".

blitzar•1h ago
Sounds like regulatory overreach attacking small businesses and innovation.
mjhay•1h ago
Used oil and grease theft is fairly valuable to use for biodiesel. Theft has actually been a problem for a while.
analog31•1h ago
Actually the first thing that came to mind for me was re-using used oil for cooking.
kotaKat•22m ago
To add to the bit... Simpsons Did It!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu24aQ3D5sk

monerozcash•1h ago
I put all the available court filings from PACER on RECAP https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/72028072/united-states-...
maxglute•1h ago
Used cooking oil / UCO has been liquid gold for carbon credit maxing as feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel. Sells more per unit than cooking oil, so much so there's fraud going around mixing UCO into fresh cooking oil for resale. There's tariff shenanigans over PRC UCO exports, so now US UCO = $$$.

The broader TLRD is there's no market for gutter oil for cooking anymore when UCO sell more to industrial recyclers. Gutter oil for cooking in PRC, TW disapeared once waste cooking oil recycling industries sprung up. I think SKR avoided it all together by building biodesel management earlier.

OutOfHere•1h ago
I don't know why restaurants need to use oil in this waste-generating way, presumably for frying. All of the same things can be cooked in an air fryer oven without oil. Granted, it takes longer, and uses plenty of electricity, but it can be done all day long.
Stevvo•58m ago
At least they are using it for Biodiesel. This happens daily in China, hundreds of thousands of people collect used oil from drains/sewers and sell it to a refinery. However, the refinery doesn't turn it into bio-diesel; they clean it up and resell it as new cooking oil.

I tried Gleam for Advent of Code

https://blog.tymscar.com/posts/gleamaoc2025/
88•tymscar•1h ago•37 comments

Fast, Memory-Efficient Hash Table in Java: Borrowing the Best Ideas

https://bluuewhale.github.io/posts/building-a-fast-and-memory-efficient-hash-table-in-java-by-bor...
37•birdculture•1h ago•0 comments

What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

https://louplummer.lol/nice-stranger/
148•speckx•1d ago•90 comments

Analysis finds anytime electricity from solar available as battery costs plummet

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/12/12/analysis-finds-anytime-electricity-from-solar-available-as...
43•Matrixik•1h ago•30 comments

Cryptids

https://wiki.bbchallenge.org/wiki/Cryptids
47•frozenseven•1w ago•4 comments

SSE sucks for transporting LLM tokens

https://zknill.io/posts/sse-sucks-for-transporting-llm-tokens/
6•zknill•4d ago•2 comments

Java FFM zero-copy transport using io_uring

https://www.mvp.express/
76•mands•6d ago•27 comments

Z8086: Rebuilding the 8086 from Original Microcode

https://nand2mario.github.io/posts/2025/z8086/
20•nand2mario•3h ago•4 comments

macOS 26.2 enables fast AI clusters with RDMA over Thunderbolt

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-26_2-release-notes#RDMA-over-...
506•guiand•22h ago•259 comments

EasyPost (YC S13) Is Hiring

https://www.easypost.com/careers
1•jstreebin•1h ago

Useful patterns for building HTML tools

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/10/html-tools/
126•simonw•2d ago•42 comments

Photographer built a medium-format rangefinder, and so can you

https://petapixel.com/2025/12/06/this-photographer-built-an-awesome-medium-format-rangefinder-and...
123•shinryuu•6d ago•27 comments

Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/
1337•parisidau•14h ago•761 comments

Go Proposal: Secret Mode

https://antonz.org/accepted/runtime-secret/
82•enz•3d ago•22 comments

How exchanges turn order books into distributed logs

https://quant.engineering/exchange-order-book-distributed-logs.html
97•rundef•5d ago•50 comments

Researchers seeking better measures of cognitive fatigue

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03974-w
65•bikenaga•2d ago•11 comments

A Lisp Interpreter Implemented in Conway's Game of Life (2021)

https://woodrush.github.io/blog/posts/2022-01-12-lisp-in-life.html
65•pabs3•15h ago•2 comments

Indexing 100M vectors in 20 minutes on PostgreSQL with 12GB RAM

https://blog.vectorchord.ai/how-we-made-100m-vector-indexing-in-20-minutes-possible-on-postgresql
63•gaocegege•5d ago•10 comments

Show HN: LinkedQL – Live Queries over Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB

https://github.com/linked-db/linked-ql
16•phrasecode•5d ago•6 comments

A 'toaster with a lens': The story behind the first handheld digital camera

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251205-how-the-handheld-digital-camera-was-born
62•selvan•5d ago•29 comments

GNU Unifont

https://unifoundry.com/unifont/index.html
301•remywang•22h ago•70 comments

Computer Animator and Amiga fanatic Dick Van Dyke turns 100

187•ggm•10h ago•49 comments

Rats Play DOOM

https://ratsplaydoom.com/
366•ano-ther•22h ago•136 comments

Will West Coast Jazz Get Some Respect?

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/will-west-coast-jazz-finally-get
39•paulpauper•6d ago•18 comments

Dynamic Pong Wars

https://markodenic.tech/dynamic-pong-wars/
16•rendall•1w ago•2 comments

Beautiful Abelian Sandpiles

https://eavan.blog/posts/beautiful-sandpiles.html
113•eavan0•3d ago•17 comments

OpenAI are quietly adopting skills, now available in ChatGPT and Codex CLI

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/12/openai-skills/
514•simonw•19h ago•297 comments

Show HN: I made a spreadsheet where formulas also update backwards

https://victorpoughon.github.io/bidicalc/
207•fouronnes3•2d ago•98 comments

Show HN: Tiny VM sandbox in C with apps in Rust, C and Zig

https://github.com/ringtailsoftware/uvm32
177•trj•20h ago•11 comments

Show HN: I audited 500 K8s pods. Java wastes ~48% RAM, Go ~18%

https://github.com/WozzHQ/wozz
5•wozzio•3h ago•4 comments