skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It shows 13(!) transactions in total, let me try to put something together that you could make sense of.

The paypal transactions do not correspond 1:1 with the bank stuff, which makes it a lot harder to follow.

here is the png with the paypal situation (I'll add it to the post too).

http://pics.ww.com/d/427289-1/paypal3.png

Voltooid = completed
Verrekend = corrected
Mislukt = failed

I wished I had a reliable alternative to paypal, a company that just does one thing and does it well, transfer money from me to third parties without all the bs that paypal makes me deal with.

On top of that they caused me a bunch of trouble with my bank which I'm really not happy about.

What you would expect, for 3 transactions is three entries on the paypal side and three entries on the bank side.

Instead you get 8 transactions on the bank side, 13 on the paypal side and in some of those the amounts do not even match up with the invoices that were paid, which makes for a huge problem for the bookkeeper at a later date when he has to piece it all together again.
As evidenced by Max Levchins recount of Paypal's problems in "Founders at Work", the massive problem with handling credit card payments is fraud, not coding or something similar. That's most probably the reason why so few firms tackle this space.
I'm no UX expert, but the interface needs a lot of work here. You have a lot of competition here as well. You've got a decent start.

A few points:
My eyes don't know where they're supposed to go. I don't know where I'm supposed to start. I don't know the PRIMARY purpose of the site. Why choose this site over 1000 other? The radio buttons for the "food, bars, etc.) items is the wrong metaphor - some sort of button or tab would be better. The search results kind of just appear in a weird way and i don't know what i'm supposed to do with them. What's the search range? Are there ratings on anything?

"A quick way to see the world..." doesn't tell me anything. That could describe 1,000,000 websites. "SURF THE WORLD" doesn't tell me anything either.

The "News" isn't returning any news for me, just a bunch of random links. And the box is so small it's a pain to view anything in.

The "Events" tab doesn't tell me anything either. What types of events are they? They seem VERY generic.

Weather isn't available in my area.

The feedback button on the left overlaps with the search results and things. It seems cramped.

By the way, I live in Sydney, AU.

Hope some of this helps.
Great idea and nice execution! I can't wait til there is some desks in my area.
>If we want to keep HN purpose-focused, then perhaps we should just stop growing

How?
I think the last transaction mentioned in the body text should have referred to dollars (rather than euros).
There is no Internet in China. What they have is something else, and something fundamentally different.
Replace Text Inside Existing SWF File & True Type to SWF Font Conv.
Aspose.Flash is a non-graphical .NET Flash management component allowing developers to dynamically generate and edit Flash® content directly from .NET applications. It provides support for Flash v8, Flash v9, Flash Lite and ActionScript allowing you to create, parse and modify flash files. Using Aspose.Flash, you can create banners with animation, menus or whole site, GIS maps or simple games. Also insert images, shapes, simple morphing, gradients, audio and video streams to your flash files.
Cookmarking
Cookmarking - create your own collection of recipes
I use an enhancement on the PE ratio where I take the average earnings over the past X years (between 5 and 7 usually) instead of just the most recent. That can accommodate short term fluctuations in an otherwise stable business.

Also the rate at which the dividend changes is important.
Ask HN: time-efficient ways to improve English for non-natives?
Hi,

few weeks ago one of the partners of one of europe's largest VCs told me that he couldn't concentrate at my pitch because i sounded to much like http://vimeo.com/7595897

This kinda kept sticky in my mind. ;)

As i am moving now with my company[1] to London i would like to use this opportunity to improve my english, my accent and my grammar/spelling.

As a typical non-native i have regular problems with spelling e.g. with similar sounding words. I do have this problem especially in hectic faces.

Additionally I have trouble with incorrectly translated german expressions. Some of them are really below all pigs.

How would you suggest to level up english in a time efficient way?

Are there online services/startups you would suggest? Do you have other experiences here? (e.g. writing blog articles?) How did you improve you (once mediocre) english?

ps: i left by intention more than 4 mistakes in this post just to prove my point.

[1]: My Company - http://www.Garmz.com - Feedback Thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1788016
Only for US and UK sellers (and Amazon's payment service is only for US sellers iirc).
It says '$500' right ?

Or do you mean a different one ?

There are only 3 transactions, one E 550, one E 1000, one $500. That's it.

edit: Ah, my bad, that was not a transaction but an exchange rate calculation and I got the unit wrong. Thanks!
Yep, the Smalltalk machines (and the Lisp machines as well, in some ways) are perfect examples of three things:

0. It is perfectly possible to be 20 or 30 years too early

1. Some corporations just suck at understanding the value of what they already own

2. Price matters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank is pretty good, if you want to see the original patent then there's a link there.

Of course there are many alterations now to the original ranking algo.

Good quality links with varied text from a wide variety of high-authority domains along with a well structured internal link graph should be all the magic you need to get a high PR.

SeoMOZ's annual ranking factors report is a good read on the practicalities.
Name, address and contact details should be in an address file attached to the mail, no?
> I wonder why they have not been successful.

Because Xerox considered they could never make a product out of PARC's output (Apple and Microsoft disagreed). None of it ever became actual products, it was either research material or stuff for some unis.

Also, maybe price. This was in the late 70s to early 80s, the hardware in the box was significant, the rest of the world was still running on 80x25 text displays if that.
Given all the horrible things they do, why do people still grant PayPal access to their money?
Facebook charity app wins investors
A simple tool to play with world's moods: Smood it API reference documentation
Suitable alternative please?

The only one that I have that will work in all these cases is Western Union and their fees are horrible.
Am I missing something or is it impossible for a male addict to "pass on the dependency to the unborn child, leading to organ and brain damage."?
Good luck! And keep in mind that napping is a skill to practice. Don't despair if you can't fall asleep within a few minutes the first few times you try it.
How Google understands language like a 10-year-old
I agree that speaking with some "locals" is useful, but don't entirely discount foreigners who have lived there for a while - they tend to see the quirks more clearly.
jacquesm,
There are two potential solutions. The first is having a separate bank account specifically for use with paypal. This gives your "real" bank accounts some degree of separation from the at-risk account you've used to become "verified" according to paypal (note the unhealthy amount of sarcasm on "verified"). This is the only working approach if you must be "verified" by them.

The second method is far better; _ONLY_ give paypal a credit card number. You will not be "verified" according to paypal, but you now have control. If palypal does anything stupid, you just file a dispute/charge-back with your credit card company. When you reach the stupid "spending limit" for an "unverified" account, simply delete your credit card number from your paypal payment methods, then close your paypal account. Now you can create a new paypal account with a new email address and the same credit card. The result is you just by-passed their spending limit that _forces_ "verification" when reached.

EDIT: Yes, I feel giving paypal your bank account credentials is absolutely foolish. They try everything they can to get access to your bank account(s), but at least there is a way around their stupid games.
Search engines learning to anticipate user's needs
And I was reading this today http://tortoisesvn.net/howpaypalscrewsopensourceprojects ouch
eat.ww.com to http://www.weightwatchers.com/ ? (just for the joke)
These people are not "sociopaths" (nasty, effective) but "trolls" (nasty, losers): what do they have to gain?
International payments. I cannot pay for my Romania-based vps in any other way really. My debit cards don't support 3D-secure, credit cards fail 50% of the time (already had problems with that), bank transfers are not supported.

There's simply no alternative for me. Fortunately this and ebay are the only services that require me to use paypal anyways.
Nope. The experience is just as crummy, the support is even worse and there are pretty big geographical restrictions on both sides of exchanges (sales and buys).

For instance, as far as I know you still can't buy or sell from Canada (with a canadian bank account anyway) via Checkout.

Only alternatives are going straight for the credit card, or using international bank transfers (which I doubt are without hassles)
We're in the 'first' situation now, but the downside is that if paypal does decide to plunder your account that you are instantly below 0. I never even realized they could do that until it happened.

The second method is better but unfortunately paypal would not authorize any payments (from my credit cards!) until they had a confirmed (and thus accessible) bank account.
Hi

Quickly looking at the LargeMap you're linking to.. What's the problem you're trying to solve? What's the benefit of using this as compared to normal Google maps?

For me, it starts showing London. If I scroll and zoom in to my area and click one of the "Show nearest", it's still showing 'generic central London' spots, rather than where I've zoomed. Looks like this feature has been lost in your tool.

If I type my postcode in, first thing I see is that weather results are not available. Weather results aren't that specific, so I'd think that the weather result for Westminster would qualify for Shoreditch too.

I get some "MSN Web" results, but apart from the 1st one (which is yellow page type page for a company on my street) I can't see how these results are related to this area.

If it's clearer what the benefits of using this tool would be, perhaps you'd get more feedback.
This is nonsense. According to the World Bank at http://data.worldbank.org, the total cumulative GDP growth of Japan between 1991 and 2009 was 18.15% while it was 59.47% for the United States. Even though measuring economic development with GDP growth has its problems, the difference is so enormous that it cannot be denied that the US economy did a lot better, even with all the recent developments.
I wonder what the author would think of Kibo and his sig:

http://www.birdhouse.org/etc/kibosig.txt
Everyone knows who is a yakuza, but they don't necessarily broadcast their individual identities.
Philippine children's show BATIBOT will be back soon
After two decades of being absence in the local boobtube, Batibot will be back on national television.
Indian operators told to store all text messages for a period of 6 months
Now, for me a BANK (which is what PayPal is here in
Europe)

If they are a bank, I'd anticipate that you could call them and insist on speaking to a compliance officer. Keep a log book, if they fail to do so, complain to the regulator.
First off, I had a bad PayPal experience years ago, so no amount of discussion would persuade to me to use them. I wouldn't use them if they, or anyone else, paid me. They are that bad.

Putting my bias aside, what you need to consider is the time and stress that will occur if -- I'm straining not to say when -- things go wrong. If they do go wrong, then you will meet a void of silence.

You will spend huge gobs of time -- and incur costs -- trying to sort things out, and you will completely without control. You will lose sleep. You will be distracted. And if the sum involved is large enough, it could be disastrous for your business and perhaps your life.

Now, ask yourself: what you would pay to avoid those risks?

I suggest the simple answer is to sidestep the risk and simply not go there.
IPv4 Space Shrinks To 5% – Final Addresses To Be Issued In Early 2011
A blogger's store in NYC?
http://www.evernote.com/
Ask HN: Has anyone bought Laptop Insurance for their Startups?
Having a laptop smash or be stolen is an expensive problem, but can be much worse for a tiny startup- That $2000 to replace might be the difference between making it another month and launching.

IIRC, Homeowners insurance won't cover Business-owned devices, not to mention that quite a few startuppers are renting.

Does anyone have experience with Laptop Insurance for your business?

What company did you use, and how did it work out?
Just curious - how does it look from the technical side? Does PayPal use direct debit or something different?
Does anyone actually want to pay right out of their bank account? I won't even use my debit card online.
Apple and Verizon, Sitting in a Tree
The "easiest" thing would be to live somewhere where you speak English with native speakers on a regular basis.
You know what? I should have known better. We had $50K frozen for 6 months about 10 years ago when paypal suddenly decided they liked our money more than we did.

Eventually they paid it back but not after all the symptoms that you just described.

Then, about a year ago I did a project with a freelancer in the US (another HN'er) and I ended up having to pay him using paypal because we had no other viable option.

So, I thought maybe they'd cleaned up their act in the meantime.

Now I kick myself for being so stupid.
Real banks make mistakes all the time.

I once had a $35 check clear the bank for $4,035. That caused a domino effect of bounces. But the bank fixed it up -- I even got them to write me a letter of explanation to give to my landlord, and use in the future for any credit questions.

My wife is a bit anal about the bank (she's an accountant). She used to call the 800 number every morning (that was before online banking) to double-check the balance. It was quite common to see random discrepancies of as much as $5, which would resolve themselves the next day (this was a different bank than the anecdote above). I have no idea how that happened, but it didn't seem to make any difference to the monthly bottom line.
> unfortunately paypal would not authorize any
> payments (from my credit cards!) until they
> had a confirmed (and thus accessible) bank
> account.

Please elaborate. I'm not sure what you mean by this, and there may be (are!) differences between how paypal operates in the .us versus the .eu.

Were you not allowed to _send_ money with only your credit card on the paypal account?

Or were you not allowed to _receive_ money with only a credit card on the paypal account?

Sorry. It's late here, I'm tired, and I'm not reading your words as clearly as I should. Though I haven't done much in recent weeks, I do volunteer work for a non-profit organization here in the US that specializes in helping victims of online fraud. Sadly, the "paypal drained my bank account" story is repeated regularly.
Yes, direct debit. They authorize you account by taking out a minimal amount that you then use as a one-time pin to verify that you are the owner. After that they apparently can do as they please which is not how I thought it was going to work (I expected a verification step from my bank with each payment, a system called iDeal here).
4 reasons why Microsoft should give Windows Phone 7 to its MVPs
That last part of what you write is what it is all about. This did make a difference to my bottom line.

The mistakes bank make are all backdated and your statement is adjusted, you'll never see the difference once it's all over. But what paypal did here created a mess that will take quite a bit of work to untangle when it needs to be explained to Her Majesties beancounters.
> Were you not allowed to _send_ money with only your credit card on the paypal account?

Yes. They kept asking for a verification of the account, without that no further processing possible. Please note that this is a corporate account, not a personal account.

> Sadly, the "paypal drained my bank account" story is repeated regularly.

ouch.
Flag Reason Field:

When a submission gets flagged, a "reason" string is entered by the flagger. This could be done via javascript event binded to the flag link, or by redirecting to a "flag" page that gets the id of the submission being flagged. The flagger then either types a short string, or selects from a limited set of reason from a dropdown box. The reason string is then displayed at the top of a submissions's comment page when the flag is approved as [dead].

The reason string could be added in the title, appended to the byline, as an autosubmitted comment, or as a new heading... whatever is easiest to implement.

Ex. if submission X is [dead] and a user has "show dead" enabled, when they click on submission X it will now say "spam", "duplicate", "inflammatory", "automatic" etc.

This would prevent issues like: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1801727 A post was most likely harmlessly flagged and [dead]ened for being a duplicate of one by a cofounder, but a user who saw it interpreted it as persecution.
You can (and should!) dispute direct debit. I believe that in most countries you should get a refund no questions asked. Check out the details with your bank.
'@' => '.', typo sorry, edited
I think PayPal has become bad enough to justify taking the "suitable alternative" search to the next level. Like considering a change of career or company strategy.
6 Poisonous Foods We Still Eat
There are some foods that are banned in most restaurants, dishes that come from highly poisonous animals or that must be cooked exactly as specified if you want to continue living.
Some already do. Baen publishes all their ebooks DRM-free and in many formats, for instance.
> Much to my surprise, about a half hour
later, paypal reversed the charge, but the amount was paid in to the account
of the recipient. Free money, or so it seemed :)

If I understand this correctly, double entry bookkeeping should have made this situation impossible (or, at the least, Paypal should then notice their net loss). It's a bit worrying to see indications that Paypal's internal systems can't keep track of money correctly.

Have you considered reporting this to your regulator?
Would be really interested in HN readers views on how VbV could be improved, maybe in a position to implement some of these suggestions
> Have you considered reporting this to your regulator?

We're getting there.

I have plenty of stuff to do but if this is not resolved within the next 7 days or so (and that includes backdating all transactions so the effect on my standing with the bank and lost interest are corrected) there will be trouble.
No, it's not stealing. This word has a very specific meaning (and emotional baggage associated with it) which is often used to blur the argument (like you did).

It's called copyright infrigiment.
No details. Odd claims like "compared to a PC it consumes 3% of the energy, uses 4% of the material to make it, and is one hundred times smaller" but totally neglects to account for the server needed to power it.

I would love to have something like this at my house. I could imagine using it to power a few terminals... In my bedroom for some research or light reading, in my kitchen for recipes and internet searches, in my bathroom... There are many possibilities. However, it'd have to be completely under my control. I'd run the 'server', not some company in the cloud.
That's a good one, I wasn't aware of that possibility (nobody ever got it in to their heads to take more than was due). From what I recall direct debit payments can be disputed when they're periodical, and then only for the last transaction, this is not at all like that but I will inquire anyway, because if that works I can resolve this really fast.

Thanks for the hint!
So what's wrong with setting up an account with a payment processor rather than paypal? The processor only provides the interface, but does not actually hold money hostage or have other arbitrary restrictions.
It's highly likely that there is a genetic component to addiction.

This sounds like eugenics -- and the Wikipedia entry on the charity [0] is also somewhat disturbing. However, is this really any different from handing out free condoms?

I'm not sure.

[0] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Project_Preve...
I happen to agree with you. My biggest issue with GWT is that it generates the Javascript, and I am at it's mercy.

However sometimes it's important to get function over form?
Colossus and the breaking of the Lorenz machine cypher
X-UA-Compatible: pushing Internet Explorer to the edge
I had something similar happen with a shady merchant account company. I had changed some details I had on file with them a year earlier, so they said I couldn't cancel the contract I had with them without penalty, because we signed a two year contract and "it hadn't been two years" (it had been four years, I just changed the address and other simple details on file but apparently they were saying it was only a one year old account). I called my bank, told them to block all charges from the merchant account company and give them no access, and they did. The merchant account company sent a number of threatening letters and would call me at asinine hours (5AM Los Angeles time) but eventually they went away, and they didn't get their $600 cancel fee or whatever nonsense. This was a few years ago, when online payments was more of a wild wild west type deal, I think it's gotten better since then.

Anyways - you can always call your bank and explicitly them to block access. For bonus points, tell them you're recording the call in the beginning (even if you're not), and take down the person's info. Then if there's a problem, you can say, "I explicitly told teller John Winterman on 18th October at 2:25PM to deny access to Paypal." This kind of accurate record keeping makes banks take you very seriously. So yeah - call the bank and deny access, or reverse-reverse charges... the bank is generally on your side if they're decent. (And if they're not decent, get another bank! I've found all the RBS owned banks to be good quality - RBS, Citizen's, and Charter One, if any operate near you)
I haven't used it myself but Lang-8 sounds useful:

http://lang-8.com/

Example:

http://lang-8.com/184023/journals/661147/English-Class-No3

PS: I just checked an entry written in Portuguese (my native language) and there were lots of incorrect corrections, so beware.
You don't know what each server is doing. They might have 10 servers being used by an internal marketing analytics team, with 40 support servers for development, QA, testing, and disaster recovery of those specific services.

What sort of computing resources do you think it took for Google to develop the autopilot car? Would you have been able to determine that by looking at their homepage and the services they provide? No. That's the point. I'm not suggesting that Digg is doing anything so interesting, but most of those 500 servers are almost certainly NOT being used to support their website directly, they're being used by the business for other things.
What is Network-based Application Virtualization and Why do you Need It?
For single payments (freelance stuff or whatever), Western Union ( http://www.westernunion.com/ ) might be the way to go.

I received money via WU for about a decade with zero problems.

But for online shopping, I don't have an alternative.
The Never-ending Awesomeness of Bash