skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Ask HN: How to set up a payment gateway
Here's what I want to do: I'd like to act as a third-party to facilitate payments between two parties. From my initial look, I can't use a service like PayPal or Authorize.net to manage the transactions between two other people's accounts. Besides that, I'm adding on another layer of charges which would make the cost prohibitive for our customers.

So if I want to act as a third party, I need to set up my own system. Here's what I think I need:

1. My own servers in a secure location, to store all those account numbers. I don't think I can trust a third party to handle that. Is there anyone who does?
2. The firewalls, enncryption, etc. to maintain PCI compliance.
3. Deals worked out with Visa/MC/etc. to accept credit cards.
4. Deals worked out to handle ACH payments. I have no idea how to go about doing that.
5. Software to manage the process of payers and payees entry and verification of data.

If I do it right, I can bring down the cost per transaction, and I'd need to run the numbers to see how many transactions are needed to pay off the system. ACH transactions are cheap and would bring down costs, obviously.

My gut tells me it's like 1.5 million USD to set that all up right, in a way that would scale and eventually pay off.

Anyone have experience pricing that sort of thing? I assume I'd need that to go after funding, if that's the direction we decide to go in.
Very interesting post.

Reminded me of an argument between 2 great billiards players, Willie Mosconi and Minnesota Fats. Willie was the best player in the world at the time, winner of many championships. Fats was a hustler who never won anything except money. Each vowed to kick the other's butt in a match. Of course, Willie kicked Fats's butt, to which Fats responded, "So what. If there was money on the table I would have won."

This article made me realize I am more like Fats than Willie. I have interviewed and worked with many great programmers, but hardly consider myself in their class. They may know 27 ways to sort data, but being like Fats, I only need to know one to get the job done (and take the money).

If there was a competition, they would kick my butt. But if a client had to get something done, I could hold my own against any of them.

The advice in each person's list was excellent. To become a better practitioner of the art and science of "programming". Which is not quite the same thing as "getting the job done".

A typical scenario I have seen over and over: Competitor A is doing B, so we have to do C. This means that we'll have to modify our app to get data x from source y and present it to certain people so they have what we need to compete. We're losing $10,000 per day by not doing this, so we need it ASAP. My solution is rarely optimal, sometimes clever, sometimes not, and often a hack. But it gets done quickly, it works, and it "does the job".

That makes me more like Fats. But since I still aspire to be more like Willie, I'll start doing a few more things on these lists.
First step is to figure out why you want weekly team meetings. Once you've figured out the goal make sure everyone attending knows it, keep the time spent to a minimum (max 30 mins) and don't let anyone take you on an irrelevant tangent.
I am one of two web developers hired into The Palm Beach Post newsroom since August 2007. Since then, the paper has also procured (received?) a new Publisher (think President/CEO) and a new Internet General Manager (think CIO). I can't really say much more than that, but I can say that it's been a really great learning experience as I watch the company go through this 'change'.

The upside for myself and my colleague professionally is that we are in fact the only two web developers here at this point, and we've been given incredible liberty to develop new products (we're using Python/GeoDjango to do so). Traditionally, all web products have been created by a sister company, but the tendency now is for newspapers to take matters into their own hands, as the corporate mothership's Java engineers fail to keep up with the demands being placed upon them (and really, is it any wonder?).

In short: want a lot of freedom and opportunity? Consider a declining newspaper.
> Organize the world's education.

That's what I'm working on with my app, ezlearnz
Ken Sharpe - Being entrepreneurial inside Corporate America 
Disclosure: This is not my blog but I know the writer personally.

I typically don't promote blogs but this is one worth reading whether you're stuck in corporate america, or not. He's a fantastic writer and puts a lot of time into his content. The site is new, and because it is so well written, I thought I'd give him a hand putting it in front of the people that could appreciate it the most.

Background:
Ken is a young guy shooting for CTO, and was recently hired at a software development firm after creating a role for himself during the interview. Directly responsible for a large software project that will reshape the firm's offering, Ken has a long road ahead navigating corporate america to bring the idea to life. Unlike a lot of blogs and self-help books, Ken (a pseudo name) is writing as it happens - not in retrospect.

http://www.kensharpe.net
My 5 second feedback: Going to your front page, it doesn't excite me, looks boring, nothing really STICKS out.

I've seen your widget in action and I think it's great, but for a new comer who is checking out your site I don't see anything exciting on the front page and it leads me away.
Wow. Great link. Maybe we should all email info@foxriverantiques.com and let them know how much we appreciated this submission.
It was actually an article by Mike a while back which pointed me here! Hes a big fan of the site by all accounts and am glad he pointed it out, its quickly become one of my first bookmarked visits every morning
I'd like to do that, too. But there are many people with opinions. And many of those opinions are worthless. And many of the most interesting opinions sound worthless at first -- so I'd rather listen to what smart people say, knowing that if they sound crazy, it's probably because I'm dumb.

Fortunately, twitter's front page and the 'next blog' button on the Blogger bar can supply a pretty much infinite amount of random opinions from strangers. I would be interested in how informative that is.
This is great for some C# developers, but I wonder how well it will be adopted. C# is mostly used for "enterprise" development. In my work I'm still using 2.0. Worse yet, some of my former coworkers are still using .NET 1.1 at their jobs.

Why must corporate development be so cumbersome? And more importantly, why doesn't this hinder C# where it seems to keep Java so far behind?
University Researchers Discover a Flat Earth
Hardly. Things can break you and still make you stronger. Failure, by definition, breaks you.

Both statements are false since they're obviously generalisations, but I believe my version is less false.
redmine. It's trac done right (multiple project, no need for plugins for most stuff). And being a RoR app, there must be a lot of built-in testing in the codebase. That could explain why it evolves so fast.
Ask YC: HN submissions feels like submissions on reddit post sale, do you guys feel the same way?
HN submissions feels like submissions on reddit after it was purchased by wired parent company. Do you guys feel the same way?
Seconded. I was doing 3D work, which involves a lot of mousing. The 3M joystick-style mouse greatly increased the amount of time I could comfortably work. The middle mouse button gummed up on me after about two years... I couldn't figure out how to clean it out, so I just replaced it with the same model.

I also recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts for whatever environment you work in, to minimize switching between mouse and keyboard. If you find yourself doing a lot of text cursor movement with the arrow keys or mouse, you might want to try vim for a month or two. (I tried emacs, but found it ergonomically uncomfortable, although I did not remap the keys from their default positions, which I understand other people do. I have not heard any statistics on the matter, but it would not surprise me to learn that emacs users are more prone to RSI than vim users.)

Try to work in an environment that is not too cold (or wear fingerless gloves). I found the cold made my joints uncomfortable and was bad for circulation.

Also, install Workrave (or equivalent for your platform) in the most obnoxious configuration you can stand. Even though my wrists are pretty good now, I still keep it on in quiet mode in the corner of my screen, to help me keep track of my breaks.
see keyboard review threads:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185743

http://developerlife.com/reviews/?p=46

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=221434

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199493

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=104977

That's about 3 days' reading material: some bullets as i dimly remember:

1. laptop keyboards: avoid, especially for emacs/textmate control/alt/command key combo's. These 2-key to 4-key combo's are hell on your wrists if you always have to do them on the left side. If you do COntrol_C and X and V to cut/past in windows, same deal. I think it helps to use both short-travel scissors mechanism keyboards, like the new aluminum mac KB's and older-style long-travel sprung keyboards taht logitech , Matias and kensington make. I especially like the Matias' feel.

2. hourly breaks and wrist exercises: wrist curls, reverse wrist curls, the Dyno-flex ball , powerWeb exercises. The latter is expanding your semi-closed fingers out against resistance, which is one that I rarely read about, but it's important.

http://www.fitter1.com/Catalog/Category/35/HandWrist.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Roller-Strength-Gripper-Forearm-Stainl...

3. always have your elbows and heels of hand supported weight-wise when mousing and keyboarding (kinda like Formula 1 designers trying to minimize unsprung weight). Try to mouse with undominant hand (I'm not too good at this)

4. consider other factors: cocking your wrists when you drive or ride a bike or work power tools, shovel snow, brush your teeth, sleeping on your side. The combination of weight-bearing, pressure/shock/vibration and closing off the outside or inside of wrist joint is insidious .

5. Aside: i think JFred has enough material for a book. all my upmod points to him/her!
Innovative. I love small projects that blend art with technology to allow users to create something and/or auto-generate something.

If Google AppEngine supported Java, -Djava.awt.headless=true is pretty much all that's needed. I assume rendering graphics with Python isn't as familiar for wordle's developers.
It would be nice to know why the conveyor belt system looks so complex. It appears that aircraft arrive at the left and right hand sides of this big building and then need to get routed to the correct slot to go onto another aircraft. Why all the complex belts? Why can't this be solved with a single large oval belt that kicks off packages at just the right spot to go on an aircraft?
Please pardon the way this sounds, I only aim to help: Lately, yes but continuously saying "this place is turning into Reddit" really doesn't help nearly as much as continuously posting the types of articles people come here to read.
Sarcasm is a Survival Skill
Shining Time Station mourns.
not really, but i do kind of feel like the majority of the submissions i see are from people trying to karma whore via automatic submissions of popular-ish sites

i feel like reading the new links area is like reading my feed reader.

which is unavoidable, and what i do to combat it is submit more quality things when i can find them, and be picky with my modding things up.
Ruby 1.8.6-p230/1.8.7 broke your app? Ruby Enterprise Edition to the rescue!
i'm working a a big behemoth web security company 40-50 hrs. per week - and working on my startup 20 hours per week - and raising my family (2yr old + 1 on the way) with my wife. our startup is set to launch in August - so its a big push right now.
Wait, who's saying to get your money now, as fast as you can, on whatever terms you can? Maybe I'm cynical, but why do I have the feeling it's a VC?
30+ CSc Video Lectures
There's already quite a few players in this market. What will you do differently to make it worth using you instead?
The American Medical System: The Leading Cause Of Death And Injury In The United States
Ouch! I was gonna wait for this magical gPhone, but a used iPhone is starting to sound pretty good
Python Cookbook 2nd Ed
Coming from a financial services guy: Look at the legal aspects first before you sit down and write code. It sounds like you are jumping right into the transfer money aspect of it, bypassing the laws ytou need to comply with.

If you are in the middle of a money transactions you are subject to many federal and state laws, and if you deal with international, you are subject to more federal and state laws, as well as those of the country you are transferring to.

You will be imprisoned if you do not. Since Sept 11 everyone involved takes these things extremely seriously, they will jail you first, and investigate later. (not to mention close your company and impound all your equipment).

EDIT: And you will need much more than your gut estimate of $1.5 mill because there are huge bonds to be put in _per_state_ you want to do business in. Money transmission is not a business for the small guy any more.

EDIT2: Have a sip of the legal requirements http://www.fincen.gov/ (this is just for the federal government, each state has its own office that places additional restrictions on you as well)
The Need for a Common Compiler Framework
IMtrends: Netcraft-like service for instant messaging launched
Dirty Little Secrets - Response to Grady Booch
It's not as extensible as Roundup, and is poorly integrated with email compared to Roundup and others. It has a far nicer user interface though and various features like release note, projects estimation.
Pondering the nature of artistic genius, a social scientist finds that creativity has a bottom line
Would Amazon FPS do what you need?

http://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Payments-Service-AWS/b?ie=UTF...

If not, then you will need funding if only to pay the lawyers who will be helping you charter your new financial institution.
Anything beyond that is a flop.
My solution is rarely optimal, sometimes clever, sometimes not, and often a hack. But it gets done quickly, it works, and it "does the job".

Quite frankly, I hate "solutions" like that. I have spent way too much time supporting code written by people who "get the job done," but do so inefficiently, and cause the system to keel over two months later. Or do so poorly, and so the system mysteriously breaks when the "hacks" don't quite work.

Penny-wise, dollar-foolish. Sure, you save some time up-front coming up with the hack, and "get the business up and running." In my experience, it never takes long for "the business" to come back and say "I thought you fixed this."
If I was sitting next to Tiger Woods I would probably talk very little about golf...

If I sat next to Tiger Woods I would talk about the weather and the menu for a minute or two, but then I'd certainly introduce the topic of golf and see what happened. It could be that Tiger loves nothing more than to talk about golf. He is freakishly obsessed with golf, after all.

The result might turn out to be a "one-way conversation". So what? People really like to talk about the things they love. If you listen intently and ask questions that indicate you're following along, they'll love you for it, even if the questions are basic.

The secret is to be alert for signs that your conversation partner is trying to change the subject. If I ask Tiger about golf and he responds with a few quick sentences and then asks about the music that's playing on the radio it's probably time to talk about something else.
Why productivity fades with age: The  crime–genius connection
a couple of years ago i saw an academic ranking of british universities.sheffield was the best with oxford and cambridge around 20th place.
so maybe you're right that oxford is different from yale
Chat With Facebook Friends and Share Flickr Pics or YouTube Vids On Your Phone With Jibe Mobile
Jiffy Firebug Plugin: Fine grained calculation of performance timings
I have used Todoist for 6+ months and it's really great.
Media and performance
Exactly. That's why I aspire to be better.

In all fairness, though, this often has more to do with management than anything technical. No matter how much I teach my customers, sometimes they just don't learn.
The point about learning more languages that are different from one another seemed interesting. I know that knowing more languages makes you better, so i wish to learn more. I know python and started to learn scheme, can any one suggest me a 3-rd language?
On the trail of the itinerant computer
One thing cured my RSI carpal tunnel problems: the dyna-flex ball. You can find it in sports shops and sometimes golf or tennis pro shops.

Edit: found a mention of dyno-flex ball above. This thing is awesome! Plus the usual things of course. I recently bought a Dvorak keyboard but haven't yet started using it. I always use a trackball (Logitech thumb-trackball, the only REAL trackball on the market). Joystick mouse sounds about right too.
Anything is possible but the due diligence on your idea is enormous. Good luck getting investment. 1.5M probably won't even cover the upfront legal costs.
I'd go for option A too. If people are paying for something, an email address is a legitimate request. Its a virtual world, and you need a way to contact them. I would have your privacy policy ready to go and prominent though.
You might not like option A for some reason, but most of the time if the verification email is sent immediately, its not a big hassle.
Sorry, I meant quality of submissions.
Unfortunately, FPS requires users to use an Amazon account, which makes it unattractive for a lot of uses.
Well nice webapplication. But a startup? Isnt that suggesting that you will make money from it?
Conspiracy theory? That requires a lot more people.

I'm just saying, Rockstar has been making fun of Apple publicly as easter eggs in their games for years. I know some employees who say the general culture of the company rejects Apple. They also don't sell games for Apple software, which means there is no fear of monetary rejection.

It's more the comment on the complete lack of news and how disappointed I am that this story made it to the frontpage than the claims of a conspiracy theory. Looks like I accidentally laid the irony on too thick and people thought I was the Apple fanboy contingent.
Can you name some of them?
I can live without this. I cannot live without real lambdas. My heart actually will stop, and I will die. It's a dangerous world I live in.
Receipts, customer service contact, account summaries. There's a reason why they ask I'm sure. Its good practice to keep in touch with users when money is involved.
It wasn't an attack on Rock Star's games. I'm a big fan of them (People who know me are quite familiar with my infamous, "Operation: Boat In A Crowded Street".

It shouldn't be a surprise that they make fun of Apple, the have no financial fears from doing so they way they would MS. It's basically non-news, the same ho-hum jokes we've all seen before. I was disappointed it made it to the front page.
Agreed. Don't forget that unpaid leave is often an options.
Ruby. Especially if you know Python, take the time to really learn Ruby.
I've watched a lot of the ArsDigita lectures on archive.org, too: http://www.archive.org/details/arsdigita
Don't be too quick to suggest dropping the double major. It's more of a "dual" major since most CS and math programs have a bit of overlap. In fact, at my university the CS major had a built-in math minor. I actually started as a math major with a minor in CS until my adviser suggested I major in both.
I like the extra level of filtration from reddit for postings that are relevant to what draws people to come to HN. I could care less if a posting was on reddit before it comes to HN.
PLay with prolog a bit too... I find that it's a nice way of learning to think differently about a problem.
That's true. What I was hoping to do was offer payments for a specific niche. But if I have to build a full payment service, I may as well offer payments for all sorts of things. There are many players who offer generic payments, PayPal and Authorize.net to name two.

I wasn't going to offer merchant solutions or shopping cart integration like others do, but it looks as if I'm going to act as a third party, I may as well set up the whole thing. 1.5 million in legal costs alone might be far to steep a barrier to entry for just one niche.
I agree with many things said in this article, but there are many plus sides of "elite" education that shouldn't be overlooked.

For instance, I am going to generalize here, but most people I know coming out of these "elite" schools are more driven. My only explanation is that drive is what got them into these school in the first place. And being surrounded by driven and smart people who aren't afraid to challenge conventional wisdom is by far the biggest advantage in my opinion

Disclaimer: I went to a public university for a year before I transferred to an Ivy League school.
FWIW, my "code kata" is to try exercises from SICP in whatever language I happen to be playing with, which is really just an excuse to re-read portions of SICP. Always a pleasure...
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I recently moved some things on the homepage, added the slider, but I need to put some prominent "sign up now" type of badge in the sidebar.
I think what happens is that eventually there aren't enough "good" links out there that haven't been submitted, but there's still a demand to be filled. Newspapers keep "filler" stories around for that eventuality ("slow news day"). I think the same thing happens on social news sites - especially ones that grow - because the demand (for new stuff) eventually outstrips the supply (of good new stuff).
I wonder if anyone updated his wikipedia entry, or if he did it as the management was coming to his desk...
They need to start selling tshirts as fast as they can.
Great Pstam! I agree with you. People actually need topic ideas to blog about(depends on what kind of topic they focus on). Consider a popular example, Arrington wouldnt find news to talk about if no one tells him about it or if he hasn't read anything. I just read the idea. I haven't seen the site yet, i'm on my mobile phone, so will take a look at it later.
C. Or some form of assembly. Both of them get you closer to the hardware than any high-level language would, and it's important to know what scheme and python and any other language are really doing for you automatically.
It can cover the legal costs, provided you get the right lawyer. If you get the wrong lawyer, 1.5M will not be enough. The requirements are fairly straightforward, they need to be implemented correctly, though. Huge companies that transfer money have a single scary-smart lawyer/compliance officer on staff, with lots of clerks that are not particularly expensive.
AOL wants You. to monetize their IM with ads