skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A little experiment: Apply for a merchant account, saying that you're not a registered nonprofit, but intend to take donations to buy gifts for kids. I just phoned my bank and they literally laughed in my face.

People who have customer service nightmares with Paypal are generally doing something that no other payment processor would touch. I hear complaints from people who have been accepting pre-orders of a game or pre-registration for a conference, which is obviously a massive risk for a payment processor. If you found a merchant account provider willing to take such risky business, they'd demand a huge deposit and charge well above the odds.

Paypal provide an absolutely exceptional service in allowing pretty much anyone to accept card payments without a great deal of fuss. The flipside of this is that they have to deal with risky accounts retroactively, which means they have little choice but to freeze accounts that set off their fraud detection algoritms. If you prefer to know where you stand, apply for a merchant account - in most of the world, that will involve a long, expensive vetting process.

People continue to use Paypal because for many use cases, there aren't any better alternatives. This isn't because Paypal or the card companies are abusing monopoly power, but because payment processing is hard and fraud is expensive.
Back when I went to public school I tested in the gifted categories for both reading and math. However, once I got to algebra my education fell apart. "Higher math" just didn't make sense to me. However, I switched to homeschooling in Middle School and ended up going to a homeschool co-op where a Japanese teacher was teaching both a Japanese language class and the math classes.

In three months I learned more about the logic behind mathematics, and by extension more about math period, than I learned in the previous 14 years in public school. I took one math class from here years and years ago and I can still do calculus. The Japanese method for teaching math is just simply amazing (it helped that she was ranked number one in the nation (Japan, not the US) when she was in high school, this woman was seriously brilliant, she just got knocked up by an American and ended up having to quit Todai).
I didn't like ClickandBuy very much, either. IIRC I used them to pay using credit card, and when I got a refund from the merchant, of course the money ended up in the CnB account. I almost forgot about the money and had to pay some stupid fee to get them to close the account and transfer the money to my bank account. Not more than a few Euros, but I still felt cheated and more than that, it was a hassle.

As I said they're similar to PayPal. ;)
A back channel confirms that I'm right... sort of (about the GCHQ challenge)
> the above is meant to apply to overseas outsourcing in general

I feel that this is a really arrogant attitude. I wonder if the author ever heard of that part of the world called Europe for example.
That doesn't answer the question, which has a context: if people don't buy Android apps because the interface is laggy, then why do they keep buying Androids?

I have an iPhone 3GS and a Galaxy S which recently upgraded to Gingerbread. The iPhone experience is indeed more "smooth", however that doesn't bother me because the advantages that my Galaxy S gives me outweigh the smoothness of the iPhone.

As an example, on my Galaxy S I was free to install a calls / SMS blocker. You can blacklist certain numbers and then it's as if those numbers don't exist - not only it blocks the calls / messages, but it also removes all traces from the logs. Last time I checked these types of apps where banned from iTunes. On Android it isn't so cut and dry either, as these apps are using private APIs that aren't documented, however they are allowed on the Marketplace.

Another example would be the kickass integration my device has with my Google Apps account. For instance all my phone numbers are synchronized with Google Contacts. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure this is only a matter of preferences and I could probably do the same thing on the iPhone, however this works both ways and I'm having an easier time with my Android to do what I want.

The only annoyance I have with my Galaxy S is the slow upgrade cycle. It will probably take forever for Samsung to deliver to me an upgrade to Android 4. Which is why my next phone will be a Google Galaxy Nexus, or whatever blessed phone will come next after it.
Yes, i had an app that in one place didn't asynch a webrequest and locked up the main thread. They emailed me about this.
Zipcar isn't prevalent in the US outside of major cities. But I've used it and it is similar to what I'm talking about, just imagine that but fully automated and run by fewer hipsters.
At least partially because Chrome's extentions are just bits of JavaScript. For example the FF version throws up a dialog box when you want to log in. On Chrome it shows you a new tab that is mostly empty. Just feels less integrated I guess.
Very good article!! I like the fact it shows a lot of initiatives we are having in Belo Horizonte.
I think he meant to say kb devices without touch screens.
I skip those articles, too. Same for the "top xyz" lists/galleries. They should be one page, like http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/
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Good article! But I have to question the default assumption that iOS isn't laggy. I'm using an old iPhone 3G and it has become laggy as hell over the years. Scrolling on a web page is only ever smooth once a page has finished rendering -- and often not even then. The map application has become so laggy as to be completely unusable; every scroll or keypress takes 20-30 seconds to register (not exaggerating). Installing an app more or less bricks the UI throughout. I'm sure that these problems do not exist on modern iOS hardware -- but on that basis, the only fair comparison is with modern top-of-the-line Android hardware.

(In other news, I just ordered my Galaxy Nexus yesterday and am rather looking forward to it. Can you tell?)

The trick is that there is effectively only ever one model iPhone / iPad at a time -- so right now it's the 4S, for example, that captures all the mindshare and forms the basis of comparison. Legacy iOS devices simply cannot keep up, and certainly do not maintain the buttery-smooth experience that people identify with iOS. But nobody appreciates this, because legacy iOS devices aren't an active force on the market. Android devices, meanwhile, come in many hardware configurations, some of which are much more analogous to my old laggy 3G than to the latest iOS hotness.

This isn't an excuse: it just means that Android has set a harder task for itself than iOS has. But that's no reason not to succeed at that task. 15 years ago, my hand-built BeOS box gave me an unbreakably buttery UI -- even during obnoxious geek demos such as simultaneously playing 30 different videos in 30 different windows -- so there's no reason that ANY computing device, even a very cheap one, should not be able to match that performance today. This article gives a good insight into how Android is failing to do so, and what some of the solutions might be.
Responding to "Eleven Equations" Comments, Math Notation, and More
What if, right before he wrote that, he said "here's me pretending to be the evil guy the music execs think I am."

:-)
Usually these stories mistake compression for encryption.

http://www.losethos.com/code/Compress.html

That's pretty silly! (By the way, don't tell anybody about compression applied before encryption -- that would be bad.)

It boggles my mind that anyone would have hope of unencrypting something -- it seems like the odds favor the encryptor.

God says...
C:\LoseThos\www.losethos.com\text\WEALTH.TXT

the rich; and to obtain it more
certainly, they vie with one another in the cheapness and perfection of
their work. The number of workmen increases with the increasing quantity
of food, or with the growing improvement and cultivation of the lands;
and as the nature of their business admits of the utmost subdivisions of
labour, the quantity of materials which they can work up, increases in
a much greater proportion than their numbers. Hence arises a demand for
every sort of material which human inve

------

dud

God says...
informed building net beguiled discourage shoot inflicted
grammarian coals seats Repent meddle softened lead extracted
selling indicating throngs belongs figurative retard discerneth
possible Hence habits Unchangeable judgeth peacefully
seasons neglecting impostumes presidest suffice injury
answereth low mastery Nebridius harmoniously fornications
despised bargain Empress hurtful Because fluctuates melody
strayed quickenest accused precipice allegory courses
valiant increase prophecy liveth indited 'it Young Son
restraining understands strengthenest unravelled improperly
liker observed beat banter wealth those bring reform recollected
livelihood Sun Gift another chastity harts thinking conservative
referred period torments literature locusts entreat sore
perisheth Vintage loosest believing worlds lord befalls
contain passion night Still exists courtly injustice tried
counted circumlocutions enquired divinity denotes malice
forgiving apt pines Especially angered SUCH operations
troop cedars manner FITNESS till pleasanter reporters
judgements
I am sorry, but that does not logically follow. If you think it does, then at least you have to explain why you think this is the case. There certainly have been times with higher tax ratios without a nationalized economy.
I Coulda Been a Contender
I have worked for some of the biggest companies in the world fixing some of the rubbish out there, and you know why SAP has so much money? Because the business just order another instance to migrate to each time they mess it up.

SAP seems to run a powerful Reality Distortion Field. I live in a municipality (Johannesburg) that is experiencing a huge multi-year billing crisis, following a flawed SAP implementation. Despite being a disaster, SAP gave it an award: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view...
The biggest risk to a startup is that people don't know about their product. Spamming is not a long term strategy, but it might be useful in finding the first few customers to get customer development kick started.
In dollars, its almost universally assumed billion is "short billion". (Although, occasionally you still hear people saying it)

It would be a fabulous retort if you were this fellow and you actually did happen to know. "Short or long" would be almost as good a come-back as "African or European" when asked about unladen swallows.
SAP is one of my focus areas at work. My answer would be to install the trial version (which I think is no longer called miniSAP, but used to be), try to get the general hang of how it's supposed to work, and then dig deeper in the areas that interest you, maybe Java or ABAP development if you want to do development. Last time I've used it, the trial version had a 90 days license, but you could renew it easily and legally.

You won't get a SAP job that way, but it might give you enough of an edge to take on SAP-related projects (think "sure, I've done webservice calls into Salesforce and I know how that works with SAP XI, happy to work on your integration project").
Will You Please Just Shut Up?
Grapher does this quite well. It comes with Mac OS X and plots various things, 2D and 3D: http://www.google.com/search?q=grapher+mac&hl=en&tbm...

It also formats the equations nicely and lets you copy them as PDF. Makes a decent formula editor for Pages (with simple formulas).
In order to be a real alternative to PayPal, Bitcoin will have to avoid the problems that digital gold currencies had, since it's far more similar to them than to PayPal. What were those problems? Accounts differ.
I don't think this is unique to Metallica. I'm a big McCartney fan, and he too will play a few from the new album, a couple from mid career, but mostly "oldies" hits. There's little he can do to please everyone, so the hardcore fans realize there's just no way he's likely ever to do "Girls School" or "Morse Moose" live. :/

I think Metallica is in a similar place with the amount of history they have, and yet I'm not sure anyone would ever slap the label "oldies" on their work. :)
Thanks for the interesting read but I'm confused about this statement: "I grew some huge spots." What kind of spots?
A quote from the article:

Left untackled, the budget deficit, which at 11.2% of GDP in 2009-10 was larger than those of almost all other rich countries, would soon have undermined confidence in the government’s ability to service its public debt.

This is the crucial flaw in the article's argument. The UK government is monetarily sovereign, and therefore always able to service its debt. That pretty much destroys the article's argument in favor of austerity.

Note that, unlike economists, most bond traders seem to actually understand the importance of monetary sovereignty. This is why you now hear talks about Germany's debt possibly being downgraded, but nothing about the UK or Japan, and not any more about the US (where the only thing that was ever in question was the government's willingness to pay, not its ability).
New NuGet.org Deployed
I'm about as serious a high-quality protein advocate as probably exists in the leaderboard for this site (neither "organic" nor "grassfed" are particularly important adjectives for me, so much as "local" and "humane"), and I do not understand what this has to do with diet and weight loss.

Do you actually believe you're more likely to lose weight eating organic protein?
This is why, generally speaking, you want to get software directly from the developers.
Ops! http://ie6test.it/?url=localhost
This isn't even a security hole, it's a complete security disaster. Did they even think through the process for five minutes before they built that? I mean, there aren't even any hacks involved.

Nice find.
No way. A new release of my CAD software always screws something up. Unfortunately, it seems like some software is just too old and complicated to test thoroughly and cost effectivly.
Codebreakers find evidence for hidden puzzle in GCHQ challenge
Top 5 Home Remedies for Getting Rid of Acne Fast
I doubt that's way this happened. More likely, the person who implemented the "inappropriate photo"-feature wasn't fully aware of that the "Report"-functionally was enabled for everyone and not just your friends.

However, someone had to implement the backend for listing out those photos, and they clearly didn't think of access control, so there's at least something fishy here…
Thanks for the positive feedback!

I agree, you will probably both get an eye-opening experience as to what the other person was going through. You guys have a really rare chance to walk a mile in each others shoes

Hopefully you both remember what it was like in your own shoes during the first trip.

Best of luck!
Calorific restriction is not the same as fasting. Calorific restriction is eating less.

During fasting you will lack vital nutrients that cannot be stored by the body. When you end a fast your blood sugar level will sky rocket, which is also bad for you.
I've had good experiences with Windows, but then again, I have some idea of what to do and not to do. (Of course, some of the rampant problems are's Microsoft's fault, such as having everyone run as an administrator in XP.)
Aspen: il paradiso degli sport invernali non è solo neve e sci
I like it! One way you could improve it is to link to the relevant W3C docs for each tag that the user had missed.
I don't know about Amazon.de (I don't speak German), but at least for the UK version you need to have the following before you can sign up for a Amazon Payments merchant account:

* Have a phone with a UK-based billing address available for our registration service to contact you.
* Have a credit card (issued by a UK-based bank)
* Have a current account with a UK-based bank. (Optional; you can set this up after registration)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/gateway-eu

So unless in you're in one of the few countries supported by Amazon Payments, you're out of luck (as far us Amazon Payments is concerned).
Julian Assange's WikiLeaks: Ten Days That Changed The World
(I didn't start the 'world ending' stuff, I merely commented on the - inflated, imo - line in the article that said that SAP et al make the world go round)

'Boring' is a subjective term. Hell, I don't read TC unless it is linked here and couldn't care less about them, but I assume that 'boring' is what came to their mind and (talking out of line here maybe?) connects with the majority of the readers. It sure as hell connects with me. SAP is boring. For me anyway.

Do people in the SAP eco-system think that their work is boring? I sure hope not.

Thing is: If someone says 'This is boring' then he's correct. That's an opinion, a feeling towards a subject. No need to argue about it. You can discuss _why_ that comes up or if TC should be opinionated like that in the first place, but the blog post fails to address that in any meaningful way.

That post seems to be a rant about 'Why aren't we considered interesting and "cool" although our software runs in a majority of the world's breweries' and the whole argumentation is flawed. As I wrote elsewhere: Market penetration doesn't make you interesting to people per se. Being the leader in 'world's transactions' (?) doesn't by default make you a sexy subject for the technology folks.

On a less serious side note:

I found it hilarious that someone defending SAP as being cool resorted to a comparison table. With bullet points, outlining the market size and comparing company values.
It's like being the nerd in high school and sending a letter to your beloved which rationalizes your desirability by comparing your grades with ~that dude's~.
I'm talking about the UK. The UK economy and the GBP are both doing not so well.
I believe "spots" is a Briticism for pimples.
Payment information sources
New Node.js blocked by Great Firewall of China
Pinterest gets more downloads now than Twitter
Producing more money doesn't fix bad spending policies but it reduces debt -- both private and public -- at the expense of the lenders. It's also a way to alter the capital/work incomes ratio.

There is, rightly, a German trauma towards devaluation -- and that's why they agreed to be part of the Eurozone as long as the Euro was managed like the Mark.
Show HN: Errorception - High performance JavaScript error tracking
Just launched Errorception http://errorception.com/ yesterday. Errorception is a error tracking service which catches and reports in end-users' browsers as they happen.

I built Errorception since I couldn't didn't find any error reporting system that (a) didn't rewrite my JS, (b) didn't modify the browser runtime by overriding common functions, and (c) had a zero performance cost, especially with regards to blocking script tags.

Would love your thoughts.
Site: http://errorception.com/
Working link: http://errorception.com/
I think Occupy Wall Street demonstrates that many folks do care, and are quite upset about it. Finding something effective to do about it may be tougher.
"""whether that's true or not is irrelevant - perception is what counts"""

Actually, no. Reality is what counts. I don't bet my money based on perception, and neither I trade with perception in mind. Except if I'm looking to take advantage of some bubble.
Richard Branson on When Inexperience Is an Advantage
Yup. That's why I thought the Sweden/Greece thing above was odd.
There's one thing he forgot to compare: number of employees.

According to Wikipedia, Facebook has 3000+ employees, and SAP AG has 53513. So, profit per employee is ~300k for FB and 22k for SAP.
"""Do you think anyone has a copy of SAP at home that they hack on in their own time for their own pleasure? I suspect not..."""

And what does this has to do with anything? Do you have a copy of the Google search engine to run at home? (the real one, not a plain text indexer like Google desktop).
"""Do you actually believe you're more likely to lose weight eating organic protein?"""

You are more likely to remain healthy while losing weight eating organic protein.
QUOTE.fm now allows for registration of apprentice accounts
That kind of debt decrease is just another tax. A sublte one, but a tax. And if you do that, then nobody will want to borrow you money at normal interest rates. Again, Italy 80s, we did it and it did not work.
> This is the crucial flaw in the article's argument. The UK government is monetarily sovereign, and therefore always able to service its debt. That pretty much destroys the article's argument in favor of austerity.

This is almost true technically, but not true how it matters. In order to service "unserviceable" debt, they need to cause inflation. Expected inflation gets priced in to bond yields, and inflating your way out debt ends up being not very useful if you will then need to go back to the money markets at some point in the future.

But actually, your central point is also not quite true: the UK government is NOT monetarily sovereign - in theory anyway - because it's the BOE who sets the money supply in practice. And it's for this reason that they have an inflationary target. Can the government intervene? Almost certainly. Will this further fuck market confidence and drive up bond yields? Yes. Do you get to a point where no-one will buy government bonds in GBP rather than USD? Absolutely.
For want of a "Single Line of Code"
I have also experienced one such scammer when selling software using Paypal. Now for me it was nothing important since no physical object was lost. But that time I learned that Paypal chargebacks are an excellent way to scam vendors, and that the conflict resolution tools of Paypal are a joke.
Interesting comparison and let's be fair: Facebook's EBIT (which is the real financial comparison) is pretty decent. SAP's EBIT was pretty low in 2010 - expect it to increase in 2011 based on preliminary results.

Main point is FB's financial model isn't proven medium-term. Also SAP have a lot of low-cost employees in India/China. Hard to compare with FB really.
28 Random Facts about Life
Not sure if their SCM is SAP SCM, but the back-end of Apple is largely run by SAP software.
Regarding everyone in the long run being a developer, there is little historical evidence for this.

We are not all mechanics. In fact, the knowledge of how to make a simple repair like fixing a puncture in a tire is much less prevalent now than it was forty years ago. Nevermind the knowledge of how to troubleshoot a vehicle that won't start.
Awards and spotlights at conferences are how companies like SAP (Oracle has done this too, I assume many "industry success stories" are nothing but this) award managers who generate big profits and who will probably generate even more cleaning up the mess they got into. By branding their failure as a success story, they reduce the likelihood of a change in direction to less flawed approaches and maximize their chances of tying the customer forever.

After being awarded "CTO of the year", the incompetent one will probably move on, away from the problem he/she created, and will possibly inflict the same damage to the next company that hires him/her, generating even more profit.
To Get More Done, Slow Down
With a Leaner Model, Start-Ups Reach Further Afield
Mark Cuban wasn't very technical (although self-taught programmer) and had a multi-million and billion dollar exit before 2000.

The AirBnb founders are designers AFAIK. Jason Fried is non-technical (strong design and writing skills though), as well.
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Google also can't be used to make noises.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=play+sin%28440+pi+t+%2B...

(If you don't see the "play sound" link, refresh the page.)
Really funny
its fun stuff