skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If you do at least $3-5k/month in transactions, a real merchant account from a bank/ISO/MSP. I pay $0.05 + 0.04% markup over interchange. Even after the monthly and gateway (Authorize.net) fees, that's around 2%, compared to Stripe's 2.9% or PayPal's 2.2% (I qualify for their merchant rate discount). Amex cards are the only ones I pay more for by not doing a flat rate.

[By coding against Spreedly, it's possible to do things like send all Visa and MasterCard charges to Authorize.net, and all Amex charges to PayPal for the flat rate, without ever seeing the cardholder data myself. I don't though.]
Poison Tree: A letter to Niko Bellic about Grand Theft Auto V
Yup - that's what I've been saying - and potentially more expensive!
We are just about to start using BrainTree, for the only reason that they are not PayPal...
Becoming Strong
But instead you are reliant on Spreedly. Looks interesting though.
Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, wrote an interesting piece on this before. He argues that we've effectively eliminated boredom and that it really isn't a good thing. Why? Because bored people are compelled to do stuff, whether it be creative thinking or seeking out a new experience. When boredom relief is cheap and readily-available then we lose the need for these things.

It's a great read: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/creativity/
I am working on one: https://github.com/mikejsavage/rssd
(I work for FastMail) Many apologies about this. It was due to an unexpected interaction with our billing system when we added the free trial functionality. We never intended to spam or harass people who decided FastMail wasn't for them. We fixed this about a month ago and overhauled the wording in our notices as well to make them friendlier and easier to understand.
If your only experience is with the developer kit then you're not really equipped to make a judgement on it. Motion sickness is caused by a combination of the demo in question and the fact that the screen is pretty low quality.

Also, I'm not sure how this sort of 3D can't work for someone unless you're either blind in one eye or have some sort of issue with stereoscopic vision in general. Sounds like a configuration issue.
Dear website owners,

Please take the time to set up a service like CloudFlare[0]. It's free, and will prevent your site from going down during traffic spikes. There's really no downside.

Regards,
Frustrated User

[0]: https://www.cloudflare.com/
A country as ambitious as you are. Lithuania.
What? Ebay or Paypal?
AngularJS : Clearing some confusion points
People always ask for this, and the answer is always going to be "We won't disclose that." Publishing the cap table is invariably going to be net negative for the people on it.

To the limited extent that having rough numbers helps improve your estimation of what the payoff matrix is if you build a business to where it is worth $800 million: typically, the founders would split several hundred million, most employees would get $X0,000 to $Y00,000, and exceptionally early employees plus key executives (CEO, etc) walk away with a few million. The remainder (several hundred million) goes to the investors.

Braintree's numbers might be different due to their bootstrapped pre-funding trajectory or due to choices made by the founders, but ultimately their numbers are their numbers.
When considering "passenger miles flown per incident", GTalk (and Google in general) has a security record completely on par with the best airlines.
Which is a much better thing to be reliant on.

Payment processors are in the risk business -- becoming a risky account to underwrite, or their making a mistake in evaluating the risk, means you lose your account, any money that hasn't yet made it to your bank, and any customer info you have stored. Because the processor bears all the risk for chargebacks and bankruptcies of its merchants, it's an extremely thin margin business.

Spreedly is in the secure API business. They don't care much about the health of your business, the risk associated with your transactions, or anything else the processors care about. They just have to pass around messages and get paid a fee every time they do. It's a fat margin business.

The risk of losing a Spreedly account is much lower than losing a payment account. The risk of Spreedly suddenly going out of business is much lower than the risk of a small merchant account provider/reseller going out of business. And if you choose to stop relying on Spreedly, they'll hand you all your customer data (securely) to take elsewhere, which most gateways with card vaulting refuse to do. It's not a choice of who to commit to, it's freedom from vendor lock-in.
What I wish people had told me about testing:

* You write tests in accordance with a pattern:

1. Arrange

2. Act

3. Assert

4. Annihilate

If you annihilate your test data with configuration options, and you abstract your "arranging" into factories and custom methods, then every test you write should be exactly three lines. When I learned this it gave me a consistent mental framework to think about how to write good tests.

* Test the interface not the implementation:

This was an eye opening realization about what to test. If you haven't seen it yet, watch Sandi Metz' incredible RailsConf talk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URSWYvyc42M - it's so good

* Stubs:

Stubs are exactly like the viruses' that we learned about in biology class. You load them up with a value then they literally latch onto a method and inject that value into it. When you're just starting out with testing, effective use of stubs can get you really far, and only when you start hitting the limits of practicality is when you need to think about bringing in something more complicated.

* Testing isn't easy per se, but it is definitely enjoyable if you focus on making it that way

* Cucumber is pretty stupid, don't waste your time with it
> perfect is the enemy of the good.

Yep, that is what they say. You know what else they say ?

"The enemy of good is good enough"

and also

"A witty saying proves nothing".
I imagine the point is to overcome inertia --- to get people to take a first step. Often that's the hardest part when someone is facing something they expect to be painful, dreary, and complicated.

It's sort of like "the first dose is free", but applied for good.
As a Braintree customer I am a little worried. I went with them for a number of reasons, but one of the big ones was the fact that they're not PayPal.
>If this were about PR it wouldn't be a post to a technical mailing list //

You're probably right.

That said your view of PR seems naive. It looks far better to release on social networks that someone found that CompanyN was "already" working on something than it does that there's an official press release. The channel used here - mailing list to social networks - doesn't tell us much IMO.

>it's not uncommon for those docs to be nowhere near what an external team would expect or need //

You think they'd be worse than the nothing that is currently provided by many hardware manufacturers.
So it's not part of islam because sharia has been abolished ? Heh. Maybe you should tell a few muslims.
Those are exactly the reasons I suspected- and I whole-heartedly agree.
We've just signed up with braintree the other day trying to flee PayPal (somehow i thought the deal won't go through). Let's hope for the best :)
This was literally fixed in the last day. There's now feedback similar to the browser app.
This thinking hasn't been eliminated in the West.
While I like to see more competition in the marketplace, I think this is a smart move for Paypal and also a big milestone for a Chicago startup exit. Congratulations are in order to the Braintree team.
I'm more interested in micropayments but this interchange stuff seems a bit complicated. How would a $2 payment work out with interchange included ? I mean, what fees would apply for a $2 credit card payment ?
Yeah, the lack of status is exactly why no one uses SMS for messaging.
As well has helping with verification, I find unit tests help with design. I write less code, and that code is simpler and with looser coupling when I write tests first.
This is oblivious a coincidence. I hope no one here would think with their right mind that there was any kind of intelligence behind that. It must have happened by chance.
http://howmanyhedgehogsareinspacerightnow.com/
Kindling giving free accounts to startups
Hah. The real lesson if course is no place is really a safe port.
Would you say it's fair to describe your usage as akin to a feed aggregator?
Maker of dangerous pain pills is 'ghost' that can't be found [video]
>We will have to agree to disagree. CCCP and madVR configuration is not a five-ten minutes of effort. Especially for most people.

CCCP requires no configuration. It just works. And I said that I recommend madVR as an optional component, since CCCP already provides high quality playback out of the box. I've been saying this for a good while now but you keep talking like I said madVR would be a must and use that as a basis to claim that VLC is "just simpler".

Installation and basic configuration (the average user really doesn't need any more than that) madVR on top of that with a guide (and there are plenty) is five-ten minutes of effort, but as I said, it's not a necessity by any means.

>Not to mention the non-free licences...

All the playback components in CCCP are FOSS with the exception of Haali Media Splitter, which is more of a fallback at this point. I'm not really sure about the non-component parts (the installer and settings panel), though. madVR is proprietary, yes, but it also happens to be the most advanced video renderer in existence. Unless you subscribe to RMS' worldviews about proprietary software (in which case you wouldn't be using Windows to begin with), I don't see a reason not to use it if you have enough interest in high quality playback.

>Last version, the matrix colors were wrong, as clearly explained on the release page, so it's soooo great to compare with it.

We were talking about dithering though (which that comparison also demonstrates), so unless the matrix issue was directly linked to the dithering issues it's not really relevant (and I didn't mention it either). And as I already said, I haven't had the chance to compare the latest version properly yet.

Also, chill down a bit, will you? While VLC likes to advertise itself to anime watchers, it's an audience that on average cares a lot more about high quality playback than many others. And if your "goal" is "not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak", then why would you get upset when I point out that these "crazy" setups (that at their very basic level are as easy to install and use as VLC is) give better results?
Time to look for a new payment provider. Braintree stood out with their amazing service and support. Paypal stand out for their complete lack of competent service and support.
Actually, the default is for StartCom to generate your private key for you. They do let you generate your own private key and just upload the CSR though.
Pushed 1,504 commits to will/githubprofilechea

Pushed 1,848 commits to will/githubprofilecheat2
Bill Gates, full Harvard interview [2013]
Ah the language.

How effortlessly, out of all of the possible selections of colloquialisms and metaphors one could select, the ease of cognitive flow.

Maybe, just maybe there is an itsy bitsy bit of merit in her commentary?
World won't cool without geoengineering, warns report
Ouch. I feel for Braintree customers. I expect many of them chose them primarily because they were not PayPal.
https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z13uvbygrw2zyfopw04...

I wonder if the bug is related to these changes.
John Cleese's short (13min) lecture on creativity mentions this as well. Very entertaining, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijtQP9nwrQA
Paypal will kill it, PAYPAL are the absolute worst company in the world and terrible to for any new businesses who endup having their money "held" for ridiculous amounts of time, and no customer support.
I wonder how much Paypal has badgered Stripe for an acquisition.
Although I am sticking with Stripe, I hope that they leverage features like Venmo with PayPal's (rather large) user base - mobile payments are terrible as it stands.

It'll be interesting to see if large partners (GitHub, AirBnB, etc) stay onboard through the transition or if they are coerced by competitors.
do they support payouts?
The next Steve Jobs isn't Jeff Bezos -- or so Bezos says
This is mostly what unittesting is about. Not actual "testing".
If you write your tests first (TDD), your "complex business object setup" (aka state setup) invariably gets simpler.

The more complex your code, the more coupling there is, the more sources of bugs there are potentially... and the harder it is to write tests for that code.

Break down your code into smaller methods and more focused objects and just watch your unit tests get simpler.
Crap. Upvotes fo not bookmark things for me and ...etcetc..please ignore this comment. Desperate bookmarking technique.

Laters guise.
No need for a CDN for a site like this; the content should be completely static and regenerated whenever it changes.
Are we really still talking about 140 characters these days? Why can't we just let it go, let it be?
Exactly. I wish we could see your comment "score" here because I have no doubt that everyone who has read the article and read your comment upvoted you.
eBay acquired Paypal in 2002.
Wacko in the Morning 09/26 by The Wacko Network
It's not a coincidence. Actually it's a lot simpler than coincidence.

https://github.com/gelstudios/gitfiti.

https://github.com/Androguide/gitfity/commits?author=Androgu...

Also look at the commits made, it actually just adds a bunch of new lines in a file and deletes it.
I really think all languages should have "assert" and "assert_equal" methods right out of the box, built-in.

Not that they're not hard to write yourself of course.
Then switch now before they have your customer data siloed and it's too late.
Remember that time when first.name@gmail.com would go to firstname@gmail.com and they were two separate accounts? People still use GMail.
as the business guy in a tech startup, i feel your pain. everything you've said, i've gone through myself on a smaller scale. the difference between us is that i, fortunately or unfortunately, was blessed/cursed with a mildly successful startup exit which gave me a substantial amount of money to build my next startup. why unfortunately? i squandered almost all the money by trying to make too bold of a leap from my unsophisticated first startup to what i aspired to be a very technologically-driven and innovative startup. i too used a contractor, except it wasn't just one dude but i hired an indian software firm to build my product with a team. this was a terrible decision because the machine i wanted to build was too ambitious, and far too complex for the indians to understand.

anyway, i started seeking tech co-founders after the failure of that outsourcing attempt. it was too hard - the few talented people in my school (i was still in college at the time) who i befriended were either more interested in gainful employment with competitive salaries after graduation, or they wanted to do their own startups and not ride on mine. i believe i have successfully sold my vision to a few of them, and a few of them have informed me that when i described my ideas, it has changed the way they look at the industry i'm tackling (advertising). some has expressed interest, but without external funding and significant traction, they usually fizzle off after a short period.

so anyway, right now i'm at a stage where since i can't find a tech cofounder, i've decided to BECOME one myself. that's right - i'm returning to school for a computer science degree. i start school in january next year, and hopefully over the next 3-4 years i will build my skills up to a level where i'm either a successful founder, or i'm one of those engineers you mentioned in your article who are deluged with attractive offers.

good luck to you and your startup though, as a fellow entrepreneur i sincerely wish you the best. it's a hard road to tread.
Is there anything new about this?
>we don't really get what Facebook is for, and we just went back to talking and continued some of the conversations next day on Twitter //

I suspect this is just smack talk. Facebook does everything that twitter does and about a million other things too. You can tweet on Facebook, aggregate tweets, re-tweet (they call it share). Just that the eco-system around Twitter, like Twitpic and such, is integrated.

I'm the opposite of what you claim to be. I use Facebook but I can't understand Twitter. I've tried using it and have several accounts but beyond being a newsfeed like Facebook's walls I can't see the attraction (except of course that it happens that your social network use Twitter as opposed to some other medium).

Win me over?
Xen and the Art of Project Management
I suspect this is very good timing on the part of Braintree. With Stripe now actively rolling out across more than North America and with other low-overhead payment services starting to appear as well, Braintree were effectively trapped in no-man's-land with their existing business model. For start-ups and small businesses, they were way too heavy for even basic stuff like signing up compared to the new competition. For larger, established businesses, direct merchant accounts and other banking facilities are probably worth the hassle given the better margins available. If I were them and had an out like this, I'd take it in a heartbeat, too.
Mostly iOS, but also OS X.
Yeah that was my thought as well. In government you need to be accountable at all times for the time and money you spend on any effort. They track anything and everything if they think it may help cover their asses when someone asks "why did you spend all 40 hours last week on FOIA requests"? Or "why aren't these people, who have made request after request, being charged for that time"?

That's my hope at least. That it's not some list of ne'er-do-wells.
Is there an API available for this data? Would be useful.
I'm always amused when I read the statements from newly acquired companies. They refuse to call it what it is, a purchase, and instead frame it as an alignment, a partnership, anything that allows them to distract from the fact that they are no longer autonomous.
The definition of faith is, "Complete trust or confidence in someone or something". It has nothing to do with whether or not there is evidence supporting the thing you have faith in.
The dosage makes the poison.

So yes, overuse is not healthy. But consider another angle: for me a smartphone can fill useless time like waiting for an appointment, the bus, etc. instead of wasting their time these people text their loved ones, read articles about self employment or check reddit for cat pictures.

Giving someone not the attention they might deserve is indeed rude. But i hope customs will change hopefully to the better and people put their smartphones down when appropriate.

But i don't think it is right other without knowing the context and what they're doing.

Edit:
I think i want a better mute button for my phone and a hardware mute button for my laptop. Everything should be hidden besides calls from circa 5 people and the third call from one number. Besides that the OS should not show me any notification, message,etc. not even the notification light should blink and when i check the time on the phone i should not see how many messages i missed
CurlSend.it - Send physical letters from your app or website
I heard that. As I've said before, people revere the PayPal mafia, but revile PayPal.

As it's been said by others here, this is certainly good for Stripe because more than a few Braintree customers will flock their way to avoid PayPal, but it also creates opportunities for other upstarts in this arena.

That being said, there is a certain amount of lock-in for these products, so while it's relatively easy for a business to transition their new users/payers from Braintree to Stripe/others, it's pretty painful to transition existing users/payers out of Braintree as all existing users would need to re-key their CC numbers and billing addresses.
What Europe needs is less bureaucracy and taxes, Here in Ireland i have to handover 23% (likely to be more in upcoming budget) in VAT on all EU sales!

Not only thats almost a quarter of your price gone in sales tax but, there is a quite abit of added work in remaining tax compliant

Of course if you are Google etc of this island you can just launder your money onto Bahamas or somewhere else warmer and barely pay any taxes
Ebay bought Paypal, so they are basically the same thing
I agree that paid GApps customers absolutely do, and maybe even a slight refund for the outage they should be taking. But free customers don't. With no payment also comes no expectation of service (outside the Terms of Service, which probably says that this kind of stuff will happen from time to time).
If I didn't want to know if the recipient was currently online and could chat idly, I'd use SMS.

(My brain short-circuited there for a moment when trying to form a reply to a comment that was both extremely sarcastic and ludicrously wrong. Hopefully the above meets all our expectations.)
I worry that many developers write tests because it is "widely recognised as ‘a good thing’" without knowing why. It's clearly important to know why, otherwise how do you know when you are getting better at it?

So, what is the purpose of unit tests?
Title is a bit misleading, Braintree is not acquired by Paypal.

1. The transaction is planned between eBay and Braintree.

2. At this point eBay has plans to acquire Braintree (agreed to acquire).
China to launch space station by 2023
1000 Years of Darkness
I'm starting to seriously consider moving my teams away from Google; especially for chat.

Hangouts has been a debacle. I'm furious that the upgrade was shoved down our throats (on Android) for a next-gen tool that was as feature incomplete as the first EA Sports' Madden game on a new gaming system.
Twitter has changed a lot.

When I started out on it, I was a freelancer. It was a great way to chat about work and trivia to other people doing similar jobs, whether I had met them or not - a sort of online "water-cooler" I guess or a more visible IRC. In fact, I remember describing how to use it as "sign up, follow interesting people, talk to strangers".

But now it's much less about the conversations (I only really converse with the people I know in real-life, so it becomes a sort of public text-messaging). Instead, it's become a broadcast medium - communication is much more one-way and because of that, the number of retweets you get for your "pithy insight" becomes all the more important.
thanks! that looks v cool. i will check out the book. [edit: oh and map tutorial v nice!]
Thanks for that tip. Alas, I still see iGoogle that way. I can try on another browser. Yep, it works in IE on my desktop machine--Chrome must have deep settings that force the customization to iGoogle.
These two appear to have a ring of truth but I've not investigated in depth, just a brief google:

- http://www.mypicassosighting.com/4.html

- http://toshidama.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/on-being-a-picture...
Continuous Development in Node.js
5 Secret Features of »Chocolat«, the Popular Text Editor
http://www.dwolla.com
Without these tools, you might hate JavaScript a lot more
The server can still tank from too many requests, static or not.