skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I understand the attempt to farm karma by mentioning the NSA in every single unrelated thread, I'm just surprised that this is the best that you could do. Surely there's a better story to be told in monitoring financial transactions (which they actually do) than in pretending that they're going to steal the $8 you sent to your buddy for beer.
I'm interested to see what the financing model will be. One of the biggest structural problems with the MSM is their reliance on advertising and the editorial constraints that inevitably imposes. While I respect and admire Greenwald, a key takeaway from the NSA leaks is that a system that relies on the beneficence of its key actors is a system that will be abused. If the only defence against editorial degradation is the personal ethics of Greenwald and Omidyar, then it's only a matter of time before the venture's editorial oversight is captured by its financial interests.

As much as I dislike paying for news, I'd far rather see them model themselves after the Economist than CNN.
You’ll receive a reply from Square asking you to link a debit card."

So you need to confirm it (and provide a debit account) I guess - but not sure how subsequent transactions are handled.
Great! Very good news for a wide range of applications. It sounds like it was done in a very elegant way as well. Congrats :)

Is it possible to call the garbage collection at a certain time? For games, a common place to do these book keeping tasks is when the app is blocking on vsync screen refresh. Or even when the main action has finished. Say between levels in games, or at the end of an animation, or when waiting for a triggered event to happen (say for robots in a factory). Other real time systems do GC in other threads... so maybe this could be a win for pypy too?

Is JIT a similar thing? Does that cause pauses too?
> Why on earth would you allow that a court order is legitimate?

You won't get very far when arguing with judges & lawyers if you deny that, and they are a target audience.

The point that requiring law enforcement access necessarily weakens a system's security from malicious actors is an important point that our legal system needs to come to terms with, because the courts need to balance the public's legitimate need for security against the wishes of law enforcement, because the most likely alternative is for them to ignore our needs in favor of investigators' wishes.
May be, but they can't admit it.

I'm concerned about what happens when it's legislated, normalized, and accepted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dkim
New effort to fully audit TrueCrypt raises $16,000+ in a few short weeks
I thought it was m as in mancy =)
It's easy. I learned it three decades ago by this innovative method. Sing the phonetics to the rhythm of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".
They're obviously taking a loss on this (due to credit card fees) if the recipient gets the full amount sent. So this must be a loss-leader that's building up to something else where they expect to make a ton of money.

That "something" is most likely just "replacing cash and cards", but will be interesting to see how it plays out. It's a bold move regardless.

EDIT: I meant debit card transaction fees, not credit card fees.
I have used virtualbox extensively and now have had to use VMware workstation 9 and 10 this last month and I much prefer virtual box. One more anecdote!
I admit, my comment was biased towards the negative side of the industry in relation to the parent comment. While I agree there are many positive experiences and opportunities in the hosting field, I've found less interest in providing raw services and more focus in specialized publishing platforms.

I like the idea of providing a layer that floats on top of a solid network like yours, and solves some of the common problems in between that layer and the final website.

We still have very happy clients from 14 years ago, when we started, but the inventor in me has been inspired by new visions.
Confirmed from someone who has been them for 4 years now. The only reason I had to (sadly) switch was because I needed fully blown unix machine with SSH access, something that their offer was too pricey for me. But I had great time with HostGator. The nicest thing, other than their friendly knowledgeable tech support chat, was they many times they went off their ways to accommodate my needs like opening ports (sharing hosting), re-installing some mods, reconfiguring .ini files on the fly, etc.
This is one area where the US seems to be behind compared to the UK. I am from the UK and that service would look quite poor if it launched over here. We have a system called faster payments service that offers instant (although in some cases up to 2 hours) bank transfers for payments up to £100,000 (can differ between banks). You can use this directly if you share bank account numbers and sort codes but there are also wrappers around FPS like Barclays PingIt that people can register with and use your mobile number instead. There is no fee associated with these services.
To Search or to Ask?
That's exactly the thing I'm wondering about.

I'm using Hostgator for around 3-4 years now. Never had any problems with them and the support was always great.
> Do you have any specific reason to believe that?

They have more money so they can send more developers to these conferences than startups. Also, they have more employees, so the odds of a number of them being Rails developers is higher.

But that's not even what was being discussed in the context of my "selection bias" remark: the OP was saying that Ruby is used in BigBiz and used Ruby conference attendance to support this claim, which is different from what you are arguing.
M as in mnemonic.
That's not true, venmo and paypal and google wallet are all free if you use ACH.
> It's not widely practiced because it makes for a poor user experience in most cases

Skype seemed to work just fine that way until it was captured and neutered.
I'm pretty sure Google Wallet in Gmail lets you send money to someone not using Gmail. But you are correct. I guess it's a good solution if you don't want to deal with PayPal/etc. when you happen to use your own email setup or Outlook/Yahoo/etc.
Yeah, I have to disagree. Hosting a static site costs the provider practically nothing. Apache or Nginx can chew through requests for static content like it's nothing. $5 is prohibitively expensive because static sites are often one-off projects that you don't want to have to worry about. If I'm paying $5 for each one then I would worry about it.
Is this public housing in Europe anything like public housing in the US?

I'm a US citizen with ambitions to one day move to Europe (I'm a DevOps/Sysadmin/Operations guy); how does public housing in Europe work?
That is a great analogy. Makes me feel better about spending a little more for Rackspace and Virgin America, whenever possible.

Life is too short to follow the race to the bottom.
The products are marketed very differently and have different features. Google Wallet is explicitly hoping to replace your wallet, focusing on loyalty cards, NFC payment, online shopping, and fraud monitoring, in addition to simply sending money to friends.

On the other hand, Square is positioning Cash as a dead-simple way to send money to friends, whether or not they've download the Latest Social Micro-payments App™. Its plumbing. Long run, they are obviously gunning for cards-on-file to support their merchant tools, where they make money hand-over-fist.

Who knows...Square Cash might expand into something that resembles what Google Wallet is today. They seem to be starting with the basics.

Besides that, Google Wallet is available in all 50 states, while Square does not allows residents of Hawaii and Tennessee to send money (only receive it).
Thanks guys i will give play a look. Never heard of it before
Gmail "Send Money" charges a fee of 2.9% for people who don't use Google Wallet.
Fun fact: Shumway, was originally based on similar software called Gordon... And who is Gordon Shumway? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALF_(TV_series)
Doesn't take long at all and has been pretty handy to me when giving account numbers, tracking numbers, whatever to people over the phone.

They do sometimes seem surprised that you are using the "offical" words so I gather knowing this is pretty uncommon.

<nostalgia time>I learned it from The Pocket Ref book as a kid</nostalgia time>
Debit cards only. I'm sure the fees are significantly lower for debit vs. credit cards.
And before it was Ev1Servers, what is now IBM, was RackShack. So, it was RackShack, ev1, ThePlanet, SoftLayer, IBM. We started as a dedicated customer with RackShack, then on to a managed customer on ThePlanet. FWIW, we are on the same dedicated rack as when with ThePlanet, though SoftLayer tried to sell us on their "pod" solution (i.e. VPS).

So, we are overpaying for our current hardware, but haven't had the stomach for another migration. Contrary to what the article states, small companies with already limited resources don't want to spend time moving a moderately complex infrastructure around, on top of the considerable work already on the table.

But, yeah, GoDaddy engages in questionable practices. Automatically adding stuff to your cart (and/or making it confusingly easy for you to do so), bumping renewals to 5 years by default, and otherwise making their UI "consistently inconsistent" in ways that miraculously always seem to benefit them are part of the equation. To be pushy with upsells is one thing, but they take it a step further.

These are kind of ingrained business practices and part of the same ethos that says selling IT services with sex is OK. It is hard to imagine them acquiring a company without that company getting at least a little of that stink on them.
Same here. I had been completely reliant on VirtualBox for ages. About a year or so ago it felt as though advancements slowed down, performance got incredibly slow, and things became buggy.

I started using VMWare Player which definitely is a lot more polished, reliable, and way faster in my opinion.
Sounds like a cool idea, but he needs to stop referring to it as "sending cash"
Except people in China don't have to save money by putting it into a bank account. They find other ways to invest that beat inflation like people all over the world have to do. And currently in China, that's real estate.

Also, there is no practical limit to how much dollar you can get with yuan, it's called the grey market.

It's pretty astounding to me how Americans can still have such simplistic and misplaced views of how things works in other countries.
Definition of "hacker": http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html

A "developer" is usually someone who just codes for money, isn't into it, and therefore probably sloppy.
It has nothing to do with being edge-cases like "if you're hosting your own email thing". Personally, I just like to limit how many of my eggs are in one basket, and I already have a lot of eggs in the Google basket. I like my bank's own built-in system for this right now between me and their other customers, and for everyone else I use venmo. It works great, and I have no real complaints about either system.

But really I don't need to be talked out of using Google's like it's the default, and I'm not clear on why you do. I don't really get the "why do you use your own favourite toy instead of my own favourite toy?" crowd
Designing a system to resist law enforcement is not the only way to make a system that resists insider attacks. In fact, it's a terrible way. Banks have figured out how to comply with the law, allowing law enforcement to seize bank assets, without letting employees abscond with deposits; it's not difficult. The two problems are not the same.
Seems to work amazingly although I'm a bit concerned about the security. A friend sent me $1. I get an email from square, link to website where I entered my debit #, expiry and postal. It deposited directly to my debit card (I didnt even know you could do that). The deposit already arrived!

"Checking Card Adjustment POS Pin (Credit) $1.00"

So I sent him $1 back (to: my friend, cc: cash@square.com, subject: $1). And it instantly sent it to him. I didn't have to verify my details or anything.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable if there was a security blog explaining how they are validating that I indeed sent the email and it wasn't simply spoofed.

Edit - I did this from Gmail which I presume authenticates all of the emails via dkim? I'm guessing this won't work as automatic for other providers?

Edit2 - Just attempted with another friend and had to verify manually. The automatic-authorization appears to only apply when it's between two previously validated parties.
Out of curiosity what is generally your host/guest OSes? Things had gotten pretty buggy with VirtualBox running Ubuntu 13.04 inside a Windows 8 PC. (Wonder if it was just me or others too.)
There is no fee over an ACH transfer.
> Except, you didn't state that PNaCl subsets a specification of a compiler IR, well designed and meant to be compiled.
>
> asm.js subsets a language never meant for this, and tries to come up with something that will compile well.

LLVM IR was also never designed to be a portable, platform-independent, well-specified bytecode. It's designed to be a compiler IR. This shows up in numerous places: TargetData, download size, undefined behavior, and so on. Google has worked around some of these (TargetData) and has not worked around others (undefined behavior—which is really scary for a proposed Web standard).

The fact is, both PNaCl and asm.js are taking a language not designed to be used as a portable, platform-independent representation and making changes to make it work. You can argue about which is "further from the ideal", but I think that's subjective and not productive, involving predicting the future. I certainly don't think there will be any fundamental limitations 5 years from now.

> This approach certainly can work, but will have significantly more limitations 5 years from now than the other one.

I don't see this at all. As I said before, JavaScript is not some immutable thing. We can evolve it. Most of the changes needed to fill in the few remaining holes in asm.js help everyone. SIMD and 64-bit integers, for example, are something the entire Web would benefit from, asm and non-asm writers alike.

> Not to mention, LLVM, and it's IR, certainly has more traction than "asm.js".

Not on the Web, which is the important thing here.
Aren't emails sent in plaintext? What are the security and privacy implications of using this service?
Subsequent transactions are automatically debited without authorization.
I've been attempting to 'love' Wave for the past couple of days now and it doesn't seem to be happening. I've done the homework on double-entry bookkeeping and have tried to fit my brain into Wave's workflow. Unfortunately, the total lack of documentation on how to get started with it is making life very difficult.

I've downloaded OP's application and whilst it seems much more straight-forward, I've come across a problem with transfers between accounts that makes me feel that it isn't quite ready yet.

Looks like I might have to settle for GNUCash.

I can't believe how difficult it's been to find a solution for simple double-entry accounting that's also self-contained (ie, I can create invoices and attach receipts). Our side project doesn't make enough money to justify spending on Quickbooks or a monthly site subscription, but I'm not convinced that they would be the right answer, anyway.
GoDaddy is revamping and changing a lot of those billing practices. With new management, there is a push to simplify even at the cost of conversions with the hope that a better reputation will push further customer growth.
Similar experience.

CrystalTech were very good and only had one issue with a dedicated server in 5 years when a network cable came loose which was fixed after a quick phone call.

WebCentral has a horrific control panel, only one possibly worse is the cutdown Telstra Business version.

Currently using VentraIP/Zuver for a handful of VPS servers and they are always friendly and responsive.
There is an RSS feed, although your browser may not be displaying it to you.
That's not accurate. I just lost 20 pounds in two months, after hitting 197 (most I've ever weighed), without eating a single "organic" item (I had been skinny my entire life, never had to worry about what I ate, then my metabolism slowed down).

Three things made a huge difference: 1) never drink sugar or calories; 2) eliminate all pastas and pizzas, and shift all bread on a limited intake basis to very thin "flats" style bread (90 calories for the top + bottom), strictly non-white bread; 3) consume more protein, lift weights (literally any effort at all toward this, 30 mins a week), build muscle to improve idle calorie burning. I do allow myself a cheat day if I want it.

Organic has nothing to do with the amount of sugar, protein, carbs, and calories in something. That is what dictates weight gain or loss, what your diet actually consists of and what you're burning.

The #1 thing you can do, if you're frustrated, is religiously count your calories, and gradually reduce them on a weekly basis, until you find the sweet spot of weight loss for your body + activity level. I bought a book of large note cards, and for the first six to eight weeks I wrote down every thing I ate and its calorie value, tallying each day. I was over-consuming calories, due primarily to my love of pasta and pizza.

You should boost your metabolism and idle calorie burning by adding muscle, it'll do a lot of work for you. High protein foods tend to be a lot more filling. Cook up two chicken breasts and some brown rice, 500 calories and 90 grams of protein, and you won't want to eat for a month. Consume tons of broccoli, it takes a lot of work for your body to digest, and it'll boost your calorie burning while adding almost no calories.

I'm specifically not suggesting you do this, but it's a simple example: eat 6 chicken breasts per day, and nothing else but broccoli. You'll drop a ton of fat weight, and you'll feel full. All on just 1,300 or so calories per day. Whether they're organic or not will not matter, your body will dump weight rapidly.

Your body has no choice but to lose weight if you reduce your calorie intake below your calorie burn rate. Organic has absolutely nothing to do with it. If you like to eat all organic, that's a bonus.

The only problem America has with obesity, is the lack of willingness to restrain calorie and sugar intake.
CISPA is Back.
I believe that Amazon Payments is the only system that lets you pay someone with a credit card, although it's limited to $1,000/month (otherwise people abuse it, sending cash to each other to rack up points on their credit cards).
In the limiting case of an ultralight bungee cord, the human has to start falling almost immediately after the cord is cut, because the center of mass cannot fall as required without movement of the human as well. This incidentally gives us lower bounds on the speed of sound and stiffness of such a bungee cord. In order for the human to be held aloft for any significant period of time by the recoiling bungee cord after it is cut, the cord must be relatively heavy - enough to move the center of mass of the cord+human system well away from the human.
This is awesome. I have rental properties and I am so sick of Quickbooks. This is everything Intuit is not.
Yeah, true. But isn't it still in the neighborhood of 2%?
Was Matt Van Horn one of them?

[Context: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...]
The key here is that "you shouldn't buy a house simply because you're hoping to pump money out of it in the long run". I think that some people working on their first startup or simply on a project for a great software idea will agree that this is one of their core beliefs; that making money is not the ultimate goal, but instead a side effect of a great product. When you have a great idea, you put everything you have on it, and if it ultimately makes you money, it will obviously be welcomed, but the goal is to just get started and to have something to call your own, something to propel you. Maybe a house stays at the same value over time, but in the end, this may be enough for some home owners who simply want a place of their own.
> Wireless?

I probably entered this while she was at my house, but she had no problems setting it up after going home.

> Rejecting/accepting Google Now?

Never came up.

> Non-gmail email accounts?

As someone who had never used a computer before, this obviously wasn't an issue either.
Or because you straight don't need an army of super capable developers once an organization is large. You need people keeping the lights on and maintaining the momentum
Thank you for taking the time to try it out and for reporting the results back to HN.
Growing up in the outdoors and sailing, I learned to use this as second nature when relaying information - it's crazy that when you start doing this on the phone how few people understand it and you have to resort to A like Apple, F like Frank... it feels so childish after the clarity and precision of the NATO phonetic alphabet.
The US equivalent is ACH, which has the major downside that using only the bank ID (routing number) and account number you can effectively wipe out the target's account. It's up to your bank (or whatever ACH proxy) to keep you from doing that, not to the interchange, both legally and technically. ACH also takes several days to work, and has a wide window for either bank to declare the transfer fraudulent, so many banks stretch the time out longer to account for that. Most stock brokers will credit your account long before the ACH transaction completes (with some restrictions of course).

There are also wrappers around this here like Chase's Quickpay or Ally's Popmoney but most require that both people use the same bank, or that you give your ACH details to a bank that isn't your own.

Paper cheques just have the routing/account numbers along the bottom, and AFAIK essentially work via ACH anyway, so they have all of the same downsides, plus taking longer to complete.

Also, the window for fraud with ACH is so great that when you tell one bank about another account's ACH details so that you can transfer money, they "authenticate" this by making small, sub-$1 deposit amounts, and asking you what the amounts were, to prove that you can see the target account. So this "linking" process takes the entire ACH transaction time as well the first time you do it. Some banks have taken to using a service called Yodlee which asks you for the target accounts' username and password. That's right, Wells Fargo asks for your username and password on Scottrade to authenticate the transfer because they don't trust the way ACH's liability lies. So this won't work to send $8 to your buddy anyway.

Moving money without a service like paypal/venmo/square/google wallet is really quite difficult, especially if you don't want to trust an organisation with a history of taking people's money (Paypal) or if you don't want to pay a transaction fee.
Do you agree or disagree with them? Is "well what if she is unhappy, is she still successful?" really a stupid question?
> I think that part of the value people see in things like NaCL is not having to rely on JIT magic to figure out when to optimize 64 bit math. You get direct control over what is going on. It may be true that in certain edge cases the JIT can actually out-perform clean native code, but people are willing to sacrifice that for direct control over what the machine does.

This is precisely what "use asm" is for. It gives you direct control: each allowable operation in the subset has a direct analogue to the appropriate machine instruction(s). If you fall off the happy path and stray into "JIT magic" territory, you get a message in the developer console telling you to fix your code.

Unfortunately V8 is opposed to "use asm" in favor of the "JIT magic".
Presumably linking a debit card only happens once, and afterward, you're only contacted to verify suspicious transactions.