skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How is he a money transmitter? His business is buying a product (Starbucks gift cards) and paying for them with Bitcoin. By your definition, a used car dealership that buys cars from the public and pays for them with cash is also a money transmitter.
What you describe is real passion. If you are really willing to suffer for what you are working on, you are passionate about it.
Really? of all my bills, T-mobile is the only one I could get set up automatically. It's beautiful. They never call me, I never call them, my phone just has internet.
I think I get what you're saying, but I also think it more usefully applies to the conversations you might have with your philosophy friends. Meanwhile, there seem to be a lot of people on my Facebook wall who could benefit from a list of basic fallacies.
You can find a lawyer to work for equity on EquityLancer
China’s factories are shut for New Year – why has air pollution gotten worse?
> But sometimes I worry that it’s code for "we want to exploit your lack of boundaries."

That seems quite true for the video game industry.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/11/video-game-industry/
Agreed, I wouldn't be surprised if his runaway success is due to people leveraging the money laundering possibilities en masse. Thats a hell of a risky business to be in
Please, for the love of all that is good and beautiful, use the 2-step authentication system. It exists for a reason. There's no such thing as 100% un-hackable, but this is as close as you'll get.
They wouldn't be employed long if they were consumed by running a side business. And who are these employees making enough to fund multiple other employers.
Advice: Shut it down before you get raided and shut down and your "side business" becomes "going to court and defending yourself."

What you clearly didn't realize is that long before BitCoin was popular, gift cards were one of the ways criminals laundered money. There are even discussions about which gift cards can be sold for the least discount. Gift cards can be sold for cash, so you are in effect, operating a bitcoin exchange.
I like the Lumias, I would buy one with Android.
Not to pile on, but it's called Silicon Valley, not If-Statement Valley. :)
This $75 synthesizer will turn anything into an instrument
This is a 'color revolution' instigated by George Soros' Open Society Foundation and other Western-backed foundations, plain and simple. Soros has been quite open about his intentions to more or less flip this country.
Let's assume your string struct is solid. Then does that mean you can safely use it with `printf, fprintf, sprintf` (e.g. printf("%s", string->value)? Or must you also write custom versions of those functions? How deep does this rabbit hole go?
Damn. I look forward to his thoughts on driving.
I have the utmost respect for Avdi, but I think he's being way too pedantic here. It's just a word.

Literally no one ever who has written "passion" in a programming job description has demanded an uncontrollable, foaming-at-the-mouth desire to to work on their project lest ye be fired at once.
Snapchat privacy policy worse than the NSA
At this point, we all know that SnapChat is coded by kids who are definitely not master cryptographers, let alone competent software engineers trustworthy of securely handling communication data. But what about the fact that their "privacy policy" reads more like the NSA collection policy? http://www.snapchat.com/privacy/

Not only are they collecting my location information (which has no relation to their service) they are recording when each Snapchat was sent and to who I sent it to. Frankly, that's not required of them, and I'd rather they did not. At least give me an option there. Then they go on to say they have cookies and other tracking technologies tracking my phone usage to give me relevant info. Snapchat isn't Google adwords - there is no relevant information to their service. They send snap chats. So a) they are lying. And b) I have a computer science degree and I can't figure out what the heck they are talking about. Aren't cookies on web browsers? But say they are just talking about their web interface, which basically no one uses, it makes me wonder why they are so aggressively tracking my internet usage when they have nothing to provide me (not even ads, apparently they will soon, and they’ll be very targeted!). But it gets even worse. Aside from the blatant lies about providing us better service and answering our emails, which doesn't require spying on us, they are apparently self appointed law enforcement officials who wish to "Detect, investigate and/or prevent fraudulent, unauthorized or illegal activity". Really? How exactly are you going to do that? I knew you weirdos were opening my Snapchats. This is why profiteering money hungry children, who copypasta code from ios books should not be at the helm of a mainstream "privacy phenomenon".

Let's take these guys on in an open source, trustworthy, and legitimate fashion. Who's with me?
This is a cool concept, A lot of people let you trade bitcoin for cards, but the opposite is really useful too! I'd love this business in dollars.
Gift cards are more like cash than goods. That is why "Federal tax law does not view giving an employee a turkey or a ham as the equivalent of giving an employee a gift card to purchase a turkey or a ham" [1].

[1] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/p_4090_fed_0305_text.pdf
Startup Reading List – StartupDigest – January 31st – February 7th
I've been hand-verifying the transactions so far to try to keep abreast of fraud. I've also taken some automated steps (that I'm improving now).

I've been reading quite a bit about the money transmitter stuff, but I'd appreciate your take on why this would be categorized.
> I'd be sweating the fact that I can't parse the meaning of a word based on the context it's used in.

I would say that's _exactly_ what he's doing. He's considering what companies might actually mean by throwing the word "passionate" into job postings.
Your Guide to App Store Optimization
I think it's code for "at least pretends to give a shit".
I just pinged you on Twitter, @jdshutt. I know a lawyer who specializes in tax law and is very interested in cryptocurrencies. If you want to get in touch with her, you can reach me at john.d.shutt@gmail.com and I'll send her e-mail.

I'm on board with everyone saying that you need to talk to a lawyer sooner rather than later, and should work with someone who knows the area.
That was my thought too, but this is a common reaction so I'm definitely seeking clarification.
3-4 years sounds like how long it takes for a new technology to be deployed as a major part of the stack
We need a rating system for recruiters.
"OwnCloud is basically Dropbox, without the data limits and pricing restrictions.

The only catch is that you have to run and install OwnCloud on your own server"

Your own server which adds its own data limits and pricing restrictions.
Romotive's iPhone on wheels gets kids riled up about robotics
"ERROR 500 - INTERNAL SERVER ERROR"

Can't seem to get a cached version either.
Udacity has a data science track of courses (https://www.udacity.com/courses#!/Data%20Science) and the blog has recently had data science related posts (http://blog.udacity.com/).
About StackOverflow, it's probably because questions there are not supposed to be like a forum (as in, someone has a problem and wants a solution), but more like future reference for anyone searching for that. So they remove stuff that sounds more personal. That's my guess.
Ask HN: Which are the best places to showcase an app for teens or women?
If I want to show an app for early adopters in the tech world I go to places like HN, Reddit, etc.

But what if I want to target teens or women, which are the best online places to showcase an app? For example, I thought in some subreddits.
How so?

I always thought mail in rebates were a good way to experiment with the price-sensitivity of the purchase. Is that the feedback you mean?
> I can only assume many of them have no idea what they are potentially exposing themselves to from a legal perspective.

Or an ethical perspective even.
The slaves their parents owned? My parents were born considerably after the Emancipation Proclamation. As for my more distant ancestors, I have no idea whether any of them owned slaves. I do know that a bunch were serfs. Let me know where to send the bill.
Guess he should have stuck with dropbox.
Show HN: My startup designed a new type of Molten Salt Reactor
Buying stuff that's also offshore. For instance, it's rumored that Microsoft's acquisition of Skype was much less expensive than it might have been because Microsoft was able to purchase Skype with funds already overseas--if they had wanted to purchase a US company, they'd have had to move the funds back to America, with all of the tax consequences such a move implies.
Very good points, thanks. I know the finance co-founder is on top of ensuring a clean cap table, as a messy one, especially with equity owners no longer with the company, can definitely trigger a "decline".

And good point about the seed deck too, will make sure to pass that on. I'd like to think everyone is aware of that, but I also suspect we may need to pivot on the way to product market fit.
But dude, football! And the twelfth man! And stuff!

>You're right, nothing is absolutely necessary, there is not point arguing about this.

Don't you hate when arguments get to this point?

You know what else isn't a waste of fuel? Dumping thousands of gallons of it onto the ground and burning it. I mean, who doesn't enjoy a good bonfire, right? You cannot prove that I don't!

Apparently, this route was the result of a test flight. Really the only legitimate explanation for something like this.
http://fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/pdf/FIN-2013-G001.p...
Starbucks gift cards are relatively anonymous, can store varying amounts of money without being suspicious and are easily transferred and sold. They are a fantastic vector for transfering dirty cash
It's a common trait of Europe in XIX century: Pushkin in Russia, Adam Mickiewicz in Poland, Byron in England, Schiller/Goethe in Germany - they're all poets-heroes of the Romanticism Age - they all virtually determined their national cultures for decades. But I agree that Shevchenko's influence was much more profound for Ukraine than Pushkin's for Russia - maybe because the culture and language of Ukraine were the only its remnants at that time whereas Russia always had its state and its history, its army, bureaucracy and its own religion.
One of the steps to de-risk the cards will be a waiting period- new cards won't be accepted unless they've been activated X days/months. That should seriously lower the chance of stolen cards getting through.
Typical fear-driven 'business' requirements:

* They want an 'amazing' developer, but they don't want to pay them above average.

* They want a 'passionate' developer, but they don't want someone who will call them on their shit.

* They want a 'productive' developer, but they'll require 9 hours of butt in seat.

* They want a developer who keeps atop of cutting-edge tech, but they require you to use Java.

* They want a 'smart' developer, but require 10 years of one tech.

* They want someone active in open-source, but refuse to sponsor any sort of open source work, instead preferring to be a taker.
What replaced it?
As the saying goes, the devil was in the details. It's not the existence of spying but the extent that made everyone take notice. "surveilled their citizens" is too general a term;it can include anything from monitoring international communication for a handful of citizens to collecting metadata for every single phone call ever made (as was the case). I never said or implied that there was no proof that governments spied on their citizens so don't represent that as my belief.
You can learn a lot about machine learning from this course
https://www.coursera.org/course/ml
> could I some how phone Starbucks up and say my card was lost/stolen? What happens in this instance? It's the biggest risk you need to look at from what I can see at first glance. Perhaps test this.

I lost my Starbucks card and somebody used it. I had auto topup, so they kept using it :) After I reported it, Starbucks replied two days later, cancelled it and transferred the remaining balance. Still I lost about £15 from the auto topup.
Hand-verification right now before payout, though I'm locking it down further now.
Super Bowl Traditions and Superstitions
WRT lawyer: go talk to orrick. They will get you properly incorporated and will give you a ton worth of upfront legal help and won't require payment until you raise capital if that's needed.

If you crash and burn, they charge you nothing.
Being selective about which laws you enforce is worse than not enforcing any of them. In this case, the Government, through GCHQ is guilty of systematically violating its own draconian law (RIPA) that was designed to legalise all sorts of Orwellian bullshit.
> Why so much Ukraine on HN?

Maybe there are a lot of Ukrainians on HN. Considering that Ukraine has a lot of developers and internet access there is one of the fastest and cheapest in the world.
Blocked by IT under the category of Pornography. Guess I'll read it later?
His last tweet was in 2010 so there is room for both interpretations
It's the way that a lot of people live vicariously through sports superstars by fantasizing about being part of the team.
Most gift cards can be used in person for purchases without any sort of ID -- which means that they can be effectively "transferred" to anyone. In fact, that's rather the point. They're called "gift" cards because you're expected to transfer ("give") them to someone else!
From the New York Times (1):

"In March, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, part of the Treasury Department, issued guidelines (2) telling businesses involved in the exchange of digital currencies that they needed to register as money services businesses and comply with a variety of rules to prevent money laundering. New York’s Department of Financial services began an inquiry in August to determine guidelines for digital currency businesses, issuing nearly two dozen subpoenas (3) to start-ups, investors and others involved in the emerging field."

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/technology/bitcoin-pursues...

2. http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/nr/pdf/20130318.pdf

3. http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press2013/memo1308121.pdf
One aspect that is overlooked here is the actual safety of your data. If you feel that your own server has the safety and backup resources of e.g. Amazon (which Dropbox uses), you're probably deluding yourself.
Show HN: Common Interests Financial's new website
I'm not accepting registered cards, which changes the fraud vectors quite a bit. No auto-reload, etc.
I haven't used pascal for closing in on 20 years, and don't miss it one bit.

For you younger people reading this who have never been exposed to pascel, go dig up that article and scroll down to section 2.1 and just think about that for a minute. Ask yourself 'is this the kind of computing environment I want to work in?'
You should know that being a money transmitter is an exceptionally risky and time-intensive business to be in even if one is not "categorized as" a money transmitter. Even if the government ignores you, criminals will not. You are currently betting that your fraud prevention expertise is better than every criminal's fraud execution expertise. You will likely not win that bet. Do you understand that your adversary here has twenty people who are smarter than you and have years of experience on his payroll? I am not exaggerating in the slightest. Breaking your system wide open will not be his side project. It is his core line of business. You will just be a juicy target of opportunity, to the extent that you have worthwhile volumes. Note that four figures is already worthwhile.

As for the regulatory side of things, I'll pull you the exact citations when I get back from (ironically) a coffee run.
Could the Wii U be saved if it was pitched as a 3DS accessory?
I have always felt that OwnCloud was just a personal "fun" alternative to great services like Dropbox. The DropBox business package, for the price, is not bad all in my own opinion.
Hydroelectricity is renewable, but is it really green ?
To illustrate, "If you read this far, you should follow my RSS feed here." :)
to read this article right after reading
http://i.imgur.com/huUv09m.png
(the Zynga today's articles on HN) was intriguing.
True, but signing up with someone like OwnCube are cheaper than Dropbox - and if you really want it you can get SSH access (for sshfs) too ;)
I won't want to belittle anyone, but payment processing law is really complicated. I doubt you'll find someone with experience willing to take equity.

It's not like making simple LLC membership agreements and employment contracts. This stuff is complex federal regulations.
(Scalyr founder here) Thanks for the feedback. Agreed, we haven't done much to present the product yet. For the last couple of years, we've been focusing on building out the product while keeping our early users happy -- making sure we can walk the walk before we talk the talk. We'll be launching a completely new home page in a month or so that should do a much better job of presenting what we do. In the meantime, if anyone out there is frustrated with the current monitoring offerings, drop us a line (I'm steve@$COMPANY.com). We have a lot to offer, and we'll go the extra mile and beyond on support.
From my recollection, the industry stats on mail-in-rebates on (say) hard disks is something like 80% are unclaimed. Cutting a UPC out of the side of a box (and finding a stamp, and copying a tricky address exactly, etc) is a >$15 job for most people...
Not really. In many EU countries it is about 3x of average salary.
I see the coward has a regular account and is capable of downvoting...
>The less you have need for that series A, the easier it will be to obtain.

That seems to be the crux of all funding, isn't it, the less you need it the more everyone wants to give it to you. I've heard you need Team, Traction, or Technology, but Team and Technology are really just the prereqs or means to the end for Traction.
Read the article here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140130215227/http://dorktech.c...

or here:

http://pastebin.com/pudxiTmC
If you don't feel comfortable, keep moving until you do. You can analyze whether it was racist later, and then feel guilty if you want to.

In retrospect, I was probably safer every time I walked alone through the streets of Chicago's various neighborhoods than that one time I pulled in to an interstate highway rest stop in Florida. A sheriff's deputy had to watch over us and our car from the time we pulled in to the time we rolled out. None of us have ever peed so quickly in our entire lives.

In retrospect, we should have gone straight through and opted for wetting our pants. In that situation, there was no apparent difference in skin colors. Number of shirts owned, yes. Tooth count, definitely.

Had a similar family with different skin color locked all their doors and hastily re-entered traffic, I wouldn't be calling them racist; I'd be calling them wiser than me. So as I do not know much about the neighborhoods and suburbs of London, I think I'll withhold any uninformed judgements on what he said and did as a young man. It may well be that he is both racist and correct. On the whole, I care more about the latter.
So goes disruption.
Coca-Cola: Personal Information Of 74,000 Compromised?
OwnCloud got Pwned
True, but when people say "ansi C", then Clinton is almost always president.

(I say this because these days, I hear "C89" or "C90", "C99", or "C11". People who say "ANSI" get asked for clarification.)
With Paper, Facebook just blew its own iPhone app out of the water
3-4 years after deployment. It takes time to understand how a technology will be used and for the details of it to stabilize.
Excuse the friendly jibe but you might consider dropping Hostgator next! I really respect and find valuable the idea of OwnCloud, but I have heard so many horror stories about files being deleted, slow sync times and bug fixes being secondary to the development of new features I have been put off. Has it now matured and can be considered more viable? I have been using BitTorrent Sync (with a Raspberry Pi as 24/7 server) personally and have experienced zero issues. I wish it was open source but it is great as an alternative to DropBox if 'owning your data' is important to you.
Just confirming that it does actually work for someone
At this point? I would say the word means practically nothing in job postings.
I expect so.

But of course you get to choose whether to use it or not. If you want something done your way - then just start, and inform people what they should do to back you up. If you want someone else to take care of all the thinking for you, then just relax and say "Let me know how I can help."
My guess a generic domain keyword block of "dork"? Remind me not to register a domain like that for my next must-have business app.
How are you getting your bitcoin? Are you mining, or buying it at retail (coinbase, etc)?

You are providing a channel for money laundering, so you will likely come under scrutiny if this gets popular.
...the 'red pill philosophy'?
I'm not sure that's enough for this level of classified. I can imagine fairly large sections of the drive platter surviving more or less intact from that. Theoretically, quite a lot of the data might be recovered.
Legalizing Selling Food Made At Home Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses
Google Caffeine was the public release. I don't believe the technical details have been published yet.
Unfortunately, I don't know of one. My recent C work has worked with text only in a very limited capacity (parsing and building packets in an ascii format - for the later, vectorized write buffers are a poor-man's ropes).

Edited to add:

Apparently there is this: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/gc_source/cordh...
use open source standards for communication protocols and put yours in a public datasheet with detailed info on how to parse & process.

This, a thousand times this. Because I don't want to have problems if/when your company goes under in a couple of years.
Investigate NSA to Avert Police State, Privacy Consultant Warns
What you describe is going on in Mexico sounds fascinating. Where can I read more about it?
OK, that makes sense then. I was thinking "the condition" was the variable changing within the loop.
I can't remember a unix system for at least the last decade that hasn't given me the section 1 bash "read" instead of the section 2 system "read" on a "man read".
> I have about 400GB of data backed up and synced between all my offices onto external drives at each location

I can't even get it to synch 100MB properly. I'm using ownCloud for about a year now and I run into issues all the time. Simply put a Git repo in your ownCloud folder and it will never stop synching.
Unless you are part of a vanishingly small group of autodidacts who can train themselves up to graduate school levels of expertise in multiple overlapping subjects - statistics, computer science (might be able to get away with just being an ok programmer), and the interdisciplinary combination of those called "machine learning," you should disappear into a statistics degree program, and amend the traditional stats program deficiencies with the modern-day leavening agents that create "machine learning."

Downloading scikitlearn and R and such is not going to work. At that level you are only qualified to be bossed around by a real scientist or statistician. You are an "analyst".
I think he has a point though. There's nothing more of a turnoff to me than seeing "ninja" or "rockstar" in a job listing, and this seems to hit on a similar point. Why does this industry seem to expect miracle workers who know 30,000 frameworks and languages, rather than solid folks who enjoy their jobs and are good at them?
I don't think there is any requirement that these games be on iOS.