Hacker News Reader

Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

> As to the 11¢ offset, we have currency conversion to thank.

I was very confused by this. Why the 11 cent offset for currency conversion? Are there some laws around sending $155k in foreign payments? From a PR perspective, that extra 11 cents provides a pretty good ROI since you can just say that you've donated $155,000

P.S. This isn't intended to be criticism, just curiosity. Kudos to Sentry for the donation. If every profitable company donated $2k per developer, we can expect some pretty amazing innovations in OSS

On the contrary, having a bizarre number creates marketing buzz and curiosity. $154,999.89 got me to click. $155k can get lost in the shuffle of all the other numbers getting thrown around on HN.

I'm guessing one project required currency conversion and so the 11 cents is the cost of conversion for that one project. Maybe they gave the project $10 and 11 cents got eaten in conversion making it $9.89. It's possible they spent $155,000 but projects only got $154,999.89 so the note the latter.

Yup, it was https://www.softwareheritage.org/, they accept donations in Euro only. :)

If you spent $155K, that's how much you donated, regardless of the transfer fees.

But if you spent $154,999.89 because the exchange rate slightly improved while you preparing the transaction, after you chose a number of Euros to donate, then you spent $154,999.89

The amount you're quoted for an international funds transfer often varies slightly from the amount that's actually charged.. So if you initiate a $500USD -> EUR transfer quoted at 0.8591 so the recipient receives EUR429.55, it might actually clear at 0.8593 meaning it only cost you $499.88 to send.

And a belligerent failure to understand sig-figs.

:face_with_rolling_eyes:

Reply on news.ycombinator.com