Hacker News Reader

JWhiteakeron BitcoinStore Launch - Cheaper In Bitcoin

I'm not saying they shouldn't show the dollar value, I just expect them to at least show the bitcoin price next to it with a name like BitcoinStore.

JWhiteakeron BitcoinStore Launch - Cheaper In Bitcoin

It's called BitcoinStore, but the prices are only shown in USD. I expect it will show the conversion on the checkout page, but at first glance the concept feels like just a marketing gimmick.

JWhiteakeron Face.com Free Detect Faces in Pictures Alternative

Is this just for face detection or for face recognition as well?

Face detection is a pretty much solved problem IMO and running OpenCV locally is a simple enough solution.

What I will miss about face.com is the face recognition. It was state of the art, lightning fast, and free. The eigenfaces implementation in OpenCV doesn't even come close.

JWhiteakeron Ready to found a startup, but my co-founder is on a temporary visa

That's not a bad idea. A student visa in general would at least delay the problem.

JWhiteakeron Jon Fisher: selling the company should be every entrepreneur's goal

If your goal is to make money, then sure, selling should be your goal.

If your goal is to make something that might change the world some day, then maybe it shouldn't be.

Hyperbole aside, if you really believe in what you're working on and want to see it live on, an acquisition might not be the best option. Many acquisitions lead to product deaths as the team gets integrated into the acquiring company (meebo is a recent example).

JWhiteakeron Ready to found a startup, but my co-founder is on a temporary visa

I'm aware of the startup visa act (http://startupvisa.com/), but that is not going to be available by the time we would need it (assuming it even passes).

JWhiteakeron Tech Boom Hits San Francisco Rental Prices

I experienced this first-hand as I just signed a place a little over a month ago. Compared to what was listed the apartment we ended up with was several hundred dollars cheaper, and we competed with at least 10 other applicants for the place.

However, as I talk to more people they think we are overpaying several hundred dollars based on what they are paying for comparable units, most of which were signed around a year ago.

JWhiteakeron Apple's secret weapon : Design patents

For being Apple's secret weapon, Samsung sure has a lot more of them. I wonder why Samsung's number of design patents issued peaked in 2008.

JWhiteakeron Help Replenish Landlord Listings on PadMapper using PadLister

This is the logical move for padmapper. I wonder if the press they've been getting will be enough to seed their user base to make it self-sustaining.

It would be ironic if Craigslist just helped create a viable competitor, though this is unlikely.

JWhiteakeron Password Rules

Having overly restrictive password rules like this, combined with requiring a new password every x months, just leads to more users writing down the passwords on notes stuck to their monitor.

JWhiteakeron IAmA a malware coder and botnet operator, AMA

Magnetic stripes are the most hilarious thing ever, but still work almost everywhere on the globe.

I am amazed that magnetic stripes are still the norm for credit cards in the US. Europe has managed to move all but completely to chip-based cards, but the US hasn't.

Does the cost of fraud due to magnetic stripes outweigh the cost to upgrade the entire US system, or is the market just too fragmented to coordinate such a transition?

JWhiteakeron Keith Olbermann Thinks I'm an Idiot

As for the fallout, Polls was down throughout this episode. Because it spread virally by posting people's votes to their newsfeed, the three or four days of down time halted all growth. Traffic dropped to nothing and never recovered.

This is really interesting. It makes sense the way you described it, but I didn't realize how fragile growth can be. So much for "any press is good press."