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Sam_Odioon New 25 GPU Monster Devours Passwords In Seconds

It looks like - contrary to the article - the presenters are discussing hash functions, not encryption[1]. There is a difference[2].

That said, I'd be curious to know how long it'd take a device like this to decrypt "secure" AES256 text.

1. https://hashcat.net/p12/js-sha1exp_169.pdf

2. http://stackoverflow.com/a/4948393

Sam_Odioon Intel Raises $6 Billion in Bond Sale to Buy Back Stock

Short: You are right that a stock buyback is a technique, like dividends, to return capital to existing investors. However, stock buybacks are also a technique used by firms that believe their stock is underpriced, and is likely what is happening here.

Long: To say that a firm's equity is "underpriced" is to say that the firm believes it is expensive (risk-adjusted), compared to it's debt.

This implies a two things:

* Asymmetric information - that the firm knows something the market doesn't.

* That the firm is at a sub-optimal weighted average cost of capital, and can reduce the cost of its capital by restructuring.

As found by MR Leary at Duke and cited by 600 others[1], firms resolve this situation by rebalancing their capital structure. One way to do this is to issue debt at a low interest rate to buy back the firm's "expensive" stock.

The Modigliani–Miller theorem that you reference does indeed argue that capital structures don't matter and that rebalancing shouldn't need to occur. However the theory doesn't apply in practice since it assumes the absence of asymmetric information, taxes, and the presence of an efficient market [2].

1. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=179408952930709446...

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theor...

Sam_Odioon Show HN: We built a simple way to accept payments through Stripe

Hi Chris -

I'm sorry you feel this way. I agree that HN needs less vitriol like this, but I can understand where you're coming from.

Expect an 'about page' at some point in the near future. In the meantime here are a few links that might help you learn more about the company, the team, and the product (I found most of them by googling "Freshplum" and "gethelium"):

* https://angel.co/freshplum

* http://www.crunchbase.com/company/freshplum

* http://www.linkedin.com/search/fpsearch?keywords=freshplum

* http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/11/01/freshplum-launches-...

* http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/freshplum-goes-after-small-...

* Demo: http://sam.odio.com/2012/10/31/buy-me-beer/

* http://allthingsd.com/20110621/sam-odio-i-left-facebook-to-r...

And, if there's any more information you'd like before signing up, there's always email. Our addresses are in our profiles.

Sam_Odioon Show HN: We built a simple way to accept payments through Stripe

We're developing a suite of "enterprise" e-commerce tools under the Freshplum brand, so presumably we'd up-sell the retailer to those.

Sam_Odioon Show HN: We built a simple way to accept payments through Stripe

Regarding pricing: We talked about the wording internally. It was decided that different people pay different stripe fees (eg volume discounts) and stripe may change their fees in the future w/o notice, so it's best to simply state what we charge. I've added a link to Stripe's pricing page to make things a little more clear.

Regarding the demo: we're planning on adding one to the home page. Until then I added the button to my blog: http://sam.odio.com/2012/10/31/buy-me-beer/

Sam_Odioon Show HN: We built a simple way to accept payments through Stripe

Agreed, 2% likely isn't end state and we plan on searching in the space below it.

It's easier to drop the price (or give volume discounts) than raise it.

Sam_Odioon Show HN: We built a simple way to accept payments through Stripe

We're planning to add a demo to the home page. Until then I created a demo on my blog: http://sam.odio.com/2012/10/31/buy-me-beer/

Sam_Odioon Show HN: We built a simple way to accept payments through Stripe

We believe Helium's target audience isn't the HN community, but it'd be good to get your thoughts about it anyways.

It's basically an easy way to add a shopping cart and check-out flow to a website. Think of the small business that's not tech-savvy but wants to sell a few products (or a service) on their site.

Design was by Michael Yuan, the same designer that designed Divvyshot.

Sam_Odioon Show HN: a tiny Instagram projector

They are, after all, made from photos with pixels right? Printing a digital photo on film doesn't somehow add back data.

Sam_Odioon How I made Stripe as easy to use as Paypal in 5 days

You're pointing out the obvious (that this is a 5-day one person project) in a way that's not constructive.

Sam_Odioon What Pandora Pays Top Artists

I downloaded their detailed income statements[0]. The Google Finance income statement appears to be wrong. Google's income statements imply royalties of less than 8.5%.

In their latest quarter (Q2 FY2013) "Cost of Revenue" made up $68,036,000 on revenue of $101,267,000. Of that, "Content acquisition costs" were $60,522. That means royalties make up a whopping 60% of all revenue. They're not making a profit and have lost money in FY2012 and FY2011.

0. http://investor.pandora.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=227956&p=iro... (see Historical Financials).

Sam_Odioon Vinod Khosla: “I Feel Sad Sometimes For YC Companies That Get So Much Hype”

Another point: A founder of a "hyped" company can always turn down an investor at a high valuation for another investor at a lower valuation (that presumably offers some other sort of value-add).

The situation Vinod describes would therefore only exist if founders either:

a) Didn't agree with him about the role of an early investor, or

b) Were not optimizing for their company's success.

------ edit ------

It's also worth nothing that if (a) above were common and I were a price-sensitive value-add investor I'd give interviews exactly like the one Vinod gave to Techcrunch.

I'd attempt to convince entrepreneurs that they shouldn't focus on valuations and should instead focus on the benefits investors (like my firm) provide. This isn't an uncommon argument (though it normally happens behind closed doors). Google Ventures, for example, is known to make it [1].

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2012/07/19/when-fundin...

Sam_Odioon In China, the rich and powerful can hire body doubles to do their prison time

That's a pretty loaded statement. Your implication is that the credit default swap industry is rife with fraud but it'd be helpful to be more specific about what that fraud is, who committed it, and why they're not receiving an appropriate punishment.

Sam_Odioon German security experts find major flaw in credit card terminals

It's disappointing that these guys didn't work with VeriFone before publicizing the attack.

This is FUD, just with different actors.

Sam_Odioon This Startup Could Literally Change The Way The Entire App Industry Works

HN headlines are often changed by moderators to match the article's title. That might have happened here.

Sam_Odioon Former Facebooker Scoops Up $1.4 Million for Freshplum (YC S11)

Noted, thanks.

Sam_Odioon Former Facebooker Scoops Up $1.4 Million for Freshplum (YC S11)

I'm sorry you feel this way and I can understand where it's coming from. Raising money isn't an extraordinary event and probably doesn't mean much to you (though it does mean I can pay everyone's salaries for a little longer - and that means something to me).

That said, we'd love more than anyone to make this available to as many people as possible. The team is pulling long hours to make that happen. We're just trying to do it in a responsible, methodical way.

I'd love to see you or any other HNer try us out. If you sell stuff online and are interested in an analytics tool to help you understand your business, feel free to drop me a line. My email is in my HN profile. After I understand your needs I'll tell you honestly whether we can help.

Sam_Odioon Former Facebooker Scoops Up $1.4 Million for Freshplum (YC S11)

I started this company with two other friends from YC companies: Nick Alexander and Michael Yuan. It was really to scratch a personal itch: online pricing. When you're selling something online (especially a virtual good) choosing a fair price is hard. Most people (including me) seem to guess.

I felt like there must be a better way, where econ & math is used instead of intuition.

Freshplum grew out of that. After building the company to solve that need we realized that analytics can help online businesses in several different ways - not just pricing. We now how a more holistic focus on helping companies understand their online business through analytics.

Sam_Odioon Ask HN: What is your HN topcolor. (Results to follow)

#abcdef

Sam_Odioon Obama and Romney Campaigns Adopt Square for Funding

That shouldn't be hard since old square dongles are unencrypted [1]. Just create an app that interfaces with the dongle and looks like the obama app. You're good to go [2].

1. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/per_visas_orders_square...

2. Note to the NSA or any other government agency reading my public social network comments: It's a shame I have to post this disclaimer, but I have no intention of defrauding supporters of any political campaign (simply discussing a known security flaw). Also, Hacker News is not a news site for crackers.

Sam_Odioon FBI to monitor Facebook, Twitter, Myspace

> PDF, half the pages are oddly blank

Duplex scanner.

Sam_Odioon IBM creates 9nm carbon nanotube transistor that outperforms silicon

Ever heard of the PC?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer

Sam_Odioon [dead]

The most interesting takeaway here is their clever use of a meme to engage in SEO for runningshoes.com.

However the discussion itself (and not the technique used to start it) probably doesn't add much to HN so I'd consider this spam.

Sam_Odioon Stanford Computer Science '10-'11 Salary Survey Results

When we make new hires we give them the option of trading cash for equity. I've found $60k (with the rest in equity) to be a pretty popular choice.

Many seem to consider it to be the lowest salary where one can live comfortably in the valley (allowing one to take risk without going into debt).

Sam_Odioon The Slashdot Effect from the Other Side

It'd be interesting to get an idea of how the "HN affect" compares to slashdot. Followup article by chance?

Sam_Odioon Krugman is wrong - Bitcoins not hoarded - Massive selloff

I'm not sure this proves Krugman is wrong.

Sell-offs (especially large ones) don't indicate that hoarding hasn't taken place. In fact, if hoarding wasn't taking place I'd expect low variability in trading volume (since the currency would be used by a number of parties for small transactions). A large sell-off implies to me that a large amount of value has just transferred from one set of hoarders (investors?) to another. Either that, or someone just made a huge donation to WikiLeaks...

Sam_Odioon [dead]

Hm, I guess a lot can get lost in translation. :(

That "olive branch" comment wasn't intended to be negative. I was saddened by his reply. To address your point: I am not looking for a personal confrontation...just wanting to reach out and make sure he's OK.

Sam_Odioon Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

That's a valid point. But is pursuing art (or whatsver) admitting to yourself that you value art more than world hunger? After all, that's how you're allocating your resources.

Fwiw, anyone who knows me know I don't have a holier-than-thou attitude (though I took one for this post). This was mostly meant as an edgy/controversial twist to the social experiment: how do peoople react when someone takes the money (which is a public good) and imposes their own morals on it (even if it's for good)?

Sam_Odioon Jonathan's Card

It looks like things have died down. The steady state seems to be one where the balance is low and the transactions are small: http://dpaste.com/589113/.

That would imply that the card is currently being used as intended.

Sam_Odioon Jonathan's Card

That was me. One latte plus $25 worth of food for two homeless guys outside. Turns out they didn't want any of it. I think I might've insulted them by bringing them food that they hadn't asked for. :/