ashray

Interactive Brokers is your own brokerage account, they are a regulated broker that offers Forex in addition to the other stuff (stocks, options, etc.).

I'm not 100% sure on the fees but they are not even close to 0.3% for forex. It's pretty much around $2 for most trades (their example covers: USD 50,000 daily volume for EUR = USD 2.00). Here are the details of the fees: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=commission...

I think the reason IB charges are so low is because they deal with very large customers (banks, trading houses, etc.).

Why not just use a forex broker instead? Better rates, lower spreads, and higher liquidity. I would personally recommend Interactive Brokers.

Yup, I'm having trouble with it. Sometimes comes up partially, other times it's just unable to load.

No need to downvote if you just disagree, that's not how HN is supposed to work :( It appears that you are using a different meaning for revenue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue

Revenue normally refers to top-line or gross income. This is why I clarified with the 'net-' addition, it's probably what led to the confusion in the first place.

Flipkart nowadays anyway operates on a 'store' model for the most part so sales margin for this discussion could actually be meaningless anyway. But since they were doing an exclusive, perhaps they were directly selling, in which case it would be pertinent to the discussion.

He could mean net revenue for the retailer as in profit. I don't think these phones would have a margin much greater than $20-$25 ?

This is one of the most brilliant pieces I've ever read about programming. It's funny and really manages to capture the frustrations a programmer faces through the days, months, and years with his relationship with code.

I guess what we miss in programming is a standardized way to do things and if you did it that way your accountability ends there. There's a lot of uncertainty being dealt with all the time because there's no de-facto "THIS IS THE WAY IT'S DONE BRUH!" for pretty much anything. Maybe that's what makes it interesting ? It's definitely what makes it stressful.

I've been using nginx+memcached for about 2 years on a high traffic site in production. It's been pretty great and runs without a hiccup. However bear in mind that Varnish is far more capable as nginx's memcached integration is fairly simplistic. You'll have to manage all your keys in the application layer as all nginx can do is send a certain request to a certain key and failover if it's not found. Varnish ACLs allow much finer control.

Also, I've come across benchmarks that say Varnish is faster. I just don't want to deal with a complex setup for something that gets the job done. (Job = lower the load on the app server)

Seconded. I've used KISSmetrics for this exact use case. There's a bit of groundwork required to setup 'events' but once that's done they will track every user and you can see how the user ended up using your app.

The rich would not get richer. They would stay alive and stick around until they got poorer and eventually died.

I don't understand. Did you not have company equity in your name? As far as I understand, it would be impossible to acquire the company, its patents, and associated technology without proper paperwork?

I find your story incredibly inspiring! What happened in Tibet ? Also, the fact that you and your wife run your business(es) together is something we have in common. Am going to drop you an email!

I'd say I'm a mix of entrepreneur and developer for hire. But I haven't done contract work for a while now.

I've also worked fulltime in a programming role for about a year and a half in the past at a fast growing startup. I learned a LOT in my first few months there (including getting reasonably good at Python and Django) and really absorbed so much good stuff from my peers and bosses and even people who worked in other departments. But as time went by and the company grew (went from 20 to about 100 employees in that year..) I started learning less and less. So I quit.

One thing though, I never needed to work there (for money). I already earned enough from my own projects to sustain a reasonable lifestyle. (rented apartment, car, etc.) I just did it to learn more.

I have a few successful projects under my belt that pay for life reasonably well. This really varies from person to person. Some people are happy with $3000/month and some aren't happy with $50,000/month.

In my opinion you should work somewhere for a bit because you will absorb a lot of stuff with the right attitude. You should always keep your mind focused on the end goal of being your own boss if that's what you want from life. And when that awesome idea finally comes to you, the one that you have a burning desire to watch come alive, take the leap!

If you eventually can support yourself well with your own projects/freelance work then you will have the kind of freedom and flexibility that most people can only dream about.

I spent the last two years traveling and working (a little..) at the same time! Spent time in about 20 countries :)

Regarding university and the whole rat race thing. You're spot on! My personal opinion is (and has always been) that the rat race is definitely glorious in its own way (if you are at the top..). But why compete with a million other people who are trying to do the exact same thing better than each other ? It's really really hard to stand out. And hey, you may still manage to make it into the top 5% if you work really hard and are really smart. But why run the race everyone runs ? Find your own race and you'll likely enjoy it and probably win at it too!

This is ultra important! I can't even begin to count the number of times I've come across great open source projects with ZERO documentation. I tend to read the code (if the project is in a language I know well..) but that's not an option for many people looking to quickly integrate.

Maybe OSS contributions should actually start with writing the docs, sort of like how interns start with fetching the coffee ;) Of course, you can do more if you like but writing docs is a great starting point to learn more about the underlying code anyway!

It's quite unlikely that someone who orders a 1000 burgers is actually going to eat them. I can't picture myself eating 1000 of the same kind of burger .. or in the same place..

I guess most people would eat 200 burgers (I'd say at the high end..) which would come out to 5GBP per burger. Not bad for the establishment.. I can't think of any average but even 100 sounds high to me.

This is just going to be terribly bad for the original authors and great for everyone else. The MAFIAA will look to set a 'don't ever try this again' kind of example and the original team will take the fall. Sort of like TPB all over again :(

I downloaded a working Mac version (binary) from here: http://kemald.com/pt/popcorn.html

Subtitles aren't working but I'm sure that's just a minor problem..

Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games are amongst by favorite games of all time. It's probably because I had a NES and playing SNES or Genesis at a friend's place had such a huge 'WOW' factor for me. The games were so smooth and so beautiful. The stories were so much better!

Chrono Trigger has to be one of my all time favorites. The games and their stories seemed so deep, so philosophical, so transcendental. Somehow games today fail to grip me the same way. It's probably me.

You could try using RPG Maker to create it. A lot of people made stuff for PSX back in the day like that. Not as cool/hard as making an entire game on your own but still something.

http://www.emuparadise.me/Sony_Playstation_ISOs/RPG_Maker_%5...

Why do decent people accept bitcoins ?

Because they see value in it.

The whole article goes on to paint every single bitcoin user as a criminal of some sort while completely ignoring the fact that the title itself is a glaring contradiction of the content.

Furthermore, a lot of bitcoin criticism comes from very US centric viewpoints. Consumer protection in the US (for the most part..) is miles ahead of many other places in the world. You can return stuff after 30 days and in some cases even after using things! On the flip side, my CC was fraudulently charged by Greenpeace a few months ago in India and I would've had to jump through some serious hoops (including cancelling my credit card) to lodge a case to recover my money. Considering the amount was small, I decided to just forget about it. But I still pay the 3% charge built into prices that are 'credit card friendly'.

Not sure if the article is just trolling because it seems heavy on the criticism but quotes other critics as citations. (eg. Stross)

One thing I love about bitcoin is that a lot of folks seem to be very passionate about it. There's some serious fanboyism and there are some serious haters. Personally, I like bitcoin but I don't feel polarized by it the way some people do. I can see why fanboys are excited about it but I fail to understand why the haters are so against it. This is like Mac vs PC or Nintendo vs Sega kind of stuff all over again.

I honestly want to hear from people who have actually been burnt by it. (MtGox victims ?) Did they turn into haters ? Or what happened there ?

The only cases I know of MtGox victims (guys demonstrating outside the Gox office in Japan) seemed to indicate that they clearly blamed Mark Karpeles/Gox and not bitcoin in general. So why are the Gox victim sympathizers so keen to blame bitcoin ?

How did you move to Amsterdam ? Is it like fulltime work or did you sponsor yourself with an EU Blue Card ? I'm always interested in learning about the various possibilities engineers have around the world! :)

I just want to clarify that this is nowhere close to the average salary a dev earns in India (a decent developer can make anywhere between $400/mo to $3000/mo). I'm not sure what company he's working for but it sounds like a real sweatshop. You can find better gigs even in Chandigarh (it's not known for IT that much..), but for that - you probably need to be better at what you do, or maybe you need to learn how to sell yourself better.

Wow, they just paid 105k in salaries in the last year? Now that explains all the gross incompetence. Subcontracting expenses... Not sure what that means..

That page works for me but same thing - once the game loaded, I couldn't interact with it. Firefox 27.0.1 on Mac OS X.

Amazing post! I wonder why everyone is called Mike Smith in the article though ? Mike Smith - VP of this, Mike Smith - a tourist, Mike Smith - etc. ?

Something else that wasn't covered is that cash is also dirty and carries grime and infections. Ideally you should wash your hands before you eat if you handle any cash. (this is less of a problem with laminated/plastic notes like the CAD or EUR)

Imagine a super virus propagating and killing people through cash. Ouch!

Sure, but usually that would be mentioned in the property description. Also, it was not a pullout couch. In fact, it wasn't big enough for a person to comfortably sleep on.

It is a big deal because the listing clearly indicated that the place has real beds and accommodates 4 people.

I would expect AirBNB to take responsibility given that the incorrect info is on their website and you pay pretty hefty fees to use the service. (AirBNB charges about 15% to the tenant and 3% to the host so a total of 18% - not bad ;))

Uhh no. AirBNB has a field on listings that clearly indicates "Bed Type". In this case "Bed Type" said Real Bed. Random example: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1229577?checkin=02%2F21%2F2014&...

One isn't likely to clarify that with the host prior to arrival given that it's on the listing. AirBNB needs to take responsibility for this kind of thing given that you pay about 15% as AirBNB fees and 3% is also paid by the host. Refunding just the fees isn't what you pay the fees for. It is to take care of situations such as this.

Well, this is some way similar to the experience I had when renting through AirBNB in Rio de Janeiro during carnival. We were 4 people and booked a place with two bedrooms which said it accommodates 4 people. Sounds right.

When we showed up at the place, there were just 3 beds - a double bed in one room and a single bed in another.

Mind you, this being carnival season and stuff, we were paying a handsome amount for our rental. However, when we got in touch with the host (he lives in the US with his wife, a care taker opened the house for us..) he refused to acknowledge the issue. He said: "There's a couch in the living room, one of you can sleep there - that way the house accommodates 4 people".

So we got in touch with AirBNB support who said they would find us another place. Of course they couldn't - everything is sold out during carnival. So, they finally decided to refund the "AirBNB fee" to us (about USD 54) so that we could use it to buy an inflatable mattress to put on the floor.

I asked them why they couldn't give us a full refund considering this was absolutely unacceptable as they should take responsibility for incorrect listings that lead to situations like this. (for what it's worth, Expedia, etc. have a far higher standard of customer service when it comes to stuff like this) They replied saying that the host had already been paid out - as if that's our problem.. =/

Anyway, we had no choice but to stay so we did indeed buy an inflatable mattress... AirBNB's customer support however was pretty terrible and the host was a complete asshole to us.

Thanks for pointing that out. So hang on, what you're saying is that according to the original bitcoin spec, addresses should be single use only ?

So that means that this unspent output issue coupled with the confirmation time lag is basically an implementation problem due to the way wallet systems have evolved.

It can be a pain to generate a new address for every transaction, even for automated software. I suppose these are the kind of issues that show us that bitcoin is still very much a work in progress and while it's always being worked on, it's still in 'beta'.

Well, there's a fairly easy work around to this kind of issue.

#1: What if your client kept your bitcoins spliced over several addresses ? So, each address kept just 10 BTC. Now, when you make a 99BTC transaction, you use up 10 addresses and 1 BTC change gets tied up for further confirmation. (adjust the numbers as convenient of course)

Thus, you basically can't spend your change until 6 confirmations but now it's far lesser than the 9.99 you surmised.

#2: (this one's better!) Or what if you just kept 10 separate addresses and used 1 at a time manually ? You'll tie up 1 address for up to an hour but the likelihood of making 10 transactions an hour is fairly low, and if you did want to do that, you could still split and proceed.

Entropy for BTC addresses is fairly high and each person on the planet can have far more than 10 so this is a non-issue in terms of availability.

Clients could manage these scenarios fairly easily if unconfirmed inputs/outputs were indeed to become a limiting factor.

Almost every credit card transaction in India goes through this kind of system. At a POS terminal you need to enter a pin (same thing in Europe).

For e-commerce you need to enter a password after you enter all your CC details. It's called Verified by Visa or Mastercard Securecode, depending on what card you have.

The downside is that apparently the user agreement states that if your password gets stolen (as well as your credit card details) then all liability is on you.