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mduvall

126 karma · joined February 5, 2010

Tamago!
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mduvall··on Implementing API Billing with Stripe
Hi from Stripe!

We are currently working on a new version of our Checkout product[0] and would love feedback. We are working on making the simplest drop-in integration to get up and running on Stripe, and we support Stripe Billing! Send me any thoughts you have (matt at stripe).

[0] https://stripe.com/docs/payments/checkout

mduvall··on Show HN: Check out our new 'Open Company' page
It's a great trend going forward to see companies becoming more open about the code they write, it helps get a third party perspective on what you're building. Balanced has done a good job at documenting and keeping their code clean enough that the barrier to contribution is as low as you can ask for on GH.
mduvall··on Why are payment forms so complicated?
I'm not sure '40% higher conversion rates' means anything pertinent. If it directly correlates to a company's revenue, this is fantastic. However, if it also contributes to a higher fraudulent payment rate (say we are funding loans, or performing a transaction where payment fraud tends to be higher), it must be taken into consideration and weigh how much the company will pay for each individual customer support case versus revenue accrued from each conversion.

That aside, customer data here is not only used for simply 'making the payment' as the writer says. This is a huge over-simplification of the problem, the payment gateway for the transaction to detect AVS and CVV is a /last ditch effort/ to catch fraud. The other fields could be used for other services that detect fraud such as ID Analytics, Experian, etc. and ultimately help mitigate credit and fraud risk for the company.

mduvall··on Pixels don’t care
I'm lost - where in the post is the discrimination for being short, and not just having the proper credentials?
mduvall··on Show HN: Timeboxing app for Mac
I agree here, squinting to read the barely legible text to be condescendingly met with some word that made me do a quick Google query...meh.
mduvall··on Paper
This price model will motivate the developers to create products that exactly tailor all the needs of their users, and the users could potentially (and probably will) save money buying a subset of the products they deem necessary. A flat fee will make the developers focus on top X priorities, leaving a segment of the user base possibly out of luck.
mduvall··on Sharding and IDs at Instagram
The call to default _uuids API call generates random UUIds, however you could override the call in the _config to have a different algorithm field, one that potentially could call "utc_random" still while appending a timestamp in the string to sort by later. Was this thought about when CouchDB was potentially considered?
mduvall··on Fructose: compile Ruby into PHP
I'm curious - would it be inefficient to use something that could efficiently compile Ruby into PHP such as Fructose, and then use HipHop for PHP from Facebook to compile the PHP into C++? So far I don't see a lot of tools that utilize the Ruby->C++ direction, and much work has gone into HipHop for PHP.
mduvall··on Why OS X just doesn't cut it
His evidence from the author of Redis is not accurate - chronologically speaking Salvatore jumped to the other side of the fence to OS X more recently than two years ago on 8/27/2010.

He stated in his interview for usesthis.com that:

"In the past my desktop was running Linux as well, I used fvwm2, for more than 10 years, with this minimalistic setup. Now I miss it a bit… but switched to Mac OS as it delivers a much better “just works” experience for me, every time I want to do Skype, print a document, or alike."

mduvall··on Can Etsy Scale?
Etsy really has the potential to become a major player in the micro-vendor market if it can take design considerations seriously - it may be at the vanguard of the industry at the moment but without actual design consideration for the future may be exactly the problem. I sometimes frequent the site and get the craigslist-this-will-probably-stay-the-same-forever feeling.
mduvall··on Twitter Announces Fire Hose Marketplace: Up to 10k Keyword Filters for 30 Cents
Despite being "dirt cheap" for potential clients such as companies, I find the 30 cent barrier an awkward price point since people who will want the data are probably willing to pay more, and it definitely bars the casual developer from access to social data.
mduvall··on Show HN: Grim Tweeper, easy way to clean up Twitter 'follow' lists
Neat application - keep up the good work. A couple points of improvement are 1) after being redirected to the site, I couldn't really go back to where I came from (HN, in this case), 2) not to be overtly meticulous but I was wondering why the buttons are pushed around 2px down on hover (tested in Firefox 4 on OSX 10.6), and 3) the comfy AJAX-y feel could be there if the box was a static size beforehand, when latency increases client side, the kill/keep buttons are really in a funny position. Overall this is definitely something to use again - cleaning up lists on Twitter seems to be egregious (and I'd imagine without the API rate limiting it'd be more than 1 person/screen :-P).
mduvall··on Solarized - Color scheme for vim, mutt, terminal emulators
Go to Applications > Utilities, right-click on Terminal.app and set 32-bit mode. Hope that helps!
mduvall··on With +1, Google Search Goes Truly Social — As Do Google Ads
Maybe ++ would be engineer-ish, but I think that "+1" gives a better connotation of contributing to a greater social whole rather than seeming like just another bookmarked page.
mduvall··on Build apps not businesses.
"I’ve gotten more job offers because of the stuff I’ve built than the schools I’ve attended."

I feel like this may be true for many in progress students at middle to high tier universities - however once you have a degree from MIT/Stanford/Caltech/Cal, the interest in candidates for full time jobs shifted from having miscellaneous side projects and contributions to FOSS projects to having a decent GPA and a degree. I feel that the writer of the article could try to discuss that the two are at least tantamount, the degree from a distinguished university is a display of four years of hard work, weekend side projects most of the time span the weekend.

mduvall··on Vagrant is a tool for building virtualized development environments.
This is neat, I wish there was a screencast or something of the sort up to recap the major points of this application. Does anybody know from experience how flexible it is for recreating an environment close to your own on any *nix based system?
mduvall··on Welcome
The idea is good, is the tagline 'social bookmarking for introverts' really motivating? It seems that at least in the 18-25 age range the word introvert has a stigma...
mduvall··on My crazy boss sold everything, bought a boat, and is sailing for an entire year
What about pirates and criminals at sea? (seriously.)
mduvall··on Ask HN: What advice messed up your life?
Everybody in college pretends to be not working hard as they like to admit, thus the advice that comes from colleagues along the lines of "don't do the homework, it's really a waste of time" when everybody is actually doing it, could screw you over. It didn't mess up my life per se, but definitely had an impact on my grades when I was a naive freshman.
mduvall··on Facebook Tries To Silence Lamebook: Removes Its Page, Blocks Links And Likes
That is the biggest problem. Orwell's Ministry of Truth seems to be reality...
mduvall··on Ask HN: How do you get started by yourself?
I currently attend Cal under the EECS department and have been doing research, it's been a mind-boggling experience for theory, application however has seemed quite dismal... :-\

It does help to stay productive though!

mduvall··on Ask HN: How do you get started by yourself?
This is pretty enlightening, thanks for this! This is monumentally better hearing it on here than from my professors...