polishninja

Usually you have to provide another piece of information like the first 5 letters of the last name or something. That's definitely not good that they show you a name by just putting in an account number.

Australia put a cap on interchange fees in 2017 that caused a drop in card rewards. Merchants argued that the lower interchange costs would be passed on to consumers. However, it appears to only significantly affected the consumer rewards.

It's interesting that the car was exceeding the speed limit of 35 mph. I would assume the car would stay at or below the speed limit. Who gets the speeding ticket in this case? Does 5 mph affect the reaction time such that it could have noticed and taken evasive action?

It doesn't help that almost all the fascia locks on each vendor's machines are a standard key. With that standard key, you have full access to the computer or embedded device drive.

Nowadays the communication link to the dispenser is encrypted, making swapping the hard drive useless. The real problem is the machines aren't replaced very often so there are quite a few old models out in the field that are susceptible to these sort of attacks.

I've been following the Ethereum/DAO situation since the drain of funds occurred. I currently do not own any cryptocurrencies so this has been my first real look at the communities surrounding Ethereum and Bitcoin. In laymen's terms I am under the impression that these crypto coins are to be treated the same as cash. If I hand someone $10,000 in USD and they disappear and/or spend the money without fulfilling their side of the contract, I'm out of luck. Sure, I could take them to court but if I can't find them (or I sent my crypto coins to another country) or they can't repay, my coins are still gone. I know there are different schemes to handle this situation, such as coin burn, escrow, etc. But, barring those methods, once a coin is spent it's forever spent, same as a crisp $100 I hand to some door to door salesman that never comes back.

After dipping my toe into the crypto currency world, learning about the DAO and Ethereum, there are a few things that bother me about this whole situation.

1.) Rolling back (voiding) transactions, which seems to go against the concept of cryptocurrencies in general.

2.) The conflict of interest between the DAO, slock it, and core Ethereum developers, and their hefty co-mingled investments in the DAO.

3.) The labeling of this person as a "thief" when they played by the rules set forth by the DAO contracts. Maybe not the spirit, but courts generally decide that. The code is the law and is final is my understanding. (I don't know how you code the spirit, by the way.)

4.) The non-inclusive "democratic" vote of the Ethereum community on the hard fork that appears questionable.

5.) The different rules for reversing a "theft" depending on whose funds where taken (see #1 and #2) or how much was involved.

6.) The centralized decision making on the fork by a small number of people who stand to lose substantial funds based on a poorly understood investment vehicle.

This whole situation occurred because of some poorly implement code and now there's a whole lot more code being deployed in a hurried manner. If there is another unnoticed, unintentional way to run code that is not within the spirit of a contract in the future and no core Ethereum or slock it funds are involved, will another hard fork occur? Will they legally be forced to do it? It seems as though the risk was contained to the DAO's funds and now, with the hastily rolled out fork, the whole Ethereum market is put at risk.

I've run into this issue multiple times as well.

It looks like Gigster will invest (money, time?) in some companies from a predetermined fund, not Gigster itself. In turn, they will share 1% of their fund equity with all Gigster developers who were active at the time, paying out when a fund company or Gigster liquidity event occurs. They will allocate rights to returns to active Gigster developers over a 1 to 5 year period.

It looks like, as a Gigster developer, you would get 1%/total active Gigster developers. If there were 500 Gigster developers over that 1 to 5 year period, you'd get 1%/500 = 0.002% of a liquidity event depending on Gigster's weighting mechanism. If Gigster's equity stake was 20% in a company that exited for $100 million, you'd receive maybe $40,000 depending on how Gigster determines your weighted percentage.

It's not really even the same league as a 401k or pension, contrary to what the page says.

Calling it equity is a bit confusing. On the page it states at the top:

"Gigster Fund provides our freelancers with access to equity from Gigster and select companies in our client portfolio."

At the bottom it states with regards to owning equity:

"No. Direct equity ownership or indirect ownership through a limited partnership has complex tax & legal implications, and the SEC limits the number of shareholders a corporation may have which would make direct ownership impossible after a certain number of freelancers".

And

"No. Direct equity ownership or indirect ownership through a limited partnership has complex tax and legal implications. In the United States, for example, Gigsters would be required by law to be accredited investors."

I thought that Neonto looked like a good prototype tool. Downloaded it and unfortunately, it's Mac only.

It looks like that box would be a death trap if there was a fire.

Here's her website, for anyone that's curious. http://cwpencils.com/

What CEO does this? What a strange place to work.

"Hence there are office conversations held on Twitter, and the blurring of personal and professional boundaries, such as when Mr. Altchek broadcast his dental examination on Periscope, a live streaming video app."

On the topic of tort reform, I'd suggest the documentary Hot Coffee. It obviously has a bias but it really made an impact on how I view these large settlements.

These huge sums are required to set an example and not just be a fine. If he only won $500,000, then then next time a similar situation arises it just becomes a math question. Can they can earn more than $500,000 by releasing and paying the "fine".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(film)

I recently bought a Windows 10 IoT kit from Adafruit. I've since purchased three more packs of different electronic components from them. It's been great. I'm really pleased with them.

There's an update to this story.

Bowdoin update: On Facebook, school flaunted photos of alumni, students in school-provided sombreros

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/03/04/bo...

Better software can only get you so far in banking. At the end of the day, they need to borrow and loan profitability and provide services at a low cost. In addition, they need customers, which are not easy to acquire for a new bank. Not having physical branches is definitely a cost saver; however, I’ve seen some surveys that indicate people still want access to some sort of physical branch.

According to their previous Techcrunch article [0], they are writing their own full-stack banking software. Writing your own banking core, external facing software, and internal process software is a massive undertaking, especially dealing with all the regulation and certification processes with third parties. You then become not only a bank but a specialized software development shop as well. Something traditionally only the big banks can afford. I’m not sure, given they are a bank and software business, that their cost base is 1% or 2% of a traditional bank, as stated in their article [0].

I hope they build something awesome but I think to do something of this size will take more than a few million.

Disclaimer: I write banking software.

[0] http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/30/mondo-gets-passionate/

I laughed out loud at this one after reading all the serious, in-depth posts above.

I think what they were referring to was the reverse; the banks implementing OAuth plus revocable permissions to third party apps, such as Mint, etc.

For what it's worth, all the JSBins with the react code don't work. I'm using Chrome. I keep getting Uncaught ReferenceError: ReactDOM is not defined.

I fiddled with it a bit but I couldn't get any of the examples working. <shrug>

Thank you for the insightful comment. Too often I have worked with developers that assume the original programmer was being difficult, didn't understand how to write proper code, or was inexperienced. They precede to rip out the code and re-write it "their" way.

When I come across code I don't understand I base my assumptions on the belief that the original programmer was smart, knew what they were doing, and had specific reasons writing the code as such.

They did have control over their currency and looked what happened. The big problem they face now is trust. If they came out with a new currency, no one would trust it enough to use it in everyday transactions. Regaining trust in the government and their currency will take quite some time.

I agree. Without a fiscal union, you just have a fixed exchange rate. Look at the Euro for example. Since Greece and Germany make separate fiscal policies but have the same exchange rate (due to the Euro), if their labor force output (GDP) doesn't match then the real cost of the Euro goes up in the lower output country (Greece). They lose the ability to adjust policies based on their current economic situation.

Each separate state in the US has a fixed exchange rate with each other (1 USD = 1 USD), but our fiscal policy is administered by a central authority that adjusts for overall US conditions, not just individual states.

It's great to see this type of event in Baghdad. Although a small event of 17 people, it looks like there were some big company names there or on conference call; Phizer, The State Department, Zain, etc.

I think these type of tech community events are important in building an open, collaborating tech environment. I hope they can continue to have these events and find more sponsors. It's a great way to introduce tech and programming to people who think it's too complicated to understand. Show them it is accessible, show them the resources available, and let them find the joy of building something.

Keep up the good work Ali and Marwan.

| The weak point of the centralized bank is with z: The person that manages the bank. He has full control over all the balances of all the participants.

Is this really a problem of a bank that needs solving by building a distributed banking system? Generally, in the banking systems of today there is a dual control system that makes it hard for a single person to have complete control.

I know this is a theoretical article but I've noticed quite a few ideas for "blockchain" banking and similar new systems recently. They are interesting in theory but I'm not sure they are solving the right problems. I'd be interested to see some technology that can be implemented at banks today, in the real world.

I am leaving for Paris tomorrow. Trip was planned a few months ago. We are still going but this alert is a bit concerning.

Don't forget to turn off the light on your way out.

lightsOn = !lightsOn || lightsOn

The Fed expands and contracts the money supply to keep inflation around 2%. They use it as a tool to smooth out financial expansions and contractions by affecting interest rates which affect the demand for money vs interest bearing holdings.

Currently, they expanded the money supply past demand to accommodate the 2008 crisis and now we are caught in a liquidity trap. If the Fed now wants to stimulate the economy by lowering the interest rate though expanding the money supply they can't, because the interest rate is at the lower bound of 0%. They need to now use less effective and unconventional methods to affect the economy.

PID Controller, if you don't know what one is. (I didn't) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller

I have to agree. It reminds me of the strange little shorts MTV used to have between commercials and shows.

Compared to the "smart" Samsung TV I bought, the Roku is great. It's fast and supports all the major formats.

The not so smart TV software is horrible. If I pause anything it basically crashes, and it takes 6 min from boot to wifi connection.

For Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Google Play it works great.

I've worked at a credit union for many years. The fees from overdraft charges probably come in second or third behind loan interest income. There are a few community banks / credit unions that don't charge a fee if your overdraft is less than $5 or if you bring the account current within 24 hours. I think this is a step in the right direction.

If you overdrafted at the credit union, we gave you a $500 limit and 30 days to pay it back. For $35 you could borrow $500 for a month. The problem is, people would pay the $500 back and the next day withdrawal it again. They would be caught in a cycle of this, very similar to payday loans, for months or years.

There we so many fee reversals at the credit union I was at the instituted a policy that said any fee reversal had to be approved by the CEO or VP of Retail operations. We were refunding millions of dollars in fees a year. That cut down on the reversals for sure but didn’t help the consumers.

I have an overdraft loan ($500) that just draws (transfers) funds to the checking if I go over. The only thing I pay for is the interest, which is a lot less than an overdraft fee. That's if you can qualify for a loan though, which can be tough if you don’t handle your finances properly.