Paypal Horror Story 40k Frozen No Answers - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Under U.S. federal law, PayPal is not a bank [1]. This is important. From the government's perspective, you give PayPal money and then PayPal gives you money. Between those events, it's not your money. PayPal has enormous discretion around what they can do with those funds, how and under what circumstances they get to decide to give it to you and if they get to keep it forever.

What state do you live in? Do you do business through an entity, _e.g._ an LLC? If so, where is it registered?

PayPal is, varyingly, registered as some form of a money transmitter in many states [2]. While your federal protections are probably limited to antifraud, protections you're probably outside of (PayPal has good lawyers--you agreed to surrender lots of privileges when you opened an account), there may be state regulations you can use to, if not force action, encourage it.

Going forward, I tend to consider any business using PayPal for mission critical processes as being negligent with important risks. If you can't avoid using PayPal for certain lines of business, set up a nightly sweep from PayPal to a proper bank account.

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/fdic-decides-paypals-no- bank/](http://www.zdnet.com/article/fdic-decides-paypals-no-bank/)

[2] [http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1153&cont...](http://law.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1153&context=expresso)

 _Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Only a lawyer can give you good legal advice. Don 't take legal advice from Internet comments._

<comment><USER3> "set up a nightly sweep from PayPal to a proper bank account"

That is by far the best advice one can get, and it's not hard to do.

<comment><USER4> This works, until they put 'temporary' holds on you. The holds seem reasonable at first (ID check, business verification, etc) - but can / will drag on for weeks / months.

All the while, the funds in your account add up - yet you can't touch them - and you have to deliver product to customers.

It can get very uncomfortable, very quickly. I thought I was safe with your advice, but still found myself recently with 6 figures held in a PP account.

<comment><USER5> I'll put it another way, if you are moving 6 figures of product, you can afford a less risky and... evil.. payment processor

<comment><USER6> Aren't they still by far the cheapest if your business relies on micro transactions?

I remember Marco Arment commenting on this.

<comment><USER7> Until they take all your money, at which point they become the most expensive.

<comment><USER8> What are the other processors that reasonably price micropaymens? PayPal has ¢5+5% micropaymens regime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update for anyone who cares...I tweeted this link and tagged Paypal, they reached out saying they are sorry to hear and submitted my case for a review. I replied via DM how can they review ny case without asking any new information or telling me what the issue is, got no reply back. Just got an email saying "Appeal Denied" Paypal account closed for security reasons.

Which security reasons I have absolutely no idea. There's no contact info on the email, just says it's a do not reply address.

<comment><USER9> Wow. What next?

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea, clearly they aren't paying attention to anything I say and just send automated replies. No one to talk to, nothing to do. I'm assuming complaints with different organizations to see if they can help.

<comment><USER10> I'd say keep the battle public. The more bad press they seem to have as it drags on, the more likely they'll do something about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Traditional customer service channels are increasingly broken since they are seen as a cost center to be reduced by many companies. In particular, if you are trying to cancel service or withdraw money it is even "worse" because not only do they have to pay the salary for the rep, they also lose money helping you.

If after one or two calls you don't get what you want, it is not worth retrying. I gave up after being placed in queue for an hour with Comcast. After finally getting ready to speak to a rep, I was informed by an automated message that they were closed for the day and to call back tomorrow.

Here is what I find works: 1) Least likely - Traditional customer support channel. Try once or twice at most. 2) More likely - Contact publicly on social media like Twitter (Comcast is actual great about this). 3) Most likely - Getting upvoted and written about here and elsewhere.

I would wait to engage with a lawyer as there is a good chance that someone from Paypal will popup in this thread. It is probably already surfacing in some internal emails at Paypal now. Good luck.

<comment><USER12> It is more than jusy cost. Many decisions seem like customer service but in fact are legal matters. Releasing funds isnt like reseting a password or reconnecting a telephone service. For those decisions that legally bind a company or that may violate various regs one often has to get management approval. Something as small as releasing a few hundred dollars, if that money is held due to a red flag, might even require board approval or at least be reportable to shareholders. It is silly that our laws dont have perspective, that a 100$ prize to the author of a story about syria is subject to the same rules as a 400k payment to a shadowy syrian bank operating out of a russian flat, but blame the people writing the laws.

Or, dont treat or trust paypal like they were a bank. The OP seems to be canadian. Canadian banks have a stellar rep. Trust them, not some US money- moving website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I make invoicing software that I sell using PayPal and it lets my users add a "Pay with PayPal" button to their invoices and over the years several of my clients have called me and related stories similar to this and they all had some common traits.

They all processed quite a bit of money via PayPal and they all had issues with customer's requesting refunds which they disputed or didn't issue in a timely manner, and they all sold something which had the potential to be a bit shady. One of them sold aircraft parts to Iran, which may have had some legal restrictions that applied. Another sold guns.

Since I sell access to web based software I don't have to ship anything and the product is "delivered" instantly. I also process refunds immediately and without any question.

PayPal most certainly doesn't like getting caught up in refund issues. In my case most of the customers who've requested a refund contacted me first and I issued it promptly with a "Thanks for trying my software" note attached.

The few that have contacted PayPal first resulted in PayPal sending me a notice about the request for a refund and, again, I issued it immediately, but their notice makes it clear that is what they expect and if I recall correctly they put a time limit on that.

Take from this what you want but what I've taken from it is when a customer requests a refund issue the refund as quickly as possible and try hard to make that as easy as possible for your customers and to minimize the potential for them asking for one.

<comment><USER13>
      Since I sell access to web based software I don't have to ship anything and the product is "delivered" instantly.

Since your "delivery" is not a discrete item and tracked by a common carrier they recognize (e.g. USPS, UPS, DHL, etc.), you also have _zero_ protection from chargebacks. They won't even investigate beyond just taking back your money plus a fee.

<comment><USER14> PayPal won't accept a charge back from a user until the user has contacted the merchant first. So user complaint? issue a refund.

<comment><USER13> Not true at all. If a chargeback is filed with the card issuer first, Paypal takes the money directly from your account immediately, pending "investigation". I've personally experienced this several times (I have well over 10,000 transactions with Paypal).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I very recently (as in this was resolved about 72 hrs ago) was in a a similar situation where I had $20k withheld by PayPal.

I would switch all of my business billing to stripe in a second if they had the ability to pay out to accounts in different currencies like I can do with PayPal.

Despite the fact that I run an Australian business I usually bill in USD but because I travel so much sometimes I'd like to have it in EUR or GBP etc for practical purposes. However with Stripe I am forced to convert it into AUD before I can do anything at all with it meaning I usually have to eat currency conversion fees twice before I can use it in a practical sense. Hence PayPal sadly....

<comment><USER16> We're pretty much in the same boat, except we picked Stripe anyway. We're eating the conversion fees, can't wait for when they can start paying out in different currencies, but at least we're not getting into any more PayPal horror stories. :-)

<comment><USER17> So this can't happen with Stripe? You are delusional.

<comment><USER16> Of course it can happen, but I've seen 0 Stripe horror stories, but many, many, many PayPal horror stories over the years. So far their track record is very good.

<comment><USER17> Compare the scale. Stripe horror stories will come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> IIRC this is not the first time this kind of bad behaviour has been reported about Paypal. I suppose you were aware of that. Did you consider Paypal's reputation when you chose to do business with them? Were there alternatives that you considered at the time and if so, why did you stick with Paypal?

<comment><AUTHOR> Paypal prides itself on being the safest payment solution online, they have easy integrations with Shopify. I don't breach their terms or perform any fraud so had no reason to suspect I'd be treated like a criminal and given inconsistency and lies by a multi billion dollar corporation I've paid thousands of dollars in fees too!

<comment><USER19> The fact that PayPal claims to be the safest payment solution is pretty irrelevant, especially if it's meant to be safest for the buyers and you're the seller. This is not the first story of PayPal freezing accounts with substantial amounts of money and not talking to the account owner.

Also, their ToS are pretty clear that they can do whatever they want, based on their beliefs, and there are no explicit limits how long they can keep your funds, or even obligations to talk to you. It might work differently in the EU, where they are registered as a bank (and so are regulated as a bank), but in US that's not the case IIRC.

The behavior is not all that unexpected - it's easier and cheaper to loose a customer receiving a lot of complaints than to inspect each of the complaints. So while I understand this is pretty damaging and dislike what PayPal does, I'm surprised that people are surprised.

<comment><USER20> Corporations still manage to maintain the illusion of decency and customer service. Their real behavior is surprising to a) people who were lucky and have never encountered it and b) people who suffer from some corporate equivalent of Gell-Mann amnesia.

I belong to the second category. Also, it becomes harder to avoid such companies at all, for example cell phone operators in Europe universally view their "customers" as billable addresses; some find it cheaper to settle billing disputes in court (and lose a great percentage of the cases) than to maintain a "customer" service.

With mobile the solution is to go prepaid.

<comment><USER21> _Corporations still manage to maintain the illusion of decency and customer service_

I'm baffled by this. Paypal does not. 28 days ago I wrote this comment on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624393). I'm sure that in the future I'll be reading another Paypal horror story from someone like you, who somehow thought, "It won't happen to me!"

<comment><USER22> Same here. Most people tend to downplay risks "because they're big", but there are alternatives and it's worth missing a few opportunities for a lower risk.

E.g., I don't go to USA conferences because of the TSA risk, people find it funny, yet I keep hearing horror story after horror story. For Paypal, though, people take the risk unknowingly because they aren't aware of Paypal's reputation, which is more understandable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 2% dispute rate?! That would get you shut down at every merchant account provider I've ever dealt with. In fact, it's usually 0.5% or 1% max. One major bank gave me 0.25% max. I've never seen an agreement that said 2% was ok.

That's a very serious fraud problem.

I've run an ecommerce store -- the chargeback rate was 0.1% (seriously, I calculated this from actual #s).

Nothing in this story (except maybe the customer service issues) would be out of the ordinary for any merchant account.

Edit: fixed chargeback rate

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure what kind of volume you were doing to get that chargeback rate. I was doing 500 sales a day, approximately $250k a month in volume when I was running, my dispute rate was high but chargebacks lost were minimal. Despite that, Paypal were aware of my dispute rate when they negotiated the terms of our agreement ($5000 set reserve + 10% rolling reserve) - they then woke up one day and closed my account without letting my appeal or negotiate or provide any information. I just get the run around...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand, this post has no link and no text body, just a recursive link to this discussion page. Where is the "horror story" mentioned in the title?

EDIT: Oh I see, the original post is buried down in the thread, because it has been posted as a comment. Perhaps the mods could fix this?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've processed successfully hundreds of thousands of dollars with my Paypal account over the pat 4-5 years. My account has been on review a few different times because of volume spikes (around the holiday season, I do ecommerce). When that happens, I usually reach out to Paypal and we discuss like humans, I explain where I'm coming from, they make suggestions and we get it settled. Around November 2016 Paypal reached out and told me due to the disputes coming in they need a $5000 set reserve + a 10% rolling reserve which will be released 90 days after a transaction. I accepted and since then Paypal has called me on 3 different occasions to check up on me and my efforts to reduce the dispute rate. We discussed and the calls seemed to go very well without them having any requests or EVER telling me my account is at risk of being limited and shut down due to disputes.

Towards the end of January I myself realized I tired of the disputes (seemed to be a quality issue with the product which got hundreds of 5 star reviews on my site but still disputes were coming in at around 2%) so I slowly stopped the business meaning I stopped advertising and the only sales coming in were trickling in organically. My volume went down from $200k a month to about $10k a month.

On Wednesday I log in to my Paypal account and it says it's limited they need more information.

They asked for Photo ID, bank statement, proof of address, supplier invoice, supplier contact info and proof of delivery for the last 5 transactions.

I provided everything but the proof of delivery for the last 5 transactions. From the resolution center whenever I clicked proof of delivery it brought me to a page with no transactions so of course I could not provide proof of delivery for transactions that don't exist.

I contacted Paypal letting them know I submitted everything but proof of delivery since there's a bug in their system, they said no worries i'll get an email requesting the transactions they need tracking for and I could just reply back.

I never got that email, but I did wake up Thursday morning with an Appeal Denied automated email saying my account is closed and the money will be frozen for 180 days. That's $20k CAD in my reserve + $15k USD in my available balance. Keep in mind in the past 30 days I processed less than $10k usd on Paypal in total.

I reached out to a supervisor at Paypal and told him what his happening simply doesn't make sense, i provided everything they needed except for what their system was unable to request/receive and that if they had any issue with what I provided they should tell me what it is and help me resolve instead of giving me the hammer for no reason. He said he couldn't help me but opened a ticket for both his supervisor and a supervisor from the limitation team to call me within 24 hours.

The limitation department supervisor never called me back but the business support manager called me back a few hours later. He called me from an unknown number in the evening, told me there's been a mistake, they added a second set of eyes to my account and they agree with me the limitation was unnecessary and wrongfully made. He said he just has a few questions and I will either get a restored access email in a couple hours or a call asking for more information in order to get it settled but he said there's a small chance of that happening, realistically the account will just be restored within a couple hours.

I never got an email or call again, so I called the following day. When I called the rep basically told me there's no evidence of a call and there are no notes on my account from that person/call and nothing was moved forward for a review.

I told him that is nonsense and to look harder. He eventually tells me there's evidence of a call but no notes, they tried to reach out to that supervisor and he wasn't available so there's nothing they could do for me, the decision is final.

I'm being treated like a fraud and a criminal when I'm a legitimate entrepreneur who's processed 10's of thousands of transactions successfully. I also paid them thousands of dollars in fees, never had a negative balance or anything of the sort that would put Paypal at risk.

Now whenever I call they are extremely rude telling me the account is closed they're holding the money and there's absolutely nothing I can do.

They have been rude, lying, inconsistent, unfair and have made 0 effort to resolve this amicably.

They have 0 logical reason to hold $40k of my money for 180 days, the only reason I can think of is they do this on 10's of thousands of accounts and gain big money off the interest.

When I log in to my account there's a notification saying they need more information from me. When I click on that notification it brings me to a page that says the account is limited because they need more information regarding my recent sales, they do not say what information or how to provide information. That is straight up illegal and a complete abuse of power.

I know there are thousands of Paypal horror stories but I genuinely feel abused. I have expenses, a family and so on and need that cash flow and no one at Paypal can be consistent for more than one phone call or help me resolve my issue, it's pathetic.

Just had to vent and hopefully this will give them some of the negative attention they deserve.

<comment><USER25> _"...so of course I could not provide proof of delivery for transactions that don't exist."_

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but isn't proof of delivery meant to be documentation from a shipping company? Why is the OP trying to get proof of delivery from Paypal?

Edit - I now understand the resolution center does have a problem where transactions are not listed, so the form cannot be submitted. Still, he could find the transactions himself and email paypal the required documents. I would do that before coming to HN about it!

Something doesn't sound right about this story. The whole mysterious phone call in the evening etc.

<comment><USER26> It shouldn't be a huge stretch to imagine a customer service department having lousy or non-existent documentation. They said there was no record of the call, they checked again, then magically there was a record. Do you think it's more likely he imagined it or even lied about?

<comment><USER25> You said it. "Magically there was a record of the call".

I don't buy it. This story shows signs of factual adjustment to make things look better for the OP. I'm happy to be in the minority on that position.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are free to not buy it my friend, but one day Paypal will give you the hammer and you will see just how believeable this is. In fact, there are countless threads online with the same story. You've never had a rep from a big company say something and you call the next day and they have no record of that? It happens at least 3 times a year with my cellphone company, you must be very lucky!

<comment><USER25> All good. If you'd used your original HN handle rather than making a new one for this issue, and mentioning who you were and what your business is, that may have gone further in validating your story (for me at least).

Took me 2 minutes to find your post on Twitter, and from there your old handle and submissions on HN and details of your business. Your story now has more credibility. I'm all for anonymous opinions and discussion, but when it comes to seeking support in complaints against another company, it's best to disclose who you are (in my opinion).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you're outside of the US, it gets even more interesting.

First, you need to be VERY careful about using VPN or letting remote team members access Paypal. One misstep with, say, Hong Kong account being accessed from Ukrainian IPs, and you're blocked for a security review which drags for days and weeks.

Second, they completely neglect any special international shipping methods' unique constraints. Sometimes when you ship from China, the tracking will only appear when the package reaches destination country. This is considered an outright fraud by Paypal, which promptly returns money to the client and you're left with a loss.

On top of that, they will impose 3% commission for currency conversion. Did you ever hear of a bank taking 3% to convert between your multi-currency accounts? Well, "Paypal is not a bank".

Add to the mix their robotic support with that condescending tone.

No. I wouldn't touch Paypal with a ten-foot pole.

<comment><USER28> they are luxembourgish bank in Europe actually

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> OK, so when I click this post, I go directly to HN's comments section. Where is the original story? Missing URL?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851124)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I worked with paypal almost 10 years. I can tell you this. Paypal is an evil company.

</comment><comment><USER31> I had this happen to me. I filed a complaint with the CFPB and within a week had my account unfrozen (i.e. still shut down but ability to transfer funds out)

</comment><comment><USER32> We use PayPal for a few scattered customers who have problems paying with a card and the occasional eBay sale, so I don't pay much attention to it. Whenever I see a PayPal horror story, I transfer all funds out of there to my bank. It's not the most effective sweep method, but it works depressingly well. I wonder what PayPal's cash balance would be if it had a reputation as being a safe place to keep a balance?

<comment><USER33> > but it works depressingly well

I dont think it "works" though. paypal can withdraw funds from your linked bank accounts too. I think you would need to create an LLC , open a bank acct under that LLC, then sweep funds out of that LLC account to be "safe".

<comment><USER34> Or just immediately pull your money out of the linked account to an unlinked account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If the OP were running an entirely legitimate business, they would have no issue revealing what product they are selling. They clearly do not want us to know what that product is. This is no doubt because we would have no sympathy for them if we knew.

That being the case, I'm calling bullshit.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL buddy where I come from you don't disclose an extremely profitable niche on a public forum online where the majority of the community is familiar with ecommerce and business online is general. I'm not saying what I sell because I don't need 10 more competitors. What I sell is 100% legit, it's been approved on Paypal, it sells by the thousands daily on both Amazon and Ebay.

<comment><USER35> This particular public forum also has a lot of people who know that a lot of "100% legit" digital-only crap sold on Amazon and eBay is anything but. Does that describe your product? Only grandma knows...

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a physicial product with proof of tracking shipped from the USA man. It's an accessory that retails in countless physical stores. You're just trying to find a way to delegitimize my story and that's fine but it would be nicer if you asked questions instead of just calling bullshit with no back up.

<comment><USER36> Can you give us an idea of what type of accessory it is? Or at least, what are the concerns you had about quality? Is this something you have commissioned a manufacturer to build? Is it a dodgy supplement with claims that aren't backed up by science?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> We quit using paypal 8 years ago for exactly this kind of treatment. Seems it has not changed.

<comment><USER38> Why would it? Obviously there are plenty of fools, who continue to do business with PayPal.

<comment><USER39> I sell on eBay, and if you don't accept PayPal very few people will buy from you.

<comment><USER40> I found as long as you could take a card, most people were good. Only some ebay addicts were tied to paypal. Ymmv.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wouldn't move large volumes through Paypal. PP is useful for small donations and shuttling small amounts around, but not for the amounts being discussed here, because the larger the amount, the more it _hurts you_ when things go awry.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm looking at using Paypal for my next business, and it scares me that there is no recourse whenever an issue arises. I need to receive payments and send payments to workers, mostly in Europe. I'm doing a marketplace for jobs kind of like Upwork. I'm based in the USA, so Paypal makes it possible. Are there any alternatives to Paypal? I've been talking with Payoneer, but they have not inspired much confidence. I had my paypal account frozen about 10 years ago for a bullshit reason, and I'd like to avoid using them again.

<comment><USER28> i am using this market places and PayPal requirement would be very off putting, why not just use wire transfer? wire fees sure are much lower than 5% PayPal robbery they are committing when i am receiving money, I would much rather take off wire fee from money i am suppose to receive than deal with PayPal

<comment><USER42> Wire transfer is definitely the way to go if transactions are only Europe to Europe or USA to USA. Unfortunately, I'm doing business in UAE, too, which creates huge problems. :/

<comment><USER28> I have zero problems to do wire even from US to Europe, heck I did even transfers from China to EU, but with help of Chinese national to circumvent their low forex limits (of course this is not solution for regular business, but neither is Paypal in China, only reasonable solkution without help of local is bitcoin, which I find risky for large sums)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It might sound bad, but usually, when I was doing volume, and I would travel to the different country, region, I would call PayPal central and let them know. While I am all about privacy, this always made them put some comment on my account that helped me pass all the bad things. "We need more documents" issue? Solved in hours. $20K spike of revenue in few days? Not a problem!

</comment><comment><USER28> yeah, lifting my limits work further verification was online ordeal for like 2 or more weeks since apparently my ID card with address and full name issued months ago is not good enough, my printed bank record from internet banking is not enough, in the end had to send them two other bank records from different bank to have my bank account back to regular

also don't get me started they steal 5% of my income and don't have live chat service to resolve issues and their FAQ is referring to website layout from years ago with most of the steps wrong

sadly still two of my vendors don't offer to me other payment solutions (well one does wire transfer but only for large amounts i can collect in months) so i still have to use this horrible service to not lose income

</comment><comment><USER44> One of my top-ten rules for staying sane on the Internet is 'Never leave _any_ money in your PayPal account.' Served me well so far - I had my account frozen but there was only $2 in the account. PayPal is horrible.

<comment><USER45> You are wise. I had money on my PayPal accont once. It was payment for a software feature I wrote for someone. Soon after I received the payment, they wrote an E-mail that it was a fraudulent transaction and froze my account. Of course I disputed it. Then my account dropped into negative balance: The payment was taken away and a fee was taken from me for disputing the claim. Of course, I refused to pay up my negative balance, despite their frequent reminders. After half a year or so (I was in negative balance for all that time), I got my money back, but they kept the fee for disputing the claim. PayPal - never again. Do not leave a dime on that account.

<comment><USER46> If you get any money on your paypal account without a bank account linked, you can't 'move' it.

So I just let Mrs BusError loose on a shopping spree immediately! that usually clears the balance in no time at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Apparently no details either. Where's the story?

<comment><USER48> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851124)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> As someone paying for products, I detest PayPal. I'm forced to do it rarely enough that I would pay 5-10% extra to avoid doing it. I realize I'm just one data point but perhaps there's a market here?

One case where it's especially frustrating is Etsy. There are many vendors on Etsy who refuse to accept any payment other than PayPal. (One can't use an Etsy gift card.)

Edit: add etsy note

<comment><USER50> I also avoid PayPal whenever possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Queen Victoria supposedly told her daughter on her wedding night, "Just lie back and think of England." Whenever I have to deal with PayPal, I think to myself "Just lie back and think of SpaceX." If Paypal helps Elon Musk take us to Mars, maybe it's worth putting up with at least occasionally. (You can think of Tesla if you prefer.)

</comment><comment><USER52> this has been going on as long as paypal has been around. i never allow anyone to send more then a $1k to my paypal, everything larger than that gets check or wire. First time i got a $5k wire, they locked me out and held my monies for 90 days.... doesnt really help a growing business to have money locked. this was in 2002.

</comment><comment><USER53> One of the most valuable lessons I've learned from HN was to autosweep my PayPal account. I am thankful that I was fortunate enough to learn this lesson before starting my company and running tens of millions through PayPal. I can't say for sure that I would still be in business if I hadn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a CAD Paypal account - but I charge customers in USD. To withdraw money I have to pay Paypal's exchange rate, they won't let me attach a Canadian USD bank account. That means I have to pay exchange rate to take money out, then pay exchange rate again to convert the money to USD to pay my supplier and Facebook Ads in USD. It makes much more sense keeping my money in Paypal, that they are a fraud of a company is a different story.

<comment><USER54> Have you thought of setting up a USD account with a US Bank? Canadians can do that without a problem at most branches near a border, and I expect it could be done remotely. Another alternative is to set up an account with RBC(USA) [https://www.rbcbank.com/banking-in-the-us/checking- accounts/...](https://www.rbcbank.com/banking-in-the-us/checking- accounts/index.page).

<comment><USER55> That would probably raise a flag to the IRS. I suspect the purpose for using Paypal, and a contributing factor for the freeze, could be tax issues

<comment><USER54> I think people use Paypal because it's easy to use in general, not because it makes tax evasion easier (I suspect it's a pretty dumb choice for that :) ). Taxes need to be paid regardless of how the money get brought into the country, and Canada and the US have a pretty well understood tax treaty.

When I opened up my account at the BOA, it seemed to be a very well used and smooth process - they mentioned that the number of Canadians holding accounts at that branch (close to the border) was a significant percentage of their total. I really doubt it raises any red flags on it's own - there are a lot of legitimate legal reasons for the arrangement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> [https://www.paysap.co.ke/](https://www.paysap.co.ke/)

<comment><USER57> Does this really work as a marketing strategy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Yeah... pretty much the exact reason I don't leave any significant amount of money in PayPal at one time.

</comment><comment><USER59> Where is the story? This post doesn't link to any article or anything.

<comment><USER60> I was also wondering. The OP put it in a comment which is quite far down the page currently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851124)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> You stopped advertising and still had passive income of 10k monthly ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, when I was advertising I was doing close to $300k a month - I advertised on FB, there are still thousands of people who have my shared ad on the top of their newsfeed to this day. On top of that, I rank #1 on Google for my main keyword..

<comment><USER62> are you on IndieHackers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, not sure what that is even.

<comment><USER62> [https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com)

"Learn from profitable businesses and side projects."

People like you get interviewed to inspire those who want to do side project or start a business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I deleted my Paypal business account, never going back.

</comment><comment><USER64> How surprising, I've never heard of this happening before

(this is sarcasm, for people who actually never heard of this happening before)

</comment><comment><USER65> This is a case of KYC. Paypal wants to get to know you. Just talk to them. This looks scary to people who dont deal with banks and entities that act like banks, but paypal is doing this because they need to protect themselves from aiding people in money laundering, which is a pretty big deal.

If you explain to them what youre doing and come up with some proof, they will release your money. They do not want to steal it. Almost all these cases revolve around someone not communicating with paypal and then acting surprised when they freeze funds.

Any bank would do that. If my bank is hit wit ha 100k transfer and I don't say a word about it and then appear at the local branch and demand to cash it all out without an explanation of whats going on, they will refuse that, as well. And probably call the cops just to cover their asses. Seriously. Talk to them.</comment>


Fast stereo rendering - <AUTHOR> http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/stereo/stereo.htm <comment><USER2> This makes a lot of sense in OpenGL (with a Geometry Shader) but in something like Metal I'm not sure you would get a lot of efficiency gains due to the way the command encoder manages state where each encoder would be a separate target with set of render states. With Vulkan you can actually re-use command buffers so theoretically you could get even better performance.

As far as the additional memory cost; the 2x memory on a PS4 may seem trivial but it certainly is not on a mobile device trying to do VR.

Great article, though. Inigo is truly a genius (his articles on tracing equations is a regular reference whenever I do any analytic gpu stuff).

<comment><USER3> Link to the article on tracing equations?

<comment><USER2> Great one: [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfun...](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm)

Just go to his articles section and you'll see a bunch more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice write up. Both Unreal Engine ([http://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Support/Builds/Relea...](http://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Support/Builds/ReleaseNotes/2016/4_11/index.html#new:vrinstancedstereorendering)) and Unity3D have added support for this recently.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is quite logical and I've been wondering--isn't this at odds with (future) dual SLI one-eye-per-card techniques?

Would it make sense for dual SLI VR setups to go back to the old "card 1 renders the top half of the screen and card 2 goes bottom"? Then you wouldn't need 2x sized framebuffers.</comment>


Does removing "override" on noprocrast increase HN's market share? - <AUTHOR> http://nielsolson.us/Haversian/2009/02/how_pg_reduced_readership_clos.php

<comment><USER2> Is this modded up to #1 so we can all feel good about ourselves? "Everyone on HN is so interesting I just can't get enough!!11"? Puh-lease.

Anyway, I used to be really bad about reading social news sites. The good news is that programming Reddit eventually scared me away because people are so willfully ignorant, and don't want to hear anything they don't already like. Think religious fundamentalists, but even worse.

This has given me a lot of free time. Now when I feel like reading Reddit, I instead open up my TODO list (a plain text file), and pick one thing to do. While I'm there, I also add two more things. I'm not missing anything on Reddit (if there's something really cool, it will be here), and I'm getting real work done instead of wasting my life. (And not getting mad at 13 year old kids that think they're programmers.)

Noprocrast _is_ nice, but it's even better if you convince yourself to not even want to waste time.

</comment><comment><USER3> In short: "I used to open up another browser to bypass my Firefox anti- procrastination software, Leechblock, so that I could override noprocrast and read HN. This usually led to me reading other, less interesting sites like Reddit. Now that I can't override noprocrast, I decided to use it exclusively and removed HN from my Leechblock blocked list. Now I don't end up reading Reddit afterwards. Thanks!"

Moderately interesting, but the linkbait title was unnecessary.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I think this post proves that people are voting up stories before reading them.. not that that's a big surprise, but it's more associated with Digg and Reddit :(

<comment><USER5> I usually upvote stories to save them or mark them to-read. I don't vote up to thank or agree, though I still do it, subconciously. I reply with a thanks instead. I'm probably starting to rely on other users to do the voting now than it's not 100 users any more, so I guess am using this site selfishly. Also, after 2 years here, I don't care about karma and post whatever I feel (that relates to the topic.). I used to spend the entire hour editing a post, but now I just come to read. Then again, I have to do homework and readings for 7 CS/Math classes this semester, so I am not here so much to say something about some random science topic. On the other hand, this site is great for opening up my mind and feeling like I'm part of a bigger and insightful nerd world. There are more submissions but much less startup advice that I haven't heard before, compared to when this was Startup News. On the other hand l, it is that breadth that I like while I'm in college. Any such stories with a high score, interesting title, or high number of comments I make sure to save to read later by upvoting (see /saved?id= feature). (I didn't save or upvote this article because it's neither science nor start up.)

<comment><USER6> Hey, you started 12 days after me. Anyway, same sort of thing here. Been around for two years now, and I use to participate more. That's when I was sorta at a phase where I was just consuming a lot of information that was new to me. Now, not a lot is real news, so I'm starting to build more.

Nowadays, it's nice to see when you, mechanical_fish, Tichy, chaostheory, and others that have been around for a while comment. And the occasional comments from raganwald, buccheit, etc.

I still think that the front page shouldn't have upvote links, and that the new page should have them only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So you don't have the self discipline to just not waste a bunch of time here, but you do have the discipline to not just find a workaround for the noprocrast feature that you yourself set? Might I recommend the services of a good therapist?

<comment><USER8> It's a subconscious thing. For me, anyway. When I'm stuck on a hard problem, my default behaviour used to be to alt-tab to my browser and see what's new on HN. Now when I do that I'm blocked by noprocrast. Usually, this is enough to get me back to the problem.

It's actually broken my procrastination habit enough that I can leave noprocrast off most of the time and not have to worry about procrastinating. Sort of like training-wheels for self-discipline.

<comment><USER9> I have the same problem as you, but haven't tried the noprocrast feature. Maybe I'll give it a shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The amount of kiss-assery in this post is disgusting. No offense, pg. _smooch_ _smooch_ _smooch_

</comment><comment><USER11> The logic there seems faulty. Basically, "I can't read Hacker News as much so now I don't waste time reading alternatives." So before when you couldn't access HN you turned to Reddit, but now you do work/other productive activities...seems like a stretch to attribute this change in behavior to an HN tweak. Also seems like this behavior will not last.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does Paul Buchheit have a secret HN alias I don't know about? Whoah, is Paul Buchheit nickb?!

<comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure he is <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=paul>.

The account is one of the oldest. Hard to be a fake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i was utterly confused the first time i read this.</comment>


Ask HN: Any startups applying for YC funding using the Google App Engine? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen a lot of startups using Rails, but are there any out there that apply for YC funding that are using something more enterprise focused for their application? If you've considered using the GAE and choose something else, what was the deciding factor? <comment><USER2> Rails is a framework. The equivalent on AppEngine would be django (Python) or J2EE (Java).

So, no. Don't make you framework decision based on what your platform provider has to offer. Do it the other way. Make a decision on your framework, then choose a provider.

If the question is provider vs. own hosting? There is nothing wrong with using a paas-provider for a startup. Make sure there is no lock-in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, I was considering using GWT over the AppEngine. It provides a lot of supported functionality (such as fast Image serving, OAuth & OpenID, BLOBStore, Memcache) that seem a bit of a pain to integrate with ROR. Those features in conjunction with the free quota limitations (for approximately 5 million page views per month) make it seem like an ideal low investment platform that can scale one demand. I'm just wondering if anyone chose ROR/Django over GAE and what their reasoning might be.

<comment><USER3> Well RoR has got good libraries for image manipulation, OAuth (note that AppEngine _doesn't_ have OAuth built in), OpenID and Memcache.

Blobstore really only exists to work around the lack of file access in AppEngine.

The pricing is something of an advantage, but don't choose it on that alone. If you know Java (or Python) already then it's worth using, but it's probably not going to give you enough of an advantage to switch platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm considering it (applying, not using AppEngine. If I apply I'll use AppEngine for some parts of it).

I do Java AppEngine work in my day job, so if you have questions let me know.

(When you say "enterprise focused" do you mean your application is enterprise focused, or do you mean GAE/J is? Because there are some issues with using GAE for enterprise software and it's important you have considered them)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate? I'd be curious to know what limitations you've experienced that work against GAE for enterprise deployments.

<comment><USER3> (To be clear, I'm not using AppEngine for enterprise software. But I've done lots of enterprise software in the past, and I'm doing AppEngine now)

The main problems are as follows: 1) Data privacy. _Usually_ this is just people worrying unnecessarily, but sometimes there are legal requirements about where customer data is stored. These may be jurisdictional or geographic requirements.

2) Integration issues. Enterprise software is all about integration. The AppEngine integration story is getting better, but you'll need to understand the SAML based single-sign-on support that is built into Google Accounts and/or implement it yourself, and you'll need to become familiar with Secure Data Connector (<http://code.google.com/securedataconnector/>) to integrate with private data sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. I'm pretty sure I won't need SAML for my application, but the Secure Data Connector is definitely something that I will be looking into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We'll be applying with a project that uses Google App Engine, built with Java. We had originally started with PHP, and had considered Rails, but we found that we were much more comfortable using Java for our product, which retrieves and works with very large sets of data.

</comment><comment><USER5> i know simplenote a recent graduate spoke how they used it to scale.</comment>


Ask HN: What are the biggest time wasting activities in your work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Reading Hacker News :-) seriously !

<comment><USER3> I've been training my bot to read it so I don't have to.</comment></comment>


The Bizarre History of Buca Di Beppo, America's Most Postmodern Red Sauce Chain - <AUTHOR> https://www.bonappetit.com/story/bizarre-history-buca-di-beppo <comment><USER2> Weird name that translates to Beppo Hole in English despite their claim to "My buddy's basement" in the article.

[https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=it&t...](https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=it&tl=en&text=buca%20di%20beppo)</comment>


Apple Cancels Danish Data Center - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/apple-data-center-cancelled-denmark/ <comment><AUTHOR> They have now pulled out of the site in Aabenraa, while their other site in Viborg has apparently been dormant for a couple of months.</comment>


Coinbase Ventures - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coinbase.com/introducing-coinbase-ventures-c67865a1d2fe <comment><USER2> It is impressive that Coinbase took VC money as recently as 8 months ago according to Crunchbase and they are now funding other companies. Although I am not sure I would love that if I was an investor in Coinbase.

<comment><USER3> They also did over $1B in revenue last year

<comment><USER4> Actual revenue, or just market trading volume? If the latter, $1bn sounds like a lot but actually isn't really.

<comment><USER5> I believe it's actual revenue

<comment><USER6> Might still not be that much, if earnings through exchange rate gains were also part of their revenue. btc made what? Over 1000% in that year? If they pooled earlier in the year that are huge gains. If it's only from their 1.5% cut, it is really impressive.

<comment><USER7> Exchanges are literally printing money. I think nearly a million Ether a day was traded on Gdax at the top.

At $1,400 you're talking $1.4bn a day in trading volume, on (at least) half of which they take a 0.3% fee. That's $2.1m a day, just from ETH. Then there's Bitcoin and Litecoin. Bitcoin probably makes a similar amount. And their "simplified" website on which they charge higher fees.

<comment><USER8> They would be fractional if they were literally printing money.

<comment><USER9> Right, it's Tether which is doing that, not Coinbase!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, I have been living under a rock recently: did somebody already discovered an use case for block chain other than money laundering?

<comment><USER11> Yes, I can send money to my buddy in the US for a few cents and I don't care about Western Union opening hours or ELIXIR bank session times or whatever really. It's just me, my buddy, and the money. Takes only a few minutes, I can do it whenever I like. Even sundays. And nobody even knows. It's beautiful.

<comment><USER12> And your buddy has to pay income tax on that transaction. And IRS will know later, when his chosen exchange will decide to share their records with them (and they do this).

<comment><USER13> LOL just like everybody pays all their taxes on gifts right? Do you know how Monero works? Monero is completely private and there's too many exchanges for the government to audit them all, and besides that the laws are bound to change in the near future as crypto-currency becomes more viable. Stop being so cynical, it's a poor long-term life strategy.

<comment><USER14> So besides money laundering, the other use case for the blockchain is tax fraud?

<comment><USER13> what I'm saying is that anybody who gives somebody five dollars is technically supposed to pay taxes on that, but when's the last time you did that? "Tax fraud" is rampant if you're going strictly by the book, it's not just limited to crypto-currencies. (But the fact that you attempted to make that point isn't surprising considering Hacker News in general seems to be very cynical towards crypto-currency)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > You may also see us invest in companies that ostensibly look competitive > with Coinbase. There may be nuance to the way these startups are building > out their products. Or, in some cases, we may be comfortable investing in > companies that are potentially competitive, because it's in everyone's > interest to see the ecosystem innovate. We're taking a long term view of the > space, and we believe that multiple approaches are healthy and good.

In other words, everyone else in SV has conflicts of interest when it comes to funding startups from corporate entities (GV, SalesForce Ventures, angels who work at big corps, etc) and we're just gonna come out and be somewhat explicit about it...and well hey it's crypto, so there's no rules anyway!

</comment><comment> aaron-lebo Is stuff like this still an issue?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261136](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16261136)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16106793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16106793)

Seems wrong to invest in companies and not serve your own customers first. That should be the absolute priority. You're basically investing their money.

Many unhappy customers:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/)

Why don't you "create customer value" by doing right by your customers?

<comment><USER16> Coinbase employee here

We've significantly scaled our support organization over the last few months. Most customers are getting a first response in a few hours now.

<comment><USER17> Bragging about first response metrics is a little disingenuous when most of those are automated replies. To answer the question, support is still a disaster and why I left Coinbase last month.

<comment><USER18> Yes, the 95th %-ile of time-to-resolution would be a far better metric, although you would need to correct for the fact that open unresolved cases are right-censored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like this company as a customer and admire them as an entrepreneur. They are smartly run.

But, it does bug me a bit that "traditional money" is once again co-opting and effectively centralizing what was supposed to be a democratizing, de- centralized paradigm shift.

<comment><USER20> Primates gonna prime. In many ways, Bitcoin was a technological solution to a social problem. But the primate dominance dynamic is, like most things that predate humanity, pretty baked in. It's hard enough to fight that when you're explicitly working against it, as with the origin of the various western democracies. Doing it as a technological bank shot is even trickier.

<comment><USER19> > _Doing it as a technological bank shot is even trickier_

OTOH, if ever you're going to end-run the money-changers, it'd be by supplanting their money with something that can't be controlled/centralized.

<comment><USER20> Alas, I don't think they are end-runnable. Their whole business is end-running whatever system exists so as to maximize their own profits. And they're very good at it; their rake has quadrupled since WW II: [https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/12/10/number-of-the- wee...](https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/12/10/number-of-the-week- finances-share-of-economy-continues-to-grow/)

<comment><USER19> No doubt it's tough, but I tend to think anything human-made can be changed/un-made by humans.

<comment><USER20> Oh, agreed. I definitely think we should keep financiers and rentiers on a much tighter leash. I just think we have to do it explicitly and politically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Hopefully they invest heavily into making blockchain technology green and energy efficient because without doing so, you can't "help billions of people".

<comment><USER22> Right now PoW blockchain doesn't require energy consumption to scale with # of tx or even total value tx, but rather with value tx * time spent waiting for confirmations * probability of double spend attempt.

Unless we start seeing cartels that would aggregate tx that they'd like to see double spend having a long tail of users and tx means that the likelyhood that you'll be targeted for a double spend attack decreases.

All that to say that you don't necessarily need to increase the electricity spend to extend the same security to more people.

<comment><USER21> How many blockchains aren't using proof of work? There are large mining operations everywhere for various cryptocurrencies (the largest most popular ones!) taking large amounts of power and greatly contributing to climate change.

The graphics card shortages proves my point here.

<comment><USER23> > The graphics card shortages proves my point here.

Oh man, do you think if the popular coins start moving to proof of stake, used graphics cards will flood onto eBay and the like and we'll get to snap them up cheap for some machine learning?

<comment><USER24> You probably don't want to use graphics cards that have been abused mining cryptocurrencies in generally poor thermal conditions.

Floating point math errors similar to the recent Titan V issues could potentially mess with your machine learning.

Regardless, if it has been mining for some time, the lifetime of the card is greatly shortened, if the operator did not take precautions such as running undervoltage and designing a good thermal solution. Most people will not have done these things!

<comment><USER25> Do you have proof that mining reduces card life outside of mechanical fan failure?

Anecdotally, I've been running 12 RX480's to mine ethereum since AMD launched the cards some year(s) ago. They're still just as fast as the day I got them. What in your opinion would make the cards fail at this point?

If anything im inclined to argue that reduced thermal cycling will result in these GPU's lasting longer than cards that get torched to 100% to game for an hour every day and then sit at idle the other 23 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> not answered in article: where does one apply?

<comment><USER27> don't call them; they'll call you

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> why in the world did they link to that Vitalik tweet that implied crypto was in a massive bubble?

<comment><USER28> Vitalik's tweet was a call to direct effort to more important projects (quoting Vitalik directly):

\- So total cryptocoin market cap just hit $0.5T today. But have we _earned_ it?

\- How many unbanked people have we banked?

\- How much censorship-resistant commerce for the common people have we enabled?

\- How many dapps have we created that have substantial usage? Low added value _per user_ for using a blockchain is fine, but then you have to make up for it in volume.

\- How much value is stored in smart contracts that actually do anything interesting

\- How many Venezuelans have actually been protected by us from hyperinflation?

\- How much actual usage of micropayment channels is there actually in reality?

\- The answer to all of these questions is definitely not zero, and in some cases it's quite significant. But not enough to say it's $0.5T levels of significant. Not enough.

<comment><USER29> Market cap is misleading. Example, this week. The market cap of one first 100 coins, as seen at coinmarketcap, grew with $3M because of a trade of $2000.

The reason is simple. Say 1 coin is valued yesterday at $1, there are 300M coins, so the market cap is $300M. The total coin trade today was such that one instance when somebody bought at $3/coin, for $2000, makes the coin price today to be $1.01 and $0.01 X 300M coins = $3M so called growth in market cap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this officially up and running, or just an announcement? Would love to talk to someone at CV about what we're working on.

</comment><comment><USER31> All because of crypto-boom. Flip can come anytime just take care.

</comment><comment><USER32> You can't make this stuff up.

</comment><comment><USER33> Coinbase still didn't implement transaction batching. Whenever Bitcoin's price drops for a few months the company forgets that its system needs to be solid and scale 10x for the next bull run. They should be already be preparing for Schnorr signatures support (not a year after it's in production). There's a lot of things they could do to solidify their business instead of spraying money around.

<comment><USER34> This is the fault of the bitcoin project, not coinbase. Bitcoin transactions should just work without the end user not having to worry about what's under the hood. Why the bitcoin client cannot just use segwit / schnorr automatically? Why it doesn't provide a simple API for batching? All that stuff is up to the end user to develop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hope they keep some for lawyers...

<comment><USER36> This is one of Coinbase core assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Coinbase wants in on the ICO action. This is exactly what this vehicle is for.

</comment><comment><USER38> Armstrong is pretty anti-bitcoin and anti core and pro Ethereum and bitcoin cash.

Most likely they will invest in alt coins companies.

<comment><USER39> source(s)?

<comment><USER38> Follow him on Twitter, it's pretty obvious by looking at the things he likes on there. Just today he liked some non sense that Roger Ver posted. Coinbase also wanted bigger blocks.

In an interview with bloomberg ([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-12-07/coinbase- ce...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-12-07/coinbase-ceo-on- crypto-surge-bitcoin-futures-irs-video)), he didn't say that he thinks Eth is better but it's obvious that they are more bullish towards Eth. They have also built Toshi, a Dapp store for Eth.

Coinbase has become a giant on the back of the work of Bitcoin Core developers and will continue to do so however, they have given NOTHING back to Bitcoin Core. Not a single BIP, they don't sponsor any core developers and they are not helping at all with Lightening Network.

It's very easy for them to sit back and complain about the state of Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is an open source project and they have the money to invest some money into Bitcoin core to improve it. But they rather prefer to pump shit coins and engage in insider trading. In my opinion Armstrong doesn't care about Bitcoin, they are short sighted and don't believe in the long term vision of Bitcoin.

<comment><USER40> The Bitcoin community in general is very toxic and unsavory. That's probably why they aren't funding them.

<comment><USER7> If you compare core to the Ethereum community then it really is a world of difference. They both have their problems, but from a development point of view, one tends to be open and embracing of changes, and the other one is often hostile and inflexible.

<comment><USER38> Short sighted. How will Eth survive without Vitalik? Bitcoin has already passed that test.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


After fifteen years of downtime, the MetaFilter gopher server is back - <AUTHOR> http://metatalk.metafilter.com/24019/Direct-your-gopher-client-to-gopher-gophermetafiltercom?utm_content=bufferaa556&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> I'd love to go back to the days where I didn't have to endure the 20+ external scripts (mostly ads, analytics, social and "optimization") that some crappy dev has crammed into their markup, just to read an article or browse a store.

Maybe we need a content oriented alternative to the web browser.

Maybe a modern Gopher.

Display preferences are handled by the client. Sure, support video and audio. Support tables. But keep it minimal. Put all the scripting on the server side, as it should be. Lock down the specification - do everything to stop it becoming web browser 2.0.

Then we wouldn't need junk like AMP.

Maybe it would take off well in some nice to start with.

<comment><USER3> Core problem is that creators of value want to be paid for it. The delivery medium doesn't change that.

<comment><USER4> Much value is created by people who don't want to be bothered with payment because they are motivated by the social capital accruing from contribution to a community. Trying to pay for such gifts actually drives these contributors away, by devaluing their efforts - as though they were only doing it for the money. There is labor you literally cannot buy.

<comment><USER5> That class of people is not as large as you might think it is.

<comment><USER4> There's a strong selection bias, of course, given that I have structured my social life around communities of people who value community. Still, my impression is that it's less about wanting to be paid for creative work and more about _needing_ to be paid for it, else they can't afford the time to do it. If we had a basic income system, I suspect you'd see a lot more work done for community benefit, without the overhead and distraction of payment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd really love (and have toyed around with) a modern reimagining of Gopher, targeted toward mobile devices and maybe e-readers, and with a focus on accessibility. Just the content, please, and as quick as you can get it on my screen. I'll pick the styling options that make it easiest for me to read.

<comment><USER7> That sentiment brings me back to the old days of unix geeks writing structural html with no concern for appearance.

The separation of structure and formatting is not practical for serious media of any kind. You can't separate form and content. Nor would most people want to, because (visual and other) complexity is an inevitable and rewarding part of human experience...

<comment><USER6> Instapaper? Reader View? RSS readers? Ebooks? Separation of form from content is both practical and commonplace.

Your blog post may be beautifully styled, but that makes no difference if I can't even load it, or the fonts are so thin I have to squint to try to read, or the glaring white background makes me see floaters. A blind person doesn't care about the whizz-bang of $framework if your JS-only site breaks their screen reader.

<comment><USER8> Likewise I read all Hacker News links and comments over an iPhone HN app. Absolutely don't miss the form at all except in the cases where the source HTML is not semantic and so the reader mucks it up. But that's an issue with structure relying on form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It works :-)

[http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?a=gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher...](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?a=gopher%3A%2F%2Fgopher.metafilter.com)

A post from Cameron Kaiser explaining some features of gopher:

[http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html](http://gopher.floodgap.com/overbite/relevance.html)

Something lightweight like gopher and markdown is enough for a lot of people.

<comment><USER10> From the relevance link:

"by divorcing interface from information, Gopher sites stand and shine on the strength of their content and not the glitz of their bling."

Forcing content creators to focus on the strength of their content is pretty much a non-starter for most modern commercial enterprises. Which is why it's amazingly useful, but likely futile.

<comment><USER11> The departure of the modern web from text that has links -> full heterogeneous application suites that run in an elaborate VM has been wonderful for users of desktop applications, in that they no longer need to maintain several stacks of software, but just their browser.

However - those who enjoyed text + links were left behind. I really just wanted text with some links. Thinking about setting up my own websites as a gopher site, just don't know the best ways to proxy it back to HTTP best.

I think pocket, instapaper, readability etc were all essentially peeks into a style of web we could have had where content presentation was something a user has decent control over.

<comment><USER12> There's Lynx--the text web-browser. [1]

Someone wrote up their experience using Lynx on the web around 2012. [2] Conclusion: "Not all the sites are usable with Lynx, but many of them offer at least basic functionality using the text-only web browser."

As long as there's HTML output, a more humane web browser could allow better customization of the information; it could infer the usual human organizational methods; lists, metrics, groupings, buttons, etc, and present it with your favorite background color, font size, line-length, image size, videos, etc, based on the hierarchical structure. The other camp is web apps, which is a different use case.

[1] [http://lynx.invisible-island.net/](http://lynx.invisible-island.net/)

[2] [http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/06/25/using-web-browser- lynx-v...](http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/06/25/using-web-browser-lynx-visit- top-websites/)

<comment><USER13> IMO, elinks[1] does a much better job of rendering web content in a terminal. Google actually looks pretty good, and gmail is not too bad either.

[1] [http://elinks.or.cz/](http://elinks.or.cz/)

<comment><USER14> Has elinks development stopped? I vastly preferred it to lynx, but it seems unmaintained now.

<comment><USER13> Looks like there's limited activity still ongoing.

[http://repo.or.cz/w/elinks.git](http://repo.or.cz/w/elinks.git)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, I was just thinking about a return to gopher, in the past couple of years. Guess I wasn't the only one.

I've also been thinking about NNTP. Usenet never went away, entirely, but maybe it will be having a little renaissance, as well. Old-school distributed, independent networking. And again, where content rules over graphic design.

P.S. That second part is NOT a poke at MetaFilter, which I rather like -- although, I guess I've been away from it for a while, now.

But, I'm interested in communities that are orthogonal to any one particular platform, or perhaps I should say, host. Among other things.

<comment><USER16> _Usenet never went away, entirely, but maybe it will be having a little renaissance, as well._

It sorta came back as Reddit. I was a huge Usenet junkie from the first time I saw it, but it eventually turned into 99% binaries and junk. All the interesting discussions in the areas I was involved in went to sites like HN, Metafilter, Reddit, Web-based forums, etc.

<comment><USER17> And IRC came back as Slack.

It seems like we are going through a period where everything that used to be its own protocol is now recreated using HTTP and JSON.

Hell, it may well be that the web browser has become the new X server.

<comment><USER18> IRC is still heavily in use in open source development and gaming circles. You can even use it to implement things like Twitch.tv chat. The great thing with open protocols is that everyone can write clients and servers for them.

I've never used Slack but their front page alone is enough for me to turn away. The first two words I see is "Product" and "Pricing". Nothing on the page hints to an open protocol so I guess it is proprietary.

<comment><USER19> I've never used Slack, so I have no idea why people would use it instead of IRC, but they do have IRC and XMPP gateways available: [https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/201727913-Connectin...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en- us/articles/201727913-Connecting-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A Seattle Council candidate was running a gopher site last year. It is _incredible_. It feels like the road that should have been evolved upon, rather than HTML.

Ah well. I should turn my own site into gopher!

<comment><USER21> That might have been my bad :-) I'm still paying Digital Ocean $5/mo for its hosting AND REGRET NOTHING. Alon was a really great sport for letting me put it up. We even put an Easter egg up where anyone who read the open invitation on the gopher site would be treated to free drinks at a post Reddit AMA party. Sadly, we had few takers. Oh well, we and some nerdy friends poured a few out.

I really hope Alon will run again at some point so I can jump back into action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm a volunteer for The MADE, and as part of our preservation efforts, we maintain a (simplistic) gopher server (thanks to pyGopher). It's pretty neat bringing a computer old enough to drive back to life, getting an IP address, and downloading our logo via gopher.

http interface: [http://themade.org:70/](http://themade.org:70/) (there's a proper gopher server as well, of course)

Gopherspace ain't dead!

</comment><comment><USER23> Gopher was the coolest thing on the internet when I first came online with the advice of _The Whole Internet Catalog_ [1]. Eventually, I found Project Gutenberg and gopher became the second coolest thing.

[1]: a printed book!

<comment><USER24> I have my copy of the Whole Internet Catalog here with me at all times. You never know when you may want to reminisce about The Well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc1436](https://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc1436)

They may not quite suit the modern world very well, but I like protocols that I can use via telnet/nc

       nc gopher.metafilter.com 70
       <hit enter>

</comment><comment><USER26> It's just the navigation that's been converted. Even though metafilter pages are almost all just text + links, they haven't been converted from HTML. So you still need a web browser.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure but I think floodgap.com can convert the web pages to text with elinks or w3m.

<comment><USER27> lynx can render gopher pages itself as well as being able to render the <html> format content linked to lower levels of the MetaFilter site mentioned in OA.

Below is an 'ascii screenshot'

                                                                           Gopher Menu
                                        Gopher Menu

                __  __      _        _____ _ _ _
               |  \/  | ___| |_ __ _|  ___(_) | |_ ___ _ __
               | |\/| |/ _ \ __/ _` | |_  | | | __/ _ \ '__|
               | |  | |  __/ || (_| |  _| | | | ||  __/ |
               |_|  |_|\___|\__\__,_|_|   |_|_|\__\___|_|

         (DIR) MetaFilter
               sharing and discussing neat stuff on the web
         (DIR) Ask MetaFilter
               asking questions and getting answers
         (DIR) FanFare
               pop culture discussion -- TV, movies, podcast, books
         (DIR) Projects
               creative work by MetaFilter community members
         (DIR) Music
               original musical and audio recordings by MeFites
         (DIR) Jobs
               employment opportunities and member availabilities
         (DIR) IRL
               organizing meetups and community events in real life
         (DIR) MetaTalk
               where the commuity talks about MetaFilter itself
         (DIR) FAQ
               frequently asked questions

        Commands: Use arrow keys to move, '?' for help, 'q' to quit, '<-' to go back.
          Arrow keys: Up and Down to move.  Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
         H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

Back in mid 90s I was dialling into a GreenNet shell account and running lynx to surf gopher and http content seamlessly, all for the price of a phone call to a London number.

<comment><USER26> Sure, but lynx is a web browser. If you use a real gopher client, clicking on any of those links will open into a browser rather than in the gopher client.

<comment><USER27> Yes, for the real retro experience, people might want to try a _graphical_ gopher client, complete with the little folder icons. Lynx just happened to already be installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Next up on HN... "GOfurr, a gopher client written in Go" ;)

<comment><USER29> I'm actually halfway done implementing a gopher library in Node.js. I think it works, but I haven't really tested it yet (was going to build an actual client and try to use it, so I can see how well it works and how well the interfaces work in practice). Have at it, if you want:

[https://github.com/twhaples/gopher- client](https://github.com/twhaples/gopher-client)

Not that I believe it'll really be useful for anything. :b

My real plan is to write a web-to-gopher gateway that actually looks nice (because the existing ones look like they're from 1995) and then use it to host my homepage / blog / CV before my next job search (in London!) for the retro-hilarity factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Gopher was already a historical curiosity fifteen years ago. So this is a nostalgic recreation of a retro project.

On an other note, I think I remember web browsers used to support gopher natively. I wonder when it was removed from the last major browser.

<comment><USER31> It was removed from Firefox in Firefox 4:

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388195](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=388195)

<comment><USER32> And it was me who did it!

<comment><USER33> Why are you limiting my functionality in 2016!!! You mean I have to download an ADDON to make this work?

I'm submitting a bug report right now.

<comment><USER34> At least you don't have to download an add-on to use Pocket ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> In the discussion Paul Bausch (the site coder) notes they are using PyGopherd

[http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd](http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd)

[https://github.com/jgoerzen/pygopherd](https://github.com/jgoerzen/pygopherd)

</comment><comment><USER36> It's so fast!!

Now, if only there was a way to browse Reddit and HN using 'tin' or 'nn'.

<comment><USER25> I have too many projects, one that I shelved was "Reddit-as-a-filesystem", because I was messing around with Dokany [1] at the time.

The same kind of thinking (Reddit->FUSE->Files) could be applied to a Reddit -> Gopher proxy. To reduce the cost of the project, I'd make it self-host the Gopher server on the user's PC and make the API calls from there, rather than setting up gopher-hackernews.xyz:70

My gut feeling is that the slowest part of this would be the API call to HN [2] or Reddit [3].

[2]: [https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API)

[3]: [https://www.reddit.com/dev/api](https://www.reddit.com/dev/api)

[1]: [https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany](https://github.com/dokan- dev/dokany)

<comment><USER37> Instead of using API calls for user navigation, you can keep a synchronized local mirror of whatever subreddits the user is interested in.

I have a repository somewhere with a thing that does that, through Reddit's .json URLs, mirroring subreddits into Git repositories full of JSON files, and then serving a minimal local web interface with real time updates. I'll make a note to clean it up and publish it...

<comment><USER25> That's a very clever idea.

I've been playing with FreeBSD's ports system this afternoon. There's something to be said for using the filesystem instead of a database, API calls or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> FWIW OmniWeb supports gopher:

[http://i.imgur.com/KFEzrTP.png](http://i.imgur.com/KFEzrTP.png)

[https://www.omnigroup.com/more](https://www.omnigroup.com/more)

</comment><comment><USER39> How do people read HN comments on their phone? On Android, neither Firefox nor Chrome seem to do this correctly. Each line of text scrolls off to the right, there is no reformatting to the screen. So I zoom in to a readable size, and now half the text is not visible off the right so I have to navigate right to read then left then right then left. It's terrible. Why is this so awful?

<comment><USER40> I just use the [https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb](https://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb) url. It formats the whole thing pretty nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> <3

</comment><comment><USER42> Why are people so obsessed with Gopher? The protocol is abysmal.

<comment><USER43> Explain

<comment><USER44> There's an RFC that goes over it but basically, you open a connection, send a pathname, and then the server responds with the file, which is basically the original HTTP spec (without the GET/DELETE/etc verbs).

Oh, but it also differentiates between text and binary files. Binary files are sent as-is, text files are sent line by line with a \r\n terminator. .\r\n indicates the end of file. Leading .s must therefore be doubled. And then directories are sent in another format (type/name, path, hostname, port -- tab separated).

Which means the client has to know before hand if it's a text or binary file or directory. How does it know that? Well, there's a 1-character code at the start of the filename which gives the filetype. 0 is a file, 1 is a directory, 9 is a binary file. There are also other filetypes which will make you reminisce about the 80s (Unencoded file, BinHexed file, n3270 session, etc.

HTTP (once headers and mime types were added) is a better protocol. Maybe people pine for the days when you didn't need 2 megabytes of javascript to punch the monkey, but that's not due the underlying transport protocol.

[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1436.txt)

<comment><USER17> Sounds like in this day and age you can tag everything as either 0 or 9, and leave it to the client to figure it all out.

The whole text vs binary reminds me of FTP, and most clients there defaults to requesting everything as binary transfers.

Edit: MIME is no cure-all, i wonder how many times i have seen Firefox get royally confused because the MIME type is wrong.

<comment><USER44> Even if you limit it to text/binary 0/9 you still have problems.

1\. your url looks like gopher://dipstick.io/0file or gopher://watchingpaintdry.museum/9folder/file. The filetype is part of the url, but only the client is aware of it -- it's not passed to the server.

2\. When using a URL, the client has one idea of the file type but it does not necessarily match what the server thinks the file type is.

2\. Error messages. HTTP has a status code to indicate the file doesn't exist (or was moved, etc). Gopher can send the error message back as the payload but... is that in text format or binary format? The server has no idea what format the client expects.

Always sending binary data and using out-of-band status codes and file type just keeps life simpler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I guess MetaFilter kind of misses the point of gopher here, since they just serve HTML document on the gopher server, with <a href> links to normal web.

Example:

[http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://gopher.metafil...](http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher://gopher.metafilter.com:70/0/MetaFilter/The- leg-exercises-are-pivoting-curtsy-lunges.html)

What is the point of serving that on gopher? :)

</comment><comment><USER46> Gopher is the ultimate separation of content from presentation. You write the content, I'll read it in the style of my choosing.

Flashy ads and social network dropins need to go away. A good content author can figure out how to work sponsorships and other revenue generation into their work. I don't mind reading through someone's text based plug for a product, it creates a stronger focus on writing quality content rather than link-baiting.

</comment><comment><USER47> i waiting for someone to kick up archie.

</comment><comment><USER17> Gopher really does feel like it would be a match made in heaven for Freenet or some kind of Bittorrent FS.

</comment><comment><USER48> I say gopher it!

</comment><comment><USER49> But is the connection encrypted? :)</comment>


How BetaList performed for our new project G.A.Joe - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gajoe.co/2018/02/01/betalist-review/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello all,

We used BetaList to promote G.A. Joe. Happy to share a performance review on our blog. Find out how it performed and how it helps new startups.

This should help others while evaluating multiple channels for promotions.</comment>


Google Drops the Price of Google Maps -- By 8X - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/06/google-drops-the-price-of-google-maps/ Google has drastically lowered the pricing for their mapping service. <comment><USER2> very old news...</comment>