Wevorce (YC W13) makes divorce suck less - <AUTHOR> https://wefunder.com/wevorce <comment><USER2> I enjoyed how her profile danced around Wevorce's raison d'etre, without actually coming out and saying it: acrimonious divorces are fueled (or created entirely) by lawyers.

As a lawyer with many colleagues practicing family law, I don't think this is terribly fair. Divorces are acrimonious because the overwhelming majority of divorcees have fundamental issues with their spouse that they can't even verbalize, let alone work out. The underlying feelings that trigger the explosive fights about nothing (think toilet seats or dishes in the sink) are only magnified when blame for failure of the marriage and the dividing of assets/children comes into play. In other words: divorce is acrimonious because people going through divorce literally go crazy.

I would bet Wevorce is successful because it integrates counseling/communication into the divorce process, something that is basically prohibited when both sides are represented by counsel. That alone sounds like a substantial improvement.

<comment><USER3> As someone who went through a bitter, totally unfair, divorce - I agree that lawyers can be POS in these situations.

I was belittled, laughed at, threatened and completely farked over by my ex's lawyer. They drew out the process an incredible amount. Why? Because I was paying all of her legal fees.

Every single court appearance they had a different attorney show up - if they bothered to show up. I am still extremely bitter over the whole process and pray I never run into any of those lawyers in person on the street.

Nothing has made me so close to extreme actions as has those complete thieves. I still hold a special place in my heart for revenge against that company.

<comment><USER4> Was it a personal or legal that you paid for your ex's fees?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey HN: (while we're discussing family law) someone please make a startup that improves adoptions and/or surrogacy.

The fees are intense. $20k, 50k, 100k gets dropped left and right in this space. (Never underestimate the human drive to reproduce!) Most of that goes to agencies (who do good work, but incredibly inefficiently) and to foreign governments (if international). All to adopt kids that need a good home.

Navigating these waters is intense and difficult. There are so many hucksters, scams, multiple government bureaucracies, lawyers, clinics, and way too many options to make sense of things. It's a nightmare.

This is my pain point right now; I'll be your first customer!

Regardless, congrats to Wevorce for taking on family law.

<comment><USER6> I heartily recommend becoming a foster parent through your state children/family services agency. It's an oft overlooked route to adoption and, despite a million frustrations of its own, has worked much better for us than private adoption seems to/would have.

<comment><USER7> I have no experience, so please excuse this if it's insensitive, but isn't the difference between adopting and being a foster parent the fact that as a foster parent you are only a temporary guardian for the child? i.e. they usually have parents they would go back to eventually?

<comment><USER6> Not insensitive at all. Fostering is just the first step, and can be followed by a formal adoption. Our three adoptions were foster for ~2 years as the case made its way through the courts (we got all the kids at <1mo old).

Depending on the situation, kids can go back with their biological parents. The social worker should be pretty up front about the prospects of that, though. Of the 5 kids we've fostered, 2 went back to their parents and we were well aware of that before we took them (they were 3 and 6 years old). Usually when infants are removed from a home, there's not much chance of them returning.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for sharing. I have thought about adoption and it helps to learn more.

Both adopting and fostering are a huge responsibility, and it speaks volumes about you guys that you have done it multiple times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Wevorce is already having success. While living in Idaho, Michelle ran a beta test. She put 104 families through the system and only one went to court."

This was the part that was most surprising to me. That's an incredibly good success rate (albiet with a small test) for something that's trying to mediate such a polarized situation. All it takes is either party not being satisfied with what they got to push it to court, so it must be extremely good at helping both sides feel comfortable with the outcome.

<comment><USER9> Careful: there's also a self-selection effect here. Only those couples who have a fairly good chance at a somewhat amicable separation would even try a service like this. Wevorce would probably have a much lower success rate with 104 randomly selected families going through divorce.

<comment><USER10> For a scientific study you are absolutely correct, however, this is a business and in business you only deal with the self-selecting group that would use your service. The better question would be what percentage of the market would actually use this service, especially knowing that it has and over 99% success rate. In my experience women often want a fast divorce and men want a cheap one so if she can provide that she has a winning business proposition.

<comment><USER9> I think asking whether wevorce provides any benefit to its customers is also a pretty good question. This is why the self-selection problem is important. 99% of wevorce users don't go to court, but is that an improvement over the baseline percentage for the kinds of couples that would use wevorce?

<comment> j-reynolds Thanks for the question (I'm with Wevorce). I think you're right, that self- selection does contribute to our very high success rate. But the fact is, we definitely see our share of contentious situations and are able to help them too. Since we know that even some of the folks who want an amicable divorce at the beginning are turned hostile by the grind of the traditional system, we don't see self-selection as "a problem." We're happy for amicable divorces anyway they come.

The benefit to our customers goes well beyond signing the papers. There's a strong education and co-parenting/budgeting tool component which, clients tell us, brings way more value than the legal aspect of ending a marriage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really? This is what it's come down to? Parenting and separation via day- planner. No wonder so many of my friends aren't getting married.

A common law marriage is likely to last a lot longer these days since, well, it's not common law unless you've been together for a while. Sometimes years.

This is also another reason why parents who ignore their children's feelings when getting a divorce are a bunch of inconsiderate bastards. You can argue all you want about how things are just not working out, but unless one of you is abusive or reckless, there are no _irreconcilable differences_. You just suck at getting along with each other and you should have thought about that more before having kids.

Got to therapy, go to counselling, try anything to hold it off until your kids are at least older teenagers.

Wanna know what's _really_ destroying the sanctity of marriage? Abuse, Adultery and Divorce.

<comment><USER12> I can't stand hearing this kind of fud. My parents divorced when I was ten. My dad was accused of being abusive. He may or may not have been, I'm not sure on all the details. Regardless, I turned out fine. I had to go to court. I had to talk to police at random intervals. I could only see my dad a few times a month for a few hours, or every other weekend. They were strange circumstances. But this bullshit about stay together for the kids is complete horseshit. Are you fucking kidding me? I'm livid.

My father has since remarried and is extremely happy with his wife and my two little half sisters. My other sister and I are doing great. I'm starting a company in Sweden and my sister is about to finish her bachelors from USC. My mom is doing great and just adopted a new puppy. Everyone is happy and the shit show is over.

Alternatively had they stayed together... There would have been MOUNTAINS upon mountains of resentment inside of our household. Fuuuuuuuck that no thank you. Kids are tough. They grow up and will be fine if they are loved and supported by their family members... Regardless of whether or not they were divorced.

This bullshit excuse that divorce damages and gives a kid post traumatic stress is false. As we all know most marriages in America end in divorce, so I have a lot of friends with divorced parents. They're all fine. I've never sat with any of them and pouted or wept over my life.

Correlation does not prove causation.

<comment><USER11> It didn't happen to my family, therefore it doesn't happen right? Thanks for glossing over the therapy and counselling bit.

FYI the age, gender, temperament, environment, household size, family income, income disparity between parents, support or lack of support of other adults in the immediate family, support or lack of support of other children, association with children comparable age/gender/temperament, association with children of different age/gender/temperament etc... etc... one of the few things people miss out when they cite "I'm well adjusted therefore..." as opposed to the legion of people actually studying the effects of divorce on children.

Suffice it to say, your experience with divorce wasn't mine or many others' for that matter. I don't wanna turn this into a flame war, so I'll end it here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disclaimer: I'm not in a position to use this startup, but my parents divorced when I was young.

I'm going to be that guy. I really don't like this startup, or at least how it's presented.

I have never seen a startup's front page focus so exhaustively on a founder's background. After reading about her story I'm not motivated to look elsewhere.

Her story garners a lot of sympathy, but _how does the company work?_ That's all I care about when I go to a website's page. And it's not immediately presented. What I'm hit with first is the name, tagline, graphic and founder's story. I get that she went through divorce. The part about the judge is particularly riveting. But I, personally, don't feel it is as professional as it could be. It doesn't need to be cold, but this is trying _very hard_ to be relatable.

I'm not trying to be cruel, I'm just being honest. I hope I don't offend the founders.

<comment><USER14> It looks like OP it's just a founder profile. The company's home page[1] is much closer to what you would expect. I was initially thrown off too, though.

[1]<http://wevorce.com/>

<comment><USER10> I still think the homepage leaves out a lot of the value. The explainer video only sets the problem, not the solution.

Problem: Divorce is messy and it's the second most stressful event you and your Children will ever go through. The average divorce takes a year with many dragging on for many years,and inculde _________ trips to court with an average cost of $27,000.

Solution: Our initial trial of 104 families Wevorced in an average of 89 days with 1 trip to court (That's not per family that out all 104 families) and our service costs a fraction of what is normally paid in court fees.

We are able to this using our 6 step process _______ instead of the traditional adversarial __________.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, we have startups that help get people get together, startups that help people marry, and now startups that help through divorce.

If I were an entrepreneur, I'd cut out the middle man and vertically integrate all three into one startup.

<comment><USER16> "integrate all three into one startup."

What would be your tagline ? How about "no hassles marriage to divorce in 1 package." Then could price your service as:

\- Dating only

\- Marriage only

\- Dating & Marriage (value package)

\- Marriage and divorce (value package)

\- Dating,Marriage,Divorce (super value package)

<comment><USER17> No, man, you've got it all wrong. The real opportunity isn't in marriage-to- divorce, it's in divorce-to-marriage. "Tired of your marriage? Get a better one in six months or your money back!"

<comment><USER18> ... I.... YC14

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is ridiculously hard problem to solve and the likelihood of Wevorce succeeding is very low (as in all startups). But man... it's refreshing whenever I see SV funding large hard to solve problems. It's not all me too ideas, bloated valuations, social network XYZ with zero business models as the press might make it seem much of the time.

<comment><USER20> Acctually i saw the opposite, a startup drives traction from addressing a pain point and there is a big easy target here, make the process suck less. I would say just by cutting out two opposing lawyers this will instantly be more successful based on just the collaborative start alone.

<comment><USER21> Wait until Wevorce gets sued by an unhappy husband or wife.

<comment><USER20> Possibly, and also another reason to bet on these guys as they are founded by a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Mods, wefunder, whomever: the similarity of your names is making people think this is the home page of Wevorce rather than an article about the founder and company. Either make it clear at the top of the article page, or in the title here.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the feedback, anateus (and everyone else). I made a few quick tweaks to the page that hopefully makes it feel less like their homepage. Let me know what you think.

We want to be careful about making our branding too strong, because this post is about Wevorce, not Wefunder. In the future we'll put more design cycles into separating the Startup of the Week brand from our own, while keeping the featured startup front-and-center.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's some advice to the founders: as a man I wouldn't use a site where it shows a graphic of a father being torn away from his wife AND child.

<comment><USER24> unless they've changed it already, it doesn't. <http://wevorce.com/>

<comment><USER21> I though the original link was to the homepage of wevorce but it wasn't (<https://wefunder.com/wevorce>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Divorce is one of the most stressful events that can happen in your life, as a kid or as a spouse. It's great to see companies like Wevorce work towards solving real and important problems.

<comment><USER25> Yep. One thing worse: divorce coupled with abuse (physically + sexual), and the authorities refusing to do anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "so she could help make sure other children didn't have to go through a similar traumatic experience."

If her goal is to help other children avoid going through this wouldn't the better problem to tackle be how to lower the number of divorces? Any divorce, no matter how "smooth" the process is is going to be painful for the kids.

<comment><USER25> My boy is now having nightmares going on a year later. And the ex and I came to an agreement, handled things ourselves and had no lawyers involved. Not to say it was easy, and there weren't fights, but as far as divorces go it wasn't messy.

My son appears to be scared that hes going to be taken from me, or his mom. Not exactly sure, as talking to a 3.5yro just woken from a nightmare isn't exactly easy or informative and I'm having to read between the lines a bunch.

I need to find the little guy some counseling or something so we can address his fears and help him work through them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't understand how this is a "startup" in YC/PG's sense of "growth machine".

From the article, the purpose of wevorce is to offer a new approach to divorce, where just one lawyer works for the whole family (partners + kids), instead of the usual arrangement where each partner fights the other to death.

This certainly sounds like a good idea, but isn't it just a kind of counseling business (the Accenture of divorce)?

Even if they can speed up the paperwork a little, at least one lawyer will still be needed for every "customer" (couple divorcing), so how does this scale in a startup sense?

<comment><USER27> Replying to my own question like on Stackoverflow, it could be that what wevorce does (from a business perspective) is create a new market (a cheap divorce where there is only 1 lawyer instead of 2, and less paperwork), and providing this market with a software solution that it builds and maintains.

Wevorce doesn't employ lawyers directly, it just acts as a marketplace between them and people wanting to get divorced without killing one another, and it takes a cut in the form of software licence.

So from this point of view there's no reason it couldn't scale indefinitely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Would like to read about your company, but something on this site is causing my browser to jack my CPU, and I'm unable to continue. FF18.0.2 on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER29> Also unusable in IE9 because it crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just got divorced for the 2nd time last week (what can I say? It's a gift), and what I'd really like to see is a web app that does the following:

Give parents and extended family tools to better manage their split parenting work, from parenting schedules, to birthday wish lists, to the child's clothing sizes, favorite foods, etc.

\- Enable the family on one side to be engaged with the life of the child when the child is with the other parent.

\- Help the child avoid feeling as if they have "two separate lives".

\- Function as an intermediary between both sides, with focus solely on the child, thus allowing them to cooperate with each other without danger of confrontation. Seeing Nana on Dad's side communicating and cooperating with Mommy benefits the child greatly.

\- Ideally, this technology-assisted "virtual" cooperation in time will serve as a bridge to real-life cooperation and engagement, healing, forgiveness, and understanding.

Features

\- Each parent and child can post their work/holiday/event/school/sports schedule

\- Track parenting time

\- Keep a diary of the child's activities (food, health, etc) to share with the other parent

\- Track shopping lists and assign who buys what (Christmas, bday, etc)

\- Track contact info (school, coaches, etc), clothing sizes, etc.

\- Share important documents (report cards, etc)

\- Share videos, pictures, audio messages, text messages with parents and extended family

\- Q&A and community support for parents

\- Allow for indirect phone calls between parties who don't want to share their phone numbers, or chat video the web site.

\- Allow for translations to be added to videos and messages.

<comment> j-reynolds Great feedback, mikesickler. I'm one of the founders and I can tell you that your requests are in the planning stages. Our vision is help families build sustainable lives over the long-term (I'm 38 and I still get uncomfortable when my divorced parents are in the same room). The tool you describe will be part of it.

I'll share your comment with the rest of the team so we can add some of these to our features list. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are going to be some really good mock testimonials created for this service. They'll probably look like an eHarmony commercial but they'll say really funny things about how great their divorce was and how everyone should try Wevorce for their next divorce.

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't know, the idea sounds nice, but I doubt that this a venture case and will scale and fits into PG's 'Startup = Growth' strategy since it's just a service which requires tons of manpower (except it pivots into a marketplace/leadgensite for lawyers offering a defined divorce package but we had similar models 10yrs ago and they just do not work). The landing page could be stolen from one of ClickBank's merchants (you know those shady ultra long landing pages which want to sell useless stuff).

I understand that YC startups are proud to be part of YC and thus, put the YC label on their site and everywhere else but often (and in particular here) it's the only USP such startups have.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hopefully this can help people who don't want to deal with "jagin" to ensure that their divorces don't "wind up like their parents one did." Don't worry, "All of our clients our Wevorce clients."

</comment><comment><USER24> i'm a tad confused. is wefunder related to wevorce? if not, it might be worth saying so, because the names are so similar.

</comment><comment><USER34> Wow, I was thinking two nights ago about how interesting/funny it would be if someone pitched a startup to "disrupt" divorce to PG. I hadn't thought at all what the thing would actually do, just the idea. It sounds like one of those sitcom ideas to me but I'll look it over. Weird coincidence, though.

</comment><comment><USER35> great, but... no one is discussing the moving clouds in the crayon drawn header graphic.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is a cool idea. I'd like to see something like Wevorce on the other side, i.e., a startup that gives couples more flexibility in creating a marriage contract that meets their needs. Does anyone know if that already exists?

</comment><comment><USER37> As someone whose parents divorced amicably, I must opine that this is a great idea. The difference between my experience and those of others whose parents fought bitterly is considerable.

Done right, this idea can be a force for good.

</comment><comment><USER38> At least in Minnesota, there is a trend towards attorneys who practice Collaborative Divorce and I'm told it's spreading across the country rapidly. How does Wevorce fit in with this?

<comment> j-reynolds Great question. I'm Jeff, with Wevorce. Collaborative Divorce actually started to catch on in the '80s and does some great work. The trouble is that it is more expensive and unstructured. Just coordinating schedules of the various professionals can several hours in fees. That's one of the problems our system fixes. These sorts of issues meant it spread rapidly at first, but has struggle gaining new converts lately.

Actually, most of our mediators (we call them Divorce Architects) come from a Collaborative Law background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I can't help feel that a lot of the problems mentioned could be substantially mitigated if one had a decent prenuptial agreement.

Other than that, I think this idea will work.

</comment><comment><USER40> Majority of that page tells me who the founders are, their business plan, and their investors, but not a whole lot about what they're going to do to help me.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is petty compared to the purpose of the startup, but the typography/use of ligatures on the site is fantastic.

<comment><USER42> I thought the opposite -- the ligatures seem like they're supposed to make the company look fancy, but when combined with the photos of the founders I just felt creeped out.

<comment><USER27> I also immediately noticed the ligatures and found them disturbing too. I'm not sure I can explain why but I'll try.

It may be because the first and most prominent ligature is in the title... and the word "suck"

\- ligatures are unusual, even in print, let alone on the web => they're distracting (I found myself chasing them on the page to see if they were also in the article -- turns out they're only used in some subtitles, but the rule isn't clear to me)

\- ligatures are kind of "classy" (?), and the phrase "suck less" is very colloquial => the contrast is unpleasant (like seeing someone in a tuxedo, covered in mud)

Finally, the home page of wefunder is completely different, with basic sans used for copy (font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;) and 'ChunkFiveRoman' for titles (?)

In short, the typography seems to be a little all over the place (but that's just my opinion).

<comment><USER43> I agree with this - thanks a lot for the feedback.

We're going through the flow and experimenting with a lot of type choices, and your point about the tone really rings with me. I expect to put ChunkFive on the bench soon, to be replaced by something with a little less angst, though I expect it to still be a slab-serif. As far as Abril Display (what we're using for headings on these featured startup pages) is currently used, we could improve. I think the actual use of ligatures helps give a bowtie look, but it's not necessarily what we're looking to do. The tone of the brand going forward will be key for that decision. IMO Abril Text, being used for the body copy, is a good typeface for long format reading. Though however I try to justify it, we've got some serious typeface gloat happening, and we'll start to see them tightening up over the next few releases.

Thanks again, much appreciated thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I would invest in these people in a heartbeat.

YC is lucky to have you onboard.

</comment><comment><USER45> it makes me sad that there's a business model for monetizing divorce. for the sake of humanity, I hope this company fails.

<comment><USER46> You realize that it's actually an industry, right?

<https://www.google.com/search?q=divorce+lawyer></comment></comment>


Evernote will let its employees read your notes - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/3150479/security/bye-privacy-evernote-will-let-its-employees-read-your-notes.html <comment><USER2> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177971)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13183490)

</comment><comment><USER3> Note: you can disable in: Web App > Settings > Personal Settings > "Allow Evernote to use my data to improve my experience"

<comment><USER4> "please note that you cannot opt out of employees looking at your content"

Source: [https://help.evernote.com/hc/en- us/articles/235660588](https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/235660588)</comment></comment>


Leading 'anti adblock' provider gets hacked- pushed malware to end users - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pagefair.com/2015/halloween-security-breach/ <comment><USER2> I think I saw this. I visited a legit science or business page (don't remember) and a windows said my "Flash player was out of date" and immediately started downloading a Windows ".exe" claiming to be a flash installer. I am on OSX with no Flash installed, so I know it wasn't Adobe's updater.

<comment><USER2> Remembered the url: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/10/30/developing-in- stockfight...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/10/30/developing-in-stockfighter- with-no-trading-experience/)

<comment><USER3> They seemed to have removed the pagefair code for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And then content makers are still scratching their heads on why people please won't stop using adblockers?!

<comment><USER5> This has nothing to do with blocking ads. You'd still be affected by this hack whether you were running adblock or not - the service is designed to be extremely difficult for adblockers to catch except maybe on a site-by-site basis. It's more of an argument for blocking _all_ scripts.

<comment><USER4> I'd expect any decent adblocker to already have blacklisted this and similar services.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a service publishers use to show ads when a user has a adblocker enabled. It works on the most popular adblocker, adblock plus (firefox/chrome). Not sure if it works on ublock origin or ghostery/others, but those are still a small proportion of all adblock users.

Noscript would have protected you though, which has a pretty large install base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the downside and the greatest danger with more and more centralized ad networks.

Site owners: Market your ads directly or through smaller exchanges, and host them yourself. This is the only viable long-term option.

<comment><USER7> Is it? I hypothesize that smaller exchange have less resources to develop secure systems. While they maybe smaller targets, I think their architecture maybe less robust. Hence why I trust gmail to run my email rather than rolling my own server.

<comment><USER8> An image that links to the advertiser's product is really all that is needed.

<comment><USER9> My advertisers are happy with this approach and instead of taking a CPM or CPC billing monthly like a billboard seems to work just fine meaning I'm not incentivized to game clicks or views.

This is nice because it makes me want to make good decisions for the user experience (no multi-page image galleries) which I believe will help attract the types of visitors my advertisers want to interact with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They're basically selling a content-obfuscating anti-detection system for webpages as a service. Of course it's going to be abused to push malware. They're just lucky the attacker wasn't more sophisticated this time around.

<comment><USER11> No they aren't. They aren't even an "anti adblocking" tool. They replace ads with "acceptable" (as defined the ad block plus people BTW) ads for ad block users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> So the attacker got the password for a work email (and let's be honest, it was likely a shared account amongst a department not an individual) that was used for the CDN account hosting their serve code, where the attacker appended a malware download link to their script running on however many sites they work with.

And they were able to convince website owners to grant them access to visitor's connection in order to prevent people from blocking ads? And they were also able to convince them to pay money for this service?

</comment><comment><USER13> I've never seen a major website that uses anti-adblock. I've seen a few that display a message but none that actually stop you from viewing the site.

<comment><USER14> rdio.com stops playing music as soon as it tries & fails to play an audio ad. You can refresh the page to continue with the next song though.

Since it seems to play an ad after every song (?!) this basically prevents ublock users from using the free version of rdio.

<comment><USER15> Hulu does something similar, but sometimes it shows ads, and sometimes it tells me that I need to disable ad-blocking software.

I just refresh, and it usually works.

I'm not willing to disable Ghostery and uBlock, though; 12 things blocked by Ghostery and 31 by uBlock - I don't need any of it, Hulu, thanks.

<comment><USER16> I will never understand how that company makes money. If you can get users to pay you for your content, then don't try and sell your users time to someone else. Horrible value proposition and if you have to block that much stuff they likely sell your data as well, not to mention many premium clients are shittier than the pirate sites. Hulu value proposition:

* Pay for content. * Still have to watch commercials. * Have data about my usage sold to highest bidder. * Video client that is not as good as putlocker (or whatever the cool kids are using these days)

it is owned by nbc, disney and fox. they still don't get that you can sell content, sell ads, or sell nothing. Very little overlap.

<comment><USER17> It's like with Lenovo and SuperFish. Even if you have a perfectly good business model and satisfied customer, there's nothing stopping some greedy people to try and extract _even more_ value from their customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > The attackers then immediately performed a password reset to hijack > PageFair's account on a Content Distribution Network (CDN) service that we > use to serve our analytics javascript tag. They modified the CDN settings so > that instead of serving PageFair's javascript, it served malicious > javascript.

It would have been nice that the article spelled out the exact hostname from that CDN, to find out whether it is blocked by default by blockers.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems like this could have been prevented if they supported subresource integrity.

<comment><USER20> Not really. Since you need to know the correct hash ahead of time, Subresource Integrity works best when you're requesting a well-known piece of static data from a 3rd-party server, e.g. jQuery version x.y from a CDN. For a site like Pagefair (or other sites that serve 3rd-party scripts, like Google Analytics), the benefit of the web platform is being able to serve _dynamic_ data. You get to upgrade your software quickly and easily, without the friction of obtaining the cooperation of your website partners (1st party sites that included Pagefair's scripts) or end users.

If you want to use Subresource Integrity to prevent this kind of a problem, you need to first devise a mechanism to communicate the correct expected hash from the 3rd party site to their 1st party customers in a trusted manner. This is non-trivial. It adds a lot of friction to Pagefair's software development and deployment processes (think about how you would implement A/B testing, for example). It's also not a guarantee - if your servers can be hacked, it's possible your "trusted hash communication mechanism" would be as well, unless you follow stringent security protocols (human confirmation for signing, offline keys, etc.) which would add even more friction.

Of course, you would need cooperation and involvement from your first-party customers for SRI to be effective in the first place, and I don't know how many of them would be thrilled to have to devote engineering resources to fixing potential security problems caused by their partners... sounds like a good reason to consider switching to a competitor.

<comment><USER21> Sure it could. "It's hard" is not a rebuttal to "it's possible". That ad- networks might need to implement a system to let content-providers review and approve a set of ads that might be served, that have a TTL until they expire, and generates a JS to be included in the local site with SRI hashes to be integrated might be hard, and it also might cede some control to sites as to exactly what ads they are willing to serve, but it's also a responsible way to deal with ad-delivery and would in all likelihood have made this hack if not impossible, at least much harder and likely caught and mitigated with far less exposure. Sure it's harder on both parties (but there are benefits as well), but sometimes things are harder because you are not longer taking unsafe shortcuts, and I have no sympathy for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone else see a page with nothing on it on this site?

<comment><USER23> I get the page loaded fine but with no css or javascript (it's very snappy!). Will probably be back to normal soon.

<comment><USER24> You might be using uBlock, then. For me it's blocking all assets on the pagefair.com site except the contents of the page itself. Temporarily disabling uBlock lets the rest of the page load.</comment></comment></comment>


Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed - <AUTHOR> http://www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your-lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/ <comment><USER3> Lately I've been thinking about this a lot.

I also took a break from corporate life for about 5 months now, and now trying to get back into it. I'm actually content with what I have, give me my laptop (which I already own) and my bookshelf (with probably more than 50 unread books), as long as I have money for food and house/utilities, I'm actually quite ok.

The problem arises when you are in a relationship and have a kid. It is really hard to 'convince' people (including the wife) the baby doesn't need 10 pairs of trousers or 50 plastic toys (He actually has a lot of hand me downs, and all of his toys, maybe 20 if the many, are handmade wooden ones).

Also, that vacation the wife always dreamed, you can't really do that. Or she wants a new fancy dress - nopes. Ohh the kid should go to private school (while I'm not fond of it, looking at public schools in the area, maybe isn't that bad of an idea), will the money be enough?

Yes, we can all live minimally, but we also have to agree, it maybe easier for us 'techies' to do so as a laptop is usually hours of entertainment, but trying this with a social life (girlfriend/friends/family) makes it really hard.

All this to say, I'm really sad I'm giving up my free time to work 9-5 again, but consulting isn't paying all the bills and allow me to provide a 'good' life to my wife and kid.

<comment><USER4> The key to maintaining a minimalist or anti-consumption lifestyle is to find a partner who holds the same values, and not having children.

<comment><USER5> It's still possible to be minimalistic, with kids... Kids love nothing more than spending time with their parents, and that is something today's western world seems to infringe... If both parents are working long hours, what happens to the kids, where is the time and love to nurture and educate them!

<comment><USER6> Absolutely true. Unfortunately, it's more expensive to have kids, which inhibits the transition to a freer lifestyle.

<comment><USER7> It is a bit of a shame when those in society that have been well educated, have invested heavily into themselves and have the most to pass on to their children choose not to breed. Yet those that many would consider have the least to pass on....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Unfortunately, this is close to impossible in my industry, and most others. You work 40-plus hours or you work zero._

I've mentioned this before but my company hires Rails developers for 24hrs/wk. Health insurance is provided and salary is proportional to full-time.

It's not for everyone, but it works well for us. Everyone's fresh and relaxed when they come into work, and the free time is great for learning, side projects, exercising, travel.

Anyway, we're actually hiring right now: if you're in the Bay Area and looking shoot me an email.

<comment><USER9> Good for you. I'm neither in the Bay Area nor a Rails developer, but I really wish I could find work like that.

<comment><USER10> Have you considered freelancing?

<comment><USER9> I contract, which means I get to work "as much as I want" over the longer term, but it still means full time working for extended periods. It's not a bad deal at all, but I'm starting to feel like I'd like something more stable. I am hard to please.

<comment><USER11> I did that for a while and had similar plusses and minuses, but the one thing I still can't wrap my head around is insurance. What did you do about that?

<comment><USER9> In the UK I think most of us buy a professional / public indemnity bundle from Hiscox, which costs a couple of hundred gbp or thereabouts. It's normally a contractual obligation.

<comment><USER11> Ah, well in the UK you have it much easier with the existence of the NHS, whether or not it covers all of your needs. As I'm sure you know, in the US if you don't have insurance, you don't really have much of anything--and due to the tax advantage setup to get insurance through one's employer, self-employed people get hit really hard with insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > _But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of > the amount of work people get done in eight hours... but because it makes > for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay > a lot more for convenience, gratification, ... We've been led into a culture > that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence... Western > economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very > calculated manner on gratification, addiction..._

This makes it sound like there's some kind of a conspiracy, like robber barons or The Man all got together to plan this out. It's a lot easier to invent scapegoats like this, but that doesn't make it true.

> _Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much > unnecessary fluff that doesn't add a lot of lasting value to our lives? The > economy would collapse and never recover._

Again, any kind of research to back up such a bold and incredibly controversial statement? That's just unsubstantiated fluff, without demonstrating any knowledge of actual economics.

The truth is much more prosaic. People buy what they want, and companies make money doing their best to give it to them. In fact, we _celebrate_ companies that do a better job at this, like Apple inventing the iPhone. People like buying things, and decide on their own that they want to work harder to buy those things.

Of course, most people don't have the degree of self-awareness or reflection to realize what really makes them happy in the long-term -- but companies that provide short-term gratification are under no obligation to educate their consumers, and it's not like they have any better idea what makes you happier long-term either, since everyone's different.

We have a 40-hour workweek because most people _prefer_ work twice as much and be paid twice as much as a 20-hour workweek. Sure, there are people who would prefer 20 hours and half (or less) salary, but they're in the vast minority, so that's not what companies build their workforces around.

To rebut the title: yes, your lifestyle has already been "designed", but it isn't intelligent design. No _person_ designed it. It's just what cultural evolution has arrived at so far.

<comment><USER13> A great Steve Jobs quote relevant to your first point:

 _A lot of times we think "Why is the television programming so bad? Why are television shows so demeaning, so poor?" The first thought that occurs to you is "Well, there is a conspiracy: the networks are feeding us this slop because its cheap to produce. [...] but the truth of the matter, if you study it in any depth, is that networks absolutely want to give people what they want so that they will watch the shows. If people wanted something different, they would get it. And the truth of the matter is that the shows that are on television, are on television because that's what people want. [...] And that's far more depressing than a conspiracy. Conspiracies are much more fun than the truth of the matter, which is that the vast majority of the public are pretty mindless most of the time._

There's no conspiracy, just mindlessness. It's just how society has evolved over time.

<comment><USER14> Used to be legitimate news reporters getting substantial stories. Turned into pretty faces spouting fatuous nonsense.

Why did news teams last so long? Not because the television public wouldn't have watched crap - there was crap available, and they watched it. (Candid Camera was a sort of first-generation realitiy TV show).

It lasted because the guys running the business respected the news teams - <USER2> their power over politics, their ability to turn over rocks and reveal dirt, whatever.

At some point (writers' strike?) content became a race to the bottom, which is about where we sit now. This is a new phenomenon, not some natural ecosystem response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting that the author uses the word "lifestyle," because the popular etymology of the word actually _comes from marketing research_.

The word itself was popularized relatively recently (only a generation ago): [http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&y...](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

It was driven largely by VALS, research done by Stanford Research Institute on new marketing techniques, which has been partially credited for transforming advertising into what we know today: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALS>

The Adam Curtis film "Century Of The Self" has an excellent exploration of the term "lifestyle" and the context it came from.

I think it's interesting that we commonly use the word "lifestyle" to talk about breaking out of a consumer-driven mindset, when the language itself was developed precisely for marketing to that mindset.

<comment><USER16> I didn't know that. I first read it here, in HN (not an English speaker) in two senses: "lifestyle business" and as a synonim for something a little less strong than "vice" or "crime": drinking, overeating, "soft" drugs, workaholism...

The funny thing is that it seems to conflate the same slight deviation from the average in the good direction: exercise, healthy food...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm always a bit surprised that people are surprised to discover this. You know the experiments where monkeys will do things for grapes or tokens? That, writ large, is human society. The feelings we get making and spending money, and the feelings we get comparing our ability to do that to other people, satisfies a deep biological need in our primate selves.

<comment><USER18> I think you've hit on an important point here which the article has missed. Peer-pressure is responsible for most of the unwanted consumption that the author mentions. If we lived in a society where reading and debating on books was considered an accepted and revered social activity, then we would have many more people reading books than (say) watching sports.

I don't really blame most people for having that kind of feeling (we are humans after all) but it does help to sometimes take a step back and ask ourselves why we live our life the way we do.

Ben Franklin used that kind of peer-pressure to learn new skills so it can be used for doing good too

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can certainly relate to this. Living in Boston, it's very easy to drop $50++ just walking around the city for an afternoon, then to come home and spend $100 for half a week's worth of groceries at Whole Foods.

I definitely wish each raise came with the option to work less.. 10% more money or 10% less work. When you consider that, on paper, a 20% pay cut could mean a 3-day weekend, it makes a lot of sense until you bring it up in conversation..

<comment><USER20> Trader Joe's.

Used to do Shaw's + co-ops when I lived in Vermont. That was around $160 a week.

Now, in Boston, I pay about $100 total at Trader Joe's (for more groceries). 40% decrease - around $3120 per year in savings.

Random note: you can live in Boston for about the same cost as Burlington, Vermont. Something is crazy about that.

<comment><USER19> I love Trader Joe's, but the only one I know of is downtown. That means 20 minutes extra each way, plus a little under $4 for the T. Whole Foods is a quick ten minute walk.

<comment><USER21> There's also two in Cambridge (one by Fresh Pond and one on Mem Drive near the BU bridge) and one in Coolidge Corner in Brookline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> These type of posts bother me because they play the blame game without substantiating arguments or offering useful alternatives. This paragraph in particular was annoying:

"We've been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don't have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."

To start, this almost implies that there's a room full of Old Powerful White Men (let's be honest, that's what you imagine) figuring out how to raise little consumer sheep. Like it's a big conspiracy or something. Even worse, the government must be in on it, otherwise I wouldn't have to work 8 hours and feel tired all the time! Well, part of this 'conspiracy' is called 'marketing', and if you have an issue with that, then please address it with a logical argument. I think most of HN is fine with marketing, otherwise nobody would get to witness these new startups.

Regarding the 8 hour workday: this is an economics argument more than anything. Again, either address it properly or leave it be. What would be nice would be an alternative suggestion. However, I don't think travelling at large with a MBP sipping mojitos on the beach and skyping clients is something society at large can start doing. But the author probably can. (There's a bit of an interesting aside - should intelligence and technical skills afford you more freedom?)

To wrap up, what really bothers me with that paragraph, and this post in general, is this: it's being implied that personal happiness and fulfillment (so nothing "feels missing") is not a personal responsibility. What? Let's look at that last sentence again:

"We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."

Just because consumerism isn't "filling your inner void" doesn't mean it caused it. That's not to advocate for or against consumerism, just to suggest that there are other alternatives to these problems. And it's your own responsibility to go find them.

All that being said, I found the post interesting enough to think about and reply to, so thanks for writing it.

<comment><USER23> _To start, this almost implies that there's a room full of Old Powerful White Men (let's be honest, that's what you imagine) figuring out how to raise little consumer sheep._

I've never been in such a meeting, but what would you imagine is discussed when sales strategies are devised?

\- How can we drive our customers to buy more of our products? How can we sell more to existing customers, how can we attract more new ones? Marketing, advertising campaigns showing how happy our customers are?

or

\- Do our customers really need that much of our products? Should we educate them on the fact that excess usage of our products is unhealthy? Should we make sure they don't hurt their budgets or rake credit card debt?

What I'm saying is that it's not a conspiracy, but the "hand of the market" does not care if you are better off buying something or not. McDonalds wouldn't care if you ever eat anything but fries, Johnson & Johnson wouldn't care if you wash your hands obsessively 25 times per hour, and no home electronics provider would care if you hoard their products in stacks in your basement. The only thing they care about is to sell as much as possible, and ideally make you come back for more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn't add a lot of lasting value to our lives?

The economy would collapse and never recover."

I used to think this, but I don't believe that so much any more. It would take a hit, but would adjust to people spending more time and money on things that mattered more to them - the things that take more money to do, vs the $5-$10 impulse purchases on things of limited value.

What things might those be? Travel? More energy efficient housing/appliances? More experience-oriented stuff in general (time with family/friends/etc)

<comment><USER25> I've taught myself to reduce the "things" in my life (impulse items and expensive distraction "things" like cable subscriptions) and to do a lot more cooking at home (fun and a big savings in and of itself). I'd say that at the end of the month I'm likely spending a little less than I would if I were a huge impulse purchaser/had to have every little subscription possible, but the things -> experiences trade has a far better ROI. Here are the differences I've found over the past year and a half:

1\. I am traveling more. Unlimited vacation + not insisting on having multiple $x00 payments (like a fancy new car) means a $300 round trip ticket isn't even something I have to plan to purchase. I'm averaging a trip by plane every three months and a smaller weekend road trip once per month.

My buddy has a big fancy truck and he pays the equivalent of two round trip tickets per month but his average round trip commute is about 2 miles. I'll never understand this (if for no other reason than my love of the bicycle).

2\. When I go to dinner I eat at better (healthier) restaurants. I've never been a picky eater but I've definitely found myself turning my nose up at food I would have enjoyed six months ago. I have probably only eaten at fast food places maybe 7 times in that period. This so far has been my favorite plus.

3\. When I do buy things, I have no reason not to buy the nicer of two items.

4\. I can afford a gym membership and personal training sessions. Actually where I go it pretty much works out that if you brown bag your lunch every day you can afford the membership + 3 sessions per week.

5\. My apartment looks huge without all the clutter. My aunt lives in the same building and has the same apartment layout but you'd assume mine was at least 50% larger.

<comment><USER26> Once you declutter, I really suggest painting if you are allowed to. It is really nice to have painted rooms, and you can take the small "apparent size" hit

<comment><USER25> Thankfully the preceding tenant did that. Having something besides white primer walls is a big plus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The REAL issue with this is the high cost of N employees vs just hour per employee. Training, health insurance, etc

If we could drop it so everyone worked 30 hours but worked 75% of what they do today, many would jump at it in the higher earning echelons.

Per worker costs strongly incentivise long weeks.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps the overhead could be considered as part of the overall costs. I would still appreciate the choice of having to work 75% of the time for 65% pay if I understood that the difference was due to health coverage and other benefits. In other words, the transparency would help. I strongly believe I'd still sign up for it.

<comment><USER26> I'd just prefer to see medical benefits untie from employers (not for moral, but for reducing worker overhead reasons).

Additionally, under the current sphere 'part time' workers don't usually get company benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As far as 'where the money goes', I can't speak for everyone but in my case I have asked myself this question a number of times and I think the answer is pretty simple.

Firstly, I have more past-times than I did when I was broke. This is partly because I can afford to, and partly because I have more time. (When I was broke, I was a busy student)

Secondly, I no longer stop and think as much about goods quality. When I had no money, it made sense to spend ridiculous amounts of time carefully selecting goods to maximize "bang-for-buck". Now that my time is more valuable, I will more often opt for the best quality item.

The same carries over to food as well. Not a foodie, but eating healthy is simply more expensive than ramen.

</comment><comment><USER29> > The economy would collapse and never recover.

That is exactly what I said (at my 40-hour/week job) would happen if everyone were like me.

More seriously, I've come to the same conclusion. Our entire society is built on the consumption of junk. Expensive gadgets with a built-in expiration date (either by breaking easily or technology deprecation).

<comment><USER30> I think the key problem is that such consumption isn't sustainable. Sooner or later you run into the fact that we can't keep running on this treadmill and pushing the costs on down.

It seems to me that the call to action should be building a new economy, one of free individuals guided by a truly free market, because as the article demonstrates the market is hardly free at the moment.

<comment><USER31> Is it possible that, by definition, a "market" has controls on it that make the term "free mark" an oxymoron?

<comment><USER30> I think the question of a free market is a question of who has power in the market. We'd say a communist "marketplace" isn't free because the power is concentrated in the hands of the state, but the same must surely be true in a marketplace run by a non-state monopoly. I would define a marketplace as free if and only if the primary power rests with the purchasers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> At Mandalorian we generally have to work the standard work week when doing stuff for clients, but beyond that people manage their own time, often spending bits of time here or there to do the school run, take their kids to the doctors or as happened for the last two weeks, one of our consultants taking half days off every day while they get their new house sorted out.

I find that a results oriented work environment seems to make for happier employees.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nicely written piece. I like the progression from the author's observation about his backpacking trip; the contrast with his regained 9 to 5 day, and the realisation that consumption is driving the whole whirlygig. Reminded me of Tom Hodgkinson's _The Idler_ <http://idler.co.uk/magazine/>

" _It's amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer._ "

I've just relearned that lesson; we have come through a very busy time at work and things just had to get done in minutes, right _now_. It worked and the sky did not fall.

<comment><USER27> It isn't always sustainable, though. You do this long enough and a lot of people would start burning out. Certainly there are people who would thrive in an ongoing high-stress environment, but not everyone is built like that, or would want to stay in such a situation for long.

The occasional case of high stress, high productivity periods can be good for that feeling of accomplishment once the deadline is met. It's like the climactic ending of an action movie - a lot of activity leading up to a desired goal. However once the next chapter begins, you want to go back to a sense of normalcy, when people can recover and just relish the recent accomplishment.

<comment><USER33> Oh, yes, I agree completely, there is a need for peaks and troughs. What I learned last week however is that certain fairly mundane documentation and planning tasks can actually be completed in _much_ less time than I have usually allocated to them (the domain is not IT or computing by the way).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So why don't we work less? Is it really because we want more stuff? Or is it driven by social competition, desire to move up maslow's heirarchy, ...?

I know I will be happier if I work less. But I don't.

<comment><USER35> Well, it's hard to find a job that's <40 hours a week for one.

<comment><USER36> Next to impossible if you're looking for benefits too, such as health insurance, vacation time, and sick leave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What was old is new again :) - In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell <http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html>

</comment><comment><USER38> Yet there are those of us who enjoy our jobs and don't mind spending 40 hours a week doing something fulfilling, and who look forward to exercising and don't look at it like a chore, or who take great pleasure in saving money and being frugal.

<comment><USER39> Yes, and that's great, but it doesn't invalidate the general trend.

<comment><USER38> And how sure are we it's a general trend? Are there any numbers anybody can point to?

<comment><USER39> Plenty of studies on job satisfaction exist. I just googled "job satisfaction trends" and got various studies, and this article from 2010:

"Americans' job satisfaction falls to record low" [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-01-05-jo...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-01-05-job- satisfaction-use_N.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Incidentally the article references a Book and Documentary both called "The Corporation" by Joel Bakan. The book[1] is an excellent read and the documentary[2] is also worth a watch, free on archive.org.

[1] - [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit- Pro...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-Profit- Power/dp/1845291743/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361117603&sr=1-1)

[2] - <http://archive.org/details/The_Corporation_>

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm always skeptical of arguments that assume massive implicit cartels. "the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business ... because it makes for such a purchase-happy public". Maybe, but if I can really get happier, more productive workers by letting them work 9-4, I don't care whether they are being good little consumers in their off hours. A business's employees make up a very small fraction of their customers.

</comment><comment><USER41> "We've been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don't have."

Almost all of us are sheep and have a herd mentality. This makes it easy for big businesses and even government to sway our sentiments to manipulate us. From the education system to work place to media, everything is designed around big businesses generate revenues by pushing items we do not REALLY need. Material comforts and sensory pleasures do not fulfill anyone for long. How do we realize what we want will not truly satisfy us? How do we break out of this?

The hard way is to discover the source of satisfaction lies within, through meditation, questioning and experimentation. When we discover our true calling and use our talents to serve all selflessly (as much as possible), we can get a glimpse of true happiness. Till then we cannot help but be manipulated by society in its current form.

<comment><USER36> Most of the world's population is low wage workers who don't _have_ any extra for mindless consumption. Somehow they are able to get by without these comforts, and don't even need to meditate.

The real problem here is the yuppie lifestyle. Just think if all of those wasted financial resources could actually go to fund something important, rather than mindless waste. Keeping people exhausted and feeling they are entitled contributes greatly to the problem.

<comment><USER42> I'm sorry to say, even low wage workers WANT the "mindless consumption" extras.

The doorman at my apartment here in Uruguay (who makes about U$ 1.000 / month) has just spent about a month's wages on some high-tech cell phone with Android (I think it's a Galaxy Note 2). He has a wife and child to feed.

The number of people living in hovels (they're called "cantegril" here in Uruguay and "villa miseria" in Argentina and "favela" in Brazil) that have LCD TVs is staggering.

There's a subculture that values Nike shoes and steals to get them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Does anyone have statistics on the breakdown of expenses for the average household, or within different income levels? I don't think we can really discuss this materially without some real stats. My hunch is that the budget of most families is dominated by food, housing, and transportation.

</comment><comment><USER44> Great article. Some old ideas, but worth carefully exploring.

A huge understatement, but right on: "Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business."

My wife and I talk about this all the time, especially in the context of TV commercials.

BTW, on the subject of 40 hour work weeks. I am in my early 60s and I have worked full time for a very small fraction of my life. Even when working for large companies in an office environment, I was just about always able to negotiate working 32 hours Tuesday-Friday. Three day weekends every week allowed me to write a lot of books and spend lots of time outdoors.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have been talking about this with a friend recently, but the author managed to put this down with much better words. Great reading.

</comment><comment><USER46> Possibly too much traffic right now.

Here's Google's cache (text-only).

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.rap...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.raptitude.com/2010/07/your- lifestyle-has-already-been-designed/&hl=en&tbo=d&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER47> After reading a post like this, I feel fortunate to live in a place where 3-bedroom houses go for $800,000. When someone is paying ~$175/day just for housing, all of the "unnecessary fluff" really are a drop in the bucket.

</comment><comment><USER48> Site seems down. Anyone have a cache?

<comment><USER49> When this happens, just search google for cache:[url]

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.r...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.raptitude.com%2F2010%2F07%2Fyour- lifestyle-has-already-been-designed%2F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> mirror?</comment>


World's Data Centers Refuse to Exit Ice Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/12/data-center-ice-age/

<comment><USER2> I've used outside air to cool a small server closet. It makes sense to just blow the hot air out.

When shopping around for fans, I discovered that the best prices were at hydroponics shops. Apparently, they have customers who deal with heat issues. Go figure.</comment>


Scientists Are Giving Dead Brains New Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/magazine/dead-pig-brains-reanimation.html <comment><USER3> > Sestan did acknowledge that, yes, theoretically there is nothing stopping a > scientist from immediately building a perfusion machine that could support a > human brain. The BrainEx technology is open-source, and pig and homo sapiens > brains have a fair amount in common. And there are plenty of conceivable > applications for a human-optimized BrainEx.

Imagine that you are a billionaire. Money is absolutely no object at all. And yet, you are in an accident. A car crash for example, your body was gravely injured but your head intact. You are flown to a facility but die on route.

This technology is a get out of jail card. What's interesting to me, is where is the cut off point. Right now I assume its within minutes? But one day it could be a week? Your head in a jar until they either create a new body for you or find a donor body?

Then there is this:

> Consider, Greely suggested, the case of the Italian neurosurgeon Sergio > Canavero and his associate, the Chinese scientist Xiaoping Ren, who claim to > have transplanted a head from one cadaver to another. Undoubtedly, a > scientist with fewer scruples than Sestan, fewer moral qualms about human > experimentation, will emerge. "Somebody will perfuse a dead human brain, and > I think it will be in an unconventional setting, not necessarily in a pure > research manner," Greely told me. "It will be somebody with a lot of money, > and he'll find a scientist willing to do it."

Putting the current ethical concerns aside. I find this absolutely fascinating. How long until the technology is perfected and some form of immortality is reached?

How would it work. Do you get to 90 years old and they pull out your brain and put it into a newer body?

Just so happens that in 50 years I'll be 90 myself. I a more ethical version of this tech is around in some form or another. I'd love another 90 years!

Oh and for over population concerns, don't worry. I'll be happy to be part of the new expedition on Titan or Ganymede or further out. :)

<comment><USER4> > _Your head in a jar until they either create a new body for you or find a > donor body_

Could you imagine the horror of waking up and being just a head?

<comment><USER5> For me, it sure beats dying!

<comment><USER6> In its current form it would probably be horrific torture at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Perhaps the most innovative modification involved fluid mechanics, one of > Vrselja's specialties in graduate school. As the British mathematician John > Womersley managed to quantify more than half a century ago, blood does not > circulate through our arteries at a uniform rhythm — it circulates in > pulses, in concert with the shudder of our hearts. To account for that > dynamic, the BMI unit had shipped with an automated "pulse generator," a > device that replicates the heartbeat's pulsatility in the organs.

> But the pulse generator's settings proved unsuitable for brains, which have > a different flow pattern than the rest of the body. Before Sestan's team > adjusted the settings, the fluid might not completely permeate the > vasculature of the organ, leaving parts of the brain essentially untreated. > In such tissue, Daniele told me, "you'd end up with this sludgy, white > yogurt-ish substance. It was a mess." Conversely, if the pressure was too > high, "the brain could just physically not stand it." The organ fell apart.

> By that summer, Vrselja and Daniele had fine-tuned the pulse generator and > attached a number of custom sensors[...]

It sounds like it was a lot of work getting the pulsation right. If they actually needed pulsation at all that seems like an interesting finding unto itself, since humans and cattle do fine with continuous-flow hearts: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423277](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423277)

</comment><comment><USER8> "Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω."

'I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae hanging in a jar, and when the boys said to her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she replied, 'I want to die'.'

</comment><comment><USER9> I see many comments on this article on people's choice to do anything to avoid dying. One argument I haven't seen covered is the fairness of it.

Is it fair to younger generations that we keep on living? If we don't die there will be fewer opportunities for the younger generations, the resources we have all have access to are after all rather limited. Population growth is already too high, immortality can only make it worse. We can see how millennials are struggling with a tight job market and housing market, all because previous generations who now have longer life spans than their parents are holding on these resources.

There are aspects to immortality that go beyond selfishness, such as the experience and knowledge that is lost of the people dying, being a negative to the society. I'm in support of pursuing technology to allow all or most of that knowledge to be preserved and passed on to younger generations but at some point I think we have to accept our role in this world and that role includes having to stop existing and let others have their chance at a full life.

<comment><USER10> This brings up a question of how you value people who don't exist yet. Technically (not saying anything about politically) the problem you describe can be solved by population control -- "just" don't make more people than can be comfortably supported. We already do that with birth control or by simply not having sex.

But that means people who would have been otherwise born would not be. If that is not an issue, perfect, you have your technical solution. If that _is_ an issue, then you have more problems than immortals hoarding resources (one of them is Repugnant Conclusion [0]).

Another way to look at it -- would you want current lifespan artificially shortened if you knew for sure that it would make things fairer for new generations?

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find this sort of thing fascinating both for what it means about our own consciousness, but also what it means for emergent consciousnesses. We're not sure when a dying brain stops being conscious; and we're not sure when a once- dead brain that's revived starts being conscious again. Why do we think we'd have any idea when an artificial brain awakens to consciousness?

I feel like the same ethical concerns raised in the article about accidentally reviving a person into a sensory-deprivation nightmare could also apply to accidentally generating a thinking being that can only express itself though shopping recommendations.

We're a long ways off yet from a comprehensive ethics of universal consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER12> Al I can think about is Metallica - <USER2>

      Now that the war is through with me
      I'm waking up, I cannot see
      That there is not much left of me
      Nothing is real but pain now
      Hold my breath as I wish for death
      Oh please God, wake me
      Back in the womb it's much too real
      In pumps life that I must feel
      But can't look forward to reveal
      Look to the time when I'll live
      Fed through the tube that sticks in me
      Just like a wartime novelty
      Tied to machines that make me be
      Cut this life off from me
      Hold my breath as I wish for death
      Oh please God, wake me

<comment><USER13> Or "I have no mouth, and I must scream" [http://www.mikedidonato.com/images/2009/04/harlan- ellison-i-...](http://www.mikedidonato.com/images/2009/04/harlan-ellison-i- hav-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream.pdf)

<comment><USER14> A wonderful classic.

Though I must point out -- and I've absolutely no qualms that you shared this, mind you! -- that Harlan Ellison used to be furious and very vocal about it when people shared his stuff online. I don't mind; I'd rather more people read these good old classics of the New Wave of scifi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This has been discussed a fair bit:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19684386)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18766920)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19753418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19753418)

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me a little too strongly of Infocom's interactive-fiction game Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare [http://gallery.guetech.org/suspended/suspended.html](http://gallery.guetech.org/suspended/suspended.html)

 _They said you would sleep for half a millennium — not an unreasonable length of time, considering you 'd be in limited cryogenic suspension. Your body would rest frozen at the planet's nerve center, an underground complex 20 miles beneath the surface. Your brain, they told you, would be wired to a network of computers; your mind would continue to operate at a minimal level, overseeing maintenance of surface-side equilibrium. And you would not awake, so they promised, until your 500 years had elapsed — barring, of course, the most dire emergency._

 _Then, and only then, you would be awakened to save your planet by strategically manipulating six robots, each of whom perceives the world differently. But such a catastrophe, you have been assured, could not possibly occur._

 _Good morning._

</comment><comment><USER17> Didn't CS Lewis cover this in his highly prophetic sci-fi "That hideous strength" /s ;-)

<comment><USER18> Or Robert Heinlein in Recalled to Life.

In that book, the tech works, except that one time out of six the person wakes up insane.

<comment><USER19> > _Or Robert Heinlein in Recalled to Life._

Silverberg, not Heinlein.

(Had me wondering if there was a Heinlein I hadn't read for a second.)

<comment><USER18> Ah, my error. Silverberg is correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is nice to see that whoever wrote that headline acknowledges that this is a story you see being discussed on a TV in the background of the first 10 minutes of a zombie movie as the protagonist prepares for their day.

</comment><comment><USER21> Please someone tell me that he is considering using viruses to bring those dead brain cells alive!

</comment><comment><USER22> Where did the truism "you can't stop the progress of science" come from in the first place? I think we're going to have to reexamine it pretty soon.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately, the opportunity to reexamine it has already passed. Even without brain-in-jar sci-fi devices, technology is already sufficiently advanced to create artificial nightmares. Consider the case of state-sponsored torture, which now has at its disposal near-perfect surveillance, VR, genetic modification, a litany drugs, remotely controlled robotics, etc. It's a tragedy that scientific progress itself is a control system that is capable of overshooting its target.

<comment><USER24> There is nothing scarier to me than primates discovering ways for a sentient brain to be effectively immortal. There is still time to re-examine the implications of this, as such technology is quite a ways off still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of the lifetime movie classic starring Mare Winningham, "Who is Julia?"

</comment><comment><USER26> This rings familiar to Yun Tianming's voyage in Deaths End (Three Body).

</comment><comment><USER27> Omg so many letters why can't they just summarize in a few paragraphs

</comment><comment><USER28> Next thing you know they'll be offering chakra transplants.

</comment><comment><USER29> Again it seems "ethics" is holding us back.

This is absolutely something we need to put lots of research and experimentation into.

<comment><USER30> Without relying on "ethics" then, what is your justification that more resources should be allocated for this?

<comment><USER29> Research? Understanding? Reaching dominion over death? The usual?

Nothing really matters, you can only strive to achieve.

<comment><USER30> Why do any of _those_ matter? Ultimately, for something to be "worth" anything, it requires a system of values, which is exactly what ethics is.

My point is not that research is worthless. My point is that relying on ethics to assign positive value to research in one hand whilst denying the existence of valid ethics when convenient is hypocritical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Zombies

</comment><comment><USER32> "What could possibly go wrong?" Because clearly we have _never, ever_ seen this before and its consequences, I guess. _Braaaaiiiinnsssss_

<comment><USER33> Zombies make no sense. They would starve to death quickly without farming and modern supply chains or eat each other to extinction.

And the zombies that can go on without any source of energy for years break thermodynamics.

<comment><USER34> The premise of this technology is however startlingly close to the cult- classic zombie horror movie _Re-Animator_.

<comment><USER35> There are hundreds of ways to make a zombie in fiction. Pretty much any experiment involving death or near-death or hibernation is going to resemble one of them. I have to disagree on 'startling'.

<comment><USER34> Most zombie fiction is premised on a contagious pathogen or a botched scientific response to such a pathogen _(28 Days Later, The Last of Us, I am Legend, Shaun of the Dead etc.)_ Some use accidental exposure to radiation or extraterrestrial contamination, with unclear mechanisms _(Night of the Living Dead)_

Zombie movies outside of the contagious pathogen paradigm are more uncommon. Some zombie movies, particularly the older ones predating Night of the Living Dead, are premised on religious supernatural voodoo stuff _(White Zombie [1932!])_. In others, the condition is not strictly contagious, but exposure to a chemical substance causes a reversal of death _(Re-Animator, and Return of the Living Dead (my personal favorite and the origin of zombies who desire 'Braaaaiiiiiins'))_ In only a few, the creature[s] are created by a mad scientist deliberately trying to reverse death using something other than a contagious pathogen _(Frankenstein (should that count?), and Re-Animator.)_

Mad scientist in an academic setting attempting to reverse death and accidentally creating an outbreak of non-contagious zombies is a pretty narrow list of zombie movies. Re-Animator is the only one that comes to mind. Anyway, a zombie outbreak obviously isn't going to happen, but if the public becomes generally aware of this research, now might be a good time for Hollywood to reboot Re-Animator. Gods know they hate making original movies these days. I'm aware that a zombie movie fan complaining about a lack of originality may seem ironic.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Django Ipsum (evening project) - <AUTHOR> http://djangoipsum.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Random little project I put together over the past couple days, inspired by the excellent delorean ipsum. (<http://www.deloreanipsum.com/>)

</comment><comment><USER2> The "lorem" template tag in django.contrib.webdesign can already produce lorem ipsum text for you!

(I know.)</comment>


Send payouts with Stripe - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/send-payouts-with-stripe/ <comment><USER2> (I work at Balanced)

Balanced (<https://balancedpayments.com>) provides a payouts solution for marketplaces like redditgifts, Crowdtilt, Fancy, Artsy, Visual.ly, and many others.

The differences with Stripe include the money being available for payout immediately (instead of 5 days), and the recipient will receive the money the next business day. Balanced has also performed a lot of work to verify merchants with as little information as possible — name, dob, and address. Instead of SSN for an individual you only need to pass in the last four.

<comment><AUTHOR> Stripe actually requires substantially less information -- just the recipient's name.

Still, this isn't about Stripe vs Balanced -- we just built the API many of our users wanted. Hope you guys continue to do well!

<comment><USER3> Its nice to see that Stripe wishes competitors well when all Balanced tried to do was promote their brand.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry if we gave you that impression.

All three founders have engineering degrees. I built the original version of the product, was the second engineer at Milo.com, and wrote DDoS prevention software in college. Mahmoud built high-frequency trading systems for Wachovia Securities and built Milo.com's matching and categorization system. Jareau studied Electrical Engineering at U Penn, built GPS enabled devices in college, and wrote Milo.com's original systems to interact pull in data from retailers.

Even our General Counsel codes. He studied Symbolic Systems and wrote some of our internal reporting systems in Python.

<comment><USER4> I fail to see how this addresses the idea that Balanced was "promoting their brand." Was anyone questioning the engineering talent at either company?

Stripe wrote this blog post to promote their brand, Balanced let potential customers know that they have similar functionality. Both companies, in my opinion, offer extremely high-quality services (I have used both in production) and have great engineering talent. I do not think we should knock either company for "promoting their brand", it's important that potential customers (read: HN users) are able to make informed decisions. I think zende, pc, and the original blog post all do a good job of articulating the features available through their respective APIs.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I'm starting to look at Balanced differently now.

<comment><USER6> He clearly intended to answer this guy <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5827717>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I assume the author of the announcement wrote the example code with the longshot hope that some Stripe users would say, "Hey, I guess I'll send Amber Feng three thousand bucks, just to see if this works." Takeaway point: always write code examples in such a way that a straight copy-and-paste might send you a lot of money.

<comment><USER8> It's a test-mode API call, so I'm sadly not getting any money from this. (:

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just used Stripe for one of my major annual events. I used PayPal the first two years, and all I can say is Stripe is far superior to PayPal. I do wish the dashboard was a little more configurable, but that's minor. Everything else is so much better.

Pros: \+ auto deposit into the back account without having to make requests

\+ easy refund process

\+ easy charge identification process

Cons:

\- a few customers like using PayPal, so there's that. We dropped PayPal entirely from the online sign up and payment so for the users who wanted PayPal we had to send them our PayPal address. Not entirely smooth or professional, but that's not Stripe's fault, it's the reality of having an entrenched payment processor.

\- the dashboard displays total volume, and that's it. Would like this to be configurable. Showing total volume since day 1 is pretty useless, especially since it does not appear to remove refunds.

<comment><USER8> Which parts of the dashboard in particular? Would love to hear your feedback at firstname.lastname@example.com!

<comment><USER9> I don't have much to complain about, but I will gather my thoughts and shoot them over. Really a huge fan of the product, though.

<comment><USER10> It's a paid add on but maybe look at DigMyData too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm most interested in the inverse... allowing customers to send us cash directly from their bank accounts for $.25 per transfer (instead of the bullshit credit card company fees). I'm sure there's some serious fraud implications that Stripe would have to deal with to ensure validity, but is that coming?

<comment><USER12> FWIW, Balanced has this functionality: [https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#crea...](https://www.balancedpayments.com/docs/api?language=bash#create- a-new-debit)

<comment><USER11> Network effects. :) I'm not going to swap stripe for balanced at this point, but would happily offer customers the ability to pay with a bank account if they prefer.

<comment><USER13> as a customer, why would I ever sign up for bank account payments vs card? with credit cards, one call to amex and a $5k charge gets instantly removed and I get the credit line adjustment, but with a checking account, this can take much longer and stuck cash-less for a while

<comment><USER11> We have customers who prefer paper invoicing. We're more B2B-ey. We could do their net30 payment terms all electronically, which would be a big plus for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is cool, but the money has to be charged via credit card first right? It would be nice to transfer money from the bank account linked to stripe to another account, and as a user of Stripe's connect API, it would be nice to enable this in our apps for our users.

Even cooler would be full blown ACH. We are working with ACH providers now and what a stark contrast to the beauty of stripe. All require some form of monthly fee, paper set-up forms with 1-2 week delays (vetting periods) and API's from the 90's

<comment><USER8> (I work at Stripe.)

Right. Those are both things that are on our product roadmap. (:

<comment><USER15> On an only moderately related note... here are two more things that I would love to see on the roadmap:

1) Better support for disputes in the API (right now to get all our disputes, we have to pull _all_ charges and walk them...)

2) The ability to generate test disputes. You guys provide an awesome test API, but there's no way to generate disputed charges in testing, so I can't test any of that functionality...

<comment><USER8> 1) You should be able to pass in "disputed=true" to the charge listing call: GET <https://api.stripe.com/v1/charges?disputed=true>

2) Definitely. We'll keep that in mind!

<comment><USER15> Ah, the folks in your IRC channel (and your docs) didn't know that one... Awesome, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats on the launch!

My startup was in the private beta for this and is in the process of switching to Stripe for ACH payouts from our previous provider bill.com. The folks at Stripe are super friendly and helpful. Two thumbs up! :)

</comment><comment><USER17> This sounds pretty awesome, I can't wait to try it out.

FYI I'm working on a guide to integrating Stripe with Rails[1] and I'll definitely be covering this, as well as Stripe Connect.

[1]: <http://www.petekeen.com/mastering-modern-payments>

</comment><comment><USER18> Now that payment processors like Stripe and Balanced are providing very similar services, what serves to differentiate them? As each of these companies release features, they become closer and closer to converging to the exact same product. I'm seeing the same fees, the same abilities to payout, the same ability to act as a marketplace, with only a few very minor differences. Why should someone pick Stripe over Balanced, or vice versa?

<comment><USER19> I think you should pick based on your primary use case, i.e. whether you are a merchant (stripe) or a marketplace (balanced).

IMO in a couple of years the offerings from these two companies will be so close that this distinction won't matter, but for now they are converging in from different directions so you should choose appropriately.

(I feel this is a lot like Box vs. Dropbox. One started from the team/enterprise side, and the other from the personal/consumer side, but now Box offers free 5GB for personal use, Dropbox offers dropbox for teams etc. A couple of years back, it mattered which one you picked depending on your use case, but these days not so much.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Please bring this to Canadian Bank accounts. Please, please please. :-)

<comment><USER21> Interac.ca email money transfer

<comment><USER20> _If your financial institution does not yet offer the service, or if you don't bank online... You will be required to register and provide your banking information in order for the money to be deposited into your bank account. The deposit usually takes 4 - 6 business days to process and a $4.00 fee will be deducted from the deposit amount._

Not really compatible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How does this jive with laws around transmitting money?

<comment><AUTHOR> Tl;dr: we work with a bank to do this; we do lots of checks; and you're required to verify the identity of the recipients. See [https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending- transfers#verifyin...](https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending- transfers#verifying-recipients) for more info.

<comment><USER23> Do the funds ever sit in your (Stripe's) account or is the ACH transfer direct from the card to the destination account?

<comment><USER12> Come on Aaron. As someone who formerly ran a payments company, _you know_ that going direct from a credit card to a bank account is not possible with today's banking infrastructure. Of course the funds go to their account. You know that, but you're clearly trying to prove a point here. Please, do it somewhere else.

<comment><USER23> Of course it's possible. Stripe could give its processor the routing and account number of its customer to deposit the funds in in place of its own routing and account number. This is why the Department of the Treasury distinguishes between payment processing companies and money transmitters.

By the way, I still run a payments company, and you should not assume that you know what I know (or don't).

<comment><USER12> My fault, I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How long does it take from the time I create the transfer to it hitting the user's bank account?

<comment><USER8> It's next day, depending on what time you create the transfer.

[https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending- transfers#transfer...](https://stripe.com/docs/tutorials/sending- transfers#transfer-timeline)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sweet.. can't wait for full ACH! ... watch out Balanced.. they're on your tail!

</comment><comment><USER26> Any chance of this coming to the UK? Loving the UK Beta for cc payments!

<comment><USER27> The uk beta is awesome! I would love to know when we can send money to UK and other EU accounts. Any stripe employees care to comment on any potential roll out roadmap outside of the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> $0.25/transfer, without a cap on the amount? Might expose Stripe to a lot of risk on large transfers?

Example: If something goes sideways on an $100k transfer, $0.25 is 0.0003% of the borked transaction....

<comment><USER29> Since this feature is backed by a bank (FDIC backed bank no doubt) I assume it has the same protection as any other transfer and that the backing-bank is actually shouldering the risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's ridiculously hard to launch a new marketplace. I think it's awesome that we have more API choices.

My next big problem is taxes. I wish one of these two could make it a no- brainer for the same market-place scenario (eg. selling a work from a South African gallery to a customer in France via a U.S. based marketplace).

As a footnote, I am a very happy Balanced customer @ <http://artsy.net>.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just to be clear, this requires a balance in your Stripe account? What if you do not have a balance? How does this affect the currently (already very slow) 7 day payout? If an account is balance holding, and then you withdraw to your own bank account, does that mean the 7 days starts then? What if you do not have enough balance?

</comment><comment><USER32> Can't I build a marketplace with stripe connect? How is this different?

<comment><USER33> It supports substantially more complicated movements of money. Stripe Connect is basically "Bring your own Stripe account. We handle the API integration for you." This lets you do things like (hypothetical case for Airbnb-clone) "Pay the room lister 90% of the amount charged 5 days after the later of 'satisfactory feedback received from renter' or '10 days after checkout'. Then, pay us our 10% fee for enabling the transaction."

Bonus: with this, the lister doesn't need a Stripe account and will perceive all of their interactions with money being handled by you or their bank. This means you don't have to, as a part of making the sale to them to list their room, convince them "You should really open a Stripe account."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Really neat feature.

Is a rollout to scandinavia in the weeks, months or years-timeframe?

</comment><comment><USER35> From my understanding it takes 7 days for the funds charged with a credit card to be available? In this case, is there an api to show how much is actually available to payout to 3rd party?

<comment><USER8> Yep! <https://stripe.com/docs/api#balance>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does the font rendering look bad to all of us? <http://cl.ly/image/0S3B0H241w01>

<comment><USER8> Hm, that's interesting.

What OS/browser are you on? (Feel free to email me at email@example.com as well.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Apart from Balanced Payments and Dwolla I don't think anyone gives a simple way (means using API) to send payouts. This could be huge!

<comment><USER38> Balanced Payments only allows transfers to customers with Wells Fargo accounts, right? Does Stripe allow transfers to all banks?

<comment><USER12> You can transfer to any US bank account with Balanced. Wells Fargo accounts benefit from same day transfers, while all other accounts are next business day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> When is there going to be a serious Paypal alternative that works pretty much everywhere, internationally?

<comment><USER40> Not for a long long time. The reason Paypal doesn't work everywhere is because of crazy laws, not technology.

And Paypal can afford many more hours of lawyering than most startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Can't wait for Canada to get this.

<comment><USER42> Seconded. I will use this immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> She went to my school Berkeley!

</comment><comment><USER44> Can Stripe now be used to accept ACH payments as well as send them?

</comment><comment><USER45> What does the payee see? My business name, stripe's name, etc

<comment><USER8> Your business name, along with the transfer statement descriptor you specify (though this varies by bank).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Keep up the great work, I absolutely love you guys!

</comment><comment><USER47> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯</comment>