What happens traffic wise when a post hits #1 on Hacker News? Here are my stats - <AUTHOR> http://purde.net/2015/01/hacker-news-number-one-post-stats/

<comment><USER2> Did you take any special measures for protecting your blog, like caching ? Or are you running beefy enough hardware ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was able to get hold of my hosting provider (virtuaal.com) and upgrade to their biggest package in about 15 mins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looking forward to the 'What happens when a post about a post that hits #1 on Hacker News, hits #1 on Hacker News?' post.

<comment><AUTHOR> great idea :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ty for sharing. Tiny FYI, on mobile the sidebar, even while collapsed, is distracting. Thankfully there is reader view.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, need to update that theme.. Glad the reader view is there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "ie. my Mom and a dozen bots" in the graph is priceless.</comment>


Android Platformer, added a new video of game play, what do you think? - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1621630581/android-platformer?ref=home_location

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that this is something that a year or two ago would be just classed as a work of passion, you've been writing a game on and off for a while with a friend and you have a very rudimentary engine with no polish. As a student you should be making lots of things like this instead of asking everyone to chip in so that it can have Art assets. Why not take more time in polishing, or find an arts student who can help you out with art once you've got a prototype you can show them that it works neatly.

As a student ( only a handful of years ago ) I made lots of projects like this, but Kickstarter wasn't around then and to get art for it I just had to prove to people that I could finish the project and not waste their time. But Kickerstarter is here now, so I guess you'll see if people will be enthused with the idea. If you don't hit your goal, you should consider thinking of ways to stylise it. Programmer art can be beautiful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had planned on making the art myself in the first place, but I discovered kickstarter and figured it was worth a shot.

I have a lot of these little projects that I work on, most of them are for my research though. This is the only game I have had time to do for myself. The fact is that the engine I am making can me used for anything. I have already began work using the same basic code for a top down rpg. There is a lot more code there than you can see from the game because of the stuff I did to make it moldable

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You are asking for honest feedback, so… if you want to excite people about your work, you need to be excited yourself. To my ears you sound rather bored during the video which made me click the back-button midway. Engage!

<comment><AUTHOR> I did the recording at midnight last night, I thought about that after. I tried to sound excited, it just came across as cheesy and put on, so I went with this approach, sorry I bored you :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the video: better audio quality. I don't want to hear the sounds of your keyboard or anything else, just the soothing sound of your voice (level-editor part). Maybe record the video without audio, just talk to yourself for timing- purposes and then do the audio on top.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did them separately, I just used my laptop mic as I was watching the video to do it. I don't think I have another mic around or I would record it again :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> little side note: the audio on the video is way too low (at least on my speakers). otherwise: I see a lot of potential in this idea, especially in the level editor - you just gotta make sure people can use it in a compelling/engaging way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I will try to fix that when I get home. I have been thinking about ways to allow the editor to become more compelling. My initial idea was to set up a server to allow people to host levels, and have a random level button in the editor, allowing them to grab a new level and play it. I don't know if that's what I will do or not, but it's an idea i guess. Do you have any ideas how to make it more engaging?

<comment><USER5> that's the way I would go. but don't make the levels random, let the players choose them. and implement some scoring mechanism, so players can compare how they did on each level.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am planning on adding a scoring system, I haven't figured out how I want to do that yet though, time or what have you. Thanks for the input, I appreciate it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me a little bit of VVVVVV (thelettervsixtim.es).</comment>


Ask HN: More tech-oriented HN alternative? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes I think the amount of political/social/sales submissions is just to great and I would like something more technical to read.<p>What are your suggestions? <comment><USER3> Lobsters is more tightly focused, but has a lot less traffic and submissions.

So depending on what one means by "an HN alternative," maybe that fits. Maybe not.

I bet some folks could also recommend some good Reddits if you list what type tech is your thing. Some Reddits are really good, I just try to stay off the main front page which tends to be all the drama for which Reddit is infamous.

\---- Generic Lobsters invite info:

[https://lobste.rs/about](https://lobste.rs/about)

 _The quickest way to receive an invitation is to talk to someone you recognize from the site or request one in chat._

Chat info: [https://lobste.rs/chat](https://lobste.rs/chat)

<comment><USER4> Lobsters has working tagging and filtering system so you may simply filter "culture" out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One option for a more tech-oriented alternative to HN might be to try surfing the "new" page of HN. Quite a lot of tech stuff gets submitted but never makes the front page.

This also gives you a chance to help make the front page more of what you want by upvoting what you like.

Another option is Twitter. It puts the burden on you to do the curation, which is hard at first. But if you get following a good mix of people and accounts, it's a great way to find new tech content.

<comment><USER6> I've also found this to be a pattern and made a rendering[0] that orders by time or points independently rather than mixed. I can quickly scan down to around the low double-digits to see deeper stories of interest to fewer readers. Clicking the heading switches views, clicking clock/triangle changes ordering (in some places).

[0] [https://hackerer.news](https://hackerer.news)

<comment><USER7> > I can quickly scan down to around the low double-digits to see deeper > stories of interest to fewer readers

That sounds cool. Can you give some examples of interesting stories that you found this way, which you wouldn't have found otherwise.

<comment><USER6> By the very niche nature anything I choose will likely not be of interest to most but many may find something else interesting with similar age and points.

<comment><USER7> I think you might be underestimating how interested other people would be in those stories, and overestimating how much attention the newest page gets. Many fine submissions never reach the front page. We do a lot to try to mitigate that, but more is needed.

<comment><USER6> I'm just trying to find a way to increase the s/n ratio to how HN used to be where the front and subsequent pages had so much interesting content not reported elsewhere. Not complaining everything evolves but different people want different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The are a lot of niche subreddits which are very technical. Making an account and only adding those will get you a very tech home page. I am not talking about the mainstream ones like r/programming but more like r/haskell r/idris r/agda r/dependent_types etc (if you like programming; there are similar niche groups for other interests). They are low volume but together they are about the same throughput as HN but only technical.

It will take a while to find all that interests you; some only have posts once a week but are still worth it.

</comment><comment><USER9> I tend to agree and solved this for myself by building a small, self-hosted service that auto-hides Hacker News stories by title keyword/regex, site, or user. That way you can have more control over auto-curating your Hacker News page, instead of having to invest time in a whole new community. If you have a Raspberry Pi or small VM somewhere, consider giving it a try!

[https://github.com/barrowclift/hacker-news- cleanser](https://github.com/barrowclift/hacker-news-cleanser)

<comment><USER10> I'll also suggest [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) which helped me tremendously.

<comment><USER11> I always start looking at HN through hckrnews to reduce clutter. But I also check HN directly after this so that I don't miss something (more so when I'm just generally browsing around).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What do you consider 'more technical'?

HN has a decent amount of breadth and depth. I imagine you'd be able to find more depth (read: technical discussion) in listservs, subreddits, slack channels, and some niche forums. For example: [https://elixirforum.com/](https://elixirforum.com/)

But as far as breadth, every field can get technical. Person A might consider Physics and Math technical, while person B considers quantitative finance to be technical, while person C considers organic chemistry technical. Heck even farming can get technical[0]. There are few places that have quality posts from diverse backgrounds. Have you tried filtering out stuff you don't want to see on HN?

[https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/) is a great tool to do that. You can avoid terms using the `-` character see examples here: [https://hn.algolia.com/help](https://hn.algolia.com/help)

[0] Energy Discussions on a Permaculture Forum: [https://permies.com/forums/jforum?module=search&action=searc...](https://permies.com/forums/jforum?module=search&action=search&forum_id=-1&search_keywords=joules&match_type=all&search_in=ALL&forum=&groupByTopic=true&sort_by=time&sort_dir=DESC&search_date=ALL&member_number=&member_first_name=&member_last_name=&member_match_type=memberPosted)

<comment><USER13> I think he means there is too much NYT and WSJ, and not enough cool project or tech hacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://blog.acolyer.org](https://blog.acolyer.org) reviews a computer science (scientific) paper each week day and gives decent insight. Not really an alternative to HN, but the comments are usually high standard and often highly technical. As others have said, HN is good for serendipitous discovery of topics you may not have been looking for. However it can sometimes be an echochamber of superficial/similar comments.

</comment><comment><USER15> Would love to see more tech / entrepreneurial stories. It does seem there are a lot of political/privacy/bigcorp posts compared to back in the day (2009).

Edit: perfect example currently on the front page - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20179511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20179511)

How is this related to tech or entrepreneurship?

<comment><USER7> Please read the site guidelines. The first paragraph explains that HN is not just for tech and entrepreneurship ("includes more than hacking and startups").

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Re that example, it wasn't a great HN submission because it stokes indignation without teaching us anything new. Indignation is always good for upvotes, but it didn't last long on the front page.

<comment><USER15> Thanks Daniel! The site guidelines are great. I have read them previously but it seems I had forgotten the details of the relevant section:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Like most others, I'd step in and say Lobste.rs has fantastic submissions but quite thin in conversation compared to Hacker News, even in highly technical subjects. I suspect that's because you need to ask someone for an invite right now. Maybe they'd be better off just letting your HN account be enough social proof. Or maybe they're happy at that size, how am I to say otherwise?

It's hit and miss, but reddit is kinda nice in that you can subscribe to pretty narrowly focused, well moderated subreddits. I'm only familiar with the case of r/java. You actually get a really weird mix of really low and incredibly high quality posts and discussion. Half of what you get is what I assume are beginner programmers coming out of school or early junior programmers while the other half are \ _big names\_ in Java-land. Like people who work on, design, build and decide what goes into Java 10, 11, 12 etc. I know I'm biased and a bit of an HN snob about it, but that odd mix is part of why I never became a redditor or frequent the technical landscape there.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

<comment><USER18> Highly recommend this one. Has a really tight focus on high quality tech topics only.

<comment><USER19> I need an invite to this website

<comment><USER18> Let me know your email address and I can send you an invite

<comment><USER20> Can I get one too please? jgaphne at gmx dot com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Strong recommendation for [https://dev.to/](https://dev.to/)

They have great content and a great community and enough traction that they're not about to disappear.

<comment><USER22> It probably started as a way to _discuss_ more tech, but ended up being an RSS aggregator for Git hello world posts.

<comment><USER21> Might be changing a bit over there. I've been sending a lot of Medium authors there. Medium's paywall is a good deal, but not necessarily a fit for everyone. Of the programming oriented sites to publish on, Dev.to has the biggest community and the best community leaders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I would recommend [https://diff.blog](https://diff.blog) and [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)

</comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, the community/demographic seems like it has changed quite a bit since even a couple years ago. It's so politically charged these days, hardly anything that interests me (and what the fuck is the deal with this Boeing 737 fetish?). Privacy shit, security shit, cryptowankery, JavaScript shit, and the weird "motivational" posts? Seriously, my time wasting has really suffered under these changes.

Forgot to add: sleep shit. What's up with that?

<comment><USER25> I don't want to sound like a snob (but will go ahead and do so anyway) - <USER2> has been a noticeable Redditification of HN over the past year. More so in comments than the submissions. We're not into the puns and meme trains territory just yet, but the shifts to conversational style and vibe are unmistakable.

To actually answer OP's question - Lobste.rs is worth a look. It can be quite technical, if a bit on the dry side. It's public, but accounts are by invite only. That said, if anyone might be able to extend an invite (to myself, OP, or both), that would be much appreciated indeed.

<comment><USER26> > Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a > semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

Source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER25> > It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

I know the source says that, but wouldn't mind seeing some elaboration on why that is the case. If the `newsguidelines` made a point of mentioning it, there's perhaps some merit to this "illusion".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. The problem is that once a platform gets slightly popular, journalists, NGOs, PR, foreign actors, think tanks, etc sneak in and push their wares ( sometimes with the help of the forums themselves ). Slashdot might be worth a look but I gave up on them years ago.

The problem is that so much of "tech" forums, magazines, sites, etc are not run by "techies" but agenda driven media people masquerading as "techies". TheVerge, arstechnica, etc being prime examples.

My advice is to browse the "new" section of HN for the interesting tech/science/hack stuff. But unfortunately, most of the interesting stuff has no traffic or discussion. But maybe that's a good thing.

<comment><USER7> HN has never been "all tech oriented".

<comment><USER27> I didn't say HN was "all tech oriented". Please stop misquoting me. I said "There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. Meaning "HN was tech oriented", "reddit was tech oriented", "digg was tech oriented", etc.

I didn't say HN was all tech. My point was that HN was tech oriented like reddit, digg, etc.

<comment><USER7> Ah, I see that I misbound that pesky "all". Sorry! But the point is more or less the same. Actually, let me reply to all your points.

HN isn't less tech-oriented now than it used to be. The mix of topics fluctuates, but within a stable range which has been about the same since pg renamed Startup News to Hacker News 12 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html). That announcement is where this language originated: " _That includes a lot more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._" Anyone who's read the HN guidelines should recognize that.

We've put a ton of effort into countering wares-pushing. If you think you see a story that is only on HN's front page because "journalists, NGOs, PR, foreign actors, think tanks, etc" are sneaking it in, you should let us know right away at firstname.lastname@example.com.

I don't know if we count as "techies" in your book but if there's one thing I'm sure we're not, it's "agenda driven media people".

If "most of the interesting stuff has no traction or discussion", you could help out a lot by upvoting it. That's at least an easier problem to solve than interesting things not getting submitted in the first place.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Staff in open plan offices are fitter and less stressed - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/money/2018/aug/20/staff-in-open-plan-offices-are-fitter-and-less-stressed <comment><USER2> But somehow most people here think that open space is bad for programmers because of noise and movement and whatever.

I love open space, move around, talk to people and when I have to focus I have good headphones to help me.</comment>


HTTPS Certificate and SSH Key Reuse Endangers Millions of Devices Worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sec-consult.com/2015/11/house-of-keys-industry-wide-https.html <comment><USER2> Before someone goes into the typical "they don't get security" tirade we need to bring some reality to the table.

Lets say these devices all do the perfect thing and when first fired up generate their very own device signed public / private key pair. So what? How does this make them more secure if the device cannot provide the public to the end-user so they can match it to the one they got in the SSH or HTTPS connection before they establish that connection? The problem here is a chicken or the egg one, plain and simple. If they accept the security warnings and connect to the device, a man in the middle can simply tamper with the encrypted traffic so that when they view the device cert, it's the one they see in the connection. This I'm afraid is the elephant in the room when it comes to device connectivity over protocols utilizing public / private key cryptography.

Of course this problem can be solved, but I would propose that it wouldn't be cheap in many cases and doesn't really solve the problem. For devices with no display output the manufacturer could fire the device up on the product line and then obtain the public after it is generated. They could then print it out or save it to a USB drive and put it in the box with the device. Ultimately; however, the end user getting the device will have no idea what that paper or USB drive is and it will be promptly ignored anyway and browser or SSH security warnings will be accepted just as they are today.

The assumption for all of these products should be that they are untrustworthy until made trustworthy, even if they are generating their own unique key material. With that in mind they should be configured on isolated, trusted networks until which point they are secured. The only way to make them secure is if they can generate unique key material or accept organizational key material and then the connections are validated before establishing encrypted communication with the devices. Ideally this means having an organizational PKI program that can issue certificates to devices which are then validated against an organizational root CA or exporting the device generated public and importing it into hosts which will be used to connect with the device.

This I belive is the conversation we need to be having here.</comment>


Show HN: Login-With Oauth Microservice for Twitter, Facebook, GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://login-with.now.sh/ <comment><USER2> I'm really no expert and therefore my opinion is irrelevant, but is putting all your authentication details in one place that great an idea?</comment>


6 Credit Card Processing Facts Nobody Tells You - <AUTHOR> http://letsfreckle.com/blog/2008/12/ecommerce-stuff/ <comment><USER2> If you're doing test charges for SAAS, you're doing it wrong.

The subscription is worthless without you flipping a little bit in your database somewhere, right? You could flip that little bit at any time if you suspected the account was fraudulent, right? Great news. Assume everybody is telling the truth that they're authorized, even if they fail AVS. If the charge is later disputed, rescind it and (optionally) lock the account. If it is not later disputed, hey, it must have been authorized.

This is time tracking not file hosting -- scamming 25 days out of the provider doesn't provide you any benefit. You should expect fraud rates to be negligible.

Why is locking the account optional? Well, really, clanging the doors shut on a legitimate paying customer is a lot worse for you than letting 10 illegitimate people take up another record in your database.

(Oh noes, how will I scale with invalid records in my database?! Oh wait, I charge people money which means I scale practically by definition.)

So sure, give people a few extra days to get their details re-entered before you shut down their access. The time is free to you.

In my business (selling downloadable software), after I have handed over the Registration Key the horse is out of the barn... and I could care less. They're free to me. You can try paying me with an e-check, which is basically a promise that 5 days from now you'll have money in a checking account ready for me, and e-checks come with NO verification for those 5 days. I'll still give you the key as soon as you hit the submit button. If you were dishonest or fumble-fingered your account number... oh well? Paypal will send you an email to retype it, if you do that is great, if not then I'm not out any money am I.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really simply a decision based on how you wish to operate your business, don't you think? We've decided to require CCs up front based on a number of factors.

Doesn't make the pains of validating and charging CCs any less.

<comment><USER3> If you require CCs up front, charge a set-up fee - that's easier to explain to potential customers (a well accepted concept, whereas test charges sound shady to most non-geeks, and even to some geeks). And it makes you more money. So long as the set-up fee is reasonable, people are unlikely to mind. They expect to whip out their credit card when they buy something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's one: American Express charges 1% higher than Visa and Mastercard, and is brutal to businesses when a customer tries to chargeback a legit charge. And yet, unless you're in a very low margin business, it's profitable to take AMEX because they have an excellent clientbase that you really want.

I thought about it a lot, decided I couldn't beat 'em, so I might as well join 'em, and got an AMEX Gold Card. The reason AMEX gives you all kinds of crazy- awesome rewards and bonuses and great customer services is because they stick it to business. 1% of gross is HUGE. If you have 10% profit margins independent of credit card processing, you lose 20% of your profits to Visa/MC, or 30% to AMEX. Someone's going to slay the credit card company beast someday, because they're evil and don't add that much value to business for what they charge, but we don't have free authenticated ACS debits yet.

So yeah, you need to take AMEX unless you're low-margin or the only game in town and very necessary. And they scalp you, but you suck it up.

<comment><USER4> Also for people without a business background: Gross profit is what you charge (Hamburger at Burger King: $1). Net profit is the money you make from it after you pay costs. Burger King doesn't make $1 per burger, since they have to buy meat, ship it to their stores, have it prepared, etc. Losing 3 cents out of every dollar to AMEX instead of 2 cents to Visa/MC doesn't sound like much, but it's huge if you're only making 5 cents per burger.

That's why fast food didn't take credit cards for so long - I hear the CC companies inked deals at lower than normal rates for some huge-volume small- margin companies like Walmart, McDonald's, etc. The credit card companies want more widespread use of their cards so people start using them for everything. As a small merchant, you're not going to get that and it's yucky. It's part of the game right now unfortunately, but that AMEX additional 1% of GROSS is really huge in many industries.

<comment><USER5> Same with Sam's Club/Costco kind of places. Their margins are below what those credit cards charge out of the gate (except for Discover) but their order volume is so high that they were able to negotiate with at least Visa or Mastercard.

<comment><USER6> Actually, Costco does NOT take credit cards, with the only exception being Amex.

They will takea Visa/Mastercard Debit card, but you have to enter the PIN. Debit charges are processed at a lower rate, since they're essentially an interface for ACH, and having a valid 4-digit PIN entered (plus buying stuff on a membership card) supposedly eliminates fraud.

(I was there this past weekend to capitalize on their great deals on flat screens.)

<comment><USER5> They don't take Discover? I'm surprised. Sam's now takes that and Mastercard. I would think Costco's superior volume could get them an awesome deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have to disagree with the general feeling and the details of this.

 _1\. The web sites for credit card processors & merchant account services are completely useless_

That depends on the site. Protx has awesome documentation at <http://techsupport.protx.com/> (see the "Advice" bit on the left). I'd even use it when building for other providers, because much of it is very generic.

 _3\. Address verification (AVS) is voodoo_

All the verification systems are voodoo (except the security number). Hell, even the credit card number is voodoo. Why? Because the customer could have made a mistake while typing them in. The bank lets you decide how to handle it. That is a little unclear to most cc processing beginners, but it can be resolved easily: use 3D-secure. This shifts the liability back onto the bank and you don't have to worry about that crap anymore.

 _4\. Test charges are pretty much unavoidable_

Both of the times I've had to build a cc processing system, I haven't needed "test charges". If you really need to verify a card ahead of time, don't use test charges, charge a proper setup fee. Why do you think so many sites charge setup fees?

 _6\. Errors are incomprehensible and your credit card processor is useless at helping you solve validation issues._

Dunno what kind of merchant they're using... I get descriptive errors from my accounts.

 _7\. When you ask why stuff doesn't work, even due to Stuff Nobody Told You, they think you're kinda dumb._

Again, it goes back to the first point... get a better provider that has decent documentation.

Credit card processing is a pain, but it's not that terribly hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> The stuff listed in the article is true for one of the most popular / well- supported processing gateways, Auth.net. If there are better alternatives, we sure weren't able to find them. Their biggest competitor is TrustCommerce and they seem to have the same web site, information, support problems.

<comment><USER7> We use Auth.net with one of our clients who processes an order about every 5 minutes around the clock. They started with LinkPoint which was horrible (bad support/high failure rates), and Auth.net is like a vacation in comparison.

<comment><USER8> Can I ask approximately what your client's failure rate is with Auth.net? This is a problem we're struggling with - out of 10 different payment attempts, we get maybe 1 successful payment (yes, some of the attempts are bogus, but that still seems pretty bad). It might be worth switching to Auth.net or something else, but the only reason would be the failure rates, and that information isn't very easy to find.

<comment><USER3> Failure of what? legit transactions? Are you saying that there are times when someone enters data that you know is correct and it still fails you?

That should never happen.

If you have full AVS checking, you might hit against the incapability of most users (quite understandably) to type in their address exactly the same way as on their credit card bill. For this reason, we (at my previous start-up) disregarded the address part of the verification (but still required post code and CCV2). Address failures aren't a good indication of fraud, since most legit users will mistype their address.

<comment><USER8> Well, the payments seem to fail for every possible reason imaginable (and many of the error messages aren't very descriptive), so it feels like death by a thousand cuts. The problem is that we're new to this game, and reliable information seems surprisingly difficult to find. Maybe it's perfectly normal to see 9 out of 10 people entering bad information or carders trying out numbers, but that seems high to me, and tech support has been useless.

We'll look into what AVS options we have available, and I'm also reading through the Protx link you posted.

<comment><USER3> This is a bit lengthy to debug via HN comments, but feel free to chat me on IRC (freenode), where I hang out as (predictably) swombat for a chat about this, I might be able to help in figuring out what's going on since I've implemented 2 such systems already...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We are in the Online Travel Industry, for people who dont know the forward book and high possibility of cancellations (Chargebacks) makes travel regarded in the same category as Adult Porn and Online Gambling sites in terms of risk.

It has taken us 7 months to get a card merchant facility, the bonding and legal registration requirements alone for trading are pretty damn difficult within the UK so following this we were hit with little or no co-operation from Merchant facilities, despite holding an IATA bonded Licence, UK TTA Licence and ATOL Licence, literally no card acquirers would touch a new travel startup it really shed some light on the way the industry can make or break a business. Common conversations would start with..."what sector"...."online Travel"..."oh we dont like that..sorry"!

If I were aware of the utter disdain towards travel companies worldwide from card merchant services then I certainly would not have gone into the sector.

Suffice to say we eventually got our card acquirer 2 weeks ago after 7 months of applications!, we eventually tried 7 UK merchant services & high street banks, 7 offshore merchant services - Panama / Belize / Delaware / Amsterdam / Estonia / China / Cayman Islands and were not even entertained by Google Checkout / Paypal / Neteller!!

Additionally to give you guys an idea, our margin is about 10-12% of the Total Transaction Value, on the two occasions we actually got to terms of business they wanted a 10% rolling reserve for 6months (our margin!!) and on top would require a rate of 5.5% on credit AND debit cards!! therefore for each transaction when charging the customer a 2% CC fee we would infact be losing 3.5%. A completely unworkable situation, in essence...we've seen your business plan and your financials and if you want to trade your gonna have to bootstrap and borrow for your first year at least!!

Luckily we have managed to find an excellent company in Moneybookers who are very open to negotiation...terms started at 180 rolling reserve of 10%, we have negotiated down to 45 days and 3% Rolling Reserve and a credit card rate of 1.9% which given our margins is MUCH more workable!!

Sorry if this sounds like an anti merchant rant but when i saw this topic I had to share the problems we have experienced, after finishing complete integration with 45 xml suppliers, building a custom platform and new social media elements for travel and obtaining every licence under the sun its literally been 7 months of uncertainty and hell while we have had a fully working site just sat there!!

Rant over!! lol

<comment><USER10> Can anyone explain the reason for these attitudes? Is it just because expected fraud rates for that particular industry are higher?

<comment><USER9> Its not that the fraud rates are high but rather that if an airline or supplier in the chain fails then the credit card company are liable for the refund to the customer. The Risk lies with them.

So for example XL Airways going bust earlier this year had a massive impact on the merchant service provider as where products werent sufficiently bonded the liability lay with them.

In such a high value turnover industry I can understand the risk element to the credit card company, but you would assume that becoming a member of 3 required bodies with bonding in place would be adequate! Clearly not in 99% of the cases!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another fact: everything is negotiable, once you have enough volume. So if you're building a serious business, don't worry if the first merchant account charges fees that eat into your profit margin. Once you get the volume up to a few million a year you'll have the leverage you need to negotiate a better deal.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd take a serious look at Braintree for credit card processing <http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/>. I'm not affiliated, we're a customer that uses them for processing. Reading stories like this, I'm glad we do.

When we signed up they gave us a heads-up on almost every one of these facts (i.e. warning us up front to authorize a minimum of a dollar or many banks would reject it). They called AMEX on our behalf to get the service hooked up so we didn't have to. They've also given us tons of technical advice, like how to improve accuracy on AVS checks and details on what some of the esoteric failure codes really mean.

<comment><AUTHOR> Last time I looked they have a minimum bar of $250,000 of business a month, or they're not interested in you. Thus not an option for people starting out.

<comment><USER13> Not true.

We use Braintree and they're great. We're not doing $250k/mo yet but had no problems getting signed up with them back in May.

We also helped a partner company get setup with BT recently. They're doing < $50K a month IIRC.

Have not run into most of the problems mentioned in the OP.

<comment><USER14> And, dare I ask without sounding like a complete user, what would you use if you were only doing < $1000/month. Would a credit card processor even touch you or is it basically just paypal?

<comment><USER12> Paypal and Google Checkout are both good alternative options to look at. In some cases when you factor in all of the upstream credit card processing charges you'll even pay less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Regarding issues 4 and 5, I had this happen to me recently when a service tried to charge my card 1 pence (GBP) to check the validity of my card.

The bank said they fail these transactions on fraud protection, as many fraudsters will try a very small charge first to see if a card works.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another one...

AmEx will cancel your business credit card account if you test AmEx charges on your merchant gateway with your AmEx business credit card.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've used the Auth.net live support option several times and have always gotten the information I've needed much quicker than calling.

As far as test charges go, Auth.net has a "test" mode, and since they batch daily, you can charge whatever you want and then just void it before the batch even when it's in live mode. I don't see any issues there or why you have to worry about 'small charges' either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really, they usually won't talk to me unless it's about a web interface question. They keep telling me to call them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Merchant Services is a relatively shady and EXTREMELY cut throat industry. The good news is that you have tons of options and can play providers against each other. The bad news is that some places are shady with their terms and hidden fees. If you're thinking of doing a lot of $$$ volume, it's very much worth spending some time and talking to as many people as possible.

</comment><comment><USER18> >> 2\. If you want to process AmEx, you have to call them directly...

This is not true when using Paypal Payflow Pro or Website Payments Pro for your merchant account.

<comment><USER8> Well, if you happen to be using Website Payments Pro UK or Canada as opposed to US, they don't bother mentioning they don't support AmEx and Discover until you call them and ask why the payments aren't going through.</comment></comment>


AMC Theaters to go public using Social IPO Platform Loyal3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.homesforhackers.com/AMC_Stubs_Email_about_stock.png

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I just received this email as a Stubs member of AMC Theaters. The link embedded in the email goes to: [https://ipo.loyal3.com/amc](https://ipo.loyal3.com/amc)</comment>


Realistic Predictions for the 2020's - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kentonpalmer7/realistic-predictions-for-the-2020s-b76208bddf83 <comment><USER2> > Notice American tax revenue to GDP is only 27%, which is low compared to > many developed nations.

Total government tax revenue is about 32% to 33% of GDP.

fy2020 Federal: $3.65t; State: $2.1t; Local: $1.4t

Out of an economy roughly $22.x trillion in size for fy2020.

Those all must be counted as they each provide useful, typically different, government services at various levels and are paid for via taxation.

Total government spending is equal to about 37% to 38% of GDP (throw an extra trillion x in spending on the Federal number). This figure in particular is much closer to being aligned with typical OECD developed nations.

The deficit spending up at 37-38% comes out of American pockets one way or another regardless of taxation, via future currency debasement, QE infinite.

A VAT is a horrific idea and is wildly regressive. The very, very obvious tax change the US needs to make is also very simple: raise taxes on the top ~25%. And particularly raise taxes by a lot on the top 10%. There's absolutely no need to introduce a VAT when the US system is already perfectly well set up to boost taxation by a lot through its existing levers and the US system has immense slack income taxation potential. In most of the US you have to make around $600,000 to $700,000 per year before your total tax rate hits 40%. You can go make $5m, $20m, $60m per year and stay around 45% (higher in CA, NYC, etc). That's obviously going to change in the next 10-15 years.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right about the tax numbers, I was referencing 2018 data, so I'll update that. Also I don't disagree with what you said about the deficit spending, I do believe that the long term solution is shrinking government spending, but I don't think that will be politically feasible in the next recession.

As far as a VAT goes, you could adjust the VAT to fall heavily on certain items, but in many ways you're right. My point in that statement was to find a way to tax large corporations. I don't think the US tax code is "perfectly set up to boost taxation" when one of the largest growth sectors pays such low rates. Also the top 25% already pay quite high tax rates, and this option is also politically infeasible at least right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> These are fun to discuss. I do think it's more interesting to discuss broader trends than individual politicians. Even if Trump loses, for example, there's likely to continue to be serious populist, "anti multicultural" (to put it lightly) political forces to contend with across the globe in 2020s.

Moreover elites will continue to assume that demographics will eventually solve this problem, and continue to be disappointed when this doesn't come true. All you have to do is look at slowing immigration in the US and how previous Democratic constituencies continue to switch towards the populist Republican messaging.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I think the days of someone like Yang polling 5% in some places, but getting left out of tons of media, pushed aside on the debate stage, etc will come to an end. The media generally pretends like Bernie Sanders doesn't exist, and they acted like Trump had zero vision or capability from day one. To sum is up that arrogance has to end for them to remain relevant. The antics need to end, too. Currently it looks like the DNC and media have systematically propped up candidates one by one (Buttigeg, Biden, Warren, Harris, Klobuchar) in order to split the vote and take it to super delegates the same way it was done in 2016 with Bernie. I don't agree with any of them, but for the DNC and media to stay relevant things need to change.</comment></comment>


A Baltimore police officer accidentally recorded himself planting drugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/19/15999806/baltimore-police-body-camera <comment><USER2> > He apparently didn't realize that body cameras often save the last 30 > seconds of footage before they're manually activated. So all of that > preparation for his big faux discovery was caught on tape.

Why do we even allow cops on duty with the camera off? Why do we give them the choice of when it will be turned on?

Apart from going to the washroom, or going off duty to eat lunch, I say the cameras should record constantly.

<comment><USER3> > Why do we even allow cops on duty with the camera off? Why do we give them > the choice of when it will be turned on?

Presumably argued as concern for the privacy of the police themselves. I can imagine the police unions fighting tooth and nail to maintain the right to decide when cameras are recording because otherwise there is going to be a lot of crap like this for them to deal with.

Personally, I think they should always be on, always be recording both audio and video, and continuously uploading the footage to servers controlled by a third party agency that is not in the direct or indirect control of the local police or district attorney's office. Footage would be archived for a preset amount of time (1 year? 5 years?) and then destroyed (by deleting the crypto key that's used to encrypt it). During the "active" window either the prosecutor or the defendant could request access to any or all footage of the police around the timeline of an incident.

Outside of that, it should require a warrant to view the footage. The goal isn't to turn this into a fishing expedition to turn over prior dirt on the police that apprehended you. An investigation like that by internal affairs would require a warrant as well.

<comment><USER4> It needs to be a lot longer than 5 years; The Innocence Project[1]'s fairly regular overturning of convictions that are decades old suggest such controlled destruction would inevitably destroy evidence. Additionally, unless there was some guaranteed way to permanently prevent the destruction of video marked "of interest", the video could be destroyed simply through delaying tactics by the force under investigation.

[1] [https://www.innocenceproject.org](https://www.innocenceproject.org)

<comment><USER3> > It needs to be a lot longer than 5 years; The Innocence Project[1]'s fairly > regular overturning of convictions that are decades old suggest such > controlled destruction would inevitably destroy evidence.

I'm not sure what the duration answer is, hence the guesses as examples. I don't think it should be indefinite either. Again, the problem we're solving is providing evidence of what occurred at a specific incident, not retroactively creating a Truman Show out of the lives of any involved police.

IMHO, working in law enforcement requires you give up some of your privacy rights in exchange for a local monopoly on the use of force. It shouldn't mean you lose all of them permanently.

> Additionally, unless there was some guaranteed way to permanently prevent > the destruction of video marked "of interest", the video could be destroyed > simply through delaying tactics by the force under investigation.

That's why I specifically call out having an entirely separate entity control the storage and dissemination. The video can't be public by default for a host of reasons (for starters, the privacy of both the police and non-police that are recorded) but it also shouldn't be able to be held hostage by the law enforcement bodies that may be held accountable by it.

<comment><USER5> > not retroactively creating a Truman Show out of the lives of any involved > police.

I don't understand this objection. Police officers are generally presumed to be honest by jurors. If there is evidence that this presumption is unreasonable, then it is definitely relevant.

<comment><USER3> > I don't understand this objection. Police officers are generally presumed to > be honest by jurors. If there is evidence that this presumption is > unreasonable, then it is definitely relevant.

Do you expect every recording, video, audio, and statement made by a police officer involved in a case, at any point in his service, and unrelated to the crime at hand, to be provided to the defense?

Going through someone's history to find dirt is the definition of a fishing expedition. With enough footage, speech, and actions, you could find incriminating evidence on anybody.

If there's accusations that a police officer is dishonest, lying under oath, planting evidence, or really anything else illegal, then internal affairs should be investigating them. They'd require a warrant just like anybody else to get access to the historical records (and I think they should get it). But not just any random person that wants to dig dirt on Officer Joe because he busted him for public urination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> Body cameras don't always work out as many activists envisioned. Last week, the officer who shot Justine Damond in Minneapolis and his partner didn't turn on their cameras, leaving us in the dark about what exactly happened in the case. This week, prosecutors in Cincinnati dropped charges against former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing after two mistrials — even though body camera footage clearly showed that the man Tensing shot, Samuel DuBose, never posed a threat to him._

Cameras work out exactly as advocates said they would - exposing how corrupt police forces can be. Police officers not turning on their cameras or judges disregarding clear evidence is what's not working out.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes, but not often. Cops seem to lose the in-car footage anytime it reveals something damaging to them. Also, "inadmissable as evidence" happens to damning footage as well.

Judges and DAs side with the cops because there is no real impartiality. One protects the other because it's a machine designed for domination of the citizenry and it works extremely well. Look how many cases get plead out instead of going to trial.

I don't hate cops or anything, I just see the system for what it is. I don't know how we do better, but it's tiring to watch. It's the same way I feel about our Congress--all these establishment politicians doing work for big donors and working against the interests of the public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchers?

I've heard about drugs being planted before, but I think there was always some doubt in my mind that it was just an excuse by those being prosecuted. This is the first time I've seen solid evidence that it's real. That is fucking terrible! How many times has this happened and put innocent people in prison? We can't let this continue to happen when the cameras are off. We need these cameras everywhere and we need them on all the time.

<comment><USER9> it happens a lot. i think the misunderstanding is that we the citizenry think that the police should held to certain standards of objectivity, that each citizen is presumed innocent, and there is a legal framework that very carefully evaluates guilt before taking punitive action.

the police think are they fighting a war where people don't wear uniforms and intermix freely. part of their job is to put on one side of the front or the other, a citizen or a criminal. once you are determined to be a criminal the goal is to first and foremost instill fear and compliance. after that as many bad people as possible should be sent away - cleaning up the streets.

unless this context is changed, extra-legal tactics like planting drugs and overt police brutality won't go away. and if those things continue to be part of the job, then obviously cameras aren't acceptable.

unfortunately, as horrified as i am, i'm not sure i can judge this war perspective as unconditionally wrong.

<comment><USER10> Very interesting to read this comment immediately after this one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14813206)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That cop should get the same punishment that he tried to foist on the innocent man.

The level of crime we tolerate from "law enforcement" is astonishing. Why do people no longer care about justice?

<comment><USER12> >tried to foist on the innocent man

I'm not sure if that's the case. The article seems to be saying that they did actually find the drugs in the alley, and the officer was essentially recreating the finding of the drugs using his body camera. Obviously that isn't an acceptable way of using the body camera, and it has the unfortunate effect of causing the case of a potentially guilty drug-dealer to be dropped.

<comment><USER13> Why wouldn't the initial search be conducted with the body cam on? This is falsifying evidence, whether the person was guilty or not.

<comment><USER12> Presumably because he didn't know they were going to find anything. We already know he didn't know about the 30 second thing. If he did, it wouldn't have been a problem, he wouldn't have needed to do the recreation at all.

I'm saying it was possibly illegal but not amoral. There is a difference. Compare to planting drugs to frame someone innocent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The cop who did this is being disciplined right now but not the other two cops who stood right there and watched him do it.

</comment><comment><USER15> What sometime happens in cases like that is that the officer's previous arrests are gone through, and many of them thrown out as unsafe. Which is harsh and the police force concerned will absolutely hate. But that's too bad; if you don't want that outcome then don't plant evidence.

<comment><USER16> Exactly if cops aren't held accountable they're just another gang.

<comment><USER17> Replace "if" with "as long as".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> While I think the cop in the video deserves discipline and/or dismissal and/or criminal charges, and the person accused deserves a stronger than usual presumption of innocence, the video is not hard evidence that the cop planted drugs. He may have been simply recreating his previous discovery of the drugs.

I've watched lots of youtube videos of rock hunters recreating their discoveries on camera for the sake of drama and upvotes, often admitting it. Police are surely affected by similar incentives.

The above argument is brought to you by someone who thinks that all drugs should be legalized, and that all cops who work to enforce drug laws are acting immorally.

<comment><USER19> Someone re-enacting a scene for entertainment purposes is one thing. The police should absolutely not be "recreating" events and passing them off as the actual occurrence. This is one step away from using reenactments on Unsolved Mysteries as actual evidence for the crime. Whatever bits the cop wanted to add in or leave out, if it became acceptable for them to recreate evidence in this way, how would we ever be able to manage that?

Seems like most people agree that this behavior is bogus, and that cops shouldn't be fabricating or recreating evidence. And even if some do-gooder was doing so innocently, they probably shouldn't forget to mention that that video was a recreation, not actual evidence. That's an oops that cop and his dept will have to address while they're making excuses for it.</comment></comment>


Scoble gives more PR tips - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.com/2008/05/25/brian-solis-and-loic-le-meurs-real-pr-secrets/

<comment><USER2> it's the PR tips week!

<comment><AUTHOR> *day</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are ongoing stimulus and extra jobless benefits economically dangerous? - <AUTHOR> If you look at the US Dollar Index, the dollar is losing value against a basket of other international currencies at a fairly rapid pace. US Dollar Index tracks the price of the dollar against a basket of international currencies: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/dxy<p>Just wondering if anyone on HN has any takes on this topic. <comment><USER2> It may be more related to the death count, and subsequent trust in the administration. It's complicated, and a mix of opinions, betting and hedging. You are certainly part right but I don't think it's a majority.

</comment><comment><USER3> That would surely have more to do with the USA's general inability to deal with Covid?

<comment><AUTHOR> What is 'that' ?

<comment><USER3> "the dollar is losing value against a basket of other international currencies at a fairly rapid pace."

<comment><AUTHOR> Right but that is a result of stimulus, and an increasing deficit, giving people (international economic agents) less faith in the value of the dollar. Sure, these things are related to the economic effects of the pandemic, but I was trying to focus on the longer term effects of the economic relief that's being done and less about the semantics of whether we should have done stimulus to deal with the pandemic (which seems like a reasonable thing to have done).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How China Is Buying Its Way into Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-china-business-in-europe/ <comment> temp-dude-87844 Not all of these buys are the same kind, and the same risk: Chinese money parked in prime office space is perhaps frustrating to some, but isn't functionally any different than Qatari money, or Saudi money, or random Central Asian Republic money owning half of London.

Infrastructure and resource-related facilities are an entire other concern: ports, power plants, mines, refineries: there's a national security concern here with the inconvenient subtext that China is potential geopolitical adversary, but there's been years and years of private ownership of critical infrastructure in Europe and it was always naively assumed that worrying about conflict of interest in ownership was never going to be necessary. It's somewhat ironic that free trade was apparently okay when Germans and Austrians were buying up Eastern European banks, or when the Spanish were buying up mines, or the Americans buying steel plants, but is suddenly worrisome when the Chinese want to renovate railways.

The truth, of course, is more nuanced. Europe is noticing the influx of foreign money and asking, what's their ulterior motive, if anything? It's relatively easy to file Qatar or Saudi Arabia as genuine investors looking to accumulate money to diversify from petrodollars, and even accept their attempts to buy mindshare and increase their profile in the hearts and minds of average Europeans, but it seems outlandish that those states would try to leverage their foreign ownership in shows of might that go way beyond that. Meanwhile, some are concerned that in a particular turn of events, China might try to do just that. People put themselves into China's shoes, and it certainly _seems_ more plausible.

<comment><USER2> Outside of Europe, China has also been lending huge amounts to developing countries with corrupt and incompetent governments. When those borrowers inevitably default years from now, China will have a lot of leverage including the ability to buy their votes in the UN in exchange for debt forgiveness. I suspect it's a long-term play to generate some international legitimacy around their ambitions to seize more territory.

<comment><USER3> Because europe and the US haven't ... ?

<comment><USER4> i guess that's the point - china out-us-ed the US and out-europed Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's weird the map is shaded by number of deals rather than amount of money invested, or even amount of money per-capita or vs GDP. Portugal for example with 8.6B invested would in my mind be darker (and taking into account GDP) than Spain with 7.1B, although Spain has a higher number of deals.

</comment><comment><USER6> >> are pressing for a common strategy to handle China's relentless advance into Europe...

I guess I missed something. When exactly did we decide that China advancing on Europe was a bad thing? Was that before or after the trade deals? Was it before or after every world leader went to china begging for them to invest in western economies? If we are going to have some grand plan to deal with something, we need to first decide whether the thing is good or bad. We haven't done that. Do we want to limit China's spread or not? I have my opinion, but my opinion is not consensus. Before we move to limit China's growth, I want to see the open statement as to why that growth is a bad thing.

At the moment stories like this seems to take for granted that the reader will understand it as some nebulous evil that must be addressed. I worry that that assumption relies upon fears that we dare not express openly. Gut feeling and "smell tests" are too often cover for darker motivations. Few complain about middle eastern or american companies buying up europe. What exactly is so different about China?

<comment><USER7> > What exactly is so different about China?

The companies are fully or partially state owned, so the political pressure may be greater. [https://qz.com/1000541/norway-wants-china-to-forget-about- th...](https://qz.com/1000541/norway-wants-china-to-forget-about-the-human- rights-thing-and-eat-salmon-instead/)

You do not want to give too much power to a single actor. Doesn't matter if this is China, USA, EU.

<comment><AUTHOR> A recent write-up of some of the political complexities and problems cropping up from China's broadening influence over parts of Europe:

"Greece was one of the early flashpoints for Germany's concern about the growing competition from China. Benefiting from Beijing's large direct investments, Greece blocked last June an EU statement at the United Nations about China's repressive human rights policies."

"Hungary, where China is building a high-speed railway line from Budapest to Belgrade, joined Greece to block another EU statement criticizing China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, after The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled against Beijing in July 2016."

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/16/chinas-growing-economic- pres...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/16/chinas-growing-economic-presence-in- eu-causing-concern--commentary.html)

<comment><USER8> For Greece, just like when they were begging in the street, all his neighbors are not care. At that time, someone from far east helped them to avoid the bankruptcy. As the return, they helped the friends if there is any chance. And right now his neighbors blamed him that he should not help that far east friend. What the fuck?

<comment><USER9> China's not your friend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Look through the typical house in Europe or practically anywhere else in the world. Note how many things are made in China - clothing, TV, furniture, appliances, etc. All that money has to go somewhere. Ideally, it would flow back into that original country as investment.

<comment><USER11> >> Ideally, it would flow back into that original country as investment.

That's what taxes are for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No surprise there, if you look at the trade surplus China has.

They send us a few million metric tons of stuff each year and we give them a few numbers in a computer in exchange (USD or EUR).

Now they try to get something real for a small part of those fiat numbers. If they were serious and sold all their treasury bonds (1.2 Trillion USD) they could probably buy all beach-front properties in the US.

1.2 Trillion USD buys you 1/20th of all US real estate (estimated at 25 Trillion USD in 2013), or it buys you 1/8-th share of all NASDAQ companies.

</comment><comment><USER13> China is overflowing with investment money and its findings home in properties around the world with stability, reliability and great potential for returns. Why should this be concerning? I bet one can make similar article on foreign investments in China.

<comment><USER14> Why is China overflowing with investment money? Where does it all come from?

<comment><USER15> Simplification: When americans and europeans buy chinese products then china has dollars/euro and we have physical goods. Dollars/euros can only be used to invest into usa/european companies or to buy usa/european products.

<comment><USER16> On top of that: Chinese financial markets are strictly controlled and the rates of return on safe investments like bank deposits are artificially kept down. Chinese citizens have very few trustworthy investment options outside of housing or sole-proprietor entrepreneurship, and the latter is only feasible for the politically connected.

<comment><USER17> Are non politically connected Chinese citizens sitting on any money to invest?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's so funny how propaganda works. When we do it, we call it investing. When china does it, the propagandists spin it as something nefarious or underhanded - "buying it's way into europe".

<comment><USER11> There is a difference between state investments and private investments...or better said between private investors and a communist state "investor"

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article has an undertone of China "taking over" the west, as it raises a "red flag at the European Union level".

Yet if you look at the data objectively, Chinese companies (both private and state-owned) are just playing by the rules of the western market economy. They are purchasing and investing, playing the capitalist game just like everybody else.

The west also has state-owned enterprises. In Canada, we call them crown corporations (e.g., Bombardier). Yet whenever a corporation is owned by a western government, tons of waste happens and somehow our companies rarely make products that are competitive with the global market. They are just not competitive.

So it seems to me that China and their companies are playing the capitalist game better than EU, and the core of EU are being sour grapes.</comment>


Debug node.js applications on Windows with iisnode integrated debugging - <AUTHOR> http://tomasz.janczuk.org/2011/11/debug-nodejs-applications-on-windows.html <comment><USER2> iisnode is one of my top 3 favorite projects of the year. In my experience with hosting a few production Node apps on Ubuntu and on Windows, I'll be hosting future Node apps on Windows any time I can (i.e. when they don't rely on C modules). There's no comparison. I highly recommend checking it out if you're working with Node and have a Windows server handy.</comment>


MIT and CERN's secure webmail plan stumped by PayPal freeze - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/01/proton_mail_caught_by_paypal_processing_freeze/

<comment><USER2> The second meeting took place in October 1988 at a summer resort in Western Virginia, sad and grey this particular autumn. The Americans turned up in force. Bill Bostwick, from the Department of Energy was the Chairman, Barry Leiner from the Department of Defense and Vint Cerf were present. The European representatives were thin on the ground: a German and British representative plus Francois Flückiger.

In 1991, 80% of the internet capacity in Europe for international traffic was installed at CERN, in building 513.

</comment><comment><USER3> This needs to be upvoted. I think it's Paypal's biggest blunder yet. Their excuse is that "it might not be legal" and if they asked the "government" (which government? The US one? They are based in Switzerland) for approval.

Absolutely unacceptable.</comment>


Streaming Bipartisan Meeting on Health Reform - <AUTHOR> http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/bipartisanmeeting

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this mainly because of the quality of the streaming flash. I've seen many people support Silverlight for its great quality. I think this video shows that Flash can do nearly as good as Silverlight.

I've yet to see anyone do streaming with HTML5 video. Anyone know of any examples? If its even possible right now?</comment>


Ask HN: Which is harder Front end or Back end? - <AUTHOR> This is a two part question, I want to get a friend into Web development should I start him off with the Frontend side(HTML, CSS Javascript) or Backend side(PHP, JAVA, PYTHON) of things?
Which is harder and why? is Web development hard in general?
And which is more fun and joy to work on? if you had to pick one particular side to start off in and build a career out of because is fun which side would you favor? <comment><USER3> Asking the first question is as silly as asking whether physics or chemistry is harder. It's a vague and loaded question that will be answered through a foggy personal lens of experience.

And asking which is more "fun and joy" is as silly as expecting an insightful answer as to whether football or soccer is more awesome.

My one piece of practical advice: learn JavaScript. With its massively growing presence on the backend, it's on of the few cross-cutting skills you can have in web dev.

<comment><USER4> Yeah but the more advanced fields of physics like quantum mechanics are way harder than anything in chemistry. It's actually a good analogy though, they are pretty similar in difficulty at the beginner through intermediate levels, but once you get into the advanced stuff they begin to differentiate.

<comment><USER5> > Yeah but the more advanced fields of physics like quantum mechanics are way > harder than anything in chemistry.

That's a very loaded statement. If this were a forum for the physical sciences (as opposed to computer science), that would probably be analogous to saying "Android is easier to develop for than iOS" or "Java is easier than C#" (both of which would easily start flamewars on HackerNews)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, still... it's true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd suggest that /you/ start him off with neither - your best bet is to turn him on to something like teamtreehouse.com's html/css/javascript course if he's already computer literate. Otherwise computer literacy is first priority and linda.com has some pretty good videos.

You should then after the 30 day trial be able to judge his _passion_ by how far he gets. If he doesn't even complete the first chapter, then you would have wasted your time trying to teach him something he has no interest in.

I believe the way to introduce someone to web development is by teaching them something that has a tangible reward - e.g. design a static web page you can host, or have the ability to edit the HTML/CSS in a CMS or e-mail template.

My opinion is that anything is hard if you have no idea what you're doing. The biggest factor I've seen that determines if someone can become a competent programmer is passion.

</comment><comment><USER7> I work across the whole spectrum from design to backend. During the learning phase both front/backend can be quite fun. Though it becomes less joy full when you are working professionally due to constraints, bugs, deadlines etc.

Anyone can start learning frontend development as you only need a browser and text editor to experiment. There are tons of free tutorials and books available to get going. I also find it helpful to see how other websites are implemented, last night I was going through khanacademy.org using chrome developer tools. However, professionally, I find frontend to be the most frustrating part of web development due to inconsistencies and bugs across browsers.

In my experience backend is the least frustrating part of web development once you know your environment, stay within that environment and follow best practices, most of the time things just work. It only get irritating when you have to integrate with some troublesome remote api which is not under your control.

But, to answer your question, I would say try both, see what he likes and go from there.

</comment><comment><USER8> This depends on the person entirely because you can challenge yourself and push the boundaries in either one.

If your friend enjoys visual feedback/things then it would follow that they would probably enjoy front-end work better, however if they enjoy problem solving and tend to be more logical in their thought process, the back-end may be a better fit.

</comment><comment><USER9> Begin with a problem then start with the thing that your users will see and work your way down the stack. New students enjoy the immediate gratification from changing a color, moving things around on the browser, or animating a great looking turtle. I recommending having a problem to work within as it provides constraints and a set of mini goals. "I need to take user input" then becomes "I need to process user input" then becomes "I need to put this user input somewhere" and once your friend visits each part of the stack, he can decide where he wants to spend time.

I didn't answer the "fun" part because it's not so great a leading indicator of career direction. Both sides have significant depth and breadth in terms of technical challenges and skill.

</comment><comment><USER10> The answer is of course: _it depends_

"Modern" front end development will often involve build processes - gulp, browserify, whatever - that will introduce a barrier for entry.

Likewise if your friend wants to get into, say, C# development, you'd be much better off with a Visual Studio environment.

That's not to say that either of those are necessary, but I'd suggest that they are the norm for developers in those areas.

Alternatively, work with something like Sinatra and plain old HTML/CSS/JS - your friend could get a sense of one of the simplest methods of creating web applications.

So - _it depends_. Because there are so many choices, I suggest you find out their interests first. Is it visual? Then maybe they'd prefer frontend. Is it in the overall architecture of an application? Then maybe they'd prefer the backend?

</comment><comment><USER11> When I started off there was something really gratifying when doing a static web page front end. You get immediately rewarded when throwing in an img tag and setting some basic CSS (if you start from nothing, it's really nice to get visual feedback). But soon after I wanted to get into 'real' coding and got interested in TDD, and finding elegant solutions for problems be it backend or a complicated UI. If you can spark that kind of motivation I'd say your friend is good to go. I'm also working on a program that I'm basing on my experience of teaching myself how to code: [http://archi2tech.com/](http://archi2tech.com/) maybe your friend is interested ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> I would have them try both and see what they like more. I came from a backend development background and found the most difficult thing about frontend stuff is figuring out what the best tools, frameworks, etc. are to use. As soon as you learn something new and shiny like Angular, Bootstrap, etc. there's a new thing like React and Flux to check out. The build systems for frontend tools are IMHO a pretty big mess, annoying to use, and changing very quickly too.

Regardless of which path you take learning solid algorithm and software engineering skills will help with any development you do, frontend or backend. Consider your friend might not even care about web stuff too, perhaps they'd rather make games or mobile applications.

</comment><comment><USER13> Which is more fun may depend on the person's skills. For instance, a person with a background in design may prefer front-end. IMO, it's best to start the person off with at least basic understanding of HTML, CSS, JS the reason being that all web sites have a frontend, but not all a backend. Codecademy Web Fundamentals can be good for this. I guess in the end, really depends on what kind of web dev the person wants to do. The person will be motivated to work on what he or she wants to build for pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER14> It depends on what you want to do and where you want your career to go longer term, but that's specializing. Realistically, you should start him out learning the entire stack and understanding how different pieces fit together to create a complete picture. Perhaps something like Ruby on Rails that includes a more end-to-end approach. Knowing how the pieces fit together early helps you understand what you enjoy doing and makes understanding future co- workers more expedient.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's really hard to get a friend into Web development. You can encourage, mentor, and guide them but someone has to be genuinely curious and excited about web development.

</comment><comment><USER16> Each of them requires its own paradigms and conventions. Writing good UI code that works cross-client (especially on mobile) is often a challenge that requires different thinking than backend code. On the other hand, backend requires you to think about databases and scalability, which may not be your bread and butter. I genuinely enjoy each of them for different reasons. I don't think it's tenable to argue that one is objectively harder than the other.

</comment><comment><USER17> To build anything non-trivial you really need both, but the frontend is generally easier to start out with and get enough visual feedback to motivate you to go deeper and deeper into the stack. The reverse is far more difficult for most people.

As you go deeper and get exposed to more concepts, it's only natural to specialize in either backend or frontend.

</comment><comment><USER18> It depends.

Both can get difficult and being an expert requires lots of training. However, I believe that frontend is easier and more fun for starters. With little skill you get something on the screen, with more skill you can make some really sweet stuff. If you can hook in some existing API it's easy enough to do a dynamic site.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why not both at the same time?

1\. Think of a small project (one _you_ could do in a weekend)

2\. Architect it as a backend API + frontend consumer.

3\. Explain the architecture to him at a high level.

4\. Teach him Python/Ruby with bottle.py/sinatra, make the API.

5\. Teach him HTML/CSS, make the layout.

6\. Teach him Javascript, call the API and manipulate the DOM.

<comment><USER20> I like this approach, but I would reconsider step 6 as soon as possible. Most people move away from directly manipulating the DOM, because it's just not sustainable. Better to set them along the path of having templates that render to the page.

Facebook's React.js [0] could be great for a beginner. Even though it's another library to learn, it's conceptually simple and has a very small surface area. Components (optionally but usually) have a number of properties and (always) a render() method which renders the component to the page. There's more to React than that, but that's enough to get started.

[0]: [http://facebook.github.io/react/](http://facebook.github.io/react/)

<comment><USER19> Yeah, agreed. I was speaking in the general sense. Definitely better to teach Javascript via a framework (whether it's Angular, React, Polymer, whatever) than manipulating the DOM directly.

<comment><USER20> Right, gotcha.

I wouldn't throw a framework like Angular, Ember, or Backbone into the mix right away though. They have a lot of moving parts.

The thing I like about React is that it's just a view layer, and can be a very simple one at that. A beginner could start putting things on the screen very quickly, then pick up a framework or larger app architecture later on. Not only is it a way to get started quickly, but the core concepts of a view layer learned through React would be applicable in larger frameworks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I can't see why there would be a consensus best answer for this. People enjoy different things and are better at different things. If you want to get your friend into web development, I'd advise having him work through one of those complete tutorials where you write a bit both sides of a site, and see what he enjoys more. I know there are different languages for back end but I think any good tutorial should do, as the problems you solve on the backend I think are pretty consistent over the different languages.

Some people really like working front-end and doing all types of things to make a page load quickly in all browsers/look good or whatever, and some people like working on the back end and getting it up to 10kqps ro something.

I like back end but that's just my personal taste. Let your friend be good at what he's good at, I think the job market wanting both skills right now if that's the reason your friend is trying to learn web development.

And don't forget the whole world of non-web programming :)

<comment><USER22> I see what you're going for with this answer, but given certain constraints, there are definitive answers to this question. I feel like saying "people are good at different things" is the statement we tell children so they aren't discouraged

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Front end is harder because success is less objective. I think that backend has for more technically difficult problems, but if you want a straight answer to this question without lots of caveats then front end is harder.

</comment><comment><USER20> Frontend, with a backend serving as an API/data layer. But focus on the frontend.

That seems to be the way things have gone and are going, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER24> For a long time, the hardest was front end because you had to remember all the bugs and incompatibilities of various browsers. I think it's getting better.

</comment><comment><USER25> Front-end development is easier if (a) they are a designer (b) they know a designer. HTML, CSS and JavaScript are easy, but making a design is very hard.

</comment><comment><USER26> My advice: show her 3 lines oh html that talk to 3 lines of backend. Once she gets it, she'll decide by herself which parts she wants to hack first.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nothing is hard once you have put your 10000 hours of practice in.

But this is a question about personal preference. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses, different personalities, etc. We cannot answer for your friend. The best approach would be to gain a broad exposure to all layers of the stack, not just "front-end" or "back-end", but also the databases, servers, networking, and all those pieces that comprise the modern Internet. Any one of them might spark an interest and a passion.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd say back-end. The front-end of any software no matter how complex it is it will always run on a single device, while a scalable back-end could imply a complex architecture composed of multiple components running across multiple servers, all working together to serve the front-end.

<comment><USER29> A single device that can be any out of 100's of devices with different browsers, screen sizes, densities and capabilities...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why not try both and find out which comes across as easier for _you_.

</comment><comment><USER31> Frontend, without any doubts. A lot of compatibility and legacy issues, most of tools are in "beta", main language was made to "move a monkey".

</comment><comment><USER32> Front end is harder, because people that have no knowledge about how things are created can more easily justify their decisions because of the way it looks.

the back end just needs to work as intended. The details can be pretty much any combination of things..as long as it works.

<comment><USER33> > Front end is harder .... the back end just needs to work as intended. The > details can be pretty much any combination of things..as long as it works.

I think I know what you're trying to say - front end work is easier to justify to a client because he/she can easily "see" what you did.

But your statement that front end is "harder" and that the details of backend implementation don't matter are patently false. Let me guess, you're a fronted developer right?

<comment><USER32> I've done both. Front-end is much harder in my experience.

"don't matter are patently false"

okay. I'm going to go to my boss and ask him if I should use an array or a linked list for this part of my project. He won't care. He does care if it works and if it works well. The actual details don't really matter to him.

However, if I show him an admin interface, he will have all kinds of opinions on where things should go and how they should function.

Developers have much more of a say in the back-end, which makes things easier. Especially when the people making the decisions have almost no experience in the matter.

<comment><USER33> Maybe at the entry level but what about scaling an application that handles personal info (and credit cards) over multiple servers (just for example)?

What's the most complex backend stuff you can think of? Perhaps Google or Amazon level engineering? There's simply no equivalent of that on the front end.

TL;DR I'm pretty sure the majority of the PhD's at Google are not writing CSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are increasingly more tools for creating the frontend without code - <USER2> favorite right now is Webflow. This will continue happening because that's what we had in the past (Smalltalk, VB6, and so on).

Nothing seems to be replacing the need to code backend any time soon.

That's my argument for learning backend: frontend coding is unnecessary and an affectation of the current industry.</comment>


Resilient SSH tunnel app (keep alive and conn retries) - <AUTHOR> Latest version of mole, 0.5.0, adds two new features that increases the resiliency of an established tunnel:<p>* Idle clients do not get disconnected from the ssh server since Mole keeps sending synthetic packets acting as a keep alive mechanism. * Auto reconnection to the ssh server if the it is dropped by any reason.<p>Link: https://davrodpin.github.io/mole/ <comment><USER2> Interesting! I previously tried to do this with autossh, which seems like it does approximately the same thing, but autossh didn't seem to work in my use case. That use case being, I have a laptop with VMs, and ssh tunnels between the host and the VMs; when the laptop goes to sleep, sometimes the connections break when the laptop wakes up, because some timeout expired and sleeping hosts can't send or receive keepalives. I'm not sure why autossh didn't work, but I'll give this one a try!

</comment><comment><USER3> For the uninformed, can you explain how this is different or better than Mosh?</comment>


Billing Incident Post-Mortem: Breakdown, Analysis and Root Cause - <AUTHOR> http://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/07/billing-incident-post-mortem.html

<comment><USER3> _> 2:42 AM PDT / 7:42 UTC: Our on-call engineers restarted the redis-master to address the high load._

Over the years I've learned that restarting something that's under high load is not the correct solution to the problem.

By restarting the thing under load, you will always further increase the load when the thing you've restarted is coming back. Recovery will take longer and stuff could fail even more badly.

Of course there's the slim possibility that the thing under load has actually crashed or entered some infinite loop, but over the years I've learned that it's far more likely to be my fault than their fault; the abnormal load is far more likely caused by a problem at my end than a bug in the software that's misbehaving.

I know that just restarting is tempting, but I've seen so many times that spending the extra effort to analyze the root case usually is worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is indeed. Proper procedure would be to pivot to a slave. We have reconfigured all our Redis hosts to prohibit a restart on masters to prevent exactly that temptation.

<comment><USER4> I should mention that promoting a secondary to a primary in an asynchronously replicated system can (and almost certainly will, under load) result in the loss of committed transactions.

Redis has two resynchronization modes. One just recovers a small delta from the primary, if it hasn't diverged that far. If the primary has accepted too many writes, the secondary has to initiate a full resync, which is much more expensive. Since Twilio's postmortem says their nodes initiate full resyncs, I suspect that had Twilio promoted a secondary, they would have lost a significant number of writes.

Probably best, under these kinds of scenarios, to design the system such that lost writes don't cause overbilling. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Good for them for being open about this. Solid incident reports like this make me trust a vendor so much more. Not only do I have a good idea how they will handle a big public failure next time, but it tells me a lot about how they're handling the private issues, and therefore how robust their system is likely to be.

One minor suggestion: the root cause of an incident is never a technical problem. The technology is made by people, so you should always come back to the human systems that make a company go. Not so you can blame people. It's just the opposite: you want to find better ways to support people in the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree completely.

Ultimately the responsibility for getting this right is on us. We feel a thorough, dispassionate accounting of the human and technical errors when we come up short is part of living up to that responsibility.

<comment><USER6> Yes, well done for how you've handled the situation. Very professional, very honest. I liked Twilio before, but I'm even more impressed now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking forward to reading this. It never fails to amaze me how these sort of incidents are caused by a cascade of small, unrelated problems, any one of which on its own would likely not have caused the end problem.

The post-mortem has plenty of details but without being wishy washy in any way. Just the fact's ma'am, ending with a sincere apology and steps to prevent a recurrence. Well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true - in this business, it nearly always is a waterfall of small errors that produces large consequences.

Part of why I love being a software person - the devil lies literally in the details.

<comment><USER8> "literally"

[http://blog.fittothefinish.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/de...](http://blog.fittothefinish.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/devil-in-the-details.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Taking a page from something I learned from MySQL replication tricks, have you thought about trying a master -> inner slaves -> slaves out peers? Where there's one inner slave per datacenter/region.

I know atleast with 1.2.6 a slave can be a slave of a slave but I never measured the latency of a write at master, through the inner peers, out to the fan out slaves. Admittedly a more complicated topology but it would circumvent the stampede's against a master instance and also makes it easier to spin up larger numbers of slaves without wiping out the entire platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure I know anyone who has tried such a topology with Redis. Would be interested to see how it affects writes as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It sounds like, by deciding to make a charge based on what amounts to a temporary cache of the balance, there has always been a race condition in the billing code? I would think it would have always been necessary to successfully update the balance before proceeding with the charge in order to avoid double charges.

I can see how this sort of situation is hard to predict and test for, but that means it needs to be designed and implemented very carefully. $0->charge card just isn't a reasonable approach at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting to slave redis across datacenters. I wonder how well that works in practice.

<comment><USER12> I'd imagine pretty well...until partition behavior occurs.

<comment><USER13> [http://aphyr.com/posts/281-call-me-maybe-carly-rae-jepsen- an...](http://aphyr.com/posts/281-call-me-maybe-carly-rae-jepsen-and-the- perils-of-network-partitions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't use Twilio, but this was an interesting write-up. After reading it, I can totally understand how important it is to have safe-guards and redundancies baked into user balance information. I like how they even mentioned (although a bit vaguely) how they plan to implement those additional protections [1].

[1] "We are now introducing robust fail-safes, so that if billing balances don't exist or cannot be written, the system will not suspend accounts or charge credit cards. Finally, we will be updating the billing system to validate against our double-bookkeeping databases in real-time."

<comment><AUTHOR> Truthfully the billing system is one of the most fascinating parts of our stack to me. Twilio's utility pricing model generates an incredible volume of minute transactions, which is a fascinating engineering problem to solve at scale.

That solution ultimately came up short last week, but think the foresight behind a number of the features (double bookkeeping to an unrelated, persistent datastore in particular) aided in recovery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe I missed this bit of information, but can someone explain....

They use a multi datacenter master - slave redis cluster? What's the relationship between the master and slaves?

Are the slaves just failover? Or are they for read only?

How have they configured their writes and reads from their main application? I'm just curious how their application routes the reads/writes in such a multi-database setup. (Are they using DNS for a manual failover?)

<comment> brown9-2 This is speculation, but it seems like in the result of a true loss of the redis-master or it's datacenter, someone would have to reconfigure one of the slaves to become a master and reconfigure the applications that use it (or perhaps they have this type of service discovery built-in).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems to only explain a single faulty recharge, due to the customer using the service with a zero balance and triggering the charge attempt. Why would there be multiple recharge attempts? Was the customer using the service in that period multiple times triggering each of the recharge attempts or was it the code re-trying the transaction? If it was the code why would it restart the transaction from the top instead of just the part that failed - <USER2> balance update?

<comment><AUTHOR> I could have explained this better. Many usage events on the Twilio API generate a billing transaction (e.g. call, SMS message, phone number purchase, etc). When the transaction attempted to apply against a balance of zero and the customer had auto-recharge enabled, the billing system would trigger a charge attempt. With balances set to zero and read-only, each subsequent usage event would trigger a charge attempt, resulting in the erroneous charges.

<comment><USER16> So, the users most affected were some of your most active/high traffic ones? Ouch.

<comment><USER17> While it's unlikely that Appointment Reminder is one of Twilio's largest accounts, we do have a number of customers in the Eastern Standard time zone, and due to customer usage patterns we have a predictable spike in outgoing calls and SMS messages which happened to coincide with the early-morning PST Twilio problem.

Under normal circumstances, I have Twilio set up to bill us $500 if the balance ever dips below $500. That $500 is our rebilling increment. Each SMS message and phone call we made caused us to get charged our rebilling increment. We hit $3,500 before our credit card company started rejecting charges. I think that if they hadn't, we would likely have saturated our credit line.

I'm thrilled with Twilio's response to this issue, and most other transient issues I've had being a Twilio customer. The system is mostly rock-solid reliable. I actually went to bed during the middle of this event (midnight, Japan time) because a) my systems were reporting that our messages were successfully going out (so no customer-visible downtime) and b) I had total confidence in Twilio to take care of things. And they did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The double-bookkeeping Twilio is using -- what's the downside to it? Is it only updated per-minute with Redis doing the second-to-second usage and then rolled off into MySQL?

I'm curious how that's working, if you don't mind the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure there is a "downside" to be had - it is an important requirement to every billing solution of any scale at all. The term is borrowed from accounting ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double- entry_bookkeeping_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double- entry_bookkeeping_system)) and states that each transaction gets recorded in a different ledger. Our implementation at Twilio divides the two in stages of the transaction lifecycle that we allude to in the OP - in-memory for in- flight (when a call or SMS message is initiated) and disk for post-flight (when a call or SMS message is complete).</comment></comment>