Stripe raises $600M at nearly $36B valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/stripe-fundraising-600-million-1f1f38b6-fde6-4316-b111-2f3b0e868ab7.html <comment><USER3> Stripe cofounder here. This isn't really new -- it's an extension of our last round ([https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/fintech-start-up-stripe- notc...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/19/fintech-start-up-stripe- notches-35-billion-valuation-in-funding-round.html)).

That said, we've seen a big spike in signups over the past few weeks. If any HN readers have integrated recently and have feedback, we're always eager to hear it. Feel free to email me at email@example.com and I'll route to the right team(s).

As always, thank you to the many HNers who are also active Stripe users!

<comment><USER4> My top issues running my business on Stripe:

1) Many countries still only allow depositing a single currency (i.e. Aus/AUD), doubling the cost of transaction due to the currency conversion, even tripling when we have to convert it back to pay our bills. I always get told either "soon", or "not possible due to the law", despite competitors doing it.

2) If we were an EU company, we'd get charged 1.4%+25c on transactions in the EU, where most of our customers are. Instead, because we're selling from Australia, we get charged 2.9% for some arbitrary reason. This coupled with 1) puts our all-in transaction fees at 5%+ :(

3) I think billing the vendor for refund fees is a really retrograde step - <USER2> increases friction in the decision for us when a customer asks for a refund, and industry wide is going to cause less happy customers and less card users online. It's already hard enough convincing Dutch/German customers to use a credit card online.

If any non-EU companies know a cheaper way to process transactions in the EU, I'm all ears...

<comment><USER3> Great feedback... thank you. In case it's useful, some context on them:

On (1), we started an FX team this year. (There are a lot of legal complexities here around how the funds move, who has title to what at which moment, and so on.) But we're investing significantly in improving it and it should get better soon. On (2), the core issue is card network pricing rules -- by design, they discriminate on the basis of where the business is located. We happily extend EU fees to all EU legal entities, however, and would be happy to work with you to set that up. On (3), refunds aren't free for Stripe, and we were previously in a position where businesses with a lot of refunds were being subsidized by those who didn't. We want to give this margin away more sensibly.

Still, all the issues you bring up are real and I'd like us to find better solutions.

<comment><USER5> Isn't FX a done deal based on how TransferWise is able to do it. Maybe you guys can collaborate with them and make payouts in any currency possible atleast in countries where there are no Forex restrictions like Hong Kong.

<comment><USER6> Please no. TransferWise is terrible at customer support and internet is full of horror stories of people founds being frozen. The are the new incarnation of good ole' paypal. You will get your account frozen the moment you wire more than$1,500 as per my own experience with 3 different businesses giving them a chance.

I hope Stripe which is amazing will never have anything to do with TransferFraud.

<comment><USER7> Not affiliated with TransferWise in any way but just want to say that this is totally the opposite of my experience and that of pretty much everyone I know who uses TransferWise.

We've moved hundreds of thousands of dollars through them over the last couple of years with no problems on their end (we've had problems with banks failing to transfer correctly though..)

<comment><USER8> I've had the same (mostly) great experience with them.

My only issues with TransferWise have been having to ask recipients for their full addresses and then manually having to translate address schemes into something that fits in the boxes TransferWise provides in their forms. Sometimes things don't map over 1-to-1 (some Japanese and Taiwanese addresses, for example). I've also found that some Japanese banks only have one branch without a name and Transferwise requires a branch name. I eventually figured things out by researching the branch number online though.

All minor gripes though. Transferwise has let my business operate smoothly and make connections to vendors that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive to pay.

<comment><USER9> Hey kernelbugs, I work at TransferWise and would love to learn a little more about the issues you face with our address forms (it could be due to the fact that payment system limitations often lead to field limitation on our side). Hopefully I can help you figure out a way to make your life using our product easier as well. Could you please send me an email to email@example.com?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jeez, just go public already! You've had employees waiting for nigh on a decade to realize the value of what they've built, but instead it appears that those gains are just going to VCs (and whoever is privileged enough to take money off the table during these raises).

Perhaps I'm being too cynical, and perhaps Stripe is taking a more enlightened view than I'm giving it credit for, but my goodness this trend of large businesses just raising money forever (and long after they cease being startups) is frustrating. At least at Google I know I can actually spend all of my paycheck at some point in the decade after I've earned it.

<comment><USER11> might be nice for employees but borders on negligent when private markets are practically begging for you to take their money and going public has alot of hoops and disclosures

<comment><USER10> I will never argue that the founders are not acting wisely - they've got no moral imperative to go public. As you say, there's far cheaper capital on offer. Rather, it's a systemic failing. They would pay an undeniable cost by going the IPO route, but it would be to the benefit of their employees and the public at large.

Private markets being so flush with cash while regular folks are strapped, on the other hand, is a sign that the tax code is too lenient and we should be re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is the moral failing.

<comment><USER12> >...we should be re-purposing those dollars for societal benefit. _There_ is the moral failing.

To see such a dangerous, totalitarian ideology expressed so casually is terrifying.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry to have terrified you. Here's what I mean by that, and what I think should change.

Companies boast of record profits, buy back stock constantly, and pay next to nothing in taxes. Meanwhile, even with the ACA Americans scrimp and save, paying outrageous amounts for paltry healthcare that most of the First World would find totally inadequate. Education is chronically underfunded and over- regulated. Student debt is a ticking time bomb.

All of these problems could be resolved in an instant, had we the political will to solve them. Is it totalitarian to wish for a modern single-payer health system? Is it totalitarian to want my children to have access to a good education like I had in the 80s? Is it wrong to ask those who benefit most from society, to pay their fair share? I don't think so. Neither of us want boots on the ground, so to speak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm very happy with Stripe and for their success, but I plan on switching all my payments to go through PayPal again. I did some math and PayPal offers a better deal for Canadian businesses after Stripe bumps me off of their grandfathered conversion fees in a couple months.

I love the slick interface, but it's simply not worth the thousands per year I'll be saving with the switch.

For me the main selling point for any payment processor is the minimization of fees. Sure, the API's are nice, but I already use a payment gateway for that.

I'm a few clicks away from saving thousands. Am I missing anything?

<comment><USER14> Are you planning to go through PayPal directly or Braintree?

One thing I notice is, I get much less fraudulent payments through PayPal, and when I do get them it's handled automatically (and most of the time they end up being not fraud because PayPal investigated it and released the funds). 100% hands free, $0 in fees.

With Stripe, not only do I get more fraudulent payments but you need to pay $15 as a dispute fee through Stripe when you lose the case and pretty much all fraud causes through Stripe will be lost (because it's actual fraud). It also takes like 20 minutes to fill out the forms, create fax-compatible sized screenshots and a lot of other boilerplate information if you plan to contest the dispute.

It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the normal amount.

Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs and yeah I'm in the same boat as you. Stripe is no longer an immediate "of course I'm going to use Stripe" decision. Braintree is looking pretty good at this point.

<comment><USER15> Would you mind sharing your percentage of fraud with the two services? (I assume you are using Braintree.)

Honestly, you are the first person to make a good case on using PayPal over Stripe. Especially with the arbitrary horror stories I hear about PayPal all the time.

> It's a shame Stripe doesn't offer the Radar service (helps detect and > prevent fraud) with custom rules as part of their normal service. You can > only get it if you pay insurance fees, which are added fees on top of the > normal amount.

I agree. This should be standard.

> Combine that with the new Stripe SCA compatible APIs and sketchy docs

Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA.

[https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer- authentication](https://stripe.com/guides/strong-customer-authentication)

<comment><USER14> I use Stripe and PayPal currently but on the next platform I'm currently building I'm strongly (and very seriously) considering Braintree.

With PayPal, the fraud experience has been nothing short of amazing. Out of many many thousands of transactions, I've only had about 3 or 4 transactions get flagged as high risk by PayPal. What this means is PayPal will hold the funds, review the transaction and then either give you the funds if it's legit or do something else if it's not legit.

I've had 0 cases on PayPal where fraud / disputes actually took place. Of those 3-4 transactions, they were all released. None of this required any intervention by me. I just got notified by email from PayPal when a high risk transaction occurred. 100% of the funds were put back into my account a few days later (short of the normal 2.9% + 30c fees).

On Stripe, I've also had many many thousands of transactions. I've had a number of fraud transactions in the process which ended up as disputes. Stripe sends out an email letting you know, but then it's now on you to decide if you want to contest the dispute. This dispute typically happens when someone who got their credit card stolen sees an unknown charge in their records.

Now you need to fill out like 8 form fields and supply screenshots and server logs of proof that someone was accessing the material they've stolen (I sell digital courses so there's no physical item). The screenshots need to be sized perfectly to be displayed in portrait mode on a sheet of paper that gets faxed over to the person reviewing it from the bank, otherwise it'll be unreadable from their perspective and you'll auto-lose the case.

Stripe doesn't let you see a real preview of these screenshots and they even alter the uploaded image size in your preview which makes it hard to preview what it will look like from the reviewer's POV even though that's the only thing that matters.

After doing that, it takes about 2-3 months to get a resolution. You get charged a $15 bank dispute fee (on top of the full amount of the product of course) which is non-refundable unless you happen to win the dispute, but if someone got their card stolen then you're not going to win the case. You also don't get any information from Stripe about the review, other than you won or lost. Stripe says it's because banks don't give them any info beyond that. Fine, that's ok, but yeah the overall experience is very very bad.

Then on top of that, Stripe sells a Radar service that you need to pay extra on top of for each transaction to get better tools to help prevent fraud before it takes place. They choose not to give it to everyone because I guess they profit from dispute fees and fraudulent transactions.

The kick in the teeth is that the data Stripe uses to train their Radar / anti-fraud service is data provided by business owners who have trusted Stripe with their business. Now they are selling that data back to us in the form of insurance fees on each transaction (the Radar service you need to pay for).

I haven't personally used Braintree yet but from what I read in their docs, you get that type of anti-fraud service baked into the normal 2.9% + 30c (don't quote me on that, but it very much reads that way on their site).

Whatever PayPal is doing (and in turn Braintree since it's a PayPal service), they're doing a fantastic job at combating fraud and disputes, especially compared to Stripe.

 _> Would you please describe what is sketchy? Their docs seem pretty good... but I am now just hearing about SCA._

Their docs are typically good, but the SCA / Payment Intents docs are not really at the same standards as the rest of their documentation yet.

Come back in a few weeks when you've implemented it.

What's interesting is I run a podcast about running web apps in production and I've had a bunch of folks come on the show who use Stripe to accept payments.

All of them have said the experience with implementing SCA with Stripe was pretty rough. These are seasoned developers running successful platforms too.

They've all done it in the last couple of months as well.

<comment><USER16> > _Their docs are typically good, but the SCA / Payment Intents docs are not > really at the same standards as the rest of their documentation yet._

Stripe PM on the Payment Intents API here. You're right that there were some rough edges when we started rolling out this new API last year. SCA is complex and we want to help make it easy to navigate this regulation: we designed the new APIs to abstract away as much of the complexity as we can. In addition, thanks to a lot of feedback from users, we made important changes to our docs architecture, guides, API reference, and Dashboard in November 2019, and are continuing to iterate on it. I would love feedback on how we can further improve our documentation. I'm email@example.com.

<comment><USER17> One of the main tough things with the SCA / Payment Intents is that we have to keep our payment state in sync with Stripe's (updating the amount to charge and syncing with the cart total), and then syncing with a webhook. The transaction apparently happens in a separate process from the customer's browser session.

With PayPal you simply send a request for a certain amount, and when it gets approved the customer's client comes back with a token and you choose to execute it or not. If you don't execute, the charge just isn't completed.

Stripe's docs says to not depend on the client because the client can close the browser window. In the PayPal case, if that happens, the transaction is simply canceled (since the client closed before finishing).

EDIT: It looks like Stripe's docs do support the PayPal style integration, but recommends against it because it doesn't work with longer-delay asynchronous methods. It's funny because PayPal's old API was done in this way (with instant payment notification webhooks) and their new API is closer to Stripe's old API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I love the quote from John Collison:

"This is digital migration in a very compressed period of time, for both businesses and customers," Collison adds. "My mom recently asked me if I'd heard of 'this Instacart thing.' Yeah mom, I have."

<comment><USER19> Sadly, it's also likely one of the largest and fastest transfers of wealth from small businesses to large corporations. As Amazon hires 100,000+ workers how many small businesses are shuttering for good?

Stripe is one of the "good" tech companies in this respect by helping to level the playing field for smaller businesses, but it's not going to be enough.

<comment><USER20> I don't understand this idolization of small over large (or vice versa for others). The thing that matters most is that businesses best satisfy their customers, whether they are small or large.

There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior products or inferior service relative to a large company.

I buy from small companies all the time and many of those that I do will likely survive because they provide better goods and services than any large company.

<comment> core-questions > There's no benefit to having a small business that provides inferior > products or inferior service relative to a large company.

Sure there is - in terms of where the profit goes. The profit in a small business goes to the owner(s), who usually live somewhere in the local community, and in turn that money stays within the community to be spent on other businesses there.

When a Walmart comes along, the profits all move up the chain to a corporation that is nowhere nearby, effectively sucking the wealth out of small towns in exchange for slightly reduced costs thanks to efficient logistics.

The happy medium would be to find a way to have logistics as good as Walmart without having to actually be Walmart.

<comment><USER21> By that logic, car dealerships in America are a positive because they keep profits locally. In reality, they just increase prices to consumers and limit competition through lobbying.

The cost advantage from Walmart is not just in logistics, it is specialization of labor, superior negotiating power against suppliers, and diversification of geographic risk. A small business will be less efficient and give up more profits to suppliers.

<comment><USER22> This is true, but are lower prices for consumers better for everyone in the community than keeping the profits locally? I don't think anyone knows. My guess is it creates different winners and losers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I hope they are letting the employees cash out at these rounds. Otherwise they will end up like Uber, Lyft and other unicorn employees that not only got screwed by the IPO, but the subsequent taxes because of that. I know many Uber employees that need to sell at these low prices just to pay taxes and their RSUs leaving them with very little actual gains.

<comment><USER24> Are employees supposed to make gains on their equity based compensation when their company underperforms? Isn't this a risk you take when joining a startup? Thus far the only thing Uber has ever proved successful at, financially, was taking VC money. So it sounds like what you're asking for is that startup employees be allowed to siphon vc funds into their personal bank accts.

<comment><USER25> This is a ludicrous comment unless you believe that "employees" deserve to be second-class citizens. Lots of people cash out during funding rounds. It may be the status quo, but no one deserves their equity being a scam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Stripe user here (Stripe Singapore) since 2016 and processed a loooot of money which was a life-changing thing for me and many other people.

Patrick, I appreciate how supportive you are here so I hope you don't mind this turning into Q&A/support type of topic :D

1) Do you plan to lower the currency conversion fees for Singapore? We charge customers in USD but we are forced to convert to SGD and conversion fees adds up. On 99USD charge, with the current conversion, we get around 138 SGD but the net for us is 133 SGD because the processing fee is ~5.20SGD. That fee was lower before. There is no problem for us getting an extension of our account in USD currency so we could avoid unnecessary conversion USD->SGD fees.

2\. Chargebacks. A real pain in the ass. I shared a post on IH about it. Basically there is no way for us to issue someone a refund if they are doing a chargeback. This is a real problem that is relatively easy to solve. PayPal does it - basically, if the customer submits dispute, PayPal first tries to contact the seller to voluntarily provide the refund and only if they refuse, the dispute is being reviewed. Why Stripe cannot work this way? That would save a lot of drama and stress involved running the business for both sides - you and us, your customers.

3\. Pricing info. It's still very confusing on your website to understand what and how you charge for particular add-ons and whether we are grandfathered and have these add-on services included free of charge (since we have been with you since 2016).

<comment><USER27> For 2, a dispute is not a cb - on paypal if someone chargebacks _on their card_, there is an entirely different workflow

<comment><USER26> When I say "dispute" I mean chargeback. It's the same in Stripe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Adyen:

$25b market cap, with 2019 full year net revenue being $538m, up 43% year-on- year.

[https://www.adyen.com/investor- relations/news/h2-2019-financ...](https://www.adyen.com/investor- relations/news/h2-2019-financial-results)

Stripe:

Significantly less than Adyen, as many have reported.

\----

Same business model, with Adyen having a higher operating margin.

This should be interesting to see how this plays out. Either Adyen will skyrocket in value, or Stripe will decrease in value.

<comment><USER29> Isn't adyen cheaper too?

<comment><USER30> They also return interchange fees on refunds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is not a new valuation, is an extension of their series G from last year which also had a 35B valuation.

<comment><USER3> That's right; this isn't new. We just decided that it was prudent to extend the round a little given the economic uncertainty.

<comment><USER32> In which book is $600M 'a little' :) Really, that's boatload of money by any standard.

<comment><USER3> Fair :-). "A little" relative to market cap. But, yes, $600M is a staggering amount of money in absolute terms.

<comment><USER33> Please tell me it's to fund a massive expansion of Stripe Press! I want more books like _The Dream Machine_!

I just looked at your site and saw a book about Prince of Persia I hadn't seen before. I'm trying not to buy any more books because my stack is already too big but it's really tempting...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I just want to say thank you to Stripe for being amazing.

I'm just now dealing with canceling service with a traditional merchant account (I switched completely over to Stripe back in August), and the experience has been terrible and stupid.

Around 2003 or 2004, I was working on my first startup. I signed up for an authorize.net account through a merchant account called Capital Merchant Systems (later acquired by EVO Payments). At the time, the process required filling out a pile of paperwork, including writing an actual cover letter to get approved.

Things were fine until recent years, business for this particular service had slowly dropped to the point where it was no longer feasible to run through authorize.net. So I decided to finally make the switch over to Stripe (which I'd used for a number of years on another project).

Signing up for Stripe is so painlessly easy, straightforward, and friendly.

After switching my system over, I called and emailed my merchant account to cancel (this was in August). Then I called and emailed again in November. Then I called and emailed again in January.

All the while, they've been withdrawing from my checking account.

Then I emailed again in April, and filed reports with the BBB and FTC. Only then have I heard back from them, and they're claiming my January request is the first request.

So the short of it is, use Stripe. They are amazing, open, and transparent, their API is a joy to work with, and their dashboard is great. I wish Stripe was around 16 years ago when I first got started processing payments.

And DO NOT, under any circumstances, use EVO Payments. Cancelling with them is like cancelling a shitty gym membership - at the end of the day, you'll have to file complaints with every 3-letter organization you can think of, and file transaction disputes to cancel your account.

</comment><comment><USER35> That's much higher than Square (25.2B) but lower than Shopify (60.5B)

(Square and Shopify have 4.71B and 1.58B in revenue, respectively)

<comment><USER30> Shopify is going to pull back payments from stripe. It's the only logical thing for them to do for them to boost revenue. They already ramped up the Shopify Pay branding and removed the "powered by stripe" cobranding on Shopify Payments. Stripe helped it along by not refunding payment fees on returns. Shopify's largest merchants are apparel companies who have high return rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So with Stripe, is it industry practice to keep the fee when refunding customers?

For example, if I return something to Best Buy, are they still paying that 2.9% fee to their CC processor?

<comment><USER37> i don't know about best buy, they might be able to negotiate something better. but for small fish, it's standard practice to keep not just the fee, but twice the fee: when you charge a card, visa charges you 2.5% on the purchase amount. and then when you refund the card, visa charges you 2.5% on the refund amount.

as far as visa is concerned, they're both just transactions, regardless of the direction, and they want their fee.

<comment><USER38> IMHO it is time to start promulgating the idea that electronic money transfer should be considered a basic human right just like free cash transactions have been since the invention of money. It already is that way in many advanced countries where electronic money transfer is a service provided by the government. It is only in the U.S. where a private monopolistic cartel is allowed to impose a private tax on all retail transactions.

<comment><USER39> In what countries can you do free electronic transactions?

<comment><USER40> If you're a business basically nowhere. Some of the sibling comments are suggesting e.g. the UK where I live. Modestly sized transactions (maybe not the price of a new car or home but from pocket change to a nice family holiday) between individuals are zero cost and typically near instant. But a business can't access those rates.

However the EU forced the payment services sector to cap charges for businesses so you're maybe paying 0.5% or less on a transaction not 2.5% and that's why you don't see amazing cashback card deals or big discounts for cash in the EU normally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Stripe has great and interesting products but this valuation seems very high. They are competing with companies like Global Payments and First Data but they aren't disrupting them.

First Data has a lower market cap than this with $9B in annual revenue and $1B in annual profit.

<comment><USER42> I'm aware of a large org actively moving the bulk of $3bn in volume from FiServ (formerly First Data) to Stripe. Stripe's valuation is higher because of their trajectory. FiServ isn't innovating- at all. Just more attempts at lipstick on the pig.

<comment><USER41> $3bn in volume equates to around $90M (~3% of volume) in fees. Not an insignificant amount of money but when your revenue is approaching $10B, it doesn't move the needle.

Also, this money is divided up among all the players. This includes the network (Visa, Mastercard, etc.), the Bank (every credit card has an issuing bank), and the acquirer (Stripe).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think I've tried to use Stripe stores with ApplePay and discounts, and it never works. A couple local breweries, a coffee roaster, and another place I ordered car parts from. As soon as you enter a coupon code, the ApplePay option goes away. I am trying to remember why, I want to say, the ApplePay option shows up BEFORE the checkout page where you enter coupon codes, then once you enter a code you can no longer ApplePay. Anyone else notice this?

</comment><comment><USER44> If they are so successful, why do they need to continuously raise money?

<comment><USER45> Because they're aiming to be even more successful. $36B is still a tenth of Visa, and I think Stripe believes they can eventually become an equally important part of the financial ecosystem.

<comment><USER30> It's larger than Adyen who has a arguably a better platform and bigger customers like eBay and Microsoft. Stripe has Shopify but with their misstep of not refunding processing fees on returns, that's going away quickly as merchants pressure Shopify.

<comment><USER45> Stripe's forward looking goals seem to be mostly about expanding and changing the nature of online commerce, rather than capturing the existing payment processing market. I agree it'd be dumb for them to expect to grow based solely on stealing customers from existing processors.

<comment><USER46> _Stripe 's forward looking goals seem to be mostly about expanding and changing the nature of online commerce, rather than capturing the existing payment processing market._

This seems to be a recurring pattern in the more innovative online payment services. GoCardless is similarly trying to shift how people pay for things online away from the fragile and unreliable card networks.

Unfortunately, at least for some of us, the problems these services are solving are becoming secondary. The biggest pain points now, as a business selling services online from the UK, tend to be about regulatory compliance issues that increasingly conflict with clean, user-friendly payment processes and about the increasing complexity of global VAT/sales tax rules (and the ever more hostile rhetoric combined with often unrealistic demands from many governments in connection with the same).

I'm looking at setting up a new business at the moment, and our initial assumption is that we won't be using services like Stripe and GoCardless at all any more, even though I've built modestly successful businesses with them in the past. We just don't have time for all of the compliance and tax hassle in every country in the world where someone might buy from us, and while Stripe's new samples and guides have helped with showing how to get their new PSD2-friendly API to work, they also serve to show how horrifically complicated the once-simple process of charging a card online is now becoming. In the near future, I suspect this will push many of us into using marketplace or merchant-of-record arrangements and just outsourcing the whole shebang to businesses large enough to deal with those issues properly, who will no doubt take a larger cut of the revenues in return.

You'd think governments would have been solving these problems at an international level decades ago, but many of them aren't even following the general OECD guidelines they've theoretically agreed. It's bizarre that in 2020, it's actually becoming _harder_ for an honest business to sell a decent product or service to a genuine customer online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How about opening your business to new markets. Stripe feels like you have to have your business in the top first world countries only. It's unusable even in some EU countries nowadays.

<comment><USER3> We're still working hard on this. (We just expanded our beta in Bulgaria last week!)

<comment><USER48> The Indian rollout has been extremely slow, Stripe launched the beta in December 2017 and still hasn't come out of preview. What kind of challenges did you face that delayed the launch by more than two years?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I wished I could use Stripe but when selling worldwide you need to send the V.A.T. / G.S.T. to each country and US state you're dealing with. With customers all around the globe it means something like minimum 50 tax invoices to fill and send for me

<comment><USER50> Hey! I'm a PM at Stripe working on solving VAT/GST/sales tax pain points for our users. Would be great to connect and hear more about what you're looking for. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like your main pain point is around specifically handling the collection, and then remittance and filing of tax for all countries/jurisdictions you have nexus in? Or is it actually the difficulty with issuing customers compliant invoices across all countries you sell to (e.g. ensuring VAT ID is shown, language is local, etc.)?

Either way, would be great to connect -- email@example.com

<comment><USER49> Email sent !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> My biggest concern is data leaking, via web hooks, from other platforms into ours.

Most of our clients use Stripe for payments on our platform. They are connected via Stripe Connect. However a handful of them use other services from other providers as well also with Stripe Connect.

We are seeing web hook events not just for our own platform but also the other platforms too which obviously includes details about the transaction but also often with personally identifiable information such as name, email, address, telephone number.

Your support team acknowledged that they are aware of the issue. The response was:

"Because of how the design of the connected accounts are, any events from that connected account will be sent to all Platforms that the account is connected to. We do understand and see how this is a potential security/safety issue, and we have made note of this to our Connect team.

While we do not have any current plans to adjust this, we are going to discuss things with our Connect team to see if there is a way to we can make this better for our users."

I personally consider this a massive data leak because potentially sensitive information about customers is being shared to companies who have no right to access that information.

I really hope you can look into this.

Regards, Will

</comment><comment><USER52> I want a bot that translates these advertisements to the equivalent phrasing used in public equity markets

"Someone bought 1,000,000 shares of a company at a price of $20 in a secondary offering. Company's marketcap is now $36B"

Private equity market lingo is dumb. Many companies don't state the valuation after a round and the ones that do deliberately do it for clout. It is confusing and counterintuitive because people wonder why the "valuation is stretched" when literally just someone bought some shares, its not really news that someone bought shares at a high price. "Jonathan bought 1 share of Amazon for $2,000 for a valuation of 1.5 trillion" doesn't matter if this was a secondary market trade, or Amazon doing a 1 share secondary offering "raising $2000", it is a completely non news story, except in how the private equity world chooses to warp the language.

In private equity, the "rounds" have to be a higher valuation, and a "down round" is bad - an instant death knell and death spiral for the company solely because of how the PE world chooses to broadcast clout.

<comment><USER53> Down rounds are also bad news for previous investors (and other shareholders, like employees) due to how liquidation preferences typically work.

<comment><USER54> This article was an eye-opener for me on how that works:

[https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2020/04/08/w...](https://www.economist.com/finance-and- economics/2020/04/08/why-a-lot-of-startups-will-come-to-regret-their-unicorn- status)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Naive question: why? Aren't you already profitable and making more money as even more transactions happen online?

</comment><comment><USER56> Oh.. May be Stripe will hire Frontend Developers who use Firefox to fix numerous bugs?

</comment><comment><USER57> I get that stripe is easy and convenient, but once your business is running, I don't get how many people doesn't switch to bank provided payment gateways, at least in Europe the savings are huge (like 0.40% instead of 1.4%)

</comment><comment><USER58> Why would a very successful company need $600M? this is pure speculation now.

<comment><USER55> I have 100% the same question. Esp. since they make money from the very first customer.

<comment><USER59> privatize the gains, socialize the losses?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Stripe is the only company worthy of its lofty valuation. I love their products. Not sure how Shopify market cap is nearly 2x Stripe. Makes zero sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER61> if HNers are asking specifically for how to beat Stripe, Paypal in business I would say quite simply process more transactions or offer more flexible rates or services. Both are great companies that have grown into larger players. However, they still only account for a non material portion of total transaction value and volume when it comes to commerce. Therefore, they can be caught to in many areas. Take for example stripe. They are almost exclusively online and offer a bundled transaction rate. By simply focusing on areas like offline payments or more flexible/customizable rates a company could easily beat them.

For PayPal, they are much larger, you could do the same. You will not beat them over night but you can easily find niches where a more tailored approach would benefit the businesses rather than the broad strokes a company of that size has to take.

One area to look at for both would be online sales. Neither do that well at all. Another area to consider would be embedded experiences that require micro transactions. Stripe and PayPal are all but wedded to the payment networks at this time.

<comment><USER62> I love Stripe and have been a happy customer for years. But to piggyback off of this comment, one thing I've always wanted from them is plug-and-play subscription management, similar to Memberful[0].

[0]: [https://memberful.com/](https://memberful.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> I wish stripe would offer some relief for the pandemic to their customers. I use them for my business to process CC's but they have not provided anything. I can't get a PPP loan. I'd accept an interest free loan if they would offer it to my business. They did approve me for a loan but want a fee upfront + a slice of daily sales until its paid back.

<comment><USER3> We've been working with various government agencies behind-the-scenes and are about to pilot our first PPP loans. (Since so many banks have had troubles with the SBA application process, we want to make sure the process is robust and scaleable before deploying anything broadly.) Feel free to email firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested in trying it out.

<comment><USER64> Thank you for this. It doesn't impact me personally, but every contribution helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Anyone at Stripe do security or pentesting or redteaming? What's the hiring/requirements like for that?

</comment><comment><USER66> I want to use stripe but we sell travel, and 1.5% for a +1500Eur ticket is way too much compared to what integrating with my regular ol' bank costs 0.15%, no fixed fee.

I would love to use stripe because of DX/UX, but honestly as a SMB, can't really justify it.

</comment><comment><USER67> What's the story with paying people through Stripe? PayPal is dead easy, give me an email address and I can pay them. I would really like to replace our PayPal system with a product from Stripe, but it's not straight forward how you would do that.

</comment><comment><USER68> Congratulations to folks at Stripe!

</comment><comment><USER69> >Stripe is an American technology company based in San Francisco, California. Its software allows individuals and businesses to make and receive payments over the Internet.

They're worth how much!? Forgive me but how is this worth that much?

</comment><comment><USER70> I remember seeing a graph (from Paul I think):

graph1: linear + exponential s curve

When you zoom out the first graph, the exponential part starts looking linear

graph2: linear + slightly less linear + exponential

Oh wait, it is an exponential curve right? D'oh

</comment><comment><USER71> Anyone know Stripe's revenue and the multiple this 36B valuation represents?

<comment><USER72> Revenue? Zero. Why should they need $600M?

<comment><USER54> Have any sources on that zero?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Would be nice if Stripe decided to lower their processing fees a bit for small businesses getting crushed right now. Ours just went up in fact. A big slap in the face really.

</comment><comment><USER74> Best wishes to Stripe. They deserve to succeed. I speculate that the biggest competition for Stripe is going to be Amazon which will use AWS to rollout payments API.

</comment><comment><USER75> I just wish Stripe figured out how to integrate with PayPal. I'm stuck using Braintree because I want a single payment provider for CC and PayPal payments.

<comment><USER76> Just curious: what field are you in, and what's the % of PayPal payments?

I work with non-profits in Canada. PayPal used to be omnipresent, but in the past 2-3 years, most of our clients dropped it. I never found any good data to back whether we should still support it or not. (payment method FOMO)

<comment><USER75> Consumer saas. 60% of our payments come through PayPal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Is it easy enough to integrate multiple payment vendors- stripe, braintree, paypal and switch between them as needed in your application?

</comment><comment><USER78> When Stripe goes public they need to let customers participate in IPO just like Square did. That was awesome.

</comment><comment><USER79> It's been really fun and inspiring to see what Stripe has done. Well done and well deserved!

</comment><comment><USER80> Didn't they recently start out giving loans to SMs?

<comment><USER81> Yes based on incoming revenue from payments, Stripe Capital: [https://stripe.com/capital](https://stripe.com/capital)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Can Israel be supported? (as a seller)

<comment><USER83> כן כן כן

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> why is stripe looking for funding now, instead of before the pandemic? it might have increased their valuation.</comment>


Python iterators: wat - <AUTHOR> https://paste.pound-python.org/show/xlnI9t8bemWEQW1iViv4/ <comment><USER2> I had to stare at this for a while before I figured it out.

`works` and `notworks` are both generators. They take an iterator (over a list) and take two elements from it, then yield this. So when given [1,2,3,4] you would expect to get back, [1,2], then [3,4], then StopIteration is raised.

`works` uses a list comprehension. It gets [1,2], [3,4], then there are fewer than two elements left, so StopIteration is raised, the toplevel call wraps the results in a list, and returns [[1,2], [3,4]].

`notworks` uses list() with _another generator_. This does look like it would have the same behavior as the listcomp, but it does not. When we turn an iterator/generator into a list, and the generator raises StopIteration, list() will return a list of all the values produced so far. So it produces: [1,2], [3,4], then [5], then endlessly [].

You can inspect the behavior by looping over the generator calls, e.g.

        for x in works(iter([1,2,3,4,5])):
            print(x)

tl;dr: In `works`, the StopIteration is handled by `works` itself, while in `notworks` it is intercepted by the call to list(), rather than by `notworks`. This causes the difference in behavior.</comment>


Justin.TV on Yahoo news - <AUTHOR> http://potw.news.yahoo.com/s/potw/40075/the-real-reality-tv

<comment><USER2> How did the crew get their inspiration for Justin.tv?

Hah! Catching that crime was brilliant. Did they get him?</comment>


Saving Innovation: Can a DIY culture of unconferences spark start-ups in MN? - <AUTHOR> http://stage.tcbmag.com/industriestrends/features/130308p1.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> Key paragraphs:

At Minnebar's unconferences, there are no attendees or speakers, only participants. An unconference is to a conference what Wikipedia is to an encyclopedia. Instead of flying in authors or executives, Minnebar taps the knowledge of the crowd. Anyone can volunteer his or her expertise, and everyone collaborates ahead of time on line and votes to decide what makes the agenda. Sessions flow like conversations rather than lectures.

It may sound messy, but over the past four years, Minnebar has shown that it works. The event is now the largest of its kind in the country, with attendance eclipsing even the Silicon Valley sessions that inspired it. It's the highest-profile example of how new entrepreneurs are building not only businesses but new institutions to support innovation and entrepreneurship in the region.</comment>


I Spent A Month Living In A Romanian Sexcam Studio - <AUTHOR> http://m.vice.com/read/bucharest-webcam-studios-america-outsourcing-sex-trade?utm_source=vicetumblrus <comment><USER2> That was a fascinating, well-written, and yet incredibly sad read. It's easy to lose touch in the relative comfort of the first world, both geographically as well as virtually. I loved the comparison to the red light district. Desperately lonely divorced Western men spending a fortune on these young foreign girls and boys for companionship and sexual gratification, and the young folks drawn into whoring out their bodies over the internet just to make rent and buy food. Or, evidently, to squander their money "Gangnam Style" on luxuries to feel rich. The whole thing reaches a level of depravity almost to the point of absurdity. Interestingly enough, Romania turns out to have among the fastest average broadband connection speeds in the world [1].

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania#Average_Spe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania#Average_Speed)

<comment><USER3> I see it as basic economics, with a history going back as far as biblical times. The real first world problem is looking at this as depraved when in fact it's a real business, with a real demand, that makes money versus some shitty startup.

<comment><USER4> > _I see it as basic economics, with a history going back as far as biblical > times._

The same could be said for slavery.

<comment><USER5> The same could be said of all economic activities going back to biblical times. What's your point?

<comment><USER4> My point is that (1) "has been going on for ages" and (2) "is an economic activy" are not sufficient qualifiers to show that something is (3) OK to go one and/or good and/or beneficial to society.

(Which was part of the argument the parent made).

I used the slave trade as an counter-example to his point, because while it qualifies (1) and (2), most people will agree that it's not OK.

<comment><USER6> What is beneficial to society is none of your competence, so you would do wise to refrain from such comments.

<comment><USER4> > _What is beneficial to society is none of your competence, so you would do > wise to refrain from such comments_

Perhaps you are not current with this ancient Greek notion called "democracy". Its premise is that "what is beneficial to society" is _everybody's_ competence and everybody can, nay should, have his say on the matter.

(Of course, there are other trains of thought, from Plato to Nietzche and Hitler, that run counter to this idea, perhaps you subscribe to them. Or to some second-rate, provincial, version of them, like Rand).

In any case, it would be wise for you to refrain from silly advice such as the above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are "sex cam studios" in every country, including America. There are several in Arizona and Nevada. They're just like the coworking spaces us devs/designers have available to us -- space to work in, a solid internet connection, and a network of people in the same industry as you, some of whom will pair up to serve "clients" whose needs are too much for one "contractor".

<comment><USER8> While this is technically true, I disagree with the undertone. I think the industry is fundamentally different and in its most extreme realizations has been shown to cause severe emotional harm to exploited workers.

<comment><USER9> Extreme realizations and exploiting workers is a problem in any industry. People have died farming gold in video games. Its why we have labor laws.

<comment><USER10> _People have died farming gold in video games._

What.. really? Died farming gold?

<comment><USER11> Yap, IIRC one Japanese and one Taiwanese dude, but don't remember the specifics.

<comment><USER12> Definitely a few in china and Korea as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Several years ago I worked at an adult entertainment company. They were involved in pretty much every vertical of adult content except perhaps print. When I read articles like this one I'm always amazed at how well the tone of numbness carries through. This is the essential characteristic of the adult industry, as everyone involved in it, top to bottom, is numb or becomes numb.

<comment><USER14> Numb in what way? Numb to the mundane in-and-out stuff of the business? I'm sure many people in many industries become numb to things.

<comment><USER13> It's a numbness to being objectified, passed around and drained of value. It's not only the "talent" (as the performers are called) that is treated in that manner. All employees are subject to it - from HR, secretaries, video editors, developers, IT, marketing associates, all the way up to executives.

In adult entertainment you are not an individual, but rather a resource to be exploited. I've worked in a few other industries and I've never felt the callousness that I did while working in the adult industry. Because everyone is numb, it ends up creating an environment where there is no support and you'll eagerly step over a fallen comrade and right into the meat grinder yourself.

I remember sitting at a pub with a group of 8 coworkers, one of whom had just given his two-weeks notice. He confided in us, over beers, that he was extremely depressed. No one at the table said anything in response; no reassurances, no thoughtful gestures. We sat quietly for a few moments before someone changed the conversation, but we all knew why he felt that way.

<comment><USER15> I don't think that's unique to adult industry though...

I know plenty of people in programming business who are depressed. Read some stories about gaming company death marches.

Financial business is also notorious for numbness and meaninglessness it often engenders in its participants.

Let's not fail to mention the innumerable hundreds of thousands who are stuck in menial/warehouse/retail/tech support jobs that offer little to no mental nourishment. "Wage slave" is a common term for a reason.

I think pretty much any industry can numb and dehumanize people who are not careful to build and maintain their relationships and social structures. I would not expect to be best friends with all my coworkers, and I would feel my life to be severely one-sided if I only had friends among coworkers.

<comment><USER13> I didn't say unique to, but "essential to." It may also be essential to those other industries, but I have no experience in them.

Sure, shady and disheartening things can happen at any company. However, if that type of negative culture is cultivated at the expense of everything else, it can be jarring even for the most stable individual. I experienced some things that were pretty terrible (and illegal) that gave me pause, but more veteran employees shrugged those things off with cavalier sarcasm. I left because I didn't want to become like them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The people getting rich off of this industry are the cam sites, such as MyFreeCams or LiveJasmin, typically taking half of the earnings brought in (models get the other half, often split down to a quarter if a studio is involved). Several of them are generating tens of millions in revenue at this point, and are among the top 500 sites globally in traffic.

The founder of MyFreeCams runs a VC business in the US with his cam wealth.

I wouldn't be surprised if in another five years the cam business is larger than the traditional porn industry, including the large porn sites.

<comment><USER13> It's probably already bigger, but they guard their numbers. Tube sites are just portals to get you to go to a cam site or a dating site. There are fewer regulations with those sites as opposed to professionally produced pornography (2257 regs, condom use laws in LA County, etc.). You also don't have to worry about copyright infringement (executing it or defending yourself from it) with cams and dating sites.

<comment><USER17> How do they monetize the adult dating sites? Sign up fees? I would think there's not a lot of repeat business there, once the users find out it's a scam. Whereas cam sites can milk people forever.

<comment><USER13> Membership fees and cross-promotions to other adult properties are the primary means of monetization. Some of them will have virtual goods and tribute/tip systems as well. Most often (male) users cannot communicate with other members unless they pay for access. And, what's more scammy, is that if you receive any messages from women, it's highly likely to be a camgirl or female agent from another part of the company. These girls receive commissions for getting non-paying members to convert.

Hookup sites are a volume-based business. A common business practice is to whitelabel a successful hookup site; give it a different skin, but share the same database so it looks populated. Once you're in the database, you'll be spammed for any new whitelabeled version that pops up. Also, the user population is 95% male, so you have better odds of finding a female hookup at a gay bar.

<comment><USER18> Poker sites work on the same principle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Many people would pay for non-sexual fully clothed friendship services.

Get the price right, get the training right, make sure there is strong blocking to protect against creeps (and set expectations from the start) and I think you'd get considerable business.

<comment><USER20> Like a virtual community center?

It would need games and activities as well as profiles.

How would it differ from facebook? Not that I approve of what facebook has become but I can imagine spending a lot of time developing this awesome site only to have it be nothing more than a social media clone.

<comment><USER21> Is it common for people to "meet" new friends on facebook? I have no experience of people doing so. If someone I had never met contacted me on facebook to try and forge a social relationship, I would find it inappropriate.

<comment><USER14> Unless you opted in to an app to find new people. Seems like instead of building a site from the ground, the quicker technical approach is probably a Facebook app.

<comment><USER22> People in general have an aversion to linking their personal FaceBook to apps in this space. Rightly or wrongly, they worry about it becoming known that they use services like that. It's an interesting phenomenon, and it wasn't all like that back a few years.

<comment><USER23> Haven't people been living in fear of their loneliness being unmasked for longer than a few years? Put another way, don't we already demonize loneliness and low social value?

I can't imagine it being a new phenomenon that people are averse to "Katie started using e-Friend MatchMaker!" showing up on their Facebook news feed. And if there is a usage statistic indicating that fewer people are using e-Friend MatchMaker, I wager it's because they're realizing that it shows up on their news feed.

I would think it's always been uncool to use dating websites and any other extension of that concept. Even on Tinder, there's like this subtle charade that yeah, we're both normally way too cool for this stuff but our throng of friends finally convinced us to join. Maybe we can find some time to send each other a message despite our busy schedule of meeting new people irl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Non-mobile link for those not on a phone

[http://www.vice.com/read/bucharest-webcam-studios-america- ou...](http://www.vice.com/read/bucharest-webcam-studios-america-outsourcing- sex-trade)

<comment><USER25> In this case the mobile one is actually the better viewing experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I actually don't find this story all too surprising. What really irked me was the piece on how Japan commodified various aspects of a relationship (i.e. "cuddle cafes"[0], those bar/club places where people pay top dollar to tell their problems to complete strangers). Maybe this is the logical "next step" of human relationships; however, such a conclusion is thoroughly disheartening.

[0][http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese- lo...](http://www.vice.com/the-vice-guide-to-travel/the-japanese-love- industry)

<comment><USER27> > Maybe this is the logical "next step" of human relationships

It might be a logical one, but it's not one we ought to aim for. There's a weak, but building movement going on trying to push us in a different direction. See stuff like Jeremy Rifkin's RSA talk or Enrique Peñalosa's TED talk. I'm sorry about the vagueness, but I'm having trouble coming up with a way to summarize it usefully. =/

<comment><USER26> I think fundamentally, people are growing more lonely as we shift from the purely physical realm into the abstract world of the web. You have startups like Grouper trying to solve loneliness, but in reality they may even be exacerbating it. We all get a little lonely sometimes, and I don't think there's a viable substitute to physically meeting someone. Barring a fundamental change in our brain chemistry.

<comment><USER27> Which is why I reference movements like the one Peñalosa is part of. (I don't have enough easy references.) It isn't something that can be well-answered by startups. Profit motive _defines_ the shift from the purely physical realm into the abstract world. That's what money is: it abstracts trust and makes it less necessary. It makes us more efficient for the price of less effort spent on trust.

The answer isn't to remove money but rather to provide money-less connection points. Create debts that aren't monetary but personal and non-transferable. Talk to people for no better reason than to get to know them. Find out what makes them tick and what would make them happy. That kind of thing. It's... complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Whilst there are a lot of impassioned statements of position in this thread, I'm not seeing a lot of discussion of the massive body of research on sex work and sex workers, or the many commentaries on the industry from people working inside it.

Given this is HN, that seems like a bit of a pity. As usual, evidence produces some conclusions which intuition may not.

Here's one study on strippers, for example, from the University of Leeds (Reuters link, can't find the original study, irritatingly):

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/27/us-britain- lapdanc...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/27/us-britain-lapdancing- idUSTRE67Q2YW20100827)

</comment><comment><USER29> Well written article. I spend regularly on the cam sites and find the whole model fascinating. Very few models however actually give any meta details such as those provided in this article.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm in Bulgaria, not Romania. We have similarly great residential Internet speeds and I think the article is wrong in attributing them to the sex industry. (I have no idea whether there are a significant number of similar businesses here in Sofia.) I think the net connection speeds are due to a combination of two factors: a very dense population (think 10-20 floor cheap residential towers from the times of socialism) a wildly unregulated market. The result was a zillion of small, very aggressive ISPs wiring up neighbourhoods with LAN cables for 5-10 EUR/month "all our router can handle" speeds (only international traffic is metered, national - where the torrent trackers and other torrent users are - is virtually at wire speed).

<comment><USER31> I think that the answer is capitalism:

>Total number of active providers[in Romania], as of Dec 31 2007: 1338

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania#Internet_Se...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Romania#Internet_Service_Providers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> As a Romanian web developer working remotely for a Western company active in the adult industry and collaborating with video-chat studios in my hometown (Bucharest), I'd like to add my 2 cents:

I'm actually in touch with the studio managers here and I can tell you everything happens 'by the book', we are not a 3rd world country. The girls are not enslaved, abused or forced into anything, instead they are recruited through the usual recruiting methods (media), they even work legally and get their pay-checks in time. They can quit whenever they want, all of this happening in complete discretion. You probably know that the websites they work on are blocked within the same country for obvious reasons. Of course the morality of the girls may come into question, but that is strictly up to them. They are just taking advantage of the economical discrepancy between eastern and western Europe (average monthly wage here is around 400 EUR). Yes, there are people spending massive amounts of money on video-chat and things can degenerate quickly (affecting your private life) but same thing happens with gambling sites and no one bats an eye.

As for working within such a company I could never say that I became numb or feeling morally wrong. I've had the opportunity to work with quality people on challenging technical issues and it has been a prolific period for my career. The way I see it is as being strictly business.

As for Romania, it really is a good place for startups. There are a lot of competent people here wasting their value and time on jobs and wages that some of you would consider ridiculous. But that's just what history left us with and it may take a while for us to get in line.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Unofficially, someone's put a lot of work into the country's telecommunication infrastructure, with the result that Romania now has a faster download speed than any G20 nation."

So, low cost of living and great internet infrastructure. Seems like a good place to found a "regular" startup also.

Anyone knows how hard would be to get a visa? Are they part of EU?

<comment><USER34> They're part of the EU, and do have a rapidly growing startup scene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I didn't realize it was real people, I always thought it was some "AI" with loops, kind of like that viral burger king campaign with the chicken.

<comment><USER22> Some are indeed just video loops. They don't do very well though, it's not just the naked body that's needed, it's the interaction that matters more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> She says the girls are exploited by the studio and the clients are exploited by the girls. A typical marxist way to view things. I see no one being exploited here. All I see is consenting adults passing contracts with each others and all getting satisfaction out of it. Nobody is being forced to do anything. The studio makes good money, the women and men work willingly and make a great wage even by american standards. And clients, well, they may be lonely indeed but for all I know, the few minutes they spend on the cam may be the the happiest minutes of their days, no one is forcing them to pay for the service and they seem extremely satisfied by what they're paying for.

So who here is being exploited? All I see is an exchange of transactions between consenting adults that all seem extremely satisfied with what they get out of each deal. What again is wrong with that? Where is the exploitation? I know it sounds good to say these people are all exploited and maybe we should ban these activities to protect these people from hurting themselves because they're too dumb to make their own decisions. This is generating great business for Romania and client satisfactions. Please, don't call it exploitation and let people live their life. Live and let live. Don't judge, don't prohibit things because they offend you.

<comment><USER37> Eh, I'm libertarian as they come, but some of those men are addicted. It is possible and unethical to exploit an adult.

<comment><USER36> They are just satisfying the clients needs for their service, the clients know exactly what they're doing. She even told one guy she had a boyfriend and everything and the guy didn't care, he just enjoyed paying for his fantasy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Well I could comment but I'm at work

<comment><USER39> Hard at work in a sexcam studio?

Honestly is this SFW and is it a video or article?

<comment><USER40> It is SFW and is in article format.

<comment><USER39> Whoops: "Not allowed to browse Adult/Mature Content category". Foiled again.

<comment><USER11> Probably a keyword filter in the URL... lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wasen't this why the Internet and Cams were invented? I'm being facetious(a word my father abused), but kinda serious. I remember talking to Rick about a way to annonymously talk to chicks in the early ninties. It has gotten disgusting though, and I'm sorry, I don't blame guys completely; girls have changed. They care more about money than ever before. Girls in the eighties and ninties didn't know what power they possessed, and I think they had better morals? As to any masoginistic claims; I used "girl", because you in my time women didn't spread their legs for clicks.</comment>


Not allowed to fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.notehub.org/2014/1/14/not-allowed-to-fail

<comment><USER2> I'd say just the opposite. The reason smarter companies don't have these high- profile big failures is that they're much more willing to pull the plug on a failing project earlier, learn the lessons and respond correctly.</comment>


Programming fonts - <AUTHOR> http://s9w.github.io/font_compare/?rp

<comment><USER3> Looks pretty neat! - Can you render the fonts at higher DPI? It doesn't look good on a retina screen at all.

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

<comment><USER4> When you say Retina you mean high dpi since retina is just a trade marked word for dpi of 220 inches or higher and means different things at different models.

Sorry to be a stickler but Retina is a worthless term and just causes confusion.

<comment><USER5> To any non-tech person, "high DPI" is probably more likely to cause confusion and is just as variable in definition. To (almost) any tech person, "retina" is common enough that everyone knows what you're talking about.

Being trademarked doesn't really affect the meaning of a word once it's part of popular parlance - Kleenex, Band-Aid, Hoover, Google...

<comment><USER4> I disagree but I got down voted enough to guess people like the term???? It makes zero seance. Your retina is the part of the eye that converts light into signals for the brain. Your screen is a display and has nothing to do with converting signals.

<comment><USER6> It makes sense in the detail that it matches resolution. Our retina is the fundamental limit to our visual resolution. Like the pixels on the screen. Would it make more sense to call it a 'retina-matching monitor' instead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah this has reminded me how awesome gdipp is [0]. For those who don't know, it's an alternative renderer for Windows that makes the fonts look a lot better. The only downsides are that it hasn't been updated in years and that it breaks the font rendering in a few applications (notably Chrome and Skype).

[0] [https://code.google.com/p/gdipp/](https://code.google.com/p/gdipp/)

<comment><USER8> This is a matter of choice I suppose.

For me gdipp (or mac ftm) rendered fonts look like just crap. Never been typographic junkie though...

<comment><USER9> It also depends on the DPI of your display. The classic Windows font renderer sacrifices accuracy for readability on low DPI displays. If the stroke of a font was going to be 1.3 pixels wide at a given siW Windows will just crop the extra 0.3 to give a crisp edge on low DPI displays. Unfortunately on HiDPI displays this can needlessly make the font stroke very thin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting project, but some of these look a bit... wrong to me. For example, ProFont is my favorite bitmap programming font and the renderer used makes it look bad. Just loaded it up in my Terminal.app to show how it /should/ look: [0]. Also while I'm at it, some cool fonts not mentioned that I think deserve some attention are tewi[1] and ProggyTiny[2]. Tewi glyphs are particularly nice [3].

[0]: [http://i.imgur.com/3A0HEqu.png](http://i.imgur.com/3A0HEqu.png)

[1]: [https://github.com/lucy/tewi-font](https://github.com/lucy/tewi-font)

[2]: [http://www.proggyfonts.net/download/](http://www.proggyfonts.net/download/)

[3]: [https://rbt.asia/boards/g/img/0379/00/1383925217833.png](https://rbt.asia/boards/g/img/0379/00/1383925217833.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> hmm in what way do you think it looks bad? I just double checked and the screenshots on the page are correct. I can see that some letters (MN) are too close together on the site. I'll try a different font version to see if that fixes it.

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll have a look and add them all if they work. But my internet right now is damaged so it might take some time.

<comment><USER10> Yeah I think it was just the strange kerning and size that it was displayed in. I know ProFont has bitmap sizes other than 9 (10, 12, 14, 24, etc.) but I'm not accustomed to seeing any other than 9 used for programming is all.

I have a patched version of profont for windows that correctly supports the powerline glyphs which I use in mintty. In the end, when I have everything configured (ClearType disabled, MacType excludes mintty.exe), it looks exactly like my above OS X screenshot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's great that we have so many choices of great programming fonts nowadays. What's everyone's font of choice? I've been using Consolas for the last few years.

<comment><USER12> I've been using Bitstream/DejaVu Sans Mono for years as I really like their choice for 1Il| but this page made it easy for me to find some alternatives to try. Ubuntu mono and Monoid both stand out as looking good to me (M+ is a close third, but has larger line spacing than I'm used to).

<comment><USER12> I don't know if you're still looking here, but after trying out the alternatives, they all had things I didn't like. Source Code Pro was _nearly_ perfect for me, if the latin characters were only as tall as the non-latin characters; the designer seems to like generous space between lines to the point of even skimping on accent length for upper-case characters. The good news is that it makes the Han characters much more legible, as they are larger than the latin ones, but I never use those in my programming.

Looking at alternative fonts, I noticed that the designer of the Meslo font considers Menlo (so also Bitstream/DejaVu) to be "too cramped," so my personal preference must be fore closer-together lines than average.

Here's some samples from a directory listing:

[https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/dejavu-sans-mono- latin.png](https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/dejavu-sans-mono-latin.png)

[https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/dejavu-sans-mono-non- latin.pn...](https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/dejavu-sans-mono-non-latin.png)

[https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/source-code-pro- latin.png](https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/source-code-pro-latin.png)

[https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/source-code-pro-non- latin.png](https://phab.jasom.org/orfiles/source-code-pro-non-latin.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The subpixels on my screen aren't rgb (vbgr on this one) ordered, so the images with AA don't quite work right for me. Annoyingly, quite a few sites/applications make the assumption that everything is rgb, which causes crappy looking text on my portrait screens, and even worse on my monitor at home which is bgr ordered.

Also putting in a plug for my personal favorite font, Tamsyn ( [http://www.fial.com/~scott/tamsyn-font/](http://www.fial.com/~scott/tamsyn- font/) ) Although firefox recently dropped support for bitmap fonts on linux, and my ttf version of it only looks good at one size, so I've been trying to find something to replace it in the browser.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never had contact with different subpixel configurations. So I have no clue how to fix that. Any ideas?

I will add Tamsyn, thanks for the suggestion!

<comment><USER13> Well it wouldn't really be fixing it, but you could render the images with different ordering and allow people to select. I'm not sure if there's a way to detect it in browser. Setting the ordering depends on what os you're on. In linux you can set it either with fontconfig and/or in whatever DE you use. In windows I'm not aware of a way to specifically set the order, but it can be changed with cleartype tuner. Osx I have no clue if you even can.

Example of bgr AA: [http://paste.click/fXuAWF](http://paste.click/fXuAWF)

It'll probably look wrong on your monitor, with red and blue fringing visible. Thats what rgb ordered images look like to me.

I think it may be possible to specify AA with css, so that might be another avenue, but I'm not sure.

I do like the idea of the site and appreciate all the effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Inconsolata-dz is a great font, though I recommend

[https://github.com/DeLaGuardo/Inconsolata- LGC](https://github.com/DeLaGuardo/Inconsolata-LGC)

for fans of Inconsolata that would like bold and italic weights, as well as extended glyphs.

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be more or less identical with the -dz version as that already contains bold and italics. So unless I'm missing something I don't think this is necessary

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've tried various programming fonts, and I keep coming back to DejaVu Sans Mono. There are a few others that are as good, but none that seem so much better to be worth getting used to.

</comment><comment><USER16> I use Terminus as my Linux terminal font and love it, however, I don't get to use Linux much and it's hard getting Terminus to work anywhere else.

<comment><USER17> Try [http://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/](http://files.ax86.net/terminus-ttf/) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Proves even further to me that Terminus is superior.

<comment><USER18> I agree with you, although I suspect many people confuse the clarity of Terminus with AA being forced off because its a bitmap font. They really want a non-AA display, and Terminus being bitmap forces the issue.

If you just shut off AA there are some fonts almost, but not quite, as good as Terminus. Non-AA Ubuntu Mono is almost as good as Terminus. Non-AA Source Code Pro is almost as nice as Terminus. Dejavu Sans Mono is almost as good as Terminus.

The clarity and consistency of Terminus never fails to impress me. Other fonts have like 25 good glyphs and at least one "whoops" usually a M or W or E. Think of Monoid or the sad M in otherwise good Ubuntu Mono. Then again Ubuntu mono is definable as a Terminus clone with a broken M. Or sometimes none of the glyphs are individual disasters but the whole font has crazy variations, think of the Meslos some verticals are double width very strange looking, unreadable, looks like old fashioned ransom note.

I used an OCR font for awhile a couple years ago. Its not bad once you get used to it. An ugly yet productive duckling. Easy to read does not necessarily equal beautiful (with the exception of Terminus).

I have a suspicion that Terminus and buckling spring / model-M keyboard use correlate, as a "will not accept anything but the absolute best" attitude.

<comment><USER19> I've never understood why some people dislike antialiased text rendering so much. Aliased text is obviously inferior to my eyes - all the spurious 90-degree angles add meaningless noise to the character forms, as though the font is decorated with a lot of extra fuzz. Antialiasing smooths all this cruft away, leaving the character shape more clearly defined. And yet there are people who dislike this look enough to disable it and work around it, describing it as "blurry", though my experience is that it's _less_ blurry. I really wonder what it is about their experience which differs so greatly from mine.

<comment><USER20> With AA text on a normal-DPI LCD screen, it never feels like I'm focussed on the screen properly. With no hard edges and no sharp corners, my eyes can't seem to find the right setting. Whatever I do, it just always feels slightly wrong. Blurry edges just don't make me think that something is smooth - <USER2> make me think I haven't focussed properly. Drives me nuts.

I wouldn't mind so much, but over time people seem to keep taking the option of a pixelly display away, and when anybody complains, they're told they don't know what they're seeing through their own eyes.

Fortunately, AA text + retina display, I like, because the pixels are too small for the blurriness to be visible, and things look sharp again. So roll on more of that please. (High-DPI, I mean. Not AA. We have more than enough AA to be getting on with.)

<comment><USER19> Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

High-DPI displays are clearly the right long term solution. It was amazing to use one for the first time - I couldn't see the individual pixels anymore, and it was disconcerting in a really good way. It's like a bit of Hollywood fakery brought to life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Excellent, I love it! Did you calculate the font size so that almost all lines are equally long automatically? Why are some lines shorter?

I think Courier and Courier New would be good additions. They are terrible programming fonts but for years were very widespread because they were very often the default and still very often are the last resort fallback.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wish that more fonts had a semi-bold version, like Source Code Pro. It's one of the main reasons I use that font, since it looks good at smaller sizes, but still allows the syntax highlighting colors to stand out. You can tell the difference between black and blue at a glance.

</comment><comment><USER23> Very useful! - but i'd humbly ask why any programming font set with a non- struck zero would be associated with a green indicator, (e.g. Droid Sans Mono, Luxi Mono). Perhaps the associated green/red don't mean what i think they might?

<comment><AUTHOR> The red/green are anti-alias indicator. They're stay red for bitmap fonts even with AA toggled on to signal that they cannot be anti-aliased. Maybe I should make that clearer

<comment><USER23> Thank you! Nice you highlighted comparison of little nasties like lowercase "l" (ell) nearly indistiguishable from a "1" (one) (like "Envy Code R") (horribly burnt by that in a Fortran program long ago with "k = l" instead of desired "k = 1" (i didn't write that, just spend days of debugging it))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is very useful!

I've been a big fan of Droid Sans Mono for the longest time, and my biggest complaint was the lack of 'crossed' zeroes.

Roboto does have the crossed zeroes, but it seems a bit less crisp than Droid Sans to me.

</comment><comment><USER25> No Menlo?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if I am allowed to use it. It's from Apple, no?

<comment><USER26> From the Font Book application: (sorry for the formatting. EDIT: Hey, it sort of worked!)

      Manufacturer	Bitstream
      Designer	Jim Lyles
      Copyright	Copyright © 2009 Apple Inc. Copyright ©  2006 by Tavmjong Bah. Copyright © 2003 by Bitstream, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
      Trademark	Menlo is a Trademark of Apple Inc.
      Description	Menlo is based upon the Open Source font Bitstream Vera and the public domain font Deja Vu. Bitstream Vera is a trademark of Bitstream, Inc., designed by Jim Lyles.
      Enabled	Yes
      Duplicate	No
      Copy protected	No

I don't know if that helps you or not? But presumably you can show images of the font in any case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright, well I should just do it and wait if something happens. I'll add it, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nice! I'd like to change the default string to see how it renders in different fonts

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean change it dynamically on the site? I wouldn't know how that would be possible. That would rely on browser rendering which is probably quite tricky to get it to look exactly like in editors. Not even mentioning the hassle with all the fonts and settings

<comment><USER15> One possibility: what if you used a version of libfreetype or similar, compiled via emscripten, and run it on the client?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No Glass Tty VT220?

</comment><comment><USER29> Huh, this comes up blank in Mobile Safari.

</comment><comment><USER5> when i clicked on the link, i thought it might be an article about actually programming the design of a typeface - generative glyphs! algorithmic aesthetics! oh well... one day...

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is Comic Sans missing?</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so difficult to buy academic software outside of a college? - <AUTHOR>

I don't just mean "expensive", I mean, "how many #$%@ing hoops do I have to jump through even for a commercial license?"
So, I have a project I just won a bid on which requires some pretty heavy number crunching. I'm going to do the prototyping in R, which I know like the back of my hand, but I need a more popular language to hand it back to the client in. They've said they'll accept Wolfram, Matlab, or Maple.
Fair enough. I used all of those in grad school, and I more or less know their strengths and weaknesses, and really any of them would be fine for the job at hand (as would R, as would Octave, as would...)
Here's the thing. I simply want, as an individual, to buy a license for normally-academic software to use commercially, and it's a frigging nightmare.
No, I don't want to leave you my number so you can call me later. No, I don't want to find a local re-seller. I want to state my license needs, buy a license, and use the software as advertised.
(I admit I'm kind of in a weird position because I'm a US citizen living in India, so web stores assume I need Indian licenses but my visa precludes me from buying them. Still: this shouldn't be this hard, should it?)
I ended up going with Wolfram because they actually just let me buy a commercial license. An expensive one, but this contract makes up for it and I'm sure I can drum up another one in the next two years. But this really is stupid. Is the "contact for pricing" really just a "how much money can we squeeze from you?" thing? <comment><USER2> At least for me in Germany Matlab also shows a normal webshop with prices and a shopping cart. I didn't check what happens after account creation though.

A VPN to the US might help with the other issue (although I wonder how a visa can block you from buying software?)

</comment><comment><USER3> What's so hard about leaving a number or talking to a local re-seller?

<comment><AUTHOR> Why the hell should I have to talk to someone to buy software?

As far as the resellers: why would I deliberately insert a middleman in here? I'm talking directly to the producer.

<comment><USER3> Getting mad at me isn't going to solve the problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Software Firm Learns the Rules Of Disengagement - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119179859820351674.html

<comment><USER2> This is only somewhat related to the article, but I rather dislike this trend about putting people in treehouses or what have you to make them think and do creative things.

First of all, it's insulting to intelligent people. _"Here, go into this treehouse, put on the funny hat and start brainstorming. "_

Second, it doesn't give justice to the art of being creative. Companies don't put people into rooms filled with balancesheets and numbers and expect them to be able to do accounting. Being creative is a skill you hone over many years. And it's not an easy skill either. Good creatives have vast general knowledge, are good listeners, good at crossbreeding ideas, good at visualising and great at thinking an idea through to the end to find the weak spots.

Interestingly I know quite a few people that are extremely good at coming up with ideas and being creative and they all absolutely hate being put in a room with people who have no idea and told to be "creative" and to "brainstorm". It's like putting the company accountant in a room with secretaries and marketing people and telling them to do the annual report. The accountant would run away screaming and the annual report would be flawed like hell.

<comment><USER3> > First of all, it's insulting to intelligent people.

One of the hallmarks of intelligence is not taking offense when none has been given.</comment></comment>


Bad Safari extensions bug with context menus - <AUTHOR> https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/contextmenu.html <comment><AUTHOR> This bug unfortunately still exists in Safari 14, more than 2 months after being reported to Apple.</comment>


The FCC Ruling on Robocalls – What Does It Mean for Businesses? - <AUTHOR> http://pro.whitepages.com/blog/what-the-fcc-vote-on-robocalls-and-spam-text-means-for-your-business/

<comment><USER2> Now businesses need to be held accountable to this... I get robo dialed daily!</comment>


Asking Questions vs Giving Advice - <AUTHOR> http://blog.intercom.io/asking-questions-versus-giving-advice/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish someone had asked me these questions when I was starting out :)</comment>