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Pardon my ignorance, but how do you prove a) He doesn't have a copy of the private key? b) He's telling the truth about mining them? c) Actually threw away the drive?


What incentive would he have to lie about any of this?


He's already set up a wallet to receive donations. Imaginary internet points. Exposure.


Collecting the donations changes everything. It seems like going to "the internet" with a sob story and a paypal account (or bitcoin wallet in this case) has been getting pretty popular recently, or at least has been getting more attention.

I absolutely cannot understand why anybody would ever throw money at some unverified sob story...


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806056

I do; and I do it because I'm not completely cynical about the general public. I actually think most people are telling the truth. I could be very wrong, but nothing in my life has indicated as such. I have no idea what that indication would look like, but my default is to believe people unless I have a reason not to.


I'm not completely cynical about the general public. I firmly believe that most people are good trustworthy people who are kept in line by their own sense of what is right and wrong, not the law. However I am aware that there is a small fraction of the general public that makes a living scamming the largely innocent and trusting general public.

If I hear about somebody's house burning down on the local news, I might chip in a few dollars so that they can get their kids new clothes or whatever. I hear the same story, on reddit, 4chan, HN, whatever, from the alleged victim, and they are coming to me with this story and a collection jar? I'm sorry, I am going to require at least some local news confirmation, and it seems like even that isn't good enough with some of these scams.

And don't even get me started on how in most of these cases the jump from "here is my sob story" to "and that is why I need money" is completely missing. The connection there is clear when a house burns down, but "I threw something out, then later learned it was worth a lot"? "I am a server who was insulted/was not tipped"? Uhuh. If I see a donation cup, and no connection between "sob story"->"now I need lots of money", I don't think that there is any rational conclusion besides "it's a scam".


Agreed, sounds fishy and a great way to get exposure, The Guardian covering this pyramid scheme, and to get it into the mainstream...


SimpleCharters, Inc. - Portsmouth, NH. (45 min from Boston, 4 hours to NYC, 1 hour to mountains, 1 min to ocean)

We're a marketplace for booking private jets, instantly. Looking for front-end & back-end devs. Application written in PHP/MYSQL (CodeIgniter), small (but critical) pieces in Node.js and Python.

Preferably candidates interested in aviation or luxury lifestyle.

(http://www.simplecharters.com)


There's something wrong with your website--when I first visit each of the pages, some totally other page appears first. It has a black or dark grey background with some tabs in a column along the left edge. It is quickly replaced by the proper site each time, after being visible for perhaps 200ms. I tried to find a contact address to send this to, but your site makes it really hard to contact you (except via "Live Chat" which I am wary of). Well, hopefully you find an easy fix. If it helps, page loads are probably slower than average for me because I'm on the other side of the world.


Hey thanks for the heads up. I'll take a look.


Congrats to Stripe for all the new users!


I suspect this is very good timing on the part of Braintree. With Stripe now actively rolling out across more than North America and with other low-overhead payment services starting to appear as well, Braintree were effectively trapped in no-man's-land with their existing business model. For start-ups and small businesses, they were way too heavy for even basic stuff like signing up compared to the new competition. For larger, established businesses, direct merchant accounts and other banking facilities are probably worth the hassle given the better margins available. If I were them and had an out like this, I'd take it in a heartbeat, too.


I heard that. As I've said before, people revere the PayPal mafia, but revile PayPal.

As it's been said by others here, this is certainly good for Stripe because more than a few Braintree customers will flock their way to avoid PayPal, but it also creates opportunities for other upstarts in this arena.

That being said, there is a certain amount of lock-in for these products, so while it's relatively easy for a business to transition their new users/payers from Braintree to Stripe/others, it's pretty painful to transition existing users/payers out of Braintree as all existing users would need to re-key their CC numbers and billing addresses.


If only PayPal had joined Braintree's "Credit Card Data Portability" initiative [1]. I'm betting that's dead now with them joining PayPal, if it's even still active. If it is, get your data out quick before PayPal can lock it in!

[1]: https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/open-letter-to-the-ce...


I'm an engineer with Braintree. This deal will not affect our participation in the Credit Card Portability Standard.


Or you could use Braintree with Spreedly to keep your options open: http://blog.spreedly.com/2013/09/26/braintree-payments-a-por...


I'm somewhat annoyed that they do not publish the list of providers who have joined this initiative [1].

[1] http://www.portabilitystandard.org/ (FAQ Q #1)


Braintree offers data portability, so you can transition existing customers & credit cards to a new payment system easily. That being said, I see no reason to jump ship unless service deteriorates


Wow, I was looking at Braintree when I found Stripe last year. I wanted something truly different from PayPal for my customers. Looks like I made the right call.


Why would merchants looking to switch from Braintree expect Stripe's fate to be any different (i.e. acquisition)?


Hah. The real lesson if course is no place is really a safe port.


The ability to shut off emails has been pretty easy, in my experience. Other than that, I find quite a bit of value from linkedin.


Seems like that article missed A LOT of sites running on RoR.


The domain name should have told us that.


Let's not forget Portsmouth, NH... heh http://seacoast.io


#35 gives me a seizure if my mouse isn't perfectly still while hovering.


You can purchase a Cessna 150 for under $15k. And that's not a light sport.


You should also point out that's a 20 year old Cessna 150.


The last Cessna 150 was made in 1977 so it would be at least 35 years old.


And so what! The engine certainly would be more modern. I just had some excellent fun flying in a Piper Cub on Sunday, it's about 3 times my age. Planes are not like cars, entire chunks of them are replaced on a regular basis materials prone to rust and similar corrosion aren't normally used.

It was my first time flying such a primitive old plane and honestly I hadn't had such fun since my first solo. I was walking round with such a grin.

Old planes aren't bad at all. They are tried and tested, meanwhile this design doesn't exactly look as modern as a Diamond or similar cheap to run glider-come-airplane so it's hard to be excited in all honesty.


Agreed. It's amazing the conditions of some of the Cessna's that come in to where I work... It's often insanely difficult to tell how old it is just by looking at it (Though not every aircraft is taken care of the same).


Yet another! Foundation, Bootstrap, 960, unsemantic, etc.


Hooray for variety. Or do you prefer monopolies?


Is there any site like http://todomvc.com/ comparing all these CSS frameworks properly?


How's their service going to stop a Man-in-the-middle attack, client endpoint exploits? Or the HN effect crippling their marketing servers.


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