AskHN Digest

1. Ask HN: How does onlyfans.com work around the “no porn” Stripe rule?

Top comment by disillusioned

Cascading payments might be the real answer, and shuffling higher risk charges to non-Stripe providers, but in my experience, Stripe can get pretty moralizing pretty quickly.

We built an adult ecommerce site (purely toys for purchase, no porn) and because other adult toy sites had been successful on Stripe, Stripe assured us this wouldn't be a problem.

Six months and several million dollars processed later, Stripe informs us we're going to be deplatformed because Wells Fargo (their banking partner) had reviewed our account (apparently because of its volume) and determined we violated their standards because of the nature of the toys.

We did a bit of back and forth where Stripe suggested we alter the colors available (seriously) to assuage Wells Fargo's puritanical concerns, and Stripe insisted it wasn't _their_ moralizing, but rather Wells Fargo (paragons of fucking virtue as they are), but we weren't willing to compromise on the nature of our product or have our product's options or colors dictated to us by one of the most corrupt banks on the planet.

We ended up deplatforming and moving to a high-risk processor who was willing to match our competitive Stripe rate. That processor sucks and their fraud protections are weak and their interface is garbage, but they're not telling us how to run our business.

Was mostly disappointed that we went through an arduous review process with Stripe beforehand and received assurances we'd be fine since our chargeback rate is insanely low and we ship actual physical product and have no nudity on our site, but alas.

2. Ask HN: How to do cross platform GUI?

Top comment by fbelzile

If you require a UI that is pretty heavy, here is my pro* tip to save time when developing for both Windows and macOS.

1) Buy a basic HTML template online for your app's dashboard.

2) Don't use Electon. Your users WILL notice and complain about performance. Instead, use the native WebBrowser control in .NET for Windows and WebView using macOS to display your UI. Disable right clicking and highlighting using HTML/JS. To the user, it'll feel like any other native app. Add this meta tag to the HTML file to ensure the WebBrowser control knows to use new versions of IE to render the UI: (and/or look up how to add the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION registry key)

3) Use the built in script calling functions to transfer settings back and forth between the UI and main app in JSON. Do the back end stuff in native code.

4) You can then re-use most of the UI code you wrote to easily port over to macOS. Use the same functions and logic you wrote on Windows to make your Swift functions.

* I've been making a living from building/maintaining my desktop application for about 5 years and had no regrets setting it up this way. I've also seen a number of other expensive, high-end, "professional" software using the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION registry key trick.

Good luck!

3. Tell HN: Check medium's localstorage if you use adblock

Top comment by errantspark

Medium is so chock full of anti-features this doesn't surprise me at all. I often find myself hunting for an archive link to read some article because I'm past my free article limit. It's absurd that I have to sign up for Medium to read some random blogger's article.

I miss the days where it felt like software was trying to make my life easier, nowadays my experience is mostly characterized by a constant struggle to avoid being taken advantage of.

4. Ask HN: There are 5 S-1 posts on the front page, what explains the rush?

Top comment by TallGuyShort

Links to the referenced 5, since one just dropped off the front page: Sumo Logic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24262251 Asana: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265430 Snowflake: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24265041 JFrog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24264478 Unity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24261559

I understand the stock market very poorly and had the same question myself, so this may be way off the mark, but I wonder if it's because of pessimism in the economy that non-public investors are harder to milk right now. It's unusual to see this many S-1's on HN, even more unusual that I've heard of most of them before.

5. Ask HN: What's some “one sentence” wisdom you've learned or created?

Top comment by credit_guy

"Don't do people favors if they don't ask for them."

Sometimes in the corporate life, you imagine that X would like to have Y, and you put in a lot of effort to make Y happen. And then X is not even aware that Y took effort, or worse, you misinterpreted, and X is annoyed that Y happened. Better make sure that X really wants Y and asks for it.

6. Ask HN: Do You Despise Marketing?

Top comment by eaandkw

I think I despise marketing. For one marketers and spam calls have basically made me put my phone in airplane mode permantely, only allowing people in my contacts to get thru. I am getting close to the point of getting rid of my cell phone. If I get unsolicited emails I set up a rule to send them straight to the trash can. Mostly I am getting tired of every single interaction with a person or technology being used or designed to extract information or money. Don't get me wrong. I am willing to buy things. I just don't want to have to spend X amount of dollars for the rest of my life.

7. Ask HN: Why do many sites now put username+password entry on different pages?

Top comment by kayman

The reason your username and password are on different pages is to handle federated identities. Take a typical saas product. Initially you build your own login username and password. As you grow your users ask to login using gmail, LinkedIn or Microsoft so they don’t have to remember multiple usernames and passwords. If you enable third party login it means you have to redirect the site to the third party login page to authenticate.

To accomodate that you design your page so the user first enters username. In your system you check based on email who the identity provider is and redirect to that login journey.

For e.g. if Microsoft you redirect to Microsoft login page to authenticate.

If successful the third party login provider will send you back to your app with a JWT. In your app you check if the JWT is valid - if so allow access.

On first entering email on login, If your login provider is your own app, you redirect to your own login password page.

8. Ask HN: How to Sell Software?

Top comment by j_autumn

Asking myself the same question, it seems hard while starting out especially for B2B.

A “good way” seems to be to cold call / cold e-mail businesses that would benefit from the product. This is sadly considered illegal in germany. The only way to get in contact with them would be if they sign up for a mailinglist, which needs a lot of marketing money. Maybe someone knows other good ways?

Attending events, conferences, etc. is not possible either during the pandemic.

2020 doesn’t seem to be a good year trying to start a company :(

9. Ask HN: Does Anyone Want AGI?

Top comment by ekr

The question is almost tautological because an AGI is fully general problem solver. Every human being has needs, wants that they are working to fulfill, because otherwise they would simply stop living. An AGI can be used to solve those problems for them.

The most common reason people are hesitant about rushing to build an AGI is the issue of AI safety. (at least that's the general consensus in the community).

10. Ask HN: How do I “make the switch” towards becoming a director or VP

Top comment by auspex

I don't think you "make the switch"

I think the best way to get promoted is to first be the employee that managers want to copy and paste to build a team if they could. That doesn't mean putting in hard long hours (it can include that) but it means: Be exceptional at your job, be on top of the details, developing processes that other employees start to copy, create content internally, being a go to resource for other teams.

The second big thing is that you have to make it known to your boss that you want a promotion to management.

When a promotion is available they have an incredible employee, respected by peers and others, that has been improving the overall team that wants to be a manager.