Send Money to Friends in Messenger • Hacker News Board

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#291

Post by sanswork » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

vanzard wrote: post #290

sanswork wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't warn against mailing cash only because it might be stolen in transit we warn against it because of the lack of tracking. How do you know the store received the cash? What happens if your envelope is delivered but falls off the mail cart somewhere and is lost? The merchant isn't going to take your word that you mailed them cash no matter how trustworthy they are.

> lack of tracking Are you joking? The entire shipping industry offers tracking services, delivery confirmations, etc.

Yes that will track that a package arrived but it doesn't track that it had money in it or its location within the receivers infrastructure.

I get that you're a huge fan of bitcoin but your instance to dismiss the possibility that companies can make mistakes in processing orders or managing orders or shipping is really weird. Even after I've showed you examples of it happening. Even in large 'trustworthy' companies.

I've said it repeatedly during our discussions. Not all problems that require a chargeback are fraud. Just let that sink in for a bit then go back and read our last conversation with that statement in mind and look at the points where you repeatedly accuse me to saying a company was willfully fraudulent immediately after I said the above.

I think from this point I'm just going to stop responding as honestly I don't feel like wasting time in another back and forth over whether or not companies are able to make mistakes.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#292

Post by vanzard » Thu, Mar 19, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

sanswork wrote: post #291

vanzard wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of tracking Are you joking? The entire shipping industry offers tracking services, delivery confirmations, etc.

Yes that will track that a package arrived but it doesn't track that it had money in it or its location within the receivers infrastructure. I get that you're a huge fan of bitcoin but your instance to dismiss the possibility that companies can make mistakes in processing orders or managing orders or shipping is really weird. Even after I've showed you examples of it happening. Even in large 'trustworthy' companies.…

> it doesn't track that it had money in it or its location within the receivers infrastructure

If the customer mails an empty envelope, the merchant won't ship, so where is the problem?

If postal workers steal the cash but reseal the envelope... well these incidents do happen but are very rare. It can't be the major reason why "people don't mail cash". People mail valuable items all the time.

If a trustworthy merchant genuinely lose the envelope after delivery... well these incidents are also very rare. It can't be the major reason why "people don't mail cash".

If a fraudulent merchant "lose" the cash after delivery... as I said this is why we warn to not mail cash to untrustworthy merchants.

Again, "lack of tracking" is not why people don't mail cash even to trustworthy merchants. People don't do it because faster and more convenient ways of sending money exist.

> your instance to dismiss the possibility that companies can make mistakes

I DON'T DISMISS MISTAKES. I acknowledge they do happen. But they are rare and therefore don't matter as much as you insist they do. You gave me 3 examples of Tiger Direct refund problems, and yet that's only 3 out of thousands(?) of error-free orders. And these 3 all were eventually solved in the customer's favor, so none of them required a chargeback (had it been possible).

> Not all problems that require a chargeback are fraud.

That's not my point. My point is all of these problems (whatever they are: mistakes, frauds, etc) are rare to begin with. How many times to I have to explain it? You even confirmed it with your own life experience: you personnally issued only 2 chargebacks, ever.

Chargebacks are RARELY needed, period.

Re: Send Money to Friends in Messenger

#293

Post by ethanbond » Mon, Mar 30, 2015, 2:52 PM UTC

tajen wrote: post #267

mbesto wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It most certainly did. "Confinity Inc. is best known as the creator of PayPal. It was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and _cryptography_ company. Confinity launched its milestone product, PayPal in late 1999." [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity

In the book "Founders at work", there is a chapter about Paypal's founder and half his interview is about how banks told them they'd be crushed by fraud, then how fraud was probably eating up 10-30% of their transfers, then how they built such an incredible alrogithm against fraud that they had to build a room around the server to protect their trade secret.

Actually the key differentiator of PayPal, at least according to Thiel, is it wasn't an algorithm. It was a method to abstract the transactions enough to allow a fraud analyst (not a computer, or even a computer/data scientist), to interpret the patterns.

It had some cute name that I can't recall right now. Hugo or something? It was spun out into a separate company to use the same philosophy to fight terrorism. That company is Palantir and seems to be Thiel's opus magnum.