It's called BitcoinStore, but the prices are only shown in USD. I expect it will show the conversion on the checkout page, but at first glance the concept feels like just a marketing gimmick.
I agree, the price should not be shown in dollars, otherwise I feel it kind of defeats the purpose. But this could be the beginning of something great. Bitcoin needs a real economy behind it to sustain itself and to become a lot less susceptible to speculators.
I don't see point displaying the bitcoin price, instead they should post what their conversion rate is. Still like to compare the prices with other USD rates.
We're adding the option soon. For now we just wanted to get the site out there so people could see the savings they can receive if they use Bitcoin. Having the prices set in USD helps consumers compare across sites much easier.
Is this just for face detection or for face recognition as well?
Face detection is a pretty much solved problem IMO and running OpenCV locally is a simple enough solution.
What I will miss about face.com is the face recognition. It was state of the art, lightning fast, and free. The eigenfaces implementation in OpenCV doesn't even come close.
Would work for two years, by then, with funding and you as a co-founder he should lose a controlling stake and your startup would be able to get him an h1b.
If your goal is to make money, then sure, selling should be your goal.
If your goal is to make something that might change the world some day, then maybe it shouldn't be.
Hyperbole aside, if you really believe in what you're working on and want to see it live on, an acquisition might not be the best option. Many acquisitions lead to product deaths as the team gets integrated into the acquiring company (meebo is a recent example).
I'm aware of the startup visa act (http://startupvisa.com/), but that is not going to be available by the time we would need it (assuming it even passes).
Wikipedia says this bill is awaiting committee review. I'm curious, and I'm not familiar with US Congress stuff, but how long do these things usually take?
I experienced this first-hand as I just signed a place a little over a month ago. Compared to what was listed the apartment we ended up with was several hundred dollars cheaper, and we competed with at least 10 other applicants for the place.
However, as I talk to more people they think we are overpaying several hundred dollars based on what they are paying for comparable units, most of which were signed around a year ago.
If so, then it would justify Craigslist having a blanket "no using our data, ever" position, and shutting down competitors like padmapper much earlier.
Having overly restrictive password rules like this, combined with requiring a new password every x months, just leads to more users writing down the passwords on notes stuck to their monitor.
Magnetic stripes are the most hilarious thing ever, but still work almost everywhere on the globe.
I am amazed that magnetic stripes are still the norm for credit cards in the US. Europe has managed to move all but completely to chip-based cards, but the US hasn't.
Does the cost of fraud due to magnetic stripes outweigh the cost to upgrade the entire US system, or is the market just too fragmented to coordinate such a transition?
Credit card fraud is actually a fairly small problem in the US. Wikipedia tells me that the total cost of fraud is 0.07% of the transaction value. And I suspect (without evidence) that the bulk of this is made up of remote purchases, not swiped activity.
Really, the chip things are an example of security theater. Yes, they're more "secure" in the sense of being harder to defeat. No, they're probably not actually worth it in terms of the cost of upgrading all the infrastructure.
A serious upgrade would need to look at things like two factor authentication, c.f. Google Wallet, etc...
You're missing the point entirely. I'm not saying that chip & pin has no value. I'm saying that the value it has is finite (i.e. it saves money equal to the amount of fraud it eliminates) and needs to be weight against the cost of replacing all the card reader infrastructure. And I argue that the fact the US has not upgraded is an existence proof that the upgrade cost[1] outweighs the savings.
[1] Really the amortized upgrade cost. Remember that chips are dinosaur technology already, and have known problems. What's the point of doing an upgrade if you need to dump it all and start over in 6 years anyway?
The fact that the US has not upgraded is not an existence proof, it's simply one piece of supporting evidence. There are other possible reasons why the upgrade hasn't happened even if it makes overall economic sense - perhaps the cost of fraud and the cost of upgrades aren't borne by the same actors; perhaps there's some kind of game theoretic problem like a first mover disadvantage; perhaps the actors aren't acting entirely rationally.
It seems like the upgrade of terminal equipment could be done quite cheaply if it was done as part of the regular cycle of equipment refresh, for example.
"cost of replacing all the card reader infrastructure"
I'm not sure how many PoS are already equipped to deal with chip cards. In the USA/Canada it's hit or miss (most misses), and in Europe it was the standard 10 years ago (but most readers take swipe cards).
Replacing cards is cheap and they can be replaced as they expire
What would be the upgrade cost for each PoS? $100? Some systems are more integrated than others (like card reader integrated with the register as one device) so this may cost more.
Or maybe it's just a matter of issuing the cards to justify the stores to upgrade.
My previous U.S. card had a chip. The very recent replacement came without one.
So they aren't really moving in the direction of issuing cards with chips. I never actually encountered a situation where I was aware I could use the chip, over 5 years or whatever it was.
It's not fair to just look at it in terms of the cost of fraud vs. profit. Consumers whose CC info is stolen aren't liable for fraudulent charges but it can still be very expensive and time-consuming for them to correct everything, not to mention the affect it can have on a credit score. And obviously, the consumers don't get any say in whether the costs to upgrade the infrastructure are worth it.
> Consumers whose CC info is stolen aren't liable for fraudulent charges
That's only if the credit card company believes or accepts your story.
I once reserved a flight by telephone using a credit card, but at the airport I paid for the flight with cash. Later I found that my credit card was charged for the flight. The airline said that they couldn't find any evidence that I had paid in cash, and even though their policy was to get a signature when paying by credit card, they could not produce my signature. But they still insisted that I had paid by credit card.
I complained to the credit card issuer, but they took the airline's word (United Airlines, by the way) over mine.
It's not enough that charges are fraudulent -- if the merchant is mistaken in their belief (or lying), you are on the hook!
Try to find the value of all swiped CC transactions. Then take 0.07% of that number. I'm guessing you'll be hard pressed to call the result "fairly small".
The whole chip and pin thing is pointless though, my company credit card gets used by plenty of people who don't know the PIN thanks to online/phone purchases, and in the past when I've forgotten a PIN, or just got a new card which I haven't yet received a PIN for, I've had no problem persuading shops to let me swipe them (magnetic strip) and sign for it instead.
