16-year-old earns WSU degree without stepping on campus - <AUTHOR> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014985971_younggrad07m.html <comment><USER2> As great as it is that she can learn so much online at such a young age, I try to picture what my life would be like if my entire college experience was through a computer screen. I did a lot of growing up and reflection at UT- Austin, and met my best friends at the dorm, my wife at a coop we both lived in, and my business partner when we were both student programmers at the university. I didn't finish until I was 24 and I constantly think about all of those memories. In one of my philosophy classes (Human Nature, 10 years ago), the professor brought up the "Experience Box" thought experiment pretty regularly. Essentially, if you could replace all of your experiences with a digital equivalent, would you?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine>

<comment><USER3> Yes, but her formal education is acceptably 'over'. She can go out and do things without worrying about degrees. (or she can get a grad degree, whatever). Many choices are open to her that you simply didn't have.

I wish I would have tried to do it.

<comment><USER4> "She can go out and do things without worrying about degrees."

Her work life is set, but it still does nothing for personal growth. You usually need both to be successful. I wish I would have learned this earlier in my life. I went to a commuter school and did not get the full college experience.

<comment><USER5> Is college the best setting for personal growth? What would be some alternatives? Travel? The peace core? The military? A start-up? I wonder if Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, feel they missed out on some personal growth because they dropped out of college?

<comment><USER4> It's possible. Owning a company and working at company and living in a dorm/going to college all give you different experiences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It took three years, with an associate's degree, for a 'super genius' to get her bachelor's degree?

Tell me they didn't milk her for tuition for duplicate courses.

Did the article mention what her bachelor's degree is in?

[EDIT]

 _Heard majored in history and minored in political science, which falls under social sciences._

The article also mentioned she has passed an online law school admission test and plans to get a JD entirely online.

It did not mention LSATs and I also believe entirely online JD programs do not require LSATs.

I actually watched on Ally McBeal episode ("The Playing Field" - season 1) on Netflix an hour ago reminding me of this scenario...

A 10-year old boy genius becomes a lawyer, and during negotiations against Ally, cries and sulks under the table when not getting his way.

So, I am pretty tickled by this article. I don't understand why the child would not pursue a higher caliber academic institution. Perhaps she is not that smart.

<comment><USER7> I was handling college level biology texts just fine in eigth grade. I handled the chemistry required at that level as well. (private school, someone had donated intro bio and chem texts to their library.)

A high school age person getting a college degree does not surprise me. I don't think this is unusual at all. Many kids are far more capable than we give them credit for. As for the social aspects, I would tend to agree with you.

<comment><USER6> I will probably be downvoted for this, but I am a bit more impressed with a high school age person getting a college degree in biology or chemistry or engineering or math, not history and political science from a state school (no offense Wazzu alumns).

<comment><USER7> A science degree requires an amount of logic and application in additional to memorization and writing skills to pass. History and political science can be handled largely through latter two skills.

Not to say you can't learn reasoning in history classes or memorize your way through a biology degree. It think the professors have more impact on your degree of learning than the actual subject material. (And of course, your own desire to learn)

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"My parents felt that it would not be a good idea to send me to campus at such a young age," Heard said. "I appreciate their decision, mainly because online studying has given me quite a bit of flexibility in my study schedule."_

Yes, and all of the 16 and 17 year olds who got into college with my freshman class got in way over their heads socially and emotionally. If I were to have a daughter who finished High School early, or found some way to dispense with it entirely, then I'd have her do some sort of research or work until she reached age-parity before going away from home.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure you identified _all_ of the 16 and 17 year olds?

When my wife was a 15 year old college student, people assumed she was quite a bit older. She was intellectually, emotionally, and socially ready for college at that age. Those students who are ready in all three ways are often overlooked. Other students are ready intellectually but missing the social or emotional aspects, and they're the ones you're more likely to notice.

If you or I have a daughter who finishes high school early, college might not be the best option, or it might. You have to evaluate it on a case-by-case basis.

<comment><USER8> _Are you sure you identified all of the 16 and 17 year olds?_

No, but of all the young women I knew well, I first found out that they had made it into college a year or two early, then much later found out the kind of shenanigans they were up to. I also had a girlfriend in graduate school who had many stories of similar young women at her alma mater. Granted, it's much too small a sample size to be scientific, but it was a striking realization for me.

 _When my wife was a 15 year old college student, people assumed she was quite a bit older. She was intellectually, emotionally, and socially ready for college at that age. Those students who are ready in all three ways are often overlooked._

This is a good point. A student who is savvy and mature might want to keep their age a secret, and they would be missed by an observer.

On the other hand, I am more and more convinced that performance in _substantive work_ is one of the few good indicators of emotional maturity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd expect to get a price break on something like an internet course. I wonder if her degree cost her less that way?

<comment><USER6> <http://www.finaid.wsu.edu/coa.html>

$3000 less per semester, AFAIKT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >"My parents felt that it would not be a good idea to send me to campus at such a young age," Heard said.

Yes, because the fact that she can get degrees quicker than the other also means she is mature and evolved enough.</comment>


Why I Love Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~mvanier/hacking/rants/computer_science.html

<comment><USER2> I think this guy has mathematics totally wrong. Maths just doesn't work today the way it did in Newton's time, and even back then people weren't satisfied with Newton's proofs, but they lacked an alternative so they had to use them anyway. If the author had his way, we would have refused to accept Newtonian physics for two centuries! Could you imagine the damage that would have done?

 _> [A]ny realistic mathematical proof will leave out a great many steps, which are considered to be the "required background knowledge"_

Computer science papers are different how? Computer science != programs!

 _> [T]he inference rules are not always specified accurately, or are not believable if they are. This is why you will sometimes read a mathematical proof and say "I understand the reasoning, but I just don't buy it"_

I think this guy just isn't too hot at mathematics. Omitting a trivial step (or domain specific knowledge) is _not_ a lack of rigour, but a courtesy to the reader. The details can always be filled in cleanly. If you ever see a modern mathematical proof that is accepted by all mathematicians, but you don't "buy it", then I can assure you that it's _you_ that's at fault, not the proof.

Oh, and computer science papers never leave out trivial steps or assume domain knowledge? Not the papers I've read. Once again, CS != programming!

 _> This is reminiscent of Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica where hundreds of pages pass until the authors can prove that 1 + 1 = 2._

Surely _Principia_ is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the argument that everyone should always spell out all the steps!

<comment><USER3> _I think this guy just isn't too hot at mathematics. Omitting a trivial step (or domain specific knowledge) is not a lack of rigour, but a courtesy to the reader. The details can always be filled in cleanly._

A very astute comment. In principle, mathematical proofs are supposed to be every bit as completely described as computer programs, but perhaps not as explicitly expressed. Edsger Dijkstra used to refer to mathematical proofs as a model for computer programming.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_derivation>

<comment><USER4> I'm not a mathematician, but I can imagine some sort of "library of derivation" whereupon, in order to prove something, say, based on arithmetic, you _include_ (the language directive, not the verb) the specification of arithmetic derived in Principia Mathematica. Then the proving system follows your logic to its logic, and then to the logic they relied on, and so on, until everything is completely explicit. Basically, formal execution of bibliographies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quick note: many of you are saying that this guy is totally out of touch with how math works, and that formal derivation of proofs is just fantasy. It's true that that's an extreme view, but it is in fact one that is held by some top mathematicians, even if a small minority. There are people who have built up research programs out of trying to make it a reality. See, for instance, Doron Zeilberger, who apparently describes himself as an "ultrafinitist":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doron_Zeilberger>

<http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/OPINIONS.html>

I'm not saying I agree with that, just that it's not lunacy. Carry on.

<comment><USER6> I agree. The original post is echoing many of the views expressed at more length by Sussman and Wisdom in their book "Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics." There they showed that a computational expression of classical mechanics was much more explicit and rigorous than the standard mathematical or physical treatments. They also have a similar long paper on differential geometry from a computational perspective: [http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/wisdom/AIM-2005-003.pd...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/wisdom/AIM-2005-003.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Their point in SICM was that traditional notation was not as ambiguous as their computational notation. That's because traditional notation is designed to be convenient rather than explicit. They are right, but this does _not_ mean that physics lacks rigour. More explicit notations were always available and physicists, being more intelligent than computers, were capable of resolving the ambiguities to reveal the fully rigorous structure underneath.

There's a difference between using a convenient notation and lacking rigour. If you are always capable of discerning the true formal equations behind a convenient notation then everything is OK. If you can't, or people can't agree on what the formal meaning should be, then there is indeed a problem. The fact that the authors could derive a computational notation that no physicist would disagree with is _proof_ that a lack of rigour never existed in the first place.

<comment><USER6> You write that "More explicit notations were always available and physicists, being more intelligent than computers, were capable of resolving the ambiguities to reveal the fully rigorous structure underneath."

I doubt that's true. For example, here's what Piet Hut, now a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, writes about his experiences with classical mechanics as an undergraduate in his review of SICM available at <http://www.ids.ias.edu/~piet/publ/other/sicm.html> :

"Soon I went through the library in search of books on the variational principle in classical mechanics. I found several heavy tomes, borrowed them all, and started on the one that looked most attractive. Alas, it didn't take long for me to realize that there was quite a bit of hand-waving involved. There was no clear definition of the procedure used for computing path integrals, let alone for the operations of differentiating them in various ways, by using partial derivatives and/or using an ordinary derivative along a particular path. And when and why the end points of the various paths had to be considered fixed or open to variation also was unclear, contributing to the overall confusion.

Working through the canned exercises was not very difficult, and from an instrumental point of view, my book was quite clear, as long as the reader would stick to simple examples. But the ambiguity of the presentation frustrated me, and I started scanning through other, even more detailed books. Alas, nowhere did I find the clarity that I desired, and after a few months I simply gave up. Like generations of students before me, I reluctantly accepted the dictum that `you should not try to understand quantum mechanics, since that will lead you astray for doing physics', and going even further, I also gave up trying to really understand classical mechanics! Psychological defense mechanisms turned my bitter sense of disappointment into a dull sense of disenchantment."

<comment><USER2> I actually agree with Sussman and Wisdom (and the author of this article) that physics is taught in a very sloppy manner, and that the computational notation has huge advantages. But that's not the point I (or they) were making. Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics were perfectly rigorous before Sussman and Wisdom came along, even if they weren't taught very well. If mechanics had really been deep-down sloppy, then Sussman and Wisdom would now be heralded alongside Newton and Einstein for their incredible contribution to science! Rather than just creating a new notation, they would have advanced science incalculably, turning vague and untestable theories into hard empirical science for the first time!

But that's obviously not what happened. Physicists were always capable of making exact calculations and predictions from Lagrangian mechanics. SICM contains no new theories, theorems or proofs, just a more explicit way of representing old ones. Nothing new was discovered and no old notions were clarified. Instead, they just found a better way of _teaching_ mechanics, one that didn't rely on the implicit knowledge that masters of the subject already possessed. They were only capable of doing this because Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics were well-defined in the first place. If they hadn't been then they would have had to advance a new theory of mechanics to replace them, rather than just re-presenting an old one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This disdain for fields without rigor reminds me of the general attitude towards people using excel macros or vb. I understand it's fun & I used to feel the same way. But at some point you just have to stop playing with your tools & get some real work done.

</comment><comment><USER8> A compiled computer program is certainly a rigorous description of something, God knows what, certainly not the programmer.

This is just funny:

 _"I think computer science has a tremendous amount to offer the fields of logic and mathematics. Specifically, I think that requiring all formulas to be executable by a finite, deterministic system (a computer program) could lead to a great increase in the level of rigor of these fields, would make it easier for students to learn existing results, would make it easier for practitioners to develop new results, and might possibly suggest whole new approaches..._ *

Also he keeps refering to computers as finite. I can only assume he means in a physical sense that there are a non-infinite amount of atoms making up his CPU.

I suppose I should critic his argument seriously but it's just too far away from any actual reality.

<comment><USER9> What, with his comment about being able to eventually understand sociology using physics, I think this essay is easily 3 Cuil.

<comment><USER10> what does that mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The dichotomy he puts forward - algorithms (CS) vs. proofs (math) - is totally made up.

<comment><USER12> The dichotomy of CS vs Math is tenuous as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Links down, here's the cached version: [http://22.214.171.124/search?q=cache:YchvBt7eH24J:www.cs.cal...](http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:YchvBt7eH24J:www.cs.caltech.edu/~mvanier/hacking/rants/computer_science.html+~mvanier/hacking/rants/computer_science.html&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari)

</comment><comment><USER9> So much fail.

</comment><comment><USER14> "I really loathe vagueness in science (or, for that matter, in philosophy and argumentation in general)."

Is he a computer, true or false no other answer? I think he's fooling himself, what happens if quantum computing becomes common and a result can be a 1, 0 or 'maybe'?</comment>


Why Does the DICOM Standard Exist? - <AUTHOR> https://innolitics.com/articles/dicom-i-facilitating-interoperability/ <comment><USER2> Having personally worked with the DICOM standard, I'll say it's not the worst, but definitely not the best spec to work with.

The main issue I've found is the manufacturer's implementation. They range from okay to barely meeting the minimum standards.

One thing that always annoyed me was the time stamps. They're mandated by the standard, so there's always a timestamp, but it's often useless. For example, it seems some scanners don't get their time set, over the network or otherwise, _ever_, so you might have a bunch of scans performed a few years ago on scanner A with an accurate timestamp of say 2017, but in a new scan from last week that was taken by scanner B, which hasn't had its clock configured properly, it reports a date closer to the start of the unix epoch rather than 2020.

Of course some of this is out of the manufacturers control, but temporal data is critical to analyzing changes to patient over time. I think this is one area where the DICOM standard couldn't be a bit more strict with a lot of positive impact.

<comment><USER3> This is why I hate DICOM. DICOM itself is fine, it's just that every device manufacturer mucks it up. I remember once working with a device that claimed to meet a certain supplement. Got some sample data from a real world device, implemented the standard in our system, and started playing with it, but every image I got back was just a garbled mess. After tons of attempts, I eventually got in contact with a developer at the manufacturer who told me they encrypt the image data so that it can only be used by their supporting software...

<comment><USER4> Is that even legal?

<comment><USER5> I don't think it is, at least in the US. What most people forget about HIPAA is that the P stands for "Portability". The entire point behind it was that someone should be able to take their records from one hospital, doctor's office, or imaging clinic and then bring it to another one without having to go through another scan. DICOM was the industry's response to those portability requirements that our government put into place.

<comment><USER6> Are you sure about that timeline?

DICOM 3 (which was the first version using the DICOM name) dates back to 1993. HIPAA was signed in 1996.

I thought the "portability" part was meant to cover changes in jobs and life circumstances.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Be glad for DICOM. In digital pathology we don't even have that. Every manufacturer has their own format. We don't even have proper OS libraries, there is a LGPL library that hasn't been updated for 2 years and GPL one that's up to date but slow as molasses.

EDIT: yes, I meant OpenSlide and BioFormats. BioFormats is in unoptimized Java. Oh yeah, and DICOM for pathology exists and some software tools use it exclusively but none of the manufacturers do. As the only standard some organization press for standardizing on it - forcing all vendors to provide convertors. But those are often slow, buggy and produce huge files.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am curious what digital pathology libraries you are referring to (by any chance, is one of them [https://www.openmicroscopy.org/bio- formats/](https://www.openmicroscopy.org/bio-formats/) ?)

Also, I am sure you are aware the DICOM folks have been trying to get digital pathology pulled into the standard. I am not sure how much success they have had, but David Clunie (the current editor of the standard and a very friendly and open-minded person) had a funny set of power point slides about this topic. I recommend taking a look just for the humor:

[https://www.dclunie.com/papers/HIMA_2017_DICOMWSI_Clunie.pdf](https://www.dclunie.com/papers/HIMA_2017_DICOMWSI_Clunie.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> FWIW, Innolitics has a better data dictionary (information object definitions) for DICOM than the official standards website. [https://dicom.innolitics.com/ciods](https://dicom.innolitics.com/ciods)

DICOM has its issues, but it's much better than HL7.

<comment><USER9> Hey, I'm actually one of the engineers at Innolitics working on improving the DICOM Browser, and we just finished a relatively large update to it.

Thanks for linking the site! If you have any suggestions or encountered any bugs on the site, please feel free to create an issue in the repo: [https://github.com/innolitics/dicom- standard/issues](https://github.com/innolitics/dicom-standard/issues)

<comment><USER10> Nice work! It is the primary DICOM resource for me and my team. Good to see that it's being actively maintained!

<comment><AUTHOR> @korijn I'm glad you find our DICOM Standard Browser to be useful!

You (and others reading this post) may be interested to know that the JSON data the powers the browser is extracted using a set of open-sourced Python scripts:

[https://github.com/innolitics/dicom- standard](https://github.com/innolitics/dicom-standard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's like TIFF, or like USB Storage.

Sometimes when it doesn't really matter what is chosen, one powerful entity can just pick and it doesn't matter. Even if maybe option B is very slightly better, clarity that we're all doing A is arguably better than some do A and some B and all suffer.

Unicode / ISO 10646-1 is an example like that. Some people don't like Han Unification, some people think UTF-16 reserved codepoints is an abomination, but mostly everybody is happy to live in a world where Unicode and ISO-10646 are effectively the same thing seen from different angles, not competing standards (Yes that could have happened)

Other times though there is no single entity powerful enough and willing to insist on one way forward, and no natural agreement on whether to do A or B. Instead parties that want to do A, and parties that want to do B just agree either is fine. The result is "standards" like USB Storage, TIFF or DICOM that leave far too much as unresolved choices.

Example: Some scanner manufacturers agreeing TIFF had designed scanners that start from the top-left of the eventual document, others started top-right or even bottom-right. If TIFF said "Images are top-to-bottom" the bottom-right scanners become expensive because they need a huge RAM buffer. Vice versa if TIFF says "Images are bottom-to-top". So... the actual TIFF standard says either can be true, you just flip a tag in the header to declare which way up the image is. Decoders have to carry all the burden of dealing with this, or be incompatible with some images to the confusion of users. ("Why is this picture upside down?")

These standards are marginally better than nobody agreeing anything, but only marginally. They're like that mediocre fusion restaurant you end up at when half the group wants Chinese and half wants Indian. Nobody likes this (hypothetical) fusion restaurant, so now nobody is happy, is that really better? I guess it's an improvement on spending the evening arguing pointlessly, because at least you can eat now.

</comment><comment><USER12> I work with DICOM and HL7 and these things bring me to daydream about becoming a farmer and never looking back... Public healthcare IT is not where you want to be.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think some of the frustration towards DICOM is misattributed. Yes, there are many instances of the standard being implemented poorly, and yes it is not always the most convenient having to index into your metadata using hex digits. But at least there IS a well documented, universally adopted standard that captures the most important information relevant to medical images right there next to the pixels. If this weren't the case, I think it would be much harder to have reliable interoperability between the highly complex + diverse types of systems that need to talk to each other in order to conduct an imaging workflow. There is a reason it exists and is so widely adopted -- and if you dig in to the details, a lot of thought has been put into its design. I highly recommend the book [https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Imaging- Communications-Medici...](https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Imaging- Communications-Medicine-DICOM/dp/3642108490), which believe it or not is a very entertaining read on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminder to not put these things on the Internet (~2,600 results):

[https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=dicom+server+response](https://beta.shodan.io/search?query=dicom+server+response)

We're continuing to see hospitals and other healthcare-related organizations expose services that fall through the cracks due to the relative obscurity of these types of protocols in IT.

<comment><USER15> Hospitals tend to have piss-poor security. Their IT budget is usually low, they have one or two sysadmins who are eternally busy fixing things that users have messed up. Pentests are slowly becoming more accepted as a requirement, mostly because the GDPR has come into effect. And those inevitably turn up large lists of criticals.

Typically, gear is left with all the settings at 'default', things are opened up to the net for temporary access which is then never removed again, it's possible for the whole hospital to have only one LAN segment and so on. Ransomware, directed attacks to gain admin privileges and substantial violations of patient confidentiality have all been recorded with great regularity.

I'm assuming that if I have to go into the hospital again for whatever reason that that data will be on the street before I leave the building.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As standards come DICOM is actually pretty good. Sure, manufacturers will do their damnest to mess it up but interop tends to be surprisingly good because - just like with HTML - people tend to write for the lowest common denominator on reception. A typical PACS system will talk to a large number of machines all producing different output for different specialists to look at.

I've looked at about 10 companies using DICOM over the last couple of years and interop was typically the least of their worries. Think about the level of complexity here: anything from single frame BW at high res (say an X-ray) to time series of volumetric scans (for instance CAT).

The smarter companies will use one of the better FOSS libraries to implement the standard, the not-so-smart ones will try to roll their own, burn a ton of resources and will end up playing catch-up.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seeing those diagrams brought back swarms of memories from 20+ years ago working on UML diagrams on HL7 committees. Ewww.

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to work with DICOM about 7 years ago. It was a complete shitshow. Most of the important data was in "private fields". Imagine all websites using CSS, but they all use different vendor-specific attributes like "-moz-border- radius: 5". Might as well use a proprietary format at that point.

</comment><comment><USER18> In the pre-DICOM days, I made money by making video capture cards. Back then, the only standard to get images from CT and MRI machines was the composite video on the 75 ohm coax going to the operator's console screen. Laser cameras (medical image film printers) worked the same way.

Actually that's not entirely true: there was also a 3M / Kodak defacto standard using a parallel RS-485 bus.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'll just leave this right here: [https://www.ihe.net/](https://www.ihe.net/)

</comment><comment><USER20> I worked on DICOM images sent to Blackberry apps in 2006 or so. It was a pain then. Assume not much has changed.

<comment><USER21> DICOM hasn't changed a lot, but thankfully there are lots of tools available now, and vendors have stopped using proprietary formats.</comment></comment>


A complete guide to virtualization (all types, in-depth) - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/2653 <comment><USER2> Here's another nice article focused on Xen: <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8909></comment>


Engineering - <AUTHOR> http://engineeringdegrees101.com/ Get a very useful Online Engineering Degree Programs at engineeringdegrees101.com! Our website is dedicated to Engineering and has all the latest information you need to make informed decisions about your future. <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much substance here; it reads like a high school guidance counselor's pep talk. If you are seriously interested in entering engineering there are several good books available:

A fairly recent books is _Studying Engineering_ , [http://www.amazon.com/Studying-Engineering-Road-Rewarding- Ca...](http://www.amazon.com/Studying-Engineering-Road-Rewarding- Career/dp/0964696959/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314784271&sr=1-1) , unfortunately even it is eleven years old.

An older one I read more than 20 years ago, but is very readable and has a lot of useful information, despite its age, is Eric Laithwaite's _Invitation to Engineering_ , [http://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Engineering-Eric- Laithwaite...](http://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Engineering-Eric- Laithwaite/dp/0855206616/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314784036&sr=8-1) .</comment>


Hotmail Blocking Email - <AUTHOR>

I run a legitiment website & I do require that users activate their accounts via email. Now i've tried sending email to my hotmail and it doesn't go into SPAM nor the INBOX.
I have done some research and lots are stating that hotmail are dropping emails. (I read once this is illegal)
My server is in no blacklists and isn't used for spam purposes.
Any suggestions would be great. <comment><USER2> Common problem with Hotmail and a bit of a crapshoot. I assume you have done all the general SPF stuff. There is a postmaster website for Hotmail (guidelines, contact info and other tools) and also a whitelist that you can get on if you are ready to pay out the nose. Google around for it.

One thing you can do is to get an account with an external SMTP service (such as Authsmtp) and configure your email server (such as Postfix) to relay your email through that service. Many people use Gmail for this but Gmail requires unique settings that can make this kind of a pain. This allows you to piggyback on the deliverability of the other service.

If you are sending out newsletters, you might consider going with a specialized service such as Constant Contact.

If you look around, there are more blog posts and information sites that are more detailed. One of them is on hacker news as I type this. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Just curious, where did you read that dropping email is illegal?

It may be against the terms of service or perhaps violate a service contract but for it to be illegal there would probably need to be evidence of some other nefarious activity.

<comment><USER4> It is not illegal to drop emails.

That being said, are you positive the problem is with hotmail itself and not its mail handlers?

For example, if you use the incorrect sort of line breaks [1] in an email that gets sent to a qmail server, the server will silently drop that email message. It will report an error textually but not return an actual error code. This could make it look like your email was getting dropped. This happens quite frequently with machine generated emails.

Who knows if MSN / Hotmail uses qmail, but my point is that there may be other matters afoot than Hotmail intentionally playing hardball with you.

[1] Qmail pukes when you send an email that contains carriage returns without line feeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We've had this problem a lot, even with specific in house policies for how mail should be sent from our web applications. I've found that making sure the SPF record is correct and very 'tight' helps a lot. Also make sure before you're mail server isn't running as an open relay well before you send a test e-mail to Hotmail (make sure everything is perfect before you send to hotmail).

After that, don't just start sending a large bulk of e-mail to hotmail, send a few (they'll run some tests, open port, check SPF, etc!!). After a bit then start shipping mail out to hotmail.

Even after all of this you can still be up the creak, we've gone to using AuthSMTP at work now (having Postfix directly proxy the requests on). It's fast and we can deliver to hotmail (a lot less stuffing around).

</comment><comment><USER6> Start here: <http://postmaster.msn.com>.

</comment><comment><USER7> We had exactly the same problem and have tried a lot of things. But recently we have solved it. You need to set SPF and register it with hotmail. It should solve your issue.

</comment><comment><USER8> I had more simple problems with Hotmail. I had many cases where people sent me mails to Yahoo and Gmail accounts and if they came from Hotmail mail addresses, they just didn't reach me at all. Some Hotmail users I knew had difficulties even to subscribe to Google and Yahoo Groups too (for the same reason). Mail sent FROM Hotmail accounts many times doesn't even go to spam folders.

</comment><comment><USER9> We had the exact same issue with these morons. Email them and explain what's up. They will add you to their "white list". Funny thing is how their SMTP server accepts messages without errors and then just silently drops them.

It's Microsoft we're dealing with here.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hmm Thanks for your suggestions. I might actually just get hotmail users for now to just go via an alternate activation method.

</comment><comment><USER10> I had the same problem, have you got correct reverse DNS record? it may help.</comment>


Quantopian Brings Algorithmic Trading To The Masses - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/01/23/quantopian-brings-algorithmic-trading-to-masses/ <comment><USER2> Call me cynical but this is a bad idea, and not for Quantopian either. It is well known that only a small fraction of traders ever end up making money consistently.

Effectively Quantopian get a vast and relatively cheap set of researchers/traders to develop strategies and they can simply cherry pick and front run the most successful. This means that the actual developers of the successful strategy will quickly be muscled out.

Of course Quantopian would deny they would ever do this but they have full access to all your code and results and can do what they like with it. You really think a "Wall Street" company is going to be happy with your $nn a month subscription fee when they can see you are running a strategy that when scaled up a bit could make so much more?

<comment><USER3> It's 8 guys hacking in a small office in Boston. Hardly a "Wall Street" company. (disclosure: I've worked with half the team before... and they're all the best devs I've ever worked with. I do not work for Quantopian.)

<comment><USER2> They are being backed by GETCO, which most definitely is a "Wall Street" company...

<comment><USER4> There are all sorts of reasons why GETCO might have chosen to back us (I work for Quantopian), but I can say with certainty that "Steal algorithms from the people who wrote them" wasn't one of them.

GETCO really doesn't need to steal other people's algorithms.

<comment><USER2> I may well be maligning you but on the other hand I have over 20 years experience working as a trader/researcher and developer in the finance industry for tier1 investment banks as well as hedge funds and have seen a lot. You are not doing this for "the greater good" you are doing this to make money, as is GETCO et al. Stealing algorithms and protection of algorithms are fundamental issues in the industry.

I would suggest you guys try to assuage fears about this by doing as much as possible to prove your true intentions.

<comment><USER4> _You are not doing this for "the greater good" you are doing this to make money, as is GETCO et al._

Yes, we're doing this to make money. However, making money and doing good in the world are not mutually exclusive, and making money and stealing are not inextricably linked.

We believe we can make money at this, or we wouldn't be doing it. We intend to make money in an ethical way, giving our users the tools they want and respecting and protecting the privacy of their intellectual property.

 _Stealing algorithms and protection of algorithms are fundamental issues in the industry._

I entirely agree, but it does not follow that everyone doing algorithmic trading is a thief or that the only way to make money from algorithmic trading is to be a thief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quantopian suffers from a few problems (not unlike Access or the other 4GLs):

1) platforms like thinkorswim get you 90% there (and have an associated brokerage so you can also run it). You can write powerful trading scripts using a wide variety of signals, but for the last 10% you will need something more powerful like C or matlab or excel.

2) terms of service are always shaky -- if you have alpha, you want to guard that like a first born child.

3) other people (<http://tradingphysics.com/>) offer market data at very low prices, which is far better than trusting a third party with your code

4) oftentimes strategies don't directly translate to production profits, and to a great extent they depend on simulator assumptions (let's say that there are 10K shares offered at the best selling price what happens when you try to buy all of them? What happens if you are stopped due to RegNMS or some other oddity? What happens if the quote is fake or will be canceled by the time your order reaches the exchange -- a common tactic of Chicago firms like GETCO?) for which you have no control. But now, given that they don't have a BD license, you need to go through someone else (adding another layer and process that potentially could cause problems later on -- I've seen a similar situation happen where a person leaves one company to join another, only to find out his trading strategies don't work in the new place )

Tl;dr: there are better platforms for getting your feet wet, and if they aren't good enough you are better off going with a real solution.

<comment><USER6> Both the sites you list seem to be US based. Are there any UK based solutions?

<comment><USER7> www.timetotrade.eu

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's an interesting idea, but most successful retail algo traders probably won't trust their bread-and-butter algos to a cloud-type solution. I've been algorithmically trading for a few years now, and I've invested money into Ninjatrader, where I program my algos and run things from my own computer.

If anyone had their own algos, they would probably be too paranoid that Quantopian would run backtesting on every single algo, and cherry pick the best ones for themselves. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter, it's most likely the common thought process that any successful algo trader would have.

That would leave only the inexperienced and beginning traders that would be more apt to fail, since algo trading is very, very, very hard.

<comment><USER9> Do you have any book recommendations? Technical analysis? Quantitative analysis?

What makes it so hard--trying to come up with a good model?

<comment><USER10> I'd argue that a lot of the hard parts of algo writing are solved by Quantopian. Hard:

* Data. You need to test your idea. Most historical stock data (like Yahoo) excludes companies that went bankrupt or were bought or otherwise disappeared. That's called survivorship bias. If you run a backtest on the finance industry and you don't include things like Lehman, you're going to get the wrong answer. Add in things like Hurricane Sandy, MLK Day, 9/11, mergers, acquisitions, stock splits, etc. and data is very painful to put together. * A backtester. Once you have you data, what do you put it into? How do you calculate commissions? How do you calculate slippage (your order affects the price, remember)? How do you avoid look-ahead-bias and other bugs that plague backtesters?

Coming up with an idea to trade is hard, but it's only a part of the problem. I'd say it's the most fun part of the problem, but it's only a part. Quantopian is trying to remove all of the hard parts and let you do the easy parts. We have tens of thousands of lines of code (backtester, IDE, etc.) and we're leaving the most exciting 100 lines of code to our members.

On the other question about books. I'd recommend a couple: * Ernie Chan's book is a great place to start [http://www.amazon.com/Quantitative-Trading-Build- Algorithmic...](http://www.amazon.com/Quantitative-Trading-Build-Algorithmic- Business/) * More advanced: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470128011/>

I work at Quantopian.

<comment><USER8> Backtesting is only 1/2 to 1/3 of the actual task of algorithmic trading. When it comes to actually trading money, if you're not careful and cover every corner case, you really could lose your shirt. I can't believe that 100 lines of code is all that you would need to cover all the edge and failure cases that could lose yourself a lot of money.

What happens if the network drops while you're in a trade, or in the middle of executing an order? What if you have a partial fill, and you have a partial buy order hanging around and a full sell order out there? What if you have a stop limit order to exit a trade, and it blows through your limit? Do you have a backup stop order just in case? There are a lot of issues that you can't backtest that can only be learned once you start trading real money. I've had situations where I ran my algos on the DAX overnight, and I woke up to find that the exit order never executed, and I was 1000 euros away from where I should have gotten out. Luckily, this trade was in my favor, but it scared the shit out of me because it could have easily gone the other way. I've also had my internet connection drop overnight, and I had to scramble to figure out how to get out of a trade I was in.

The other issue is interpreting backtesting data, and knowing the difference between over-optimized data (ie. curve fitting) vs something with an actual edge. You can make almost any algo profitable if you curve-fit, even a simple MA cross-over can show extremely profitable results, if you over-optimize the data. But it won't work in real life. So being able to sift between falsely good algos and actually profitable algos is very, very hard, and takes experience. This is the biggest problem with trying to find an actual algo with an edge, it's very very hard.

I wrote my own backtester and I download my own data nightly, and that definitely takes a lot of time and effort, but the hardest part is the actual trading, by far. The psychology involved with trading is an order of magnitude harder than coding, and the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I blew through a shitload of money, just to learn the ropes.

In terms of algo trading books, I really don't have any recommendations. I found most of the algo trading books are similar, telling you to watch out for curve fitting, etc. Where they lack is helping you come up with actual trades. My recommendation is a book called "Mastering the Trade" by John Carter. He gives out trade setups that he actually used. They may no longer be profitable, but it's the closest thing you can get to actually learning various day trading techniques, and you can implement those to get an idea, and then work your way from there.

I'm not hating on Quantopian, it looks pretty nicely done, and hopefully it takes off. But from experience, I know that algorithmic trading is by far the hardest thing I've done. If inexperienced traders jump in, they'll spend a lot of money on "tuition" for sure.

<comment><USER9> What service do you use to download your market data?

<comment><USER8> I use IQFeed. I pay about $80/month for it to download tick data for futures and stocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not a good idea. People can barely invest in regulated securities doing a dipshit buy and hold strategy.

For professionals - brokerage houses already do most of the hard work and provide decent APIs - so they don't need it either.

Algo trading is cool - but it's most definitely NOT for the masses.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm happy for Quantoplan making steps to improve the user experience around algorithmic trading, however armchair traders and many hedge funds have been using platforms like Tradestation (and dozens of others) to back-test and develop algorithmic strategy for well over a decade.

I spent a year working as a researcher for a now-failed hedge fund (failed due to regulatory issues, not performance, we were doing 20% year over year on commodity futures). As an engineer/math guy, it was an incredibly interesting experience because it opened my mind to all sorts of theoretical possibilities and explorations of pattern matching, noise filtering, exotic concepts like wavelets and more.

However, I quickly learned a few things from experienced traders and from seeing my work move from testing to prod. What I learned makes me extremely hesitant to employ automated trading systems on my own money:

1\. Historical back-testing is a great way to curve fit. You can hyper optimize your algorithm looking for arbitrage opportunities, trends, whatever. You'll get performance reports that make it seem like you're ready to print money. Then you get out and trade and discover that your system can't keep up with market movements because the indicators that you relied upon may have exhibited correlation but not causation.

2\. The boon of algorithmic trading is that it attempts to remove emotion from the trading process, not that it is a better predictor. Listening to a machine should help alleviate the symptoms of "fear and greed" that lead to abrupt, incorrect decision making. Think about that for a minute, some hedge funds advocate algorithms not because of predictive power but as guarantees of rational decision making.

3\. Conversely, while developing and testing a system, a smart person will almost inevitably try to bring in exotic concepts into price prediction, order sizing and trend following functions. Given enough time, complexity will increase until it becomes challenging to understand the rationale behind a system's output. Trading this way is scary because real money is being moved without an understanding of fundamental and macro-factors.

4\. You will _very_ likely lose money. Even at the size of our fund (1B under management) we were sometimes at the mercy of market makers who gave us crap prices on trades or seemingly manipulated prices to hit our stop orders and cause us to exit positions too early.

I love seeing the ideas behind algorithmic trading popularized, however I want to make sure that anyone embarking on it understands the market as a system and not just as a time series to be modelled. It's composed of real human beings, with emotions running wild. If you decide to play, then play, but do so wisely and carefully and remember to keep it simple.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a lot of criticism here, but as someone who has never done algorithmic trading before - it's very exciting. I don't believe Quantopian's intention was to target veterans, since I'm sure you vets have your own system for testing and trading already worked out.

As a newbies with no experience in the field at all, it is unlikely that I would've even tried without a platform such as this. If Quantopian's intention is to bring more people into the field and get them exposure, even now, it's quite an impressive stepping stone.

<comment><USER11> _> As a newbies with no experience in the field at all, it is unlikely that I would've even tried without a platform such as this. If Quantopian's intention is to bring more people into the field and get them exposure, even now, it's quite an impressive stepping stone._

This assumes that people with an inability to get experience should get into a field where one can lose one's shirt in less than 24 hours whilst competing against some of the smartest people on Wall Street.

There are barriers to entry to various things for a reason - e.g. driving, steel milling etc.

It's to stop newbies getting shot.

<comment><USER13> You can lose all your money in so many ways; a reasonable expectation is that players will use caution, and hedge their risks.

Applications aren't meant to teach common sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> beat me to it, working on something similar... with a twist. btw they're on github : <https://github.com/quantopian>

<comment><USER15> Hi undrcvr, I work at Quantopian. We'd love to hear your thoughts on our open- sourced Zipline backtester: <https://github.com/quantopian/zipline> and learn more about what you're building - there are lots of interesting challenges in this space.

<comment><USER16> How do you guy handle situations where there may not be a trade that day. For example: with OTCBBs. Also, how would you handle unexpected market closures [such as the flash crash?]

I've been developing my own back tester for quite a while [in Java] and I must say: You guys are doing some interesting stuff and its a challenging area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Our backtester is event driven. During any closure, there are no events, so we simply "fast forward" through the closure and send your algorithm the next available event.

We provide a facility for working with trailing windows as pandas dataframes, which are updated by the events. You can control whether those trailing windows have NaN values for missing bars, or if values are filled forward. You'd keep the NaNs if you want your algo to be aware of empty bars (stock is held, thinly traded, etc). You keep the fill forward if you want to avoid coding guards on NaNs :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I will be releasing my own algo trading system open source in Feb, if anyone is interested. I'll do a post on HN once it's released.

<comment><USER14> would you share a twitter link so we can be alerted when you release?

<comment><USER17> I'm @hitechnomad on twitter. I'll tweet once it's on github. The system I'm open sourcing is my own system for trading on my Interactive Brokers account. It should be able to handle any FIX-based exchange/brokerages. Currently finishing a contract at a bank, and I can't trade on my personal account while I am doing this contract, which is why I am waiting until Feb to post it.

<comment><USER18> I use IB too. What language is the framework in ? Java ?

<comment><USER17> c++

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wouldn't you need a broker account with minimal spread and very low broker fees for this to work?

The banks who are already doing high frequency trading don't have to worry about this, they can profit off a trade after its gone up a fraction of a point or so and close the trade, your average trader has to make up for the transaction fees or spread which are sometimes 10 to 100 times what a bigger firm has to cover.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm a bit surprised about the amount of people afraid of trading in HN. Or rather afraid that others would trade en-masse.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is algorithmic trading a force for good in the world? If not, is it a good idea to increase the number of people using it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Algorithmic trading is a force in the world; whether it is good or not depends on the people wielding it. I think the danger isn't the technology itself, but the small number of people who understand, develop, and control it. I believe having more quants will give algo trading/quant investing a better chance of being a force for good.

(I work for Quantopian)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great job. Surprised at the amount of negativity for an app that is meant to help people.

This is one of those disruptor-style apps that pierces the veil of an industry and brings professional level tools to the masses.

I sat up from my chair after seeing this and said "wow". Have not done that for an app in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER23> This will be cool if/when it has:

\- options

\- futures

\- fundamental company data

Until then, it's matlab.

edit: Ok, this is a bit harsh. It's already pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER24> Which broker-dealer do you use to route your orders to the exchanges?

Do your orders flow through Getco's infrastructre at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't use GETCO's infrastructure at all. They help us with expertise in the field and advice on how to build software for traders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great stuff.

</comment><comment><USER26> great work guys..</comment>


Tim Cook Rejects Politics of the NCPPR - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rejects-politics-of-the-ncppr-suggests-group-sell-apples-s <comment><USER2> "<Tim Cook> said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues"

The next time someone trots out the tired old "companies are _legally_ obligated to maximize profits/shareholder value" to explain away crappy corporate behavior, I'm linking to this.

And kudos to Cook for telling NCPPR to take a figurative hike.

<comment><USER3> Yeah because that's just what we need, another asinine interpretation of an event in which the CEO was basically hand-tied to do one thing: not fuck up PR. And let's just ignore the legal precedents where companies were sued for their philanthropic work, and indeed lost. (see the many court cases in which courts end up ruling that companies are not allowed to engage in purely philanthropic duties when there is a rigid fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits; see eBay vs. Craigslist).

And anyway, actions speak louder than words. What I know of Apple is that it had a CEO who orchestrated keeping wages down for engineers, orchestrated price fixing of ebooks, kept taking credit for other people's work, frequently partook in borderline psychopathic behavior (woz: "I begged Steve that we donate the first Apple I to a woman who took computers into elementary schools but he made my buy it and donate it myself."), etc. etc. If Tim Cook actually goes on to commit some serious dollar on philanthropic activities, I would change my mind about Apple, until then, it's clear that it's all a bullshit PR dance.

<comment><USER4> Good news, he has!

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/09/the-post-jobs-era- tim-c...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/09/the-post-jobs-era-tim-cook- brings-philanthropy-back-to-apple/)

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57370922-37/apple-ceo- tim-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57370922-37/apple-ceo-tim-cook- donates-$100-million-to-charity/)

<comment><USER3> Cool, good to hear, I didn't know about this. It seems to be a small step, but at least it's a step in the right direction. I hope Apple makes it a point to advertise everywhere that they're doing this (so that other companies can follow). I think America would do well to have a policy compelling publicly owned companies to have social goals (apart from the profit-maximizing ones).

<comment><USER5> _I hope Apple makes it a point to advertise everywhere that they 're doing this_

In which case they are going to be accused of doing a "bullshit PR dance." Damned if you do...

<comment><USER6> If they are _actually doing_ the advertised good deeds, it will just be a PR dance, minus the bullshit. One smells a whole lot better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I understand and agree with the idea that companies should maximise shareholder value, but I've never understood the argument that shareholder value is exclusively determined by profit. As I see it, the stock market consists of various firms saying "buy our stock, and we will try to achieve _X_ with your investment", where X _might_ be maximum ROI, but I don't understand why it has to be. If I want to found a company which has some goals other than making a profit, and _so long as I am explicit about this_ then nobody is being cheated or defrauded, the investors are getting exactly what they signed up for.

If Tim Cook widely announces what Apple's future philanthropic principles will be, he's giving everyone a chance to decide if they want to own stock in a company which follows those principles. The market will judge that via sales and purchases of Apple stock. What could possibly be more free-market than that?

<comment><USER8> The fiduciary duty of the directors of a company entails that they make no decisions that prejudice the general shareholders of a company. The classic case is making an issue of equity that benefits only a limited group who can buy it at the expense of diluting the value of the equity of other shareholders.

The idea that (i) the entire value of a company is the NPV of future profits to the shareholders, and that (ii) this fiduciary duty is very broad and bears on all decisions made by the directors, so that any decision that might reduce return is prejudicial to the interest of shareholders, does pretty much entail what the NCPPR claim. And there have been efforts in places to expand fiduciary duty in some jurisdictions to this strong requirement. But I have the impression that lawyers generally think the idea is daft and undermines good corporate governance.

IIRC, Steve Milloy of Junk Science operates a crank activist hedge fund that attempts to undermine environmental innitiatives in the kind of way described in the article. I believe they have produced dismal returns for their investors, which suggests that they do not eat their own dog food.

<comment><USER9> It's actually a myth that a company has to maximize shareholdervalue. There is no corporate law even remotely suggesting it and it is generally a horrible idea.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson- the-m...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-the-myth-of- maximizing-shareholder- value/2014/02/11/00cdfb14-9336-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html)

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry but that article neglects any mention of court opinions (many of which I have read, as has any law student) which interpret the law and say otherwise.

<comment><USER9> Lynn Stout, a Cornell Corporate Law Professor, seems to disagree with you: [http://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders- Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders- Corporations/dp/1459638697/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393680047&sr=1-4)

<comment><USER11> Having never heard of Lynn Stout, her claim to fame on Wikipedia is that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens cited her work in Citizens United v Federal Exchange Commission... in the dissent.

I could believe that oxygen doesn't exist, and I could probably find somebody else to agree with that, perhaps even an author or something, but if there exists a body of law that is on the books and that will punish you for violating it, the idea of shareholder primacy is very much not a myth.

Dodge v. Ford 1953: > The Court held that a business corporation is organized primarily for the profit > of the stockholders, as opposed to the community or its employees. The discretion > of the directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and > does not extend to the reduction of profits or the nondistribution of profits among > stockholders in order to benefit the public, making the profits of the stockholders > incidental thereto.

This all extends on precedent set way back in 1896 (though there may be earlier) in Steinway v Steinway & Sons, though in the case of Steinway, the philanthropic behavior was excused as having had pecuniary value. It's been cited since, and punishments are being levied in spite of the myth. While it may be true that there is no law codified to speak expressly on the duties of shareholder primacy, stare decisis specifically disagrees with that, and that's really all that matters.

In the real world, of course there is no duty to maximize value at all costs, and the board elects a CEO who will do a good job of balancing short-term value against long-term value, and while actions such as Cook's are likely debatable either way, if we took a more extreme example, and Cook were to give 80% of Apple's assets away to charity, he would very certainly be sued, and he would very certainly lose. If, as in Steinway, the charitable actions could be argued to lead to longer term profits, the case gets blurrier, but the idea that shareholder primacy is a myth that does not exist is simply too unqualified a statement, and too counter to the facts to be regarded with much weight.

<comment><USER12> Saying that "primacy" equals "short term profits" is also too unqualified and counter to the facts.

<comment><USER11> Which is why I didn't suggest that it was.

The claim I was responding to was this > "It's actually a myth that a company has to maximize shareholdervalue."

There's plenty of evidence that, myth or not, the courts certainly think that it's real, and if the courts think that it is, then it cannot be a myth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems to me that Apple is directly investing into its brand name by doing things like planning on "having 100 percent of its power come from green sources".

The ROI is, among other things, customer loyalty.

</comment><comment><USER14> Companies shouldn't always do things for profit, because doing things only for profit, well, isn't profitable. Good will has a monetary value, and it is often worth far more than just making money is.

I never said I was eloquent.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like you're saying that companies should only do things for profit - but only if it's _actually_ profitable :)

<comment><USER16> I think he's suggesting that there are two kinds of profit. The short-term, next-quarter-results kind which fuel wall street, and the longer play when money is invested now and achieves a payback later.

Unfortunate when the word "profit" appears in text, it is often unclear which one is being referred to.

The easiest way to maximize short-term profit is to simply fire all r&d staff. Reduce expendses, sell exiting products and profits for that quarter will go up by plenty. That'll work for 2 quarters, maybe even a year, before the whole thing implodes.

Obviously we don't do that - we forgoe some of the immediate profit to gain profit in the future. But there's no guarantee that what r&d are working on will ever pay off. There's risk involved.

There are also solid reasons for doing one product, which will never make profit, in order to complement another product which will. That complement might be direct, or indirect.

Taking Tim's example of making sure apple devices can be used by blind people, that may indeed be profitable if one considers both the blind people who buy your product, and also the people who _know_ blind people who made their decision based on your blind-friendliness. This is of course impossible to measure.

And therein lies the root problem when it comes to "only doing things to maximize profits". It's mpossible to measure the actual profitability, over both short and long term profits, of pretty much anything we do. There are slimply too many unknowns.

Had Tim answered the question another way, would that impact profitability? If the question had not been asked, would that improve profitability? Given that the question was asked, and answered the way it was, does Apple gain some goodwill? Does that mean that by soundly rejecting the question it accomplished what the question asked for?

Profit is impossible to optimize for. To make profit you encounter risk. And by definition some risky actions will ultimately be unprofitable. Thus the line about companies responsibility being just to make profits, and the promise the Question asked for, is not meaningful in any practical way.

<comment><USER17> John Kenneth Galbraith wrote with a great deal of detail and eloquence about what kind of conditions might inspire corporations not to maximize profit, and how those kinds of decisions actually contribute to the perpetuation and success of said corporations. The main book to read is The New Industrial State. He wrote it in the '60s when conditions were very different, but the fundamental principles remain valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of > this stock."

While I agree with his sentiment, I wish he took a moment to explain that pursuing environmental sustainability may actually help the top line (rather than insinuating that those goals are net negative to shareholders)

<comment><USER19> That's a rathole to avoid if you can. It may sound dismissive, but these guys are cranks, and their time in the spotlight is rightly to be minimized. 97%+ of shareholders understand that Apple goes the extra mile in sustainability and agrees with that approach.

<comment><USER20> Completely agree. Whether or not worker safety contributes to ROI should never be a question. Same with environmental impact.

<comment><USER21> I disagree, mostly because you presented your opinion as black and white.

Apple has, what, > 10k workers? If it cost them $100 billion to prevent one software worker from getting carpal tunnel, your statement suggests that cost should be born by Apple. Similarly, if it cost the cumulative GDP of the US to prevent N amount of pollution, your statement suggests that Apple should go bankrupt preventing that pollution.

Back in the real world, I suspect we generally agree. The problem, IMO, is that companies (and consumers) aren't forced to capture the hidden costs of injuries/pollution.

I just disagree with your black and white assessment. The laws of economics mean companies have to assign dollar values to human life and safety, as much as we dislike the feeling it gives us.

<comment><USER22> Not all good decisions can be rationalized as having a known, positive ROI. I think it is a pretty safe statement to say that many big decisions must be made for other reasons.

<comment><USER23> When you take the decision, you may not have enough information to know if it's going to be good or not. But when you took the decision and still refusing to know how much it costed you and how it influenced company finances - it's just willful ignorance and unwillingness to face the facts. That is never good. For the sake of Apple shareholders I hope Cook actually knows the figures he was asked for, and refusing to publish them just as a PR move, to gain some fanboy love from bashing an unpopular target. Because if they genuinely spend money and refuse to count them, it's not good for the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> All things being equal, I'd like it if Apple provided these numbers to shareholders/the public.

I support Apple continuing to participate in these programs, but giving shareholders accurate numbers seems like a worthy goal, and I'd actually like to know the scale of Apple's investment in green energy as a benchmark for how far along the green energy industry is coming -- if it's a 100% markup, it's got a long way to go, but 25-50% wouldn't be too bad.

<comment><USER25> I agree. Regardless of what one think about the questioner, I would really like to know the answer to the first question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wait a second. From the lede:

"The self-described conservative think tank was pushing a shareholder proposal that would have required Apple to disclose the costs of its sustainability programs and to be more transparent about its participation in "certain trade associations and business organizations promoting the amorphous concept of environmental sustainability.""

What is so wrong with that request? Forget your opinions and mine, as well as of the think tank. Asking Apple to disclose what it is spending, and where, is a reasonable request. And even if you're a firm believer in the dangers of anthropogenic global warming, you must understand that not all of the organizations doing research or providing information about it are entirely reputable. Information is good. Put it out there. Let stockholders decide.

<comment><USER27> Because it's concern trolling - they do not offer these proposals to actually get the information - they are looking for ammunition to stir the pot.

<comment><USER26> Like I said, forget their opinions, but also forget their motivations. What is wrong with the request?

<comment><USER28> There is nothing wrong with the request. However it was soundly rejected by the shareholders (only 2.95%). That's how corporate democracy works. The problem is that they kept pushing to get their way even after they had been voted down by the shareholders.

The more I hear about Tim Cook, the more I admire him. That was a really great put-down he delivered. There comes a point where you can't reason any further with unreasonable people and you just have to tell them to fuck off.

<comment><USER23> The next thing to do after that is to go and publicly complain about how political discourse has devolved recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For me this article highlights the tension between long term value creation and the short term quarterly profit perspective of Wall Street.

I think the creation of value comes before Return on Investment (RoI). Creating value is much harder than showing a RoI because value is somewhat intangible and is seen through people's personal values/beliefs. Also it may take time before the value you have created makes its way to the bottom line.

Arguably Apple's brand, and how stakeholders feel about it, increases Apple's ROI for its shareholders.

Do Apple's customers care about environmental issues? I'm sure they do. If Apple ignores this it will eventually hurt Apple's bottom line. Do Apple's employees care about worker safety? Again, I'm pretty sure they do and I'm pretty sure that if Apple's management doesn't pay attention it will eventually hurt the bottom line.

Personally I like the idea of a 'Triple Bottom Line'[1] which acknowledges that businesses can create negative value to parts of society when maximizing profit (negative externalities if you are an Economist).

It sounds to me like Tim Cook internalizes this world view and uses it to steer Apple's corporate decision making. I applaud this and hope that this inspires other big corporations but also the future entrepreneurs on Hacker News.

[1][[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line)]

</comment><comment><USER30> The climate change versus shareholder value debate aside, I would be angry that this representative was obviously trying to hijack the shareholding meeting discussion to make a political point or have me (Tim Cook) say something polarizing. They got the latter, but not in the form they hoped for.

</comment><comment><USER31> So let me get this straight:

Conservative group buys stock in Apple. During shareholder meeting asks CEO to report detailed and accurate figures regarding sustainability costs.

CEO goes off on a bit of a restrained tear, telling the group if they don't like Apple's sustainability policies they should get out of the stock.

So, since Apple fans have long been the left-leaning, creative, wine and croissant crowd, was this a paid publicity stunt? Or just simple happenstance? This kind of story is like giving away free candy. People can argue the politics of it, people can talk about the role of profit in corporate governance, people can argue about climate science. Coverage of the story just goes on and on.

Seriously, you couldn't ask for a better PR platform. I'm pretty damn close to calling bullshit on this entire story.

<comment><USER32> It's pretty unlikely that the NCPPR would be willing to help Apple with a pro- environmental PR stunt.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Public_Poli...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Public_Policy_Research)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm pleased that Tim Cook said this, but Apple has been marketing itself as the manufacturer of counter-cultural hippy objects for anarchic outside-the- box geniuses for decades, while at the same time behaving like any other RoI- driven capitalist enterprise -- worse than most, in my opinion.

I'm not even convinced that this wasn't, despite appearances, a prepared statement designed to re-assure stockholders.

<comment><USER34> Could we once, not have to play favorite sports team with companies and enjoy a CEO talking down a shareholder that is trying to play politics? Of course not, now we need to play into conspiracy theories that this whole thing was a prepared statement by Apple.

No, I guess we can't not be us vs them on things as tech people. Always have to play teams at all times. After all EVERYONE hates the Yankees cause they are successful. This crap crops up on every story not about actual technical things (even then) be it Google, Microsoft, or Apple, or whatever.

Gets draining to be honest, I use a combination of the above's products. People seem to want to follow some type of religious zeal to this crap.

Some days I want to just go move to a remote greek mountain and cut out my vocal cords and ears so I don't have to endure constant bickering about this junk.

/rant/squirrel mode banter off I'm going to bed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would like to know actually how much of Apple's sustainability projects involves government subsidies. Oh well.

</comment><comment><USER36> "The representative asked Mr. Cook if that was the case only because of government subsidies on green energy.

Mr. Cook didn't directly answer that question"

It's a shareholder meeting. Answer the question. Unless the answer is embarrassing, which, without more data, we have to assume it is.

<comment><USER37> Assuming it is embarrassing is a baseless attack on Tim Cook. We could equally assume that it was an irrelevant line of discussion that would allow extremists to distract the meeting from important business. This was a shareholder meeting, not a trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Came for the comic sans, stayed for the delicious irony of a think tank run on outside donations complaining to the most profitable company in the world that they aren't focused enough on ROI.

<comment><USER39> The think tank is pushing _somebody 's_ agenda, and even though the think tank as an organization isn't profiting, I'm sure the officers are doing quite well for themselves.

<comment><USER40> Isn't a think tank basically the same as lobbyists, e.g. legalized corruption? Think tanks push an agenda, which creates laws beneficial to the business interests of the think tank's backers, which creates $Bns in profits.

In that view, think tanks are probably the most profitable business there is. Certainly the highest ROI when it works out. Politics can be bought for hundreds of thousands, but bring in billions.

<comment><USER41> No. In the US, many (most?) think tanks are 501(c)(3) nonprofits -- NCPPR included -- and cannot make lobbying a primary activity [1]

More broadly, think tanks are groups of like-minded people expressing their opinions, typically about how governments should be run. The fact that they accept donations in order to be able to work full time on the cause and to extend the reach of their advocacy, and that many of those donations come from individuals or organizations who stand to benefit if some of the think tank's desired policies are implemented, does not make them "legalized corruption".

[1] [http://www.irs.gov/Charities-%26-Non- Profits/Lobbying](http://www.irs.gov/Charities-%26-Non-Profits/Lobbying)

<comment><USER42> They can't lobby per se, but propaganda is what they do for a living.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Go Tim - Its true what they say about the quiet Englishman OK IDS is the exception.

What should have really happened is that another voter at the meeting should have called move next business and have the motion dumped.

Moving next business is a very brutal way of a meeting telling some one with a not wanted motion to FO - defiantly would send the right message.

</comment><comment><USER44> Tim Cook shrugged.

</comment><comment><USER45> Also, it's not like Apple's out there on their own investing in renewable energy. Intel, Google, and other tech companies are quite mindful of their environmental impact.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think it would be awesome if Apple could somehow go "unpublic." Is there a word for that? Buy back all of their stock and dissolve it. A powerhouse of design and engineering like Apple would be a real force if it didn't have to blow their asshole investors each quarter or risk some kind of coup.

<comment><USER47> A company can't buy itself, at least in cash. The cash reserves of a company are (or should be) worth less than the company itself.

The company obviously can't raise capital to buy itself by issuing shares, so it would have to get the money loaned to it. At this point I think it needs to convince its creditor that its stock is undervalued, and at that point the creditor is better off just buying the undervalued shares themselves. If they bought enough then they could take the company private if they wanted.

Now, maybe if someone who owned a company outright decided to donate all of their shares to the company, then it could "own itself". I don't know how that might work legally, though.

<comment><USER46> Could a company create a second business (I'd go with Apple ][) and then have the second company just buy the original company for like a dollar? I'm assuming there are legal reasons why that can't happen.

<comment><USER48> Like… the shareholders would not agree to that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Good for Tim Cook. This was an appropriate response.

</comment><comment><USER50> What rock do these people crawl out from at night?

<comment><USER51> Lignite, most likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think Tim Cook is ready for a run for Congress. It's classic politician - "we're doing the right thing, and we're not going to disclose to you how much it costs you to do it, because it's the right thing, and if you don't like this just STFU and GTFO". Indeed, what the gall has the shareholder to ask the executive how much the policy costs him! One should soundly reject this novel and outrageous concept of executives reporting to shareholders the actual results of their pet policies. The less shareholders know, the better. Especially when it comes to the question if the decisions taken by the management rely on public subsidies - shareholders don't need to know if their wellbeing depends on taxpayer-funded handouts, that would only disturb them. Just trust the Supreme Leader, he's doing the right thing.</comment>


Gestures Glamour: Setting Up a Touch Menu – Step by Step Tutorial - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/outsystems-experts/gestures-glamour-setting-up-a-touch-menu-6d9b94039997 <comment><USER2> I was recently arguing with someone who said that horizontal swiping should be banned. Thanks to this article, I can now point out that it's all part of the glamour of gestures and point people to the codepens and alpacas.

<comment><USER3> Why should horizontal swiping be banned, though? I personally like horizontal swiping. What was their reasoning there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damn... Just a few months ago, me and my team were searching for something like this to create some touch based patterns like drawers, this would be so helpful! Saved for reference

</comment><comment><USER5> Good step by step implementation guide for a performant mobile menu. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER6> Performance, glamour and functionality together. Great article!</comment>


Have Google Resize Your Images for Free - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/carlo/5379498 <comment><USER2> Works as a sort of proxy as well. If you point it at an html url, downloads it as a file.

       curl -I 'https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3a%2f%2fnews.ycombinator.com%2f&container=focus'

<comment><USER2> Hmm. You can also arbitrarily set the mime type of the returned content.

      curl  -I 'https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=https%3a%2f%2fnews.ycombinator.com%2f&container=x&rewriteMime=application%2Fx-shockwave-flash'

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Someone posted a URL which allows website screenshots with google, does anybody remember what the URL was ?

<comment><USER2> I don't know about google, but you can do it with the wordpress.com site:

      http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/http%3A%2F%2Fnews.ycombinator.com%2F?w=250</comment></comment>


VC: Rumors of Its Non-Brokenness are ... Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/12/vc_rumors_of_it.html

<comment><USER2> It is unfortunate that, in the USA, the FDA and EPA keeps such a heavy lid on innovation in the biotech sector. Whereas the tech industry had the luck of being allowed to run relatively free for 50 years, the biotech industry needs to get approval for anything it might want to do. It seems to me likely that at some point in the 21st century the biotech sector might lead a revolution in the economy similar to what the tech sector was able to achieve 1960-2000, but sadly, the biotech sector faces so many checks and limits, that the pace of innovation will probably not be allowed to ever match what the tech sector achieved in the past.

Some have argued that the FDA needs to heavily regulate everything in biotech, so as to protect lives, but this argument cuts 2 ways - the heavy regulation also freezes out a certain amount of innovation that would also save lives. More so, the FDA insists that any treatment that is approved must work for a known illness, and it has steadfastly refused to define "aging" as an illness, so no business can go after aging by itself and have any hope of meeting with regulatory approval. And aging is a major contributor to illness and death.

More so, the biotech industry includes a lot of areas of research that have nothing to do with human health, but these other applications of the technology tend to run into the regulatory limits of the EPA. Genetically engineered bacteria that can break down various toxins are useful, and have been approved. Genetically engineered organisms that have novel applications would have to work their way through an approval process that might take many, many years. All of this raises the costs of accomplishing anything. Millions of dollars get spent on lawyers, who haggle with the regulatory authorities - we can only dream of how much good might be accomplished if that money could be spent on research.

There are, of course, good arguments why these regulatory agencies should exist, but since they exist, they also must defend their legitimacy, which leads them to often exaggerate the dangers that they are, in theory, protecting us from. Thus defenders of the FDA paint a grim picture of what life would be like without it. And yet, the FDA, like any regulatory body, tends to be staffed by people who come from the industry that it is regulating, and so, over time, the FDA tends to develop a viewpoint in keeping with the industry. This is known as "regulatory capture". The worst aspect of this is that the regulatory bodies come to identify with the established players in an industry, while looking upon newcomers with a certain amount of unearned wariness.

The combination of regulatory capture and wariness of newcomers leads to situations where the FDA is slow to act against reports of e coli at a plant owned by a well known meat producer, while at the same time, acting slowly to allow novel uses of, say, stem cells to repair damaged tissues. Thus people die from those very things that the FDA was first enacted to protect us from (food poisoning - the FDA was created in part by public revulsion to what the public read in Upton Sinclair's novel, The Jungle), while at the same time the FDA "protects" people from novel treatments that might save lives.</comment>


Never Read the Comments - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@saraheadler/never-read-the-comments-9cba93b5712a

<comment><USER2> "50 told me, go 'head, switch the style up, And if they hate then let 'em hate And watch the money pile up" \- Kanye West (quoting 50 Cent)

Jokes aside, it's easy to say 'trolls will be trolls' and move on and some will even say that it's not even worth writing about hateful comments on the internet anymore, however, sharing experiences like these do help to empathize with others and act as reminders to everyone about their own biases when making comments (sexist, racist, or what not).

As for trolls and haters, I think there are many (both simple and complex) reasons why people try to lash out at others even if they're not of that personality in their offline lives. It's naive to think there's a single reason.

The episode of TAL does a good job of describing just one of these encounters: [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/545/i...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/545/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say-say-it-in-all- caps?act=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> Comments attacked the person's academic background; she spins this post into a gender-rant without any merit.

Sorry, but this is useless fluff.

<comment><USER4> Of course it is gender related. There are hundreds of male startup CTOs in their early 20s with all kinds of partially done degrees in various subjects and they are far less likely to see a comment like this.</comment></comment>