MoviePass Worked Out Great - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-07/moviepass-worked-out-great <comment><USER2> I really like this writer's style. This Dickens reference is hilarious:

 _Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure three hundred million pounds, result unicorn._

<comment><USER3> It seems like 90% of startups have the business plan "step 1: get as many users as possible at any cost, step 3: profit." Hardly anyone talks about it or seems to think it's weird. I don't get it.

<comment><USER4> My favorite summary of this entire pattern is that VCs would happily fund a company which sold dollar bills for $0.90, figuring they could get users now and raise prices later. (After all, they already raised the price from $0.70 and nobody complained!)

<comment><USER5> The VCs are banking on that startup playing obnoxious and privacy-invading ads to customers while they purchase their dollar bill with $0.90.

<comment><USER6> What about the other missing $0.06?

Oh, I get it, they sell antidepressants for the society they ruined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Moviepass worked great when it handed you $2 of VC money for every dollar, but I appreciate the fact that it did end up disrupting the market as it died.

Most of the big chain now offer Moviepass-esque premium services. AMC now charges like what, $12 a month for 2-3 movies / week? That's how much individual tickets cost in the bay, so as long as a person watches even a single movie a month they're breaking even!

<comment><USER8> > I appreciate the fact that it did end up disrupting the market as it died.

It might be too early to say that for sure. The AMC service was created when MoviePass was still a player and was very much a response to them. I believe AMC also only committed to that pricing for a single year and we just recently passed that 1 year anniversary. Now that MoviePass is functionally dead, there is little stopping AMC from raising prices to the extent that basically kills this model for the average consumer. We might soon find ourselves back in a market similar to the early days of MoviePass when one of these unlimited subscriptions costs $30-50 and is only viable for an incredibly small group of moviegoers.

<comment><USER9> Competing movie chains have also introduced monthly plans.

MoviePass proved the demand. They simply lacked the data or leverage to make their business model work.

AMC and Regal have both. Crucially, they can negotiate with the movie studios re the payouts for ticket purchases; MoviePass could not. This is probably the biggest and most important factor behind why AMC/Regal can make these plans work but MoviePass never could.

<comment><USER8> >MoviePass proved the demand.

MoviePass proved there is demand for free money. They didn't prove that this model could be profitable and therefore sustainable at this price.

<comment><USER9> AMC's been at it for a year and is still committed to it. Regal's corporate parent has been at it for decades and just expanded it to the US (via Regal), so I assume they have the data to make the numbers work.

Also important to note is that both AMC and Regal subscriptions are twice as much or more per month as MoviePass was...closer to the original/sustainable MoviePass pricing (when it was a lot smaller and not very popular).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Lowe's happy-go-lucky persona marked a shift from the all-business Spikes, whom he had replaced in the company hierarchy as CEO. On the rare occasions Lowe made it into the office, staff would need almost an entire day to get him up to speed. His general attitude, as one source described, was, 'Well, what do you think we should do?'

How do people like this make it so far in their careers?

<comment><USER11> The writeup says that Lowe was installed as CEO by the company that bought MoviePass, Helios & Matheson Analytics, and that the shift down to the $10 price point was the brainstorm of H&M's own CEO, Ted Matheson.

Put yourself in Matheson's (presumably quite expensive) shoes for a moment. You're in the process of acquiring this company, MoviePass, and you have some Big Ideas™ for it. Who would you want to have sitting in that company's CEO chair? Not an independent-minded entrepreneur who's full of ideas of their own, that's for sure. No, what you'd want is a yes-man, an amiable non-entity who can be counted on to do what you tell them to do while otherwise staying out of your way and letting you play with your new toy.

It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have a few people like this in their entourage, people whose job is to fill a chair so as to prevent someone who could cause the rich guy trouble from filling it instead. It's a job whose only requirements are that you get along with the Big Guy and are willing to unquestioningly do anything he tells you to. In other words, it requires all the business savvy of a block of cheese. But it definitely pays well.

<comment><USER12> This reminds me of Gervais principle. Basically sociopaths use clueless managers as pawn.

More details here: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

<comment><USER13> Great read, thanks for sharing. May I ask how you originally stumbled upon that?

<comment><USER14> It's a Hacker News classic, so a lot of the people here have read it, and they link to it when it's relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's the story - HMNY ( Helios & Matheson Analytics - the parent company of MoviePass) is owned by an Indian company that filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and then re-emerged with MoviePass in the US.

The entire thing is probably a giant money laundering or tax evasion scheme.

[https://www.moneylife.in/article/helios-matheson- liquidated-...](https://www.moneylife.in/article/helios-matheson-liquidated- in-india-but-nasdaq-listed-hm-offshoot-thrives/54261.html?fbclid=IwAR0nT- Jh66CSfJZpMOp-1N9m-59lRUemgk4NHndzpBlNHPUv5BVmmaothkg)

[https://www.insider.com/moviepass-owner-emerged-from- indian-...](https://www.insider.com/moviepass-owner-emerged-from-indian- company-accused-of-massive- fraud-2018-7?fbclid=IwAR3j9bVmfUChrqEadBVDO3F1Xv1_ZXv2fkhmtlhH4-j9DTUpqLYQbE0faoU)

<comment><USER16> Considering how all money streams for MoviePass depend on domestic card transactions which generate 100% auditable records... I'm completely failing to see how it could possibly result in money laundering or tax evasion.

Can you explain how? I don't see any obvious explanation in the articles you linked.

<comment><USER17> It's in vogue to describe a business you don't understand as "money laundering" even when you don't understand money laundering.

<comment><USER18> Ok, but what about mattress stores? Are you telling me they _aren 't_ for money laundering?

<comment><USER19> > Ok, but what about mattress stores? Are you telling me they aren't for money > laundering?

Margins are insanely high on mattresses. Why the connection to money laundering?

<comment><USER20> It's become a meme, likely due to the clusters of mattress stores that seem to pop up despite zero customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > They said Lowe ordered that the passwords of a small percentage of power > users be changed, preventing them from logging onto the app and ordering > tickets.

Genius move! Truly diabolical.

<comment><USER22> I feel that this act is unethical somehow, but I can't place exactly how. I would presume that the user is still allowed to perform a password reset, but I see this as a "soft" denial of service. I don't think any of the power users broke the Terms of Service and MoviePass didn't change these terms until later.

MoviePass was literally advertising a service it wasn't truly willing or able to sell at scale. I'm glad I stopped using them once I heard they were becoming bankrupt.

<comment><USER23> How is it hard to see how this is unethical? You are paying for a service, the company is deliberately making it hard/impossible for you to actually use that service.

This would be a very easy class action lawsuit if the company actually had money to pay for it.

<comment><USER22> I see now. Even though I've was a MoviePass subscriber in the past, I was so focused on just that paragraph that I forgot that MoviePass is something you pay for. Your reply reminded me that you are paying for the service, so thanks for that. Sorry for the trouble.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> AMC's CEO thought he was so smart and defiant by eliminating what he saw as a competitor, yet was, in reality, probably the largest individual block purchaser of AMC movie tickets. Meanwhile in the midst of this bull market, AMC's stock hit an all-time low just last month, from which it has recovered slightly (still trading about 65% below 2016). With some tweaking to its ticket availability, MP could have been these over-extended theater chains' golden goose -- huge surge in off-peak ticket sales with zero marketing cost to the theater -- yet they failed to recognize it, instead, actively sought to crush it.

<comment><USER25> Major cinema chains in Australia went one step further and would actively block your payment from going through if they detected you were using a moviepass like product.

After becoming frustrated with my payments being rejected I reached out to one of the cinemas. I explained to the likely overworked support worker that they were essentially both turning down free money and being hostile to me personally as a customer by refusing my payment method. As I should've known the support was powerless to do anything but repeat "we are not associated with product x".

Suffice to say I no longer offer unsolicited advice to theatre chains.

<comment><USER26> What kind of MoviePass-like products were operating in AU?

<comment><USER25> Sinemia. From the start of 2018 until the start of 2019 IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somewhat tangential but also maybe not: Matt Levine's "Money Stuff" is a fantastic newsletter. It's consistently hilarious while explaining a digestible number of very real events in finance and tech. He regularly muses about the absurdities and appreciating the bumbling creativity of humans. As you might expect, he spends a lot more time on the topics that fit into those interests (i.e. the recurring segment "blockchain blockchain blockchain" about companies being founded around/pivoting to blockchain with seemingly no reason to use it vs. a database except for hype.)

Anyway, great writer and I'd encourage folks to subscribe.

Also a great writer, and this _is_ almost entirely tangential, but also maybe not: Jia Tolentino. "Trick Mirror", her first book of essays, came out yesterday and the first is an accounting of the internet and our collective descent into hell, the subsumption of self through social media, the irreconcilable promise of the web vs. its business model, our magnified sense of the importance of our own opinions, feeling good about saying things vs. doing the work (e.g. tweeting about politics vs. organizing; changing our profile picture to add an overlay for a cause vs. working to solve that issue; etc.) All of this in <30 pages. Stunning work of prose, somewhat depressing, and tightly delivered with measured sobriety vs. the performative outrage we've grown accustomed to (she also covers that.)

<comment><USER28> Going along with the tangent, if you're into recent essay collections (as someone who has been very much looking forward to picking up Trick Mirror myself), you might like Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips which came out last year. I wouldn't call it as focused as it seems Trick Mirror is, but I get a similar kind of vibe from their writing sometimes.

<comment><USER27> Thank you for the recommendation! I love essay collections and will pick up a copy.

I can't say that Trick Mirror is entirely focused, unless you're responding to my description of her prose which very surely is. The opening essay is on the internet, another on drugs and losing faith and finding faith and megachurches and Houston hip-hop, another on our obsession with optimization, another on the complexity of campus sexual assault, etc. The collection is broad and each essay is deep. (I feel quite strongly that I would read Jia's writing on anything—sawdust, pecans, lice, dry cleaners—and that compounds itself when she writes about topics both so weighty, so broadly applicable, and yet so personal.)

What I love about the collection is it feels the way Joan Didion's or DFW's best narrative non-fiction feels. That kind of awe at the writing, that unfurling of confident and thought-through storytelling, that kind of blossoming of connections that form the richness of life and intellectual inquiry. The difference–and for me this is somewhat personal and so perhaps not universally relatable but feels like it could be–is that, at 30, she is writing about our time. She's writing about coming of age in and with the world we live in now.

Didion writing about the sixties and seventies and Wallace about the eighties and nineties and two thousands are both beautiful and timeless and a masterclass on what greatness feels like in your hands, but there's something special about reading someone cogently weave personal experiences about AngelFire and Twitter and political extremism and Anonymous and the crushing weight of forever being "seen" and performing on the internet. Something special because we are living it now.

I feel about Jia—as well as a few other living writers; Caity Weaver's profiles come to mind—the way I didn't know to feel about other living legends. That feeling of not appreciating what you have because you think it will last forever. I think about when Mac Miller was still alive (less than a year ago) or when Lil Wayne was on top of the world with Tha Carter III or when Chance the Rapper still made good music or when Obama was president or when Jon Stewart was on TV or when Jobs was leading Apple. I didn't consciously stop and appreciate not only the work but to be alive to live it, and now that those times are gone there's only nostalgia. I'm trying to be more mindful of witnessing generational talent in the moment and Jia's writing feels that way to me.

<comment><USER28> Ha, no worries, wasn't taking a through line in Trick Mirror from what you wrote, but from the excerpts and reviews I've read elsewhere. I feel similarly close to her writing, in a specific way that's a bit electrifying when you initially have the realization of, "Oh! they also wrote that other piece I _felt_!", something speaking to your brand of existential experience drifting through now.

As for Brian Phillips, if you wanted to read pieces directly adjacent to some in the book, a few of the essays were adapted from freely available longform pieces he had already written. Sea of Crises[0] is very close to the in-book essay if I remember correctly, while the piece related to Out in the Great Alone[1] in the book is more of a side story. I'm a bit envious if you haven't already happened upon those and get to read the duplicative passages for the first time in the course of the book.

Also, I couldn't help clicking through to your profile given this aside (the quality and content of which I don't expect here) and I wanted to say that I appreciate the work you're doing.

[0] [https://grantland.com/features/sumo-wrestling-tokyo-japan- ha...](https://grantland.com/features/sumo-wrestling-tokyo-japan-hakuho-yukio- mishima-novelist-seppuku/)

[1] [http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/9175394/out- grea...](http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/9175394/out-great-alone)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I still maintain that $HMNY (the parent company) stock was an interesting and unique case where the average person could buy shares in, essentially, an early stage startup that had tremendous consumer interest and growth.

Most of the time you see tech startups they are either in the seed/VC stage (you can't invest unless you are accredited and have connections) or the IPO stage (mega-companies that everyone has heard of).

Did it turn out poorly? Yes (Share price went from $35 to $1 for a while and then down to basically zero). But was it a good process? I think so!

<comment><USER30> There is a school of thought that says that you shouldn't let people without investment experience, put their money into early-stage tech startups run by people they know nothing about, precisely because they are less likely to understand that the great majority of startups fail. It's an elitist school of thought, for sure, but I have to say there is some truth to it.

<comment><USER31> It didn't _used_ to be an elitist school of thought, because a school of thinking on the subject wasn't needed. There were high enough fences to keep the riff-raff out (high transaction fees, inaccessible markets for commoners, et. al.). Thanks to e-Trade, Schwab, and the like, those fences got torn down, not knowing those fences not only kept people _out_ , but they also kept the bad things _in_. Bad things like super-duper sketchy penny tech stocks (HMNY).

Elitist? Meh, no more elitist than, say, a climbing permit for Mt. St. Helens (which is just $15 and fill out a form). Put up even a token barrier, even if it can easily hopped over.

<comment><USER32> It was made inaccessible. Previously new and speculative companies were pretty accessible. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curbstone_broker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curbstone_broker)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I loved it. VC money in my pocket is always a good thing. MoviePass was a regular Robin Hood.

</comment><comment><USER34> This part struck me as well:

> But, no, the main constraint on MoviePass's growth seems to have been the > actual production of plastic prepaid credit cards, which it couldn't print > fast enough:

Given how much money they were losing, it wasn't possible use digital cards that could be added to phone wallets? Or am I missing something here?

<comment><USER35> Yes, the primary way to use the service was with a MoviePass credit card. From the theater's point of view, it was just a regular credit card. MoviePass eventually wanted to move to direct ticketing, but they made enemies of the major theater chains do their aggressive and unsustainable business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> In some ways, MoviePass always felt really scammy so never went in with it: a too good to be true proposition (also, it isn't a gym membership: they can't guilt you into signing up for a year right at New Years. So buoying the users who didn't leverage the pass yet paid for it vs those who really leveraged it seemed to be an unattainable dream).

But that being said, when AMC came out with their own version? I went for it and I'm very pleased. I can take my daughter to see a movie pretty much whenever (2-3 a month, really. Have to buy her ticket because it is only for 18 and up though. A single movie essentially pays for that month though). Plus, I seem to get some kind of money voucher thing as this most recent time I had $60 available somehow and the drinks and popcorn were billed to that.

So maybe MoviePass was trying to play the middleman in a way they couldn't as they couldn't control the theaters as much as they hoped for their own survival, but the existence of it maybe clued theaters into a different revenue stream that could work for them (and customers). So thanks MoviePass.

<comment><USER9> If only MoviePass had gone B2B and partnered with theaters to provide the backend systems for white-label movie subscription plans, they'd still be around today.

<comment><USER37> Why would the movie chains need MoviePass? AMC already had its own online system for payments, reservations, had mobile apps and website and had handheld system to allow e-tickets. They had the free AMC Stubs program already where people could register. Adding the subscription plan wasn't that heavy of a lift.

I'm sure Regal had something similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Very interesting article on the economics of MoviePass [1]

[1] [http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2018/05/user-and- subscri...](http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2018/05/user-and-subscriber- businesses-good-bad.html?m=1)

</comment><comment><USER39> I remember it took almost two months for me to receive my card. Since they were completely unresponsive via email support, chat, or the phone, I was starting to worry that it had gotten lost in the mail or something, or worse that they had never shipped it.

it was getting to a point where I looked at their website, noticed that they were based in NYC (like me), and thought about applying to a job there purely as a means to talk to someone, and complain about my card never arriving.

Sadly, I chickened on that plan, but I really wish I had gone through with it; I would have loved to see how awesome their office was if they were totally OK hemorrhaging money with no real strategy on making it back.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't know why it didn't occur to them to do a pass for movie snacks instead. Probably with a mild discount they could reap a decent profit there if the movie theaters could be negotiated into reducing their extravagant prices in return for increased sales.

<comment><USER41> Movie theaters wouldn't allow it. Snacks are expensive because movies are not really that profitable for them.

<comment><USER42> movies are profitable for some of the parties in the chain, but the theaters specifically must pay so much in licensing fees that they don't make much on a given ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The US didn't need MoviePass for this.

Movie theatre subscriptions have been a thing in France for a very long time.

<comment><USER44> They've been a thing in the US for a long time as well. I remember them in the early 1990s when I was a teenager, so I assume they probably existed for decades before that. I don't know why MoviePass was perceived as a good idea, other than the notion of centralizing the service into one bigger company and away from individual theater chains (which could then give an entity like MoviePass leverage to suck more value out of the movie theaters as a whole; another middleman parasite that adds very little real value).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The joke is: "We will lose some on every unit, but we will make it up on volume!"

</comment><comment><USER44> Outline for the Business Insider story referenced in the article that covers the MoviePass history in greater detail:

[https://outline.com/ZPqaXs](https://outline.com/ZPqaXs)

</comment><comment><USER46> The biggest problem was only "cherry pickers" bought the service. People who were already spending $10 a month or more in movie tickets. For it to work it needed to be a "breakage" play, like gym memberships.

Also theaters started getting non-movie-goers back in occasionally they may have been perceived as more valuable "conversions" and Moviephone admissions would have been discounted.

<comment><USER47> > People who were already spending $10 a month or more in movie tickets

I don't think that's the case. I know a ton of people who went from seeing movies almost never to seeing them several times a month. They had the opposite problem of a gym - having a moviepass membership available actively changed people's moviegoing behavior on a wide scale.

Gyms also don't pay a per-visit overhead cost for a given member.

This is more or less why AMC can successfully offer A-List.

<comment><USER23> You both are saying the same thing. They needed people who paid the monthly fee but never went, but instead got people who went a _lot_. And gyms definitely do pay a per-visit overhead since space is a fixed and precious resource, especially in urban areas.

<comment><USER48> There's no marginal cost (effectively) on a single gym visit.

If 100 people use moviepass, moviepass loses 100*$X

If 100 people use a gym membership. The gym loses $0. And maybe a few people cancel because it's too crowded (or better yet, don't cancel but stop coming)

<comment><USER23> > And maybe a few people cancel because it's too crowded

Wouldn't you consider that a per-visit cost?

<comment><USER49> No, why would you? Attaching a cost to someone unable to visit the gym due to "overcrowding" wouldn't make business sense since you're unable to determine if that is actually the case or if they weren't coming for another reason.

A customer with a gym pays a monthly rate... That rate is paid even if they use it. The running cost of the gym remains the same whether or not someone comes to the gym.

This comparison, then, doesn't make sense. MoviePass is paying directly each time a customer uses the service. While both services are better off with people simply giving their money for something they don't use, only MoviePass actually LOSES money if people are using the service. The gym, on the other hand, doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So running an early stage startup is basically performance art, with an intended audience of VCs?

</comment><comment><USER51> It was always unclear to me why anyone who wasn't an investor or stakeholder should have cared that MoviePass spent/wasted a bunch of investors' money. If someone is selling dollar bills for 75 cents, who cares what their motive is, or if it's sustainable or whatever?

<comment><USER11> I think it wasn't so much about MoviePass _per se_ as it was about the idea that MoviePass symbolized something broken in the modern economy -- that what it rewards isn't productive entrepreneurship that creates value by making life better for people, but rather burning tons of cash to wedge yourself into a position from which you can then extract rents from other people. The valorization of unnecessary middlemen.

<comment><USER31> From an HN comment from today that I've added to my favorites: _" It feels as though much of tech has gone from helping people accomplish their goals efficiently to a business model of extracting rents while providing no or little value."_

I quote it because your comment made me think, "where have I recently heard that before?" :-)

<comment><USER52> The world has become this raging river of dumb money, and it's a lot easier to simply find the biggest cup you can find and dip it in, than it is to actually create something of value and sell it to actual people.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A stock trading platform for hackers? - <AUTHOR>

There seems to be a lot of talk on HN about HFT, short-selling, and the stock market in general. Using AI / Machine Learning / Data Mining allows smart hackers like us to more-or-less print money (according to the newspapers anyway).
Okay, I realize that I probably won't retire off of this, but data-driven stock trading just seems like a lot of _fun_. I'd like to try my hand at it even if I lose my "investment".
This immediately brings me to a practical problem: what is the best way to make a (HTTP?) request over the internet that buys a stock? I've know that some sites have APIs, but I want to know what you recommend.
My question two-fold:
1. Does anyone know of a good trading platform for (non-windows) hackers? 2. Is HFT (or anything close) possible for an individual hacker without a huge cash position?
I'm a total noob in this area, so please feel free to post any recommended resources as well. <comment><USER2> I was previously a professional trader.

For quantitative mid frequency trading on a retail size account that doesn't require ultralow latency: Many pros use IB personally and their java API is quite good. You'll be disappointed to know that MOST finance apps are built for windows environments and are frustrating to work with. IB's is quite reasonable. IB also lets you pull historical data that is quite decent, though they cap the rate at which you can pull historical data bars.

<http://www.maxdama.com/> has written quite a bit about the IB API and I've found the provided documentation is actually quite good.

For pseudo HF type trading I'd say to take a look at lime brokerage.

REDI plus (Goldman sachs' platform) also has reasonable resources, though its harder to set up an account. for IB I think you just need 8k or so to open an account. Transaction costs are also the best for most retail/hackerish type applications (smallish quantitative based trading).

Also i'm interested in collaborating with HN people regarding trading strategies. I think the HN crowd is actually sort of the idea crowd to try to make it. There seem to be quite a few pros that actually read HN as well.

Would love to get in touch with anyone who is interested in working on strategies or even just talking.

<comment><USER2> More on IB: so you basically just have to fund an account with whatever their minimum is now (might be 10k now).

then to get most US stock/options/futures data, it only costs 10 bucks a month for their live feed. If you make trades, your commissions go towards paying down your data fee. If you don't trade for a few months, consider it 10 bucks a month for the opportunity to develop strategies in a real environment.

Also, they give you a "paper trading acct" which behaves like a real account, except it doesn't post real trades. you can forwardtest your strategies on live market data with this.

IMO, this is probably the best way for HN people to get involved.

I also realize that it probably sounds like I'm selling for IB, but i'm not. Just a happy customer for 4 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As an individual over even the fastest internet connection there is no way you can do High Frequency Trading. You need latencies of sub-millisecond to do this. The guys that do do this have very expensive hardware co-located at the exchanges. All this costs a LOT of money (a friend of mine who developed an HFT platform for a large bank reckoned you'd need about a million bucks to have even a vague chance of comepeting). Additionally it's also VERY risky, and not the free lunch it's portrayed in the media. You're "picking up pennies in front of the steam-roller" - one mistake and you're f*cked. And trust me, mistakes get made: if an order doesn't fill/complete and you're left with an outright position you can lose a lot of money very rapidly.

So forget HFT. However yes there may be opportunites for relative value / alpha / rich-cheap type analyses, which AI/ML could help you with. But bare in mind that markets are often "confounding" - and never do what they are supposed to. So play carefully.

Edit: I should also add that HFT requires a very fundamental knowledge/understanding of contracts and their pricing (mostly futures), how exchanges match and fill orders, how curves are constructed, how the markets operate and so on.

<comment><USER4> > You're "picking up pennies in front of the steam-roller" - one mistake and > you're f*cked.

Isn't that why exchanges have a simulation FIX ports?

<comment><USER5> Depends. We use simulation to validate connectivity and business logic. No link to the potential future bad decisions taken during trading.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have been dabbling in this and it is pretty interesting. It is a huge time sink by the way. Also, you are playing the odds and you need a certain amount of cash or it will be gone before you get anywhere. If you end up trading frequently ("pattern day trading") you will be required to keep a higher balance in your account, BTW.

You might start with ninjatrader, which you can get for free. They can connect to yahoo for free price quotes (daily only), and also to some brokers for real time quotes during the day, if you have an account (I use TDAmeritrade and have been pretty happy with it).

ninjatrader has a (wacky) programming language and you can code up the conditions for buying and selling. The really neat thing is that you can run your "strategy" against historical data to see how it would have worked, and tweak it, etc.

Overall it is really painful to work with (if you are a programmer). But it does allow you to learn a lot without spending or risking any money until you think you are ready.

I believe TDAmeritrade has some kind of API you can call directly, but you have to contact them about it. Another one that I have looked at is Interactive Brokers. I haven't used them but I think they are well regarded. They are really aiming at professionals ("industrial" vs. "retail"). Possibly more what you're looking for, since they have a download page.

I would hold my nose and spend some time with ninjatrader (or something like it) just to see what's involved. You can code up your strategy and see on a chart where it would have you buy and sell, and how much you would gain or lose.

It's really pretty tricky and you should have some feel for what works and what doesn't (and when it works and when it doesn't) before you go all in.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if there is a place to download historical "real time" data for testing?

<comment><USER3> By "real time" presumably you mean tick data. This is generally not available for most contracts on most exchnages unless you are prepared to stump up a fair wedge of cash. However, i did once find on some russian website per- second historical data for various currency pairs - although I forget the site now.

However depending on your trading strategy I doubt you'll need tick data. You may be able to find per-5-minute data for free on some stuff. And EOD is generally free for most contracts.

<comment><USER2> I have also pulled 1 second bars for currency from IB. they throttle your query rate though, so it can take some time to get your data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use IB, and it's the best I've found so far.

My dream, however, is to be able to trade on a headless linux box using REST. Currently, I have to fire up my windows PC every morning before the market opens, connect to IB, and start my algorithm running. Needless to say, if I go to that much trouble, I want a trade or two to occur that day, and I think it influences the algorithms I write.

It would be better to have something on a dedicated Slicehost slice that updates every minute or every five minutes, and waits for some event that may only occur once a month. I don't need tick data, and I'm not sure I need even one second data. Actually, the data feed is not the issue. The issue is that I have so far been unable to find an API that will allow me to initiate trades on a headless linux box.

</comment><comment><USER9> A few brokers offer APis such as TDAmeritrade, and Interactive Brokers. IB has 10k minimum opening (though I believe you can transfer some of that out after).

More importantly to be a pattern day-trader and get the 4-1 margin you have to maintain a minimum account of 25k.

Also you should check out marketcetera <http://www.marketcetera.com/site/> \- though I don't have first hand experience with it.

To your second question - no not really. HFT works by scalping a stock for pennies - buying and selling (tens/hundreds) of thousands of shares for a very short timeframe (seconds, minutes, hours?) (Tangentially look into the 'sharpe ratio' on wikipedia)

I don't think you can compete in the HFT arena - I would personally recommend looking at medium-term strategies and possibly using options for leverage.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been thinking about building a simple fundamentals strategy. More interested in EOD data and indicative data, though.

HFT itself is just a good way to have your money taken away by smarter people... but long-term alpha is probably still doable.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you're into forex/CFD/futures rather than stocks, you might want to take a look at Metatrader. It's free, it is very widely used and it comes with its own C-based programming language, MQL4. I've used the language to set up my own custom indicators and expert systems (for real-time automated trading). I recommend this as a very hands-on way to learn technical trading.

<http://www.metaquotes.net/> <http://www.mql4.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://www.milleniumit.com/media_room/gui-press_releases.php> offers turnkey HFT solution.

        HFT = Algor trading + Flash trading

and Flash trading is possible if you've a seat in the exchange.

<http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04162010.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> Forgot to mention: algodeal.com

Never tried it myself and can't vouch for them, but it seems to be an interesting concept and might let a lot of hackers get their feet wet without any monetary investment.</comment>


Gigabit currently available in Burlington Vermont - <AUTHOR> http://www.burlingtontelecom.net/Residential/Internet/Cutting-Edge-Speed

<comment><AUTHOR> Ridiculous claim at the bottom of the page that AirPlay would be faster.</comment>


Apple acquires "identity pollution" patent aimed at fighting Big Brother - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/apple-wants-to-protect-your-identity-by-cloning-you/258873/

<comment><USER2> The other day I made an eBay account, and in order to raise the maximum sale amount beyond $1000 eBay made me answer personal questions about my relatives, information that they had apparently found out from some commercial database, which I'm sure will then be fed back into that database. Not really sure how I feel about that.

<comment><USER3> It's called knowledge-based authentication, a kind of identity proofing. This could conceivably be implemented such that your personally identifiable information stayed with the third party (who already has it) and never crossed eBay's path, though I don't know if that's the case here.

Credit agencies already have this information about you, so it's perhaps no surprise Equifax is the first result for "identity proofing" on Google.

<comment><USER4> I've had to do that before when applying for a credit card, but the information wasn't very accurate. They were asking a bunch of questions about my mortgage, which I've never had. Eventually I realized they had somehow gotten my parents' mortgage attached to my name (possibly because I was on one of their credit card accounts years ago?), and once I realized that, I was able to answer the questions correctly by asking my parents what to answer. But, not too impressed.

<comment><USER5> Thats committed a criminal offence in the UK.

I'm assuming you're in the US. You need some sensible privacy laws.

<comment><USER6> Which part? The questions themselves or the commingling of credit histories?

<comment><USER5> Storing information insecurely, releasing someone else's data without their permission, etc.

EDIT: Here's the official guidance from the regulator: ([http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/sector_guides/financ...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/sector_guides/finance.aspx))

([http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/c...](http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/credit.aspx))

Page 12 of this document talks about "associations" ([http://www.experian.co.uk/downloads/consumer/creditRefAgency...](http://www.experian.co.uk/downloads/consumer/creditRefAgencyExplained.pdf)) - credit reference agencies cannot use data about one person at an address to rate a different person at that address, even if they have the same surname, unless there is some financial link.

<comment><USER6> Re: "associations," I doubt very much it's intentional; more likely a mixup in the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Aimed at fighting Big Brother, or preventing others from implementing the method?

<comment><USER8> Since Apple's users actually pay for their products, Apple is more motivated to protect privacy IMO.

<comment><USER9> I would argue that fact makes there user data more marketable and valuable to third parties. Which would provide the opposite motivation to most companies.

<comment><USER10> "most" is the key here. For all its faults, Apple is not some sleazy strapped for cash operation that neds to sell their customer data to marketers...

Consider all the potential damage if that happened and was brought to light, and for what? 1/1000 their revenue?

<comment><USER9> They already do, and reserve the right to in their TOS. In regard to marketers and advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am quite surprised that anything that apple apply patent for automatically is for the greater good, instead being for its own agenda. I would not be surprised that the only application of this patent would be to spead more non- sense about its futur product.

</comment><comment><USER12> Paranoid Linux used to do something similar. The concept was lots of seemingly real browsing traffic would be randomly generated through your computer, and this would add a significant amount of noise to the total web browser traffic to your machine.

<comment><USER5> See also "TrackMeNot" - (<http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/>) which is a browser extension to generate realistic fake traffic.

I haven't seen any analysis of this extension, but I suspect it'd be trivially easy to split the fake traffic from the real traffic. I guess it has an annoyance factor if people have to store your traffic data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What sort of identity thief cares about what products you buy, or what you search for? This is just a giant middle finger to Google, Facebook, and any other data-collection service.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if my proxy server that replaces cookies and referrers for Facebook Google & domains with "ads" in them - with random-but-plausible junk infringes this patent (or provides prior art against it)?

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure a product publicly available before the patent was registered can't legally be considered to be in violation of the patent...

<comment><USER16> No, not legally, but they will sic their lawyers on you and bleed you dry anyway.

<comment><USER15> Being sued for something like this sounds like a perfectly good way to make some patent lawyer very famous and yourself very rich.

Maybe I'm just naive, though.

<comment><USER16> The problem is you will be up against a legal team funded by millions of dollars and they will get you stuck in red tape for years. I don't think a lawyer would take that on commission. And I don't know a lot about it, but I don't think counter-suits are very lucrative in patent law anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > One of the properties Apple won in a February acquisition of patents from > Novell...

This story would have been interesting if Apple had actually acquired this specific patent. Now, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is more about confounding certain advertising based companies than anything... I'm almost surprised Safari doesn't block ads by default already.

<comment><USER19> because safari requires work arounds from most sites to work 100%.

remove ads, and the efort to suport that browser just die.

<comment><USER20> Safari = Webkit. The same workarounds would have to be done for Chrome.

<comment><USER21> Not true. Safari and Chrome are both built on top of WebKit.

<comment><USER20> That's what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There seem to be quite a few knobs to tweak, and I'd be interested in seeing how such a service would work in iOS/OSX while minimizing user involvement. I suspect there would be certain tendency to still make oneself somewhat trackable if the user were to be given the possibility to tweak the Clone's parameters—much in the way that tweaking one's User Agent is quite likely going to severely lower privacy in terms of uniqueness.

On a tangential note, I'm always glad to see entities try and solve problems (here: user tracking, surveillance, and privacy violations) with strong technological solutions rather than conventions and policy. It's not that, say, DNT can't work, but solutions similar to the one at hand[^0] seem much stronger as guarantees.

Needless to say, I'd also be very interested in using this system, or a subset thereof. Hopefully, in a way that ensures not even Apple can track me ;)

[^0]: Acknowledging the fact that Apple themselves might not actually implement this, of course, and that Novell doesn't do much with it further.

</comment><comment><USER23> This patent would also prevent others from using the idea to stimy Apple's data collection efforts.

<comment><USER24> Apple just wants your money, they don't need your data.</comment></comment>


I am dyslexic - <AUTHOR> https://matthewsag.com/dyslexic/ <comment><USER2> There are no clear criteria to distinguish dyslexia from poor reading ability; multiple studies have found that reading ability is unimodally distributed, with no clear distinction between dyslexics and "ordinary" poor readers. We have identified no interventions that are particularly beneficial to dyslexics; dyslexics and non-dyslexics appear to respond at similar rates to training and practice in reading skills.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20051220004651/http://www.nrdc.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051220004651/http://www.nrdc.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_166.pdf)

Colored lenses or special fonts do not appear to be beneficial in any way.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27580753](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27580753)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26993270](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26993270)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29204931](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29204931)

<comment><USER3> Without having dug into those studies to check the statistics and how they were done, the linked blog post gives a pretty compelling account of how coloured lenses do with for at least this person. It's quite possible that there are types of dyslexia which do respond to coloured lenses that are averaged out in a bell curve of general "dyslexia".

<comment><USER2> _> the linked blog post gives a pretty compelling account of how coloured lenses do with for at least this person_

I could link you to any number of blog posts giving compelling accounts of how drinking bleach cures autism. Belief is not evidence.

<comment><USER4> So you are accusing the author of making this up? Your arrogance is sickening.

<comment><USER2> No. I think that the author genuinely believes that colored lenses make it easier for him to read; I know that several carefully conducted clinical trials have found no benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's weird how much Dyslexia and ADHD overlap. Looking at the symptoms of Dyslexia [https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/signs-of- dyslexia/co...](https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/signs-of- dyslexia/common-characteristics-of-adult-dyslexia/)

<comment><USER6> align these ideas and check out the autism spectrum and get ready for your mind to be blown.

<comment><USER5> Mind is pretty blown. There really is so much overlap

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dyslexic's of the world untie!

I actually think a lot of people underestimate quite how many dyslexic people are about in industries you wouldn't expect them. I work in software development for instance and have worked with vast swaths of dyslexic devs, QA/test automation engineers and all sorts of other technical roles. A lot of the time its never really brought up as thanks to syntax & spell check its fairly hard to go wrong (I'll admit to having been responsible for a couple of pretty questionably spelt variable names tho).

Its really only in fully written out text it can become obvious as even with spellcheck, if you bungle a word bad enough (or somehow skip a few which i also do more frequently than i'd like), what gets fixed can sometimes be far more bazaar than the spelling error itself.

For the most part I think people develop coping mechanisms for the majority of day to day issues it gives them, although some bits Ill admit I've never been able to fully work around (I feel most 6 year olds would likely out do me trying to alphabetise a stack of books for instance) - not that its something that comes up regularly in my day job `book.sort();` :)

It's probably also notable that the stuff under the term "Dyslexic" vary's a lot - both my wife and i have it (future kids are doomed), and although we share a lot of stuff, some symptoms are entirely different. Its actually a pretty interesting thing to read up on - especially as a remember some of the info being pretty much none existent only a decade or so ago - while now there is are ton of research about in to what on earth is going on with it.

<comment><USER8> I tend to rearrange the letters in a word, and also add letters that are not there and/or remove letters that are there.

For instance, I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and genuinely thought that the Wizard's name was Grandalf.

I had a tough time in grade school learning to read and write, but I credit my Grandmother constantly reading to me for giving me a strong desire to learn to read myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be interested to know if folks here with dyslexia agree with the sentiment that dyslexia affects their visual ingestion of words, and that visual aids (like the colored filters he discusses) can improve their reading ability.

I ask this because many dyslexia experts in the US (and some outside the US) insist that dyslexia is purely phonological, and therefore non-visual.

As someone who works in the field but does not have dyslexia, I have to reconcile these academic's edicts with the personal descriptions I hear from individuals with dyslexia, which clearly indicate that dyslexia can have visual causes and aids.

<comment><USER10> I'm with the phonological camp. In fact, one of the things that surprised me greatly is that I can read Japanese dramatically more comfortably than English. I can read the symbolic characters very easily and since almost all of the phonetic characters in Japanese are grammar, I tend to gloss over it. However the grammar is very regular, so you can usually figure out what's going on without having to read every character.

In fact, I get very frustrated when I read children's books because they often omit the Chinese characters for words and replace them with phonetic characters. I just can't read it without a massive struggle.

It's also interesting that I vastly prefer computer programming languages that use symbols rather than words. One of the common "coding practices" in Ruby is to replace "if !whatever" with "unless whatever". I literally can't understand the latter and I'm always rewriting it in my editor to "if !whatever" so that I can understand the code. You might think I'm just used to it, but if I write "if not whatever" \-- bam! I can't understand it. Weird, isn't it!

<comment><USER11> Have you ever tried an APL-family programming language? If so, I'd be curious how you found it.

<comment><USER10> I have, indeed. I studied APL at school (which shows you how old I am!) I enjoyed reading it and hated typing it :-) I tend to prefer things that are a little bit in between. APL has quite a lot of unusual features, though (some of which were intuitive for me, having been a FORTH programmer, and some of which were not -- having a pretty poor math background). I've been thinking of playing with one of the modern APL variants. I think I would really enjoy it these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's crazy how different his dyslexic experience is than mine. I think there are differently several different things going on under the umbrella term "dyslexic".

Colored glasses do not help me. Reading is slow, but doesn't cause headaches. Spelling is near impossible. After a slow start by high school my reading comprehension was at or above my peers.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have always thought I had dyspraxia[0], which although totally unrelated to dyslexia, made teachers think I was dyslexic when I was young as I was unable to (and still can't) write in a legible way unless I write slowly and in block capitals, however I can read very well, and when in the mood can consume books on many topics at quite a fast rate.

That said... I've just read the list of dyslexic symptoms[1] and I'm shocked. I can legitimately tick about 80% of that whole list. So maybe I _am_ dyslexic after all ?

\--

[0] [https://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia- adults/](https://dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia-adults/)

[1] [https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/signs-of- dyslexia/co...](https://www.dyslexia.com/about-dyslexia/signs-of- dyslexia/common-characteristics-of-adult-dyslexia/)

<comment><USER14> Sorry but that list of symptoms is absolute BUNK. "Had it tough in school"? What kind of horoscope level bulls--t is this? "May be able to sense energy of others"? Really?

C'mon dude, maybe you have difficulties, but don't turn to these tricksters for diagnose.

<comment><USER15> (removed, misunderstood parent, wasn't constructive)

<comment><USER14> I am aware of the word's multiple uses, and I resent the suggestion that I don't.

Dyslexia is a diagnosis about reading text. That page very clearly uses underhanded horoscope type wording to make you think it applies to you individually.

Hogwash. Absolute hogwash.

<comment><USER15> Sorry I misunderstood your comment. Sometimes metaphors _are_ taken over- literally on HN. I didn't assume ill intent.

Dyslexia is obviously caused by _something_, but its forms and manifestations do seem to be varied.

There are specific tests that can be done, and no doubt they are accurate. But you can't test every single child, and I think one should be open minded to the kinds of behaviours that are co-incident with dyslexia in case it might lead someone to a diagnosis.

Diagnosing based on that list is obviously wrong, but I don't think it claims to be a list of falsifiable, scientific characteristics. More something to prompt. I'd rather have a more open funnel than a closed one.

<comment><USER16> Of course you can test every single child. In America we test every single child, every week or two. Starting from childbirth and continuing pretty much uninterrupted until they leave school.

In the US the Federal Govt requires schools to test every student for dyslexia and provide appropriate services.

<comment><USER15> I don't know how things were done in the US. But I get the impression that the educational authorities are keen on automated multiple-choice tests. At school I failed pretty comprehensively at the 'standard' testing until the dyslexia was taken into account (although I don't recall more than a tiny handful of automated tests).

From my dim memory (over a decade ago), my own dyslexia diagnosis was a few hours long, included a variety of tests, both hand-writing, physical, an interview etc. That would he hugely expensive to do for every child.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was diagnosed with dyslexia at age of 8. At the time I couldn't spell my name with any reliability (it's not a complicated one), and I was failing primary school across all subjects. My reading level was, perhaps surprisingly, about average for my age, although I do find to this day I have to be very careful not to skip lines or misread words while reading (I usually use my finger IRL or highlight the text I read through as I go along online).

I see dyslexia now as an umbrella term for a wide class of learning related symptoms. The justification for receiving additional support and understanding as a means to reduce waste of potential. If there is such a large gap in one area of development that that it overly impacts the measurement or development of the other areas then failing to compensate for that seems negligent.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's a funny thing. I'm almost certain I came up with that dyslexic agnostic insomniac dog joke. I thought of it while delivering pizzas in my uni years around 1989.

Would be happy to be proven wrong though if someone can find an earlier reference to it.

<comment><USER19> It's a Steven Wright joke from sometime in the 80's. (I don't have a reference handy and I'm on a phone...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was diagnosed with auditory hearing dyslexia when I was a child.

I find it to be very useful, but it also can be extremely taxing when I'm trying to process information in a noisy (visual and auditory) environment.

It's hard to explain, but I actually am capable of processing a lot of information. I often imagine that I have a hyper-threaded brain that is multi- tasking. However, the issues start when I'm processing conflicting or too much information. Which can be many things, like multiple conversations, unusual or loud noises, smells, lights, odd patterns of any kind, etc...

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm also dyslexic, however my experience has been completely different from my fathers (also dyslexic). Where as he struggled though school and university and eventually attended night school lessons to help with work, and still to this day has real trouble communicating effectively through written text, I went through the unitsofsound[1] course before the age of 10.

I can say that for 90% my of day to day I really don't notice it. With more intensive written work (writing a CV or a formal letter) i need to "double think" myself quite a bit and follow processes to write & then review & refactor my work before letting out the door.

Obviously it's a sample size of 1, but I think unitsofsound really helped me, and when about 15 years ago my dad started work on converting the course into a program that could be delivered easier for more people that was great. 7 years ago I got involved converting it to flash so we could deliver it on the web and reach even more people, and this year we sold it to another company who can hopefully take it to the next level again and help even more.

I hope people will not dismiss my praise of unitsofsound as just self promotion, the ideas were not mine/ours, the theory goes back to the 70's, but I do believe it has the potential to help lots of people.

Anyone wanting to try it out for free please get in contact and I can set up some accounts (just now still anyway). One of the great perks of doing something like this is giving it away to those who genuinely need it.

[1] [https://www.unitsofsound.com/](https://www.unitsofsound.com/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Dyslexics of the world, untie!

</comment><comment><USER23> The dyslexic folks at HN might have the special responsibility to come up with some sort of solution. Only you know what works, and have the tech smarts to figure something out.

So, for example, what if this:

> de – et – te – ct – ti - io – n

were actually displayed as

> de.tec.ti.on

Would that help? Maybe you can up with some other scheme, like coloring syllables? Or positioning of syllables spatially (across 2 lines) to help synchronize them?

Maybe you've already tried these or other things. It would be valuable to share your experiences.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am dyslexic. Recently my father reminded me as a child (1st grade) I had this crazy ability to write in mirror image with my right hand while normally with my left. By 3rd grade it was gone (I didn't practice at all). Literally you could hold it up to a mirror and read it (allowing for a child's lettering). Is this common? I've not known anyone else that could do this.

<comment><USER25> My wife (age 37) thinks she's mildly dyslexic. What's the best and most effective way to test that? (if you happen to know)

<comment><USER9> There is no one test, especially because dyslexia co-occurs with various other neurological differences (ADD/ADHD/dyscalculia/processing disorders, etc.)

I run a startup whose technology is used as an assistive technology for people with dyslexia (and also as a speed-reading aid for non-dyslexic readers). Some reading specialists have suggested that our tool could be used as a litmus test for certain types of reading issues, including dyslexia. For some (not all) people with dyslexia, the first time trying our line-wrapping color gradients is life-changing. (For most people who use it as a speed-reading tool, it's a cool lifehack, but not a quantum leap.)

She can try it by just looking at the demo on our website. [1] Protip: we're going to launch a fully-functional, free, version of our browser plugin later this week. It will require occasional tweeting, but not a Twitter auth or any PII gathering whatsoever.

1: [http://www.beelinereader.com](http://www.beelinereader.com)

<comment><USER26> tried it, seemed a bit easier to read. Maybe a nice option would be to adjust background color, font size and line width. Pure black on white especial with long sentences makes it really hard for me to read. That is why most of the time I rather read form my phone than from a printed book.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the feedback! We do offer all of these features in our browser plugin. Background color has been configurable since the beginning, and we added the layout and sizing options last month!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > When I forget to change back to my tinted lenses all my old symptoms come > back. This is as close to proof as you can get that colored lenses work for > me and that this is not just a placebo effect.

I'm glad it works for OP (and, really, he doesn't need to care _why_ it works if it does!) but I don't think that really does anything to show it's not placebo?

<comment><USER4> The placebo effect is supposed to remain effective even if the person knows its a placebo. If it is placebo, it should be possible to get an improvement by putting on a "reading necklace" or something else that obviously shouldnt help. Might be interesting to look into

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Interesting how most of the issues cased by dyslexia he describes have a strong social component.

Seems like having people be more aware and tolerant of its symptoms would help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wow, a dyslexic lawyer. (A very text-intensive occupation.)

Kudos to the author. Helps people (me) relate, and offered with a healthy dose of encouraging can-do attitude.

</comment><comment><USER30> What you are describing is something other than dyslexia, which is a phonological thing, not a visual thing.

<comment><USER10> To be fair, from the article: "Dyslexia can mean a lot of different things. The term is used as an umbrella term for a combination of auditory, visual and attentional disorders that manifest as learning disabilities. I can't say what it means in general to be dyslexic, I can only say what it means to me.

My type of dyslexia is visual/attentional, but mostly visual."

I have the phonological thing, but I was _not_ diagnosed as dyslexic as a child because I'm also not so typical in many ways. These kinds of issues are often like that. Our words are imprecise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another one here...

</comment><comment><USER6> that's inspiring.</comment>


Ask HN: Does learning C really help you develop better software? - <AUTHOR> The question encompasses for both Beginners and Professionals for building expertise and great intuition in building software.
The other part of the same question I would want to know is, whether C improves our expertise and geat intuition of problem-solving in data structures and algorithms.
It could be in any domain, be it web development, or any other. <comment><USER2> C allows you to interact directly with your OS (especially true for unix OSes). This in turn helps you to understand how a specific higher-level feature is implemented, how can it be used, how and when can it fail, and how to debug it in all the other programming languages, like `subprocess' module in Python, polling descriptors (any language), or ports in Erlang.

</comment><comment><USER3> C gives you a behind the scenes look at most abstractions you use in terms of data structures. You create and destroy things such as lists, trees and such. You manage your memory manually and that let's you appreciate the work people put by making languages that do those things for you but you also learn a lot in terms of abstraction.

There are surely languages you use or will use which implementations are in C ( Python for example )

I think it's somewhat similar to a question with JVM languages. Do you have to learn a bit of Java to get a deeper understanding of Scala of Clojure?

Do you have to learn a bit of Latin to express yourself in English or Italian a bit more fluently?</comment>


Show HN: Video++, a Real Time Video Processing Framework Using OpenMP4 and C++14 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/matt-42/vpp

<comment><USER2> The thing that is amazing about imagemagick/graphicsmagick is the fact that they can open 100+ formats. That is not something to be taken for granted.

Other than that... they feel kind of old. Video++ feels really new, I'm excited to try it out, but I will miss support for all those weird formats I love so much.

I don't see any video examples though - or is that all handled using opencv?

I've found opencv's png/video decoders to be extremely picky. Opencv doesn't open some files that other libraries will and because of that I've been extremely hesitant about using it as my main image IO.

<comment><AUTHOR> The video++ project is still very young. It's goal is not to re-code all the image formats, but just providing nice abstraction to build fast image processing apps. You can easilly load whatever format you like and pass the buffer and its dimensions to vpp::image2d to process it. I am actually using opencv to open images or grab images from videos, and then process them with video++ via the opencv bridge.

<comment><USER2> Cool, that's best - it would be silly to try to re-do all of that. I will definitely continue to follow this project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was looking for something like this for a project once. I settled with imagemagick and ffmpeg. Maybe this has what I want.

<comment><USER4> If video processing is what you want to do, I can very much recommend Avisynth[1] (and while it's Windows software, it runs quite well in Wine). For a more natively cross-platform alternative, there's also Vapoursynth[2], but I personally prefer Avisynth's DSL much more over Vapoursynth's Python scripting, not to mention it's generally got more filters available for it.

[1] [http://avs-plus.net/](http://avs-plus.net/) [2] [http://www.vapoursynth.com/](http://www.vapoursynth.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> C++11 and C++14 definitely looks very nice. Kind of makes me want to go back and code some C++.</comment>


Google scraping local webpages viewed in Chrome? - <AUTHOR>

I've been developing a Javascript table component[1] for a little while, and a few weeks ago I was working on a demo page to show some examples. I picked a few stocks off the top of my head (AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, FB, JPM, C, VZ), and created a page that included a table with dummy data that changed every few seconds. The page is now viewable at http://jwoah12.github.io/aTable/demo.html#dynamicDataWorker, but at the time was only on my local machine. I was predominantly using Chrome to test the page. Later that day I happened to open up Google Now on my Galaxy Nexus, and noticed that there was a new card showing stock quotes.[2] Creepily, the stocks were all exactly the same as the ones I chose for my test page. I figure Chrome must have scraped the data and used it to show me the quotes in Google Now. Has anyone else seen behavior like this? I have to admit I don't like the idea of Google scraping local files I'm viewing.<p>[1] ATable - http://jwoah12.github.io/aTable<p>[2] http://jwoah12.github.io/aTable/gnow_stocks.jpg <comment><USER2> A big point of Google Now is it scrapes what you view in browser and uses that (web history) to determine what it should show you as cards.

I'm not sure why you'd expect local pages to be treated any differently in terms of extracting signals to feed into the model of what is of interest to you to be shown in Now.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know. Something about it just feels invasive. It probably doesn't help that the Now card was not useful at all to me. I noticed that they scraped my gmail for an OpenTable reservation confirmation a while back and notified me when it was time to leave. That also felt creepy, but I didn't mind as much because it was useful.

<comment><USER3> They do not "scrape" content on your local machine. They do incorporate stuff on their services including emails, as you mention (OpenTable, Amazon packages, etc).

You can also have this sort of stuff triggerd by desktop searches if you join this "field trial": <https://www.google.com/experimental/gmailfieldtrial/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you've Googled these stocks/companies then they will show up on a Google Now card. Chrome has nothing to do with it, except maybe that you are more likely to be signed in when using Chrome.</comment>


Ask YC: how could investing by crowd wisdom actually work? - <AUTHOR> The idea to somehow leverage crowd wisdom for investing has been on my mind for a while, and probably on that of many others, too. So far I haven't acted on it, in part because of other projects, but mainly because I could not yet think of a way to avoid abuse of the system.  For example, if users would invest together and vote on investments, somebody could vote on an irrationally high price for something he wants to sell outside of the group, and use the shared money to buy it.
Now I have been invited to a german startup in beta (sharewise) where people can give recommendations, predictions, and do the social networking thing. And it makes me feel even more clearly: why should I trust the projections of those people on sharewise more than the projections of the actual stock market? It costs nothing to create a projection on sharewise, whereas people "voting" on the correct price in the actual stock market better believe their projection, because they put their money on the line.
In general, if somebody (analysts for example) is projecting a higher value of some stock, why do they not buy it? Either they believe in what they say, then they should buy it, or they don't believe in it, then perhaps they should better keep their mouth shut?
So I guess it is back to investment clubs again? I don't know exactly how they work, I would guess everybody can speculate with the money they put in only, but wins and losses are shared? But even that seems to be exploitable in the same way as described above. Presumably one would only start such a thing together with trusted friends, but still?
At least there seems to be commercial software for managing investment clubs, and quite expensive, too, so perhaps there is still a market out there for web 2.0 style managed investment clubs. I just don't think that any of them will provide a magic bullet to outperform the market.
I should add that I don't know very much about investing etc. anyway, but I am always happy to learn more...
 <comment><USER2> have you looked at caps.fool.com? several online brokerages are building communities such as tradeking.com. covester.com tracks your real trades and is going to allow others to follow successful traders for a free.

good luck, there are a lot of great sites out there already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link! caps.fool.com looks very similar to sharewise, and therefore probably has the same flaws (if they are really flaws).

And even tracking real trades might be open to abuse - trade a small amount on the tracked system, and then a large amount on some other system? At least I can see some incentive for participating, though: perhaps you are more likely to attract followers to your trades, which in turn increases the value of the stock.

At this point I am not planning a real startup (as obviously I don't have the right idea yet). I was contemplating to experiment a little together with friends, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hey, send me an email bkmrkr at yahoo.com

</comment><comment><USER4> Index funds?</comment>


Maximator: European signals intelligence cooperation - <AUTHOR> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1743538 <comment><USER2> Source article this is based on: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2020.1743538)

(Found it since I cannot read the full economist article)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for this complete version.

Random detail, but "Maximator" is a type of beer (a Starkbier/Doppelbock) brewed by the the very popular Augustiner brewery, not a brand in itself. In fact, it's a Bavarian tradition for the names of Doppelbocks to generally end in "-ator": Celebrator, Optimator, Animator...

<comment><USER4> The article covers this fact well. I like the idea that a super secret cabal name is based on the drink they were having at the time. It humanizes the whole endeavour showing how they agree on more than secrecy.

<comment><USER5> Or the place they were having the drink in, like the Beer Hall Putsch

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the source article:

"Certain countries were deliberately not allowed to join because within the Maximator alliance they were considered as lacking relevant (signal-/crypto- analytical) expertise and/or experience. Allegedly, these countries include Norway, Spain and Italy."

And

"Belgium is a notable exception in north-western Europe; it had not been invited to join Maximator because of its lack of SIGINT (and COMSEC) capabilities." adding in a footnote that "Belgium's cryptographic behaviour and discipline were problematic. For instance, at least once it compromised its own communications via a basic mistake in key management;"

:D

<comment><USER7> It is disappointing to continue to see such rampant fragmentation within Europe.

I had hoped that the EU would break down regulatory barriers and force bureaucratic consolidation, but it seems progress has stalled in the last 10 years.

The EU should have one single intelligence agency - not a dysfunctional collection of fighting to be part of the "in" group.

<comment><USER8> One single intelligence agency? And what if the Germans are interested in gaining better understanding of Viktor Orban? Or if the Italians want to know just how far Germany will really go to help them financially? An intelligence agency is a means of acquiring answers to intelligence needs - I'm not sure Europe is of one mind with regard to what questions merit answering.

<comment><USER9> Exactly. You'd need a single united economic and political union first.

The EU is heading away from that, not towards it.

<comment><USER10> How do you figure that?

The EU is an economic and political union. It might not be complete or perfect, but integration has been happening decade by decade. We now have a single currency, a unified supreme court, a single charter of citizen rights, freedom of movement and a single market. A lot of younger people feel European, there is such a thing as an European identity. Each one of these things was considered impossible at a certain point. It is a slow and hard process but it is happening.

I find that the English-speaking media is particularly keen on repeating the mantra that "the EU is collapsing". I've witnessed this all my life. It became more intense now with Brexit, but the UK was not ever a real member. It opted out and demanded exceptions for everything. Unfortunately, the EU had to be built _around_ the UK, not _with_ it. There was also a shift in attitude with the current administration in the US, which sees the EU as an adversary instead of as a friend. So I would take anything I read in English about the EU with a pinch of salt...

<comment><USER11> > the UK was not ever a real member. It opted out and demanded exceptions for > everything. Unfortunately, the EU had to be built around the UK, not with > it.

There's a tendency among hardcore europhiles to blame the nasty british for all questioning of the European ideal, as though if it weren't for perfidious albion Europe would be of one mind.

This completely ignores both the deep euroscepticism felt by many people across the EU(which European countries tend to just ignore instead of being so hasty like Britain as to actually have a referendum - and if a referendum must be held, just have it again and again until you get the right answer...) and also ignores that other countries have differing opinions to France and Germany too.

<comment><USER10> > There's a tendency among hardcore europhiles to blame the nasty british for > all questioning of the European ideal, as though if it weren't for > perfidious albion Europe would be of one mind.

Perhaps, but that was not what I said at all. What I said is that the UK always chose to not participate in the project, and that the project went on without it. Now, with Brexit, the UK government is openly hostile towards the EU. This is just a fact. Another fact is that the EU was able to maintain a united political front when faced with Brexit (which posed -- and was meant to pose -- an existential threat to the EU). So the reports of EU's death may be premature, as the cliché goes...

> This completely ignores both the deep euroscepticism felt by many people > across the EU

Well, I haven't. On the contrary, I said that it is a very hard and incomplete project, and that it was considered impossible by a lot of people every step of the way. I also mentioned that it is among the younger generations that a European identity is growing. Not established, but growing.

> and also ignores that other countries have differing opinions to France and > Germany too

Well, I ignored none of that. You just assumed it.

What I think is undeniable is that there are vested interests in the collapse of the EU. The EU is composed of many small countries, that could be much more easily pushed around if not acting as bloc. Naturally, those who would indeed like to push Europe around dislike the EU. With the stance of the current US administration and of the post-Brexit UK government, it just so happens that in the current year of 2020, a lot of people with such vested interests write in English.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's most interesting about this is what Professor Jacobs omitted, and the stuff he omitted happens to be related to his circle of friends.

Set up a Google Alert for appropriate keywords, this could get really interesting in the coming months. That's all I can say, sorry.

<comment><USER13> Intriguing comment given what he has worked on and with who.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that dominated the global market, turns out to have > been jointly owned by the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. They > would sell rigged machines to friends and enemies alike, including several > NATO countries.

<comment><USER14> How is this getting a free pass, while allegations about other countries prompt much consternation.

I think it is ethically problematic to assist/work for any espionage/intelligence related work during peace time.

<comment> blaser-waffle The Cold War was mostly a spy game and it kept the peace for decades. There was no gigantic WW3, no nuclear holocaust, and kept the regional conflicts limited to that specific region.

Everyone plays the great game, even allies vs other allies (e.g. the French spying on US businesses, and the US NSA spying on Europeans during negotiations).

<comment><USER15> Surely the threat of mass destruction had more to do with that so-called peace.

And was it really peaceful? All that espionage essentially led to the proxy wars across the globe that cost countless number of lives.

<comment><USER16> How many people died in WW2 vs all wars after WW2?

<comment><USER15> Why?

<comment><USER16> Proxy wars and spying kills less people than world wars. It's objectively better.

<comment><USER15> It's only objectively better until another world war comes - we are not immune, and then, it will be easily objectively worse. This argument is rather pointless - externalizing warfare to poor nations and then saying the world is "peaceful" is quite immoral.

<comment><USER16> Do you have a better, moral way to reduce war fatalities?

<comment><USER15> Do you have an argument that isn't a straw-man?

Espionage is not used by governments to maintain peace and reduce war fatalities - it's used by governments to gain an edge over their adversaries. Espionage existed in WW2 as it did in times of peace - to say peace is a consequence of it is absurd.

MAD is the only thing that has prevented major world conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As both an American (culturally) and European (by citizenship, as in European Union citizen), this whole ordeal is going to be profoundly damaging to US-EU relations.

But, you (Americans) should be angry because democracy has been in backslide hardcore in the US. Europe has dealt with populism before, unlike the US, and is more likely to recover from these bad times than the US—and it is really due to a multitude of reasons.

My bet is that the US closed the operation once they knew they were certainly busted. Who knows, maybe even a European counter-operation of some sort occurred. The US probably has several other covert operations now based directly on intelligence from the devices with poor encryption. Sure, post World War 2, the US maybe had legitimate reasons to be spying on such activities in general in Europe. They also probably knew (practically guaranteed) over time from various patterns (from good data—whatever that data could possibly be) that a super coordinated secret intelligence operation was going on between European countries, while not knowing who exactly they were (as in not being able to put their finger on what was going on, but still being able to rely on intuition to just know and to justify the means).

Swiss laws permitting ultra-confidentiality in banking do absolutely have a legitimate purpose, but they are problemsome too. Unless you have been living under a rock in recent years, everybody knows that there are plenty of oligarchs (Russian oligarchs in particular) funneling dirty money through the Swiss banking system. America also effectively has its own form of oligarchy too (by the way, guess who is listed top in the world for wealth inequality by Credit Suisse? Russia. Guess who is second? USA.), so it is not like this route seemed unnatural.

Even if the Europeans knew for certain that somebody had some sort of substantial counterintelligence on them, it would still take a long time to figure out the source of failure. That is, unless the US messed up severely, which, I suspect, is probably what happened.

<comment><USER18> > _But, you (Americans) should be angry because democracy has been in > backslide hardcore in the US. Europe has dealt with populism before..._

Populism is a creature of democracy, what you're talking about is a failure of the republic; which itself is debatable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Maxinator", "Five Eyes"

Imagine being in the brainstorming session to come up with name for intelligence agencies alliances.

"It must sound dangerous, yes, but not evil. Like some kind of anti-villain"

<comment><USER20> Whenever I read about such organizations I always wonder who cleans the toilets. Whether they are real like the CIA, Five Eyes, or even Dr. Evil someone low down on the ladder has to get access.

<comment><USER21> Keep in mind that there are all sorts of odd circumstances and that the rules surrounding this stuff are necessarily inflexible, so there are lots of different arrangements.

That said, in the US, the janitor is probably a contractor. Typically ex- military, they have to pass a background check and are cleared to work in public spaces. When cleaning secure areas, they're escorted and watched.

<comment><USER22> And the people escorting and watching them are also escorted and watched. And their families are interviewed. Etc... It's a huge undertaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > to the considerable irritation of those who had kept it under wraps for > decades

On one side, so much secrecy worries me. On the other side kudos for keeping the secret pact secret for so long.

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://archive.is/zmTgX](http://archive.is/zmTgX)

</comment><comment><USER25> They let the Turkish Army into NATO and hold nukes and it reuses OTPs?

<comment><USER26> They don't let Turkish Army hold nukes.

They are just located in Turkey. Turkish Air force practises the delivery so that they can do it if necessary.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, however there was talk that getting the nukes _out_ of Turkey would not be easy, especially if Turkey would not cooperate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sans paywall [https://outline.com/VKPeR4](https://outline.com/VKPeR4)

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://archive.md/FMsZM](https://archive.md/FMsZM)

</comment><comment><USER30> Can somebody explain why The Register and The Economist suddenly pick up the subject, while the original article from Jacobs was published a few months ago, and several newspaper already covered the topic ?

Anything new happened ?

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder what is behind the comment that french/german works better than french/UK

<comment><USER32> The origins of the EEC were a French(agriculture + coal) and German (manufacturing) alliance. The other countries were just added on as export markets.

<comment><USER33> Those were probably powerful lobbies for an enlargement of an economic union.

However, technically the concept of an european economic union originated with the treaty for the Benelux Economic Union (1958)

(Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)

<comment><USER32> Generally treaties occur after interested parties have realized their interests and undertaken discussions for a great deal of time prior to the signing of anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Supposedly, they mean West-Germany when they say Germany?

<comment><USER35> Yes. BND originated as West German intelligence agency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Nothing on SPECTRE</comment>


Ask HN: What to ask an Intellectual Ventures Officer - <AUTHOR>

I'm at a talk with a few people, but most interesting is a CIO from Intellectual Ventures.  Anyone have anything they would ask him given the chance? <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't get a chance to ask that, sorry. I did ask how he addresses critics who say IV stifles small inventors by making it impossible to defend themselves against the large resources IV has at its disposal. His response? Utterly useless

</comment><comment><USER2> When will they release reference implementations of all of the alleged intellectual property they have patented or bought patents to?</comment>


UnlockFame – You Have a Talent You Want to Be Noticed and Go Viral - <AUTHOR> UnlockFame - You Have a Talent You want to Be Noticed and Go Viral Show Case and Unlock Your Fame<p>https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/unlockfame/id1232206553?ls=1&mt=8 Google Play Store https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.unlockfame <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys just launched this app on Google Play and Apple would love your honest feedback I am new to this love everyone's support or even a share with friends and group

thanks again</comment>


Ask HN: Do you see sales jump on the 1st of every month? - <AUTHOR>

We have been noticing, for our service (www.peoplelex.com), that sales jump up disproportionately on the 1st of every month.<p>Anybody else, running direct consumer monetization services, seeing similar trends? <comment><USER2> As a consumer, I typically blow my 'toy' money on a project that will keep me busy for a week at the beginning of the month. This gives me 3 weeks to search for my next adventure and wish that I had more money. When the first of the month rolls around and as soon as that check clears... I'm going to hit up that .txt filled with things I wanted to do with money. (Today, I bought a shirt, rented a logo designer, ordered new headlights (last month's project gone bad), donated to my favorite site, and bought an ebook!)

Also, I noticed CTR->conversions on the first few days of the month(or holidays) on my Adwords campaigns was phenomenally higher. Almost to the point where I dumped my whole budget in the first 3 days of the month just to see if it would pay off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not really anything exact but sometimes at certain times of the year, yes. We are in the training business so first of month, last of month seem to coincide with "end of quarter" or "start of new training budget" for us.</comment>


Mozilla ships Firefox update in response to FarmVille users - <AUTHOR> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574905#c0 <comment><USER2> This 'crash protection' was closing every flash thing I tried to run, from Hulu to the simplest sample apps in the Adobe LiveDocs. Worst 'fix/feature' ever. I've almost never had problems with Flash before this...

<comment><USER3> I concur though for me after updating to 3.6.4 and then updating my flash plugin on my mac mini Firefox wont even open. It crashes each time i try to open it.

Unfortunately after six years Ive moved to chrome. I need a browser that works and is stable. Chrome doesnt crash and i can have 3 tabs open running flash content.

<comment><USER4> So let me get this straight, you updated to 3.6.4 on Mac, had lots of problems with Flash and then decided at that time to switch to Chrome? Hope that works well for you. I should mention though that the new out of process plug-in feature isn't in Firefox for Mac. The problem discussed here wouldn't have affected you. Any chance you were just wanting to advertise Chrome and thought this would be a good vehicle? If you have been having trouble with Flash in Firefox on Mac for a while and upgrading to 3.6.4 didn't help, have you tried upgrading Flash itself? Do the Flash tabs inside Chrome sometimes crash or is Flash behaving differently there than in Firefox?

<comment><USER3> So far I have had no issues with Chrome crashing while running two to three tabs of content each playing flash content.

As for advertising Chrome ... that wasnt my aim, rather to let Mozilla people of my issue. Could be a wider spread issue then myself. Ive used Mozilla as my main browser since 2003, unfortunately after the update Im not able to use it at all :(

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry that I misunderstood your purpose then.

I'm also sorry that you are having problem running Flash in Firefox. There are a lot of good articles in support.mozilla.org that might help you, and you could also check out your about:crashes tab and check if any of your crashes have been linked with bugs that indicate what the problem is or whether it might have a resolution.

Flash crashes are a frustrating experience both for the browser user and the browser creator. Firefox devs have worked tirelessly to try to insulate the browser from this problem, and they continue to make further improvements. Adobe has many engineers that look at Socorro data to try to find and fix their product's crashes as well, but it is still something that way too many people bump into far too frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FarmVille players are real, ordinary, normal people. If you want to develop software that impacts real people, target the FarmVille audience and ignore readers of Hacker News, TechCrunch, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well, it's not really FarmVille. Basically they guessed on a reasonably timeout before, and now they have more data.

I bet any game would cause them to need a longer timeout.

<comment><USER7> Zynga was in direct contact with Mozilla during this fix. It was a lot more about FarmVille than this comment will lead you to believe.

<comment><USER8> Yeah but I can tell you other flash games makers had the exact same problem and did their own communication.

BTW: Thanks Zynga ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting... seeing that the change list does indeed only show that bug 574905.

What I'd find more interesting though, would be to find out why they decided to skip Fx 3.6.5. There has been quite a number of bugs that was marked fixed with that code. I wonder if those are included in 3.6.6: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL%20s...](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=ALL%20status1.9.2%3A.5-fixed)

<comment><USER10> Firefox point releases are versioned to match Gecko platform releases:

        Gecko 220.127.116.11 -> Firefox 3.6.4
        Gecko 18.104.22.168 -> Firefox 3.6.6

The Gecko 220.127.116.11 branch was created for a Mobile Firefox security release (Fennec 1.0.1). This did not affect Firefox 3.6, so there was no Firefox 3.6.5 release: [http://christian.legnitto.com/blog/2010/06/09/heads-up- the-n...](http://christian.legnitto.com/blog/2010/06/09/heads-up-the-next- firefox-platform-version-is-1-9-2-6-instead-of-1-9-2-5/)

 _[Note: I am a member of the Mozilla Mobile team.]_

<comment><USER4> Interesting. guess I should keep my half baked theories to myself. :)

That said.. I wonder what in the world the browsers reporting themselves as 3.6.5pre actually are...

<comment><USER10> The "pre" version numbers are used for nightlies and are not always kept up to date. For example, current nightlies are still labeled "3.7a6pre" even though Firefox 3.7 was renamed Firefox 4 weeks ago, and the next release will probably be Firefox 4.0b1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> never underestimate the power of the middle-aged mom cyber-farmer demographic

<comment><USER12> they know how to report bugs to browser developers?

<comment><USER13> They know what they want and gosh darnit, if it means they have to harass a bunch of nerds to get it, well, look out for those bug reports!</comment></comment></comment>


Building a Deep Learning (Dream) Machine - <AUTHOR> http://graphific.github.io/posts/building-a-deep-learning-dream-machine/ <comment><USER2> Part 2: [https://graphific.github.io/posts/running-a-deep-learning- dr...](https://graphific.github.io/posts/running-a-deep-learning-dream- machine/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wrong stance on SSD: always get an SSD where to put the temporary data, i.e. the form that your dataset takes to be fed into the DL backend. For instance, working with Caffe, your image dataset is turned into an LMDB or HDF5 database, while you can keep your unprocessed dataset on a regular HDD. The trick is to always prevent your GPU(s) from starving.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good build. If you have cash to burn and don't want to do a build, you can buy a prebuilt one with 4x new titan X in the UK - [https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/nvidia-deep- learning...](https://www.scan.co.uk/3xs/configurator/nvidia-deep-learning-box --3xs-g10)

</comment><comment> dj-wonk My projects involve a blend of fast CPU and GPU, so I decided to build a fast system recently with 1 GeForce GTX 1080, a fast Intel Core i7, and 128 GB of RAM.

I'll install another GTX 1080 soon. I found that the new Titans are hard to get and the performance/price ratio seems favorable on the 1080's.

I got Ubuntu 16.04 to work with the latest 1080 graphics drivers and CUDA 8 RC drivers -- no small feat. Reading all the documentation helps, and even then, it took some finagling.

<comment><USER3> See [https://github.com/beniz/deepdetect/issues/126#issuecomment](https://github.com/beniz/deepdetect/issues/126#issuecomment) and other links online. The trick is to install CUDA 8 _without_ the attached driver, then install the new NVidia driver. Once you got that, install on 16.04 is straightforward.

<comment> dj-wonk Yep. Also, this is a nice write-up for TensorFlow with CUDA 8.0 RC and cuDNN 5.1.5 with Ubuntu 16.04:

[https://alliseesolutions.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/install- gp...](https://alliseesolutions.wordpress.com/2016/09/08/install-gpu- tensorflow-from-sources-w-ubuntu-16-04-and-cuda-8-0-rc/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> if CPU isn't that important, then I suggest getting a second had hp Z800, with the big PSU

lots of space for GPUs lots of space for ram and disks.

<comment><USER6> Are there any hosting solutions that offer GPUs yet?

<comment><USER7> Microsoft Azure's K80 based N-series are the best that I've seen so far for by the hour instances. They're currently in preview availability[1].

Compared to the best AWS GPU, the Azure K80s are (a) cheaper and (b) many times more performant for the purposes of deep learning.

Hopefully this lights a fire under AWS to become more competitive with their GPU range.

[1]: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-n-series- previe...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-n-series-preview- availability/)

<comment><USER8> I'm still on the waiting list for the new N-series GPU servers. Does anyone have any idea about when it will be made available more broadly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> what was the total price of this box - did i miss the price in the article ?

<comment><USER10> I spent almost $2400 on my box. Finished it just a few weeks ago. I used parts of this article for inspiration. I only have 2 x NVIDIA GTX TITAN-X 12GB (bought used), not 3. I also used a 1600w power supply.

<comment><USER11> How does the Titan compare to the new 1080s for machine learning?

<comment><USER12> Slower but more memory (8GB vs. 12GB). Depending on the problem it could definitely matter.

There is also a new pascal based titan.

<comment><USER10> for my needs these cards are working just fine. I could post a picture of the rig if anyone wants to see it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>