Ask HN: How to launch an algo trading side project? - <AUTHOR> I've been writing my own implementations and using 20 year historical stock data. Have been test trading to see how my logic is working.<p>However, I have an issue. When I think I am ready to use real money how do I do this? Do I need to get ETrade or Robinhood to actually start automated trading? <comment><USER2> Interactive Brokers (IB) is your best bet. However, I'd like to reiterate as others have stated that you need to be prepared to lose it all (and moreover that you likely need much more capital than you realize to stay solvent on down swings).

Don't take this the wrong way, but it seems like you haven't done a lot of research into this: Interactive Brokers is one of the first things that comes up when you search on Google (etrade, Robin Hood or any other retail trading just isn't credible).

Finally, is your 20 years of historical data for just open/close? Is that your execution plan? (Otherwise you can get really tripped up as you move to intraday trading)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know about IB but initially I thought that I couldn't use their API unless I also ran on their platform. Meaning I can't use my own VPS, etc.

I have been using 1 minute bar data.

<comment><USER3> When using IB, you can trade on your own machine/vps/whatever. I suggest you do this, and set it up such that you trade on an IB paper account, make sure everything is running correctly and in line with your backtests, and then start trading with some real money. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To other folks in this thread - your warnings are justified but please stop conflating "algo" and "HFT".

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Only use money that you can 100% afford to lose.

2\. Once (if..) you've made some profit, take out your initial investment and now you're gambling with free money.

<comment><USER6> _" Once (if..) you've made some profit, take out your initial investment and now you're gambling with free money."_

I never understood this sentiment, and I'm surprised to see it so often on Hacker News. It's irrelevant whether the money came from profits or initial investment - money is money? There is no need to distinguish the both, it's purely psychological.

<comment><USER7> It's a classic example of loss aversion[0]. In my mind the real loss risk of this venture is the opportunity cost spent developing the algorithm. Many people that fail to build trading algorithms would have been very successful if they invested their time/expertise doing something else. The person stands to lose not only his cash investment, but all of the cash he could have received if they focused their efforts on a less risky venture[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)

[1] I'm all for risk, but Vegas has better odds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. Read Flashboys

2\. a) Realize how CRAZILY far many HFT firms have gone to inch out literally every single microsecond and achieve economies of scale with billions in assets

2\. b) individual user-scale tools like ETrade won't get your trades in fast enough/any cost per transaction fees will erase any gains

3\. Invest said capital in something like Betterment

If your model has been truly beating the market for a sustainable amount of time, I apologize for my comment and go all out :)

<comment><USER9> HFT is only one type of algo trading.

You can make money with simple trend following algos that execute perhaps only a few times a week.

To the OP, if you aren't sure about market execution, it makes me think you haven't modeled for slippage. Make sure you do, as that nudges many profitable algos into the red.

<comment><USER10> And maybe trading costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have only tried one algo trading platform, Interactive Brokers. API documentation: [http://interactivebrokers.github.io/tws- api/index.html#gsc.t...](http://interactivebrokers.github.io/tws- api/index.html#gsc.tab=0)

Their live market data is gated at 250 ms, so definitely not for HFT. Market data subscriptions are only $5 / month (US Equities, and others I don't remember), and commissions are low.

You can program in C#, Java, VB, C++, or Python. I use their C++ platform. It is not particularly pretty, but it seems well-tested and works. Perhaps most importantly, they have an awesome support phone number. They are responsive and very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER12> The easiest way to make a small fortune in trading is to start with a large one. :-)

HFT is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

<comment><AUTHOR> > HFT is like picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

here's to hoping I can stay one step ahead, lol. It's risky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Check out [https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/)

<comment><USER14> +1 Read the zipline source, I learnt a lot in how to structure trading code / solving common problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How often do you trade and how important is fast executions? I've noticed many programmers try to shoehorn in execution algorithms into a strategy that doesn't need it. If you can run an analytics program that just sends you a trade alert from which you manually execute, that will save you a lot in systems risk.

Also, the fact that you're asking this question tells me this is very very unlikely to be a good idea. Be careful.

<comment><AUTHOR> My thought is to trade as infrequently as possible, sort of batching trades to do all at one. Nothing is automated for me yet. I am just manually reviewing my output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Check out this podcast. Dis guy had a algo trading as a sideproject (now fulltime): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co_GYku903k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co_GYku903k)

<comment><USER17> Looks like this guy is looking to create a Quantopian clone, so in the end it feels like the whole interview was a bit of advert for the signal service to come...

In fact all podcasts of this guy are like than, a lot of charlatans and scammers are appearing on the podcast all the time, probably 99% of the guests...

<comment><USER16> I listened to ~10 podcasts and most people are very humble and talking about a lot of mistakes they made and I learned a lot. I cannot share that 99% of the guets should be charlatans or scammers. Did you listened to most of the episodes?

<comment><USER17> Yep at least the first 50, maybe more, beside the occasional guest, every one is selling a chat room, indicator or similar scam, just listen to this particular podcast where the host comments on the expected 60% yearly return and that it should be easy to do...

<comment><USER16> It's crazy in this business how everyone tries to sell something but I think there is still value there to extract, don't you think? It's a honest question because I'm new in this space and I always enjoy learning from others, especially from their mistakes so I can try to avoid them.

I would never copy anything they say or buy anything they offer.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that they will "teach" you the wrong things, because they do not have trading experience... all is smoke and mirrors with made up stories and nothing to learn... I was listening in the beginning as entertainment and because there were one or two real guests, but in the life is too short to waste your time on those scammers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Mind sharing where you get your market data? Are you using a paper account that you can simulate the trades? what markets are you participated in?

Apologies for the burst of questions. Am interested in testing out some ideas too

<comment><AUTHOR> Historically I have scraped data, but now: [http://eoddata.com/default.aspx](http://eoddata.com/default.aspx)

<comment><USER19> Be careful. EODdata has a lot of data issues. Seriously...a lot. I would recommend checking out Alpha Vantage. It's free and I didn't see any of the issues with their data that I saw with EODdata.

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW! OMG. Thanks for mentioning your experience. Can you share more about this? My e-mail is in my profile if you want to do it privately.

Thanks for mentioning Alpha Vantage. I will check them out.

<comment><USER19> No need for private communications. Probably better to have here anyway for anyone else who is curious.

I was thinking of using their data to help test and run a system I am working on. I was excited to see that their stuff is free for what I need, as long as I wait until after a specified time to grab it (9 PM EST). I started looking at the data and noticed that it doesn't track corporate actions well at all. This becomes very problematic when you need to track your day over day returns for a security. There were also unexplained gaps and spikes in historical data. For index data, the lists seemed inconsistent in that things would seemingly drop out and then back in from day to the next leaving you with having to manually acquire the value of certain indices manually or having to process a historical file for that index to fill the gap. Historical files are not adjusted properly for actions like splits and ticker changes. Basically it boils down to there being a very, very limited use case for a provider like EODdata. Also, it should be noted that while I was never a paying subscriber, their subscribers have said there is virtually no customer service. I thought that might be the case looking at the website. It seems like EODdata was basically put on autopilot a long time ago and just left to run with no one at the helm. From a security standpoint, I recall them not using HTTPS (that should give you an idea of how long they haven't updated their site or security) and I clearly remember them storing passwords as plain text because I did a "forgot password" and it emailed it to me. In fact, I just did it again now to make sure I wasn't crazy, and sure enough, they haven't fixed anything. Still no HTTPS (even when manually typing in the HTTPS:// prefix) and it just emailed me my password (which was set to a bullshit password that I would never remember after discovering this gaping, unforgivable security travesty). I also remember having issues with some of the downloads not working correctly.

All in all, I'm damn near certain someone has this site on full autopilot and never fixes, updates, or even maintains anything. The plain text password nonsense should be enough right there to disqualify its usage, even if you are only using the free service(s) and never provide your payment details, and even if you use a unique password. If you were actually thinking of providing payment details, it's a clear and total no-go.

There are additional reviews from other people at these links: [https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/3284/is- eoddata-a-...](https://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/3284/is-eoddata-a- good-data-source) [http://www.trade2win.com/reviews/data_feeds/82-eod- data#revi...](http://www.trade2win.com/reviews/data_feeds/82-eod-data#reviews- wrapper)

They mention a lot of what I have talked about and more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I appreciate the word of caution. I'll look at the place you mention too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you are not planning to do HFT then let your system create signals and send them to your e-mail. Then buy/sell manually.

</comment><comment><USER21> I went with Interactive Brokers and their python API.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am working on the same thing. I'm still in the model building phase and I still need to complete my backtesting framework. You seem to be ahead but I've already looked into the trading API process.

Go with whatever broker offers a trading API obviously, and has a fee structure that matches your trading strategy. If you can afford to lose a bit on the trade through commissions and your strategy is swing trading then you can pick pretty much any broker. If you need specific fill times and commission percentages before your strategy pays off then you are stuck with Interactive Brokers ($10k minimum[1], low comms, fast exec) or Robinhood (low minimum, free comms, slow exec). And technically Robinhood doesn't have a public API[2] so you would have to do a little reversing of their app's messaging. And then there's terms of service... yeah. Probably not a big deal for a small fry like yourself.

Next would be testing. You've got isolated tests with historic data but try get a broker that has a paper money version. TDAmeritrade's paper & api is good (but they are expensive). To be clear you would be using your algo to trade in a paper money account. That lets you get more realistic trade tests and if you blow something up you are still ok!

Keep in mind Robinhood is free because they are paid to route your orders to hedge funds and they are re-ordered in the book. You will get ok price execution through them but never the best. One thing you should include in your backtests/simulations is order execution delay and fill price variance. If you place market orders they won't always fill at the quote price. If you place limit orders they may take a while to fill (or not at all) unless the price is within the other side's order prices.

Last is the pattern day trading rule. Make sure you have a strategy that won't make more than 3 day trades in a 5 day window, otherwise your account might get suspended for a few months. It's a pile of horses but you can get around that by simply having more money in your account. > $25k will buy you unlimited day trading privileges.

Just curious what your strategy is based on if you don't mind giving a few details.

Good luck!

[1][https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969](https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=4969) [2][https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en- us/articles/210216823-Ro...](https://support.robinhood.com/hc/en- us/articles/210216823-Robinhood-API-Integrations)

<comment><USER23> One suggestion to avoid the PDT rule (and in general be more efficient with your capital) is to look at futures. For instance rather than trading SPY trade ES. ~8k per contract minimum to control ~140k (50*Index Points) of the SP500 and no PDT.

<comment><USER22> You say more efficient, I say leveraged. Potato Potato. :) Yea futures are much more interesting in my opinion and no PDT is way better!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What if I want to do fundamental analysis? Anyone know of any cheap or free data sources that have parseable financial statements?

</comment><comment><USER25> If I may, what is the timeframe for your algo trades?

If it's short one like say in minutes, then you might want to test it with small amount of real money before going all in. The reason is orders fills are imperfect. So, cost price you had during backtests vs realtime might differ a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the hard part. How much money am I willing to part with :-) Some of these places I think need $25k in an account.

<comment><USER2> Actually, that threshold is an SEC one for being a "frequent trader". So anyone who doesn't is just not telling you that you'll need at least 25k (and IIRC, _at all times_ ) to make the volume of trades you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A friend of mine did this and had the algorithm output the trades and then he made them manually. If it trades too quickly for that to work, trading costs will likely be an issue for you anyway.

Remember hindsight bias, and as others have said, don't invest more than you can lose.

<comment><USER27> This is how I did it. My problem was that I listened to my algos for entry points but let my emotions take over for exits, so I often left money on the table.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you did is a natural instinct/emotion! I can see this happening to me also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Depends...

What instruments are you trading?

What frequency?

What size?

Why does it need to be automated?

</comment><comment><USER29> You said you have been test trading. What does that mean? Where are you testing? Which platform are you using?

</comment><comment><USER30> Since this topic is trending, I would like to grab this opportunity to ask if anyone's knows any material on how FPGAs are used in HFT/ Quantitative trading? Any books/ web sites / blogs?

Any pointers would be highly appreciated?

</comment><comment><USER31> for development in Python you can use [https://www.backtrader.com](https://www.backtrader.com) with simulations and live trading

</comment><comment><USER32> TradeStation. I wouldn't bank on any HFT, unless you're doing FPGAs, and you've got the 'good' port on the switch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have always wondered if FPGA's are really needed. Can you share more info about this?

<comment><USER33> Are you doing HFT trading? If so, then the FPGA could help. Are you just doing plain ol' algo trading then you wouldn't really need it.

<comment><AUTHOR> plain ol'. Currently I dont even have this running on a VPS yet. I am just using a Mac Pro in my house, lol. But I am not "live" yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Robinhood have an unplublished api. There are hard limits on the number of trades you can do. But i would use that

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you share more about this? IIRC web isn't ready yet so mobile only.

<comment><USER34> [https://github.com/Jamonek/Robinhood](https://github.com/Jamonek/Robinhood) I used that a few months ago, you might need to sniff the traffic if there has been changes. it wasnt too difficult

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am glad you ran with my idea and found an edge pretty quick!

What is your average yearly return on the 20 years back testing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Your advice was absolutely amazing and cemented my desire to continue! Now I need to figure out how to actually execute. If you have any advice! I keep staring at a list of possible transactions and manually checking how my trade might have turned out and keeping a gain/loss figure.

I was hoping you would chime in on this thread. I was not so comfortable with the work I was doing and felt like my direction was wrong and I was questioning why I was even going to try this. Your advice helped me decide to continue.

<comment><USER17> Hey Jason, I am glad I could help!

Before you start with the execution, make sure you did use the 20 years of data, go and back test all the years, they encompass few market cycles, so you will know how your strategy will perform in bull and bear markets.

For the execution part, when I started, I had an ssh session open to my server with the output of my bot running on the screen and had it configured to chime with something like" EXECUTE buy 2000 HYZ at $65 stop 56. I did it manually for a few weeks until I made sure everything worked properly and then did the order execution with the API. Interactive Brothers are a good choice with a good API.

I would stay away from Quantopian and other platforms that are holding your code, because this is the prefect target for a hacker and the perfect crime – nothing to steal or sell, they will just copy your winning strategy…

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 1e-9 The Interactive Brokers (IB) API would probably be your best option for trading on the side.

Here are a few words of advice regarding IB:

\- Thoroughly read and understand the IB documentation. \- Be sure that you never get close to any of IB's risk limits that can result in the automatic liquidation of some, or all, of your positions. \- If you don't want to put up enough cash in your IB account for day trading, be sure you don't exceed the trading limits that will get you classified as a day trader and thus prevent you from further trading until you add more cash. \- Be aware that the IB market data can have significant inaccuracies and/or delays.

Here are a few words of advice on automated trading:

\- Thoroughly understand the exchanges that handle the instruments you want to trade. Each exchange has online documentation explaining details of traded instruments, matching algorithms, pricing, and market data. Even though you won't be accessing the exchanges directly, these details have an effect. \- Thoroughly understand IB's order routing and how they construct their market data (if you use it). \- Just because your historical data says an instrument closed at a particular price, that does not mean you could have actually bought or sold at that price with IB or even with direct market access. The same is true of tick data constructed at 1 minute, 1 second, or even millisecond resolution. Trading simulations can be terribly inaccurate if you don't have a reasonable approximation of the exchange order books, the exchange latencies, IB's latencies, and your own trading system latency. To counter this, you need to be extremely conservative in your assumptions about getting an order filled at a particular price. \- Even with accurate market data and exact latency measurements, predicting future profits by backtesting over historical data is perilous. I advise having a strong background in the statistical/machine learning methods for constructing and analyzing appropriate training, testing, and validation sets. \- Don't make a trade just because some analysis suggests the market will go in that direction. Doing this will probably get you hurt and it harms markets by pushing them to overshoot or undershoot the correct prices. The trend is your friend until he turns around and stabs you in the back. Make a trade because that's where the market _should_ go and probably _will_ go eventually.

My best advice for trading profitably is to do something to improve a market. Focus on areas that can benefit from your strongest personal advantages (mathematical, technical, domain knowledge, etc.). Gain an understanding of the exchanges and instruments that allows you to recognize ways to make prices more accurate. This improvement could be in an absolute sense for individual prices or it could be in a relative sense in terms of how instruments should be priced with respect to one another. It could also be in terms of adding liquidity (offering to buy or sell) where needed and justified. Improving markets improves our economy by helping it to better prioritize resources and limit risks. That is a valuable service and the market will pay you for it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Consider cryptocurrency over stocks, as it comes with exchange API's and low/no fees.

<comment><USER36> Crypto doesn't have 20 years of historical price data though.

<comment><USER37> Isn't history-based trading a myth? I mean, technical analysis of markets in general.

<comment><USER3> It's not about using the 20 years of data to fit your model, it's about using the 20 years of data to test your strategy on (a process called backtesting). Once you know how it performs historically, you can develop an intuition for where it breaks down, and try to alleviate the problem (keeping in mind overfitting and all those types of issues).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> have you looked into quantopian?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I just looked at them. I like their idea of letting you test, but all of my code is in c++. I have 6 apps that need to continually run to fetch new data, import it, create models, make predictions and execute them. I'm not ready to share code, but I could always share how my architecture is works.

<comment><USER39> [http://quantconnect.com](http://quantconnect.com) is a better alternative for you, take a look.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Why do you feel they are a better alternative?

<comment><USER39> Considering you can't use Quantopian, it can't be much worse.

TBH I've never used them, I just remember looking at a platform that was much more tech agnostic, I'm not sure if this was what I looked at, but looked potentially useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> As others have said checkout cryptocurrency, im founder of [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) providing ai forecasts, charting and bulk data for backtesting bots. Checkout our blog at [http://blog.bitbank.nz](http://blog.bitbank.nz) for info on how to easily develop profitable trading algorithms from some of our open cryptocurrency data. Also checkout our GitHub</comment>


A novel material with world record breaking surface area and water adsorption - <AUTHOR> http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=133026&CultureCode=en

<comment><USER2> Its an interesting material but other than even more amazingly absorbent diapers, or better dessicants, I'm struggling with what the applications are. There are a list of uses for zeolites ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite#Uses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeolite#Uses)) which seems that these guys if they can make theirs cheaper and its better could jump into, perhaps I'll be getting a new Brita water purifier "Now with Upsalite!" or something?

Is there a materials scientist in the house that can help me out here?

<comment><USER3> I'm a materials scientist, but this isn't my background, so I'm just taking a stab:

These materials have a lot of potential for several reasons: high surface area (many reactions and processes are often rate-limited by surface exposure), surface activity (not sure about metal carbonates, but some metal oxides for example have a photocatalytic effect, where exposing a surface to light can break down compounds adsorbed on the surface), and very fine (and potentially controllable) pore size (with the potential to filter out things on a molecular level -- so it could potentially be tailored for like isolating co2 from a gas stream, water purification, heavy metal uptake).

Just a few guesses.

And of course, since the research came out of a cold country, think of all the applications for hockey rinks! Love that.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, the adsorbent one seems to be the most practical. I wonder what the cost to produce this stuff is relative to zeolites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that Plos One is not exactly the top journal one would publish such "groundbreaking" research. In general I've found university press releases to be little more than propaganda machines, and unreliable sources that do particularly poorly in providing context.

</comment><comment><USER5> Saw it yesterday somewhere. Sounds rather impressive. I ordered a sample[1].

[1] [http://www.disruptivematerials.com/request- sample/](http://www.disruptivematerials.com/request-sample/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I love that this was the result of a mistake, and the brief note about the only available reference material for part of their work being in Russian. Sounds like the makings of an excellent story.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Quoth he, "A Thursday afternoon in 2011, we slightly changed the synthesis parameters of the earlier employed unsuccessful attempts, and by mistake left the material in the reaction chamber over the weekend. Back at work on Monday morning we discovered that a rigid gel had formed and after drying this gel we started to get excited, says Johan Goméz de la Torre."

It is in fact slightly disturbing and somehow heartening how many discoveries are the result of mishap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I originally found this article confusing as "Uppsala" is a way to say "Ohh, oops" in German, along with the discovery being by accident.

Still not entirely sure whether it's a real finding.

<comment><USER7> In fairness, it's a pretty famous Swedish university.

[http://www.uu.se/en/](http://www.uu.se/en/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uppsala_University_peop...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uppsala_University_people)

<comment><USER8> As a native german speaker, I still think it's mindly confusing the Swedes would name one of their universities that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is an entire class of materials called MOFs (metal organic framework) with similar characteristics. This is a highly interesting emerging science.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does this conduct heat pretty well? I have a couple applications for high surface area high heat conducting materials.

</comment><comment><USER10> Would this make a good super capacitor?</comment>


Galaxy S9 Killer? The LG G7 ThinQ Can't Beat Last Year's Phones - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomsguide.com/us/lg-g7-thinq-fail,news-27159.html <comment> dan-0 Maybe I'm a little jaded on the hardware front, but everytime I see one of these articles it's comparing nominally different features the will almost always be beat by another phone within a few months.

Maybe it comes down to brand loyalty (I know I'll never but another LG after my last experience)? Or maybe what your carrier provides? But I'm really curious, with the current state of Android, if you're going to get a flagship phone, why wouldn't you opt for a Google brand phone so you can stay on top of the latest updates?

It's one thing if you just want a cheap phone, but if I drop big money on something, I want to know that I'm getting the latest updates. Especially when it comes to security on the device that has access to my most importantly information. I hear too many Android users complain about how their phone is two whole versions behind. Wake up! That's your carrier/manufacturer putting you at risk.</comment>


Ask HN: How to turn down a job interview - <AUTHOR> I applied to 5 companies about 6-7 weeks ago.I got an interview in all but one.To cut the story short,I got offers from all of the four companies.I am thinking to myself which to pick among them.Now,today the last company emailed me for an interview(after 7 weeks or so).I am not interested in the company anymore.How do i decline the interview in a decent way?. <comment><USER2> Just email back and let them know you are no longer available as so much time has passed. Don't burn bridges as you never know what the future holds. So a polite rejection should wok in this case.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      I got offers from all of the four companies.

Show-off.

;)

But seriously, courtesy is always appreciated, even when it is not returned in kind. A prompt, polite decline means they aren't left hanging. Stay on good terms in case they acquire a place you _do_ work later.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just say "I really appreciate your time so far but I have other offers which I am more interested in and don't wish to continue any further with your interview process"

Just be polite and don't waste either your or their time any further.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wait 7 weeks then say you're not interested.

<comment><USER6> Nope. They were a bit of a jerk (or, at best, indecisive) to leave you hanging that long, and then get back to you. Be better than them rather than vindictive. As pavornyoh said, don't burn bridges.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone interested in hosted CI (Jenkins) for iOS / Mac? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently building a service, as it something I myself need. However I would like to know opinion of other iOS/OS X developers.
I'd like to know what you think on pricing plans, etc. Any feedback is welcome.
Website in development: http://hosted-ci.com/
Thanks in advance!
Vladimir <comment><USER2> I'm building a new website, and I know that I definitely want to use Jenkins for CI.

However, with all the infrastructure stuff that's needed for a software organization, having all of these services hosted quickly becomes a nightmare to manage in itself?

By infrastructure stuff I mean all of the following and more (and the decision to run it yourself or have it hosted): \- Hosting - Amazon EC2 or Rackspace \- Bug and Task tracking - Bugzilla \- Version control - Git (Github private costs $/month) \- CI - Jenkins \- Deploy - Heroku (hosted) vs Capistrano scripts (DIY)

Because I like to do pretty much everything myself and save money whenever I can (I have been hosting several websites from my home desktop on dynamic DNS w/ freedns.afraid.org for years)--I am just about to finally give in and actually rent a VPS from Rackspace.

Knowing that all of these are services will always be needed (or at least, should be best practices) for collaborative software building, I would much rather build these out and customize them for myself for the years to come.

The only reason I'd switch over to hosted solutions is if I or someone on my team got too busy to maintain it in-house, and if the cost savings were justifiable in switching over.

After using Jenkins CI at my last company, I really enjoyed that experience, and absolutely must have it for all of my future projects. On my list of infrastructure stuff, CI comes after hosting and source control as a basic necessity, so it should on average cost the same or less than those.

I hope I'm not being so cheap and parsimonious as to offend you, but I'd like to see a version of your service offered in the $15 price range without much sacrifice in quality/service.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I hope I'm not being so cheap and parsimonious as to offend you, but I'd > like to see a version of your service offered in the $15 price range without > much sacrifice in quality/service.

There are two main reasons for high cost: 1\. iOS / OS X projects have to be built on Apple hardware. 2\. CI is resource intensive task, so not like very many users can share single machine.

I'll think on making a smaller plan though. Also for non-Mac projects $15 plan would work for me.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that clarification, it makes more sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple Safari: Do you see problems with the fonts' sharpness? - <AUTHOR>

I find webpage fonts on Safari kind of blurry, even after changing the smoothness from medium to light, it doesn't improve a lot .. any idea why? <comment><USER2> Safari uses Apple's font rendering algorithms. They're intended to stay true to the shape of the letterforms without worrying too much about keeping them within the pixel grid. Check out Joel's explanation: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html/>. Or Jeff Atwood's: <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000885.html>

Of course, if you're not on Windows, I have no clue.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this happen in any other applications? Are icons fuzzy as well on the dock or desktop? If that's the case, you might not be running at the monitor's native resolution.

If it's just the browser, try changing browsers. If THAT doesn't work, stop leeching your neighbors internet ;) (<http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside- down-ternet.html>)

<comment><AUTHOR> the fuzziness is only on the web-pages in safari - same web-page is okay on firefox - i think firefox is the best and with ver3.0 there is no competition.</comment></comment>


What has changed in Postman's new pricing? - <AUTHOR> https://capiche.com/q/what-has-changed-in-postmans-new-pricing <comment><USER2> Discussion from a day ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22002560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22002560)

<comment><USER3> Yes. Although that thread is getting cold, I've moved the comments thither, so the discussion stays in one place.

<comment><AUTHOR> @dang, I'm curious: why is analysis and clear explanation of a pricing change considered a dupe of a sugarcoated company announcement that buries the lede?

It runs contrary to a fairly common occurence on HN, where a piece of news is on the front page, and then analysis of that news is on the front page subsequently. For example:

Mandrill's official announcement post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11170713)

Analysis allowed on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11203056)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11328631)

<comment><USER3> (I was busy answering your email when you posted this, so maybe it's easiest to just include that response here.)

The articles aren't 100% identical, but it's unquestionably the same story, and when HN has had a major discussion about a story recently, follow-ups count as dupes unless they contain significant new information [1]. Commenters in the original thread were well aware that the pricing has gone up. Indeed, that was the only significant thing about the story, so I don't think there is significant new information today. One way we check that is to look whether the comments are saying the same sorts of things as previously, or whether they are focusing on something new. In this case the discussion seemed much the same.

Front page slots are the scarcest resource HN has [2], and optimizing for curiosity [3] requires minimizing repetition. Follow-up posts on controversial topics often get a lot of upvotes, but because they're mostly repetitive, it's an important function of moderation to downweight them. I'm sorry your article got caught in that mechanism. I know it sucks to get downweighted off the front page.

I completely agree with you that their announcement was unclear, and in fact was having a conversation by email about this with some users yesterday. You can see one artifact of that conversation here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22003612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22003612). HN's title rule calls for keeping original titles except when they're misleading or linkabit. Bland corporate press releases that are designed to bury the lede are misleading [4], so we tend to change them. If you want to suggest an accurate title, we can still change it. The only reason I reverted "Postman announces 50% price hike starting Feb 2020" is that at the time, I had no easy way to be sure that that was true.

I hope this helps explain things a bit, and sorry for the disappointment.

Edit:

I haven't had a chance to look into the details of what happened with those old posts you've linked to. It's possible that that case differed significantly from this one. But it's also possible that we just missed the duplication. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted to HN, so we miss a lot. For that reason, it's impossible for moderation to be consistent [5]. Our principles are consistent, but the practice isn't. If you or anyone see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the most likely explanation is that we didn't see it [6]. In that case you can help out a lot by bringing it to our attention at email@example.com.

1\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20significant%20new%20information&sort=byDate&type=comment)

2\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment)

3\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)

4\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20misleading%20corporate&sort=byDate&type=comment)

5\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20consisten&sort=byDate&type=comment)

6\. [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20likeliest&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough.

I don't agree with your assessment here. But, I respect how tricky your role is, and I can't argue with the overall results of your approach to moderation considering how often I come back to see what's happening on HN. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Cross-posted to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013580) per @dang above.)

I don't know anything about Postman, but this is an interesting case study on price increases.

No one likes price increases, but they happen. So long as you have a strong ROI use case, you can navigate those discussions with your customers. E.g., "You were getting a 50x return, but listen, we're running a business over here, and a 45x return is still pretty darn good."

The challenge in Postman's case appears to be that they ALSO reduced the bundle components. So you compound the perception from "paying more" to "paying more _but getting less_ ". That's worse optics.

What I'd offer you think about is _this may be a perfectly rational and even optimal customer solution_. It's unifying two different pricing actions: price increase and product bundling. The logic being that many customers weren't using all the users, API calls, documentation views, custom domains, and integrations that were previously included in, say, the Pro bundle.

So as opposed to increasing price by—I'm making up numbers here—12% and leaving bundle elements the same, they increased price by 10% and cut features by 2%. The end result is exactly the same, but is actually _better_ for most customers because they will get the same level of features they needed and not have to pay that additional 2% for features they weren't using anyway.

<comment><USER3> I appreciate that you took the time to include helpful links, but please don't cross-post. Copy-pasting lowers the signal/noise ratio here. If you want to refer to what you posted elsewhere, please use a link to do it, and perhaps add some new information that's specific to the new context.

(In this case, of course, that's not necessary because the entire thread has been merged!)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20copy%20paste&sort=byDate&type=comment)

<comment><USER4> Of course. I started commenting before the merge, but posted after it, and didn't want this comment to be orphaned. Re-posted in the "correct" thread, and left this comment for traceability only.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. That degree of circumspection is unusual and if everyone practiced it we'd have no worries at all, so I'm sorry for the criticism!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do you need to worry about IP issues with respect to people testing your service and giving you suggestions? They might be doing so while at work for example. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> No. And please don't use "Intellectual Property" generically unless you know what you're doing.

Trademarks have nothing to do with your question.

Copyrights have nothing to do with your question.

Patents are always a risk, but you're no more or less liable by knowing it was someone else's idea. You're only more liable if you know somebody else got a patent.

<comment><USER2> Geez, I really didn't mean that to sound as hostile as it came out. I'm nicer in person, really.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If the testing and suggestions are extensive, their employer might argue that they have some claim to the IP for your startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> An interesting issue but I've never seen any reference to this kind of problem. I personally wouldn't worry about it. As already pointed out trademarks/copyrights are unrelated and also patents are for specific _implementations_ of ideas -- they don't cover broad concepts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not if you don't credit them as part of the development. If I worked for BigCo.A and sent in customer feedback to SmallCo.B's new web startup, A has no claim in IP. If I'm just leaking inside info from A to B, that's another set of issues altogether.</comment>


A/Bingo 1.0.0 Official Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/02/14/abingo-1-0-0-official-release/ <comment><USER2> I didn't think this would necessarily be HN material so I didn't bother submitting it, but apparently someone disagrees with me.

I figured I had to "professionalize" A/Bingo a bit because recently from reading my email I get the impression that it is looking less like the 10% time project from my 10% time project and more like "Oh, effity, if this breaks businesses with employees start losing money." So I did a bit of code cleanup, wrote some tests, and created a versioning plan so that folks depending on it are not totally on their own for evaluating whether a particular commit will break stuff if they pull it in.

Since I had the opportunity I also made some changes to the user experience, such as decreasing the amount of code you have to write even further, and incorporating the Minimum Viable Dashboard.

If you aren't A/B testing yet, I want to change that. Tell me what I need to do to make it happen.

<comment><USER3> I'm going to have a look at this in a few weeks. I only knew about Vanity so I'm glad I came across this post.

Does A/Bingo also auto-select an alternative if there is a 95% reliability that it's better?

<comment><USER2> No, it does not.

Vanity and A/Bingo have some fundamentally different takes on the problem. This is totally fine -- there are a lot of good ways to do A/B testing just like there are a lot of good ways to parse an HTML document. Use whichever fits your needs.

I'm happy to answer specific implementation questions, but the bumper sticker version is "In general, Vanity wants to be your one-stop measurement shop. A/Bingo wants to make A/B testing so easy you do it automatically, every single time."

<comment><USER4> How about "A/Bingo vs Google Website Optimizer"? What's the bumper sticker on that comparison?

<comment><USER2> A/Bingo: Written by programmers, for programmers. GWO: written by an advertising company, to be used by non-technical stakeholders in marketing.

GWO makes _significant_ compromises on usability -- both for the site's programmers and the site's users. Previously I recommended it only very hesitatingly, to non-technical marketer types. These days Visual Website Optimizer exists and it is embarrassingly better in every possible way for that audience, including the WYSIWYG interface.

You can read my thoughts on GWO at length in the A/Bingo documentation. <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo/compare>

<comment><USER5> Thanks for recommending <http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/>

It exists to make A/B and Multivariate testing dead-simple for non-technical types :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Patrick, as you said my tool (VWO) is for non-techies (and I know that) but some of the users have been demanding an API of sorts for A/B and multivariate testing. I have been perplexed on how a language agnostic API for A/B testing can possibly exist. First of all, to make it language agnostic it would probably need to work on HTTP REST but then how would it be different that client side JavaScript based A/B testing.

Any thoughts on language independent API design for A/B testing?

</comment><comment><USER6> Would anyone familiar with ASP.NET MVC & ROR care to tell me how portable this would be to ASP.NET MVC?

<comment><USER2> ASP.NET is not my bag, baby, but on the gratuitously painful enterprise- friendly development platform that has put a roof over my head for the last few years (J2EE) I think you could get the moral equivalent of this done in under a month.

If you want to write yourself ASP.NET A/B testing stuff, send me an email and I'll tell you what I know about the design tradeoffs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice writeup, looks great. btw a tiny typo: "I intend to migration my own deployment to Redis"

</comment><comment><USER8> Any chance of offering a download that doesn't require me to install GIT on my computer?

<comment><USER2> Watch out, first you start using SVN over git and then people will assume you don't own a MacBook and then your chances of Rails development jobs are shot :)

<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/files/abingo.zip>

At the moment that is created by hand and so it won't be automatically updated. I'll figure out a more permanent solution later.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for that. Given your writing about the pain of dealing with open source, I would have expected you'd have that autogenerating from the start.

For what it's worth, the reason I'm not running git on my Linux box is that I'm a C# guy by choice. ABingo seems like something the .NET world needs, so I want to look into porting it.

<comment><USER2> I made it available through git because that is the de-facto standard distribution method for Rails coders these days, who are the audience I needed to reach with it. If it were consumer-facing, oh yeah, I would have done something much easier from the getgo.

I concur that .NET desperately needs an A/B testing framework. Stack Overflow should have one. Give me their worst .NET engineer and two months -- one for writing A/Boverflow and one for writing tests -- I could increase almost any metric on that site by 10%. What is your worst engineer scheduled to do this month that is more important than that?

That's a question I'd like to ask anybody who isn't A/B testing yet. Seriously. What keeps you so busy that you can't adopt a low-risk, battle- tested, low-investment strategy with stupendously scaling returns like A/B testing? (I can only hope that every company with a web page pulled a Google, built one of these internally, and keeps vewwwwy vewwwwy quiet about it for fear of letting people know how easy it is.)

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, my worst (and only) engineer is me, and he's busy trying to get FairTutor.com launched by working out how to store dates as UTC and display them correctly in local time zones so that students in LA can schedule lessons with a teacher in Quito and not show up 3 hours late to class.

Once that's done (or instead of it because frankly this is more fun), we'll see about getting a drop-in AB component built for ASP.NET too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever convinced a naysayer about something?  If so, how?   - <AUTHOR>

Have you guys ever convinced a naysayer about the value of what your doing in the first stages before the evidence becomes vastly overwhelming shown they cannot reasonably deny it (e.g. giant sales numbers)? If so, how did you do it?  What stage of development did you do it?
I've been meeting a lot of people at the beginning stages who basically say "this will never work" and give some loosely logical reason as to why it doesn't work.  Most commonly, "Ya, but so and so has done something similar and they failed thus you will too.  Now let's discuss something realistic (status quo topic) or go away and stop bothering me with this idea."
Since I haven't made a successful product, I'll use other people's product as an example.  The iPhone, it was beyond obvious to me that this was the future of phones.  I tried to convince people that this is the future of the phone but so many of them said it was impossible.  Of course, years later, guess what phone they are using?  I have no clue how that happened but something made them quiet about the problems. <comment><USER2> I found myself with the same problem: And first, I tried to see it the most objective way I could. I had to ask myself if my product is simply a piece of shit or this person just can't see the potentially good thing I have in my hands. After analyzing the meeting with this guy, I found that I actually I learned something! What I disliked the most was his lack of objective arguments to tell me why he thought my project wasn't good enough so I dismissed that part and started paying attention to the objective aspects of the conversation. I realized that I wasn't prepared for some of the questions he asked and that I had to focus in that aspect for the future. The only advise I can give you is that you should always try to see your project outside the box and analyze the feedback people tell you about that, always try to take something you can use out of any conversation to have more tools in your favor in the future, good luck

</comment><comment><USER3> The worst thing you can do to convince a naysayer is providing logic and reasoning. They are naysayers for a reason, rationalism simply eludes them.

Talk about some rubbish pride and take a middle ground. Let them win a bit, it kinda pampers their ego.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reading the title alone, I thought of personal contexts rather than professional.

I have had influence in personal contexts. By not judging, spending time with the person, and slowly explaining my point of view -- often after listening to theirs without immediate response or interruption.

Key to this was the investment of time. And key to that, perhaps, was that I enjoyed the person, even if I did not agree with some of their viewpoints and opinions. They were fair with me and enjoyable to be around (within the limited context of our relationship), and that provided the context for trust and understanding.

I'm mindful that these same traits may apply in professional contexts. You may not agree with someone else's approach or opinion, but you may enjoy spending time with or working with them. Over time, they may come to a greater appreciation of your point of view, especially as they observe your abilities and integrity.

So... it's back to time and relationships. Convincing someone may well be more, or something else than, a brilliant argument that provokes an immediate transformation. You earn respect and trust, and perspective comes along for the ride.

Of course, this is predicated on some positive professional or personal connection.

I've experienced this at work. I have been smart and I have come through with solutions. Over time, others have come to grant my ideas consideration because of this. It's worked in large corporations, allowing my to bypass normally undefeatable red tape. If people know you and have learned to rely on you, you can often at least get due consideration. And, in turn, if the answer is "no", you may get an explanation, rather than just "no". It's worth the effort, for them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Most people are naysayers, they believe in a pessimistic universe and make choices accordingly. They will follow the herd where ever it goes. For the most part all you can do is convince them that the herd is going that way. You will never radically change their opinion. Ignore them and don't worry about it, spend time finding people who are ready to embrace whatever you are doing.

If you want to find out about convincing people, learn about rhetoric and learn about posturing (body language). Ensure that your body language matches your rhetoric and you will convince most of those that can be convinced. Spend time listening to what they are saying and change your pitch to reflect what they are saying. Understand their problems and show them how your product can help them. When speaking to a single person do not worry whether your product can help 10,000 other people worry about solving THEIR problem.

If you can't convince people of the greatness of your idea perhaps it is time to consider whether the idea is great in the first place. Your idea should be good enough that you can get them to sign a letter of intent to purchase conditional upon the product doing what you said it would do for them.

If the iPhone was a great idea, the Newton should have been the greatest idea since the wheel, but it was a shitty idea because it was 15 years ahead of the infrastructure required to make it useful. (3G internet / Facebook / Twitter / etc)</comment>


"It turns out" - <AUTHOR> http://jsomers.net/blog/it-turns-out

<comment><USER2> Douglas Adams summed it up nicely in _The Salmon of Doubt_ :

"Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression 'it turns out' to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It's great. It's hugely better than its predecessors 'I read somewhere that...' or the craven 'they say that...' because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it's research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight."

<comment><USER3> The other phrases put the emphasis on some particular unnamed authority that you read or heard. "It turns out" puts the emphasis on the "it" -- on existence, reality, or fact. It makes it sound as though "the real" is your authority -- that you drilled all the way down, and found the particular facts were thus-and-such.

When the phrase is used in everyday speech, in my experience, it's usually true. I went to the local grocer and "it turns out" (meaning, I checked and I asked and) they don't carry such-and-such. That's what makes it such a powerful device: there's implicit trust when someone claims to have done the research.

But it's a two-edged sword. If you make a habit of abusing the phrase, and it turns out you're demonstrably wrong on occasion, opponents will begin to view the phrase with extra suspicion, and hammer you on not providing the actual "it" that turns out.

<comment><USER4> Without using a conjugation of "to be," the phrase manages to do everything E-prime sets out to avoid by banning that verb. I think this is the most egregious specific failure I've noticed so far from E-prime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, it's interesting to see how people in different fields make use of this term. In medicine, when I say "it turns out," I am often conceding that I just discovered an obvious connection that I should have discovered days earlier:

* "It turns out that our patient with salmonella has a pet lizard."

On the other hand, when I am trying to convey my knowledge in, say, human genetics in a humble fashion and convey to the reader that it's OK that they didn't know what I'm about to say, I'll also use "it turns out:"

* "It turns out that every gene found to cause Mendelian lipid disorders also has common variants discovered by genome-wide association studies."

<comment><USER6> In the pet-lizard case, aren't you using the phrase with mild irony? Something like, "After painstaking analysis coupled with a few brilliant flashes of insight, I managed to deduce this totally obvious fact"?

<comment><USER5> Sometimes (often, even)! But with that particular example, it's actually more like, "I didn't ask the questions that many second-year medical students might ask after finding out a patient had salmonella."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Loved this post. The foibles of rhetoric and language "hacks" fascinate me. I'd subscribe to a blog that posted stuff like this regularly - not least because I'd like to learn similar rhetorical "tricks." Anyone know of any (or even books)?

<comment><USER8> William Safire's weekly "On Language" piece in the Sunday New York Times did this type of thing for decades and was required reading in my English classes. Sadly he passed on recently but you should be able to find stuff like this in his books or in his articles in the NYT Archive.

<comment><USER9> I think Safire would probably have suggested that you used "died" rather than "passed on". No?

<comment><USER10> He would also have suggested a comma after "sadly," so that it's obvious that it's the writer's comment, rather than a modifier on the way Safire died.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think using the phrase "it turns out" is intrinsically deceptive. Pragmatically it's just declarative sentence + expression of surprise.

I'd be interested to see a list of all the 46 passages though. I wonder if there are patterns.

<comment><USER12> It tu... I mean, I _suspect_ that it's ability to 'deceive' correlates strongly with how much you trust the author on that subject in the first place.

If someone tell me "turns out, the astrologers have been right all along!" ... that's not going to sway me unless they're sitting in front of a library of relevant peer reviewed evidence, and can guess which irrational number I'm thinking of.

<comment><USER13> That's because critical thinking is an entirely different activity from looking for key phrases. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Using the word "is" is troublesome. It spares the writer of any need to explain his/her authority in making such a statement. eg "This article is not useful."

<comment><USER15> Your statement asserts fact! Have you read about E Prime?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Great article on a pet hate of mine.

"It turns out" is often used in mathematics lectures, when the lecturer is trying to keep things relatively informal and is avoiding proving results. Blind assertions have no place in mathematics - it's much better to provide an intuitive explanation in the spirit of the proof.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes the proof isn't intuitive. Sometimes "it turns out" that if you just crank through this ugly mess of symbols, you get out this result. This is more common on the applied side of mathematics than on the pure side, but I've seen it in both.

<comment><USER16> Sure, rigorous proofs are often obtained by "proceeding formally", but there's usually (not always, granted) some more intuitive reason as to why something should be the case, otherwise nobody would have tried to prove them in the first place.

<comment><USER17> Although some proofs can accumulate cruft.

E.g. there was a small and nice intuitive prove of a reasonable theorem in the first place, but scores of people found ways to generalize it, and in the end you have a mess of symbols proving a hopelessly general lemma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The author conflates usage in situations where conclusions are certain ("It turns out Fermat's Last Theorem is false." * ) with ones that merely express the author's opinion or conclusion: "After a life long quest for the perfect smoked meat, it turns out I hate pastrami." In the latter case the author is only telling you the conclusion he's reached, not attempting to convince you of its truth.

* Yes, this sentence is false.

<comment><USER9> I would trust the author's judgement in matters such as "I hate pastrami". If (s)he had said "... it turns out all pastrami is horrible" I think you would have a stronger case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _"to say that someone uses the phrase particularly well is really just an underhanded way of saying that they're particularly good at being lazy"_

Larry Wall counts laziness as one of the key "great virtues of a programmer" <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris>

<comment><USER20> That would be a different kind of laziness. In one case you're looking at someone, that given a task, actively searches for a way to accomplish it optimally. In the other, it turns out, you're looking at someone completely going around the task, redefining it.

The result is not the same. But if it is interchangeable, that makes for a useful trait indeed. We call it «hacking».

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's one of several intros that work in a cute way now that we have status update habits (twitter and facebook):

      "it turns out..."
      "ProTip:..."
      "apparently..."

I caught myself using these a lot, and it seemed like every time I used them, I was trying to be cute. Now they are banned.

</comment><comment><USER22> Human languages (un)fortunately cannot be parsed unambiguously. I think most readers know a difference between a piece of writing written for entertainment and one they can use to make substantiated scientific claims.

Also, I would not dismiss personal experiences. Turns out they are what life is made of ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand the criticism here. "It turns out that X" is just another way of asserting that "X" is true. And a writer does not have to justify all of his assertions. An unjustified assertion could merely be just another premise for the argument.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm at least glad the title wasn't "It turns out considered harmful", which would probably have crashed people's parsers for a while. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> In my opinion this sort of phrase conveys the opposite of laziness... it is evidence that the author has gone to great lengths to coerce his gut feelings into something that seems rational, plausible, and convincing.

This sort of phrase works like a logical/causal exoskeleton intended to support the far more loosely linked set of intuitions that motivated the author to write/communicate about the topic.

These sorts of things are not even necessarily the biproduct of conscious thought. We are trained by academe that our intuitions must be served on a platter of logic and causality, and our sparks of inspiration (or emotion) are rarely experienced in remotely the same way that we would communicate them, so we back-fill.

Ponder this the next time you have a spark of insight about something and then contemplate telling someone else about it. Notice how your brain adds on the trappings of logical structure ex post. In some cases the idea was highly logical and the trappings come easily, while in other cases the idea is moderately ill-formed or speculative and one notices his/her brain being effortful in its quest to find the logical/persuasive platter on which to present the concoction to others.

</comment><comment><USER26> "that's not an argument at all! It's a blind assertion based only on my own experience"

And this is a problem, making assertions/arguments based on direct experience?

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it possible to call someone on this in conversation without being rude? e.g. "What do you mean 'it turns out'?"

<comment><USER27> "Care to cite some specific examples?"

or, brasher

"Citation needed."

<comment><USER28> > "Citation needed."

And you have to hold your hands up to indicate [square braces].

<comment><USER29> Or, if you're going for wiki-formatting, you somehow need to crook your hands & fingers into weird {{double-curly braces}}. Seems more painful than air- quotes...

<comment><USER28> Might be possible with shadow-puppetry... I'll work on it this weekend and publish the RFC on Monday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not relevant to the OP, but: I had never heard this phrase used so much before moving out here to California. Is it a local thing? I think it's especially over-represented here when preceded by "so": "So, it turns out that virality is a big win."

<comment><USER31> _"So, it turns out that virality is a big win."_

That phrase is the 1973 high school yearbook of the startup culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> PG's assertions based on anecdotal or no evidence used to be one of my main complaints about his older essays. Though I often still agreed with his overall points, I didn't like how he would reach them. Having said that, it's definitely hard to toe the line between succinctness and backing up your claims.

But, as it turns out, he's gotten a lot better about substantiating his claims. I'm tempted not to substantiate my claim after that sentence, but his presentation at startup school last year was pretty much all about the evidence.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hear, hear!

While we're at it, can we please add "At the end of the day..." to the list of pseudo-pithy (and indeed lazy) phrases to retire, too. JFK coined "in the final analysis..." which hung around for years, and years. "At the End of the Day" took its place, but has become just as tiresome, and meaningless.

<comment><USER34> "At the end of the day" is a Britishism that got transported over here during the leadup to the Iraq war, mainly because Tony Blair used it so much. I actually have not heard it very much recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Trips my BS detector. Like "Really!" and "You know,".

</comment><comment><USER36> jsomers is the best writer I have found so far on Hacker News, short of Paul Graham. I tried to think of better, but it turns out that he is just more interesting and thoughtful than your average front page blogger.

</comment><comment><USER37> That was an absolutely brilliant analysis. Such an innocent phrase can be so powerfully and deceptively persuasive!</comment>