Hacking for Security, and Getting Paid for It - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/hacking-for-security-and-getting-paid-for-it/ <comment><USER2> "And the company's [Microsoft's] once sour relationship with the security research community began to improve. The company now routinely works, for example, with law enforcement to disrupt criminal botnet networks"

If it was reference to NoIP takedown, that's not quite a success story: [http://www.wired.com/2014/10/microsoft- pinkerton/](http://www.wired.com/2014/10/microsoft-pinkerton/) [http://www.noip.com/blog/2014/07/10/microsoft-takedown- detai...](http://www.noip.com/blog/2014/07/10/microsoft-takedown-details- updates/)

</comment><comment><USER3> 'It should come as no surprise that the Internet is riddled with holes' ..

It's a surprise to me and most people on here, it's the computers connected at either end that are riddled with holes.

'For all the holes discovered in Microsoft's code, the security industry still largely sees Microsoft .. as a security success story' ..

Who wrote this self serving revisionist waffle?

"There is a lot to be learned from that," said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation.

"The problem is that Bill Gates can't write a memo to the whole world. What we need is a new culture of norms."

Who wrote this self serving revisionist waffle?</comment>


The Best Code Documentation 'Tool' Ever Made - <AUTHOR> http://martinnormark.com/code-documentation-tool/

<comment><USER2> The method comments are where you explain the expected/accepted inputs and outputs. Its not for outlining design decisions. You also don't need to explain how the method works. It's a black box.

Your ide can be configured to show warnings if your comments don't match your parameter list. Though generally you don't change the external api of your code once you've written it. Or else you then have to update all the methods that call it.

</comment><comment><USER3> so your using function names instead of comments?

<comment><AUTHOR> You could say that. What I'm saying is that splitting up a function into smaller functions with good names, is way better documentation than comments.

<comment><USER4> How do you write unit tests for classes like this? A lot of reflection I assume?

<comment><AUTHOR> I only test against the final result, that I expect any public method to produce. The unit test should pay no consideration to the implementation details such as private methods.

If you want to test the fragments in isolation, split it out into a separate class that you use as a dependency. Your desire to do so is often a good indication that you should split up the responsibility.

<comment><USER5> [https://gist.github.com/joshka/54548c3dfb9a4ebcdea9](https://gist.github.com/joshka/54548c3dfb9a4ebcdea9)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Perl Conference 2017 in DC – CFP - <AUTHOR> http://www.perlconference.us/tpc-2017-dc/cfp/ <comment><AUTHOR> Known in a parallel universe as YAPC::NA 2017, we invite all to submit talks to the largest North American conference for Perl programmers. We expect about 400 attendees at this conference located inside the Washington DC beltway at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Topics will range well beyond Perl itself, as we welcome discussions of all the things a Perl dev cares about and at all levels of experience -- which is pretty much everything! I'd really love to get some cool biology talks for example.

This will include both Perl 5 and Perl 6 topics!

If in doubt -- submit the talk!

</comment><comment><USER2> Glad to see they finally changed the name from YAPC. Ovid goes over that in one of his recent talks. It is much easier to tell your boss you'd like to go to the Perl Conference than "YAPC".</comment>


Show HN: We made finding a REMOTE developer job easy - <AUTHOR> https://join.remotemore.com/hackernews <comment><USER2> I tried to put in a URI from github.com Pressed the next button and NOTHING Tried with www as part of URI STILL NOTHING Maybe it's just me, but this site is not ready for prime time as far as the github URI

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, you are right - we have a very stupid usability problem/bug! We validate the URI by the "http" part, and not the "www" etc. Thank you very much for writing!

I'm a bit shocked that we didn't notice this until now!

P.S. It's now fixed, we will deploy it with the next release in a few days.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Community!

Exactly one year ago, I posted in HN that we had just released RemoteMore. We have made a lot of progress since then.

Now we are a company with 7 employees and investors! There are 3700+ developers on our marketplace, and about 300+ companies that are hiring remotely.

Find a remote developer job through our website:

[https://join.remotemore.com/hackernews](https://join.remotemore.com/hackernews)

<comment><AUTHOR> Feedback is more than welcome!

I hope you like what we have built :-)</comment></comment>


German official mulls breaking up Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101680307

<comment><USER2> Breaking up MS I could understand--they were in a dominant position largely through questionable legal tactics involving strongarming OEMs to block them from distributing competing operating systems. But Google? They're in a dominant position because nobody else is as good at helping people Google things.

<comment><USER3> I keep trying duckduckgo and other search engines, but they all still suck compared to google. Bing isn't too bad, but still not as good as google.

It seems that google is just successful because they have a good product. Therefore we want to break them up? That doesn't make any sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How would a German official break up Google? Perhaps Germany could bar them from supporting users (or products :-) in Germany, but in that bad case scenario, Google would just lose some small fraction of its business.

<comment><AUTHOR> _How would a German official break up Google?_

Search separate from everything else.

 _but in that bad case scenario, Google would just lose some small fraction of its business._

Germany is in EU, so Google would risk losing roughly 50% of their business. But not really, in theory you could see "Baby Googles" being setup with different properties. Will they stand a chance on their own without being thrust on top of Google Search? Who knows</comment></comment>


Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls? - <AUTHOR> http://urlchecker.o2.co.uk <comment><USER2> The O2 Parental controls feature is designed to limit access to a whitelist of "sites that have been classifed as suitable and interesting for children under 12". It must be explicitly enabled for each device by the account holder.

There has been a surge of Twitter outrage about it this weekend, though many of the outraged appear to misunderstand what the feature is designed to do.

<comment><USER3> there is literally zero reason to block sites such as the NSPCC and Childline. Zero. Parents being fundamentally _able_ to block these sites is wrong.

<comment><USER4> yeah it is somewhat similar to having all outgoing calls being blocked even 911 unless enabled by the parent.

I mean who is even allowed to block outgoing 911 on their cellphone? it works even without a sim card!

<comment><USER5> It'd be like blocking a special number, say 1111 (which is the UK landline Childline number), which kids could use to only get advice on bullying, stress, self-harm and abuse.

It's extremely sad that parents can be given the option to block these sites from potentially at-risk kids with abusive parents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like the middle "Default Safety" row is the normal mode however, and that doesn't seem particularly onerously restrictive. It seems to only be blocking actually NSFW sites, plus selected pages on Reddit, Tumblr etc.

The bottom row appears to be an (properly) opt-in service for much younger kids that must be whitelisting only a few destinations, which is not the same thing at all as the filters that Cameron et al are pushing for.

<comment><USER7> >The bottom row appears to be an (properly) opt-in service for much younger kids

Having grown up in a southern baptist family I think you're being idealistic here. I could easily see this filter being imposed on me by my previous parent/guardian until I moved out of the house, thus vastly restricting my knowledge of the world. Any alternative news site is blocked, so it's basically the mainstream conservative fun-filter.

<comment><USER8> It blocks mainstream news too...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I write this, the title is "Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls". How does the link in question justify that title? It links to a lookup tool.

(Straight question; if there's an answer to that I'm just not seeing, great! I'd love to hear it.)

<comment><USER10> > How does the link in question justify that title?

Spot check some sites.

slashdot.org Parental Control (opt in u12 service) Blocked

news.ycombinator.com Parental Control (opt in u12 service) Blocked

news.yahoo.com Parental Control (opt in u12 service) Blocked

<comment><USER9> I'd _expect_ a "parental filter" to work on a whitelisting principle, which will inevitably look like this. Anything else is snake oil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If its a dns based control, one can dnswalk/iterate over the censored dns ipv4 space for example 126.96.36.199, then lookup the same ip in a public dns server such as opendns or google dns. By comparing the dns results from the censored and public dns you get the list of what censorship authority was trying to block. You can then publish the list of the address on for example Pastebin :)

</comment><comment><USER12> It is the result of the government allowing providers to fudge what the concept of what the 'Internet' is. All your service provider does is to allow a process running on your computer to make contact with another computer over the TCP/IP protocol. If they interfere with that they are technically in breach of contract.

The use of the word 'Internet' should be strictly defined. If by 'Internet' they mean going through restricted gateways in accord with their criteria, that is fine, but if they mean allowing processes to connect as described above they are in breach. The public needs to understand that.

There was a case some time ago when BT wanted to cut of the phone lines to prostitutes who had their ads plastered in phone booths and the courts stopped them from doing this.

Restrictions should be done with customers informed consent or at least they should be notified when the subscribe to the service

<comment><USER13> "if they interfere with that they are technically in breach of contract."

Which clause of the O2 service contract are they in breach of? You said 'technically', so you must think they really are in breach rather than just morally in breach.

<comment><USER12> It depends on what the 'Internet' means to customers. The man in the street considers being able to get Email, Facebook and Google as being connected to the Internet, and doesn't understand that the provider doesn't even have the right to obstruct or interfere with their connectivity for any reason, whilst a tech guy considers it to be the ability to connect to a port on an IP address.

They are morally in breach if you are inclined to see it that way, based on promoting a restricted concept of what an Internet is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hm, Github is blocked, Python.org too. Microsoft.com is permitted though. Wikipedia is permitted, including pages about coprophilia, tentacle erotica (illustrations) and decapitation (photographs).

Sorry parents, censorship is still no alternative to actual parenting and may just get in the way of your kid becoming the next amazing Python hacker.

<comment><USER15> China once blocked "freebsd.org" because there's a "free" keyword in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It may be a whitelist filter. Inevitably, isn't that the result of every whitelist-based filter?

</comment><comment><USER17> Well at least [http://www.conservatives.com/](http://www.conservatives.com/) is blocked too.

<comment><USER18> So is [http://foxnews.com](http://foxnews.com). Good riddance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Huh. blekko's search engine has more blocking than google's, so I pushed the "If you think this website needs a different policy, click here" button to give them feedback... and the response is:

> Your reclassification request has been received. Please come back soon to > check the reclassification results.

No way to specify what I think ought to be changed. Thanks, O2, for giving everyone a great way to report problems!

(edit: Bing is more blocked than google!)

<comment><USER20> Don't worry, your reclassification request has been duly archived to /dev/null for later review.

They are probably going to receive tens of thousands of requests so I wouldn't expect them to be read by a human. If that's the case they'll just prioritize by frequency of report. Obviously it's all conjecture on my part.</comment></comment>


AOL's New Plan: It's Not Working - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/aols-new-plan-its-not-working/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Every once in a while I enjoy reading news like this about AOL ... I just think there is so much you can learn from their story ... to me they are one of the only companies out there that had many chances to be the biggest player in the industry but over and over missed it ... many ideas implemented by successful companies of today (such as Social Networking in general) could have all been implemented better and more successfully by these guys, years ago... maybe they were just never as smart as the other guys :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why Yahoo (YHOO) Should Buy AOL (TWX) <http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/why-yahoo-yhoo.html></comment>


Monorepo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/interstellar/monorepo-e1847cbd6800 <comment><USER2> This is an interesting look at how a monorepo can be used - I've [blogged about merging microrepos into a monorepo]([https://www.jvt.me/posts/2018/06/01/git-subtree- monorepo/](https://www.jvt.me/posts/2018/06/01/git-subtree-monorepo/)) to get you started.</comment>


Capitalism needs a welfare state to survive - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/07/12/capitalism-needs-a-welfare-state-to-survive <comment><USER2> I am troubled by the lack of rational discussion of "capitalism" and "socialism" in the society today. Partially, this comes from the complete failure of modern academic philosophy to make cultural contributions. Part of it is from the weakness of a two party system that both seem to advocate for necessary and insufficient social functions.

The terms capitalism and socialism, on their own, are virtually meaningless, being shorthand for any number of specific policies. For instance: Are monolopolies a failure of capitalism or an inevitable outcome? Is capitalism stronger with or without monopolies? On the socialist side, is social ownership of the means of production necessary for maximizing the distribution of goods? Or are free markets and profit motives appropriate strategies for promoting social value?

Instead, you have the wall street journal treating socialism like idiocy and millennials treating capitalism as an obvious evil.

This is rather practical philosophy... So I'm disappointed things aren't further developed in our polical discourse.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately people in general are not interested in discourse, they want convenience and novelty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are few topics that provide a better intellectual Rorschach test than the economy.

Communism is the most appealing if only because it's the natural system of families and of hunter gatherers. Sadly, the 20th century emphatically demonstrated that this system doesn't scale into anything other than a complete disaster.

On the other hand, capitalism is brutally horrible. But it's one saving grace is that it does scale. You can run a 2 billion person economy on it and things will work out overall and through time. That is, if you overlook the long time constant, positive feedback loop of the concentration of capital. Eventually just a few guys own all the stuff which is sub optimal.

Raw capitalism guarantees winners and losers, and a whole spectrum of outcomes in between. This can be fixed up a bit by first, having government regulation of clear market failure zones, like food, construction and finance etc. And second, having the government collect a reasonable percentage off the top of the economy to subsidize those being squished to death at the bottom.

Scandinavia does this best. Sure, they're not perfect, there is no actual perfect solution.

The result is an elephant of a system that few people can view in its entirety but most people think they can.

Given such a messy, devisive, inscrutable system you have to believe there must be a better way. But there's probably not.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to say if the article is tautological, or if there's a fundamental (and common) confusion here about what the state is in relation to capitalism. The modern state co-evolved with capitalism, and as a result, it's institutions are generally what capitalism needs to survive and prosper. The point about a welfare state is not really whether or not one is necessary for capitalism; the point is more that it is necessary for a specific type of capitalism.

For instance, Toyota wouldn't work without a welfare state, because you need the kind of social stability a welfare state creates to preserve and shepherd a really skilled workforce. Ford, on the other hand, neither needs nor desires a particularly skilled workforce, but rather leans more heavily on intense capital investment (automation) - so an expanded welfare state, necessitating higher taxes, is a net loss for Ford, since they aren't all that interested in stability, but they are interested in low taxes.

Making arguments about whether or not people _like_ or _support_ free markets is kind of missing the point. The point is, certain business models are predicated on certain forms of social organization. That's why Google is based in Silicon Valley, not in Shanghai, and why Foxconn is in China, not Japan.

<comment><USER6> > The modern state co-evolved with capitalism, and as a result, it's > institutions are generally what capitalism needs to survive and prosper.

This is either tautological or empirically wrong, depending on what exactly is meant by "the modern state". In many ways, the problem with our current welfare states stems from the fact that they evolved under the material constraints of mid-20th-c. capitalism, when, for example, even the unskilled could easily find lucrative manufacturing jobs, and a welfare state simply had to fill in a limited amount of income gaps resulting from unemployment (generally due to short-term business crises), medical conditions, retirement and the like. Back in the mid-20th century, a baseline UBI wouldn't have made much sense, for example. The situation today is vastly different, since incomes are skill-biased to an extreme extent. Welfare states should be reformed to provide a baseline subsidy even to those who are currently working (assuming a low income, of course), while at the same time leaving them with the right incentives to improve their skills, productivity and income, perhaps in unconventional ways such as "bootcamps", MOOCs or "gig" work, that governments can't easily track or manage. Something like UBI, or Milton Friedman's proposed NIT, would seem to be highly appropriate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even pretty staunch libertarians are willing to entertain the value of the state when it comes to the transition into post-scarcity markets, and even this transition into markets that net diminishing value from many human endeavors (as we are already seeing). I just think that most libertarian types, myself included, don't want that to mean an overbearing bureaucratic system that necessarily creates perverse incentives and rations resources along politically contentious dimensions. Let us keep our markets, just help balance them. Universal basic income to keep the bottom in check, anti- monopoly, anti-collusion to keep the top in check, and then please fuck off. No affordable housing, no welfare, no social security, no food stamps, no shelters. Just give everyone cash and fuck off. If they want to create an authoritarian sub-state, or sibling-state, for the people that just cannot take care of themselves, despite all the necessary resources literally being deposited in their bank accounts, so be it, but don't rope the rest of functional society into the moral authoritarian nightmare we're currently already sinking into.

<comment><USER8> What checks would be in place to insure that the UBI was sufficient to substitute for eliminating affordable housing, social security, and food stamps?

<comment><USER9> UBI shouldn't replace Social Security, since SS is not a means-tested benefit program.</comment></comment></comment>


Major iOS6 / Facebook Privacy Issue - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm an iOS developer with a device running iOS6. I'll try to stick to the NDA, but I'd just like an answer regarding what I view as a major privacy issue. By the way, I had another account on HN but lost access to it in the transition away from clickpass.
To summarise the issue: iOS6's Facebook integration allows me to simply add a stranger's phone number and then, in most cases, retrieve their Facebook photo, URL, name and occasionally email addresses and sometimes, though infrequently, actual addresses, depending on the user's Facebook privacy settings.
Steps to recreate the issue:
1. Link your Facebook account to the device
2. Add a person's phone number
3. Go to Settings > Facebook and tap "Update Contacts"
4. Return to the Contacts app and there is a high chance that you will now have this person's photo, a link to their Facebook profile, and potentially other information, all from a phone number. Something which I don't believe can be done through any other means.
I find this to be a major breach of privacy, and I don't see how Apple or Facebook would allow this. I thought the point was to synchronise information from existing Facebook friends, not strangers.
I apologise if this is old news but I'd have thought this would be a huge issue with the tech community—particularly since it involves Apple and Facebook—and I check HN, Reddit, etc. daily.
Thank you <comment><USER2> Im unable to duplicate this, but I'm trying because this is pretty bozotic behavior if true.

When you say "add a person's phone number" you mean as a new contact in your regular phone book (since it seems that you can't add contacts to the "Facebook" group), right?

I havent messed with this previously (not interested in syncing my FB friends to my phone book) so I may not be doing it right.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you saying this works for people who are not in your social network?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It works for anyone who has their phone number tied to their Facebook account (even if not publicly displayed) which turns out to be a lot of people. IME Facebook has all sorts of ways to convince you to give them your phone number.</comment></comment>


Lessons learnt from my failure. Launched my product one week ago - <AUTHOR> One week back i released my product .
Voblet  - A better way to send,organize and share links.
Website : https://voblet.com
Explainer video :   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0q6ZiiC2Do
I worked on this for almost 10 months.I expected it to be a big hit and thought people will start using it when they see the video. But it didn't happen. I failed to gather interest, these are some of the lessons learnt.
1) Explain your product in one interesting line
When you post about your product in producthunt, reddit, hackernews, twitter etc. You should be able to get people interest with just your one line.No body has time to read your description and watch explainer video. When someone asks about your product and you failed to get his attention in one sentence.I think you should revisit your product and make it better and strong in at least one aspect.
2) Have at least one big differentiating feature
If you have a competing product which is already popular.Doing small improvements will not make users install your app. You product should be very good in at least one thing than your competitors. Making things better is not sufficient.You can build user base on that and keep improving.
3) Have tools to get info on user behavior (Google analytics etc)
For your initial launch, you will spend more time on writing code and making the functionality work.After the launch to make improvement knowing user behavior is important. Spend more time on gathering all the events,user interactions using google analytics. Have metrics based on your server logs etc.
Next steps for me: Back to zero.Working hard in making improvements .Will launch my next version in few months with some big changes.
Please leave your feedback on my product if you can . If you want to add any things to the above list please comment,it will be helpful :) <comment><USER2> A better way to organize links isn't a benefit it's a feature. what do users get from having a more organized set of links. "Want to find your favorite web resources faster/easier?" (you may want to change the question)

The problem is it might not be enough of a problem for people to care. maybe you need to think of a niche and focus your question/benefit around them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Planning to do many changes to the text,video and how i present the product. Your feedback is very valuable. Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi, i think you need a copy writer, just showed this text below to a 19 yo on FB,snapchat and a 50 yo social media marketer, they both read it twice and said "huh?", you need to get it revised and tested till test subjects say "wow!"... Quoted text:"Most of the bookmarking apps rely on share button to save links from other apps. Facebook ,Twitter , WhatsApp - the apps where you spend most of the time don't have share button for links."

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense.Thanks for the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I think the best starting point is to create landing page with 1 main benefit and a couple supporting features. then go about finding people to click on "start here" button or something which lets me know there at least a little interested. check out leadpages.com or unbounce.com

Although I built my own landing page template.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Will change my landing page for next release.</comment></comment>


KDevelop, KDE's development environment, has just released its 5.3 Beta - <AUTHOR> You an read the release notes of 5.3 Beta at
https://www.kdevelop.org/news/kdevelop-5280-released
KDevelop now comes with Clazy(https://github.com/KDE/clazy) integration, a compiler plugin which allows clang to understand Qt semantics and therefore helps you fix issues in your Qt code. The developers are asking users to try it out. You can download an AppImage from
https://download.kde.org/unstable/kdevelop/5.2.80/bin/linux/KDevelop-5.2.80-x86_64.AppImage
If you do, please report bugs before the final release.
The KDevelop project also needs experts on Windows installers to help fix the currently broken 5.3 one. If you think you can help, get in touch:
https://www.kdevelop.org/contribute-kdevelop <comment><USER2> How is it for things like Java or C# or JavaScript?</comment>


Ask HN: Your favourite project site/demo? - <AUTHOR> I want to make a little demo site for a script I have written, and am browsing for inspiration/bootstrap templates. What's a nice simple one pager that you've seen floating around? <comment><USER2> strapdown.js is pretty cool... Just create a static file with your Markdown text within <xmp> tags... [http://strapdownjs.com/](http://strapdownjs.com/)</comment>


Blockbuster drug patents expiring in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.greyb.com/drug-patents-are-expiring-in-2018/ <comment><USER2> I know for a fact Pregabalin expired earlier this year as i started getting given ones from all sorts of manufacturers rather than the pfizer ones id been used to, seems they got the generics out lightning fast</comment>


Cambridge University Press has made higher education textbooks free online - <AUTHOR> https://www.cambridge.org/about-us/covid-19/ <comment><USER2> > Due to performance issues caused by unprecedented demand and reported > misuse, we have had to temporarily remove the free access to textbooks. We > apologise for the inconvenience caused and are working to address these > concerns to reinstate free access as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> A positive sign that the human thirst for knowledge knows no bounds!</comment>


Is Domain Name Typosquatting Worth It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.domainsherpa.com/is-domain-name-typosquatting-worth-it/

<comment><USER2> "it would produce at least 0.1 percent of Coupons.com's traffic, or 10,000 unique visitors per month."

Amusing</comment>


What if I were 1% charged? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/what-if-i-were-1-charged/ <comment><USER2> The author probably came upon this idea from reading Richard Feynman's _Lectures on Physics_ , in which he says this:

> And all matter is a mixture of positive protons and negative electrons which > are attracting and repelling with this great force. So perfect is the > balance however, that when you stand near someone else you don't feel any > force at all. If there were even a little bit of unbalance you would know > it. If you were standing at arm's length from someone and each of you had > one percent more electrons than protons, the repelling force would be > incredible. How great? Enough to lift the Empire State building? No! To lift > Mount Everest? No! The repulsion would be enough to lift a "weight" equal to > that of the entire earth!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a common problem given in first year physics majors. One of the interesting things is creating an repulsor field that would keep pretty much any matter outside of it in this way. There was a working (albeit accidental) example of one at a 3M factory for making tape [1]

[1] [http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html](http://amasci.com/weird/unusual/e-wall.html)

<comment><USER4> Whoa, amasci.com traffic spike!

Heh, wasn't there a Larry Niven SF story where an alien weapon would zero out the charge of electrons, so the nuclei would fly apart? Our undergrad phys-101 had calculating the force between two (copper!) pennies 1M apart, with all electrons removed from one and deposited on the other.

Later I realized that it would have been even more impressive to estimate the energy-equiv of kilotons of TNT which would be released when the meter-long spark brought the two pennies back into equilibrium.

Another: calculate the width of one coulomb. It's about half a mm, like a grain of sand. That's assuming its the mobile electrons in copper wire (so, not Cu's electrons, but just one free electron per atom.)

<comment><USER5> It was actually in a number of his short stories in the Known Space universe: the slaver disintegrator. I had a physics teacher in high school who gave us an assignment to describe what the effects of a sci-fi device would actually be like. The disintegrator was probably the most interesting one of the bunch.

<comment><USER6> The Puppeteers had one too! [http://news.larryniven.net/concordance/main.asp?alpha=P#Pupp...](http://news.larryniven.net/concordance/main.asp?alpha=P#Puppeteerdisintegrator)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 40MC is a lot. Another way to think about it is that a force on the order of that many tons would be needed to rip out 1% of your electrons from your neutral body in the first place. That's why we don't see charging up to that scale in day-to-day life.

</comment><comment><USER8> The example of static electricity holding a balloon up against the Earth's gravity is a good one. I like it better than the one I always heard, which is a refrigerator magnet resisting Earth's gravity.

</comment><comment><USER9> Getting attracted to the ground wouldn't be a problem, since you would already have exploded due to the repulsion of your constituent parts from each other. This happens to charged things in nature, and it has a cool name: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_explosion)

<comment><USER10> This is called out in the article, before the attraction to the ground is mentioned:

> Suppose, for example, that in their rush to escape my body, those 40 million > Coulombs split in half and flowed to opposite extremities. Say, each hand > suddenly acquired a charge of 20 million Coulombs. The force between those > two hands (spread apart, about 6 feet) would be 10^{24} Newtons, which > translates to about 10^{23} pounds. Needless to say, my body would not > retain its structural integrity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me in a weird way of the potato paradox, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why isn't there a way to use this principle for energy storage?

<comment><USER13> Isn't this what capacitors do?

<comment><USER12> But they can't get anywhere near this energy level. Why not make a piece of metal .xx1% charged and encase it in a big insulator, glass? Seems like it would be an awesome battery no?

<comment><USER14> Because we don't know how to make it 0.xx1% charged and keep it that way until you need the energy.

<comment><USER12> How about the van de graf generator?

<comment><USER15> No, a Van de Graaff generator doesn't get anywhere close to 0.xx1% charged.

As the article says, loosing 1% of electrons leads to a voltage potential of 40 exavolts. As [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator) points out, the best a Van de Graaff generator can do is "about 25 megavolts" due to "arcing and corona discharge."

The sequence is mega-, giga-, tera-, peta-, exa-. That corresponds to 0.000,000,000,000,1% charge, though you should double check me as I'm not used to working with that many powers of ten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now the question is how much energy is needed to extract 1% of your electrons... Making a Coulomb bomb shouldn't be that easy.

<comment><USER15> As energy is conserved, I would say that it takes a Coulomb bomb's worth of energy to extract 1% of one's electrons, plus overhead due to inefficiencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Alkali metals react in water because of coulomb explosions:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMfQSV4ygHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMfQSV4ygHE)

The explanation was only discovered this year.

<comment><USER18> That's the video from before they published (which is still interesting). There is also a more recent video[1] (post-publication[2]) that covers how they got the data (which supports the coulombic explosion hypothesis).

While it is mentioned at the end of the newer video, I highly recommend watching the 500fps footage[3] of a drop of NaK burning (just before it explodes) on the top of water. There is a striking color change as it starts to interact with the water, and right the NaK explodes... the metal turns _completely transparent_.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmlAYnFF_s8)

[2] [http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v7/n3/full/nchem.2161.ht...](http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v7/n3/full/nchem.2161.html)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIGMfai_ICg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIGMfai_ICg)</comment></comment>


The Immortal Bard (1954) - <AUTHOR> http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Asimov_TheImmortalBard.html <comment><USER2> Reminds me of a recent WaPo article: "Poet: I can't answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems" [1]

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2017/01/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests- about-my-own-poems/)

<comment><USER3> Funny, in the HN comments for that article, there's one that says "This reminds ne of a short story by Asimov, about William Shakespeare failing a university course on his own work."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a great punchline!

Reminds of Lenny Bruce's "Christ and Moses" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-J4O-6hANU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-J4O-6hANU)).

"The lepers are coming!"

</comment><comment><USER5> Asimov isn't held in quite the same esteem as Shakespeare, but I can see someone writing a similar story with him as the time-traveler a few hundred years hence...

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Sorcerers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flying_Sorcerers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The copyright on this is still valid, and will be until 2049, as I understand it.

No, it won't induce Isaac Asimov to write any more books. He died in 1992.

It's still copyright violation. Now you know.

<comment><USER8> Legally correct I suppose, but do you have any moral qualms reading a short story written by someone who died a quarter century ago?

Interestingly enough, Project Gutenberg did deem one of Asimov's stories out of copyright:

[https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31547/pg31547.txt](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31547/pg31547.txt)

Apparently its copyright was never renewed.

<comment><USER7> Me? I own paper copies of nearly every SF book and short story Asimov wrote, including this one. I'm not concerned for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Picasso, Schoenberg, Moss: how humans unlock social capital and spark progress - <AUTHOR> https://blog.leonardofederico.com/2020/08/how-humans-unlock-social-capital.html <comment><USER2> I might sound naive here, and I'm not an art expert, but I feel like only some artists are interested in technical innovation and social capital (though I think it definitely plays a big role.)

Success in art is different for every artist, some musicians want to innovate and challenge people with new approaches (avant garde composers), others want to tell stories and spread ideas (hiphop, folk musicians, film and musical theatre composers), or help people dance and have a good time (EDM), or a million other reasons.

Maybe I've missed the point of the article, but I think there are so many reasons why art gets made beyond the artist trying to prove themselves as a master of the craft

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of those posts that is easy to disagree with and it is easy to find fault with the some of the arguments. Nevertheless, it is an attempt, an essay as Paul Graham would say, to understand a thing that is worth exploring. The concept of "proof of work" is one that is much easier to understand now that we have bitcoin. If I look at art movements, it is interesting to wonder if proof of work is mixed in there. Did the collaboration of Gauguin, Van Gogh and Cezanne involve proof of work?. And social capital or a social currency is to me worth more thinking.

Thanks for this.

</comment><comment><USER4> > There wasn't much left to discover.

I'll bite.

Let's take the most banal and fundamental structuring element of common practice harmony-- the root position triad.

Are you _absolutely certain_ I cannot find a 20th century composer doing something so innovative with root position triads that no composer before 1900 could even _conceive_ of using them in such a way?

There are probably more examples than the one I'm thinking of, which is Nancarrow's Study No. 37 for player piano. The thing I love about that example is that it completely undercuts the serialist argument that tonal tropes create an inescapable harmonic push-and-pull that ends up structuring the music, regardless of the composer's will. The rigors of early twelve-tone music were designed to "liberate" the composer from this seeming inevitability.

And in Study No. 37 we almost have a kind of Alice in Wonderland response to that mentality. There are many root position triads. There is a tonal ending to the piece. There are little tonal segments of melody. We have all the ingredients necessary for a piece that ought to be chock full of evidence that the tonal building blocks of the common practice period put the composer in a kind of structural straight-jacket. Well, just listen to it. It ain't that.

So author-- don't be "that type" who repeats high-fallutin' historical myths because they happen to fit the pattern you're going for. Besides, even if that mentality were based in fact it is leads to absolutely insufferable behavior. Ghost of your futures past: "Ooh, I love that song by [The Beatles, Radiohead, Otis Redding, etc.]. Too bad it uses a system already completely exhausted a century earlier. Imagine what it would have sounded like if it hadn't been so harmonically regressive! Oh, I'm hearing it in my head right now and truly it is wonderful. Quick, give me your address so I can send you a million slips to donate to my concert series..."

</comment><comment><USER5> While I'm amenable to the thesis, the portion on Picasso is distractingly inaccurate in its portrayal of art history. Cubism wasn't so much swimming against the flow as it was riding the wave of non-representational art that the tumult of the turn of the century and previous experimentation had triggered (let alone the opening of Western eyes to the artistic traditions of Africa and East Asia). There's a fairly clear through-line crossing over Monet, fauvism, negrophilia, perhaps turning at _Fountain_ (what I personally would have picked to illustrate the author's point), and then continuing through cubism to modern art. That branch which turned left rather of right at dada is perhaps then more applicable, as it connects more neatly with postmodernism and the idea of resetting the social capital game.

<comment><USER6> The portion on Schoenberg isn't much better. Serialism was an _attempt_ at a new music, but outside of academia it never had the momentum of the classical mainstream.

There's a niche core of contemporary classical music fans who like serialism and its descendants (New Complexity, and so on) but there's literally only a few thousand of these fans worldwide.

The most popular serial piece is Berg's opera Wozzeck, closely followed by Berg's other opera Lulu. Both are in steady rotation in opera houses. But the original serial orchestral and piano pieces don't get much air time because audiences just don't like them much.

Compare with contemporary art which gets plenty of popular interest, even if it's abstract. In fact abstraction is now so mainstream it's corporate. You won't find many bank or VC foyers without brightly coloured non- representational oils on the walls.

<comment><USER7> I think if you look outside mainstream classical music you will see contemporary classicals influence. Many hollywood movie scores use many of the techniques created from serialism and onwards. Sampling audio with tape began in the 60s with Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. You can see the influence in Hip Hop and Dance music. Synthesizers were originally only used by Academics making Contemporary Classical like Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbit. They have obviously had a huge influence on pretty much all popular music. So even though the music itself has few fans its influence is fairly widespread.

<comment><USER5> That may be a case of simultaneous but unrelated discovery; audio sampling in hip-hop was an evolution of DJing techniques that helped to transition between or embellish songs, with beats or "get downs" being repeated to allow MCs to maintain a flow while rapping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The assumption of progress you claim is a by-product of linear modes of thinking -- the growth of modernism in art represents a philosophical tendency in broader culture towards deconstruction and nihilism. Painting is a reflection of consciousness, not simply a skill or set of techniques that is developed and innovated on -- as many technologists are wont to believe.

It is true that Picasso broke barriers, but the barriers were broken through a regression in consciousness.

I really recommend the work "Madness and modernism" by Louis Sass, and Jung's writings on Picasso. I am a huge fan of Picasso, but Picasso's artwork, as well as the artwork of Dali -- represents a regression into archaic portions of the subconscious -- an amalgamation of meaning that leads to meanings destruction.

This is not a critique of the artists nor the artworks -- they are phenomenal... but the modes of thinking that led to them should be understood beyond the techniques being novel, or new. The progression of western art mirrors the progression of it's consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Renaissance, impressionism, pointillism, abstract expressionism, realism, > etc, were all micro-steps part of the same bigger effort: representing the > reality for what it is.

> So, we needed a radically new thing. A new greenfield and new proofs of > concept.

> Introducing cubism.

I think impressionism had the same "radical" property—the colours are not realistic, but they are emotional. Green smoke; pink haystacks. But perhaps there is still a stronger link to reality than for cubism. van Gogh's swirls I would guess are inspired by real things such as vortices in wind or water. In any case, for me the progression to cubism was linear from impressionism, and not radical. But I think the author means that you need abrupt changes to reap social capital, and that I do agree with—but I would maintain it holds for classicism to impressionism too.

> Shoenberg's twelve tonic technique comes with no musical tonality. All 12 > pitches of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a > piece of music without emphasis on any specific note. In other words, all 12 > notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids > being in a key. Consequentially, there can't home base.

> It was a radically new game.

I don't know if I agree with this. The innovation was equal temperament and the creation of the piano. The key was that you have approximate harmonic intervals based on the 12th square root of 2: sqrt(2,12)^7 = 1.498 ~= 1.5 = 3/2.

Using chromatic notes is a logical consequence for later composers. In terms of composition, I would say that _modes_ (think Wicked Game) are rather the innovation that reaped social capital in more modern times; as well as the idea of direct repetition (all pop music) rather than themes with developments on themes.

In any case, I would agree with the author. There is a clear _proof of work_ aspect to social media. Hours spent that would lead to some Instagram picture; hours spent on some HN post...

</comment><comment><USER10> I would compare art to reinforcement learning rather than social capital. The artists may or may not strive for social capital, but the branching happens because of reward and reward comes from consumers who crave and appreciate something different from the trite, old saturated, predictable forms on the market. Hollywood of today with its predictable repeatable plot lines is ripe for this kind of disruption. Creativity and art stands out when it calls out a truth nobody has noticed before. When it engages your mind far more than predecessors because it poses more questions than it answers, but it still makes sense (Game of Thrones was unpredictable, as was Breaking Bad). In marketing it's Seth Godwin's Purple Cow. The craving of a bored/ignored audience is the spark, but just like fashion, the only guarantee is that the audience will get bored of you again in time as you may no longer help them stand out as unique for their early adoption skills, and they need a new flag to stand out from the crowd in their own pursuit of social status.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure I agree about the point of a certain space and endeavor getting exhausted and the pickings too slim to be elevated upon progress wise. Essentially this exit from a crowded space into a sparse and less competitive spaces makes me think about the hyperspecialization in academia. When everything becomes pretty fragmented everyone can claim to be an expert in some niche area unmoored from demand and usefulness. But if its fragmented out to an island no one wants to visit there's little value in that too even if it has the widest potential for social capital to be mined. That new field whatever it may be still has to attract enough folks to get a sport going in the first place, even if it's just reactionary to rally up a revolt and teardown what came before. At the end what's lacking is that absolute point of reference.

<comment><USER11> One of the things which always surprises me is the various permutations of the burger that exist. I pondered at one point the success of Five Guys. And if someone pitched to me as an imaginary investor a newcomer to the field would I buy into it. I had thought my answer being "no, that I can't imagine another variation of a burger being successful". But man there's still so much of a parameter space with permutations and combinations I could not imagine myself that there could still be success in other burger variations. The Habit, The Counter, Five Guys, Smashburger, ... (sure I'm leaving some out). Wow, it's been like a burger Renaissance, who'd have thought.

<comment><USER12> And never mind the fact that just doing things _well_ can be it's own permutation. Sometimes a field seems played out, and then someone comes along and knocks it out of the park by just _executing_.

<comment><USER11> _well_ said!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure I even agree with the claim that Twitter needs to offer social capital to be a viable business. There are significant other products which can be offered from a social network, such as entertainment and utility.

</comment><comment><USER14> So, made up history or art plus men are geniuses and women are pretty. Gotcha.

</comment><comment><USER15> Warning, NSFW image about half way down.</comment>


What super-successful entreprenuers had a first time failure - <AUTHOR> A friend and I were going down the list of technology companies which we consider "super successful", google, facebook, microsoft, ebay, apple, twitter, paypal, skype, oracle, amazon etc.
In all of these cases, for the founder of the company, their first attempt at starting a company resulted in a "success". It may not have been the success that was their super success but it was still a success.
Can you come up with any counter-examples to this phenomena? ie: a "super-successful" founder who's first venture was decisively a failure?
If not, what does this imply for all of us who have already had a first time failure? Are we destined to never become "super successful"? <comment><USER2> You may not have it quite right. You may be looking for "utter failures". But that does not necessarily have to be the case. Zuckerburg had other ventures, it wasn't that they were utter failures, it was rather that he just kept chugging along.

I think that's a better answer to watch out for. Successful people are actively _chugging along_. They don't stop.

I don't know these guys' stories too well but I would bet they actively _did stuff_ all their lives.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's probably not exactly what you're looking for, but you seem to have the idea that it's possible to "just succeed."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47UqYMDN2k>

and

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ3C9SP8xRE>

Those who seem to have "just succeeded" are the lucky -- and yes, it is _luck_ \-- minority. That's simply not the way things usually work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely the opposite! I'm utterly baffled that I _couldn't_ come up with a counter-example off the top of my head. I thought the "first time founder" phenomena would end up being the minority of cases.

<comment><USER3> Then again, you can't call recent startups successes until they've had longevity. Cromemco, Northgate, Osborne, et al.

If you pay attention to TV, you can find people who starred in a TV series and then basically disappeared after that. Some of these series didn't even last a season, But when they got the part and were doing it, they probably thought they had succeeded. Did they?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Evan Williams (blogger,twitter) tells it differently. As I remember it, there was a web consulting company when he lived in Nebraska that ended poorly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Tony! For Ev, I counted blogger as his "first time success". His wiki doesn't list anything about his web consulting company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bill Gates: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traf-O-Data></comment>


Develop Android Apps in Swift - <AUTHOR> https://scade.readme.io/docs/how-scade-works <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone heard about Scade or built anything with it? I am not a developer or in any way affiliated with the project. It looks a little premature, as it is still in beta and not officially released.

I found this project particularly interesting, especially given the recent news of Google Fuchsia and Swift.

I recently got into building native iOS applications, but this has me really curious about the differences between Scade and React Native (which I also haven't used before).</comment>


Should user interface designers be able to build what they design? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Should-user-interface-designers-be-able-to-build-what-they-design

<comment><USER2> I am strongly of the camp that designers should design, and programmers should build. I think that having knowledge of "rows and tables and backend abstractions and things that make things more or less difficult" simply constrains the artist. From a programming perspective, it is possible to create almost anything the designer requests. If a designer is aware of the challenges their design may entail in the creation, then they may subconsciously limit themselves, a trend I have seen in several people, including myself. "ignorance is bliss" especially when designing. I would prefer to have to put in the extra effort as a programmer to produce a radical new frontend, then have to produce the same 2 column layout with some jquery thrown in for good measure. I think I tend to design myself the easier path when I am doing the designing myself, even if it is accidental.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. They are like Yin and Yang. An artistic, intuitive designer that understands people working with an analytical, logical developer that understands systems make the perfect core team of any startup. I don't know why everyone mocks non-technical founders, not everyone is meant to code when they are much better at design.</comment></comment>


Robert Bigelow convinced of alien visitation to Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/robert-bigelow-ufos-aliens-on-earth_us_592ca03ce4b0065b20b7bfb7 <comment><USER2> If he's spent "millions" researching this, I'm curious what that was spent on. Also, if he is so convinced and he doesn't care if people know, why wouldn't he publish his (very expensive) results? At the very least under a pseudonym?

<comment><USER3> _" Also, if he is so convinced and he doesn't care if people know, why wouldn't he publish his (very expensive) results?"_

My guess is that his "knowing" is emotion-based and _at best_ his results are inconclusive.

The alternative would be that he has clear evidence supporting such visitation, and I find it difficult to believe that such a thing could be kept under wraps.

Personally, I don't care if Robert Bigelow believes in the Loch Ness Monster as long as his company can produce viable habitats for orbit and beyond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe he is thinking of something like waterbears and thinks he has evidence they came from somewhere else. It's the interviewer who brings up ufos. Also bigelow says et is "under our nose". If he is being literal I'd wager he is thinking of either some lower life form Or panspermia

</comment><comment><USER5> The US government has been deferring all FAA UFO reports to Bigelow Aerospace for a while. So perhaps he knows something.

<comment><USER6> If not joke, source?

<comment><AUTHOR> One source, not very official, but...

"The FAA confirmed to us that for years, it referred reports of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena to a company Bigelow owns. He told us he's had his own close encounters, but declined to go into detail."

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bigelow-aerospace-founder- says-c...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bigelow-aerospace-founder-says- commercial-world-will-lead-in-space/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> R. Bigelow, just stop those god damnable red towers ok

</comment><comment><USER8> Possibly crazy, but if so it's the good kind of crazy that we should be encouraging to see what comes out of it.</comment>


Ask HN: What Lisp dialect should I learn? - <AUTHOR>

I don't know any functional language and would like to get started with Lisp. Which implementation should I go with? Maybe Clojure? It seems pretty popular on HN although it's not mainstream yet... <comment><USER2> Honestly, I'd start with Scheme, because it's a small language and will teach you the basics of Lisp-like languages. Once you understand closures, and macros, and continuations, and data abstraction in Lisp-like languages, and how you can build just about anything out of these building blocks, _then_ you can learn the more advanced stuff that Clojure or Common Lisp has.

For implementations, I'd probably start with PLT Scheme for learning. It's fairly complete and easy to get up and running with. Some other implementations are faster (Stalin), and some may have more practical libraries (Bigloo, though that's debatable), and some may have more interesting implementations (Chicken), but PLT's a fairly well-rounded early choice. (Disclaimer: I started with Bigloo and my experience with PLT is limited to getting Arc to compile on MzScheme.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't aware that Clojure had a steeper learning curve. I'll do as you recommended: start with Scheme to grasp the basics of Lisp and eventually move on to more advanced stuff. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> IMHO Clojures steeper learning curve comes from having more features built right into the language. Scheme is refreshingly simple, but Clojure gives me so much more, right out of the box: instead of being based around lists, as Scheme and Common Lisp are, Clojure is based on _sequences_ (which are really just an abstraction over lists, vectors, maps, sets and regexes - but this means you get lists, vectors, maps, sets and regexes built in); Clojure has direct access to the JVM and therefore Java objects; Clojure has built in multiple dispatch, concurrency support (with transactional memory) and a bunch more.

So, while Scheme is definitely a lot simpler, Clojure has a lot more built right in (I'm fairly sure Scheme provides libraries for a lot of, if not all, of these features though). Actually, since most of Clojures advanced features can be ignored, I think the only thing thats more complex is the way the syntax uses () and [] (though, IMHO it does make the code simpler once you understand it) and the list/vector/maps/sets - since instead of everything being a list, it can now be one of many different data structures (though in practice having them makes life easy).

Clojure also benefits from a wealth of libraries, since you can use any Java class directly from Clojure.

Disclosure: my experience with Scheme is limited to reading SICP, but I've been using Clojure a LOT over the past 4 or 5 months, so obviously Im biased :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The "learning well" of a dialect is more important than agonizing over choosing any particular dialect. Pick one at random and write some large (5k to 10k line) programs in it. Read some programs written by great programmers who use that dialect.

The knowledge you gain will transfer very easily into the dialect you choose next (and you will get more informed by then and won't have to ask in forums).

</comment><comment><USER5> Scheme. The amount of high quality, and mostly _free_ Scheme literature out there is overwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER6> Depends what you are trying to achieve. If you primarily want to learn the language, Scheme is a good choice. Ifd you want to write code that would benefit from Java's extensive libraries, Clojure is the obvious choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> If it's just a functional language you want, you ought to consider other things too:

* Haskell: very 'pure' functional language from academia, much more so than Scheme.

* Erlang: slightly more practical functional language that's used in industry and has some nice properties, but is probably not a 'thing of beauty'.

* F# and Ocaml seem to have their supporters too...

Clojure seems to be popular these days if it's a Lisp you want.</comment>


Paired Brackets Notation - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2014/10/23/paired-brackets-notation.html?2014-42 <comment><USER2> This looks too obvious to me, but I have to admin that most of the code I read looks ugly</comment>


Presentation: Redis, The Hacker's Database - <AUTHOR> http://amix.dk/blog/post/19593#Presentation-Redis-The-Hackers-Database

<comment><USER2> I really am liking Redis, and they've expanded beyond just snapshots for persistent storage. You can now append data, and there a different options for both when you snapshot or append (a time, for each set, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> The video is up on GoogleTechTalks: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BS3UVSLX-I>

</comment><comment><USER4> I just started using MongoDB in a Python project; it shares a lot of the advantages (vs. SQL) mentioned in this presentation -- there's a natural mapping between the BSON in MongoDB and Python dicts.

What are the pros & cons of Redis compared to MongoDB?

<comment><USER5> The cool thing about redis is that it supports a bunch of different data structures: (ordered) sets, arrays, hashes, queues and more. There are a lot of db operations that are very natural with such support that are harder to force into the basic key/value paradigm exported by MongoDB. Also, redis is really simple to use which makes it useful for many cases where a full database might otherwise be overkill. For example, I've used it for storing results from experiments for further analysis. It's easier than a flat-file and much more performant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Another excellent redis preso - <http://simonwillison.net/static/2010/redis- tutorial/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Shenanigans. The author says that MySQL/Tokyo Tyrant don't work because of "death by I/O". Right, well, if your data set fits in memory, which I assume it does because you're relying on Redis, and the Redis VM feature is ghastly, then your problem isn't with "I/O", it's with MySQL not doing the right thing.

Buy some SSD drives, try out Postgres, but if you bet your business on something like Redis, you deserve whatever you get.

<comment><USER8> I'm always suspicious when I see something that is known to be a limitation of a tool is held up as the reason it's better than all other tools, including those that don't have that same limitation. And, as I understand it, redis is specifically designed to work with data that fits in memory, which is definitely a limitation that will prevent its use in a lot of places.

It strikes me that redis has some cool concepts...but you can't just wave your arms around and say that because redis is a memory-based database it solves I/O and performance problems of databases that normally operate in larger than memory deployments. If redis falls apart when memory can't contain the entire data set, that's a limitation, not a feature.

Since I know Tokyo Tyrant (and its successor or sibling or whatever, Kyoto Tycoon) are blisteringly fast in memory only workloads using key-value datasets, I'm highly suspicious of claims that redis is naturally and obviously faster (or something...I can't tell if this is a claim of speed, or architectural superiority because redis somehow solves I/O in a different way, I can't tell from the slides what is claimed, really).

Personally, I'd like to see some more meat to the argument that redis is superior, or at least some clarity about _when_ and _why_ redis is superior. It's obviously not going to replace MySQL for my CMS or OpenLDAP for my directory services, but it might have a place in other types of deployments. I couldn't figure out what Plurk is, so I'm not sure I understand what it was developed for. (I'm old, though...Plurks purpose might be obvious to someone not afflicted with my particular malady.)

<comment><USER9> I don't see another obvious advantage of Redis over Tokyo Cabinet other than the nicer complex data structure support. I use Redis for several projects and for me it serves well. Particularly, I know the limit of Redis and can predict how much memory it will eventually eat up with respect to the growth of site. Besides, Redis has a small code base that I can tinker around (It is c!) which would be nearly impossible for me to tinker around MySQL with confidence. Tokyo Cabinet has a nice code base too, and I liked it a lot but the limitation is: Tokyo Cabinet provides either a simple key-value db (b-tree/hashtable) or a full flee of table-like db. The former one is too simple to actual usage and the latter one is too complex (from my point of view, it is just SQL without parser, I even programmed a SQL parser on top of its table db). For my usage, a document-based db (MongoDB) or Redis which has sorted set/set data structure is enough and since MongoDB is complex in terms of code base too, Redis becomes my first choice.

Although Redis is critiqued for its VM implementation, I found that it is good enough for my specific usage: I have around 2 million or so keys and the workset is about 25k keys average.

Yes, Redis is not a universal solution to everything, and I am a little worried about its current proposal of disk-based system (to me, Tokyo Cabinet's disk op implementation is more mature and antirez should do more analysis on the comparison to Tokyo Cabinet and Berkeley DB since these two are only known k-v based disk DBs that tested in battle field).</comment></comment></comment>


The FTC and Google: A Missed Opportunity (Microsoft) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2013/01/03/the-ftc-and-google-a-missed-opportunity.aspx

<comment><USER2> Microsoft's whining about Google's abuse of patents or monopoly in general is a pinnacle of hypocrisy. May be they should look at themselves first?</comment>


Webamp – Winamp 2 in the browser, plays MP3s from local storage - <AUTHOR> https://webamp.org/ <comment><USER2> But does it really whip the llama's ass?

</comment><comment><USER3> What is the actual point of using local storage over just playing (local) files.

</comment><comment><USER4> Visualizers? I miss my Winamp.

</comment><comment><USER5> It works, all right.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks great!!</comment>


Ask HN: Meditation - <AUTHOR> Can you change your mind through meditation? does neuroscience back all the buzz about mediation lately? <comment><USER2> You certainly can. There are lots of directions you can go in, from working with the emotions to recognising emptiness. Check out my meditation links for my recommendations: [http://danbartlett.co.uk/meditation/](http://danbartlett.co.uk/meditation/)

I also run [http://OpenSit.com](http://OpenSit.com) which is a free meditation journal and global community, where you can share your practice and connect with others. It's open source too ^-^

You can read my meditation journal, including goofy entries from when I first started meditating 6 years ago, here: [http://opensit.com/u/danbartlett](http://opensit.com/u/danbartlett)

</comment><comment><USER3> From my experience, I had very very very bad panic attacked. Several months ago I pass out 3 times in a roll and having on going shortness of breathing. I was always afraid that my heart would stop beating. I didn't take any medication but melatonin, I took it for 10 days to restart my bio clock(I had very bad sleeping problem) For 30 days straight, persistently, I practice deep breathing, writing journal in mindfulness and meditate 10 minutes a day before going to bed. I personally think that meditation helps me a lot to get through this. Although I still have (sometimes) shortness of breathing, but I feel more grateful and being a happier person. I have no fear of dying anymore. And of course, my mind changed….for better…. I am not an expert and I hack meditation on my own. If anyone wanna try, feel free to let me know. E-mail on my profile :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I started using Headspace a few months ago. I've noticed a pretty positive effect.

I react a lot better to stress. On days at work when I was in tough situations, my mind would be racing for the whole day and I wouldn't be able to sleep. I feel like now, I can clear my thoughts and focus on what I should be focusing on.

I am very calm when in situations where I used to get angry(video games, lol).

I used to have major insomnia, now I can get to bed a little bit earlier. I'm still working on this part.

</comment><comment> phatak-dev Meditation, in it's highest form, is equivalent to sleep with awareness. Neuroscience already has indicated that sleep has something do with our information gathering system[1]. So in that sense meditation should help you to organize thoughts over time.

[1][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51e2NEmuI7I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51e2NEmuI7I)

<comment><USER5> When I was in grad school, I worked out a procedure for solving my homework problems in my sleep.

I thought this was my imagination, that it was purely coincidence that the solutions to my problem sets would come to me in the mornings, but my psychotherapist assured me it was real. Elsewhere I have read that one function of sleep, for humans anyway, is that it enables us to solve problems.

<comment><USER6> Please elaborate if you can.

Did you use some form of presleep self talk, think about the problem just before bed... It's a fascinating idea.

<comment><USER5> They key is to work very, very hard at solving the problem before sleeping. It's insufficient to just read the problem, or tinker around with it a little.

However it also doesn't work to beat at the problem so hard that I stay up all night without sleeping.

I'm afraid that I didn't clue into this until _graduate_ school. As an undergrad I quite commonly didn't start my problem sets until the night before they were due.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The benefits to practicing one-pointed focus alone are worth it to me. Honing ones concentration skills come in handy for many things, such as woodworking, visualizing code flow, and dealing with A.D.D.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are many different kinds of meditation.

While Buddhists commonly practice meditation, Siddartha Gautama's actual question was "Why are so many people so very unhappy?"

No amount of money, fame, power, sex or what have you will make someone happy. If one is happy, it's not likely the result of anything that one possesses.

The simplest answer to his question is that people are so unhappy because they are trying too hard. Perhaps it is better just to accept what we have, rather than striving for what we do not possess.

I personally am as poor as a churchmouse. There are times when it bothers me, but not a whole lot. By contrast, the very most miserable time I ever had, I was making $120.00/hour as a software consultant, but had to be far away from my wife so as to work on-site.

When I do get any significant amount of money these days, quite commonly I give it away. I find it odd that many of my colleagues, even my own mother, regard me as grossly irresponsible for doing so.

<comment><USER8> Acceptance is typically the answer for ones emotional well being. I find that I can still strive towards what I want but I accept that where I am right now is exactly where I am meant to be on my journey. That it all will serve a larger purpose.

Alternatively you can be in resistance to what is, which tends to rob you of your serenity.

I meditate daily, using this app - [http://stopbreathethink.org/](http://stopbreathethink.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, I am dead certain one can change one's mind through meditation.

I don't know about neuroscience's take on it, but my experience is that mental health professionals all encourage me to meditate.

If you practice Buddhist meditation, be advised that it can be excruciatingly boring.

It's meant to be.

How often do you just sit and do nothing? Not reading hacker news, soylent news, tweaking your code?

I don't practice sitting meditation a whole lot, but quite frequently I walk aimlessly, most commonly late at night.

<comment><USER9> I don't claim any particular expertise (in anything), but I think from the Buddhist perspective, a meditator would never be doing nothing, or acting aimlessly.

They distinguish between the development of concentration (samatha) and wisdom (vipassanā, inspiring the current "mindfulness" movement in the West), and the objective is to cultivate wisdom, and not merely tranquility.

The mind is always directed and purposeful, and the (historical) Buddha applied razor-sharp logic toward experiential existence, in a very practical way.

<comment><USER5> Strictly speaking, my mind is not aimless when I walk so much at night. It is the walking itself that is aimless. That is, I don't go anywhere in particular. Often I go to unfamiliar places, without any intent to arrive at an actual destination.

When I walk I generally let my mind wander, but while doing so often come up with really good ideas.

Not long ago I was questioned by a couple Portland Police Bureau officers. I expect they thought I'd just scored some drugs, in the end I was able to satisfy them that I just liked to walk around at night.

"You know, you shouldn't be walking around Crack Central at three in the morning with that computer. Someone is going to stick a knife in you and take it."

"Thank you officer, but no one ever messes with me because I look just like a Hell's Angel."</comment></comment></comment>


How to hack almost any toy quadcopter with a $5 NRF24L01+ module - <AUTHOR> http://dronegarageblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/deviationtx-with-nrf24l01-module-the-universal-drone-remote/ <comment><USER2> For the RF geeks here - can't manufacturers implement some kind of anti- hijacking protocols into the RF I/O between the radio and the receiver? I understand it's hard to defeat jamming if the attacker has more power at hand than you do, but it seems like it would be easy to defeat devices that want to try and MITM or otherwise spoof the original remote controller.</comment>


Unplug From Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgeek.net/2013/01/06/unplug-from-google/ <comment><USER2> "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold."

For me personally, this is the most stupid statement since the "war on terror" nonesense from a few years ago. The reason this is so stupid is because there are almost zero services that you do not pay for in order to use them, and Google makes none of these services.

I pay Google with ad impressions so I can use their search engine. Google can turn these ad impressions into money, so it is as good as dollars to them.

In order for me keep paying Google, they have to make sure I want to keep using the product. Just like any other subscription model.

It is also wrong that if you pay through ad impressions, you can expect less quality or service than if you pay money. There is no evidence that this is the case, and it makes no sense at all. There are plenty of cases where a company does not support an application after users payed for it, or customers complaining about bad support for products they spent money on.

Finally, you are never the "product being sold". First, that would be slavery and a crime. Second, I'm sitting here writing this with my free will, so obvisously nobody has sold me yet.

Google's first priority is still to get users to use their products and be happy with them. Just like it is with any other paid service out there.

<comment><USER3> that's very cool story, but I did not see anything like that in google terms of use: "we provide search, you click ads"

actually it's more like: "we provide search, all informations about you belong to us!"

so "customer" is not the most appropiate word here, how about "slave"?

<comment><USER4> How about "person who consciously chooses to use Google's website." You don't have to use Google. You don't "own" information you freely give to people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just today I decided to move a lot of my self-hosted stuff _to_ Google, via Google Apps (so I will be paying after my free trial). For me it was always a trade off between how much of my free time I was willing to invest.

My self-hosted email was insecure (no SSL), noisy (no spam filtering), and occasionally difficult to use (I didn't set up a web interface, only IMAP). Furthermore, I've lost email due to my own incompetence/corner-cutting, such as bad distribution upgrades and failing to properly restart postfix. These are all things that I _could_ solve, but that's also not free - it takes a large portion of my dwindling free time.

I also have a Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 - the integration with other Google products on these devices is the lowest friction route to a very enjoyable experience.

I'm not happy with the amount of data Google have about me, but I'm happier with that than losing my free time and having a second job just to manage my own shit.

<comment><USER6> I've been paying for my Gmail access for a couple of years now, in the form of a Google Apps account, works great. Part of me want to self-host, but the gmail.com client and their spam filters and priority inbox (good for removing marketing mails etc) keeps me 100% happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > ... _and that website has analytics (Google Analytics)_ ...

Or Google Fonts. Or Google-hosted Javascript code. Or Google+ icon. Or god knows what else they just throw out there so that it would get inserted into people's websites and be pinging back. Whatever it takes, take it, take it all for free, just ping us back, damn it.

Ahem, yeah. That was the rant part.

The rational comment would be that the biggest problem unplugging from Google is other people's use of Gmail. You can evade Google all you want, but when you email someone at firstname.lastname@example.com and it ends up being a Gmail alias, they got you, with all your email headers.

</comment><comment><USER8> Far as I can tell, Google is actually trying to move away from the 'we sell adverts' business model currently. In the case of Android, they don't give away their gmail/market/maps, but charge a fee for them. With the purchase of Motorola, it hints that Google will be selling hardware in future. Google's push into driverless cars will also be in the form of a percentage of car cost (apparently). It looks like Google Glass will be a sold product and not sponsored by adverts as well.

So I'm guessing Google understands the problem here as well as anybody.

<comment><USER9> All that really says is that even Google has a problem monetizing directly on Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google has a service that shows you some of what they know about you. Last time I checked they were WAY off the mark about me, and I use Google products for nearly everything.

Aside from that, I'm not really sure why I should be offended about being given more relevant ads. Being advertised to doesn't annoy me when I actually want the thing being advertised. A very well targeted ad would tell me about a product I want that I didn't know was available. I'm happy when I get an email from Valve letting me know that a Steam sale has begun because I really love their service.

On the other hand, I sometimes get ads for booze (probably because I'm a 29 year old male) despite the fact that I don't drink. I get ads for religious groups (probably because I frequent atheism sites) which I have zero interest in. Those are badly targeted ads that annoy me.

Aside from political dissidents under oppressive regimes, I don't see much reason for people to worry about someone trying to figure out what you like. Every time I meet some tech savvy developer who only uses a Linux distro he built himself to avoid government spying, runs all his phone calls through encryption software, and encrypts his entire hard drive on every device, I immediately wonder if he's a paranoid schizophrenic or has very illegal hobbies.

I know that sounds harsh, but it's what goes through my head. If you disagree then please enlighten me. Am I being dangerously nieve? What specific things should I be concerned about that I'm not? I'd appreciate links to news articles showing that you're talking about things that are actually happening and not just hypotheticals. I'm not worried about what-ifs.

<comment><USER11> > Aside from political dissidents under oppressive regimes, I don't see much > reason for people to worry about someone trying to figure out what you like

I don't share the Google paranoia but It's not about what you like or don't like. It's more a profile of you. That means Google is (in theory) able to identify to a certain degree if you are sick, if you have problems with the law or any other other personal trait that may be problematic. Your insurance company would probably like to know about this. Your employer would also like to know about it. I'm certain that Google won't share this data but others might do.

> Every time I meet some tech savvy developer who only uses a Linux distro he > built himself to avoid government spying, runs all his phone calls through > encryption software, and encrypts his entire hard drive on every device, I > immediately wonder if he's a paranoid schizophrenic or has very illegal > hobbies.

That is a slightly rephrased variant of "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry". And it's unrelated to Google IMHO, so I'll talk only about encryption here:

It's not the government, it's also other companies. And it's great to have the possibility to encrypt your HDD and be anonymous.

You don't need to be in an oppressed country, look at Wikileaks, journalistic work, industrial espionage. There are lots of legit cases for encryption.

I'm doing freelance work, I have several root passwords on my hdd. For me it's logical to encrypt the drive. The only technical somewhat secure way to encrypt your drive is full disk encryption. I think my clients deserve that I'm not leaking their passwords when my laptop is stolen.

> Am I being dangerously nieve? What specific things should I be concerned > about that I'm not?

If you are a company: Industrial espionage, malicious hackers, law enforcement

If you are a private citizen you probably want to control the data trails you leave. They can bite you have bitten numerous others.

You can e.g. easily create graphs of your social connections and cluster you based on these. You can then make assumptions about these clusters. That means your mobile provider knows where you are and were your connections are. Now when law enforcement decides to collect these data from a whole city the structure of your group is clear. You can identify influencing persons and concentrate on these.

This happens, last I checked activism was not illegal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sure, just as soon as everyone stops using Google Analytics to track users, and blogs stop using Google Adsense to monetise their websites....

</comment><comment><USER13> The more they know about me, the better Google Now can get (and the less irrelevant ads I'll see).

The only real risk of privacy breach is if the US government subpoena the info, but that can happen to any US cloud supplier.

</comment><comment><USER14> What are people so afraid of when Google shows them ads? And Google lets you manage your ad preferences and control your privacy settings. (You can also use adblock to block ads entirely.) Also, Google doesn't use all the sources of data it has access to, e.g. it doesn't use Site Analytics data to track you.

</comment><comment><USER15> " _TINSTAFL: There is no such thing as a free lunch._ "

It's "TANSTAFL" because it ain't "is;" it's "ain't." I hate being pedantic, and I ain't sure that I am. In any event, I won't apologize to the author - the internet is a harsh mistress.

<comment><USER9> It's TANSTAAFL , and <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL> lists <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/TINSTAAFL> as a valid alternative (not that I agree with that last alternative but you can't really fault the guy for using it if it is that widespread).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would love to use a different email provider (I'd be prepared to pay up to 10$ a year for it), but it would need to be as fast and as good at searching and have at least as much space as gmail.

I'd like to be using a google docs alternative that was at least as performant and supported.

Other players are actually now catching up on search and maps, but even so, it's difficult to find products that are as good as google.

I was hoping this article was going to give me suggestions on how to 'unplug' but in fact it had a very low information content.

<comment><USER7> > _10$ a year_

Woah, really? You must be really wealthy to shell out this much for an _essential service_.

Try this - say, someone would be willing to offer you free heating for your place, but in return they would install discreet cameras in every corner of the house and be scanning and retaining a copy of every piece of mail that goes in or out and every phone call. Moreover, they will not only record your life, but also that of your guests even if these people would've objected to that had they have known it's happening.

Would you take this offer? Rhetorical question.

<comment><USER17> Well, I'd let them install devices to track my heating usage. Just like I accept that Google, who is handling my email, will check that email for relevant content to display ads.

However, if Gmail was trying to access to other things that it wasn't associated with, we'd have a problem.

Sort of like your "rhetorical question."

<comment><USER7> Fine, replace "heating" with "mail services".

Would you be OK with letting a company to scan and retain a copy of every letter you sent and receive in exchange for being able to not use stamps? Bonus question - do you think your correspondents would be OK with it if they knew you had such arrangement?

<comment><USER18> Gmail is a webmail provider. They have to retain a copy of every email sent/received, or you would only be able to read them once. They have to scan email, because otherwise you couldn't search them.

It is easy to set up Gmail such that Google doesn't have access to the text content of your mail -- simply install a desktop mail client (e.g. Thunderbird) and enable encryption. But now you've essentially disabled every feature of Gmail except for being a dumb SMTP relay.

<comment><USER7> This is all fine and dandy (and obvious), but the point is that Google is not _just_ a webmail provider. When someone switches to Gmail, it affects _me_ , because it lets Google track and profile me that much better. Hence the original comment - "unplugging" from Google is basically impossible, because of the proliferation of Gmail use.

<comment><USER17> This would be a problem if GMail was the only means by which to contact people. It's not. You have a choice to use email.

The truth is, when you contact someone, you don't know what is happening to that information. Gmail, if anything, makes it more clear than most other means of communication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes, Google permeates most peoples online lives with the pervasive services. But at the moment the compromise between ease of use,free service with seeming integration beats the privacy.At least google is seemingly better with privacy than others.

</comment><comment><USER20> The only service of Google's that I use is Reader, and that solely as a backend to Reeder. I would love to unplug entirely, so I'm hoping that Google messes Reader up to the point that third-party RSS clients will have no choice but to switch.

</comment><comment><USER21> Eh, I like Google services. I use a Google Apps domain. I used to run everything myself on a co-located server, sharing back-up DNS and MX duties with friends doing the same.

Using Google services is _so much better_. Not only in terms of me not spending time actively managing it, but also in terms of reliability, performance and feature set.

</comment><comment><USER22> Did anyone else see this as a piece of satire? Granted you had to read to the end for the punchline.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ironically, this page loads jQuery from googleapis.com.

</comment><comment><USER24> For me, even if I hated Google --which, unlike the author of TFA-- I don't, I'd still kinda like them because it's often interesting to make the ennemy of my ennemy stronger.

I'm an "abm": "Anything But Microsoft" and I do firmly believe that the day MS produce something that doesn't suck it's going to be a vacuum cleaner. And at one point the future looked bleak: Windows at something like 97% market share and some crappy IE version was slowing down the Web -- and slowing technology as a whole (the story of MS).

I'm very happy that we know have to gigantic players: Apple and Google, giving MS quite some headaches.

The last thing I'd want would be Google or Apple to sink and see MS reign king again.

So to all the Google-haters out there (and they sure seem numerous on HN): be careful what you're asking for...

The past _was_ bad. I don't think anyone really want to go back to that dark past.

<comment><USER25> Much of Google senior management is Microsoft veterans running Microsoft style business units, so be careful what you wish for. Don't live in the 90s forever.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who do you use for stock market data? - <AUTHOR>

A couple of months ago I posted asking about what the preferred source for streaming stock market data was.
I was pointed to open tick, which looked really promising but looks like it has gone into zombie mode (not accepting sign ups...etc)
Outside of scraping Yahoo Finance or Google Finance what are my options? I'm willing to spend a bit of money (20-30 per month?) and would like certain data points (short interest...)
Where should I look?
Original post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=199892 <comment><USER2> For real-time streaming API a low cost option is IQFeed.net which charges about $67/month for Nasdaq, AMEX, and NYSE + $50 setup. The data feed source is ComStock and the only API available is through Windows COM (yeah, I know)

To offer real-time to the public you will need to set up agreements with each of the exchanges individually. Expect to pay about $1/user/month plus some fixed monthly fees.

If real-time isn't essential, you could also use the fantastic python library ystockquote to get delayed data from yahoo.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used IB for few years. Recommend them highly. Not sure how much they charge these days. They're very flexible, have a great API and their transactional costs are cheap. You can get more info here: <http://www.interactivebrokers.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Did you use them as a broker or just for their data API?

<comment><USER3> Broker... but they have no minimums.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=CSCO&f=...](http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=CSCO&f=sl1d1t1c1ohgv&e=.csv)

<comment><USER4> Can also use pipes [http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/search?q=stock&x=7&y=7](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/search?q=stock&x=7&y=7)

<comment><AUTHOR> most of the data pipes (not including graphs) didn't seem to be working...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Many years ago I looked into the problem, but for the Canadian market. We couldn't find a service with an API, so we took one of those 15$/month paying services that gives you some Java software to "analyze" the data (Stockwatch). I used a packet sniffer (Etherreal?) and reversed out the protocol. I used Python for the actual software. They don't really mind you doing that if you're paying already, so it was fairly easy to do, even for me who had no experience.

<comment><USER6> I must say sir. That is brilliant. $15/mth for a pseudo realtime quote API is dirt cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If your application can tolerate a day's delay then perhaps you should look into just grabbing the XML files from Yahoo! Finance. They let you download the history of any of their stocks and use in your own code.

For example: [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL&a=08&b=7&c=...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=AAPL&a=08&b=7&c=1984&d=09&e=11&f=2008&g=d), and click on the download Spreadsheet link at the bottom

updown.com, an investing startup that really likes advertising to me on Facebook, uses these guys

<http://www.quotemedia.com/>

They seem to offer live quotes, but I cannot personally vouch for their services.

</comment><comment><USER8> TD Ameritrade ([http://www.tdameritrade.com/tradingtools/partnertools/api_de...](http://www.tdameritrade.com/tradingtools/partnertools/api_dev.html)) has an API, though I can't say I've used it myself.

Also, do you mind giving us a general idea of what you want to do? Hinting at a project without sketching out an outline is cruel.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks cool, but I'm with etrade an a little hesitant to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use Cottonelle...After all, the market is in the toilet. (Forgive me, I see a need for humor here.)

</comment><comment><USER10> With so many trading companies going bust I bet the price will go down soon.

</comment><comment><USER11> you'll need to spend much more per month for raw streaming market data

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://www.elitetrader.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> try quotemedia, esignal etc.

</comment><comment><USER13> Not techcrunch for sure!</comment>


Tessellations by Recognizable Figures - <AUTHOR> http://mathstat.slu.edu/escher/index.php/Tessellations_by_Recognizable_Figures <comment><USER2> Eschersketch's web app helps you sketch your own tessellations easily on desktop: [https://levskaya.github.io/eschersketch/](https://levskaya.github.io/eschersketch/)</comment>


Why You Should Be An Office Nomad - <AUTHOR> http://entrepreneursunpluggd.com/blog/3-reasons-why-im-an-office-nomad-2

<comment><USER2> This is really cool. I've read a lot about ideal working environments, and it seems the general consensus is that working alone, isolated, and for long periods of time is the best. This might be true for heavy thinking tasks, but I've realized that its very, very nice to go work at a pub or a coffee shop on campus. Especially on campus there is a good chance of encountering someone who is doing the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more. Working isolated works for some tasks (like getting "in the zone" while developing) but I definitely thrive off of the ambiance of a coffee shop environment.</comment></comment>


Bad cops: A new database collects information about cop misconduct - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/02/bad_cops_a_new_database_collects_information_about_cop_misconduct_and_provides.html <comment><USER2> The Cato Institute has a related site called:

[http://www.policemisconduct.net/](http://www.policemisconduct.net/)

And there is Photography Is Not A Crime:

[https://photographyisnotacrime.com/](https://photographyisnotacrime.com/)

<comment><USER3> Wow, that first website is actually quite depressing. Especially that "worst of the month" one... There just seems to be so much unjust stuff going on.

I love where I came from (Pennsylvania / NYC) and love the people, but I've been in Japan for 6 months now and it is looking better and better every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I'm glad to see this, it appears this article is from February. I guess this hasn't gotten much press?

</comment><comment><USER5> >aimed at helping defense attorneys question the credibility of police officers in court.

Note the purpose of this. To help defense attorneys find kinks in the armor in order to serve their client. Like "He's a great guy but sasses his mother" sort of stuff. If a lawyer can use it, he will.

This is not another HN-likeable article looking for bad cops.

<comment><USER6> > Take someone like Detective Sekou Bourne, for instance, who is currently > being prosecuted in the NYPD's administrative court for allegedly frisking a > woman improperly in East New York and unlawfully entering her home in April > 2013 after concluding, mistakenly, that she had crack cocaine in her hand.

Seems a little different from "sassing his mother", more like "assault and trespassing".

That's only the first example in the article. There are more, and none of them are "sassing his mother".</comment></comment>