Tell HN: Yahoo Finance has apparently killed its API - <AUTHOR> Yahoo Finance has apparently killed is API. Zero warning. Lots of apps probably use this.
Before, you could get stock information by using http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv
Now, you get the following message: It has come to our attention that this service is being used in violation of the Yahoo Terms of Service. As such, the service is being discontinued. For all future markets and equities data research, please refer to finance.yahoo.com.
What violation of TOS? People have been using this for years without any issues.
If you are going to cut this off, how about a warning and heads up?
Guess that's what we should expect from OATH / Verizon. <comment><USER2> IEX has an official, documented, supported, relatively clean, and entirely free API for their market data:

[https://iextrading.com/developer/docs/](https://iextrading.com/developer/docs/)

It's just US stocks, and quote data is just for their exchange (and you can get the deep book if you're interested in that stuff). But they have basic company info: earnings estimates, split info, dividend info, etc. as well.

<comment><USER3> IEX here. Thanks for mentioning our API. We are excited to see what everyone will build. Just to reiterate, the API is free for personal and commercial use, doesn't require an API key, and is reliable enough to drive our own applications.

Real time quotes and trades are available from our own market data, but we also provide market wide prices (SIP) on 15 minute delay in addition to the company info mentioned above.

We are very actively developing the API, and will continue to improve data sets, features, and performance. If you experience any issues we have community support at [https://github.com/iexg/IEX- API/issues](https://github.com/iexg/IEX-API/issues) which we actively monitor.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for building this! I noticed that the charting api have EOD prices for past 5 years, is there a plan to support longer durations?

<comment><USER3> We are currently working on new datasets including EOD data for the past 20 years. Our market data is available now through REST and WebSockets, but we are working on adding more data via WebSocket, and introducing HTTP streaming in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They broke functionality on their own pages, yikes.

E.g. the export button on the desktop version of [https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/MMM,IBM/view/v1?ql=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/MMM,IBM/view/v1?ql=1)

<comment><USER6> You'd think after you take down an API you've be furiously checking the server logs for any referrers coming from inside the house.

<comment><USER7> Half dead company running on fumes. They probably don't even know half of what they run, let alone have staff to check the logs.

<comment><USER8> "Half dead company running on fumes"

And for good reason. I don't go to yahoo for its clever articles or its mail or its search function ... I go to download currency commodity and stock information.

At least they could have explored offering the million people like me the info for a couple of bucks a month ... 2 million a month is worth looking at.

Instead a cryptic adios ... its brand suicide (or murder seeing how verizon owns them now)

<comment><USER7> Or they just want to get out of that business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a thread about this on Yahoo!s own forums:

[https://forums.yahoo.net/t5/Yahoo-Finance-help/http- download...](https://forums.yahoo.net/t5/Yahoo-Finance-help/http-download- finance-yahoo-com-d-quotes-csv-s-GOOG-amp-f/td-p/387096)

I am incredibly amused by the person who refers to himself as a customer of this. If you want to be treated like a customer, find someone who will charge you money in exchange for the service provided.

<comment><USER10> There's obviously way more nuance to this though. APIs of this nature rarely charge a fee.

<comment><USER11> You mean APIs that provide market data? Quite the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Intrinio ([https://intrinio.com/](https://intrinio.com/)) has an awesome API for Financial Data. While not completely free, they do have 6 months free program for developers.

They've also been featured on Indie Hackers: [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/intrinio](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/intrinio)

</comment><comment><USER13> I use Alpha Vantage, just for a personal (1 user, me) application. The service is free, you just need an API key. - [https://www.alphavantage.co/](https://www.alphavantage.co/)

[https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api- key](https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api-key) "While we are proud to provide free API service with no daily/weekly/monthly call limits, we recommend that API call frequency does not extend far beyond ~100 calls per minute so that we can continue to deliver the optimal server-side performance. If you would like to target a much larger API call volume, please drop us a note..."

<comment><USER14> Implementing this to replace a very low usage exchange rate form. The format of their data is... odd. E.g. -

{ "Realtime Currency Exchange Rate": { "1\. From_Currency Code": "BND", "2\. From_Currency Name": "Brunei Dollar", "3\. To_Currency Code": "USD", "4\. To_Currency Name": "United States Dollar", "5\. Exchange Rate": "0.73326846", "6\. Last Refreshed": "2017-11-03 17:37:12", "7\. Time Zone": "UTC" } }

Why the numbers and mix of underscores and spaces in keys?

<comment><USER13> I don't know why they did that, you would need to ask them. They seem to be open to questions and suggestions. My guess is that it's historical and now it would annoy too many users to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you built a business around data that you didn't explicitly have the rights to you built that house of cards yourself.

<comment><USER16> You realized that's probably half of the startups and companies out there right?

<comment><USER17> That doesn't make it any less true.

<comment><USER18> Businesses can fail. That is true as well.

I guess we should never build businesses.

<comment><USER17> That's a bit reductionist.

I'm saying we should enter into formal contracts for services that are vital to the running of our businesses. That way there's more protection against getting the rug pulled out from underneath us.

<comment><USER18> That's easier said than done. Try getting a meeting with the VP of Facebook, who's bonus depends on increasing ad revenue for Fortune 500's with a $100 million dollar budget. Or plow through and take the risk, and be the next Buffer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There API is still working via [http://finance.yahoo.com/webservice/v1/symbols/allcurrencies...](http://finance.yahoo.com/webservice/v1/symbols/allcurrencies/quote?format=json)

<comment><USER20> have you got any further documentation on hwo to use that? thank you.

<comment><USER21> Documentation... Oh, my sides!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> At TagniFi we have a free account that provides access to end-of-day market data (TagniFi Markets) via our API at no cost. Data items include high, low, open, close and volume along with adjusted closing price (for splits and dividends). Documentation is at [http://docs.tagnifi.com/article/63-search- tagnifi-markets](http://docs.tagnifi.com/article/63-search-tagnifi-markets). Sign up at [https://www.tagnifi.com/trial](https://www.tagnifi.com/trial)

Note: we only limit our trial to the Dow 30 for our fundamental data (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement). Market data is not restricted to the Dow 30 for the trial which does not expire.

</comment><comment><USER23> Quite happy about the suggestions for similar APIs here. They're somehow hard to find in the forest of overpriced professional services.

I'm using a different Yahoo endpoint with ticker.sh[1], which is still functioning at this time. Maybe there's soon the need to find yet another alternative after the Google endpoint stopped working recently.

[1] [https://github.com/pstadler/ticker.sh](https://github.com/pstadler/ticker.sh)

</comment><comment><USER24> Yeah. It's been on & off for a while but yesterday looks like it went for good.

I had to fix my script switching to:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/api/quote- page/{CURRENCY_PA...](http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/api/quote- page/{CURRENCY_PAIR}%3ACUR?locale=en)

<comment><USER25> is it documented somewhere or you just analyzed your browser requests?

<comment> nevi-me You'll get IP banned if you go beyond a certain threshold, but looks like you can find other API endpoints by looking at browser requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The API at [https://query2.finance.yahoo.com](https://query2.finance.yahoo.com) seems to still work [0]

[0] [https://query2.finance.yahoo.com/v8/finance/chart/VZ?period1...](https://query2.finance.yahoo.com/v8/finance/chart/VZ?period1=1388563200&period2=1509694074&interval=1d&events=history)

<comment><USER27> Thanks but this is only returning historical stock price data while the yahoo download quotes.csv returned stock market data including ebitda, market cap, price ratios and much more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > What violation of TOS?

It is against Yahoo's TOS to scrape the data there. So yes its darn entitled to even expect a heads up.

<comment><USER29> Downloading a csv isn't scraping.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if the csv was meant to be an api or just giving the option to someone visiting yahoo finance (and therefore viewing ads) the ability to download data they viewed. If you go straight to the data and bypass the ads, you are sort of scraping.

<comment><USER30> Well the geniuses at Yahoo also broke their own site--if you go to Yahoo Finance and try use their own download link it takes you to the same message. So they must not actually care about the ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> [https://polygon.io](https://polygon.io) \- real-time stock data APIs

</comment><comment><USER32> Roughly 10 years ago I build an Excel stock screener using this API. The data quality was always terrible.

<comment><USER33> I wouldn't trade on it but they were reasonably good to get a sense for where stuff trades. E.g. monitoring your portfolio with this worked well, esp for EOD data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Intrinio ([http://intrinio.com/](http://intrinio.com/)) currently offers the least expensive Real-Time and REST API for US stock prices.

You can access it via WebSocket, or Web API. No other firm currently offers this data via WebSocket which is especially helpful as you only need a few lines of code to implement. Additionally, Intrinio's customer service chat support is live practically 24/7.

The real-time feeds can be found here: [https://intrinio.com/marketplace/data#?category=prices&sub_c...](https://intrinio.com/marketplace/data#?category=prices&sub_category=realtime)

The REST API for prices would be best in this feed: US Public Company Financials ([https://intrinio.com/data/company- financials](https://intrinio.com/data/company-financials))

This blog will tell you everything you need to know to get started using the real-time API: [http://blog.intrinio.com/stock-prices-from- intrinio/](http://blog.intrinio.com/stock-prices-from-intrinio/)

<comment><USER35> It's not the least expensive. [https://www.alphavantage.co/](https://www.alphavantage.co/) is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I interviewed the people behind Intrinio[1] for Indie Hackers. I haven't used their product myself, so I can't tell you how it stacks up against the Yahoo and Google APIs that were killed this month. But I do know that they provide financial data and APIs to developers, and their primary goal is making it super cheap and pleasant to use.

[1] [https://intrinio.com](https://intrinio.com)

</comment><comment><USER37> I wrote a small cli/library to pull tickers and historical quotes from various sources directly to csv or json. It still works with the new Yahoo format, but I wouldn't count on it sticking around. Also pulls bitcoin data from gdax.

[https://github.com/markcheno/go-quote](https://github.com/markcheno/go-quote)

</comment><comment><USER38> The undocumented Google finance API was also turned off this month after many years.

There's a severe dearth of good, free, market data API's.

<comment><USER33> If both shut down within a short period of time it's probably due to the vendor. I'd guess one of the major exchanges in the US has changed the terms of the license or started enforcing it. They make money with this data so it's understandable that they don't like free APIs.

<comment><USER39> Likely the NYSE, they've decided to make some money off of algorithmic trading by charging a non-display fee, where it costs thousands of dollars per month to use stock quotes for anything other than displaying to a human, and have been on a warpath enforcing it, causing a large fight between the NYSE and Bloomberg, Citadel, etc. with lots of lawyers and government regulators involved.

I can't imagine they're happy about people possibly using Google or Yahoo Finance APIs for similar purposes either (since most of the uses of market data APIs are probably for non-display use).

[http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-letter-targets- nyse...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-letter-targets-nyse-trading- fee-changes-2017-4)

[https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/data/Policy- NonDisplay_...](https://www.nyse.com/publicdocs/nyse/data/Policy- NonDisplay_PDP.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I had been downloading about data for about 30 stock symbols once or twice a day for years.

This was a handy service that gave Yahoo credibility to me but evidently there were those who completely abused the handy service by downloading hundreds if not thousands of stocks minute by minute. It's those who wrecked it for their own need for greed. They should have been contracting with a service to provide them with data.

For the rest of us it is now gone. Yahoo could have easily given each person perhaps a limit of 10 or 100 downloads per day by counting the IP addresses as other web sites do.

So don't blame Yahoo or Verizon. Blame it on those that have to have the world for free and will abuse whatever free service you provide. They are the ones who are all about themself who wreck the world for everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER41> I did notice that in DDG, "!finance TICKER" now goes to other sites, where recently it used to go to yahoo finance. I wonder if the change was due to this, and if DDG had any warning?

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm writing an article about this... Questions to anybody that knows:

1\. it looks like this was just a CSV download. Was any form of authentication (even just a Yahoo login) required to download the CSV? I'm just trying to figure out how, if Yahoo actually thought of issuing a warning, it would have known who to send it too or how to get news of the shutdown circulated to the right people.

2\. If it was a CSV download, how up to date was the data?

3\. Does anybody have a sample URI for a filtered version of this CSV request. For example, just two symbols?

Thanks

David Berlind ProgrammableWeb

<comment><AUTHOR> here's some info on how it worked: [http://www.jarloo.com/yahoo_finance/](http://www.jarloo.com/yahoo_finance/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Was there ever a TOS for this API? I was under the impression that this was just an internal API used by Yahoo Finance itself, and that they've never marketed it in any way.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not just finance.yahoo.com, but also access through query.yahooapis.com.

[https://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?callback=&diagnost...](https://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?callback=&diagnostics=true&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys&format=json&q=SELECT%20*%20FROM%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20WHERE%20symbol%20IN%20\(%27AAPL%27\))

</comment><comment><USER45> Zero warnings? Didn't Yahoo die like a few years ago?

<comment><USER46> Globally about a billion people annually use at least one Yahoo service.

The answer to your question is: nope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> A non profit that I support has been relying on Yahoo for exchange rate information for nearly 10 years. I knew when I inherited the app that this was imminent, so it wasn't too surprising.

There are plenty of alternative paid APIs out there that made switching easy. Hopefully others who had legacy developers integrate with the financial APIs are able to switch easily too.

</comment><comment><USER48> Good time to remind everyone that Google Finance said they would delete everybody's portfolio's in November and if you want the data you should download it.

You don't see this unless you go to the Portfolios page: (not my screenshot) [https://imgur.com/0o4Ehxe](https://imgur.com/0o4Ehxe)

</comment><comment><USER49> One more existing alternative: [https://developers.exante.eu](https://developers.exante.eu)

It's broker company itself and they have API with EOD and realtime data on stocks and derivatives for many exchanges including US, Europe and Asia.

You can even trade with that API if you want (guess it won't for free though).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Google lets you import stock price info into Google sheets using the =GOOGLEFINANCE() function.

But for more than a year, Google's mutual fund prices have been showing day old information many hours after the market closed.

So i had been using the Yahoo API to populate an investment portfolio spreadsheet.

So now both Yahoo and Google don't work. You get what you pay for.

</comment><comment><USER50> There are a lot of good free alternatives on the comments but I'm curious how reliable they are.

Obviously, Xignite is the leader in paid service but it's way too expensive for startups (approximately 20k for the cheapest option).

IEX and AlphaVantage have decent customer support so I trust them, but I'd rather have a cheaper, paid service.

<comment><USER34> Intrinio ([http://intrinio.com/](http://intrinio.com/)) currently offers the least expensive Real-Time and REST API for US stock prices, AND their customer service chat support is live practically 24/7.

You can access it via WebSocket, or Web API. No other firm currently offers this data via WebSocket which is especially helpful as you only need a few lines of code to implement.

The real-time feeds can be found here: [https://intrinio.com/marketplace/data#?category=prices&sub_c...](https://intrinio.com/marketplace/data#?category=prices&sub_category=realtime)

The REST API for prices would be best in this feed: US Public Company Financials [https://intrinio.com/data/company- financials](https://intrinio.com/data/company-financials)

This blog will tell you everything you need to know to get started using the real-time API: [http://blog.intrinio.com/stock-prices-from- intrinio/](http://blog.intrinio.com/stock-prices-from-intrinio/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> That API has been flakey since months ago. You can still get quotes from Yahoo Finance in other ways just fine though.

</comment><comment><USER42> Just circling back here (hoping someone can help me with my coverage). Given how the endpoint required no authentication (no uid/pwd, key, or token), and therefore, Yahoo had no idea what developers were using it, how did you (speaking to developers here) expect to be notified of the API's retirement?

</comment><comment><USER52> Earlier this year (~May) they shut down their API endpoint that rendered handy little stock chart images with a surprising amount of useful features. Any alternatives out there, other than tying together a charting lib and data API?

</comment><comment><USER53> the robinhood API is unofficial (for now) but it's an easy way to pick up stock data for free.

[https://github.com/sanko/Robinhood](https://github.com/sanko/Robinhood)

</comment><comment><USER54> For us non-financy-types, does anyone mind letting us know what this file looked like so we can, you know, potentially duplicate it and provide it to those who find it a necessity?

<comment><USER55> There are already a number of existing alternatives:

[http://fixer.io](http://fixer.io)

[https://openexchangerates.org](https://openexchangerates.org)

[https://www.exchangerate-api.com](https://www.exchangerate-api.com)

[http://www.xe.com/xecurrencydata](http://www.xe.com/xecurrencydata)

<comment><USER33> You find FX data everywhere because it's public. But Yahoo also had stock data. And that is hard to find for free online. I guess Yahoo had to shut it down because exchanges didn't like them giving data away for free via API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The Apple STOCKS app on my iPhone is showing updates as I watch and says Yahoo! at the bottom. So, it seems Yahoo is still providing fairly real-time stock quotes via some means.

</comment><comment><USER57> [https://github.com/timkpaine/pyEX-zipline](https://github.com/timkpaine/pyEX- zipline)

</comment><comment><USER58> its _

</comment><comment><USER59> edit - hackernews apparently doesn't value new ideas.

<comment><USER60> Please forgive my ignorance, but what possible intersection is there between blockchains (method of immutably storing small quantities of data in a distributed fashion currently limited by power waste, slowness, and needed storage amount) and providing real data about real stock markets to real people (getting data with proper license and providing it to others on request, currently limited by legal means)?

<comment><USER61> Coin exchanges are dealing with plenty of real money for plenty of real people and have real licenses and very real government oversight (at least in places like the US and EU) , so your snark is not very appropriate.

Regarding your actual point, I can't see the connection either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> After 22 years they still can't handle a mailbox correctly, so that's not very astonishing.</comment>


Google forces Latitude users into Google+ - mike-cardwell http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/a-new-google-maps-app-for-smartphones.html

<comment> mike-cardwell From the post:

"One important change you should know about is that Latitude and check-ins will be retired. These features will no longer be a part of the new Google Maps app, and will stop functioning in older versions by August 9. We understand some of you still want to see your friends and family on a map, which is why we've added location sharing and check-ins to Google+ for Android (coming soon to iOS)"</comment>


Litmus tests for using blockchain vs. relational database - <AUTHOR> When should a business use blockchain despite its inefficiency? Honestly, I can't think of any reason to not just use a traditional relational database instead.
Instead of anecdotes I'm interested in any literature exploring this issue, ideally outlining specific features of a use-case that would make it a good fit for blockchain.
Here's an example, but it's far too vague IMO: https://dcicblog.umd.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2017/06/Smith.pdf (clickable version in comments) <comment><USER2> When you don't trust the other people who may be writing to the data. The advantages of a blockchain are immutability and byzantine fault tolerance: regardless of how malicious your counterparties may be, they _can 't_ rewrite the record of the state of the world, because every new record contains a cryptographic proof of the integrity of previous records. Also, this property is symmetric: there is no one person who is "hosting" the data and has full access to it by virtue of having physical possession of the bits. Even if you have physical possession of the bits of a blockchain, you can't rewrite them in any way that the other participants will accept.

Most real-world uses of blockchains (illegal dealings, adversarial relationship with the local nation-state, currency speculation & trading, gambling games) take advantage of this property. If you don't need it, you're almost always better off with an RDBMS, because you pay a heavy price in latency, transaction scalability, and data modeling for it.

Can't think of any business where you wouldn't trust your counterparties? That makes perfect sense, because people today generally do not do business with people they don't trust, because they _can 't_. IMHO most usage of blockchains will happen in _new_ markets doing _new_ things that people would've considered foolhardy before, because its central value proposition enabling transactions that would've been considered foolhardy before.

<comment><USER3> Generally enforcement has really high legal costs. My partners small business was ripped of by about $10k in product by a Canadian company. There is basically no recourse that wouldn't cost more.

If a "60 day net" contract could be encoded on chain, and automatically execute as the products are sold, that would have reduced the risks and enforcement costs.

<comment><USER4> Dispute resolution will still be just as difficult.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but if the manufacturers net their share as soon as the item is sold at a store, we reduce the opportunity for fraud.

This won't work for everything, but it could work well for high mark up items that rely on brand authenticity or warranties.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: [https://dcicblog.umd.edu/wp- content/uploads/sites/13/2017/06...](https://dcicblog.umd.edu/wp- content/uploads/sites/13/2017/06/Smith.pdf)</comment>


Mobile payments have barely caught on in the US, despite the rise of smartphones - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/why-mobile-payments-have-barely-caught-on-in-the-us.html <comment><USER2> The payment method used by Wechat/Alipay is a completely different animal than the NFC/VAS contactless method used by the US systems.

I'm not sure it's fair to compare acceptance rates on apples vs oranges.</comment>


587 SAAS Users, Tech Partner Just Got a Job at Amazon. Help - <AUTHOR>

Hey Everyone, I started clientbiller.com a couple years ago because its something I wanted/needed for my other business.
Now, after seeing the growth in payments and having 587 users, I want to continue growing it and re-launch in the US & China. I need the assistance of a tech co-founder (php/mysql) as my previous tech partner just landed a job at Amazon. I have a front-end dev & marketing background.
I've had multiple previous successes (started and sold 3 companies in the past).
Feel free to look at my linkedin on those details: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=7007692
If your interested, feel free to reach out: firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Looks like a cool service, but mehh...

I would not want to code in PHP in the year 2014.

Are you in the "bingo card creator" space where the product is complete and just needs maintenance or is there multiple technical things that are on the feature-list?

<comment><AUTHOR> Previous dev did mention he would of wanted to re-write site in RoR...

product is complete and just needs maintenance or is there multiple technical things that are on the feature-list?... ...Right On. Yes, core created and usable (I use it pretty regularly).</comment></comment>


Will Brexit break Emerging Markets' back? - <AUTHOR> https://governmentsandmarkets.com/will-brexit-break-ems-back-82b466e093be#.56c7og87g <comment><USER3> _Grumpy old people_

I've noticed a fairly consistent and unmistakable thread of ageism in the brexit articles and discussions I've seen. It would be helpful if the denigration of classes of people weren't a part of the debate.

</comment><comment><USER4> When thinking about these kind of problems I really wished we had some good -and publicly available- tools for simulating the world. While the predictions made by such a model would be most certainly wrong in most cases (the system is just too complex to be simulated reliably), it would allow us to narrow down the number of possible outcomes of a given political situation.

This would make an interesting business case for a startup, and I can imagine that hedge funds and investors are already using such tools to their advantage, it would be hugely beneficial to have something like that for the general public to use though.

<comment><USER5> We have one something even better and, in particular, more universal, trustworthy, and verifiable: prediction markets.

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

Unfortunately, they are generally illegal in the US.

<comment><USER6> In case of Brexit they didn't work at all. See e.g. [http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/06/polls-v...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/06/polls- versus-prediction-markets)

<comment><USER5> That's silly. Prediction markets still gave a ~15% change to "Leave" at their most pessimistic, and no one says the roulette wheel "didn't work" when black comes up three times in a row. The vote outcome was clearly a surprise to the prediction markets, to newspaper, to the pundits, and to the _real_ markets where people lost billions of dollars.

Prediction markets aren't magic, they aggregate views. If they say there's a 15% chance of something happening, by golly, sometimes it will happen. The point is (1) they are self-correcting and (2) they have a much better track record that polls. Not even the "market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" rule applies. With prediction markets, you know _exactly_ when and how the outcome will be settled.

<comment><USER7> That makes prediction markets non-falsifiable.

There's a simple fallacy here - _you can 't use a market mechanism to define the probability of the outcome of a one-off event like a major referendum._

All you have are hopes and fears about the probability, which are always - <USER2> definition - limited and subjective.

In fact you're simply quantifying opinions about opinions. That's one step removed from what polls do. Polls fail because of practical sampling errors (and sometimes because of political bias) - not because no one understands the theory of polling.

There's no way a prediction market mechanism can be self-correcting, because by the time you have real data the question is settled.

Some people may find this kind of thing useful. I'm not convinced it's any more than entertainment.

<comment><USER8> I'm not particularly interested in prediction markets but ...

> That makes prediction markets non-falsifiable.

Why ? We can just make a sufficiently big list of prevision which are estimated around 15% now and check in one year that around 15% of them happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With every area save England flatly stating that they would rather leave Britain than leave the EU, I think the consequences of this move are highly exaggerated.

First, there is a real possibility that Britiain will not exit the EU at all.

The referendum is actually non-binding in a legal sense. Parliament could vote to suspend it tomorrow. Another referendum could be held. The Privy Council could even intervene on its own authority.

Second, Britain has yet to invoke Article 50 of the EU charter, which would formally begin the separation process. Despite the insistent (and foolish) efforts of the French and German governments for Britain to invoke Article 50 immediately, they have not done so, and thus remain an EU member in good standing.

Third, there is a substantial body of evidence that a large portion of the "Leave" voters had no idea the consequences of their actions.

The areas that have gathered, or will have gathered by week's end, as many signatures as the original Leave petition include; Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and London. In short, almost all of the U.K., save rural and smaller cities in England proper.

Northern Ireland is even holding talks with the Republic of Ireland to unite the island. Protest Northern Ireland frantically scrambling to join the Catholic Republic of Ireland, and receiving a tepid response, is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime.

The nation of Britain is disintegrating into its constituent parts.

Great Britain may never leave because there simply may not be a Great Britain any more.

Finally, Britain's elite are already seeking to mitigate the effects of the referendum. Even if they hold their country together successfully, Britain will almost certainly seek a treaty to retain their economic rights while gaining some control over their immigration process.

Let's not start burning the furniture yet. Britain was independent for most of the post-War period.

The current panic may be merely the flip side of irrational exuberance.

<comment><USER10> Small problem: the Europeans have had enough of Britains's perfidious ways and are not inclined to being patient. This pandoras box is therefore open for business and cannot easily be be rammed shut again.

<comment><USER11> Would the EU not love to have the UK do a u-turn, showing the other potential EU leavers that leaving looks better than the reality?

<comment><USER10> Yes but there are powerful forces within Europe that always felt Britain was a ball and chain, especially in the latin bloc led by France. This is not going to be simple as they will insist that a rubicon has been crossed. Recall that Charles de Gaulle himself was against British involvement in continental Europe, considering it a trojan horse. Just recently and for a whole decade, for example, Britain was vocally pro Turkish accession to the EU, against Italy and France. Ironically the same issue was used by the Brexit campaign, feeding Britain's image as an opportunistic Judas. Distrust of Britain runs deep in the southern bloc.

As such, with all these forces, this vote genuinely reshuffles the deck, _in Europe itself_ , even if Britain now backtracks.

<comment><USER9> None of which matters a whit if Britain does not invoke Article 50.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article seems a bit of a muddle. He's talking about Emerging Markets. I'm not sure what breaking their backs is supposed to mean. He mentions the Nigerian Naria which fell last week when the government stopped pegging it and has nothing to do with Brexit. He figures commodities will go lower which I guess is likely. He kind of ignores Brexit leading to problems with European banks and a possible Grexit which seems much more of a problem.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Grumpy old people."

Naive young people.

</comment><comment><USER14> Again that furiating table with the 18-24 aged persons voting for remain. Maybe also include the percentage to actually vote for those age group. 37% came to vote for 18-24y, vs 70% and up for 35y and up.

<comment><USER15> Apparently your stats for turnout are wrong, ref: [http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/06/how- di...](http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/06/how-did- different-demographic-groups-vote-eu-referendum)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How can you know the age group of a secret vote? Statistics only get you so far that they showed Remain leading.

"I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself"

<comment><USER15> It's done using phone polls and interviews after the vote. You don't know if people are being truthful, but there's not a lot of reason to think that people would lie about how they voted shortly afterwards, at least not a statistically significant number of them.

<comment><USER16> The fingerpointing going on is a good enough reason to obfuscate the data imo. Also, if it is used as a basis of assumptions it should have at least mention how the data was collected on what sample size. It is very easy to make a bias error.

People might not be interested in the details, or it can be interpreted as sloppy journalism. Either way I'm not convinced (hence the reference to Remain).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html) will give an idea

Germany = $285,200,000,000 and United Kingdom = -$123,500,000,000

<comment><USER18> Would you elaborate on how you'll think these numbers play out after Brexit?

Isn't it a chicken-and-egg-problem and we can't just say: because Germany is producing and Britain is consuming, the latter will be worse off by Brexit?

For many developed economies General Trade Agreements are the last straw of growth. And with Brexit both sides of the Channel loose.

And another spin: A consumerist economy (US, UK) seems to have its own benefits, in that it can much easier survive on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm really, really sorry to be that guy, and sorry to be somewhat off-topic but; "We are unlikely to see a full scale collapse, but uncertainty has definately increased and it is difficult to see how the genie will be put back in the bottle."

Definitely. It's definitely.

<comment><USER20> It's not the only one. We eke out, and don't eek out.

<comment><USER21> Well, unless we see a mouse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> EM = Emerging Markets

Best bet according to the article is on Middle Eastern markets

<comment><USER23> Thank you, I was thinking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Em)

<comment><USER24> I was wondering why fonts were going to be affected:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_(typography)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em_\(typography\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Leave is mostly the elder, remain is mostly the younger. And the younger will, albeit they voted remain, confront the effects for longer than the elder. Thus they have the right to react. Don't boil everything to denigration and human rights, if everybody hides behind the shield of some identity no discussion will happen. Keep your american _-isms_ to yourselves, people need to debate, discuss and even fight and define the future of their people.

I don't like watching the american politically-correctism and identity crises being exported overseas. This sort of protectism creates a deaf and blind democracy that is also very prone to logical errors in its thinking and decision making, and renders actual social problems irresolvable.

<comment><USER26> > _Keep your american -isms to yourselves_

There seems to me something profoundly contradictory about this slur, but in any case it's a nasty breach of civility and you can't post like that here.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981009) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER25> What I refer to is a certain, observable feature of the american culture. The only breach of civility here is you calling me uncivil. But this sort of moderation is something I've seen often on the HN, so there's nothing to say.

<comment><USER26> You didn't just 'refer' to an 'observable'. You combined three pejoratives in as many words ('your american isms') with a boorish gesture ('keep your X to yourselves').

It's common for people to behave rudely like this and, when asked not to, pretend they were merely stating neutral facts. Perhaps you genuinely think so; in that case the answer is to develop a more accurate sense of what the HN guidelines mean when they talk about being civil. If you continue to break them as you repeatedly have in the past, we're going to conclude that you don't want to use HN as intended and ban your account.

It's not hard to learn what the standard here is and keep to it. Many users have had to do so (myself included). The only question is whether one wants to.

<comment><USER25> I am sorry, I disagree. I don't see any pejoratives there, and in fact you're the one using them: nasty and boorish are the words you used and you implied that I'm uneducated, uncivil, and a liar. Do whatever you want with my account.

<comment><USER26> I did use the words 'nasty' and 'boorish' and probably could have avoided them. I certainly did not mean to imply anything about you personally, nor do I think those things.

Why did I call those three words pejoratives? Because that's how they work in the context where you used them: "isms" is obviously a pejorative, "American" bound to it becomes a national slight, and "your" a personal one. Perhaps you didn't intend them that way, but I assure you that for many readers they would acquire that connotation en route.

I don't have any desire to ban you, but I do wish you'd take on good faith what I'm trying to explain about how HN conversations are supposed to operate. It all comes from long hard experience trying to prevent an internet forum from degenerating. You clearly have some interesting things to say, so if you'd join us in the work of erring on the side of civility, HN would be better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just more evidence America is still the best place to invest

</comment><comment><USER28> Independece for Britain is a good thing. People didn't like the rigged trade agreement. It wasn't benefiting them. It was benefiting the elite in London. Cheap jobs may be good for the rich, but not for the working folk.

Labor and Conservatives just didn't take the concerns of the majority seriously.

<comment><USER29> The UK currently has a great spot in the EU. It keeps it's own currency (a wise choice), it is not part of Schengen, it's fees are small for it's economy (e.g. Italy pays more), and all sorts of other exceptions.

The next deal will not be as good. In fact it will be considerable worse. As the UK does not have any leverage.

The EU can sort of manage without the UK.

But the UK outside the EEA would be much, much poorer.

The UK was on route to become Europe's biggest economy. But decided to follow a bunch of charismatic populists instead.

<comment><USER30> "a bunch of charismatic populists"... you mean 52% of the voting electorate? populist - a thinly veiled swipe at a group of people perceived to be less intelligent and too stupid to know what's good for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Trade wars/tariffs go unmentioned, yet they are probably the most important single issue for emerging markets. To the extent that brexit nurtures a reversal of global integration (and Donald Trump's "America first" platform portends the same risk), emerging markets will suffer tremendously. Wage competition first, and immigration second, are the most issues for those seeking reactionary Trump and Brexit solutions, and the target is squarely emerging markets. One needs only look at how the past 25 years of global integration has helped EM, to see the converse potential outcomes.

A related issue is capital flow restrictions, and these are arguably even easier to put into force. Brexit is a major defeat for liberal "anglo saxon" free market policies, and there are many in the world who do not buy into them, including in the EU itself. Current account deficit countries such as Turkey and South Africa are heavily exposed, as is the dollar. This last point makes it unclear that the dollar is the obvious long term safe haven. Indeed Friday's Yen price action shows that currency as being potentially the most obvious candidate for a big rally, along with gold. The latter is particularly well placed if the G7 central banks, in full panic mode, begin to implement large further slugs of QE or negative interest rate policies.</comment>


Massive Aircraft Carrier made of Lego, 200,000 bricks, 350LB - <AUTHOR> http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=126969

<comment><USER2> Pretty cool. Just wanted to mention that this is modeled after the Nimitz class, which are awesome nuke-powered beasts that are more like floating cities. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz_class_aircraft_carrier>

</comment><comment><USER3> Needs anti-aliasing.

</comment><comment><USER4> At 350 lb, it's more like a tiny aircraft carrier.</comment>


How Hacker News Completely Changed My Life - <AUTHOR> http://stoicjesterstudios.com/2012/08/how-to-use-hacker-news-to-completely-change-your-life/ <comment><USER4> As long as we're on the love boat: I've met at least three good friends here. Y'all have collectively pushed my career in a quite different direction than it was probably on when I started. I think I'd probably have ended up quitting ye olde day job and putting the BCC phase of my life in the "That was fun and I learned a lot, but time to get serious, what is next?" bucket. Then I would have done what everyone other than the Internet always suggested I do: get a job at a megacorp. I think I literally know the exact office I'd be working at in Tokyo. It is a nice office, and a nice megacorp, but it is still a megacorp.

I'd probably be a lot less happy doing that, because my current gig is pretty much everything I could ask for in a job. More importantly, the most consequential thing to ever happen to me was meeting my future wife. It is likely that I would have been in a soul-deadening crunch in Tokyo rather than at the BBQ where that happened.

So, thanks.

<comment><USER5> It would be interesting then to do a Hacker News meetup, at least in Toronto, and we can reminisce on the recent HN front page articles. How great would that be? Thanks for the inspiration patio11. +1. Any one here from Toronto?

<comment><USER4> The Tokyo meetups -- which take me about 3 hours to get to -- generally are some of the most fun I have all month. I strongly recommend starting something like that for your area if there isn't anything -- meeting people in the flesh is very worthwhile, too.

<comment><USER6> I was visiting Tokyo last February and ended up coming to the meetup, was a ton of fun! Really interesting mix of people

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a massive mis-attribution error and I worry people will learn the wrong lesson here.

The OP's story is:

1\. learned to program iOS (hard, completely under OP's control)

2\. wrote and published iOS app (hard, under OP's control)

3\. the app failed so wrote a blog post about his experience (easy although often neglected by programmers, under OP's control)

4\. HN picked up the story which led to interview (total crapshot, not under OP's control)

5\. a round of of interviews which led to job offer and "completely changed life" (hard, under OP's control)

I understand why claiming step 4 ("HN picking up the story") was responsible for "changed life" plays well on HN, but it's irrational.

The hard things that OP did and were under his control were: learning iOS programming, publishing iOS app, writing a blog post about it and doing well during an interview. Steps 1-3, 5 were necessary and responsible for his getting a better job.

Step 4 is the only one that wasn't under OP's control, involved pure luck and is not even necessary.

As an example, I get several interview inquiries every month but not because I post on HN (I do) or because occasionally what I wrote ended up on HN (it did) but because I have a website, github account and a portfolio of non-trivial projects.

Step 4 is not necessary because in this market a competent iOS programmer can pick and choose. The OP would be better off if he pro-actively applied for several iOS positions in Silicon Valley (of which there are plenty) and picked the best offer, instead of passively waiting and accepting the first offer.

I'm not saying that good things don't happen because of HN but in this particular case the lesson shouldn't be "write a blog post, hope it ends up on HN and then further hope someone will contact you with a job offer" but "learn a marketable skill (like iOS programming), produce a proof of your skill (write iOS application), market it a little bit (write a blog post about it) and then go on a job shopping spree (by applying for iOS jobs)".

<comment><USER8> I think the largest point the OP makes is that he wasn't intended to find a new job, but the HN community (mentality & philosophy) brought that opportunity to him. That's the key piece in #4, and the linchpin for the whole experience.

<comment><USER9> Yes. Not even "mentality & philosophy", he explains distinctly that his problem was communication and HN gave him auditory. Auditory that interested about his findings and problems. And even auditory that can solve part of his problems

(Excuse my runglish, I don't remember what I must write: "who" or "that" or "which")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This post really spoke to me - all my life, I'd lived in the Midwest - <USER2> in Minnesota (coincidentally enough) then in Illinois for college. In October last year (the beginning of my senior year in college) I received a nice, safe offer as a Software Engineer at Google and that was my plan: do the 'Google thing' and see how I felt two, three, or four years down the road.

Fast forward to May of this year, I saw a job posting here on HN for a YCS12 company that was looking for a summer intern. I sent them a short email, not knowing really what was going to happen - one thing led to another, and before I know it I'm flying out to San Francisco the day after I graduate to begin my internship!

I can honestly say that this summer has been the best summer of my life - I've learned more than I thought possible, worked more than I thought possible, and had more fun than I thought possible.

And that safe job offer from Google? Well, I'm not doing that anymore - I'm the first hire at a very promising YC startup that I'm in love with.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great to read things like this and gives us a reminder that there is a person behind everyone of these "Show HN" posts and every comment written (at least besides the few bots and spammers on HN). Love the advice on how if you "actually finish your side projects", you'll be well ahead of the pack - <USER3> true.

<comment><USER8> Another good take-away, though not directly mentioned in the post, is befriend HN users both in the real world and online.

<comment><USER12> Following this advice... If any other Minneapolis/St Paul based HN users are lurking out there and are interested in meeting up (or know of any similar events) then please reply here or email.

<comment><USER13> Between me, you, aaronbrethorst and azylman that's a pretty good MN expat in CA contingency already represented in this thread.

<comment><USER12> I wish! I meant people IN the Twin Cities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll jump on this too; thanks a lot for this post because one line really changed my outlook on something that I am working on:

"Everyone knows that the last 20% takes 80% of the effort."

I guess I'm outside of "everyone" because that line is really going to make a difference for me. :)

Reading HN has changed my life as well - college student in the Appalachians and I get so little exposure to startup culture in my business education. I can sit in class all day and feel uninspired about corporate strategy, but seeing so many bootstrapped ventures and learning about how to make it all work is what is driving me these days.

As cliche as it may be, I'm developing a real passion for the startup culture and some of the companies I spend all day reading about. Between the app on my iPhone and browsing online, reading HN articles (and perhaps more importantly, the comments) is contributing to the best hours of learning I get all day.

Six months ago, I didn't know the first thing about entrepreneurship, startups, or bootstrapping a venture. Now, I'll be Show HN'ing my first project within a few weeks' time. Thanks so much to everyone here.

<comment><USER15> I'd also say that the last 20% provides 80% of the learning. If you're always leaving projects unfinished then you don't really learn what works and what doesn't.

There's also a real learning experience when you make something public. Other peoples reactions are often (normally?) quite different to your own. That kind of feedback is really valuable, both good and bad. The bad because it provides an impartial view, and the good because it validates your views and encourages you to continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> thestoicjester, this is one of the funniest blog posts I've ever read. This line is especially good:

"A 'co-founder of a mobile development startup in SF' was a humorous creature I'd read all about on the internet — I may as well have been replying to a hobbit."

What's the name of the company you're working at now?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://daemoniclabs.com/>

<comment><USER17> Just a note on the site, for an app website it doesn't look great on an iPhone currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sounds like it could be me, a year from now. I'm literally in the middle of an interview* with a SF startup that came about because they read my blog post (via Hacker News) about failing at my own startup.

HN is undeniably awesome.

(*One interviewer was pushed forward an hour, the others are in 15 minutes...)

</comment><comment><USER19> This resonates with me. HN has definitely altered how I see the startup culture.

I started out in Michigan writing 3D games (by hand, no hardware acceleration!), and after my wife and I took a vacation out to northern California I just had to live there. This was during the dotcom days of 1999, and it took less than a week to get multiple job offers. So we packed up our stuff and did a cross country move. It was awesome, and exciting, and the future was wide open.

However, like the author of this piece, I wasn't really prepared with how lonely it felt. Sure, there was a lot of innovative tech happening, but sometimes at the end of the day I just wanted to have a few beers with some good friends. So, I moved away from the SF Bay area up to Portland, Oregon, where I knew several friends from college, and have been here ever since.

Lately I've got the itch to return to California. Partly for the opportunities, partly for the sunshine (it's freakin' dark and depressing during Portland winters), and partly due to HN rekindling my love of startups. Now that I'm a bit older I think I'd have a better go of it. Anyone have a cool project that needs a iOS/Python/C++ tech director?

</comment><comment><USER20> _moving across the country to a state I'd never been to and a city in which I knew nobody_

As someone who did just this, but in kinda the opposite direction: from the East Coast to Minneapolis, I hope it works out for you as well as it has for me. I basically rebuilt myself here. I love MN!

<comment><USER21> Me too! CT to Boston, admittedly not as big a move but where I lived was practically Nowhere, USA. There's so much energy here and Boston has exceeded all my expectations. I'm now working at my third startup here _.

_ Since January. Laid off from the first along with most people there, and the second one shut down literally the week I started working. But hey, technology moves fast and so do startups. They have to. I'm actually grateful since it's given me three entirely different viewpoints into how startups work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Related to how Hacker News changes lives: _How a simple comment on Hacker News motivated me to resign from my comfortable well paying job and launch my own startup_ [http://blog.freshdesk.com/the-freshdesk-story-how-a- simple-c...](http://blog.freshdesk.com/the-freshdesk-story-how-a-simple- comment-on-h-0/)

The rest of our discussion on Hacker News/startup lessons here: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4426093> (An interesting take on addressing the pain points of customers).

</comment><comment><USER22> >" _In addition to my daytime job, programming had also crept into my nights and weekends as I took up the hobby of iOS development. The interesting thing about this hobby is that not only did it help use up my spare time, it also helped use up my spare dreams. I didn't have to aspire to a bigger job in a bigger city, because at any moment one of my apps was going to hit it big and then everyone would be working for me._ "

This passage really resonates with me. The concept of dreams as a resource is a useful one and I'd never thought of it. When I joined HN, I was in a similar kind of situation. Running an EFL supplementary school in Taiwan, I had a sense of accomplishment, some prestige and likely a solidly growing income for as long as I chose to stick with it. But not only did it consume 60-70 hours a week of my time, it also consumed my dreams. It would have been really easy to stay there and not think much about doing anything more.

What changed my direction was PG essays, some of which I read on reddit and some of which I read here. Since I was so heavily invested in my business in Taiwan and nearly all of my best friends were there, it took me time to finally take the plunge, end that chapter of my life and move into the tech world. It hasn't been very easy, as some of you may have seen me post on here before, but it is invigorating. The three tasks of hunting for work, working and upgrading my work skills are using up my time, but not my dreams.

</comment><comment><USER23> HN hasn't changed my life -- yet? -- but it has taught me that a lot of my assumptions about new technology startups were wrong. I'd always assumed "networking" was only something a specific type of person could do, that if you wanted to _do_ anything you'd have to be really great at selling yourself or get lots of media attention.

Through my usage of HN I've learned that this really isn't the case, sure being able to sell yourself is a useful skill but if you can build great things and put your work out there you can achieve a lot without needing to focus on _people_. A good example I think is Gumroad founder Sahil (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sahillavingia>), he's very talented, he made cool stuff and people took notice and now he's doing really cool things.

HN has made me confident that if I ever build anything great that I won't need to spend 12 hours a day cold calling every Techcrunch writer hoping that they post nice words about me, I can let my work speak for me.

Now I just need to build something cool :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Congratulations on getting a job, I really wish you all the best.

It's finally good to see someone who writes something positive about HN. Yes, there might be a lot of negativity around and the community might have lost the quality that many of you complain about. However, it's good to know there are still elements of this community that provide positive outcomes to those associated to it.

</comment><comment><USER25> If not for an HN "Who's hiring" post I'd probably still have my safe job writing internal apps for an insurance company in Albuquerque; instead I'm back living in beautiful San Diego (my favorite city) and I get to see the ocean every day on my drive to my current awesome job. So add me to the list of people for whom HN changed their life. :)

<comment><USER26> Glad you changed your life and are happy with it... What was special about post that captured your attention?

<comment><USER25> It was that it was in San Diego doing Java at a company doing cutting edge wireless stuff with their own hardware. San Diego + Java + doing something new == whoohoo! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> HN changed my life too! I went from soul-crushing job writing patents for Amazon to ruby hacker in NYC. [1] I'm a self-taught coder hacking RoR for Pivotal Labs. I used to hate my job, now I can't wait to go to work!

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3754917>

</comment><comment><USER28> I quit my job as a biologist, became a freelancer, working for clients found on HN, and was eventually hired full-time by one of those clients, who I had previously interviewed for a side project that I was working on so I could show Hacker News.

So basically, Hacker News is pretty awesome, regardless of whatever people say.

</comment><comment><USER29> This article gives me hope. I've been at a megacorp soul sucking job (I realize not all are soul crushing) for the past three years after my comp. sci. degree.

I'm going to make the jump as soon as possible. HN has really been both an inspiration and a great place for sage advice.

</comment><comment><USER30> Great post and great story. I've lived in the Twin Cities for 10 years now and we got a pretty good set of tech companies running around this area. I'm glad you were able to find a good home out in San Francisco man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, absolutely there is a great tech scene in the TC area. I tried to paint MN and my former employer in as good of a light as I could while concurrently throwing them under the bus and using them as the bad guy in the story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> OP: I'm curious to know whether we've ever crossed paths. It looks like we're about the same age (assuming the age you listed on some game website I just found is accurate).

I was born and raised in Minneapolis, graduated from the U of MN with a Computer Science degree in 2003, and pulled up stakes to move to Seattle as soon as I could.

If you were ever in debate, speech, or quiz bowl in high school between 1997 and 2000, or if you attended the U of MN between 1998 and 2003, I'm guessing we did at some point.

In any case, congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm, I don't think so. I did a pretty good job of avoiding... everyone during that period of my life. It's only in recent years that I've realized that there are better ways to operate than being a complete hermit-weirdo.

<comment><USER31> Well, better now than never :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I guess what I love so much about HN is the generally high amount of content that is relevant to me, which seems to be hard to find elsewhere on the vast expanses of the internet. I can read articles from HN all night, but it doesn't feel like a waste of time. 99% of the time I'll have learned quite a lot by the end of the night.

<comment><USER33> Agreed about the relevant content. I have no interest in joining a startup, but I spend more time on HN than any other site. Discussions on CSS, Rails, cryptography and dozens of other interesting subjects are always interesting and keep me learning something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hacker News has provided me a much-needed view into the business tech world that it is nearly impossible to get elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think the best reminder here is that it's tempting to "Show HN" your project's App Store homepage. But like his _Bullseye Factory_ submission, you're going to get a couple comments at best.

Write _about_ your hacking experiences, what you learned, and how others can avoid your mistakes and you'll have much more luck.

</comment><comment><USER36> I got a job through one of the monthly job posting threads and getting the job has completely changed my life, however I interviewed and impressed and got the job myself. Without hacker news, I probably would never have heard about the job, but everything after that point was under my control and my own doing.

</comment><comment><USER13> From another MN to SF transplant with a similar story, congrats on making the leap. :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Thank deus for readability.com.

<comment><USER38> Yes, indeed. Dark backgrounds aren't good on your eyes, when everything else has a light background. Besides that, great post! (The article by Jake.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> HN has changed my life, too. Ironically, moving from a pre-seed stage startup (where I was more of an entrepreneur in residence) to one of the biggest tech companies out there.

More importantly, it is continuing to push me on my own projects.

</comment><comment><USER40> this is awesome! please do write more about your new life in san francisco.

</comment><comment><USER41> Add me to the list as well. This worked:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2600264>

(not at airbnb, but with another awesome YC startup in sunny CA and loving it)

</comment><comment><USER42> I think everyone should live on the West Coast (ideally SF) or the East Coast (ideally near NYC) for a while in their life. Or both, like I did.

<comment><USER9> Is it really so?

In Moscow a humorous proverb exists: "There is no life outside MKAD(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Ring_Road)>

When I read PG (and others) about "there is no opportunity for [startups ... interesting productive life] except SF" - I think it's the same. Not true

<comment><USER43> I think this is a good point. Both are about equally true. Around half of Russian economy lives in Moscow region, formally or informally. About half of the world's startup ecosystem is in North California. Everyone else just makes do with what remains, or moves.

<comment><USER9> I remember from "Founders at work" something like: "West Coast is the land of dreamers" and something about how it totally opposite with Boston and NYC (I don't remember who said this)

And I suppose that this is possible.

But: There is "life outside MKAD"

Even with: "Around half of Russian economy lives in Moscow region, formally or informally" - I remember that 75% of all money in Moscow

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thanks, I found this post inspiring and as a web developer living in a Minneapolis suburb in a bit of a rut, it really hits close to home.

</comment><comment><USER45> The first advice you give is a good reminder for people like me who have tons of unfinished projects.

</comment><comment><USER46> Minneapolis isn't exactly nowhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. But the suburb I was living in was pretty close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love this story. I hope I can get similar success from my experiences here.

</comment><comment><USER48> HN inspired my move to the Bay Area too. Thanks for sharing your story.

</comment><comment><USER49> Internal Server Error :(

<comment><USER8> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stoicje...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:stoicjesterstudios.com/2012/08/how- to-use-hacker-news-to-completely-change-your-life/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Very interesting, good luck with your new job.

</comment><comment><USER51> I actually like Minnesota and really enjoy the seasons there-- the winter's not _that_ bad-- but I'm going to chime in with a +1 for Hacker News. The quality, for an internet community of this size, is unparalleled. That doesn't mean there aren't a few useless posts here and there (shit, I've probably written a couple of those) but the overall quality remains high... and I haven't seen any evidence for a drop.

One thing I really like about the HN-sphere is the optimism. I'm naturally a cynical, dark person, as opposed to the Silicon Valley optimism and positive- sum outlook I see here. Neither is superior; both perspectives are needed. Too much optimism and you make bad choices (hence the engineers joining pre- funding startups for 1% equity) but too much pessimism and you lose your courage. It's best to have a splash of each.

It's refreshing coming to a place where people have faith in the ability for smart people to take back the world. Looking at recent improvements in compensation and autonomy for solid engineers, that might actually happen. There are a lot of bad startups too, but it's the good startups that are driving that.

</comment><comment><USER52> How Hacker News Completely Crashed My Webserver</comment>


Google Voice for iPhone released - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/google-voice-for-iphone.html

<comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1911134>

(Which happens _every_ time with Google postings because they course post everything.)</comment>


Math Can Predict Insurgent Attacks, Physicist Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/07/31/138639711/math-can-predict-insurgent-attacks-physicist-says

<comment><USER2> This kind of models can't _predict_ when the attack will happened. They are only useful to _estimate_ the frequency of the attacks. (I din't check the original paper, so perhaps the model is not even good for that.)

For example, it is possible to predict the eclipses with a very high precision (the exact day, hour, ...), years before it happens.

But it is impossible to predict when or where will be the hurricanes of the next month. It is possible to get an estimation of the number of the hurricanes in a region, but impossible to get the exact number or dates.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was initially concerned that the release of the model would diminish its efficacy but it seems the authors have already taken this possibility into consideration.

From the conclusion of the actual paper:

"One might argue that analyses of this kind are useless once publicly known, because they can be invalidated by insurgents' free will. However, we believe this will not happen for the same reason that all commuters know that a traffic jam will appear every day at rush hour on a certain route, yet many still end up joining it. External constraints of working hours, school schedules, and finite numbers of direct roads mean that such predictability is hard to avoid. Similarly, the spontaneity of fatal attacks by an insurgency is probably constrained by many factors, including the availability of troop convoys, explosive materials, and sympathy within the local population."

</comment><comment><USER4> Ancient literature can predict floods, lumberjack says.

My point is, I'm skeptical of a physicists' insight into the psychology of insurgents that would give this model any legitimacy in terms of making accurate future predictions, rather than just modeling past data. The former requires a lot more faith.

</comment><comment><USER5> This model predicts when an insurgent attack may occur. I wonder if there is anything similar that could be used to predict where with enough precision to be useful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sort of reminds me of Asimov's Psycohistory

<comment><USER6> Except Asimov himself saw issues with it as the story progressed and created the Mule and Daneel to explore obviously flaws in this type of model.

I agree with Asimov additions in the last books of that series ("The foundation series" for those that haven't read it). Its a nice idea, it may even work to some degree, but it cant handle black swan events and hence isn't something you wouldn't want to rely on it the long term. Maybe something to use as an extra guide for caution than an actual oracle.</comment></comment>


Machine Learning in a Year - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/learning-new-stuff/machine-learning-in-a-year-cdb0b0ebd29c <comment><USER2> I've been doing the Coursera ML course the past few weeks(started on the 22th of August). I can only give it my highest recommendation, it really is a great course. I did computer science in university(2.5 years) and have a decent grasp of calculus and linear algebra. I've also been programming for 9 or so years. I've found the course to be surprisingly simple and intuitive, but this probably varies with how comfortable you are with the math in the course.

<comment><USER3> >Coursera ML course the past few weeks(started on the 22th of August). I can only give it my highest recommendation.

I'm taking the edX series of courses on Machine Learning with Apache Spark. It is a pretty good class and covers linear algebra and the basic ETL workflow, plus selection of models, model parameters tweaking parameters etc., study cases involving user ad clicks prediction and PCA analysis of neural synapse data of jellyfishes.

However, my biggest fear is that re-learning different matrix manipulations, walk-through of logistics regression, PCA and SVM will be similar to learning Spanish in high school without immersion, learning guitar scales without improvising with it, learning mappings of different Madden key-combo's; I remember learning all of these mathematical syntactical operations in high school, and have an eerie feeling of once grasping these concepts concretely once and yet only knowing it vaguely. It is nice to re-learn these things, like refreshing myself with a rolodex of Spanish verb conjugation, only to go back to the CRUD work I deal with on a daily basis and fade back to oblivion.

Not sure about the Coursera class, the structure of the edX courses are presented in Python Juypter notebooks where you fill in the code snippets. It is fun and addictive to solve each exercise as a mini-puzzle; but not sure how much it'll stick vs. if one had to take an concrete problem and take its pieces and puzzles from start to finish, without the hands-holding.

I think perhaps Cousera courses have "capstone" projects - curious if anyone have had experience doing one? In lieu of one on the edX course, I think I plan to grok some papers with some large genomic dataset and/or financial time-series and try to replicate their result.

<comment><USER2> Yeah this is definitely a fear of mine, it does feel like you can get through the course and mostly understand the concept without getting the tools to fully apply the learnings. Like drothlis points out the Coursera course it very hand-holdey too. For the exercises you are given a set of Matlab/Octave files and your objective is to fill in a few of them with the correct implementation of specific steps. It doesn't feel like you ever get to perform the full task, I plan to redo some of the exercises with Python after I finishes the course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a different question: is it worth it?

I know enough about machine learning (and scikit-learn) to make simple models with production deployments. The results are pretty good, but they come almost exclusively through trial and error—testing different algorithms and approaches until something works.

Unfortunately, I really don't understand the underlying theory. Every time I start diving into it, I realize it'll probably take a huge amount of time to understand (particularly because I'll likely have to do an intensive refresher on linear algebra and multivariable calculus).

How dangerous is it to be practicing machine learning without deeply understanding the theory? Is it worth the substantial time investment?

<comment><USER5> Not dangerous, in my experience. It doesn't take deep theoretical knowledge to provide value (i.e. value to a customer or to a business) through machine learning. Assuming here that one knows how to cross validate, check for overfitting, etc., and not shoot themselves in the foot.

EDIT: Note that it's still EXCEPTIONALLY difficult to provide true, lasting value to a given organization with this stuff and takes years of experience (note I didn't mention deep knowledge and experience with the latest techniques aboard the hype train).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The part about the Coursera course's steep learning curve feels so familiar. I'm doing the course as well, but it's pretty tough for me. I suck at maths and I don't know Octave or Python. It's a very good course though, I still try to watch some lessons every week, but I'm way behind schedule.

I'm impressed by the author's ability to recognize his own failure in completing a course, because for me it often just keeps dragging on while I still think "some day I will finish it". I can't accept the fact that I just failed it. Sometimes I wish I was still in university, being able to dedicate 40 hours per week to just learning this kind of stuff and having teachers around.

<comment><USER7> It is very hard to complete a course without having the prerequisites. If you took some courses in math and Python you would probably be able to pass it with much more ease.

<comment><USER8> Where can I take a math course for the laymen?

<comment><USER9> For Calculus check Coursera - the Ohio State course if you really don't know absolutelly anything, then do the Penn State course(s) Calculus in a Single Variable

For Linear Algebra check Gilbert Strang's course on MIT OCW

For Probability/Statistics either John Tsitsiklis' course on MIT OCW (or even better on edX when it re-runs) or Harvard's Statistics 110: Probability course on youtube

The level of multivar calculus you'll need is really minimal, just google these terms "partial derivative", "total derivative", "differentials and integrals commute" ("Symmetry of second derivatives", "Fubini's theorem") or take the vector calculus course from MIT OCW

<comment><USER7> Indeed you don't need to know much vector calculus for machine learning. Stokes theorem and the like are mainly relevant for physics, but the Jacobian and Hessian are good to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Machine learning is an interesting case, in that the gap between theory and praxis is quite wide.

You can basically create, run and evaluate a model within 10 minutes (e.g. with scikit-learn or Tensorflow). It would even be an acceptable model that might solve your company's problem.

But you have to plan in a few years of deliberate practice to work through statistical learning theory and its prerequisites to get an overview and to be able contribute to the scientific or open source efforts in that field.

<comment><USER11> And in my experience the opposite applies as well. Having a PhD in a field providing the necessary background in theory doesn't necessarily imply the skills and experience required to produce useful models.

<comment><USER10> In your experience, what personal characteristics, educational background or personal trait did successful individuals have?

<comment><USER11> That's a really good question. The best people I've seen so far have had a willingness to rigorously align their models with reality, plus the knowledge and/or experience to know what to check. Verifying assumptions, picking evaluation metrics appropriate for the problem, checking for model interpretability, checking that model decisions are sane, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I see everyone talking about Andrew Ng's ML course and having some difficulty with octave. Why is no one trying the new ML with Python series by UW on Coursera? It seems pretty well structured.

<comment><USER2> Honestly Octave/Matlab isn't a problem I've found. If you are vaguely familiar with any programming languages it shouldn't be a problem. To me Matlab is just another tool to express my thoughts just like any other programming language. Sure it as has some things to learn, but it's not like it's a whole new paradigm or anything. Personally I struggled more with getting the linear algebra right than the syntax of Matlab

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey, I'm the author of this article. Happy to answer questions if anybody have any.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "It's possible to get a good machine learning teacher for around 50 USD per > hour"

How/where did you find a teacher like this? Finding a machine learning subject expert is already pretty difficult; knowing how to find one who is also a _good teacher_ would be a useful skill in its own right.

<comment><USER13> Sure, I asked at Reddit/r/machinelearning:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4kcrqp/loo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4kcrqp/looking_for_a_machine_learning_teachermentor/)

A couple of people contacted me, and the first one I gave a shot was actually a perfect fit. Maybe I was a bit lucky right there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> /r/machinelearning had a cool list of advanced courses the other day [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/51qhc8/phd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/51qhc8/phdlevel_courses/)

</comment><comment><USER15> The title makes a refreshing change from 'in 24 hours'!

<comment><USER16> You might like this: [http://norvig.com/21-days.html](http://norvig.com/21-days.html)

</comment></comment><comment> stable-point I've attempted to do Coursera's ML course, but I am not very good at learning from videos - I much prefer reading a text book and then attempting the problems in my own time.

Are there any recommended text books that one can read from start to finish in order to get a similar introduction to ML?

<comment><USER17> For the deep learning segment of ML I can recommend the still-being-written text [https://www.manning.com/books/grokking-deep- learning](https://www.manning.com/books/grokking-deep-learning).

Very low math requirement, exercises in Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Coursera ML course wasn't particularly hard

<comment><USER19> Here is the stanford cs229 course, which is a proper deal more in depth: [https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229](https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS229)

<comment><USER20> Yeah, when I did the Coursera course I supplemented it with the CS229 materials to get more of the theory behind everything, which worked great. If you want more math rather than less, it's the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I love the idea of using data to train a machine to recognize patterns and classify things. It's kind of a bummer though that the application is to help sales people do their job.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can anyone tell us how hands-on is Stanford's CS224D please? I found Andrew Ng's course too theoretical and not so practical.

Right now I'm almost halfway through Udacity's Intro to Data Science and it's great, so I'm deciding if I should take Udacity's Deep Learning or CS224D

</comment><comment><USER23> There was a great ML presentation at RustConf yesterday where a couple of guys broke down building a classifier using Python and Rust. It really demystified the process.

</comment><comment><USER24> good one!</comment>


Show HN: Awesome-code-reading - A curated list of high-quality codebases to read - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/CodeReaderMe/awesome-code-reading <comment><USER2> I like looking at much better code bases than my own when I am considering making something. It's weird, but it really motivates me.

Here are a handful of ones that I really like (all related to gaming):

DOOM:

[http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php](http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php) \- A great overview of it, mentioning the third game and its variants. Their whole github is pretty great. Just worth noting that many people consider Carmack's code to be some of the best in the industry. Really worth a read.

[https://github.com/fabiensanglard/Doom3-for- MacOSX-](https://github.com/fabiensanglard/Doom3-for-MacOSX-)

[https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM](https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM)

[https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3](https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3)

Monogame:

The Open Source implementation of Microsoft's XNA game dev framework. Really well loved C# code. And they keep it very clean.

[https://github.com/MonoGame/MonoGame](https://github.com/MonoGame/MonoGame)

Battle for Wesnoth:

Famous and well loved open source 4x game

[https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth](https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth)

Rogue-Likes:

There are a bunch of rogue-likes that are open source. It's a lovely look at the evolution of the genre and old school limitations. The genre as a whole is very open source friendly.

[http://rephial.org/](http://rephial.org/) \- Angband

[https://github.com/crawl/crawl](https://github.com/crawl/crawl) \- Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Lastly, here is a list of open source games. I would argue a huge chunk are not that nice. But there are gems in here. [https://github.com/leereilly/games](https://github.com/leereilly/games)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for sharing these games related projects. I noticed some of them are fairly large projects with tens of thousands lines of code, which is a major roadblock for many people to learn something from a large codebase. What do you look for in them? For example, do you just want to see how a particular component, like a rendering engine, is implemented? (just guessing, I know nothing about games)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking out my project. Here is some background information.

I contributed to a few open source projects over the years, but I only focused on solving the problem I had, either a bug I wanted to fix or a feature I wanted to add. Once my issue was resolved, I didn't really care much about the rest of the project. I found it was less of a learning opportunity.

That's why I created this project to really track down the codebases that you can read from start to finish and learn how they are designed and implemented. Currently it only lists a few codebases that I actually have read. They are mostly small-size projects. I'd like to hear advice on how to approach and learn from a large project.

<comment><USER3> You need one for Lua - the Lua sources themselves.

Also, LuaJIT.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, heard a lot of good things about the Lua source code. I just checked Lua source code quick. It looks well documented, and the size of the project is very manageable. Added to my todo list. Thanks for the recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this idea. I run a news letter[0] and we have a sections call `Code to read`. People love it.

That's being said, your repository probably end up on my next issue :).

\---

[0] [https://betterdev.link](https://betterdev.link)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I just subscribed to your newsletter. I especially like the "code to read" section. Checked several past issues and props to you for the consistency there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I curated a similar list of codebases from HN comments here

[https://medium.com/@012parth/what-source-code-is-worth- study...](https://medium.com/@012parth/what-source-code-is-worth- studying-8755f88f8de5)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. The list is solid. I have seen them being talked about many times in various threads here. Bookmarked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you go about reading codebases? I once fired up a debugger to go through ExpressJS and I learned some things from it. At the same time I wonder how I can do it efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER7> No Python?...seriously? I'm still learning so I don't have any clout to throw around concerning a good Python code-base. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER8> Check out peter norvig's python code

<comment><AUTHOR> For example [http://norvig.com/sudoku.html](http://norvig.com/sudoku.html)</comment></comment></comment>