Cancer 'vaccine' eliminates tumors in mice - <AUTHOR> https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/01/cancer-vaccine-eliminates-tumors-in-mice.html <comment><USER2> Writing this from a squeaky recliner set beside my wife's bed in the oncology department of a local research hospital.

Three weeks ago she had a radical hysterectomy and partial lymphadenectomy to treat stage IIIc ovarian cancer, and we're back to try to aid her in her recovery to prepare for chemotherapy. Chemo should start next week, but we are hoping to also participate in a clinical trial for atezolizumab. This is a drug that essentially blocks the cancer cell's immunosuppressive mechanism (expression of PD-L1) and allows the body's natural immune response to do work on the disease.

Suddenly inspired to learn more of the nitty gritty around how cancer and the associated therapies work, I'm shocked at how sophisticated the battle is. At least in this case, the unregulated reproduction of cells is just the beginning, and my lay mind can't grasp how simple mutation is responsible for it. If someone told me cancer was sentient with a will to thrive, I'm now much less inclined to laugh them off.

Therapies that arm our own immune syatem in the fight against this monster really seem like the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel.

<comment><USER3> Squeeze her hand for a stranger. Every person who has lost someone to cancer, and everyone who has survived it, and all of the people who watched that fight- all of us have her back and stand with her. She's fighting one of the hardest battles put to a person, and she has our respect and awe. I saw my friend at his weakest, and also when he was stronger than anyone I've ever known. It's been years but still, I'm crying. Cancer is personal. Once it touches you, and you see the enemy, you see how everyone is fighting _your_ enemy. I'm grateful to her. We'll be cheering when the bell rings for her- all of us.

Fuck cancer.

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for this heartfelt comment. The personification of cancer as an enemy didn't really click with me until my family was directly threatened by it. Reading through the drugs in her chemo cocktail, I come across bevacizumab. A little bit of googling and:

      A cancer needs a good blood supply to provide itself
      with food and oxygen and to remove waste products. When
      it has reached 1 to 2mm across, a tumour needs to grow
      its own blood vessels in order to continue to get
      bigger.

      Some cancer cells make a protein called vascular
      endothelial growth factor (VEGF). The VEGF protein
      attaches to receptors on cells that line the walls of
      blood vessels within the tumour. The cells are called
      endothelial cells. *This triggers the blood vessels to
      grow so the cancer can then grow.*

Wait...what?!?!

OK, what about this trial...atezzolblablblah.. What's it do?

      Programmed cell death protein 1 is a cell surface
      receptor that plays an important role in down-
      regulating the immune system and promoting self
      tolerance by suppressing T cell inflammatory activity.
      PD-1 is an immune checkpoint and guards against
      autoimmunity through a dual mechanism of promoting
      programmed cell death in   T-cells in lymph nodes while
      simultaneously reducing cell death in regulatory T
      cells.

      ...

      PD-L1, the ligand for PD1, is highly expressed in
      several cancers *and hence the role of PD1 in cancer
      immune evasion is well established*.

Seriously?

This thing isn't just some dumb pathogen floating around that just DoSes your body. It's digging tunnels and cutting phone lines. It has strategy.

<comment><USER4> > This thing isn't just some dumb pathogen floating around that just DoSes > your body. It's digging tunnels and cutting phone lines. It has strategy.

The cancers that haven't mutated to emit VEGF don't survive to grow and kill you.

It's natural selection, not intelligence.

<comment><USER2> Of course, but it doesn't feel that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to be the actual paper: [http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/426/eaan4488](http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/426/eaan4488)

I hope this translates well to humans and other mammals.

<comment><USER6> I see that authors are from Stanford University. Can someone from the US clarify if this will be in public domain/knowledge, or is it possible some drug company will patent this later on?

<comment><USER7> Conflating public domain with public knowledge risks a meaningful error. To patent something requires that you make it publicly knowable _, but this knowledge would not be usable by other companies.

_ well... you can write a patent that is so obfuscated that the public cannot learn from it...

<comment><USER8> >> well... you can write a patent that is so obfuscated that the public cannot learn from it...

In such case the patent office should reject your patent claim as patent laws usually require that the description of the invention being patented should be understandable to professionals of relevant domain, who should be able to replicate it based solely on that description.

<comment><USER9> I assune you can patent _part_ of an overall process (certainly that's the case in virtually all software patents), which could be a way to prevent others from replicating your process without explaining the whole thing, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We see similar effects when we irradiate tumors with X-rays, called 'abscopal effect'. Sometimes, when you irradiate a tumor, the unirradiated metastases also shrink. It is hypothesized that the immune response is triggered by the irradiation, and there are currently studies being done that try to stimulate the immune system even more.

What I wonder is why this is being discovered only now.

<comment><USER11> Yes but can it be done with minimal side effect?

Curing cancer with a bullet works too but the host suffers some adverse side effects.

<comment><USER10> I'd be careful calling the immune approach easy. Triggering a systemic immune response can also kill you very quickly.

<comment><USER12> Considering that chemotherapy is basically feeding poison to your organism in the hope that cancer cells (which are more active) will ingest it in higher quantity, I'd say that we have a pretty high tolerance threshold in term of side-effects while we are looking for an alternative.

<comment><USER13> As I understand it, most chemotherapy targets only dividing cells. In adult humans there are relatively few of these: cancer cells (which you want to kill), bone marrow (produces blood cells, so you have to monitor blood cell counts during chemo), and reproductive organs (produce gametes, so you may want to freeze sperm/eggs before chemo).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron Forgive me if this sounds ignorant, but would it not be considered a 'treatment' instead of a 'vaccine' if this is a treatment to the pre-existing condition?

<comment><USER14> It is indeed a cancer treatment that needs a tumor to work. The authors call their technique "in situ vaccination" because it stimulates antibodies against that specific cancer, which can work throughout the body to destroy metastases.

<comment> King-Aaron Cool, thanks for your reply (and those replies below also). I briefly skimmed the article however was sidetracked with work, and admittedly a lot went over my head anyway.

<comment><USER14> The article is really nicely written. I'd be happy to answer any questions about it.

<comment><USER15> As a regular man in the street, how excited should I be about this?

What's the chance of this developing into a regular treatment for most types of cancers, within, say, the next ten years?

<comment><USER16> as a former immunooncology scientist i'd say you should be guardedly optimistic. you should be aware that there probably won't be a generalized cancer cure, but i think we'll be starting to tackle a lot of different cancers in the next 2-3 years, just like we have been for the previous 3-5 years. beyond that, who knows.

immunotherapies don't work for 100% of people or 100% of cancers, and some cancers seem to grow resistant to some immunotherapies after multiple rounds of treatment.

there are a lot of limitations and strengths of immunotherapies that we don't even have a clue about yet-- by my totally made up estimation we have about 10% of the puzzle figured out, an additional 30% which we have partial or incorrect understandings of (but at least we realize it and are working to clarify things), and 60% remains unknown unknowns.

but remember: we don't need to understand quantum gravity or have much knowledge of how gravity works whatsoever to make an airplane that defies gravity at our will. it's the same way with immunotherapies, except replace "gravity" with "cancer." we can do an awful lot with what we know.

immunotherapies are incredible-- literally the data is often unbelievable at first glance.

<comment> invalid-access Thanks for the info!

For people outside this field of work like me (a software / cleantech guy), is there a concise spreadsheet to show the state-of-the-art?

i.e. Listing different types of cancers with the most promising immunotherapy treatments for each type, expected confidence and success rates, trials that one can enroll into?

It'd be a good first place to go to whenever we hear of someone who has 'cancer' \- that word is so generic that it's hard to figure out what our action item should be.

<comment><USER16> > is there a concise spreadsheet to show the state-of-the-art

doubtful imo. the state of the art is rapidly changing, and plenty of things are happening behind closed doors.

clinicaltrials.gov is your best bet but the expected success rates is not something anyone would willingly have as public information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm impressed at how precisely and locally targeted the therapy seems to be.

Many of the cancer immunotherapies I've heard about are systemic and risk overengaging a diffuse immune response against multiple tissues. This approach trains in-situ using strong signatures from individual tumors _first_ , before the antigens spread out across the body. Perhaps this localizes the cancer antigen signature better, so antibodies cause less collateral damage?

But CAR-T therapy should do something similar, though re-introduction of the antibodies is systemic (untargeted). Is the administration of this therapy directly into the tumor somehow essential to its specificity?

</comment><comment><USER18> I've passively followed this field as a layman observer for the past several years. I'd be interested in getting a lot more information on this work.

Generally I view these press releases with a skeptical eye, as the researchers have a need to "talk up" their work in order to keep the funding coming in.

On the other hand, Irving Weissman and the labs at Stanford are well respected and not known for spurious claims - often though, the problem with these therapies isn't so much potency as it is persistence, with recurrences being relatively common longer term (and many therapies simply don't translate from mice to humans well).

I'd be interested in having someone with in-depth knowledge of this field explain how the OX40 receptor work here differs from the CD47 work also being carried out at Stanford (besides being a different target protein), and existing CAR T therapies being tested elsewhere - although certainly this seems very encouraging in any case.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Obviously not as important as the main cause but I wonder if a similar thing could be used to treat warts. I had a wart once and successfully got rid of it by applying a trick I read on the internet which is putting a little square of duct tape on it. Surprisingly it really worked. The Wikipedia page used to list the method with dubious citations and said that one theory for why it worked was that the duct tape stimulated the immune system and caused it to attack the wart when it normally wouldn't.

<comment><USER19> Apparently they can now inject candida antigen into warts, which is supposed to trigger the immune system to attack them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> To the people working on this: please keep at it. You can do it!

</comment><comment><USER21> Please invest your billions in this instead of apps that open the door by voice command.

</comment><comment><USER22> As someone very far removed from the medical field, immunotherapy has always seemed to me to be the most logical programme of cancer treatment.

The animal immune system has evolved over hundreds of millions of years to target and destroy pathogens. Why use an indiscriminate chemical treatment to destroy cancer when our body already has a self defense system that operates with pinpoint accuracy, unparalleled target recognition capabilities, and ubiquity throughout the body. All these things make it a terrific candidate to destroy cancer.

Using it just makes so much sense.

<comment><USER23> > has a self defense system that operates with pinpoint accuracy, unparalleled > target recognition capabilities

This isn't always true. You body can start attacking itself if cells start misidentifying one another. This can lead to Lupis, MS, Ruhtomotide Arthritis and various other auto-immune diseases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The fact that it reached distant metastasis is incredible! Hope this will work well on human with few effects comparing to chemotherapy.

<comment><USER25> The activated T cells completed their training on the target/injected tumor, and then circulated through the body until they found their next target. Trained cancer ninjas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Another layman's question: As far as I understood, the T-cells recognize cancer cells and kill them because the two agents get injected directly into the cancer site, where the T-cells are surrounded by cancer cells. Doesn't this have a risk of the T-cells misjudging normal body cells as dangerous if they happen to have any of them around, or if the injection happens wherewhere else than the cancer site?

I'm thinking of (1) lower but high enough numbers of normal cells somewhere between the cancer cells, and (2) plain accidents like the needle pushed too far / not far enough.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow, this stops and reverses cancer in progress (in mice).

It's not just a preventative measure to eliminate the potential of possible cancers from emerging. The cancers the mice already have goes away.

<comment><USER28> If I'm understanding the article correctly, it actually can't be used as a strictly preventative measure. It relies on the fact that the subject already has a tumor and that the subject's immune system has made progress in targetting the tumor.

<comment><USER29> It also seems like that particular cancer mutation is permanently targeted, but yes it's not like this shot will be given to four year olds as a general prophylactic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminded me of this post on reddit[0] about injecting an ethanol gel into tumors (so it has nothing to do with modifying the immune system as in this tactic, just happens to have a similar means of application).

[0]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/6xsokg/duke_uni...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/6xsokg/duke_university_researchers_show_that_injecting/)

</comment><comment><USER31> i feel like i see a new 'cure' every week. How is this different aside from the pedigree?

<comment><USER32> It might seem like noise, but there is progress being made. My cousin's girlfriend takes a pill every day which has basically eliminated her lung cancer for all intents and purposes because it targets the specific mutation which is in the problem in her case.

Relatively new T-Cell therapies "train" the body's own immune system to recognize and delete cancer cells with much fewer negative effects than traditional treatments like radiation or chemotherapy.

Stories like this don't mean an end to cancer, but it's still very good news.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I hate these "XXX found to eliminate cancer in mice" news blurbs. I really want there to be an easy, effective, and inexpensive solution to one of the worst medical conditions imaginable; but they make these kind of announcements 3-4 times a year and 99/100 times they don't pan out because humans are not mice... and medicine is hard.

<comment><USER34> I'm curious as to why you think that lacking impact is due to dissimilarities between humans and test subjects. My best guess would have been that a lack of incentives for parties with the power to realize such advancements are overweighing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's hard to overstate the significance of this news.

</comment><comment><USER36> This sounds groundbreaking. Could someone with a medical background explain what this might mean?

<comment><USER37> We have cured cancer in mice many times. The trick is getting it formulated for humans in ways that are similarly effective and non-lethal. Put another way, signs of efficacy in mice is necessary, but not sufficient, of a human- applicable treatment.

<comment><USER38> As far as I know we aren't able to cure cancer in mice. Sure we can cure them of artificial cancers we give them in the lab, but actually curing spontaneous mouse cancer in outbred mouse populations (i.e. something like human cancer) is not something I have ever seen anyone try, let alone succeed.

<comment><USER39> Wouldn't that just mean we don't know whether it works or not?

<comment><USER38> Yes, but I was responding to the OP that claimed we know how to cure cancer in mice, when we have never tried. I suspect that we are actually a lot better at curing real cancer in people than in mice.

<comment><USER39> Fair point, I was just saying there's still a good chance it'll work (at least if the induced tumors are anything like 'natural' tumors.) Very interested in seeing how this goes, either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If they're at mice this is, at best, 10 years away from getting approved for humans.

Immuno-Oncology is the hot new shit, a huge wave of biotech startups is betting everything on it.

Celgene bought Juno for 11bn recently, Gilead bought Kite for 12bn.

Puts tech startups into perspective :) Tres commas...

<comment><USER41> >10 years away from getting approved for humans.

Isn't there a fast-track for experimental treatments for late stage cancer?

<comment><USER42> Not sure, but in the United States there may soon be easier access for any person with a terminal illness to get access to any experimental treatment if they so desire, even treatments that are in early stages with no human trials yet.

<comment><USER43> Yeah there's a lot of talk about "right to try" laws doing what you have described.

Personally? It had better be an airtight law accounting for the edge cases that could allow certain populations to be taken advantage of. For example, if anyone with a terminal illness can try an experimental drug, could a pharmaceutical company charge for said treatment? Or use the data from trying this treatment on the patient to further their own research?

I guess it just doesn't sit well with me since researchers in the US have had a history of taking advantage of certain populations in furthering progress (Tuskeegee, prison populations, mental institutions).

<comment><USER44> > Or use the data from trying this treatment on the patient to further their > own research?

What would be the problem with it, provided that the treatment is given for free and the patient has no other options?

<comment><USER43> My gut tells me that if the treatment is given for free (my original comment mentioned I was concerned if the company was charging for said treatments) then there's far less of a problem. However, there's still this incentive for a company to take advantage of this situation. Giving the treatment for free could technically be cheaper than providing the drug in a trial while also paying a participant.

<comment><USER42> So? Earlier human trials means faster to market drugs means competitive advantage.

<comment><USER43> Without being as vague, my main concern is that a pharmaceutical company could find value in business practices that put patients, even those with terminal illnesses, at an unacceptable risk of harm that the patient may not be cognizant of. If the company begins a campaign of fraudulent kickbacks to healthcare professionals we end up with a corrupt system in which we take advantage of patients and their families.

Medicine and medical research goes slowly and cautiously because we wish to protect people. To end this comment, I wish to go back to my statement that if this country goes in the direction of right to try, I sincerely hope lawmakers ensure protection of the patients that could benefit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The article is about this study:

"Eradication of spontaneous malignancy by local immunotherapy" [http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/426/eaan4488](http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/426/eaan4488)

> In situ vaccination with low doses of TLR ligands and anti-OX40 antibodies > can cure widespread cancers in preclinical models.

</comment><comment><USER46> 87 out of 90 mice cured after the first treatment... very impressive. Hope this works as well for humans.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Mice genetically engineered to spontaneously develop breast cancers in all 10 of their mammary pads also responded to the treatment."

Woha, I had no idea that we can genetically engineer animals to develop cancer. That is impressive, and a little scary...

</comment><comment><USER48> Hmmmm, wonder if they could inject the two drugs into a portion of the biopsy sample and re-implant that, assuming the biopsy cells are still viable at the time?

Hmmm, not sure keeping the biopsy cells viable until biopsy results arrive though would be practical.

</comment><comment><USER49> A layman's question: is it implied to be a universal cure, or for a specific type?

<comment><USER50> Both. It's targeted by injecting into one tumour, but many different tumours can be targetted. Once targetted, this tumour is eliminated along with all "copies" in body. If you had breast cancer and colon cancer you would need two injections.

<comment><USER17> Yes, but it's hard to say yet how much different the therapy process might be in humans. The treatment regimen could differ from mice significantly. (Human tumors may be buried a lot farther away from the surface than in a mouse, and thus, harder to dose accurately with a long needle.)

It's also not clear what toxicities were incurred with this therapy (in mice), which is a significant concern for the approval of any drug in humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I hope this will work out for humans as well. Wondering if we can have something for diabetes as well, it seems to be affecting a large portion of the population and growing rapidly.

<comment><USER52> we have a vaccine for that. it's called diet and exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This kind of reminds me of coley's toxins treatment a little, although a bit different. Really hoping this is successful and can be available in the near term.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is great. Does it mean we finally have cure for cancer? My granddad died because of that shit, and so did my uncle. Maybe there is still hope for me.

</comment><comment><USER55> Thanks for these researchers. They can save the world. Looking forward to the human-applicable treatment!

</comment><comment><USER56> Whenever you hear about amazing breakthroughs in medicine, look to see if it is an animal study. Those usually do not translate into results in humans.

Do not get your hopes up just yet.

<comment><USER57> > Those usually do not translate into results in humans.

Why would that be the case?

<comment><USER56> Because what works in animal studies doesn't often work in humans. This is why you hear about a novel cure for cancer in the news every month -- it's always animal studies.

If you want something to get your hopes up, look for stuff undergoing human studies. They're not new(s) -- in fact, it's stuff that is known and has shown promise for years -- but they're more likely to eventually work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I hope this is not like those vaporware revolutionary battery technologies we see time to time.

</comment><comment><USER59> Maybe we could find a way to transfer our consciousness into mice bodies ;-)

</comment><comment><USER60> Hey as long as Big Pharma can add their own useless ingredients and nonsense pretty packaging to extort as much money as they can out of patented cancer vaccine flavors, we'll never have to worry about those pesky natural cures that can't be patented and aren't as profitable

<comment><USER61> What natural cancer cure would you suggest? Maybe tumeric, or fasting, or acupuncture?

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm happy when solutions for cancer are found. A little less when the way is genetic engineering. From my ignorance I imagine the genetics like a big complex self programming software and the genetic engineering a way to change little variables in a wide enviroment. In other words: Butterlfy effect, you're welcome.

<comment><USER7> If applied to an individual person, how does this present any risks of ecological damage? Alternately, does this concentrate control of the food supply into the hands of people who might decide to starve some population out of greed/apathy/prejudice?

<comment><USER62> What are we talking about?

<comment><USER7> genetic engineering and the validity of people's objections to it.

<comment><USER62> I have no objections to genetic engineering but I think it is necessary to set limits. It's only my opinion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feedback Loop: How I Improved My Day-to-Day Productivity with Data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.parsely.com/post/57615621717/feedback-loop-how-i-improved-my-day-to-day

<comment><USER2> It's a free country and you are free to measure productivity however you want. That said, is this slow societal descent into short, insincere, 140 character coke-addict emails with expected instant response times a positive thing? I'm not trying to be nostalgic for the letter-writing days of yonder, but nothing says "I don't give a shit" like those emails you get. You know the ones. 18 people are CCd. People just attach whatever they think is relevant without reading what you're asking. People forward whatever to whomever. This guy to BCC. So and so will arrange. Have a look at my calendar and suggest a time. I attached version 2 Final Revised Signed Real Version Final Final. Blah blah blah.

People were productive long before death by instant email papercuts. It's something worth thinking about as you optimize on response time. I find many insta-responses were preventable with better planning in hindsight.

<comment><USER3> "Just as the database complex marks an "improved" image, the tracking/identifying complex marks an improved form of vision: a database- harnessed, societally-endorsed form of safe seeing that updates prior ocular regimes. Haunted by pending obsolescence, driven by technological imperatives, it is a visionary capacity that cannot fall behind lest it become simply unreliable . . . ." [http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=115](http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=115)</comment></comment>


Why do people open emails? Learn today's best practices - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mixpanel.com/2016/07/12/why-do-people-open-emails/ <comment><USER2> Great article. Thanks</comment>


Please help a fellow hacker identify the guy who assaulted him in Vancouver, BC - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTOyaZQqmXI

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a video that I took during an assault on myself by one of these 7 Canadians. The assault happened October 2010 outside the Lamplighter night- club in Vancouver, BC.

The punch was completely unexpected for me because I was looking into my phone when the guy landed it. The group started insulting me outside the night club just when I was about to leave. After a few minutes of a purely verbal argument, I decided to take my phone and film all of them in case something bad happened. This is when one of them decided to punch me in the face, causing me to lose consciousness and hit my head against concrete with full force. I was then taken to a hospital by ambulance, which I do not remember at all (I lost 2 hours of memory).

The police cannot make any progress until the guy is identified. Please help me find this guy who left me with a concussion, fractured sinus, facial scar, dizziness and constant headaches. Please share this video with your friends living in Vancouver!

</comment><comment><USER2> Try Reddit. Wider audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Done: [http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e6wkv/please_hel...](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e6wkv/please_help_me_identify_the_guy_who_assaulted_me/)</comment></comment>


Man found guilty of using phone while driving even though device was dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/10/man-found-guilty-of-using-phone-while-driving-even-though-device-was-dead <comment><USER2> This is what happens when new laws are made to invent new crimes. Driving while being distracted is a problem that had appropriate laws before cell phones were a thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> so if you hold a block of wood while driving, can you be ticketed for using a block of wood while driving? What if you plug headphones into a block of wood that is sitting in the seat next to you?

<comment><USER4> Driving while using a block of wood isn't illegal though.

<comment><USER3> Could the block of wood be considered a communication device if you write on it to communicate with your passengers?</comment></comment></comment>


Common Linux Misconceptions - <AUTHOR> http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2012/06/20/5-linux-misconceptions/

<comment><USER2> Good read! My experience with Linux is very limited, but I wouldn't mind tinkering around with it if I could set up a safety machine (i.e. not the one I use for work) to make sure I could manage.</comment>


A Haskell Reading List - <AUTHOR> http://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/essential_haskell.html <comment><USER2> > Here is a list of papers and writings of what I consider are essential > Haskell reading

Most of those papers are really not "essential" for getting things done in Haskell.

If you want to dig deeper into Haskell's type system or Category Theory in general, then yes, there are a lot of good papers in that list.

If you just want to write safe, conscious and understandable code, then you are much better off reading the excellent "Haskell Programming from first priciples" [1] or the slightly outdated "Real World Haskell" [2].

[1] [http://haskellbook.com/](http://haskellbook.com/) [2] [http://book.realworldhaskell.org/](http://book.realworldhaskell.org/)

<comment><USER3> Another book on the list I would consider essential is Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell: [http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929](http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1230000000929)

I also thoroughly enjoy the Functional Pearls series, many of which can be found on the Haskell wiki:

[https://wiki.haskell.org/Research_papers/Functional_pearls](https://wiki.haskell.org/Research_papers/Functional_pearls)</comment></comment>


Effects of the Scale Invariance of the Empty Space: The Fall of Dark Matter? - <AUTHOR> http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aa92cc/meta <comment><AUTHOR> Text: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11425](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11425) , cf. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.00697](https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.00697)</comment>


Asher Wolf's Website Cracked after Sexism Rant [direct link, has sound] - <AUTHOR> http://www.asherwolf.com

<comment><USER2> Warning: may cause seizures. The link is directly to the cracked site, not to a descriptive article.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/lQepv.png></comment>


US spy device 'tested on NZ public' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10886031 <comment><USER2> Note that this alludes to the latest technique being used to erode privacy: the idea that "metadata" is somehow distinct and less deserving of protection than [other stuff]. The implication is "metadata" (like phone logs) is not really "data", which is absurd and dangerous.

<comment><USER3> Its not new. Metadata (e.g. addresses on the outside of envelopes sent in the mail) have never been considered private.

<comment><USER4> No. Whether it's new depends on the specific meta data being captured.

Also, what is new is the scale of meta data capture and analysis capabilities enabled by current technology. It is silly to say that authorities have historically looked at postal addresses on envelopes, so that makes it also OK to sniff virtually all forms of meta data for all forms of electronic communications. You can extrapolate that point into inanity, such that virtually anything is fair game.

Here, you are literally using what was permissible with Pony Express technology to make the case that it should still be permissible (or is at least no different) in today's hyper-connected world.

But, at some point, technical capabilities render safeguards in old laws obsolete, and we must take a fresh look at long relied upon precedents. Some of those precedents are based on capabilities available at the time, long before many of those available today could even be imagined. When that happens, there is a material difference in implication and meaning.

<comment><USER3> So let me get this straight. In evaluating where the boundaries should lie, we _shouldn't_ consider how new technologies might allow criminals to coordinate in new ways, perhaps rendering existing privacy protections obsolete, but we _should_ consider how new technologies that allow more effective policing might render existing exceptions to the privacy protections obsolete.

Privacy advocates do not have a principled approach to the problem of how to reconcile the legitimate needs of the police with privacy rights in the context of modern communications. Their approach boils down to "do whatever makes it the hardest for the police to do their work." Which goes wholly against what the founders intended when they wrote that limitations on the power of police to search must be "reasonable."

<comment><USER4> > _In evaluating where the boundaries should lie, we shouldn't consider how > new technologies might allow criminals to coordinate in new ways_

No one said that. The converse of that is actually what you're doing, and I simply called you on it. That is, you are not accounting for new technology when you make such silly comparisons between addresses scrawled on postal mail envelopes 100+ years ago and today's sophisticated electronic communications intercept and analysis capabilities. Your argument rests on "oh, nothing new about that. Nothing to see here. Let's keep it moving."

> _Privacy advocates do not have a principled approach to the problem of how > to reconcile the legitimate needs of the police with privacy rights in the > context of modern communications_

What is this term "privacy advocate"? I don't consider myself one, because I reject it on its face. There should be no such term in this "debate", because per the Constitution, privacy should be the default. That people like you so casually bandy about the term, as if your fellow citizens are asking for something foreign or not already a guaranteed right, is testament to how far we've gone astray. If anything, we should instead call you a "privacy- destruction advocate" or perhaps "anti-Constitution". Yours is the outlying position.

In any event, there is a simple test for the balance you suggest and that is whether, in keeping up with modern communications, we are affording law enforcement with _more_ capabilities or eroding privacy. I think it's pretty clear that especially since 9/11, that balance you reference has tipped much more heavily in law enforcement's favor. So, as much as you may sympathize with the government, they are doing just fine. The question is, where would you have them stop?

> _Their approach boils down to "do whatever makes it the hardest for the > police to do their work."_

It's ridiculous to suggest that's the intent. That you feel the need to re- characterize our position in such a silly manner reveals your insecurity in defending your argument against the very real and significantly weightier _actual_ arguments made by people like myself.

<comment><USER3> > No one said that.

People say it all the time. It's the go-to retort whenever anyone brings up the fact that new technologies allow criminals to coordinate and plot in new ways. "Why do we need new laws to fight Al Qaeda?"

> That is, you are not accounting for new technology when you make such silly > comparisons between addresses scrawled on postal mail envelopes 100+ years > ago and today's sophisticated electronic communications intercept and > analysis capabilities.

It's not a silly comparison. The internet may not have existed 100+ years ago, but people did, and the mechanics of people are remarkably stable. The underlying dynamic: certain information not falling within the scope of privacy rights because its made plainly visible, is mechanically similar whether you're talking about addresses scrolled on postal envelopes or e-mail addresses in an SMTP header.

> here should be no such term in this "debate", because per the Constitution, > privacy should be the default.

The word "privacy" does not appear in the Constitution. The word "private" appears just once (in the phrase "private property"). The 4th amendment has certain guarantees that protect certain kinds of privacy,[1] but not the broad guarantee of "privacy" that you imply. Specifically, the 4th amendment protects your house and your person from unreasonable searches. It's not a blanket right of privacy that protects your communications, even in contexts where those communications are disclosed to numerous third parties.

[1] But the 4th amendment need not be interpreted in terms of a broader concept of "privacy" at all.

<comment><USER4> > _People say it all the time._

Perhaps you can stick to what the real people to whom you are replying here are actually saying vs. what those imaginary people are saying somewhere in the universe. That was probably the most obvious straw man I have ever seen on HN and definitely the first admission of having constructed one.

> _The mechanics of peope are remarkably stable...the underlying > dynamic...mechanically similar..._

No. None of that. I mean those words really sound great when strung together that way, but you've just repeated yourself and it is no more true now than before. You have already acknowledged that technology has changed, but you don't want to acknowledge that so called "keeping pace" by the government can and does amount to additional privacy intrusions. You just offer up a blanket, "oh, it's all the same", as if sniffing every packet of every electronic communication would be the same as human beings reading addresses on postal envelopes. Sorry. Still silly, no matter how many action-packed adverbs you throw in.

Of course, your tutorial on how infrequently the actual word "privacy" appears in the Constitution is silly as well. Obviously, much of what the Constitution expresses in so many ways with regard to protection from the government rolls up under "privacy". That you are arguing the _privacy_ word count is spurious. Citizens simply cannot have protection from the government or liberty itself without privacy, including the right to communicate with other private citizens without having virtually any or all such communications intercepted and analyzed by the government. How you can divorce such basic, common sense tenets from the very spirit of the Constitution is remarkable.

But, I guess when it became clear that enhanced capabilities do amount to a further intrusion on privacy, your only recourse was to redefine privacy and the Constitution itself. It is amazing watching you contort and move the goal posts, as much as it is a frank admission that your position is not tenable.

I seldom agree with the usual rayiner posts, but at least the arguments are somewhat cogent. The rayiner posts on this thread, however, make me wonder if the "regular" rayiner is on vacation and someone else is running the "privacy- destruction advocate" account.

I kid. Of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "DC-based author Tim Shorrock revealed ThinThread was sent to New Zealand for testing in 2000-2001"

This is news? It happened 12 years ago.

I would also note to whoever posts these NZHerald links, they are basically like the Fox News of New Zealand. None of the reports have a clue what the talking about when it comes to technology subjects, and they are known for writing about complete garbage which half the time isn't true at all.

Stuff.co.nz (Fairfax Media) is a more credible news source IMO.

<comment><USER6> >Stuff.co.nz (Fairfax Media) is a more credible news source IMO.

I find just about everything published under the Fairfax banner is of pretty poor quality, not necessarily factually incorrect or even politically biased, but presented in a overly sensationalist manner and with a populist and oversimplified analysis where any is provided at all.

Both Mediaworks and TVNZ have similar problems as well.

Radio NZ seems to have more freedom to ignore certain demographics (the lowest common denominator), and IMO has better quality news and opinion than other sources.

<comment><USER7> This isn't a new problem. Lindsay Perigo quit TVNZ in the early 90s, accusing it of being 'brain dead':

"I sometimes ask myself what would life be like if I had just stayed at TVNZ, and there is no doubt that materially life would be a lot richer. But I do not regret for a second the fact that I forsook that career. I was dying within at TVNZ. The dumbing down that was going on. Plus the fact that for twenty years I had made a career of listening to other people spouting mainly nonsense. I had also become aware of what scumbags they were."

<http://www.freeradical.co.nz/content/36/36jesson.php>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thin on details, but it just sounds like traffic analysis applied to the cell network and/or Internet, which would obviously require multiple taps into the networks (for wired communication) and multiple listenting posts (for wireless communication).

Note, I'm not commenting on the legality or wisdom of this, just that the underlying analysis technique isn't anything new.

</comment><comment><USER9> It could have been worse. In 1951 the US tested LSD[1] on the French public.

[1]: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French- bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> The NZ government basically responded to the spying claims with "Whoops..you caught us. Guess now we'll have to make the spying legal..."

</comment><comment><USER11> New Zealand is just a testing ground for the US. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you can go back to sleep.

</comment><comment><USER12> So who is watching the watchers?

<comment><USER13> The people who regurgitate shallow, flip bumper sticker slogans in the place of anything resembling facts or analysis.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure which side you're trying to discredit.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Favorite iOS Game Revenue Model - <AUTHOR>

I am building an iOS game, and was wondering what the community thought of the different revenue models.
Here are the three I am considering:
-One time purchase.
-Free, completely based on many microtransactions.
-Free, demo with full game as in-app purchase
One time purchase.
- Reach Smaller Audience
- Full experience without bothering user
- Customer must buy before trying
- Fixed profit per user
Free, completely based on many microtransactions.
- Reach Larger Audience
- Must bother user constantly for small in-app purchases.
- Possibility of high profit per user.
Free, demo with full game as in-app purchase.
- Reach Larger Audience
- Less annoying than microtransactions.
- Customer has tried and enjoys enough to purchase.
- Fixed profit per user (possibility of higher price than one time)
I would love input on the ideal model for maximum revenue and app experience. <comment><USER2> A demo with a full game unlock is a solid move, but don't be stingy with the games features in the demo. You want to show it off after all! A complete game with optional small purchases sounds risky to me if you don't already have an audience, or a team to create the side purchases. Besides you can 'fall-back' to this method if it's not initially successful.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am leaning towards the demo with the full game unlock as an in-app purchase. I feel it is a great way to reach a large audience, make sure the user enjoys the game before buying it, and keeps the user from being constantly annoyed by attempts to sell micro-transaction items.</comment>


Show HN: Trade stocks from the command line with no commission - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/aenegri/toro <comment><USER2> (Disclaimer that I'm working on an open source FIX engine in Lisp.)

This is a really cool project! But alas I couldn't use it as I'm not in the US, and I don't trade with Alpaca. And I feel like this plays into a negative trend I'm seeing.

The retail brokerage market right now is treading on similar 'mistakes' in institutional markets 15ish years ago. Proprietary APIs were prolific, and therefore increased switching costs and lock-in (looking at you, Reuters and Bloomberg).

On the one hand, retail brokers need to support popular programming languages and paradigms to gain traction. So, they are releasing http-based APIs, or popular language-specific libraries/bindings for their proprietary APIs. But, they are doing this instead of pushing well-publicised battle-tested standards such as FIX[1], that would normalise the playing field across brokers. So my gut feel is that they are banking on users coding against their APIs and having some lock-in effects. Notable exception is that any broker that supports cTrader will have a FIX API, because cTrader provides that for them.

The problem is: if I write a bunch of code to work against Alpaca, TD Ameritrade, or whoever, that code will likely need to be revisited for some other broker like Robinhood. Granted, market connectivity code _should_ be well abstracted from my model if I'm following good design principles. But at least with FIX, the core concepts, fields, and messages remain the same across most FIX endpoints (NOS, ExecRpt, etc), allowing for a more uniform code holistically.

[1] [https://www.fixtrading.org](https://www.fixtrading.org)

<comment><USER3> Since you're not from US, what trading platforms do you use? I haven't found any with free commissions and public APIs in the EU. Well, except for Interactive Brokers.

<comment><USER4> You probably won't ever see an EU broker offer free trades. The EU market is more regulated to avoid anything that smells of front running. There was a somewhat revealing interview by the people behind Flatex, a big discount broker from Germany [0].

Dutch source, do use a translator [https://www.tijd.be/markten- live/nieuws/algemeen/nieuwe-eige...](https://www.tijd.be/markten- live/nieuws/algemeen/nieuwe-eige..).

"Is it easier for a pan European company to keep big US competition like Robin Hood and Ameritrade out?

Niehage: 'The companies you name are very badly positioned for Europe. Their economic model is based on two pillars. Firstly, they want to offer everything for free. But if you offer all services for free, you have to earn money with the capital in the investors' accounts. That is possible in the US, where you can still get 2% of interest. In Europe, with zero interest rates, that's very different.'

And the second pillar of their economic model?

Niehage: 'That's the high frequency traders. As far as I know, Robin Hood sells its customer orders to this kind of parties. They are prepared to pay good money for that. According to the European MiFID II-regulation, that is illegal. Those two examples show that the US and EU markets are totally different. That's why American brokers have difficulties breaking into the EU market.' "

<comment><USER5> > You probably won't ever see an EU broker offer free trades.

Freetrade, Trading212, both registered in the UK. (And I don't think 'transition period' would make a difference, but they're both years older than that.)

<comment><USER6> >Freetrade

Freetrade are now charging £3 a month for ISAs (tax free wrapped accounts) so it might be free but it's not completely free.

<comment><USER5> It also has fee-less non-ISA accounts (not tax free).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beginner question on a related topic for those of you more knowledgeable than me:

Is there a way to get access to the order books on Nasdaq or other exchanges?

I'm working on a script that can run stock trading algorithms (and hopefully see some profit).

My first trading experience was with crypto on GDAX (now Coinbase Pro). The order book on GDAX is basically available via their API. I've been looking at various stock trading APIs (Alpaca looks interesting as well) and it seems like the only thing that's available are broker APIs that don't share the order book.

Is the order book on Nasdaq and other exchanges unavailable to regular folks like me? Is it hidden, available to institutions only, or to some sort of registered brokers?

Having first dealt with GDAX and now looking at stocks, it all seems so ambiguous and hidden behind 3rd parties, unclear order execution, etc. (not that gdax was perfect - it has its issues), so I'm just generally confused as to how things work.

<comment><USER8> You have to buy the feed, the market data isn't free. Depending on your usage the fees can get fairly steep [0]. And that's just the market data, you need to pay for colocation, cross connects, and order entry sessions. Of course Nasdaq is only one US equity market - there are 14+ with more coming online in recent years.

[0] - [http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DPUSdata](http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DPUSdata)

<comment><USER9> I need to create and operate a market place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Heard about alpaca a while back, so I made this as a small fun side project. The main features are buying, selling, and viewing stocks. In the future I may add additional features if I find something I want to add (or others want to add).

The code is just Go, using the cobra library.

</comment><comment><USER10> Alpaca is great! As far as brokerage APIs go, theirs is top notch and a breeze to code for. The founders are also really responsive and helpful.

I know this because I wrote an app that connects to Alpaca accounts (as well as other brokerages) to help people build their own custom index funds [0]. It only took a few weeks to build our Alpaca integration, whereas other brokerages often take months/years just to get access to their APIs.

[0] [https://getpassiv.com/](https://getpassiv.com/)

<comment><USER11> how does Alpaca make money?

<comment><USER12> Guesing, they are selling order flow. Same like Robin Hood

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/a-controversial-part-of- robi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/a-controversial-part-of-robinhoods- business-tripled-in-sales-thanks-to-high-frequency-trading-firms.html)

<comment><USER13> So Robin Hood is taking from the rich, giving to the poor, and then turning around and selling the poor out?

<comment><USER14> Selling order flow isn't "selling the poor out". Reg NMS literally requires brokerages to route your orders to where they will get the best execution price. In general you as a retail investor get better execution prices because of how this works (why? because retail investors generally don't have new information that will move the price so they are "safe" trades for liquidity providers).

Now robin hood _did_ get fined for "not perform[ing] systematic best execution reviews of several order types". If that's what you were referring to then fine. But if your complaint is just about selling order flow you should better understand what that means. Maybe start with patio11's How Brokerages Make Money[0].

[0]: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make- mone...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-money/)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I misunderstood what "selling order flow" means; I was under impression this is something closer to front-running. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> FYI: "With no commission" is a bug, not a feature. Typically, when you pay commission, you get better prices. Let's say you buy 100 shares of SPY at Interactive Brokers. You pay $1 commission and get it for 268.28. At a free- of-commissions broker, you might get your 100 shares for 268.30. That's $1 more than the trade at IB. TNSTAAFL.

It's exactly like how duck typing took over programming in the last decade or so with, "Whee, see, less typing!!", and we lost the value of having static types ("strong typing"). Why are we tempted so easily? Now we have the horror of Javascript everywhere. Even the Node.js founders recoil from their own creation and are going a step in the right direction with Deno.

<comment><USER16> Are you saying that alpaca charges a commission on trades by inflating the price and taking a cut?

Or through what mechanism do commissioned trades get lower prices?

<comment><USER17> Free brokerages generally don't execute orders as quickly in order to sell order flow which allows HFT firms to front-run your trade. If you're a buy and hold investor, the fractions of a cent you're losing don't matter much over the long run but the issue is still there. Generally when you pay for something, it means that somebody is beholden to you if there's issues. Robinhood et. al. are free because they suck.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/robinhood-app-down-again- dur...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/robinhood-app-down-again-during- another-historic-trading-day.html)

<comment><USER18> No, they sell order flow because market makers know discount brokerage users are uninformed and thus less risky to buy and sell from. However, they actually give you better prices than the public market offers and they have to or else the SEC would fine them [0]. Your link is just about robinhoods shitty infra that couldn't handle their user load and has nothing to do with order flow.

[0]: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make- mone...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-money/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Would be interesting to tie it into what Elastic published about trading baskets of pharma companies related to drug development (COVID-19 included):

Generating and visualizing alpha with Vectorspace AI datasets and Canvas [https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing- alpha...](https://www.elastic.co/blog/generating-and-visualizing-alpha-with- vectorspace-ai-datasets-and-canvas)

Generating Alpha from Information Arbitrage in the Financial Markets with NLP Datasets: 水涨船高 [https://medium.com/hackernoon/profiting-from-information- arb...](https://medium.com/hackernoon/profiting-from-information-arbitrage-in- the-financial-markets-3abfca9806d8)

algo guys take [https://www.reddit.com/r/algotrading/comments/gkrb6f/generat...](https://www.reddit.com/r/algotrading/comments/gkrb6f/generating_alpha_in_a_down_market_with_nlp/)

</comment><comment><USER20> My main FUD with alpaca.markets is the ability to transfer assets in/out. It doesn't look like they offer ACATS transfers (although there's not much info on this!).

Using them for anything beyond entertainment budget is very scary - you may incur substantial tax liability if e.g. they ever go out of business or you choose to use a different brokerage.

Any insight here? Am I missing something? Is there any way to transfer holdings out without incurring the cap gains?

<comment><USER21> as far as i know the "actual" backend data is standardized, ie same instrument names and dates etc. Adding to that, by playing in the US markets the SEC and FINRA, have that stipulation of being able to move between institutions in a standardized and regulated way.

long story short, they all have to implement a system to move out and in (well they all want your assets so this part is obvious).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's really cool about Alpaca is the integration with zipline via pylivetrader. This means that you can take your backtested factor models and easily convert them to live trading. Also, they have pretty lax margin requirements. You can borrow 2x the cash you have, 4x for intraday if you're a pattern day trader, and the maintenance requirement is only 25%. And with zero commissions, suddenly it's possible for the average joe retail investor to actually run a legit factor strat. If you're only trading highly liquid securities, it could even make sense to run a intraday only strat at 4x leverage. Lets say you're trading stuff that has spreads around 4 bips, your lost returns are going to be around 10% per year from trading costs. That's certainly a lot and you'll need a kick-ass strategy, but that 4x leverage might let you get there.

<comment><USER23> Do you have any reference on `legit factor stats`? I do not understand how leverage will be beneficial. Leverage will also multiply the potential downside risk after all? I would like to understand more how the trading cost would make up for it on average.

<comment><USER24> > I do not understand how leverage will be beneficial.

Same here, if I understood the grandparent they were saying you lose 0.04% on every trade (from spread) and "in a year" that is 10% (250 trades?).

If you have a strategy that has expected returns of x bips per trade then you make an expected x-4 and with leverage 4 * (x - 4). Both have the same "sign", so if x-4 is expected positive, leverage just makes it higher risk-reward.

In fact with leverage you also have to pay interest on the loan, which seems to be at least ~18 bips (or 3/4 of that since the returns are on 4 * cash and interest is on 3 * cash) for a single day loan (far exceeding the "spread cost"): [https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/accounts_prod...](https://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/accounts_products/investment/margin_accounts)

It seems the only way leverage would help is if there were fixed costs to trading (which I assume there are but the GP does not mention).

<comment><USER22> Well you have 504 trades approx, but you're buying in and selling out, so you're paying the cost of spread once per day (252 trading days in a year).

Let's say you have have a strategy that has 7% return and 3% volatility. That's a pretty fucking amazing strategy. So you lever up to 4x and now you have 28% return and 12% vol. With your spread tax, you now have 18% return and 12% vol. Using their 2x leverage, you'll have a 14% and a 6% vol. So while your Sharpe ratio will be lower, your max return will be higher. And since you can't eat risk-adjusted returns, the tradeoff could very well be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You may also like [https://github.com/madnight/wallstreet](https://github.com/madnight/wallstreet) just to get the charts and quotes

</comment><comment><USER26> What's closest to Alpaca for UK based traders?

<comment><USER27> Not seen anything with both free trades and an API in the UK. I would like to do this to implement simple strategies - for instance mirror indices but with user defined filters (S&P500 minus hospitality, airlines and oil, as an example).

Freetrade, 212 Trading and soon Robinhood offer commission free traedes in the UK but no API

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Alpaca is US-residents only unfortunately

</comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone know why they are US only? Is it because the market is different abroad, because there are no European/Worldwide legal framework or simply because it's easier to start with?

<comment><USER30> Looks like this is the answer:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23210385)

Different market and laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I don't get it. How does Alpaca offer free broker services?

<comment><USER32> [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-02/the- tr...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-02/the-trades-will- be-free-now)

[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make- mone...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how-brokerages-make-money/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Coincidentally I've also just released a command line client for Alpaca [0] written in Rust along with a library backing it [1].

Interesting timing :-)

[0] [https://github.com/d-e-s-o/apcacli](https://github.com/d-e-s-o/apcacli)

[1] [https://github.com/d-e-s-o/apca](https://github.com/d-e-s-o/apca)

</comment><comment><USER34> This is a terrible use-case for the command-line.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate? I understand it's pretty niche, but not sure why it is terrible to have a cli for it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What are you folks using this kind of stuff for? The best I can come up with is carefully studying issuers' financial reports and reaching some not very good but close enough conclusion about the state of businesses. At which point paying a few $$ or even $100 in commissions is really irrelevant given how much effort I had to put in ...

</comment><comment><USER36> You should know in general, though, that no one trades "for free" despite what brokerages say.

Your order gets routed, delayed, placed differently, and while you may not immediately see it, your trades are getting a different result than if you explicitly paid a brokerage who charges a commission on it.

Learn about "payment for order flow".

<comment><USER37> I don't know why others downvoted you, I didn't. But as general feedback: "learn about X" without linking to some resource about X is really lazy soapboxing.

<comment><USER38> I downvoted it because it's mostly factually wrong.

First paying a commission is not correlated with participation in order flow payment. Commissioned brokers also get paid for order flow.

Second if you interact with an internalizer your order will execute faster not slower. And you will usually be getting better price execution than if you try to route manually.

Third all brokerages have routing tiers that involve self matching/dark pools/contractual discounts etc. Most of them will let you pay for the privilege of using the same router the non-premium orders go through.

At the end of the day if your trade is that sensitive to execution you are not a retail customer and should not be using a retail brokerage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Would be nice if the author will add more popular Interactive Brokers[1] support. Alpaca is US bounded and seems not going to change this.

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

</comment><comment><USER40> Ok, but what's going to be your business model if you don't charge commission?

<comment><USER41> Who is this question directed at? OP is linking free software.

If you mean brokerages that advertise no fees to trade, they make money by loaning the cash in customers' accounts.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-10/brokers-p...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-10/brokers- profit-from-you-even-if-they-don-t-charge-for-trading)

<comment><USER42> And by loaning out shares to short sellers [1]

Which to me begs the question: do you actually own the shares when you buy them with those brokers? What happens if supply is limited and the loaned shares actually have to be sold?

[1] [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/shortsalebenefit...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/05/shortsalebenefit.asp)

<comment><USER43> Ownership doesn't really matter that much so long as you meet the tax criteria for it. As for the rest, everyone else playing in this space is likely to have assets that are in the range of SIPC insurance so just make sure your stuff is insured and don't sweat the small stuff.

<comment><USER42> One reason people invest in stocks at the moment is hedging against a falling dollar. In a great market turn, it could be that those $500,000 are the price for a cup of coffee. If you lose access to your shares at that moment, it doesn't help if you are rewarded with money.

*edit: Apart from that: is that actually an event covered by SIPC? Essentially it is a bad investment decision. You agreed to lend out those shares so you have to bear the consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Alpaca is very interesting, I've been following them since the beginning. The sad thing is that I'm not from the US and it's still not available for residents of my country (Paraguay in South America).

</comment><comment><USER45> go install doesn't work @anegri # github.com/keybase/go-keychain cgo-gcc- prolog:203:11: warning: 'SecTrustedApplicationCreateFromPath' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.15 - No longer supported [-Wdeprecated- declarations] /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Headers/SecTrustedApplication.h:59:10: note: 'SecTrustedApplicationCreateFromPath' has been explicitly marked deprecated here

<comment><AUTHOR> What os and version are you running? I have been having trouble with Mac because of one of my dependencies

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> A problem I've bumped into with Alpaca compared to other services is my bot needs 1 second bars, and I believe Alpaca goes down to 1min bars and nothing smaller.

<comment><USER47> Did you try the Alpaca Market Data (streaming) they just released? You should be able to get real-time data now that is aggregated from multiple exchanges.

<comment><USER46> That's the 1 min bars I was talking about.

[https://alpaca.markets/docs/api- documentation/api-v2/market-...](https://alpaca.markets/docs/api- documentation/api-v2/market-data/streaming/)

>Trades, quotes and minute bars are supported.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Thanks for sharing. Didn't know alpacca was a thing.

</comment><comment><USER49> with a record number of investors in the stock market and tools like this, i'm happy to be in all cash.

</comment><comment><USER50> This makes me wonder if there are any old school, ASCII or DOS era stock trading games out there..

</comment><comment><USER51> *using a service called Alpaca

<comment><USER52> Is that service available outside USA?

<comment><USER22> No.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Can this do OCO orders and sequences? If it can't then it's kind of useless.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is there a reason that the repo size should be 10 MB? Seems odd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh didn't realize that! Thanks for pointing that out

<comment><USER22> Maybe just remove it from the commit history? People are still going to pay the cost even if you removed it in the most recent commit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Took it out now, seems there is a bit of a lag for the filesize to update unfortunately

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> How is the alpaca API, are there any limits? Is it fast?

</comment><comment><USER56> File it under:New ways to lose money

</comment><comment><USER57> FYI - You're supposed to fill out the license info. I see empties in at least two files in the main repo.

</comment><comment><USER47> Shameless plug: I started a YouTube channel on this topic that covers a lot of commission free trading API's, including Alpaca (got featured in their docs), Robinhood Private API, TD Ameritrade, Tradier, and more. I'm seeing a huge growth in interest in developing automated trading bots and algos. With commissions dropping to zero, there is a huge wave of day/swing traders that want to learn Python, so am creating as many tutorials as possible.

[https://youtube.com/parttimelarry](https://youtube.com/parttimelarry)

<comment><USER58> I have subscribed to your channel. Do you know of any services that allow non US residents to join? I am in New Zealand.

<comment><USER59> There's [https://hellostake.com/](https://hellostake.com/) for NZ and AU. They don't have an API yet but would like to in the future - see comment here: [https://old.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceNZ/comments/fnbmlx/x...](https://old.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceNZ/comments/fnbmlx/x/fletz3i/)

As mentioned, Sharesies plan to allow US market access: [https://app.sharesies.nz/us-equities-register](https://app.sharesies.nz/us- equities-register) They do seem to have a private API at least: [https://app.sharesies.nz/api/fund/list](https://app.sharesies.nz/api/fund/list)

[https://www.revolut.com/en-NZ](https://www.revolut.com/en-NZ) have plans to expand to NZ, I don't know much about their services though.

<comment><USER59> I also just found [https://hatchinvest.nz/](https://hatchinvest.nz/) \- has US market access, I don't know about an API

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a terrible use-case for the command-line. One of the worst ideas I have come across.</comment>


The Real Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://takeaswig.com/the-real-silicon-valley

<comment><USER2> Silicon Valley is not a place. Its a figment of your imagination. San Francisco, San Mateo, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Santa Clara, San Jose are places. But no one wants to read articles and watch crappy TV shows called "The Real San Jose". To me, what people do in "Silicon Valley", they can do anywhere else. Start-ups, Self-employment, Big Companies exist in many other parts of the world. All it is is regular people making a living. And for some of these people, work defines who they are. For others though, work supports the life they live outside the office and nothing more.

<comment><USER3> > To me, what people do in "Silicon Valley", they can do anywhere else.

While this is true, you are missing the point of the valley. It's a place where like minded people accumulate. People who think they can change the world by creating the next big think. All these people could all be delusional and totally wrong for all we know, but the point is they all think that way.

It's like a party. Can you just jack up the radio and dance away in the solitude of your room? Sure, you can. But it's better to go to a real discotheque and dance away with others. The chances you meet someone interesting are higher, the chances that your amazing disco steps get noticed are higher etc etc.

Continuing the stupid analogy, in the valley there are these page 3 reporters (techcrunch, cough) reporting all sorts of things. These things make you famous and get you $$. See, how things are different when you are hacking away in your room in cape town? Want more developers? There are tons of people who will code for you. "Passionately". It's all in one place!

Do not underestimate the "energy" of the valley. Having like minded people in one place makes all the difference (just like anything else).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this sentence: "Normal people, who have normal jobs working for other people, can no longer relate to you, and you can't relate to them." I wish I knew how to better deal with situations where I have to interact with people working normal jobs, it's very awkward.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oddly enough, this post has the same air of self-importance most people on the show exhibit.

<comment><USER6> I keep seeing these blogs that have two things in common: They look identical and the content tends to positively reek of the stereotyped self-important Valley attitude.

Out of curiosity, I clicked the "SVBTLE" link at the bottom of this one:

      Svbtle is an invite-only network of people who strive to
      produce great content.

Ah ha! Granted, this could only speak to the intersection of this website's users' interests and those blogs' topics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am utterly baffled by people expecting a show on television to be even close to reflecting reality.

<comment><USER8> I share your feeling, but having talked with folks who are emotional about how "bad" this show is, I realized that there are people that wish a show would come along and _explain_ to their non-techie or non-Bay Area friends what the place is about. That desire seems to emanate from a need for acceptance (well understood) and compassion.

I have found it is similar to trying to explain what being in love is like to someone who has never been in love. You can say "There is this other person who you would walk on glass, barefoot, to get to and help." And they say "What? You don't have time to put on a pair of shoes? Seriously, how much longer could that take?" Not having experienced the emotion they can't imagine how much of your 'self' you are willing to put aside without question.

So your midwest relatives just end up thinking you are 'weird' and you have to be ok with that.

So I speculate that that is where a bunch of the angst comes from, people in the startup community would love to be understood by people outside the startup community but can't communicate that difference. So they are sad that Bravo tried and missed completely. But as you said, it wasn't Bravo's goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That was completely content-free. It made me want to watch the Bravo reality show.

</comment><comment><USER10> The show is awesome, if you approach it as a documentary-style sitcom like the Office or Parks and Rec rather than as a reality show.

As a sitcom, the show is pure genious. Especially the last 10 minutes of the second episode, in which the blonde ditz is on a "date" with some nerdy model....</comment>


Ask HN: What was your first hack? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> running a pseudo login prompt to capture user's network password.

</comment><comment><USER3> by-passing a websites authentication by SQL injection</comment>


Bill Gates Bans iTunes From Windows - <AUTHOR> http://pluggio.com/blog/?p=244

<comment><USER2> Doesn't this accidentally back up the 'third party frameworks lack quality' argument? iTunes for Windows is generally considered to be a lousy piece of software. Same with Safari for Windows, another piece released under the same approach.

<comment><USER3> I consider iTunes for Mac to be a lousy piece of software, too. I've found it to be a memory hog with inadequate features on both platforms. I think that most people don't complain about it on Mac because it meets their needs and they don't know any better, as most lay Windows users don't complain against Internet Explorer.

<comment><USER4> Do you know of any better music player software for OS X?

<comment><USER5> One problem is what are your criteria for "better"?

As a for instance, I want a music player that handles flac and ogg files and that I can access in a terminal. Low memory usage is important to me also. I use cmus on a Mac, and I like it quite a lot.

<comment><USER6> There's support, albiet indirectly, for flac in iTunes via Fluke. <http://blowintopieces.com/fluke/>

<comment><USER7> Apple's refusal to support FLAC, in favour of their own crappy rip-off (which they refuse to licence to 3rd parties) was, for me personally, the moment they jumped the shark. I feel later developments have borne this out.

I mean you can buy music from Metallica and The Beatles in FLAC format. If Metallica and The Beatles are out ahead of you on some aspect of digital music, it's time for a rethink.

<comment><USER8> made my day. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we're on the subject, iTunes could even do with being remade on OS X. It's a bit crufty and funky feeling (non-Cocoa?).

<comment><USER10> I think the crufty feeling comes from most of the App Store being implemented using a WebView and custom HTML/CSS to mimic Mac-like UI stylings. This makes it very easy for Apple engineers to update the Store but also makes the user experience a little choppy since it's not using native rendering for the interface implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome, finally a place I get to tell you guys about when I banished iTunes from my house, in a fit of rage.

Who's dumbass idea was it to put rounded corners on the iTunes window when it is maximized? What a wonderful feature, being able to close the window BEHIND iTunes, jackasses. I don't actually look for the close button, Apple, I just push my mouse forward and right, then click.

So, I push my mouse forward and right then click, then see a pop-up asking to "save changes to my document." In a split, reactionary, second I decided not to save the changes to what I thought was iTunes, not my fucking WORK.

I uninstalled iTunes from all my computers, then bought Media Monkey.

</comment><comment><USER12> I thought this was pretty silly. Perhaps I've oversaturated with blog posts on 3.3.1.

</comment><comment><USER13> Please, Microsoft, do this. An iTunes designed for Windows would take 90% of the irritation I have with my iPod away (and would just be a generally classy move on Apple's part—providing the best experience of their hardware, regardless of your choice of OS.)

<comment><USER14> There are plenty of other media players that work fine with Windows. Some even let you just rsync your media to the device and _they_ figure it all out.

The only people who still use iPods are college kids and Apple fanbois.

<comment><USER15> I'm a huge Linux and Open Source fan, but my iPod Touch is the best portable music player I've ever owned. I'd say 50-75% of my coworkers use iPhones as their music players too. And we're not all college kids or fanboys.

<comment><USER14> I guess you guys don't have any music in open formats. My collection is mostly FLAC.

<comment><USER13> Why would you put FLACs on a portable device without transcoding them first? Do you have TBs of room on your player? (My collection is currently 300GB of average-quality MP3s, and growing...)

<comment><USER11> Transcoding takes time and more space.

I like my classical music, jazz, and noise music to be of the highest quality possible. The sound quality of most MP3s is distracting.

<comment><USER16> i can't tell with my middle of the road earbuds.

<comment><USER7> Crappy earbuds are more likely to expose flaws in lossy encodes than high-end gear.

The psychoacoustic model assumes that certain sounds will mask other sounds so you can leave them out or replace them with something that doesn't sound quite right. If like most cheap headphones you don't have a flat response then the masking sound can be too low to work as intended.

Having said that, with modern encoders it's mostly not an issue, even if you're using 90kps Vorbis created specifically for portable use. What is an issue is that you'll probably want to use the same file for portable and home listening, or you'll have got the file from someone who wanted to be on the safe side, since some songs are trickier to encode than others, so you'll end up with a 256kbps AAC file from iTunes, or 320kbps MP3. At that point the jump to FLAC compression sizes isn't particularly great and the management becomes a bigger hassle plus it allows you to transcode to various other formats and sizes as required, saving even greater space for listening in noisy environments like cars, trains, buses etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ok, I'll bite and humor the author.

The reason Microsoft can't do this is because Windows penetration is absurdly high- something in the mid 90%s of all desktop computers. Any action like this would be followed by immediate litigation from competitors crying monopoly.

The reason Apple can get away with this is because contrary to what you would believe from reading the HN front page, apple's penetration in the cell phone market is minute and not a monopoly.

 _edit: for the person that said apple smartphone market share is 88%, its 14% worldwide, I don't know where you got your figures though you claim wikipedia:

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone- sales-200...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone- sales-2009-gartner/)

Having a stranglehold of 95% on an entire industry (desktop pcs) is very different than owning 14% of a _subset of an industry (mobile phones in general)

<comment><USER18> Also, Windows doesn't have an App Store. _How_ would Gates ban anything from the Windows platform?

<comment><USER19> It is a thought experiment

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

<comment><USER20> A pretty lousy one. People are just going to focus on the obvious logical problems of making this comparison.

<comment><USER21> Thought experiments generally have the expectation that you don't quibble with them; Maxwell's demon doesn't make sense because demonic spirits don't exist, but that's not the point of the exercise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >> Apple MUST use native windows controllers such as our in built Windowing system and scroll objects.

... except that the Windows Presentation Framework (the successor to Windows Forms) _does_ allow you to completely redesign the chrome and "scroll objects."

<comment><USER23> …and pretty much every major application on Windows does this. Firefox, Chrome, iTunes, and even - no, ESPECIALLY - Microsoft's software, like Office and Internet Explorer, all do their own custom UI, custom behaviours. With Windows Vista, you could have a dozen different looks and behaviours for windows, using only Microsoft software.

I get the point they're making, but you know what? Mac users already get that point. Cross-platform toolkits that have targeted Mac OS X have always been shit. They don't look right, they don't work right. This goes for everything I've ever used, from Java to Firefox (which was far, FAR worse pre-3.0, before Cocoa controls were added).

From everything I've heard, iTunes on Windows is shit. Doesn't this make the same point Apple is making?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Good idea, not-so-great execution. I think this would have been better if the author wrote in a more serious tone.

I think the point is that if you want to, you can probably conjure a logical- sounding, professional explanation for just about any 'evil' action by a company. From their standpoint, when isn't it logical to do something that hurts the competition?

I'm not saying the explanation John Gruber came up with (and was later reaffirmed by Steve Jobs) is false. I just don't think it makes Apple's actions much easier to stomach.

</comment><comment><USER25> This would actually make iTunes for Windows much better.

</comment><comment><USER20> How about this as a better thought experiment/reality:

Some Linux distro makers refuse to include closed source drivers because they don't pass their idealogical purity tests. It's no good for the end user in the short term because it makes setting up a fully functional Linux machine more difficult. Some people accept this because they believe ultimately open source drivers are better. A company like NVIDIA spends some money to develop these drivers yet they are denied inclusion into most distributions out of the box solely for idealogical reasons -- a choice made by a relatively small group of people who control how the distributions are packaged.

<comment><USER26> Uhmm...except for I can still install the nvidia stuff if I want to. This sounds exactly like what everyone is advocating.

Allow people to install rejected apps, just make it tiny bit more difficult.

<comment><USER27>
      Allow people to install rejected apps, just make it tiny bit more difficult.

I'd argue they already have. Jailbreaking the iPhone is trivial enough that anyone can do so if they desire rejected or non-AppStore applications.

<comment><USER7> Didn't Apple argue this was illegal under the DMCA?

[http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/02/13/apple.jailbreaking.st...](http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/02/13/apple.jailbreaking.stance/)

I'm not sure breaking the law fits my definition of 'trivial'.

<comment><USER27> Not exactly, they argued that the arguments the EFF put forth for carving out an exception for jail-breaking did not meet the legal requirements for carving out such an exception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I never would have thought of making that parallel. Maybe because Windows PCs don't have the limited interaction/input options of a touchscreen phone, nor the limited system resources, making this an apples to oranges comparison?

Also, like others have said, if Microsoft did this, it probably wouldn't be a bad thing. Apple's not going to lose the Windows iPod/iPhone market, so they would capitulate, and we would likely end up with a much better Windows version of iTunes. Awesome.

</comment><comment><USER29> Yeah....NO

</comment><comment><USER30> This guy's a dumb-ass. At least use Ballmer so that there's some reality to the satire.

</comment><comment><USER31> I would love to downvote this. The title is misleading. You find out it's a thought experiment only at the end of the page.

<comment><USER32> Unless of course you use common sense in which case you would have realized it before even visiting the site.

<comment><USER31> Common sense? That's being challenged everyday by news you read on this site.

Reading the comments on this page would lead you to think that many believe the headline.

<comment><USER31> What I mean by "common sense being challenged" is that the recent actions of Apple do not seem to make "common sense" so I'm willing to believe that Bill Gates WOULD ban iTunes. So nothing is surprising anymore. But please, vote me down just for being frustrated by the misleading headline and then all these comments that seem to reflect people's belief in it. This is not reddit or slashdot. There is no way to mark a comment as being "Funny".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I realized my calling in life was to sell hand-knitted red, white & blue beer koozies. Alas, Walmart won't carry them in their store. Can I get some blogger outrage over here?

<comment><USER34> I'm pretty tired of this analogy. It doesn't even make sense! Of course Walmart can decide what to carry in its stores. It _owns_ the store, and the land on which it's built (presumably). The problem is that Apple continues to "own" part of your device even after you've bought it! If I'm Walmart, and I buy some land from XYZ realty to put a store up, I don't have to take orders from XYZ realty about what I can and can't put in my store, or about how I have to produce the goods I want to sell! Now that's a proper analogy.

<comment><USER35> No one is forcing you to upgrade your iPhone. If you don't want iPhone OS4 apps and the licensing garbage that entails, then don't use it. Your phone will still have the same functionality as before. It's not like apple is taking away a feature that phones currently have. It's more like walmart opening a brand new store right next to an existing store. Something like an elite walmart (?) and the products in that section were all produced without sweatshop labor. You could still shop at the old store and get the same stuff. Or you could shop at the newer elite walmart next to the old one and get new shinier stuff.

<comment><USER36> My understanding was that apple could remove an app remotely at any time. Is this true?

<comment><USER37> Yes, but they never have, even for apps they've removed from the store for violating their ToS. And for what it's worth, they've stated that they will only do that in case an actively malicious app somehow ends up on the store in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yes, of course! Every platform is exactly the same, and any statement that applies to one also applies to all the others in exactly the same way!</comment>