Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-domo-ipo-20180604-story.html <comment><USER2> I take this as one of the two central themes of this article:

"...points to a persistent flaw in Silicon Valley financing: the willingness to give start-up founders unassailable control of their companies, to the point that investors have no recourse if things go blooey."

That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work.

The investors generally don't _want_ to invest in companies run by a committee of investors... or else they would certainly do just that. Not to mention the larger investors could self-fund their own companies, if that's what they wanted to do, and retain all control. They are investing in the ideas, talent, and execution of the founders and other principal executives. It would be pointless to turn around and take control away from them.

(I think the other main theme of this article is that Domo is a mess... which is probably true. I only know what I read in the article, but it seems they have real revenue? It would have to more than double to match their rate of spending, but that can happen if they really provide value. It's hard to have confidence, though, in a CEO who is funneling money out of the company to his family and himself. Just the willingness to put that kind of cloud over the company, is a red flag.)

<comment><USER3> Practically speaking Satya Nadella runs MSFT, not the board of directors. Nadella does not have control of MSFT (he isn't the majority holder of shareholder voting rights), though.

Investors don't want to run the company. But the question is should they be able to fire the person running the company, even if that person is acting against the interests of the rest of the shareholders.

* ps, yes, the BoD can fire a CEO even if the the CEO has majority control of voting rights through various share classes. But the CEO can turn around and fire that board in that case (and the CEO has presumably already used their voting power to install a friendly BoD)

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't the law prevent the CEO from doing just that? I mean, the board is presumably the only check on the CEO's power, so even if the CEO is the majority shareholder, they shouldn't be able to control the board.

<comment><USER5> No.

What's the worst they could do? It's their company. Worst case the CEO runs it into the ground and everyone loses their money.

CEO =/= President of the United States.

<comment><USER4> And people lose their jobs, and get kicked out of their homes, etc.

<comment><USER6> That is a old armchair argument made from those in an ivory tower.

If it was YOUR business, you would want to control your dream, your vision -- not a bunch of rich folks who could decide to kick you out from your dream if your main goal is not to _remain profitable to the shareholders_.

<comment><USER7> Once you take investments, you are deciding to me be beholden to those rich folk.

<comment><USER8> Depends on the quantity and terms of investment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd love to see the LA Times go back and revisit the Utah Valley region and the culture that helped contribute to this. The Utah Valley is chock full of startups with a serious inferiority complex to their big brothers in Silicon Valley, hence derivative name. More importantly, Utah is the "multi-level marketing capital of the world [1]" This kind of sales and growth tactic is not limited to the diet smoothie and cosmetics world, but is absolutely pervasive in the valley. Note- SLC and the Utah Valley may be united in the Silicon Slopes moniker, but they are about as similar as Austin and Waco, TX.

A few observations on Domo

1) The product is weak. It's pretty dashboards with very limited "real" BI capabilities. The connectors are custom, not OOB/end user configurable – unless end user happens to be IT.

2) They seem to be aware that the product is weak, as their demos include an NDA. Until recently there was almost no "real" information available on what exactly Domo is or does. Only void marketing speak.

3) Their absurd domopalooza (or DP for short, no joke) events included artists like Kesha and Macklemore.

4) Their totally overblown marketing hype surrounds an incoherent me-too product roadmap. Rather than focusing on building a quality product they are going for checkboxes and chasing after Slack etc with features like Chat

5) They have a billboard that reads "If Hillary Had DOMO She would have won."

I've been predicting for a while that DOMO's hubris would cause it to be one of the first in the scene to fail spectacularly. What worries me about that prediction is the economic harm that would do to the rest of the Valley especially given the impact of MLM economics.

1- [http://kutv.com/news/local/follow-the-profit-how-mormon- cult...](http://kutv.com/news/local/follow-the-profit-how-mormon-culture-made- utah-a-hotbed-for-multi-level-marketers)

<comment><USER10> I work in Utah Valley at a tech startup in the space.

While I agree that there are some startups with 'inferiority complex' etc, there is a growing number who are happy and proud to be a Utah startup and what that entails, not just chasing Silicon Valley.

The instant connection to MLMs is unfortunate and something we are trying to move past. I would argue Utah has a very strong sales culture not solely because of MLMs but for other reasons.

<comment><USER11> > other reasons

Like door to door summer sales, and the massive bro culture associated with that.

That gripe aside, there are a lot of lifestyle companies. And it's great. They aren't chasing silicon valley, they are just some small business owners trying to make a good living and provide employment for people in the region.

<comment><USER12> > Like door to door summer sales, and the massive bro culture associated with > that.

But just sign up, you'll make $50000 in 3 months!

/s

<comment><USER11> I feel explaining this for everyone not in the know is appropriate.

Mormon missionaries are usually young men ages 18-20 who go out into various places around the world for two years. They learn a lot, generally work really hard, and when they return they usually go off to school.

Someone figured out that 2 years knocking on doors to talk about God isn't that different from knocking on doors to talk about <insert product here>. Various companies selling pest control, home security systems, etc. have set up summer sales programs. You sign up, get sent to a random city for the summer and sell the crap out of whatever it is you are selling. Top sellers will clear $50k for the summer. Even moderately successful sellers will make $10k or so.

After a summer of sales, many of the companies will allow their top sellers to get recruitment bonuses. So they spend the school year holding information meetings with free pizza to try and recruit for the next summer.

This leads to a huge bro culture. The top sellers flaunt their success by driving BMWs to school, wearing high end designer watches and stuff. Some of the bigger sales companies even have lounges close to school where sales people can hang out and study. It ends up being very clear who is into summer sales, and most students shake their heads and try to just ignore it all.

<comment><USER13> Wow - just wow! You nailed it on the head! I've been trying to figure out what was off here, and you succinctly identified the key areas that make the "valley" the way it is! (I'm recently retired from the Air Force, moved here from Hawaii and ended up working in the tech field - I'm also a "member", did the whole missionary thing, and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out why the culture here seems to be so "off" compared to my military background and being around LDS outside of Utah). This place has become a huge multi-marketing campaign with everyone trying to squeeze each other for every buck they can make! Sorry, I better stop my rant! Thanks for the insight though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Domo actually is part of the Salt Lake City region's "Silicon Slope," one > of several regional offshoots of Silicon Valley._

Going off on a tangent, this is really dumb. It's not an "offshoot" of Silicon Valley. It's a distant, unrelated region that happens to also have a tech industry. Are Austin, Seattle, and Portland also "offshoots" of Silicon Valley? How about New York? Zurich?

<comment><USER15> Its a lazy way to jump on the SV bandwagon. So Austin is/was known as Silicon Hills or something and there are many other Silicon Something monikers for other places.

<comment><USER16> Well, at least they copied the meaningful part of "Silicon Valley". In Korea we have Pangyo Valley and Teheran Valley. (And no, they aren't valleys.)

<comment><USER17> Silicon Sinkhole

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I work for a BI startup (competitor to Domo), so as part of my work, we did our own analysis of Domo product, and also chanced across prospects/customers that are current/ex-Domo users.

Domo is very "business users friendly", they do this by:

\- Very pretty (and drag-and-drop capable) visualization. Not as compared to Tableau though, but still.

\- Native mobile apps

\- Their Domo cache + datasets concept, that makes it easy to load simple data into Domo and visualize

\- Their commenting system?

I suspect that it's these things + all the marketing that made them sell well in certain contexts.

They have the dataset concept that ties to their cache, which makes it easy for business users to upload a file and "just explore", but then joining these datasets together is not quite straightforward. And you have to load each dataset one by one. So it's good for very basic use cases, but for advanced stuff that requires proper data preparation, it starts to fall behind.

Also soon Domo customers would run into performance problem, since Domo hosts the data for the customers.

Besides that, I feel like the entire product is a patch work, without proper thorough design/thinking. Feels like they hire a lot of different product managers, each responsible for one feature, but the features they don't fit together very well.. Some I even find redundant (seriously what's the 3D visualization of datasets/data sources in the product homepage for?).

It's been very interesting for me to observe the space. Our startup, we took the directly opposite approach to Domo in building our business: totally bootstraped with no funding. We've been profitable since year 1, working with customers from unicorn startups, public companies to fast-growing startups. We're very conscious/aware about the space to shape our product strategy.

I think ultimately the team and the product are the most important in the long-term success. I can say that among the solutions, we're most impressed by Tableau, PowerBI and Looker.

In case you've read this far, do check us out: [https://www.holistics.io](https://www.holistics.io)

<comment><USER19> On the product side, another way to say is lacking of vision, strategy and roadmap

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I first heard of Domo last year when we were trying to find a better alternative our BI system. And boy, we were in for a ride.

The first warning sign was that their pitch was full of cool sounding words. They kept referring to the product as a "cloud based operating system", whatever that meant.

When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create anything other than a canned demo.

Personally, I even find their site annoying:

[https://www.domo.com/](https://www.domo.com/)

<comment><USER21> > When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create > anything other than a canned demo.

The opposite experience is what sold me on Looker - super competent team and very clear in how "the magic works". All logic and queries are right there to copy/paste into your own editor to fiddle with if you so choose, or use the built-in SQL runner. At the same time, non-tech users need not worry about such stuff.

<comment><USER22> Same here... I just wish Looker had visualizations at least on par with ... Excel. They've been promising to remedy that for two years now, and now they are promising a move to HighCharts by end of year... but will they fix all the issues, or just slap on a new coat of paint?

I can only wait and see for so long.

<comment><USER23> At least? Excel has excellent, top-level visualizations. They might not look sexy, but for everyone who works in the area of data visualization it's obvious how much effort and thought have been put into designing Excel charts. Getting data visualization right is far far less trivial than it might seem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Domo also has spent $600,000 for catering services from Cubby's Chicago Beef, which describes itself as 'a cute little sandwich and salad restaurant.' It's owned by Josh James and his brother Cubby. ('The menu does look delicious, but there must be caterers in American Fork, Utah, that aren't owned by the boss,' remarked Shira Ovide of Bloomberg). Domo also has bought $200,000 in furnishings from Alice Lane Home Collection, an interior design company partially owned by James, at which Drew James, another brother, is an executive."

Wow.

<comment><USER25> For real though Cubby's is so good. If I worked there, I wouldn't be upset about the relationship because it's a very popular restaurant.

<comment><USER26> Having lived in Utah and eaten at Cubby's, that's the one part of the story that shouldn't raise an eyebrow. If it's between Cubby's or Kneaders give me Cubby's all day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For the EU this might be a good general summary: [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4179302-may-scariest-ipo- fi...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4179302-may-scariest-ipo-filing-ever- seen)

<comment><USER28> Or [https://web.archive.org/web/20180605140133/http://www.latime...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180605140133/http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la- fi-hiltzik-domo-ipo-20180604-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reading this whole article and it isn't until the end you find out what Domo even does. Can't believe they've built an 800million deficit this quickly. Besides the wasteful expenditures described in the article, where is the money going? This isn't like Uber where they have to spend to grow. They are a software-only company.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are a BI dashboard company with lots of data integration connectors. They've been burning money with ads declaring 'spreadsheets are dead' and silly Domopalooza[1] lifestyle events

[1][https://www.domo.com/news/press/domopalooza-2016-to- feature-...](https://www.domo.com/news/press/domopalooza-2016-to-feature-flo- rida-award-winning-musical-artist-as-entertainment-headliner)

[2] [https://www.domo.com/news/press/kesha-joins-the- domopalooza-...](https://www.domo.com/news/press/kesha-joins-the- domopalooza-2017-entertainment-lineup)

[3] [https://globenewswire.com/news- release/2018/02/15/1349133/0/...](https://globenewswire.com/news- release/2018/02/15/1349133/0/en/Domopalooza-2018-Announces-Pitbull-as- Entertainment-Headliner-at-After-Hours.html)

<comment><USER30> _> silly Domopalooza[1] lifestyle events_

Reminds me of a particular west coast startup I was associated with that took its final round of funding and blew most of it on a massive out-of-town party. Flew in all of the A-list bankers and tech types it could find.

The idea was to make the (failing) app look like a huge deal in the eyes of investors and get bought, thus fulfilling its exit strategy.

It worked.

<comment><USER31> Is the identity of this startup a secret? Maybe someone with a throwaway account could post it? Super curious here...

<comment><USER32> FWIW I had a startup as a contract client that sounds like they did something similar. Spent hundreds of thousands throwing a "relaunch party" to pander to investors. I assume this strategy is not rare. Only difference is that it _didn 't_ work for them and they went under a few months later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> IMHO the comments here and seekingalpha are unnecessarily critical and frankly, kind of lame.

1\. I tried Domo a year ago: it's actually quite nice and easy to setup, much easier than Tableau was. A couple of friends tried to deploy Domo at scale: it's no easier than other enterprise BI i.e. a pain. The devil's in the (enterprise) details, and it's fair to say that none of us here on HN really know.

2\. web BI is severely crowded, so it's natural for a company like Domo to burn huge amounts of cash to earn marketshare, just like Lyft, GoDaddy, Monster.com and others did. It's risky, but enterprise BI is risky.

3\. buying services from insiders is a common practice and isn't a red flag on its own, if the expenses are reasonably justified and the prices paid are reasonable (i.e. at a discount). There can be big savings in transaction costs (e.g. salesrep commissions) and potential tax savings (and yes, there's completely legal versions).

4\. lavish expenses? really? Y'all need to see what startups pay in San Francisco for rent, let alone salaries. Good on Domo for spending on their Utah staff! See other comments in this thread about private jets: for business travel, it can be a nominal expense and staff LOVE IT. I owned a company in the corporate food space that catered to the top tech companies and VCs: $300K is not large.

5\. anti-Utah? SV-bias? really? I wish I'd owned IPO stock in Dell, Qualcomm, Microsoft and Amazon.

disclosure: I don't own stock in Domo, don't plan to own stock in Domo and know anyone at Domo. Ditto for other companies in the BI space.

</comment><comment><USER34> Here's what was left unanswered.... How will the investors do? If the investors at a 2 billion valuation take a bath, they will think twice. If they make money, they won't care. Same with IPO investors. Nobody forces them to invest, and there is a move to take these companies out of indexes.

The strange thing is the self dealing. The founder is already wealthy. Why create the risk of a stink to get a little more money? The damage to the IPO is much higher than whatever he pocketed. This is the true hubris.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I've been apart of two companies who did similar things DOMO is doing and neither ended well. Both had millions of VC money and the CEO burned through it all on executive boxes at several pro teams, remodeling an office that didn't need it, travel expenses, and paying himself exorbitantly.

Because of their spending, both companies slashed their runway in half, and within months, both companies went under before being able to ship a viable product.

I don't see a good outcome for this company.

<comment><USER35> The only difference here is they do have a product.

And apparently it's pretty good?

But yeah this isn't going to end well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm so glad the Domo chickens finally came home to roost. It's been pretty painful to observe all the undeserved hype around this company over the year, I felt for a long time like I was taking crazy pills.

</comment><comment><USER37> I share the name of the CEO (it's quite common) and I own the domain hack joshjam.es. A few years back I drove out to Salt Lake City to see if he would have any interest in purchasing it... now that I know the company is throwing money away, I'm tempted to retry!

<comment><USER38> Post back on how you do. :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > $3,276 per flight hour [for a leased private jet]

I am no expert. But this seems cheap to me ?

Can you really cross the USA in a private jet for less than $20K ?

Edit: i am assuming this is not a new fancy Drone ..

<comment><USER40> Per web search, that's a normal price. The question is if that's a good use of investor funds for a low value xompany.

<comment><USER41> It's a matter of utility, not low value. One hour of rental jet costs like 33 $100 airline tickets: even considering saved time, many people need to go to the same place at the same time, and it has to be a rather distant place (Utah <-> either coast?), to make a rental convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I find it weird that the article doesn't actually say what Domo does.

<comment><USER43> Domo is an analytics company: "The pitch for Domo was that it would fill in some of the gaps in enterprise data analysis that Omniture had left open, providing access to real-time marketing information that would help CEOs run their companies more efficiently."

<comment><USER44> Oh god. Omniture is one of the worst software I've had the misfortune of being forced to implement.

I'm not surprised the same founder is running into issues here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Shouldn't the criticism for IPO terms like this be directed at the money managers buying these shares on behalf of their clients?

It is ultimately those making the capital allocation decision to push back on unreasonable terms. Seems like they "sort of are":

"Domo acknowledges in its disclosure statement that Standard & Poor's will be excluding companies with these structures from some of its indexes, and other index owners may follow suit. That's a problem for Domo, because the rise of passive investments keyed to stock indexes means that many investors won't be buying its stock."

</comment><comment><USER46> As an example of what can go wrong with two tier voting stock, look at the conflict between CBS and Viacom. I don't agree that a founder should have a greater voting share than his or her ownership. I know that has got to be a really unpopular view here. But even if you don't agree with me, how long is that voting ratio supposed to last? Can it continue after you break up the company into pieces? Should it apply to ancestors of the founder?

</comment><comment><USER47> I was at the conference referenced in the photo - SAASTR 2017. The level of arrogance of the CEO was striking - down to the literal slouch in the chair for the entire talk.

I've remarked several times to people that he was the most arrogant conference panelist I've ever seen. The line between confidence and arrogance is pretty distinct in my opinion and at that time this ceo had no idea where that line is.

</comment><comment><USER48> Call it what it is- a pump and dump. People can put lipstick on the pig but it's just the same old scam that is centuries old.

</comment><comment><USER13> I used to work for the former VP of product for DOMO... the stories he told me does make me feel surprised by this story. The CEO led by a sort of "cult of personality" without having a clear direction (that was relayed to the workers/staff) of what he wanted Domo to do. Its a serious leadership failure.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems pretty unsurprising given that domo is by all appearances the result of the Utah County MLM-royalty types getting into tech.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why isn't something like buying goods and services from a company you (or your brother) own with investor money illegal? Unless I'm missing a reason why that would be ok, that should be criminal?

And then I don't understand the link between founder control and unethical behaviour. I've seen plenty of cases of corruption in investor-controlled companies. The article doesn't even attempt to make a concrete connection despite implying it over and over.

<comment><USER50> The implication is that because the founder owns so much of the company, there are very few options left to the investors to correct this behavior. Here the options are to not invest in a new round or bring a lawsuit. At a normal company, the investors could force the founder out as CEO, bring in other execs or force the company to address specific issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> What are the other alternatives in this space? Segment?

</comment><comment><USER52> >putative

Never heard that word before. Other than that, the isn't really anything new in this article. Successful startups are rare. It's rare that they even survive going public.

<comment><USER53> It's the almost forgotten cousin to the much overused "alleged".

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is there a GDPR friendly version of this? [sigh]

<comment><USER55> just seen this tool (outline) on another HN post - works well:

[https://www.outline.com/9eSGhG](https://www.outline.com/9eSGhG)

(i can't think of anyway to write a post recommending something that doesn't look like a spam link!)</comment></comment>


The World Is Getting Better and Nobody Knows It - <AUTHOR> https://fee.org/articles/the-world-is-getting-better-and-nobody-knows-it/ <comment><USER2> It's an interesting point of view; one often raised in less-serious contexts lamenting the 24-hour news cycle and the sensationalism of news. The psychology behind how we tend to remember bad events over good is also a likely contributor, as they point out.

But perhaps it's even more obvious why the survey-takers in such developed countries as Sweden, UK, and USA are of the belief that the world is not such a good place after all: it's not getting better for them.

The World Economic Forum came to this conclusion in their study asking essentially the same thing [1]. Globalization's main beneficiaries are developing countries' lower working class, who can luck out and be uplifted with higher wages and higher quality of life -- and, of course, the global rich. Meanwhile, the extreme poor and developed countries' working class sees little tangible improvement. This is reflected in the rise of political movements that are isolationist, protectionist, and anti-immigration, as they believe (whether rightfully or falsely, that's an open question) that those policies will improve their local fortunes when the opposite policies did not.

This appears to show that as the economic outlook of certain classes of people improves, the economic outlook of other classes remains stagnant or worsens. Some people insist that the economy isn't a zero-sum game -- and perhaps pedantically, they are correct -- but yet we observe this behavior time and time again. So what gives?

[1] [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/people-are-angry- abou...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/people-are-angry-about- globalization-this-chart-explains-why/)

</comment><comment><USER3> And my first reaction was to find a flaw in their statistics.

I always questioned why the media reports every instance of "adults behaving badly". Is there an upside to the reader/watcher?

Excerpt: "Why do we make these false assumptions? Many of them are formed by the media, which reinforces a particular way of looking at the world – a tendency to focus on the dramatic and surprising, which is almost always bad news, like war, murder and natural disasters."

</comment><comment><USER4> What about the rise of global mass surveillance, climate change and income inequality?

Poverty, hunger and crime levels aren't the only metrics that gauge 'world goodness'. This article screams "Don't complain, your problems don't matter, the world is better than it ever was!"

<comment><USER3> The paragraph near the end addresses this, somewhat (to keep us from feeling too good):

"The fact that things have in fact been getting better – overwhelmingly so – does not guarantee progress in the future. After years of easy money and debt financing of companies and governments, a large-scale financial crisis is possible, when all the bills come due. Global warming may threaten ecosystems and affect the lives of millions. Large-scale war between major powers is possible. Terrorists could wreak havoc on a massive scale ..."</comment></comment>


Delhi High Court rejects publishers plea against photocopying of textbooks - <AUTHOR> http://m.ndtv.com/delhi-news/delhi-high-court-rejects-publishers-plea-against-photocopying-of-books-1459716 <comment><USER2> Textbooks in the US are insidiously over priced. Even the International editions, basically black and white paperbacks are still quite expensive.

I buy a fair amount of textbooks for self study. Current year additions of Math and Science books are around $200 and solution manuals are around $50. Most of these books rarely change there content. For instance a basic Calculus textbook that is in its 12th edition is around $200. More advanced books for upper division / grad level can go as high as $300 for a few hundred page paperback.

"Copyright is intended to increase and not to impede the harvest of knowledge. It is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors in order to benefit the public," the court said."

You might need to get 8-10 books to cover a particular topic in depth. That could easily put you over $2000. If you have to pay for that out of pocket most people simply can not afford it.

Its an impressive ruling by the Indian Courts.</comment>


Oculus Medium Under the Hood: Developing the Move Tool - <AUTHOR> https://developer.oculus.com/blog/medium-under-the-hood-part-1-developing-the-move-tool/ <comment><USER2> Voxels are so cool. Level sets and distance fields are a very different way of thinking about 3D compared to the "mainstream" triangle-based rendering.

DreamWorks Animation offers a powerful open source library called OpenVDB for storing and manipulating this kind of data:

[http://www.openvdb.org](http://www.openvdb.org)

</comment><comment><USER3> This could be awesome, being able to inspect and make changes to your 3D models as if standing right next to them.

I mean, it would even have applications for sculptors. Actual materials to sculpt with are not cheap as far as I know, and it could streamline the training process.

<comment><USER4> Training for most fine art is a surprising amount of mechanical/physical knowledge about the various materials & tools. For example, creating a bronze cast is like a 18-step process[0], of which one step is 'make it look like the thing you want'.

> _Actual materials to sculpt with are not cheap as far as I know_

You learn how to sculpt with clay, which is pretty affordable. Some computer 3D models are sculpted in clay first, and 3D scanned for cleanup![1]

0: [http://www.laurencebroderick.co.uk/casting_1.html](http://www.laurencebroderick.co.uk/casting_1.html) 1: [https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Models](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Models)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh! I see DrRacket is open in that screen recording.

Is there any public information on using Racket with oculus yet?

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat, but I don't think this is going to help them sell more hardware.

<comment><USER7> This and TiltBrush are the only reasons I'm considering a headset at all, tried 3D sculpting unsuccessfully in 2D so would love to try it in 3D.

Medium looks excellent but yeah not amazing enough to outweigh being owned by FB. Still pretty disappointed VR tech innovations are just being locked up into proprietary camps.

<comment><USER8> Medium runs fine on a Vive via ReVive: [https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive](https://github.com/LibreVR/Revive)

There's also plenty of alternative apps for 3D content creation in VR. I started to tabulate them (plus some where you create the content outside of VR) here: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xwqLF3CpYWxZ6kipzWGH...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xwqLF3CpYWxZ6kipzWGHaBn8rKPsptKxRCfHjVngxzA/edit?usp=sharing)

The list is a little out of date and I haven't got around to filling out most of the columns but it's probably of some use to someone.

<comment><USER9> Another addition: A-Painter ([https://blog.mozvr.com/a-painter/](https://blog.mozvr.com/a-painter/))</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Good Morning Routines - <AUTHOR>

Diving right into email in the morning seems to be a mistake, as I easily get side tracked.<p>What did you do in the morning on your most productive days? <comment><USER2> There is research that confirms your intuition, but mostly because it taxes cognitive energy reserves. Even if you can do it quickly or time-box it, it leaves you less able to do hard things. Look for papers by Roy Baumeister, or the book he co-wrote, "Willpower".

You want to start by building cognitive reserves and then use them on something that requires it.

For me, that means working out at 6-7am. But, I think you need to figure it out for yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that makes sense. I feel like I am most productive if I touch email twice a day.

Also attacking the hardest thing that I have to do between 9am - 11am seems to work well. I have more energy to get it done. Maybe that has to do with waking up at 7, who knows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They'll get your lower back sorted in no time.

[http://www.elitefts.com/education/training/good-mornings- und...](http://www.elitefts.com/education/training/good-mornings- understanding-a-great-exercise/)

<comment><USER4> And all this time I just thought that guy at the gym had really bad squat form!</comment></comment>


Man sticks finger in a saw to demonstrate his safety invention [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.minds.com/blog/view/74687/man-sticks-finger-in-a-table-saw-in-super-slomo-to-demonstrate-his-safety-invention-maddness

<comment><USER2> There is a long back story behind this product. The wikipedia article[1] gets into some of it. For a while there was a chance that these stops would be required for all new table saws sold in the US. Sadly that time seems to have passed. The PTI (think MPAA for powertools) did an effective job of killing any regulations requiring the sawstop. Instead they have trumpeted these silly plastic guards as an effective alternative. I have yet to meet a contractor or hobbyist that has not removed the plastic guard from their table saw.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.ni.com/swf/flv/sawstop/](http://www.ni.com/swf/flv/sawstop/)

It was developed using FPGA from National instruments, the demo is pretty old and was developed around 2007.

</comment><comment><USER4> How is this news? I remember watching this on tv years ago...

</comment><comment><USER5> I couldn't watch him use his finger; my whole body is wound up right now.

<comment><USER6> Imagine the prototype testing. They don't show you the seven guys rocking it yakuza-style.

OK, OK, 200 earless albino lab rabbits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Using machines to work side by side with people, future is coming slowly.</comment>


A business ripe for disruption: The parcel conundrum - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18709348?pages=all <comment><USER2> Interestingly I was discussing this with some friends last night (trying to solve the worlds problems on the back of a napkin as always :) One suggestion was to try and crowdsource deliveries in cities, ie. have depots centralised around public transport areas. But how to deal with security?

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.bufferbox.com/>

<comment><USER4> Amazon.com also provides a similar service to their customers: delivery to lockers that are available at all hours:

[http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/17/amazon-lockers-come-to- ny...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/17/amazon-lockers-come-to-nyc-no-more- getting-caught-by-ups-in-you)</comment></comment>


Open Letter from the OpenID Foundation to Apple Regarding Sign in with Apple - <AUTHOR> https://openid.net/2019/06/27/open-letter-from-the-openid-foundation-to-apple-regarding-sign-in-with-apple/ <comment><USER3> Between lack of a a nonce and an asserted exposure to code injection and replay attacks, the issues in the letter imply a week of vulnerability research could yield a complete takedown of the product - which would suck because an Apple sign-in experience using their TEE is really valuable.

I could see someone making the choice where they would elect not to manage a nonce because its permuting effect was achieved by other parts of the protocol. Apple also has keys in a TEE, and a nonce generated and synchronized outside of that could have been interpreted as creating additional attack surface.

If the OpenID letter is correct, there are exploitable vulnerabilities in Apples implementation that could be demonstrated. If they are not correct, they could just be angry Apple is leveraging its TEE to assert it doesn't need governance from this standards body because the standard is written for products without a separate hardware keystore.

<comment><USER4> I don't think they said there's a lack of a nonce, it seems to be saying that they're not allowing the client to set the nonce.

<comment><USER5> If the second part of your sentence is true, could "allowing the client to set the nonce" be considered an increase in the possible attack surface?

<comment><USER6> The entire point of the nonce is that it can't be predicted by anyone but the client, proving that the client initiated the transaction. This is done by having the client send it over TLS and having the identity provider sign the nonce as cryptographic proof.

Also, by my reading, the problem is that the standard requires the nonce parameter to do something and Apple ignores it.

<comment><USER7> exactly, this looks like the protocol has been intentionally weakened to provide on the wire access. (state actors / telco)

The excuse that they dont want to sign up to the Terms and Conditions holds no water

If they are serious about security adopt OpenID in full (they dont have to join just pass the tests) and put fido2 security key functionality on every Apple device

Apple have made some smart moves but now the marketing dept need to do the right thing for security standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This might answer some questions: [https://openid.net/connect/faq/](https://openid.net/connect/faq/)

Also

>Are there live production deployments of OpenID Connect? Yes. Some examples include Google, Gakunin (Japanese Universities Network), Microsoft, Ping Identity, Nikkei Newspaper, Tokyu Corporation, mixi, Yahoo! Japan and Softbank. There are also mature deployments underway by Working Group participant organizations, such as Deutsche Telecom, AOL, and Salesforce.

For an example of OpenID Connect at work, look at Google+ Sign-In, Google's flagship social-identity offering, which is entirely based on OpenID Connect.

<comment><USER9> Is OpenID Connect the one where it issues a JWT that you can then verify and exchange for a session cookie? If so, I love the API. Very easy to use, and easy to integrate multiple sources.

<comment><USER10> Short answer is yes but long answer is no. OpenID Connect doesn't define anything about the token format or the use of cookies. It's really more of an authentication framework, that leaves a lot to the implementation. Web is always cookies and JWT is getting popular lately.

<comment><USER11> Only partially correct. I think the earliest drafts of OpenID Connect were completely agnostic of JWT, and so is OAuth 2.0, but the final Open ID Connect Core spec is tightly coupled to the JWT standard in multiple places.

The first and most important coupling point is the ID Token. There are three types of tokens issued by Open ID Connect: Access Tokens and Refresh tokens are opaque, just as in OAuth 2. ID Tokens, on the other hand, most follow a more-or-less well-defined JWT format (as much as JWT can be well-defined - <USER2> is a somewhat wild west of a standard).

The rest of the places you could use JWT are in the spec, but I admit I've never seen them in the wild (and I would probably avoid them like the plague if I was trying to implement a _secure_ subset of an OpenID Connect IdP):

1\. JWT request signing (and even encryption!) 2\. JWT for signing and encrypting any JSON response 3\. JWT for client authentication 4\. JWT for aggregated claims

And I may have missed more things.

If you want to implement Open ID Connect without being crazy, forget about all of these and only use/implement the Auth Code flow with a client secret. You should still verify the ID Token according to the spec, but if you fail to verify it's no longer an issue, since this is a value you get directly from the the Authorization Server on an authenticated TLS channel (the same channel you'd trust for getting the ID Token signing keys).

<comment><USER10> OpenID Connect predates JWT so it certainly couldn't have been used from the beginning. I'm not aware if there is a re edition of the spec.

Either way, pretty much everything in OpenID Connect is optional and/or implementation specific. OIDC providers have to be integrated one by one, adjusting to their slight differences.

<comment><USER6> OpenID Connect Core, section 2: "The ID Token is represented as a JSON Web Token (JWT) [JWT]." ([https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- core-1_0.html#IDToke...](https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect- core-1_0.html#IDToken))

<comment><USER10> Well, that's good to know on the one hand. On the other hand, I've never seen a provider that respected that section in full.

<comment><USER11> This is more or less one of the _only_ part that is respected in full.

I've got to say, I've seen providers without proper discovery, I've seen providers with strange hybrid flows and I'm pretty sure most providers don't implement the request/response signing and encryption (after all, if you want insanity, you'll be more than happy with SAML). But I've never seen a provider who doesn't implement an ID token.

I think everybody would agree that OpenID Connect without an ID token is just plain OAuth 2.

<comment><USER10> I've had providers with blackbox tokens. Basically a random string that has to be passed to the /userinfo endpoint to retrieve the user claims.

I've had providers with the id_token and access_token being the same value. Other where they were different values. One that didn't support refresh_token at all.

Then a variety of screw ups where the required claims in the JWT tokens are missing or incorrect.

It's wild really. It always takes a bit of work to integrate any OpenID Connect provider. Most libraries only care to handle Google or Facebook login.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess (hope?) this is actually as a result of some communication failure or refusal behind the scenes. Otherwise it would look pretty rude.

Some sort of accompanying commentary from OIDF people, explaining the reasoning behind the letter, would be appreciated.

<comment><USER13> I dunno.

It's also pretty weird to borrow 95% of a spec, miss out on a half dozen important security features, not acknowledge the relationship between your work and the spec, and not contribute back to the community that funded the spec.

<comment><USER14> The big tech companies all tend to have excellent security teams, each of which have particular strengths. Google's obviously includes low-level vulnerability research and browser security. Apple's includes hardware security and cryptography. I would be surprised if they "missed out on a half dozen important security features".

<comment><USER13> The article describes the missing security features. Did you read it?

The lack of nonce makes replay protection impossible. The lack of c_hash opens up vulnerabilities in connect flows where the service incorrectly assumes the two tokens refer refer to the same user. Returning the id token on the query leaks it in the Referer header.

<comment><USER14> I don't know enough about Sign In With Apple to map its security features to those of OpenID; I'm guessing you don't either.

<comment><USER15> Neither of you need to; the article contains a link to [https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign- in...](https://bitbucket.org/openid/connect/src/default/How-Sign-in-with- Apple-differs-from-OpenID-Connect.md) where a bunch of experts have analysed the current (beta) signin with Apple against the spec. In particular it's "signing with apple on the web" that they've analysed, which is open for anyone to analyze using the developer tools in a browser etc.

Apple are actually following the OpenID standard, that's why the list is differences is concise and to the point. Several of the pieces that are missing/different are items that were added to OpenID to prevent attacks that have been used against pure OAuth 2.

Many of the potential attacks relate to fooling the third party sites as to what happened, so it is difficult/impossible to mitigate them with magic on Apple's side.

(disclaimer: I'd listed as a contributor on above doc. I'm writing here in a purely personal capacity.)

<comment><USER16> >The big tech companies all tend to have excellent security teams, each of which have particular strengths. Google's obviously includes low-level vulnerability research and browser security. Apple's includes hardware security and cryptography. I would be surprised if they "missed out on a half dozen important security features".

>In particular it's "signing with apple on the web" that they've analysed, which is open for anyone to analyze using the developer tools in a browser etc.

Why is it I am getting the idea Apple just aren't very good with the web. I am reading it as Sign In with Apple ID is secure on the devices, iOS and App, but not when used on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Everyone is obviously focusing on the certification suggestion, but they also went and made a nice document of "bugs." If Apple does anything, patching some of the larger deviations would be great, just out of sheer convenience. Third- party auth libs already have enough exception cases for specific services...

</comment><comment><USER18> It's not an issue with $15k or if apple can pay or not. I think it's the issue of Apple vs. Open in general. Apple's echo system is closed to the world.

<comment><USER19> _I think it's the issue of Apple vs. Open in general. Apple's echo system is closed to the world._

I think that for people outside of HN, that's OK. Not everyone trusts the open source community, or open source organizations.

If something goes wrong with something important, it's normal for people to want something or someone to blame. If that something is Apple, that's useful. If it's some rando on the internet contributing code to a code repository, it's significantly less useful to the ordinary person.

For the average person, entrusting Apple with their logins is a better option than using password1234 or some other coping mechanism. People know Apple. Nobody knows OpenID. It's the same reason people used to trust Microsoft (and many still do!) with their personal information. Microsoft is a known quantity.

It's like having a neighbor watch your pets while you're on vacation, or signing up with some random service on the internet to watch your pets. Those random services get bonded and insured for the peace of mind of the user. There is no such level of assurance from OpenID other than it uses the word "open" in its name, and as a culture we value the word "open" more than "closed."

<comment><USER20> One of the big cultural problems in society today, and (antitrust) law in particular, is the focus on consumer welfare above all else. The consumer is not the only thing that matters

<comment><USER21> Can you expand on this idea? This is the first time I've heard anyone saying that consumer-first is wrong.

<comment><USER20> Lina Khan is one of the leading proponents of the idea:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly- antit...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/technology/monopoly-antitrust- lina-khan-amazon.html)

The consumer uber alles idea is actually pretty new in the history of antitrust law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They basically just asked Apple to give them 15K$, which is the cost of membership for a company of more than 100 employees [0].

Is it currently not possible to use standard OpenID clients for "Sign-in with Apple" authentication ? Does Apple not provide some sort of SDK that makes this easy ? And if so, what is the advantage of "Sign-in with Apple" being interoperable ?

[0] [https://openid.net/foundation/members/registration](https://openid.net/foundation/members/registration)

<comment><USER23> $15k feels like so trivial an amount to apple. It's the sort of expense you don't even need to file an expense report for on a corporate credit card if you're even a mid-level manager there.

edit: not "no expense report"; i actually meant "you don't have to ask anyone first (but will have to file a report about it later)", which is not quite the same thing.

<comment><USER24> I guarantee you'd have to file an expense report, but that's probably the extent of it.

<comment><USER25> Of course you need to file an expense report, his point was it's such a trivial sum to Apple the person expending it wouldn't need to ask permission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is not just ask for money, They are proposing that Apple use the standard and make public they use the standard, It could boost openid as no other could make.

<comment><USER27> Doesnt google already use it?

<comment><USER28> Yep, Microsoft too. Apple supporting the standard would be a great help to developer adoption.. theoretically, though I think they just prefer strong- arming developers into using their proprietary API anyway, standard irrespective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> ITT: People who benefit from standard protocols and use OpenIDConnect every single day without realizing it complaining that the world's first trillion dollar company might have to pay 0.000015B.

<comment><USER30> It wouldn't be this way with other companies. Hackers news will defend Apple no matter what for some reason.

<comment><USER31> Except their keyboards.

And their laptop overheating.

And the price of their monitor stands.

Or their lack of a <5" screen phone.

No, hacker news is happy to bitch about apple all day long and I don't know how one could possibly think otherwise.

<comment><USER32> ... and USB-C ... and MagSafe ... and lack of headphone jack

<comment><USER33> ... and getting rid of MagSafe and their "walled garden" and the 30% they take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Perhaps Apple has intentionally NOT jumped on the OpenID effort without tweaks, for the following reason?

Quoting wikipedia for convenience:

"OAuth 2.0 has had numerous security flaws exposed in implementations.[17] The protocol itself has been described as inherently insecure by security experts and a primary contributor to the specification stated that implementation mistakes are almost inevitable.[18][19]".

<comment><USER15> Apple are using OAuth 2.0.

The contributor referred to (John Bradley) as saying that OAuth 2.0 implementation mistakes are almost inevitable is one of the authors of the OpenID Connect spec, and if you follow the citation link ( [https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/oauth/WuT1tmFoxs8S_2v7...](https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/oauth/WuT1tmFoxs8S_2v7kYmouF_ZVFo) ) you'll see him mention that the flaw referred to is fixed in OpenID Connect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Par for the Apple course isn't it?

> _Oh, you 've all agreed on USB type-c? Well we're going to use thunderbolt. > Except for when we don't and our customer have to buy a type-c to > thunderbolt adapter._

> _Two button mouse with a scroll wheel? How about a 1 button mouse that you > click with two fingers._

> _Linux? Sure, but it 's called MacOsx and doesn't have a native package > manager._

They've always done stuff like this.

<comment><USER36> > Oh, you've all agreed on USB type-c? Well we're going to use thunderbolt. > Except for when we don't and our customer have to buy a type-c to > thunderbolt adapter.

Assuming you're referring to Lightning, that predates USB-C, and the reason why Apple hasn't replaced it yet is probably because of agreements with accessory makers over how long they are going to remain using that connector.

> Two button mouse with a scroll wheel? How about a 1 button mouse that you > click with two fingers.

I believe macOS originally didn't have the concept of right click, but rather ctrl-click. Eventually they supported both, and mice sold by Apple have supported right click for almost 10 years.

> Linux? Sure, but it's called MacOsx and doesn't have a native package > manager.

Linux (the kernel) doesn't have a package manager, and many distributions don't have a package manager either. The primary use of macOS is not the command line, and developers are better served by third party package managers/repositories, with a cadence independent of the OS release lifecycle. (Just like on Ubuntu, where you frequently need to add PPAs for anything newer/different from what's available upstream)

<comment><USER37> Just out of curiosity: Which Linux distributions come without a package manager?

The only one I am aware of is LFS (Linux From Scratch), which is more like a manual on how to build your own distribution than a distribution like others. Anything more mainstream?

<comment><USER38> Slackware has no package manager.

<comment><USER12> Uh, that depends on your definition of a package manager. Slack has had utilities to install and uninstall packages for ages, if i remember correctly, and in the most recent release it might even have something that works with remote repos.

But yes, I agree that a pkgmgr is not necessarily a prerequisite in the Linux world, plenty of smaller distros don't have it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> One of the biggest benefits of building a close platform is that you have the freedom to ignore open letters like this one.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like another case of Apple doing things in a nonstandard way for little reason, getting the security wrong, and paying the price. A while back, their iMessage system was found to have rather serious security issues. Same same.

'Not Invented Here syndrome'.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm surprised how many people seem to have a huge problem with Apple, a 910 billion dollar company, paying 15k towards a membership of an organization that underpins the major ideas in their software implementation. That's, what, a single Mac Pro?

<comment><USER10> You're giving too much credit to the foundation. OpenID was an organic effort on authentication before it became a design by committee, the root would be somewhere at Twitter or other big web companies very long ago.

OpenID Connect is not an authentication solution by the way. It's at best a few standard requests and parameters, all of which are optional, that could be used to interconnect authentication systems if that's what you're trying to do. Authentication and most of everything is left to the implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "Therefore the OpenID Foundation invites Apple to: [...] Join the OpenID Foundation"

It's not really an "invitation" if they expect Apple to give them money.

<comment><USER43> Let's start a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the Apple's membership. 10k shouldn't be that hard to get given the amount of time we, developers, have to spend on Apple's custom implementation.

<comment><USER12> Holy sheet - don't give them ideas, man! Apple are skimpy enough as they are...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's interesting to see the pro-Apple bias on Hackernews, if some other company tried to avoid integrating with existing standards, thus hurting interoperability I bet HN would throw a fit.

<comment><USER45> Perceptions of HN bias tend to be in the eye of the beholder. They're mostly an inverse image of what you like: if you like X, HN will seem anti-X; if you dislike it, HN will seem pro-X. In reality, HN is a large dataset that contains all of these things. But we have a cognitive bias to notice more of, and more intensely, what rubs us the wrong way. Pain cuts deeper grooves than pleasure.

After a few cases, the unpleasant memory hops to the dataset as a whole, leading to a fixed view of HN. But people with opposite likes have the opposite fixed view. When people tell how they see HN, they're really telling the story of themselves. It's fascinating how solid this principle turns out to be. I'm sure it extends to things that are far less trivial than an internet forum.</comment></comment>


BlackBerry 10 Beta 3 hands-on photos and video - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/25/3386444/blackberry-10-beta-3-hands-on-photos-video

<comment><USER2> I love the comments on The Verge. People complaining about there being too many gestures, and who's going to remember all of them?

Do people really think Android's inconsistent back button, and the home button on Android and iOS is better? If so, stay with those devices. For me, I like gestures better. Different paradigms for different people.</comment>


James Hong: Reinventing HOTorNOT, Part I - <AUTHOR> http://james.hotornot.com/2007/06/reinventing-hotornot-part-i.html <comment><USER2> The excuses for not sharing revenue seem disingenuous. Nothing was stopping them from just writing fat profit sharing checks every month. Perhaps that's not an ideal way of creating a sense of ownership, but it certainly aligns interests well. The guys developing the site would lose money if they messed anything up and make more if they did well. Much of the financial world operates on this type of model.

As for the change in direction, why not just start a new site and promote the heck out of it on HOTorNOT? Something like what Evan Williams did with Odeo/Twitter. That seems like the truly risky and adventurous path.

<comment><USER3> Risky for the employees, but the founders are already wealthy enough that taking the risk probably doesn't bother them much.

<comment><USER2> Those guys are well-known in The Valley and there's a lot of eyes on anything they do. They'd be risking their reputation as successful entrepreneurs. Staying with their successful site is a way of preventing total failure. Playing it safe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article makes reference to the fact that once a dating site becomes free, you don't have to scan user content for contact info any more. I think this is a buried lede; free sites aren't just paid sites with lower costs, they have different (and sometimes better) characteristics than their paid counterparts:

1.) Easier to signup - no need to force users to drag out their credit cards

2.) Enhanced anonymity - no need to tie an account to a real person

3.) Simpler operation - the site owner doesn't have to worry that the users are ripping him off/subverting his business model

4.) Lower expectations - how much can a user complain if he's getting something for free?

<comment><USER5> "no need to tie an account to a real person"

So now fat girls that pretend they are thin models to get dates is a feature?:)</comment></comment>


Poor sleeping habits are filling our brains with neurotoxins? - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/424120/our-poor-sleeping-habits-could-be-filling-our-brains-with-neurotoxins/#

<comment><USER2> Talk about overstating the impact of the glymphatic system. If it really lead in a direct causal line to Alzheimer's, toxin overload, and a vicious loop spiraling into overload, this would already show up in the data as all sorts of things like short-sleepers (who never get as much sleep time as claimed is necessary) having death-sentences rather than appearing perfectly healthy, less sleep while young would predict massive mortality losses, etc. None of which seems to be true or the studies seem to be the reverse effect (bad health and aging cause bad sleep). And then there's the persistent doubts about whether the beta-amyloid hypothesis is correct in the first place...

> Swart, who is also a leadership coach, has been instructing executives to > sleep for years. She promotes techniques related to diet and exercise, and > warns that sleeping next to your smartphone—the one that emits 3G and 4G > signals all night—affects your brain patterns, restructuring your brain > cells and likely preventing you from allowing your brain to clean out waste > material properly.

> Research published in 2007 has already found that the electrical radiation > emitted from smart devices is picked up by electrodes inside our brains. > Scientists are still trying to figure out just how much damage the > electromagnetic signals emitted from WiFi equipment can actually do to the > human brain. But by potentially preventing our brains from flushing beta- > amyloid—just by being in close proximity—it's clear these devices already > have the potential for serious damage.

Or as Lehrer's writeup says:

> Although this research shows that cell phone transmissions can affect a > person's brainwaves with persistent effects on behavior, Horne does not feel > there is any need for concern that cell phones are damaging. The arousal > effects the researchers measured are equivalent to about half a cup of > coffee, and many other factors in a person's surroundings will affect a > night's sleep as much or more than cell phone transmissions.</comment>


Ruby official mirror on Github - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/ruby/ruby

<comment><USER2> It's just an official _mirror_ : [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi- bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi- bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/28356)

<comment><USER3> Damn. Dunno why it would matter all that much, but I'd like it if they used github for core ruby dev.

<comment><USER4> Or at least use a sane source control system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once the transition is complete this should help to increase the quality and speed of development on Ruby. It is amazing how much contributions on projects go up, when moved to git/github.

<comment><USER6> If nothing else it may have improve documentation.

The API docs are generated from comments in the code. To fix or add to the docs you need to get the source from svn, add your stuff, make a diff patch, and submit that patch to the ruby-doc or ruby-core mailing lists.

I've done it, its not that hard, but it's sort of tedious, and annoying enough that people who might otherwise want to help by adding a few notes or fixing the examples just won't.

Maybe I've just gotten used to it, but the use of git and github for this seems much simpler.

<comment><USER7> I agree. There are a lot of things just simply wrong in the Ruby documentation but it's such a hassle to patch it that I haven't put in the effort to fix them. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not the best forum to ask, but just in case there are any Ruby ppl reading... Honest questions (I like Ruby):

* Is there an ETA for 1.9.2?

* Are major, minor & patch level numbers being "dropped"? 1.9.1-p376 is kinda ugly / uninformative.

* Will odd minor numbers go back to indicate unstable releases?

Thanks!

<comment><USER9> I don't think there's an ETA for 1.9.2 yet (although some discussion about creating a new release schedule was taking place on ruby-core) and I've not heard any hints that the numbering scheme will be changed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like the import didn't go so well, as all the tags are listed as branches, instead of, well, tags.

Is there any sort of announcement of the move?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, it looks as though it's a work in progress, rather than a working import. I'd be amazed if there wasn't an announcement on the github blog when the repository is actually ready.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! Any word on if they're gonna swap bug trackers? Lighthouse would be a big step up.

<comment><USER12> What's wrong with redmine? It's not like they're using trac!

<comment><USER3> I dunno. It's ok I guess. Too much of a trac clone though. Lighthouseapp has been pretty nice to work with I think.

<comment><USER4> Lighthouse is good for a lot of things, but it is lacking for big projects IMO. We use JIRA internally and its a big step up from TRAC, especially with their agile greenhopper product. A little pricey IMO for private use, but its free for open source, so why not?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Game of Life in Scratch - <AUTHOR> https://cartesianproduct.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/game-of-life-in-scratch/ <comment><USER2> Not much to the article, so I guess the interesting part is the actual game: [https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/164407978/#fullscreen](https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/164407978/#fullscreen)

> It's a slightly unusual implementation in that the surface of the game is, > in effect, spherical – i.e. the edges are effectively a feature of the > projection of the surface but left joins to right, top to bottom and so on.

I believe that is a torus, and not at all an unusual implementation choice for the Game of Life.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I was wondering how they pulled a sphere off! (So I suspected it was just a flat torus instead -- for non-geometers, a flat torus is what the game Asteroids is played on. Unlike the usual embedding of a torus in 3D, the curvature of a flat torus is 0 everywhere.)

I think the only possible convex sphere made of squares is six nxn square grids stuck together into a big cube. Supposing n>=2, then there are 24 squares with the defect that they only have 7 neighbors. Flat tori don't have any defects, so game of life creatures can't locally measure they're not just in two-dimensional Euclidean space.

A wilder topology I've never seen the game of life take place on is 2d real projective space. Instead of just gluing bottom to top, side to side, you reverse the orientation as you glue. So, if your Asteroids spaceship is flying upward near the left side of the screen, when it goes past the top edge it would appear at the bottom edge flying upward near the right side of the screen. You could also play on a Klein bottle by reversing only one of the orientations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's many other implementations of Game of Life in Scratch.

[https://scratch.mit.edu/search/projects?q=Conway%27s+Game+of...](https://scratch.mit.edu/search/projects?q=Conway%27s+Game+of+Life)

(Warning, some have music.)

(I made one before scratch had arrays, in 2008 but it no longer works.)

Also, here' the article's project in Phosphorus a javascript scratch player, for those without flash.

[https://phosphorus.github.io/#164407978](https://phosphorus.github.io/#164407978)

</comment><comment><USER5> For those who aren't familiar with scratch, you can shift click on the green flag to make it run faster, and see the source here:[https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/164407978/#editor](https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/164407978/#editor).

</comment><comment><USER6> > flash player</comment>


CO2 Levels Hit 415 PPM for First Time in 3M+ Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/05/13/we-dont-know-planet-co2-levels-hit-415-ppm-first-time-3-million-years <comment><USER2> Discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19897250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19897250)

</comment><comment><USER3> there are conflicting reports of cognitive impairment starting as soon as 700 ppm: [https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor- co2-du...](https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and- dumber/)

ETA for 700 ppm is about 2080: [https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world- passed-a-carbon...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a- carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters)

<comment><USER4> I expect you'll find food impairment kicking in hard before then. Also peace impairment, water impairment, topsoil impairment, etc.</comment></comment>


Reading Incomprehension  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28farley.html

<comment><USER2> I've been in this columnist's shoes, and I can confirm what he says: the score depends on the grader.

At the center where I graded, only 1 in 14 essays were read by a second scorer for verification. "Calibration" consisted of a half-hour of reading pre-scored essays and taking a test that required a passing rate (being within some margin of the "true" score) of only 80%.

There were ridiculous formulas about the number of adjectives, etc., required for a certain score. Imaginative writing suffered the most; cookie-cutter writing was rewarded the most.

Scorers worked eight hour shifts. Sometime after my morning coffee I was the most generous, and in my afternoon lull, when I could hardly keep my eyes open, I'm pretty sure I graded the hardest.

I remember one of my colleagues had, sadly, suffered brain injury in a car wreck. His scores were all over the place, as I could tell when he asked my opinion on the essays he was scoring. Others had modest educational attainments -- people who had maybe gotten a bachelor's degree twenty years before, but not really been engaged in mentally rigorous work in the mean time. Many of them couldn't reliably spot an adjective. They were amazed that I had an "accuracy rate" of 97%, the highest at my table by a good 15 percentage points.

We were grading fourth-graders' tests from Arizona. The previous cohort at my center (that I didn't belong to) had graded high school tests from, if memory serves, Minnesota. (This was late '90s). The tests were "high stakes" -- failure on the test kept the student from high school graduation. It later came to light that some large number of students who had failed the test and been denied graduation, had later challenged their scores and successfully shown that their tests had been severely mis-graded. They were allowed to graduate, half a year too late.

After the grading period ended, I stayed on a mailing list to hear about job openings the next summer in that city. However, some time during the spring I got a letter saying that there wouldn't be a grading center in our city that year. Wonder why.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's much ado about nothing. Some smart students couldn't really give two shits about their grade, and then they'll write essays about _Debbie Does Dallas_ (I've been there.) If you're bright and a good writer and you care about how many points you get, then you'll write a technically strong, boring essay about vanilla subject matter and you'll get a high score no matter how dim the grader is.

<comment><USER4> i wrote about masturbation back in high school. i got 4/10 mark with a big red X across the page corners :D

<comment><USER5> Victory, of a sort!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is yet another reason that I worry about one day sending my pre-school aged sons to public school. Conform, conform, conform. My experience with large companies tells me that such training might serve them well, although similar experience seemingly had little effect upon me (I hope.).

Last year, my wife and I toured the local Montessori school, and I asked whether students would be required to take the Ohio state-wide standardized tests. The teacher, thinking that I was concerned that their "performance" would not be measured, said that they could optionally take them. When I explained my relief that their time would not be wasted, she chimed in about how much she hated the tests as well.

American society is so obsessed with measurement that it ignores the nuances of what it seeks to optimize upon. By definition, any outstanding achievement lacks a convenient standard of measurement.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some of the problem could be mitigated by having multiple reviewers score answers, and taking the average of the score.

Of course this would increase the cost of grading such tests...

<comment><USER8> A long time ago, in a faraway, and mythical country, which we'll call China, everyone wanted to know how long the Emperor's nose was. Of course to be seen even trying to look closely at the Emperor's visage - let alone to hold up a (different!) ruler to it - would have invited instant, or I should say, far from instant, death. But so many people were curious, that a group of sages got together to look for a method of finding the answer, and this is what they came up with.

Questionnaires were printed and sent out in bundles to cooperating village chiefs, who distributed them to the peasants. Literacy was at a sufficient level that most were able to complete the single question, which was, of course: "How long do you think the Emperor's nose is?"

When the forms were collected, mathematicians added up all the values, and divided by the number of forms. Thus it was known that the length of the Emperor's nose was 6.734602 cm. The complete set of data was of course preserved, and many years later, with advances in statistical understanding more advanced mathematicians pointed out that fringe values - obviously the product of deranged minds - were distorting the honest opinions of the rest, and by eliminating them and using the very latest numerical modelling techniques, the mathematicians corrected this value to 4.980403 cm. To this day, no-one has produced a better estimate.

<comment><USER4> your china emperor story only suggests that the parent post's averaging scoring scheme consist of reviewers who dream about a 'test-taker' and then give a score (repeat as many as test takers there is) ... if they have access to takers' answers and keys, then averaging could be done much more objectively

the china emperor: that's maybe because there's no photograph of the emperor circulating. if there is, one can make comparison to eyes, age, coin, ground- legal-measure etc and clean out the outlier data. averaging the rest can give good enough estimate but not super accurate.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Our Offer For The New York Times Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/announcing-our-offer-for-the-new-york-times-company <comment><USER2> This seems reminscent of Blodget's offer for CNET at the end of 2007 ([http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/12/announcing-our- friendly-...](http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/12/announcing-our-friendly- takeover-offer-for-cnet.html)) and CNET ended up being bought by CBS so maybe he is on to something.

</comment><comment><USER3> From the title, this seemed like it was going to be an homage to Lorne Michaels' offer to pay the Beatles $3000 to perform on SNL.</comment>


Singapore Airlines Won't Extend Lease on First Airbus A380 Jet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/singapore-airlines-wont-extend-lease-on-first-airbus-a380-jet-1473838384 <comment><USER2> So sad. The A380 is my absolutely favourite plane and I usually go out of my way to fly it. It's so smooth and relaxing to be on.

<comment><USER3> Smoother/quieter than the 787? I haven't been on either but thought that the bleedless engines and everything-electrical would make for a quieter ride.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I flew 787 on BA, the experience was similar to 777. But A380 because of its sheer size the take off and landing is very comfortable, sometimes you don't feel a thing.

<comment><USER5> > because of its sheer size the take off and landing is very comfortable, > sometimes you don't feel a thing

Selection bias? Try—

"Because the A380 is the top level equipment operated by the carriers, pay scale for pilots is greatest. Ergo, they are flown by the most senior crew; since practice correlates strongly with proficiency these pilots have a higher rate of grease jobs." (1)

(1) Grease job = industry lingo for a buttery smooth touchdown, aka, "painted it on." :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's some insight:

The recent deregulation worldwide has sparked a huge increase in the # of low- cost airlines, resulting in a spreading out of passenger load across airlines. Therefore, there aren't as many passengers to carry per airline as before, and A380s and even B747s are no longer needed. In fact, all of the U.S. airlines (Delta, United, American, and smaller ones) are either phasing out or parked all of their jumbos.

Side effect:

Because of the # of increase, air traffic has worsened (e.g. delays at airports) and pollution has increased very rapidly.

<comment><USER7> Four engine aircrafts are also more difficult/expensive to maintain. Most pilots prefer two engines.

<comment><USER8> I'm curious, why would a pilot working for a commercial airline care about the maintenance cost or difficulty?

<comment><USER7> Two engines have more spare power than four engines. Single engine on twin must still be able to fly aircraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like SQ is going all-in on the A350 to expand their list of destinations.

I am looking forward to the restart of their SIN-NYC nonstop[0] on the A350-900ULR. The discontinued A340-based flight was out of my price range at the time, so I never had a chance to fly it. I did fly the (also discontinued) Thai Airways JFK-BKK once—it was neat to get on a plane in NYC and get off in Southeast Asia.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flight_21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Airlines_Flight_21)

</comment><comment><USER10> tl;dr

The plane is too big (600 seats) and airlines are concerned that it is/would be too hard to fill all the seats.

I was hoping for some interesting manufacturing quirks or something :/

<comment><USER11> I think it's still interesting, because (20 years ago) Airbus and Boeing made two very different bets on what air travel would look like in the future. Boeing thought it would be mostly P2P and built the 787; Airbus thought it would be hub-and-spoke and so built the A380. It's going to take a decade or more for this to play out, but this might be the first sign that Boeing was right and Airbus was wrong.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't say Boeing bet on P2P, more that they bet on flexibility and fuel efficiency. You can always fly two smaller planes on a really busy route but every flight of a 600-seater 1/3 full loses you a huge amount of money. That applies whether you're doing hub-and-spoke or mostly direct routes. Using carbon fiber and mostly electrical systems reduces weight which has a huge fuel savings over the life of the aircraft.

Of course Boeing also bet that they could bust their union* to goose profits (jury is still out on that) and outsource manufacturing (massive failure). The 787 was almost a disaster because of it. They had to go buy out a number of their suppliers and bring other work back in-house.

Just about the only bright spot is their partnership with Japanese companies. That's why Japanese airlines massively prefer Boeing planes and is a strategic effort on Boeing's part. (It's also why Japan took the battery failures so seriously: the batteries were made in Japan). If I had to guess, this is also a strategy Apple uses and part of the reason they buy Sony camera sensors and helped Foxconn invest in Sharp's display production.

* This one irks me because they're in an effective dualopoly with Airbus and profitable. It isn't a Detroit situation where the union was imposing massive inefficiencies on the business. It's purely an attempt to screw the lower-level employees. People wonder why incomes have been stagnant for so long... The richer you are the more money permanently joins the capital class vs circulating in the economy as spending. The more money accumulates at the top, the more excess capital and weak spending you'll have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is something of a non-story; Singapore retains one of the youngest fleets in the business (average 8.1 years [1]) and the oldest A380 airframe is almost 10 years old. This is approximately when Singapore replaces planes with the newer versions. Given they have 5 on order, getting rid of all of them will leave them with the same number of planes and a much lower fleet age.

[1] [http://www.airfleets.net/ageflotte/Singapore%20Airlines.htm](http://www.airfleets.net/ageflotte/Singapore%20Airlines.htm)

</comment><comment><USER14> The number of orders for A380 is still increasing in 2016, so there is a lot of speculations for just one airline company with oldest versions of the plane. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A380_orders_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A380_orders_and_deliveries)

<comment><USER15> I must be reading that wrong: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A380_orders_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A380_orders_and_deliveries#By_year)

Net orders:

2011: 19

2012: 9

2013: 42

2014: 13

2015: 2

2016: -

<comment><USER14> Your are both right for the orders (till august). That is the number of planes in operation that is still increasing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Relavent to this smaller/longer distance airplane conversation:

[http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/boeing-737-max-jets- wil...](http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/boeing-737-max-jets-will-launch- age-of.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> So what are the reasons (in short)? The article is behind a paywall.

<comment><USER18> > The A380's size has become its disadvantage as airlines prefer relatively > smaller planes such as the Airbus A350 and rival Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliner > that can fly nonstop to their ultimate destinations, bypassing major hubs > such as London Heathrow and Singapore's Changi Airport.

(Range seems odd to me as a factor, as Wikipedia thinks the Dreamliner and the A380 have the same max range.)

<comment><USER19> The range is important because historically, small jets had comparatively short ranges. The pattern used to be to use small jets as feeders to major hubs. The large jets would fly between the major hubs. Now, with small jets having greater range, you can send flights direct bypassing the major hub. There is not enough traffic on the route to warrant a large jet, however, so smaller jets with the same range are preferred.

<comment><USER20> Presumably doing so frees up landing slots at the major hubs and saves on expensive landing fees and operating costs at those larger airports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How exactly does the market for aeroplanes operate? Is there a Craigslist for superjumbos?

</comment><comment><USER22> Government planning fails yet another time

<comment><USER6> Actually, it's the opposite, and there's more than the lazy "Government planning fails yet another time."

I'm not sure whether you know much about the commercial airlines industry, but recent deregulation has sparked a huge increase in the # of low-cost airlines, resulting in a spreading out of passenger load across airlines. Therefore, there aren't as many passengers to carry per airline as before, and A380s and B747s are no longer needed. In fact, all U.S. airlines (Delta, United, American, and smaller ones) either sold or parked all of their jumbos.

Downside: Because of the # of increase, air traffic has worsened (e.g. delays at airports) and pollution has increased very rapidly.</comment></comment>


Vendor Prefixes are an implementation detail. CSS needs a jQuery. - <AUTHOR> http://chriseppstein.github.com/blog/2012/02/08/standarding-incompatibilities/

<comment><USER2> Super. So now on top of all the other junk people are putting into their sites without thinking we'll have just one more addition. Soon we'll have websites, if we don't already, that will import more junk than is actually in the website.

All to make a gradient.

<comment><USER3> The article was about native CSS, not imported libraries.</comment></comment>


How the Pentagon Could Soon Share Americans' Data with Foreign Militaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/04/how-pentagon-could-soon-share-americans-data-with-foreign-militaries/111553/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read elsewhere that the UK and Israel (and maybe others) already receive data collected by the US gov't on American citizens.</comment>


Julia 0.4 Release Announcement - <AUTHOR> http://julialang.org/blog/2015/10/julia-0.4-release <comment><USER2> By far the most notable improvement in this release:

 _The command line (REPL) now supports tab-completion of emoji characters. ([https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/107090](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/issues/107090)) _

<comment><USER3> The correct link is [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/10709](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/pull/10709)

April 1 was a good day in the lab!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An IDE would be also ideal (or at least a current tutorial for emacs mode installation)

<comment><USER5> People are working on this -- come join the fun! There is a LightTable-based environment at [http://junolab.org/](http://junolab.org/), but that group has shifted focus to building on Atom for long-term sustainability: [https://github.com/JuliaLang/atom-language- julia](https://github.com/JuliaLang/atom-language-julia)

(I don't really use emacs, but I thought julia-mode was available from MELPA)</comment></comment>


A bestiary of algorithmic trading strategies - <AUTHOR> http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/a-bestiary-of-algorithmic-trading-strategies/ <comment><USER2> Bill Gates is only there because he's standing next to a bunch of hooters models who are obviously there for Warren's ineffable awesomeness. Warren is the most famous fundamentals trader there is, therefore he belongs in the picture, even if he isn't well known as a quant. I don't have any pictures of Richard Grinold next to pretty girls.

Buying a short, selling a long: it's still buying low and selling high if you do it right.

As for why I'm linked here: I haven't got a whit of a clue. My best guess is that someone realized I'm a big Lisp nerd.

-Scott

<comment><USER3> Fun fact about that picture (if I've identified it correctly): It was taken for Warren Buffett's annual Christmas card. After the photo was taken, the Hooters girls all fawned over Bill Gates, leaving Buffett behind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The basics of devising algorithmic strategies come from the field of Market Microstructure in Finance/Economics.

I took a graduate level course on it (math prof. from Stanford).

I found a decent graduate level course syllabus with all the main literature and links to literature in it:

[http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jhasbrou/Teaching/2006%20Fall%20...](http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jhasbrou/Teaching/2006%20Fall%20PhD%20Microstructure/B40.3349%20Word.htm)

One of the main models is the Kyle model: Kyle, Albert S., 1985, Continuous auctions and insider trading. Econometrica 53, 1315-1336 (<http://www.jstor.org/pss/1913210>)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm halfway through Harris _Trading and Exchanges_, recommended at the top of this article, and it's just a phenomenally awesome book. I brought it up to the lake for summer reading, it's been that fun to read so far.

<comment><USER6> Book Extract: [http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~lharris/Trading/Book/Book- extract.pd...](http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~lharris/Trading/Book/Book-extract.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do algorithmic trading articles pop up frequently on HN?

I understand why people are attracted to it because they think that they can beat the market by implementing their own stat arb strategy using neural networks/genetic programming etc. They think that they'll fare out better than the average day-traders because they have the know-how's to program and the quantitative skills to formulate the models and the technical skills to implement the models.

But what people don't realize is that despite of all that, you still can't beat the street because: speed and volume. All high frequency trading strategy rely on fast execution speed (get in and get out, most prop shops at investment banks and hedge funds hold their positions usually for a couple of seconds, or even less), because due to prevalence of electronic trading, the inefficiency in the market for arbitrage opportunities exists in the time- frame of seconds or micro-seconds. In arbitrage, it's no longer a matter of who can discover the treasure map; it's more like everyone already has the treasure map, whoever can get to the X mark the spot first wins.

Goldman Sachs/SAC/DE Shaw etc. all "colo" with the market exchanges, meaning they have their algorithmic trading servers hooked up directly to the same trading servers of NYSE/Nasdaq/BATS. They might be connected directly to those market servers in the same server room in NYC/Kansas, or they might be connected over a dark fiber network in Jersey City. In the matter of seconds a retail brokerage customer puts out a buy order for GOOG, or even a aspiring trading-hacker sends out a order over Interactive Broker API, these algo machines have already piped out thousands of orders and a good percentage of those orders have already been filled.

Secondly, good algo's require fast real-time information processing of the quote book, general market condition, real-time calculation of the basket of related stocks in the stat arb strategy. On an single active stock, there might be hundreds of bid/ask/trade ticks per minute from a single market center. Can an individual's machine setup handle real-time analysis of a basket of stocks and general market condition from multiple market centers? This issue is so critical and complex that there exists a sub-industry (Complex Event Processing, CEP) and technology companies (StreamBase) that created and profit from dealing with this problem for hedge funds and prop shops.

Finally, usually high frequency algo's are only profitable with high volume and low transaction cost. Typically, arbitrageurs and liquidity providers make pennies on the share per trade. But their daily volume are in the tens or hundreds of millions shares traded; their transaction cost are in the quarters of pennies or sometimes negative (meaning they are compensated by the exchanges for providing liquidity). Compare this to a retail consumer account with $10,000 and trading comission of $5 (ETrade) - $0.01/share (IB).

Still, I know of people who have IB API setup's and profit consistently. But I wanted to let would-be traders know the competitive disadvantage that they are up against the big boys before they pour out their life savings in their neural network futures arbitrage algorithm.

<comment><USER8> That's like saying that the articles on particle physics that pop every once in a while here shouldn't be posted simply because I don't have the money or the resources to build my own particle detector. Some people find these things interesting. It's not for you to judge what others here may find worth reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > To make money as a trader, assuming your motivation is to make a profit, you > need to buy low and sell high.

Not to pic a nit but most traders also sell short, i.e. reverse the order to make money; (borrow stock) Sell High and Buy Low (return stock). The guy seems pretty smart so he probably left this out to keep his explanation simple.

Side note; Short selling serves an important function in price formation and liquidity and is not the primary cause of a stock price to fall. In fact, for the short seller to make profits there must be an independent cause of the fall apart from the short seller's actions or they lose money.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bill Gates and Buffet are both bad examples because both of them are essentially managers rather than traders.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's a good book on algorithmic trading?

<comment><USER12> <http://quantlib.org/index.shtml>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To fix all types of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry> issues in stock markets, every Algorithmic and high-frequency trade should be regulated via <http://www.sec.gov/answers/form345.htm>

<comment><USER13> Why?

<comment><USER12> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Opportunities for a high school student ready to get an internship? - <AUTHOR>

Hi! Does anyone know of any tech startups or companies around silicon valley that are willing to accept qualified high school students for internships? <comment><USER2> I was in high school when I started CS (now a junior in college) and if there is one thing I would suggest is not to go for the internship this early. Not only is he/she going to have to settle on an ok to subpar internship because of his/her age, but he/she is also going to never have more free time than now to create some kind of business on their own. In this time, I would experiment with different business ideas and try to start something awesome. Something that helps people solve problems.

I love CS, but I am the type that more than anything wants to build a company and help people. I understand if he/she is not the same way, but if I would have recommend not jumping into the workforce so immediately.

The day quickly approaches where I have to make a decision to either start my own thing or get a job somewhere. A job takes a majority of your time which would really put a damper on my dream. There are stories of people doing both, but if it happened all the time, it wouldn't be a story. I'm not using that as an excuse, I am using it to bring home the point to enjoy and take advantage of the time you currently have without responsibilities.

Bottom line is have fun. Experiment with different ideas. Try to make something cool that people want. There are more than enough resources to get started. Just do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey :) I'm actually building a job board for teens who are qualified in development @ [http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com), and I will be launching it complete with internships already listed from some prominent tech startups I've talked to. You can check out how it will look here - [http://jobs.teen2geek.com](http://jobs.teen2geek.com), although the current data on it is all placeholder until release.

</comment><comment><USER4> >qualified high school students

You're going to have to expand on that. If by "qualified high school student" you mean someone who has built at least one impressive and non-trivial project that real people are using and brings as much as if not more to the table than a college intern from a top school, then maybe (but it will be an uphill battle, especially at a larger company). Otherwise, I suspect they'd be out of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> For example, we have a student who has created an extensive event management system (with an awesome looking ui) backed by a python backend, with features like email notifications and google cal import. It also has a nice rest api backend and ties into an authentication api for wordpress that he wrote.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also forgot to add that he has also has taken college level classes like CS 046A and 046B at San Jose State University and completed the AP Computer Science test with a 5. I dont want to make this sound like a CV but I just wanted to expand a bit further on what I meant with "qualified student".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://cs.lbl.gov/careers/summer-student- program](http://cs.lbl.gov/careers/summer-student-program)

Since it sounds like you're in the south bay, you might check out NASA Ames; they may have something similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link, Nasa ames does look promising.</comment></comment>


Salman Khan's Commencement address - <AUTHOR> http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/commencement-khan-address-0608.html

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting how MIT's video player is really poor. Video stops playing every minute or so. Terrible buffering. Irony..?</comment>


Islamophobia: Pakistani Data Scientist Forced to Leave USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslim-family-fled-america-islamophobia-usmani_us_57fd058fe4b0e655eab7aa3c?97z9infrikura7cik9 <comment><USER2> Disgusting. And such a waste. The only consolation here: there are 50 states in the union with many regionally distinct cultures, almost like mini-nations. Come over to the left west coast (Washington / Oregon / California) there are many places Usmani and his family would be welcomed.</comment>