skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A year ago I embarked on a project to learn Common Lisp by building a trading system, to execute with the Interactive Brokers API.

I modeled the woodiescciclub.com trading strategies, primarily because the math is simple and the patterns are well defined. However since then I've seen other parties on the web talk about how the Woodies patterns actually don't make money consistently, although I didn't corroborate this.

I actually found CL to be a fantastic language for this. I was writing up the Woodies patterns using a DSL I had created:

(defpattern zlr "Zero Line Reject" :with-trend
((count 1) (within 100 250) (trend :up :or-opposite-invert))
((count 1) (within 100 200) (trend :up :or-opposite-invert))
((count 0 10) (within -50 99) (trend :up :or-opposite-invert))
((count 1) (within -50 50) (trend :up :or-opposite-warn) (angle :down))
((count 1) (within 0 115) (trend :up) (angle :up) (away 8)))

(defpattern hfe "Hook From Extreme" :counter-trend
((count 1) (within 200 300) (trend :up))
((count 1) (within 0 199) (trend :up) (angle :down) (away 3)))

...etc

The defpattern macro was creating, for example, #'is-zlr, #'is-zlr-up, #'is-zlr-down, which were then used by a trading engine that monitored 5-minute bars on a given futures contract and launched trades.

Another CL feature, restarts in the condition system, helped too. When the data feed broke or got corrupt, an exception thrown which could reload the data feed and restart back in the listening loop without forgetting any context was helpful.

Also just running in a Lisp image was great because I could swap functions during a live feed without stopping the program.

In the end, the programming worked great, but the trading system lost money. I had it working in backtesting over a few months and then papertrade mode for weeks, and then when I took it live, the volatility rose and it started hitting the stop all the time. I adjusted things like stops based on ATR, but I really just ran out of my little budget to play with it.

It did however teach me CL. ;-)

Modern trading platforms have built-in tools and programming languages and writing things from scratch in CL is really just an academic exercise.

I believe it's possible to do algorithmic daytrading, but quite a bit more difficult than it seems. There are way more market behavior modes than you can appreciate at first, and the keys to success lie more in counterintuitive aspects of your system like position sizing rather than intuitive aspects like entry strategy.

The best talk I heard from someone on the subject indicated that it takes years and the end result is a fairly sophisticated algorithm-switching engine, because the hard part is just to survive.
I live for the moments when I forget I exist. Can happen when doing math, physics, philosophy, or listening to music; being able to transcend my existence.
I'd like to try and compete with an intelligent design - see how many generations it takes for the GA to beat me.
So what's up with the closed comments?
Even better, run andLinux inside of Windows

I can't give up Photoshop for the type of work I do and I can't afford a macbook yet so I just installed andLinux and have all of the abilities of Rails and Linux while still using Windows. All you really need for Rails is the command line, I use Intype in Windows for my editor and I am cruising. andLinux only uses about 100mb of a RAM at any given time so it's barely noticeable when it's running in the background.
In the Just Curious Dept:

Can you provide the number of user accounts?

Have the number of posts also increased 12x fold? The turnover on the new page seems more like 3-5x from what it used to be.
NaCl is the chemical name for salt, right? :P
Also, any idea what those two huge spikes are at the beginning of August and, especially, the middle of September?
On the Layout of Quick-UX
The mouse turns 40
What value do you have over your competitors, like Weebly and Freewebs?
This discussion is probably dead, but just in case:

Within the last year, I've been in the position of doing <$1k/month on a credit card processor, and it was actually a delightful experience. The company I originally worked with was bought/renamed or something and I haven't had to deal with them in quite a few months, but I can probably dig up a contact. Email me if you like.
Human organizations are inefficient.
The more humans in there the more inefficient.

The way to make organizations efficient is to have, technology (machines) a large part of the organization.

Wether they are public or private is not as important as to wether the organization has used techonology to streamline its processes.

For the record the US Postal Service has an EXCELLENT on time performance:

"National overnight service was 96 percent on time — the first time this score has been maintained for three quarters in a row — and two-day service was 93 percent on time. "
Tracked by IBM Business Services
(http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/localnews/il/il_...)
mktStatus is always true and he defined 4 values for it?

:P
truth = beauty
This is sort of related to the traffic here: a snapshot of my Google Analytics after having a link on the front page for about three days.

http://dustincurtis.com/screenshots/ga.jpg

(This is the post, for reference: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388510 )
Would be cool to know what the big spikes on the graphs represent.
Fruits, vegetables and animals can be 100 percent organic.

As opposed to fruit, vegetables and animals that are not entirely derived from living organisms?
I see philosophies as more fluid than atomic.
Other interesting data: http://top.searchyc.com/
Parksville, Vancouver Island!
"The only metaphysical purpose of sarah connor is to survive.

The only moral purpose of sarah connor is to pursue happiness."

-- T-800
I left my browser open and had it running for 12 hours now, and now my car looks like a porsche.
"... What's your philosophy? ..."

Sum ergo cogito
Karl Popper.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and however many yesses are required to agree with all those things.

We also shouldn't forget the opening of more intellectual jobs to women, minorities, poor people . . . well, it use to be that only the aristocracy had a shot at being scientists.
See here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=379932
Eckhart Tolle?
Frankly, this is not a good idea. You absolutely should not substitute your judgment for others. If you want to have a strength checker, go ahead - but don't require someone to have one.
Official Gmail Blog: New in Labs: Tasks
To put a ding in the universe.
When Languages Die
actually here is a blog post analysing the craze over the iphone (back in august)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pluggd/~3/369914817/iphone-vo...

covers a few of the points in here..
Isn't Trent Reznor somewhat of an anti-solipsist? A lot of his lyrics hint at it.

I did a search for it, and ironically this thread came up as one of the top results. I guess Google _really_ likes YC News. I would be interested to read more about it, I guess I'll have to dig a little deeper.
Does anyone else find the term "leaky abstraction" annoyingly redundant?
It's worth noting that most of the top submissions are actually really good, whereas on Reddit none of the top submissions are even remotely good.
don't trust the daily mail for news.
Origins of the Senior Moment
Entropism

The goal of human civilization is to conquer entropy. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
It's really nice to have Dean Kamen as a validator for LED lighting. Our startup has developed the brightest and most beautiful LED lamp available at any price, and we plan to sell it at a price that is really nice. We are currently raising our seed round and are located in Ottawa and Montreal which is very close to Mr. Kamen's workshop.

I wonder if he would be interested in what we are doing...

For those new to the space, LEDs are the future of light. For over 50 years they have followed a Moore's law type of geometric rate of improvement in energy-efficiency, brightness, and cost. (2x improvement every 18-24 months) They are now competitive with CFL and will be the obvious choice within a few short years. Sooner if we succeed.

Learn more: http://www.arkalumen.com
Cool, thanks. (The number of users 9 days ago from pg: 12385)

Anyone know the number of daily posted links? Comments? Now versus six months and/or a year ago?
I have to fight the urge to be the "someone is wrong on the internet" guy in the XKCD cartoon when I read stuff like this. I don't think it's being overly pedantic to say that words have meanings, and that meanings are especially important in relational database theory because they are precise mathematical meanings--not fuzzy natural language meanings.

From that perspective this document is borderline incoherent. The authors don't know what a relational database is.
IIRC they have an exception for that for Rails projects, or something like that.
Could you run a Python interpreter in this, or Perl?
and for those that haven't read it: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
Same here. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when i read this.
I'm not really interested in deploying non-web apps at this point.
What the numbers can reveal
How To: Getting Started with Amazon CloudFront (CDN)
I've heard this so many times recently. The exact same argument used for exactly conflicting points of view. And every time it's brought up it is presented as an uncontroversial example of how X (or Y the exact opposite of X) works:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal#Conflicting_interpreta...

The New Deal is a Hung Jury.
...I asked the site what I should have for lunch.

I got back a tie.

Oh well, I worked through to dinner anyway.....
Buddah; I don't want to reincarnate into a bug.
It's funny how the author mentions emailing himself as an alternative to setting todos. I do the same thing, especially when i have to remind myself to do something when i get home and i'm at work (where gmail is banned).

On that note, i wonder if there'd be a way of emailing yourself with some sort of prefix in the subject to set a todo externally? That sounds like a good idea, right?
Why should one have 'a' philosophy? There are many fine mutually contradictory philosophies, I choose all.
They don't have any exceptions. I paid for the rails SAAS kit and then talked to Braintree and it took a week's worth of email just to get them to send me the application. They told us that if we didn't do enough volume they would cancel our account.

I ended up just going with Payflow Pro (Paypal). Had to rewrite most of the SAAS kit..
I'm curious about your Ted "Kazinsky" comment. Are you talking about the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski? If so, I would like to know why him, of all the brilliant people in recent history? I know he was a precocious mathematician, and very gifted academically, but I could think of a dozen more people with similar—if not better—credentials than him.
I never said there was anything random. Only non-deterministic. Of course, we are arguing philosophy, so experiments are useless.
Where does talent really come from?
Good point. As pointed out on the rest of this list, you should be very careful about "data mining", where simply finding a strategy that works on historical data may not be replicable. Also, some strategies work well in some markets (like high volatility) and poorly in others. I think a next level of analysis is trying to figure out when to turn particular strategies on or off.

As for the attacks on technical analysis, many practitioners probably are deceiving themselves that they've found some secret sauce. However, since the market is made of 100% of the people who transact in it, the presence of technical traders means that there must be some price movements as a result of these trends. One ideal would be to find a strategy that beats other technical analysts to the punch. A lot of people use the 12/26 MACD, but maybe the 11/25 MACD would help you eat their lunch before they entered the market...

It is all very tricky and takes a lot of discipline to avoid fooling yourself and getting into real trouble. Also, people need to make sure to focus on both sides of the trade - you only book the profit once you've actually sold the position (most people seem to be much more focused on entries than exits)

If anyone is interested in this kind of software but aren't so into learning a new language (perhaps less applicable to this group), you should check out QuantRunner Software http://www.quantrunner.com. In full disclosure, I am the CEO of the company, but we really focus on making this kind of back testing analysis easier for people to do without programming experience. We also have some novel tools for helping people actually improve their strategies, rather than simply iterate tests. If I had the true answers on the best strategies, I probably wouldn't run a software company. All we hope for is to make it easy enough for people to do their homework without having to worry about coding errors as well as poor strategies.
Off-topic: Kudos on the novel blog design. It's especially interesting how each of your three posts uses a different layout. The third one -- the black and red one -- leads me to believe you're either insane or insanely creative. Anyway, nice job, keep them coming.
do you surf, by chance?
Office space available for hackers in Brookline, MA (SF-like neighborhood)
I'm a single-person startup founder. Looking for other hackers to share an office with. There is room for 2-8 people here.

This is a really awesome neigborhood - perfect for hackers. Boston doesn't have many places where you can enjoy walking around outside - this is one of the few. Three coffee houses at the same intersection - reminiscent of San Francisco!
You might consider some security on the sign up form. Otherwise this is pretty dope.
They used it in the paper.
So true. I was doing a financial analysis of American professional sports a few months ago. I assumed height was a known variable (which is true; a doctor can predict a child's adult height within an inch), but talent was dependent on hours spent practicing (the whole 10,000 hours thing). That's all that really matters. What I came up with was that you have to be something like 6'7" or taller to have a reasonable shot at success. If you're going to be this tall or taller, it becomes a wise investment to work at becoming good at football, basketball, or baseball. By this I mean you have a reasonable expectation (like 1 in 5) of getting drafted to a major league.
It doesn't come back to the same problem at all; SIMD assembly generated from Java bytecode intrinsics doesn't have the same verification problems that x86 does. That's why Google's paper had a section structured as a formal proof. JITs are inherently safer than verified x86.

I'm not saying NaCL is unsafe, just that there are easier ways to get some of the same benefits.
I abide by game theory.
Kosmix’s new approach to search gets $20M
It's asking myself your question that drives me. I do whatever I do because I _believe_ (taken on faith) that it gives my existence meaning, and that ultimately, by doing enough of what I do, I hope to glean some insight into why I exist.

I dislike doing anything based solely on faith, but in this case I regard my "belief" as certain as my "belief" in mathematics describing the truth, i.e. I consider both pretty much absolute.

Here's a related commentary I found helpful, 2nd para lists (in a relatively archaic style, you have to parse it a bunch of times - 3 different religious answers to a similar existential question):
http://www.hinduwebsite.com/divinelife/auro/auro_fateandfree...

(note: I don't advocate Hinduism, Sri Aurobindo or promote belief in God, am merely searching the answer to the question - "why am I not a fatalist?")
Comparing the main reddit to HN is hardly fair. There are, for instance:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/

http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/
Not yet, snowboard and mountain bike though :)
Some of these suck. I'm referring to polyphasic sleep and speed reading.
I read this and it was ok, but when I read the title, I thought: I already know how to make my software suck. Why would I need any more tips?
On the other hand Sandy is closing shop.
I exist because of a certain chain of historical events. I continue to exist because I am programmed to maintain my existence and because my environment makes doing so with high probability (at least in the short and medium term) remarkably easy. Everything else is post-hoc storytelling.
I did't mean you shouldn't do sales, just that customer development precedes sales. I understand the value & importance of sales, did that for Akamai for 3+ years.
I'm a tad sad seeing Techcrunch.com and ValleyInsider.com on the top 10 submitted urls ;( but this is still my number favorite site as far as people go.
Screw philosophy.

Is that a philosophy?
I'm firmly Dadaist. Also: Spoon.
an aggregate of API's gets 20m? This has to be some insider shit with only 200k hits a month, they must have some bigCo's ready to sign up for some sort of CDN
A freshman CEO's postmortem
Neither are SSNs, but hey...
how does it differ from http://www.clicktale.com/?
Wordpress has web analytics built into the main blog dashboard. It's nice. I could drop code into a theme, but I kinda like the ease of use there.
That is a really exciting application. Keep in mind that "compressed" normally implies a lossless representation, not lossy, like you are proposing.
the graph doesnt show any signs that the growth will slow down, rather the contrary.
"Growth can't keep going at this rate forever without ruining the site, though. Between those two alternatives, we prefer growth to slow down."

I actually agree with you on this, and I wasn't going to say anything, but I've been a little discouraged by some of the stuff I've seen up-voted lately. I think Hacker News is a special place and hope to protect the community that we've built here.
one quick question, do you allow custom domain names?
The signup page offers to use OpenID, apparently in place of giving you an email address; then when I get back it still requires my email. It's not clear why I should have bothered to sign in with OpenID then.
Track down a relative who doesn't really know how to use the Internet, and observe all the little inefficiencies in their life that would drive you nuts. Arranging your life by mail and phone takes twice as long. Looking for work and housing takes so long that you miss a lot of good opportunities. Kids teaching themselves online is just the upper end of it; that majority of broadband users simply do the usual things more efficiently.
Can we have some more details? This looks interesting, but I can't see how you used them. They look like Mechanical Turkers - did you just give them detailed instructions?
Life starts at the end of my comfort zone. (that has been my philosophy for the past few weeks. I usually change it every other week.)
He does make the distinction that Cuppaccino/Objective-J is for web-applications and not web-pages. see: http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2008/10/21/web-pages/

For web-pages i agree with you that traditional html/css is sufficient in most cases.
10 if you are a girl.
Would be cool if he had discussed some alternaties...
G1's Android Web Browser in Action
What should be a good online identity? It's an open problem nobody has yet solved.
Intrinsics are no substitute for handwritten assembly, and anyone who has actually tried to use them should know this.

Compilers are dumb. This gets an order of magnitude worse when you expose them to SIMD.
I guess that if it come down to features, it's going to be difficult to beat old-timers off the bat.

You say that apart from that, you'd switch. Why? Just something else r anything particularly good about this?
Understand as much as possible. Especially about how we came to be who we are.
Career Management lessons from LeBron James
I think the quote that you're looking for is: "All models are wrong; some are useful".

That said, selection pressure is selection pressure, regardless of whether the means are artificial (being culled from a list in RAM) or natural (being eaten by a lion). I don't see that evolution in a computer process, even with artificial constraints, is that much different to evolution in the "real world".

I'm also not 100% sure exactly what your definition of an artificial constraint is, but something like Tierra might be more what you're looking for.
Google's answer to Java, Flash, Windows: Native Client
We sure do. It's not yet a part of the sign-up process, but once you've created an account, you can add custom domain names.
He's definitely both.
http://superbrightleds.com/edison_globe.html is currently selling LED products for homes and vehicles currently. Though they are expensive.

What sort of area of the market are you planning to target with your product?

Full disclosure: I previously worked for superbrightleds several years ago.
we wrote something exactly like yours for corporate customers and although I love jQuery, we decided it was best to write it with just straight-up javascript. It was less code than I thought it would be considering how quick & dirty jQuery lets us do things.

Also, if you need to do something like the jQuery css selector style stuff, you might want to look at sizzle by jeresig. It clocks in at 4kb which isn't too big of an overhead.
Perhaps I should have said numerical limitations or limitations of scale, rather than limitations of technique.
Hi article does not really address the point he makes in the title. Email is the best source of primary identity for web applications. If you are building a business application that people want, over 95% of the time people will give you valid email addresses. User are so much more valuable if you can market to them over time. It is very difficult to do this without at least an email address. Of course people can get disposable email accounts, this is just stating the obvious but still does not help at all in suggesting a better alternative for primary identity.
Almost all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication.
I can't betray confidence by quoting, but no specific malice was claimed, simply that the quality of the process behind some releases was nowhere near that which you'd expect from a popular project.
The C extension issue in Ruby is the same as Python afaik. There probably aren't as many windows developers using Ruby though.
Happy Birthday Greeting Cards
This site has a wide selection of greeting cards with 20% of your purchase being donated to the charity of your choice.
Carbon is a port of C APIs from the classic mac mostly. On top of that, Objective-C is ultimately C, and its easier to talk between the two than Java.
MySpace Data Availability Now Has A Catchier Name And Two New Partners
You seem to be stuck on compilers; I'm talking about virtual machine architectures. You're also not making a case for verified x86 so much as you are for generic native code.