I was telling a friend recently about how there was this "golden age" when you could access all sorts of free APIs, and how I still long for this time.
I remember the public Netflix API, Twitter APIs and Flickr API with particular fondness. My personal site was a big mashup of all of my data.
I also abused the hell out of Yahoo Pipes - I would run RSS feeds through like 15 different languages with Babelfish before back to English, just for kicks.
My friend seemed very skeptical such a time ever existed.
It reminds me distantly of an earlier time when just the web was sort of owned ... by the web folk.
In the sense that even corporate sites if you found it would have a little corner where the 'webmaster' had a page that mentioned the server, or his cat, or some silly pic. Some sort of character or tidbit before any of the branding drones were really aware of the web. All just because the 'webmaster' was the only one really in charge / who understood the site was even there and they wanted to share.
I suspect to some extent the APIs were the same. Someone who really didn't mind was all "Yeah sure if someone wants to see what I did.. awesome."
> I also abused the hell out of Yahoo Pipes - I would run RSS feeds through like 15 different languages with Babelfish before back to English, just for kicks.
Yahoo Pipes was one of the greatest services I used, just when I started getting into programming. Maybe it was so cool because I was naive, but I really miss being able to pipe services together in the same way. Anyone know of any similar attempts that is open source + offers a hosted version with paid plans?
I remember when you could just stream in every tweet and reddit comment ever posted with a few lines of code. There used to be dedicated API methods for doing so. Now, there's all sorts of namespacing, rate limiting, pagination, and upper bounds on data access that make this impossible, or at least infeasible.
> I also abused the hell out of Yahoo Pipes - I would run RSS feeds through like 15 different languages with Babelfish before back to English, just for kicks.
For a while it was common to find SEO-spam sites composed entirely of posts generated this way. They would translate from a source language back to it in a roundabout way and end up with an article that was "different enough" to count as unique content to Google.
There was a lot of interesting promise in Web 2.0 that was completely wasted and then died. I think a big part of the problem was even things like Yahoo Pipes were too complicated for a lot of people and anyone trying to use third party APIs for commercial purposes ran afoul of EULAs or just plain old rent seeking. Once privacy invading advertising became the norm APIs were further restricted or discontinued because the user wasn't running a bunch of client side code tracking and scraping all their behavior on a web page.
It didn't help that a lot of Web 2.0 darlings sold out to on-the-way-out Web 1.0 companies \cough\Yahoo\cough\. Yahoo's management couldn't even monetize money, let alone Web 2.0 properties. So instead we got social media silos. You can put stuff in but good luck ever getting it out. You can share it with whomever so long as they also join the same silo.
Those times were absolutely great. It's only human to look at the past with a feeling of melancholy and forget how great is the present and the long way we came.
Today you can actually build your own APIs with very little knowledge and effort: easy to get started frameworks, free or inexpensive hosting in the cloud, lots of freely available data. That's pretty awesome too.
Heck yeah! Years ago I had a nice little feed of my latest Tweets and Flickr photos on my personal website! It was fun incorporating them cleanly/seamlessly into my custom design. One day I'll get my site going again and have fun stuff like that -- if the 3rd party APIs even allow it these days :P hehe
Even Google Search had this. I read an old O'Reilly book back then that was centered around API mashup projects (remember that term?) using the many Google APIs, which have mostly been shut down.
As the founder of one of the screen-scraping tools he alluded to in the video (Selenium), I just want to say the video has one of the best explanations for the difference between automating a process through a user interface vs an API. In the end, entropy always gets you, but you can push it off a little bit longer if there's an API.
Introducing Selenium to testing teams has been a complete game-changers for a lot of organisations I work with. Often traditional orgs will assume you can't automate front-end testing because it requires a user to go through all of these processes in different front-end SaaS apps. It's literally saved hundreds of man-hours across the organisations I've introduced it to and allowed the project teams to focus on features and reporting instead of testing.
Selenium is awesome, but the browser GUI for it in Firefox seemed to... Regress heavily from where it was a few years ago? It used to allow you to export a script as any type of code and now that's no longer possible. The newer gui based tools have maybe a fraction of the features that the selenium GUI used to have
But on the topic: is there actually a dearth of APIs "these days" vs peak Web-2.0, or have the major players just restricted theirs due to abuse, and thus it seems like the whole world of possibilities have veen restricted? One can easily find lists of public apis (e.g https://github.com/n0shake/Public-APIs), but perhaps the video was more about the facilitators, like Yahoo Pipes.
What the GitHub list doesn't show is the amount of APIs that require you to enter a relationship with the API provider.
APIs I can just point my script at to get data are fun and useful for mashups. APIs where I have to sign a contract with someone are only worth it in rare cases, or if I need them for a business.
I really liked this video, it highlights that a lot of software we write is ephemeral and will one day either be retired or stop working.
The frequently updating title thing is cute, it'll be interesting to see what dies first - YouTube pulling the "title update API" or Tom's script running wherever he's put it
I can go find NES games and Gameboy games in my parents basement. If the NES worked I could play it or find a knock off on Amazon. Pretty sure I have a Doom floppy.
Kids these days will be lucky to remember their favorite mobile games. Let alone be able to play them.
Will they ever have an iOS or Android equivalent of ROMs?
I got the counter and the title both showing 3,690,744 when I first opened the link - so how unlikely is this actually? Probably not really too unlikely. Or I got really lucky.
EDIT: Thinking about it, as YouTube probably updates the view count only every couple of seconds or minutes it might actually be spot on most of the time if the title gets updated at about the same frequency.
Same here. However I think that the way he is communicating information in this video is meant to capture your attention not just now, but when this video is visited months or years from now.
It will be very cool for viewers to stumble across this video when it doesn't work, effectively proving his point.
This "open APIs" feeling where you can build and mash up all kinds of services together to build cool things is how writing apps on Ethereum feels right now. All of the data and functions of other people's contracts are on chain and available to you for use in whatever way you want to use it. It's very powerful and makes developing fun again for me.
As an example there is a project called Maker which produces a stablecoin called Dai which is pegged to $1. Another project called Compound took Dai and used it without asking anyone at Maker to create automatic loans where you can put in money and get interest automatically. A third project, Pool Together, started using Compound, again without asking, to pool everyone's funds together for a month and give the interest earned to one winner as a "no-loss lottery". I bet in a few months something will be built on top of Pool Together as well.
None of these teams needed to work together or ask permission. They just built cool things. An added bonus is that these projects can't be turned off by anyone which means Pool Together can trust that their app will work next year just fine, which isn't really something you can rely on in Web 2.0. It's a very exciting time for composability and neat experiments and I'm looking forward to what else will be built.
I guess one big difference is who is paying the fee. In an ethereum "app", the code stays dormant until a user interacts with it and pays a transaction fee.
Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 ("Show HN: This up votes itself") which I came across right after joining HN and really set the tone for what HN is really all about, for me. Thanks olalonde :)
The voice, oratorical flourishes, and narrative style really remind me of James Burke's Connections. "And that's why I chose to film this here..." Delightful!
You’ll enjoy the rest of his videos then. He’s one of the few Youtubers whose videos I watch regularly. In addition to being interesting, I always find them well-researched, well-produced and exactly as long as they need to be without any fluff or clickbait.
You should watch his other videos. He often comes up as recommended for me. I think it's the accent and the cadence of his speech that is so appealing.
Not that it matters, but I think Tom may have gotten this wrong. If his code is invoked many times faster than google updates it's video count then the odds of seeing an exact match in the total is proportional to that difference.
Which, ironically, means it's using even more cycles than necessary to do his intentionally silly trick, further proving his point.
"The title of this video won't be exactly right. [..] If it's actually a 100% spot on it's a miracle"
the title was exactly right when I saw it the first time. I even screenshotted it.
I also wondered if it would work on HN. Is there a limit on the number of times you can edit a title on HN? Obviously there isn't on Youtube, which I find quite surprising.
Speaking of the YouTube view count, Tom Scott also did a great explanation on distributed computing and eventual consistency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY_2gElt3SA "Why Computers Can't Count Sometimes"
My twitter bot, @fiveobot[0], lives on, within a `screen` session on my VPS. Its time zone and geographical data are both at least 2years out of date, but I'd have to adapt new tools, or hook into APIs that will eventually fail to access up-to-date data. I made it for an audience of one, and I'm still amused by it, today.
[+] [-] donatj|6 years ago|reply
I remember the public Netflix API, Twitter APIs and Flickr API with particular fondness. My personal site was a big mashup of all of my data.
I also abused the hell out of Yahoo Pipes - I would run RSS feeds through like 15 different languages with Babelfish before back to English, just for kicks.
My friend seemed very skeptical such a time ever existed.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
In the sense that even corporate sites if you found it would have a little corner where the 'webmaster' had a page that mentioned the server, or his cat, or some silly pic. Some sort of character or tidbit before any of the branding drones were really aware of the web. All just because the 'webmaster' was the only one really in charge / who understood the site was even there and they wanted to share.
I suspect to some extent the APIs were the same. Someone who really didn't mind was all "Yeah sure if someone wants to see what I did.. awesome."
[+] [-] diggan|6 years ago|reply
Yahoo Pipes was one of the greatest services I used, just when I started getting into programming. Maybe it was so cool because I was naive, but I really miss being able to pipe services together in the same way. Anyone know of any similar attempts that is open source + offers a hosted version with paid plans?
[+] [-] anonytrary|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lammy|6 years ago|reply
For a while it was common to find SEO-spam sites composed entirely of posts generated this way. They would translate from a source language back to it in a roundabout way and end up with an article that was "different enough" to count as unique content to Google.
[+] [-] pevezzac|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantrobot|6 years ago|reply
It didn't help that a lot of Web 2.0 darlings sold out to on-the-way-out Web 1.0 companies \cough\Yahoo\cough\. Yahoo's management couldn't even monetize money, let alone Web 2.0 properties. So instead we got social media silos. You can put stuff in but good luck ever getting it out. You can share it with whomever so long as they also join the same silo.
[+] [-] cjhopman|6 years ago|reply
1. they enable people to do things that other people think shouldn't be done
2. people get upset at companies when (1) happens
3. people get upset at companies for removing or restricting apis when, or in fear of, both (1) and (2).
[+] [-] marcocampana|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amatecha|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redwall_hp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshspankit|6 years ago|reply
Even if you had to pay 1 satoshi for 10 queries, it would go a long way towards making APIs viable long-term.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dylan604|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hugs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azemetre|6 years ago|reply
Your work has had a huge impact in my career and life.
[+] [-] Mandatum|6 years ago|reply
Thank you!
[+] [-] Der_Einzige|6 years ago|reply
What happened?
[+] [-] joshfraser|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Madmallard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mav3rick|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akubera|6 years ago|reply
(Relevant post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715)
But on the topic: is there actually a dearth of APIs "these days" vs peak Web-2.0, or have the major players just restricted theirs due to abuse, and thus it seems like the whole world of possibilities have veen restricted? One can easily find lists of public apis (e.g https://github.com/n0shake/Public-APIs), but perhaps the video was more about the facilitators, like Yahoo Pipes.
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|6 years ago|reply
APIs I can just point my script at to get data are fun and useful for mashups. APIs where I have to sign a contract with someone are only worth it in rare cases, or if I need them for a business.
[+] [-] djhworld|6 years ago|reply
The frequently updating title thing is cute, it'll be interesting to see what dies first - YouTube pulling the "title update API" or Tom's script running wherever he's put it
[+] [-] wil421|6 years ago|reply
Kids these days will be lucky to remember their favorite mobile games. Let alone be able to play them.
Will they ever have an iOS or Android equivalent of ROMs?
[+] [-] travisjungroth|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danbruc|6 years ago|reply
I got the counter and the title both showing 3,690,744 when I first opened the link - so how unlikely is this actually? Probably not really too unlikely. Or I got really lucky.
EDIT: Thinking about it, as YouTube probably updates the view count only every couple of seconds or minutes it might actually be spot on most of the time if the title gets updated at about the same frequency.
[+] [-] gh123man|6 years ago|reply
It will be very cool for viewers to stumble across this video when it doesn't work, effectively proving his point.
[+] [-] kube-system|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomasahle|6 years ago|reply
But then neither will the actual view counter.
[+] [-] Sargos|6 years ago|reply
As an example there is a project called Maker which produces a stablecoin called Dai which is pegged to $1. Another project called Compound took Dai and used it without asking anyone at Maker to create automatic loans where you can put in money and get interest automatically. A third project, Pool Together, started using Compound, again without asking, to pool everyone's funds together for a month and give the interest earned to one winner as a "no-loss lottery". I bet in a few months something will be built on top of Pool Together as well.
None of these teams needed to work together or ask permission. They just built cool things. An added bonus is that these projects can't be turned off by anyone which means Pool Together can trust that their app will work next year just fine, which isn't really something you can rely on in Web 2.0. It's a very exciting time for composability and neat experiments and I'm looking forward to what else will be built.
[+] [-] ajayyy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minton|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diggan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stickfigure|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atomwaffel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinushaun|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomMckenny|6 years ago|reply
Not that it matters, but I think Tom may have gotten this wrong. If his code is invoked many times faster than google updates it's video count then the odds of seeing an exact match in the total is proportional to that difference.
Which, ironically, means it's using even more cycles than necessary to do his intentionally silly trick, further proving his point.
[+] [-] weinzierl|6 years ago|reply
"The title of this video won't be exactly right. [..] If it's actually a 100% spot on it's a miracle"
the title was exactly right when I saw it the first time. I even screenshotted it.
I also wondered if it would work on HN. Is there a limit on the number of times you can edit a title on HN? Obviously there isn't on Youtube, which I find quite surprising.
[+] [-] LilBytes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enjoyyourlife|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|6 years ago|reply
And here's a video from Computerphile about overflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA0Rl6Ne5C8 "How Gangnam Style Broke YouTube"
[+] [-] jachee|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://github.com/jachee/fiveobot
[+] [-] cryptonector|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stursby|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] in9|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Paraesthetic|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonydiv|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HugoDaniel|6 years ago|reply
:(