scotttsai's comments

A way to fetch historical data but limit it to the last N days would be a useful addition.

Background: On March 17, the ruling political party in Taiwan passed a wide ranging services trade pact[1] with China through extraordinary legislative maneuvers. On March 18, a few hundred protesters, mostly college aged, stormed and successfully occupied the legislature. Once the news got out, a larger crowd of tens of thousands surrounded the legislature building.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-Strait_Service_Trade_Agre...

Another "colorful" part is that there have been gangsters showing up at the protest site, threatening the largely college aged protesters. This coincides with the return to Taiwan of a mob boss with close Chinese ties:

http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/the-return-of-gangster-politi...

He's been spotted at the scene (the last photo): http://www.appledaily.com.tw/realtimenews/article/new/201403...

The protesters are made up of three overlapping groups:

1. Those who resent the way the ruling party reneged on its promise of legislative review and forced a this trade services pact with China through.

2. Those who have economic concerns, e.g. they worry that Taiwanese small and medium sized businesses would be acquired by Chinese capital thus massively raising the barrier to entry in some industries. Another worry is that Taiwan may face a massive brain drain to China.

3. Those who have national security concerns because the trade services pact opens for e.g. some parts of the telecommunications and publishing industries. China claims Taiwan as a renegade province and has said it'd use force to unify the motherland if necessary.

So far this is still a Taiwanese domestic issue though with the U.S. and China watching closely. One WSJ report goes[1]:

"U.S. officials might consider all this as they prepare to resume bilateral trade talks with Taiwan next week. Advancing bilateral trade—and encouraging eventual Taiwanese accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—would help quiet nerves on all sides of Taiwanese politics. The U.S. has largely ignored Taiwan in recent years, but Taipei's current crisis highlights the extent to which trouble still lurks in that corner of Asia."

[1]:http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230441840...

I've been to the protest. One good reporting source is https://twitter.com/JMichaelCole1

The assembly used were relatively simple and for x86-64 Linux (You can tell it's not for Windows by how function arguments were passed).

You can actually get a firm grasp of the basics just by reading chapter 3 from Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective (http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/public/samples.html) and practice writing some simple command line programs.