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Ask HN: What is some information you're not able to find on the internet?

12 points by lainon 8y ago

Did you specialize in anything and/or know about something where there's almost nothing on the Internet about?

Adamantcheese 8y ago
I know a lot about how Blu Ray sucks.
laurieg 8y ago
When I was translating, many dictionaries were not available in any electronic format. General dictionaries usually were, but dictionaries on specialist topics usually had been produced by small teams many years ago and were out of print.
mimixco 8y ago
Yes, the Goodell monorail. The first commercial monorail (and basis of all modern monorails operating in the world today) was invented by Houston businessman Murel Goodell. Yet on the internet, he's practically a ghost. If you asked 100 people who invented the monorail, most would say, "Walt Disney." Disneyland's straddle-beam monorail was invented by Goodell and was his second-generation design. The first design which ran in Dallas four years before Disneyland's was a suspended type. I'm in the process of starting an online Goodell Monorail Museum precisely to fix this problem. I've collected hundreds of documents and photos from archival sources which have never been seen on the internet.
throwawaymath 8y ago
Sure, designing quantitative trading strategies. That’s the easiest example I can think of. There’s basically nothing public out there (that actually works). To a lesser extent, certain types of datasets can’t be found on the internet either. They may exist digitally, but they’ll never be sent across public networks.
- akg_67 8y ago
  Any “working” quantitative trading strategy available publicly will be arbitraged and stop being effective. Look for quantitative strategies that no longer work, study them, figure out why they don’t work, how they may have been arbitraged, and whether arbitrage created a new inefficiency that you could leverage.
bjourne 8y ago
FidoNet archives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12216932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12216932 At its peak in the mid 90's it must have contained millions of messages and thousands of groups. Then internet took over and FidoNet disappeared. Archives of messages from this time period is nowhere to be found.

12 points by lainon 8y ago

Did you specialize in anything and/or know about something where there's almost nothing on the Internet about?

Adamantcheese 8y ago

I know a lot about how Blu Ray sucks.

laurieg 8y ago

When I was translating, many dictionaries were not available in any electronic format. General dictionaries usually were, but dictionaries on specialist topics usually had been produced by small teams many years ago and were out of print.

mimixco 8y ago

Yes, the Goodell monorail. The first commercial monorail (and basis of all modern monorails operating in the world today) was invented by Houston businessman Murel Goodell. Yet on the internet, he's practically a ghost. If you asked 100 people who invented the monorail, most would say, "Walt Disney." Disneyland's straddle-beam monorail was invented by Goodell and was his second-generation design. The first design which ran in Dallas four years before Disneyland's was a suspended type. I'm in the process of starting an online Goodell Monorail Museum precisely to fix this problem. I've collected hundreds of documents and photos from archival sources which have never been seen on the internet.

throwawaymath 8y ago

Sure, designing quantitative trading strategies. That’s the easiest example I can think of. There’s basically nothing public out there (that actually works). To a lesser extent, certain types of datasets can’t be found on the internet either. They may exist digitally, but they’ll never be sent across public networks.

akg_67 8y ago
Any “working” quantitative trading strategy available publicly will be arbitraged and stop being effective. Look for quantitative strategies that no longer work, study them, figure out why they don’t work, how they may have been arbitraged, and whether arbitrage created a new inefficiency that you could leverage.

bjourne 8y ago

FidoNet archives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12216932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12216932 At its peak in the mid 90's it must have contained millions of messages and thousands of groups. Then internet took over and FidoNet disappeared. Archives of messages from this time period is nowhere to be found.