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Ask HN: Which company do you wish had a developer API?
There is an abundance of data that could be useful to developers, but that is not available yet. Which company do you wish had an API?
- aneesh 18y agoMy doctor. Or my hospital. Or pretty much anyone in healthcare.
- TomOfTTB 18y agoHeh...Good Luck with that. I work in a facility that provides mental health care to clients. I am in charge of the computers and all the technology. Unfortunately, our primary customer is the county government and they simply will not budge on anything. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. I recently made a very simple proposal which was that we assign clients a confidential number (given to them in person) and have them generate their own password. They could then view their records online using that number and password. But...and this was the important part... no identifying information (such as name, SSN, etc...) would ever be transmitted over the web. None. The number would be transmitted to us, matched up internally, and then treatment data would be sent back without any identifying pieces of info. No name, SSN, etc... would ever leave our firewall. In addition we’d still use secure connections through SSL, valid certificates, etc... As you can probably guess I was shot down cold by the county. Transmitting data over the internet to private clients is not secure under any circumstances according to HIPAA (so they said, I don’t agree). These kinds of policies are why every medical professional fears transmitting data in any way. I mean, if the government says it’s insecure than you’re just opening yourself up for a lawsuit if you ever try to give access. Privacy is important and I’m not against err-ing on the side of caution to a certain extent. But when fear of lawyers and fear of the Government over power common sense it’s a tragedy and that is exactly where we are now.
- jgilliam 18y agoScrew privacy, I'd rather the whole world know what's wrong with me... maybe they can fix it! Make it searchable and put my email address at the bottom.
- rokhayakebe 18y ago+1. I think if most people had the same attitude about their own problems, specially in the matters of health and finance, we would only benefit from it.
- tptacek 18y agoThat would be true if most employers (or procurement departments) were enlightened. Most, in fact, aren't.
- ambition 18y agoWhat about embarrassing problems with already-known fixes? Or easily-diagnosed but hard-to-cure embarrassing problems? I can't imagine a patient would benefit from the world finding out they had syphilis.
- wyday 18y ago> maybe they can fix it! Millions of newbie programmers have this exact thought. This is why you see countless forum posts with chunks of code and a note like "Something's wrong, can you guys fix it?" No programmer with experience is going to waste their time. Similarly, no doctor is going to waste time doing pro bono work to fix your medical problems.
- smokey_the_bear 18y agoI find people on forums are usually amazingly helpful and giving of time.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoBut one programmer will fix his problem and share the solution with the rest of the world.
- teej 18y agountil you get diagnosed with somethig that makes you uninsurable, then you'll wish you had kept it private.
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoYou have to understand that unless you've got a name like Bill Gates, they're probably not going to put in the effort to understand what you're pitching. You might describe the most perfect system, but all they hear is "complicated computer stuff that might get me in trouble later on"
- TomOfTTB 18y agoI was talking to the CIO of the County so I'd hope that's not the case. Though sadly I'm not confident enough to say that for sure.
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoThat stinks. It bothers me that this is the way the world works.
- tptacek 18y agoI think your employer is making the right call. First, assigning a confidential number is a step in the right direction, but it isn't secure; simple traffic analysis (for instance, via a database flaw) will correlate IDs to recent activity, or to a specific visit (say by a tailed car). Second, any number of other vulnerabilities anywhere on the Internet could coerce a browser to give up the unique IDs assigned to your site, as would any physical compromise of a user's computer, however brief (like, 5 seconds with a malicious USB stick). Third, your employer would face almost unlimited liability in the event of a mass compromise; they've probably insured themselves against HIPAA violations, but compromise of stigmatizing mental health information is easy to tie to material harm --- far more so than a credit card number, which can at least be revoked. Using SSL and firewalls doesn't mitigate the core problem, which is that any false step with the application that serves this information cost cost them tens of millions of dollars. This is a rare instance where I see a draconian regulation actually working to the benefit of consumers.
- TomOfTTB 18y agoThe problem with your logic is that it invalidates every security measure. The reality is this: If the client’s browser or the server’s infrastructure is compromised than there’s no security measure that will prevent a system from being compromised. Think about it. Login info has to get in somehow and if someone has unlimited access to either the system that enters that data or the system that authenticates it how would you possible prevent a security breach? So the end result of your concerns is that there’s just no way to share medical information.
- tptacek 18y agoSo, three responses: First, yes, there's no secure way to share medical information. We should recognize that, and by doing so, I think you'll see my argument about your employer being right is pretty strong. Second, my argument isn't the slippery slope you're making it out to be. In fact, there are likely scenarios in which an application flaw exposes your database, and likely scenarios in which XSRF/XSS flaws will coerce users into exposing medical information. My argument does not depend on some hypothetical killer zero-day bug. Finally, I'm not advocating a world in which we don't provide access to medical information. I'm just saying, there's no way to do it casually. Any project that does it is going to need a steering committee, and special insurance.
- menloparkbum 18y agoTransmitting data over the internet to private clients is not secure under any circumstances according to HIPAA (so they said, I don’t agree). Kaiser Permanente must not be worried about it, since I can see all my blood test results, appointments, correspondence with my doctor, prescriptions, etc when I log into members.kp.org.
- tlrobinson 18y agoMy hospital has an online portal where you can access test results and message doctors... so surely HIPAA doesn't completely prohibit such things?
- tlrobinson 18y agoGood luck... ever head of HIPAA?
- freejoe76 18y agoMy employer, The Denver Post. My bank. My library.
- natrius 18y agoWesabe has an API, so if it supports your bank, then you already have an indirect API for it. https://www.wesabe.com/page/api/examples https://www.wesabe.com/page/api/examples
- shafqat 18y ago+1 for newspapers having good APIs and using some of the great APIs available out there. BTW, would love to get in touch to ask some hackerish questions about your paper. Do you do technology stuff there? If you don't mind, drop me one line and i'll respond (didn't see your address in your profile). My e-mail is shafqat at newscred dot com.
- lux 18y agoMost public services ought to have them. Not just APIs, but even simple stuff like an RSS or ical export for garbage/recycling days so I can throw it in my calendar. It's about usable data formats too. Great question, by the way :)
- mtrimpe 18y agoAlbert Heijn, or any other supermarket.
- tptacek 18y agoMy municipal government.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- mwerty 18y agoimdb
- arjunb 18y agohttp://www.imdb.com/interfaces http://www.imdb.com/interfaces
- ev0 18y agoUnfortunately these are by no means the modern web APIs as we know and very limited in uses due to their nature. A RESTful API to the imdb online database would be hugely popular.
- arjunb 18y agothe netflix apis offer pretty rich catalog detail APIs that are RESTful: http://developer.netflix.com/ http://developer.netflix.com/
- vaksel 18y agotraffic lights system
- rokhayakebe 18y agoI am hoping this would be "read-only".
- liangzan 18y agodropbox
- smanek 18y agowhy? You have the files, which is pretty much the best API you could want, isn't it?
- natrius 18y agoMost gyms make you swipe a card to get in, so they have a pretty good idea of how many people are in the gym at a given time. If they anonymized that data and made it public, I could go when I know it's not going to be crowded.
- slavingia 18y agoWouldn't others go at the same time because they realize it's not crowded, hence making it crowded. Catch-22.
- zack 18y agoNo. For example, my cafeteria is always crowded from 12-12:30. It's always not crowded earlier or later.
- petercooper 18y agoI doubt few people would be so anal to hook up to the gym's API and analyze the data to figure that out. In that sense, someone who does spend the time to do that will reap the reward for their ingenuity :) (That said, when it comes to gyms it's pretty easy to figure out anyway. People don't tend to generally go during or immediately after mealtimes, there are fewer women during school-run times, etc.)
- ks 18y agoThey would not have to use the API directly. Someone would make a website or facebook/iPhone application.
- petercooper 18y agoTrue, but I still think the percentage of average gym users who would go to those lengths would still be pretty small (though larger than those who'd use the API ;-)). Normal people rarely care about this level of efficiency (which I find sad, but hey).
- sam_in_nyc 18y ago
- arjunb 18y agointerface Energy { getUsage(); setPowerState(outletID, powerState); ... } I wonder if we could create a developer community oriented around defining interface standards we'd like to consume.
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoNot too many. If they don't I just use Dapper, and then Yahoo Pipes if needed. Amazing "hack" about Yahoo Pipes... they block usage based on an IP accessing a pipe. Yet, you can make that pipe access the "singleton" version of itself many times. So let's say you want to pull up Delicious tags of 10,000 URLs (something I did to generate very nice marketing data), you could access Delicious yourself 10,000 times (and get blocked very soon) or you can access a pipe (which accesses Delicious) 10,000 times... or you can access a pipe 100 times, each time sending it 100 URLs, and that pipe will just loop through and do it (Yahoo will count 1 access against you rather than 100). Since there are loads of pipes servers, and it's a semi-trusted source (in this case very trusted, since Yahoo owns Delicious), not all the Yahoo pipes servers will get blocked by Delicious. Actually, at the rate I was pinging them, some of them did actually get blocked :) Another interesting experiment: Make a Dapper App which contacts Yahoo Pipes for an RSS. Make that Yahoo Pipe access the same Dapper App. Fun!
- sh1mmer 18y agoIf you like Pipes you should play with YQL (http://developer.yahoo.com/yql http://developer.yahoo.com/yql) it's much more like an API than Pipes given it's SQL-likeness. While it's actually my job to promote stuff for Y! YQL is one of my all time favourite things we have done and it really very much worth taking a look at. Especially given we just released "open tables" so now you can map any service to it, not just RSS, XML, CSV, etc feeds Disclaimer: I work for the Yahoo! Developer Network
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoYahoo! continually comes up with some amazing stuff. XPATH selection of a URL via a SQL like query (http://tinyurl.com/c5jrot http://tinyurl.com/c5jrot)... so awesome! Tell your coworkers that they've impressed me. And now, I test querying the page for itself. If your servers crash, it was all me.
- sam_in_nyc 18y agoThis has proven to be impossible
- gibsonf1 18y agoI really wish gmail had an API!
- johns 18y agoThey do. It's called IMAP
- gnaritas 18y agoGoogle analytics, it'd be really nice to have access to all that data.
- davecardwell 18y agoThere is their “Data Export API” currently in private beta. See the bottom of this post: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-enterprise-class-features-added-to.html http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-enterprise-class-...
- awt 18y agoCraigslist
- noblethrasher 18y agoAcademic Application Suites like Blackboard and the University IT system - but that's mostly for allowing better interoperability between organizations on campus. My wireless telephone service provider. I would especially like to be able to query and download my voicemails. Better ODB (On-Board Diagnostics) API. Every new car should include a webserver and either an ethernet or wireless NIC (and an easy way for the owner to explicitly enable/disable it). Actually, every high end household item should have an API (which I suppose is what Java was initially going to do).
- psadauskas 18y agoCongress
- rokhayakebe 18y agoInfoUSA.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- andreyf 18y agoElevator. I want my iPhone to tell it when I enter the building, and that I'm going to the 6th floor. Ditto for when I'm going back.
- shalmanese 18y agoHacker news doesn't have an API yet...
- petercooper 18y agoeBuyer.com - they're like the NewEgg of the UK. They have some great bargains from time to time but you always have to visit their site to dig around for them.. they have no Twitter feed, no blog, no API for their products, no affiliate program.. it sucks because otherwise they're the best place to buy computer parts/gadgets/techie gear here. A more general answer is.. ALL e-commerce sites. Preferably with a standardish API so that you can do stuff like put together comparison engines easily without scraping HTML.
- timtrueman 18y agoPower grid data would be nice, maybe then devices could start knowing when it best to power down or charge.
- pietro 18y agoRail, bus and airline companies. It would be useful to query not only the timetable, but also any delays or changes, and of course booking via an API would be awesome.
- herval 18y agoMy Bank. Actually any bank outside USA at all!!
- Stubbs 18y agoThe UK government. There's so much information held in their records that would be great to get at through an API. Can I include all the bodies funded by the government, like the Royal Mail (for their postcode db), Ordnance Survey (for their map data) to name a couple. They're funded by our taxes, so why not allow free access to it?
- al_ 18y agoGas stations, supermakets
- bemmu 18y agoAd networks should have a standard way for me to query what my CPM was for yesterday, so that I can make an intelligent decision about which ads to show tomorrow. Of course that might not be wise for them to provide...
- kubrick 18y agoPaypal could use one.